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"Let us use the Boxers to drive the foreigners into the sea."

The formidable Empress Dowager had ruled China from behind the throne for nearly half a century, dominating a succession of emperors and, in 1898, crushing her nephew the Guangxu Emperor's reform movement and placing him under house arrest. Deeply resentful of the foreign powers dismembering China, she gambled catastrophically in 1900 by throwing the empire's support behind the Boxers and declaring war on all the treaty powers at once. When the eight-nation army stormed Peking, Cixi fled the capital in a cart, disguised as a peasant, ordering (by tradition) the drowning of the emperor's favourite concubine as she went. She spent over a year in exile before returning to preside over the humiliating Boxer Protocol and a belated program of the very reforms she had once destroyed. Her death in 1908, a day after the mysterious death of the emperor she had imprisoned, left the dynasty leaderless; it fell three years later.

"The Braves of the Northwest do not fear the foreigner's guns."

A hard-fighting Muslim general from the northwest, Dong Fuxiang commanded the 'Kansu Braves' — tough Hui and other Muslim soldiers whose ferocity made them the most effective Qing troops in the war. His men did much of the real fighting against the foreigners, attacking the legations and the relief columns, and it was reportedly one of his soldiers who shot dead the German minister von Ketteler in the street, an act that helped ignite the international response. Because the powers demanded his execution in the peace terms, and because his army was too important to the frontier to sacrifice, the court could only cashier and exile him rather than put him to death. He retired to the northwest and died in 1908. He remained a hero to China's Muslims for having fought the invaders when the rest of the empire's armies faltered.

"The Boxers are loyal subjects; let them cleanse the empire of the foreign poison."

A Manchu prince of the imperial clan, Zaiyi — Prince Duan — was the leading figure of the militant, anti-foreign faction at court, and the chief patron of the Boxers within the government. His ambitions were personal as well as ideological: he had manoeuvred to have his own son named heir to the throne, and he saw the Boxers as a weapon against both the foreigners and the reformist emperor. It was Prince Duan's faction that pushed the Empress Dowager toward war, circulating (possibly forged) reports that the powers meant to force her from power. When the war was lost, the victorious allies branded him a war criminal and demanded his death; the court commuted the sentence to exile, and he was banished to the far northwest of the empire. His son's claim to the throne evaporated, and Prince Duan died in obscurity two decades later.

"I serve the throne, though the Boxers I despise."

One of the ablest and most modern-minded generals of the late Qing, Nie Shicheng commanded a well-trained division of the Wuwei Corps and had actually fought the Boxers early on, regarding them as dangerous fanatics. But when the court declared war and threw its lot in with the Boxers, the loyal Nie found himself caught between the movement he despised and the foreign enemy he was ordered to fight. He led the defence of Tientsin against the allied armies with skill and courage, but he was distrusted by the Boxers behind him and the court above him, and he was killed in the fighting there in July 1900 — some said seeking death in despair at his impossible position. His fate captured the tragedy of the many Qing officials trapped between a reckless court and an overwhelming enemy.

"I am but a bricklayer, patching a house that is falling down."

The grand old statesman of the late Qing, Li Hongzhang had modernised China's armies and industry and conducted its foreign policy for decades. In 1900 he was viceroy in the south, and — along with other southern governors — he refused to obey the court's declaration of war, keeping the Yangtze provinces neutral in a pact with the foreign powers that spared half of China from the catastrophe. When the war was lost, the desperate court recalled the 77-year-old Li to Peking to negotiate with the victors, as he had so often before. He haggled the punitive terms of the Boxer Protocol down as far as he could — a staggering indemnity, the punishment of officials, foreign garrisons in the capital — signing the humiliating treaty in September 1901. Worn out by the ordeal, he died two months later, and China lost the one statesman the foreigners still trusted.

"We shall hold the lines while there is a cartridge left to fire."

A former army officer turned diplomat, Sir Claude MacDonald was the British Minister in Peking and, by common consent, became the overall organiser of the defence of the besieged Legation Quarter. For fifty-five days he coordinated the improvised, multinational garrison — assigning sectors of the perimeter to different national contingents, rationing food and ammunition, and holding the polyglot defenders together through repeated crises. His steady leadership was widely credited with the legations' survival until the relief column arrived. After the war MacDonald went on to become Britain's first ambassador to Japan, where he helped forge the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. His experience of the siege made him one of the most celebrated diplomats of the age.

"No mercy will be shown; no prisoners will be taken."

A German field marshal and former chief of the general staff, Count von Waldersee was appointed supreme commander of the international expeditionary force at the insistence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, who was determined that a German should lead the coalition. But Waldersee arrived only in late September 1900, after Peking had already been relieved by the others, and his command was largely of the punitive phase. Under his direction, and infused with the spirit of the Kaiser's infamous 'Hun speech' urging the troops to make the name 'German' feared for a thousand years, the allied forces mounted dozens of punitive expeditions across North China, marked by looting, executions, and brutality. Waldersee's belated, vengeful command did much to fix the bitterness of the war's aftermath in Chinese memory.

"Push on to the legations — there is not a moment to lose."

A veteran British general of the Indian Army, Sir Alfred Gaselee commanded the British and Indian contingent of the international relief expedition and, through his energy and cooperative spirit, emerged as one of the driving forces of the multinational march on Peking. Amid the mutual suspicion of the allied contingents, Gaselee worked well with the others, and his troops — including Indian regiments — were among the first to break through to the besieged legations on August 14, 1900. He led his men through a gap in the great walls of Peking to the relief of the desperate defenders, a moment that made him a hero across the British Empire. His steady, unshowy competence contrasted with the rivalries and brutalities that marked much of the campaign.

"We built our barricades of sacks of rice and sugar, and waited for the guns."

The future 31st President of the United States was a 25-year-old mining engineer working in Tientsin when the Boxer crisis erupted and trapped the foreign community in the settlement. Hoover threw himself into organising the defence, helping build barricades, direct the distribution of food, and coordinate the care of Chinese refugees during the fighting for the city. His wife Lou, a fellow Stanford graduate, worked in the improvised hospitals and reportedly cycled through the streets under fire. The experience of the siege of Tientsin left a lasting mark on Hoover, who would later become famous for organising humanitarian relief on a vast scale during and after the First World War before winning the presidency in 1928.