Editing Li Hongzhang (section)

===Boxer Rebellion and death===
In 1900, Li once more played a major diplomatic role in negotiating a settlement with the [[Eight-Nation Alliance]] forces which had [[Battle of Peking (1900)|invaded Beijing]] to put down the [[Boxer Rebellion]]. His early position was that the Qing Empire was making a mistake by supporting the Boxers against the foreign powers. During the [[Siege of the International Legations]], [[Sheng Xuanhuai]] and other provincial officials suggested that the Qing imperial court give Li full diplomatic power to negotiate with foreign powers. Li telegraphed back to Sheng Xuanhuai on June 25, describing the declaration of war a "false edict". This tactic gave the "[[Southeast Mutual Protection]]"<ref name="Luo2015">{{cite book|author=Zhitian Luo|title=Inheritance within Rupture: Culture and Scholarship in Early Twentieth Century China|date=30 January 2015|publisher=BRILL|isbn=978-90-04-28766-2|page=19}}</ref> provincial officials a justification not to follow [[Empress Dowager Cixi]]'s declaration of war.<ref>{{Cite book|publisher=Stanford University Press|isbn=0804751285|last=Zhou|first=Yongming|title=Historicizing Online Politics: Telegraphy, the Internet, and Political Participation in China|url=https://archive.org/details/historicizingonl00zhou|url-access=limited|location=Stanford|date=June 2005|page=[https://archive.org/details/historicizingonl00zhou/page/n89 75]}}</ref> Li refused to accept orders from the government for more troops when they were needed to fight against the foreigners, which he had available.<ref>{{cite book|title=The dragon empress: life and times of Tz'u-hsi, 1835-1908, Empress dowager of China|author=Marina Warner|year=1974|edition=illustrated, reprint|publisher=Cardinal|page=138|isbn=0-351-18657-3}}</ref> Li controlled the Chinese telegraph service, whose despatches asserted falsely that Chinese forces had exterminated all foreigners in the siege and convinced many foreign readers.<ref>{{cite book|title=Warriors of the rising sun: a history of the Japanese military|author=Robert B. Edgerton|year=1997|publisher=W. W. Norton & Company|page=[https://archive.org/details/warriorsofrising00edge/page/86 86]|isbn=0-393-04085-2|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/warriorsofrising00edge/page/86}}</ref>

In 1901, Li was the principal Chinese negotiator with the foreign powers which captured Beijing. On September 7, 1901, he signed the [[Boxer Protocol]] ending the Boxer Rebellion, and obtained the departure of the Eight-Nation Alliance at the price of huge indemnities for the Chinese. Exhausted from the negotiations, he died from liver inflammation two months later at Xianliang Temple in Beijing.<ref>{{cite book|last=Fenby|first=Jonathan|title=The Penguin History of Modern China: The Fall and Rise of a Great Power, 1850–2009|publisher=Penguin Books|year=2009|pages=89–90}}</ref> The [[Guangxu Emperor]] posthumously honoured Li as [[Royal and noble ranks of the Qing dynasty#Notable titles|Marquis Suyi of the First Class]] ({{lang|zh-hant|一等肅毅候}}). This peerage was inherited by Li Guojie, who was assassinated in [[Shanghai]] on February 21, 1939, allegedly as a result of his support for the [[Reformed Government of the Republic of China|Nanking Reformed Government]].<ref>{{cite news|title=Another Political Murder in Shanghai|work=Dundee Evening Telegraph|date=21 February 1939|access-date=20 November 2014|url=http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000563/19390221/078/0006| via = [[British Newspaper Archive]]|url-access=subscription }}</ref>