The allied forces consisted of about 45,000 troops from the eight nations of Germany, Japan, Russia, Britain, France, the United States, Italy, and Austria-Hungary.
Some Western historians define the first phase of hostilities, starting in August 1900, as "more or less a civil war",[1] though the Battle of the Taku Forts in June pushed the Qing government to support the Boxers.
[2] The Boxers, a peasant movement, had attacked and killed foreign missionaries, nationals, and Chinese Christians across northern China in 1899 and 1900.
The Qing government and its Imperial Army supported the Boxers and, under the Manchu general Ronglu, besieged foreign diplomats and civilians taking refuge in the Legation Quarter in Beijing (then romanized as Peking).
[3] The diplomatic compound was under siege by the Wuwei Rear Division of the Chinese Army and some Boxers (Yihetuan), for 55 days, from 20 June to 14 August 1900.
[4] Under the command of the British minister to China, Claude Maxwell MacDonald, the legation staff and security personnel defended the compound with small arms and one old cannon discovered and unearthed by Chinese Christians, who turned it over to the allies.
The defenders suffered heavy casualties from lack of food and Chinese mines that exploded in tunnels dug beneath the compound.
They defeated the Qing Imperial Army's Wuwei Corps in several engagements and quickly brought an end to the siege and also the Boxer Rebellion.
Empress Dowager Cixi, the emperor and high government officials fled the Imperial Palace for Xi'an and sent Li Hongzhang for peace talks with the alliance.
[8] As allied troops moved from Beijing into the North China countryside, they executed unknown numbers of people accused or suspected of being or resembling Boxer rebels, which became the subject of an early short film.
The gold plating on the copper tanks in front of the Forbidden City palaces was scraped off by allied troops, leaving scratch marks that can be seen even now.
[2][11] Austria-Hungary had a single cruiser, SMS Zenta, on station at the beginning of the rebellion, based at the Russian concession of Port Arthur.
[13] In June, the Austro-Hungarians helped hold the Tianjin railway against Boxer forces and fired upon several armed junks on the Hai River near Tongzhou in Beijing.
After the Boxer Uprising, a cruiser was maintained permanently on the Chinese coast, and a detachment of marines was deployed at the Austro-Hungarian embassy in Beijing.
The Royal Navy's China Squadron, stationed off Tianjin, consisted of the battleships Barfleur and Centurion, the cruisers Alacrity, Algerine, Aurora, Endymion, and Orlando, and the destroyers Whiting and Fame.
Seebatallion was sent to Beijing and Tianjin to protect German interests there while the majority of the remaining forces stayed behind to prevent attacks against Qingdao.
[30] They were soon followed by the Ostasiatisches Expeditionskorps (East Asian Expeditionary Corps), which was a force of about 15,000 of mostly volunteers from the regular Army under the command of General Alfred Count von Waldersee.
In October, following losses and rotations of duty, the first three battalions sent were included in the 16th regiment of marines by order of General Régis Voyron, commander in chief of the French Expeditionary Corps in China.
[33] The larger part of the approximately 2,000 Italian soldiers and officers who fought in the campaign against the Boxers were recalled from Beijing after the end of the conflict.
[citation needed] At the beginning of the Boxer Rebellion, the Japanese had only 215 troops in northern China stationed at Tianjin, nearly all of whom were naval rikusentai from the Kasagi and the Atago, under the command of Captain Shimamura Hayao.
[36] On 12 June the advance of the Seymour Expedition was halted some 30 miles from the capital, by mixed Boxer and Chinese regular army forces.
[38] On 17 June naval Rikusentai from the Kasagi and Atago had joined British, Russian and German sailors to seize the Taku forts, near Tianjin.
[38] Overriding personal doubts, Foreign Minister Aoki Shūzō calculated that the advantages of participating in an allied coalition were too attractive to ignore.
Prime Minister Yamagata likewise concurred, but others in the cabinet demanded that guarantees from the British in return for the risks and costs of the major deployment of Japanese troops.
[38] Shortly afterward, advance units of the 5th Division departed for China, bringing Japanese strength to 3,800 members of the 17,000-strong allied force.
Japanese troops were involved in the storming of Tianjin on 14 July,[38] and the allies later consolidated and awaited the remainder of the 5th Division and other coalition reinforcements.
[42] The United States was able to play a major role in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion largely because of the presence of American forces deployed in the Philippines since the U.S. annexation after the Spanish–American War in 1898.