Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/91

for cavil that she could not fight; not yet, at all events, however favourably circumstanced and however well armed.

Naturally, after incurring such terrible disgrace, China pulled herself together, or seemed to do so. She saw plainly that the provincial troops, the Green Banners, were useless, and although she could not abolish them all since they performed police and excise duties of an extensive nature, she set about abolishing a large portion of them, and collecting in the metropolitan province an army which should have the advantage of centralisation. It is true that these reforms were rudely interrupted in 1899 by a conservative reaction, which restored Manchu authority under the Empress Dowager as against Chinese progressive ideas under the auspices of the young Emperor. Yet the organisation and equipment of a strong army was part of the Manchu programme also, and during the five years that separated the conclusion (1895) of the war with Japan from the Boxer outbreak of 1900—an outbreak having for its ultimate purpose the expulsion of all foreigners from China and the severing of foreign relations—China was supposed to have once more prepared herself to beat back any attempts against Peking, at all events. Indeed the defences of the metropolitan province still retained something of the prestige that attached to the whole military and naval machine of China before her war with Japan, for though