The War in China from Cassells Illustrated History of England

Below a drawing that was included in the 1920s edition of Cassells Illustrated History of England – it was entitled ‘The War in China – the Fighting at Tientsin’ – it refers to the arrival of the Eight Powers Allied Aermy in1900 in Tientsin to march to Peking to relieve the Siege of the Legations. Eventually of course this did happen, the Boxers were beaten and then Peking viciously looted and burned by the foreign troops. The eight powers by the way were Austria-Hungary, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, Great Britain and the United States. You can see representatives of most of these armies in the illustration, though, strangely for a British publication, it seems to show the Yanks getting stuck more than the Brits! A swift bit of research shows that a large number of historical illustrations covering lots of different historical moments in different parts of the world in Cassells were illustrated by ‘HMP’, as was this. No idea who HMP was in real life though I’m afraid – it’s a very stylised Tientsin so we can assume HMP wasn’t actually recording anything he saw!