The meeting was a memorable and decisive one. As the Chinese themselves knew, and as the I.G. agreed, there were but two ways of solving the difficulty before them. Either it must be fought out--and the fact that China's military strength could not arrest the steps of the foreign troops, and that a fort-night sufficed for them to march victoriously from the sea to Peking, was in itself sufficient to show that nothing could be hoped from the noble idea of "no surrender"--or at all costs some peaceful arrangement must be made.
A note was accordingly drawn up requesting the doyen of the Diplomatic Corps to fix a day to receive the Chinese Plenipotentiaries, who "were ready to begin negotiations and had prepared a proposal for discussion," which they enclosed. A bold stroke this, and rather a surprise to the diplomats, who marvelled that the Chinese--injuring parties as they were--should have the courage--let us call it so, for there was truly much admirable bravery in it--to take the first step.
The details of the subsequent negotiations would fill pages. How anxiously Li Hung Chang was waited for; how memorandum after memorandum was drawn up, altered, amended, discarded altogether; how the stricken city was gradually calmed, and traders induced to bring in supplies again; how the poor ladies, wives of four Emperors, who had been left behind in the palace almost starved to death when the international troops guarding the Forbidden City forbade all ingress and egress through the pink gates, until the I.G. saved them, in the nick of time, by applying to the Allied Generals, might be told at length.
But a busy age has little patience with details, however romantic--suffice it to say that negotiations continued by fits and starts. What really complicated them was the absence of the Court! The I.G. frankly wrote as much to the Grand Secretary, Wang Wên Shao, and in so doing he only voiced the general feeling that "at such a time of suffering it would be well for the Emperor to be with his people." Prince Ching willingly testified that. Though he had been back ten days he had not suffered any personal indignity, and hinted that, were the Emperor to return, he would, of course, meet with even greater consideration. But the Court was obstinate. While the Palace was in the hands of foreign troops they would not come--and so, for the time, the negotiators had to get on as best they could without their Imperial masters.