"The only difficulty with this entire story was that it was not remotely true. There had been no sustained assault by the Chinese on the legations, no breakthrough, no last stand, and no slaughter. In fact, July 6th had been quiet enough that Private R.G. Cooper, one of the British soldiers holed up in the legations, had not mentioned it in his diary of the siege. The most pressing news of those few days was the discovery of a buried British cannon from 1860, which the defenders of the legations refurbished and put to use."