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Indiscreet Letters From Peking

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Indiscreet Letters From Peking
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Author(s): Bertram Lenox Putnam Weale
Date Published: 2010/10
Page Count: 328
Softcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-319-9
Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-0-85706-320-5

Besieged by the Boxers by one of the besieged

For those interested in the siege of the legations at Peking in 1900, this remarkable book has many advantages. Its text is taken from letters written and despatched as the events unfolded and together they offer a substantial account that reveals the progress of the crisis to its inevitable conflagration. The atmosphere of unease within the city is palpable to the reader up to the point the writer introduces us to ‘the Society of the Harmonious Fist’—the fearsome Boxers. Weale then describes the siege in some detail, virtually on a day by day basis, with all its privations and with graphic accounts of fierce combat with the attacking Chinese forces. Finally, with the arrival of the relief column and foreign troops, the author tells of the sack of the city which is an aspect of the Siege of the Peking legations often absent from other accounts. Available in softcover and hardcover with dust jacket.

Word came to us suddenly that the Boxers had caught a lot of native Christians, and had taken them to a temple where they were engaged in torturing them with a refinement of cruelty. One of our leaders collected a few marines and some volunteers, marched out and surrounded the temple and captured everybody red-handed. The Boxers were given short shrift—those that had their insignia on; but in the sorting-out process it was impossible to tell everybody right at first sight. Christians and Boxers were all of them gory with the blood which had flown from the torturing and brutalities that had been going on; so the Christians were told to line up against the wall of the temple to facilitate the summary execution in progress.<br>
Then a big fellow rushed out of a corner, yelling, “I have received the faith.” Our leader looked at the man with a critical eye, and then said to him in his quietest tones, “Stand up against the wall.” The Boxer stood up and a revolver belched the top of his head off. With that quickness of eye for which he is distinguished, our leader had seen a few red threads hanging below the fellow’s tunic. The man, as he fell with a cry, disclosed his sash underneath. He was a Boxer chief. At least thirty men were killed here.<br>
But it was at the Western Roman Catholic Cathedral that the most exciting times up till now have been had, for there, as at the other cathedral, the Boxers have been at work. The first relief expedition went out during the night—that is, last night. Headed by someone from the French Legation, the expedition managed to bring in all the priests and nuns attached to the cathedral mission. Old Father d’A——, a charming Italian priest, was the most important man rescued. After having been forty years here, he surveys the present scenes of devastation and pillage with the remark, “En Chine il n’y a ni Chrétiens ni civilisation. Ce ne sont là que des phrases.” That is what he said.<br>
This morning a second relief corps, containing the most miscellaneous elements, tramped away stolidly in the direction of the still smoking cathedral ruins in the hopes of saving some more unfortunates, and our expectations were soon realised. After a walk of a mile and a half, we rounded a corner with the sound of much wailing on all sides, and ran suddenly full tilt into at least two or three dozen Boxers, who have been allowed to do exactly as they like for days. There was a fierce scuffle, for we were down on them in a wild rush before they could get away, and they showed some fight. I marked down one man and drove an old sword at his chest.<br>
The fellow howled frightfully, and just as I was going to despatch him, a French sailor saved me the trouble by stretching him out with a resounding thump on the head from his Lebel rifle. The Boxer curled over like a sick worm and expired. There was not much time, however, to take stock of such minor incidents as the slaying of individual men, even when one was the principal actor, for everywhere men were running frantically in and out of houses, shouting and screaming, and the confusion was such that no one knew what to do. The Boxers had been calmly butchering all people who seemed to them to be Christians—had been engaged in this work for many hours—and all were now mixed up in such a confused crowd that it was impossible to distinguish friends and foes.<br>
As they caught sight of us, many of the marauders tore off their red sashes and fell howling to the ground, in the hope that they would be passed by. Dozens of narrow lanes round the ruined cathedral, which was still smoking, were full of Christian families hiding in the most impossible places, and everywhere Boxers and banditti, sometimes in groups, sometimes singly, still chased them and cut them down. Numbers had already been massacred, and several lanes looked like veritable shambles. The stench of human blood in the hot June air was almost intolerable, and the sights more than we could bear. Men, women and children lay indiscriminately heaped together, some hacked to pieces, others with their throats cut from ear to ear, some still moving, others quite motionless.<br>
Gradually we collected an ever-growing mob of terror stricken people who had escaped this massacre. Some of the girls seemed quite paralysed with fear; others were apparently temporarily bereft and kept on shrieking with a persistency that was maddening. A young French sailor who did not look more than seventeen, and was splashed all over with blood from having fallen in one of the worst places, kept striking them two and three at a time, and cursing them in fluent Breton, in the hope of bringing them to reason. “Eh bien, mes belles! Vous ne finissez pas,” he ended despairingly, and rushed off again to see whether he could find any more.<br>
The blood was rising to our men’s heads badly by now, and I saw several who could stand it no longer stabbing at the few dead Boxers we had secured. We had none of us imagined we were coming to such scenes as these; for nobody would have believed that such brutal things were possible. When we judged we had finished rescuing every one alive, a man in the most pitiable condition ran out from behind the smouldering cathedral carrying a newly severed human head in either hand. He seemed but little abashed when he saw us, but came forward rapidly enough towards us, glancing the while over his shoulder.<br>
Several sailors were rushing at him with their bayonets, ready to spit him, when he fell on his knees, and, tearing open his tunic, disclosed to our astonished eyes a bronze crucifix with a silver Christ hung on it. “Je suis catholique,” he cried to us repeatedly and rapidly in fair French, and the sailors stayed their cold steel until we had extracted an explication.<br>
Then it transpired that he had used this horrible device to escape the notice of some Boxers who were still at work in a street on the other side of the cathedral. We ran round promptly on hearing this, and caught sight of a few fellows stripped to the waist, and gory with blood as I have never seen men before. Instead of fleeing, they met our charge with resolution, and one tall fellow put me in considerable danger of my life with a long spear, finally escaping before we could shoot him down.<br>
On this side the ruins of the cathedral were covered with corpses burned black from the heat of the flames and exposure to the sun. One woman, by some freak of nature, had her arms poised above her head as she sat dead, shrivelled almost beyond human recognition. It was probable that the Boxers had pitched many of their victims alive into the flames and driven them back with their swords and spears whenever they attempted to escape. . . .