To follow up this blow Great Britain, Russia, Germany, France,
America, and Japan are collecting an army at Taku. Each of the white Powers sends four thousand men,—Great Britain from Calcutta, Russia from Port Arthur, France from Saigon, Germany from Kiao-chow and Kiel, and America from Manila; while Japan sends either five thousand or ten thousand more. The troops from India, it should be added, are all native. As soon as the combined force is organised, and has received supplies, say in the second week of August, it will march on Pekin, and there carry out the instructions upon which in the meantime the Cabinets have agreed. These instructions are probably not drawn ; and the statement that the Empress-Regent will be banished, the Emperor installed, and a Council appointed which will take European advice is only a generally diffused impression. The alternatives to that plan are dangerous, but the Empress will have weighty remarks to make upon them all. She may be overthrown by a revolt of the Manchu nobles, but at present the soldiers obey her, she has vast wealth to scatter —possibly forty millions—and she has not risen from being a slave-girl to the possession for twenty years of the greatest throne in Asia without having developed pride. She may fight or fly, but in either case she will try to die with the sceptre in her hand, and to secure some vengeance on her many foes.
