ey dug in and awaited rescue. A Chinese servant was able to infiltrate through the Boxer and Qing lines, informing the Western Powers of their predicament. Surrounded and attacked nearly around the clock by Qing troops and Boxers, they were at the point of being overrun. On 25 June a regiment composed of 1800 men, (900 Russian troops from Port-Arthur, 500 British seamen, with an ad hoc mix of other assorted western troops) finally arrived. Spiking the mounted field guns and setting fire to any munitions that they could not take (an estimate £3-million worth), they departed the Hsi-Ku Arsenal in the early morning of 26 June, with the loss of 62 killed and 228 wounded.
With a difficult military situation in Tianjin and a total breakdown of communications between Tianjin and Beijing, the allied nations took steps to reinforce their military presence significantly. On 17 June they took the Taku Forts commanding the approaches to Tianjin, and from there brought increasing numbers of troops on shore.
The international force with British Lieutenant-General Alfred Gaselee acting as the commanding officer of the Eight-Nation Alliance, eventually numbered 55,000, with the main contingent being composed of Japanese soldiers: Japanese (20,840), Russian (13,150), British (12,020), French (3,520), U.S.(3,420), German (900), Italian (80), Austro-Hungarian (75) and anti-Boxer Chinese troops. The international force finally captured Tianjin on 14 July under the command of the Japanese Colonel Kuriya, after one day of fighting.
The march from Tianjin to Beijing of about 120 km consisted of about 20,000 allied troops. On 4 August there were approximately 70,000 Imperial troops with anywhere from 50,000 to 100,000 Boxers along the way. They only encountered minor resistance and the battle was engaged in Yangcun, about 30 km outside Tianjin, where the 14th Infantry Regiment of the U.S. and British troops led the assault. The weather was a major obstacle, extremely humid with temperatures sometimes reaching 110 °F (43 °C).
The international force reached and occupied Beijing on 14 August. The U.S. was able to play a secondary, but significant role, in suppressing the Boxer Rebellion largely due to the presence of U.S. ships and troops deployed in the Philippines since the U.S. conquest of the Spanish American and Philippine-American War. In the U.S. military the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion was known as the China Relief Expedition.
The siege was finally ended when Indian troops of the international expeditionary force arrived under the command of German General Alfred Graf von Waldersee. The main German force arrived too late to take part in the fighting, but undertook several punitive expeditions against the Boxers. Troops from most nations engaged in plunder, looting and rape. German troops in particular were criticized for their enthusiasm in carrying out Kaiser Wilhelm II’s words. On 27 July 1900 when Wilhelm II spoke during departure ceremonies for the German contingent to the relief force in China, an impromptu, but intemperate reference to the Hun invaders of continental Europe would later be resurrected by British propaganda to mock Germany during World War I and World War II.
In order to provide restitution to missionaries and Christian families whose property had been destroyed, American troops were guided through villages by the missionary William Ament. Boxers, or at least those identified as Boxers, were punished, even executed and their property confiscated. When Mark Twain read of this expedition, he wrote a series of scathing attacks on the "Reverend bandits of the American Board."
On 7 September 1901, the Qing court was compelled to sign the "Boxer Protocol" also known as Peace Agreement between the Eight-Nation Alliance and China. The protocol ordered the execution of 10 high-ranking officials linked to the outbreak and other officials who were found guilty for the slaughter of Westerners in China.
China was fined war reparations of 450,000,000 tael of fine silver (1 tael = 1.2 troy ounces) for the loss that it caused.