1900 - Protestant Martyrs in Beijing

June-July 1900

Protestant Martyrs in Beijing

Beijing

The ruins of the Presbyterian Church in Beijing, destroyed by the Boxers in June 1900.

The Boxers surprised many by the highly coordinated attacks they were able to launch against Christians in the summer of 1900. Many had underestimated their size and organization, downplaying the Boxers as a motley collection of gangsters.

The turning point for the Boxers came when the Chinese empress put her support behind them. Carrying out imperial orders, local officials around the country commanded all Christians to write a public recantation and place it on their doors. Church membership rolls were confiscated by the Boxers, giving them lists of the names and addresses of Chinese Christians. Guided by this information, one source notes that “in some districts, the Boxers have gone from home-to-home plundering, burning, and killing without mercy.”[I]

Beijing was the main target of the Boxers’ wrath. Emboldened by the knowledge that the Chinese military would not oppose them, the Boxers desired to rid the capital city of all foreigners and their Chinese sympathizers. Christians were especially hated because the Boxers believed the new religion was causing great offence to the spirits of their ancestors. A long drought leading up to the summer of 1900 was cited as evidence that the spirits were angry, and only a blood sacrifice could placate their wrath. The Boxers claimed to have supernatural powers to help them discover who the followers of Christ were, boasting they could see a cross on the forehead of any true believer.

Rev. Hill Murray’s Blind School in the western part of the city had 30 sightless boys and eight girls in attendance. On the night of June 13th the Boxers decided to kill all of them. The school buildings and dormitory were set alight. All of the children tried to run into the courtyard, but the heartless Boxers forced them back inside the buildings and burned them to death.[II] A few of the children managed to escape and reported this gruesome story to the missionaries in another part of the city.

The worst atrocities took place on the night of June 14th, continuing on into the next day. William Pethick, who led the first rescue party into the city after the slaughter, said, “Never have I seen anything like it, men, women and children bound together with burning coals under and around them; killed, dead and dying on every hand; weak ones carrying aged and sick on their backs—and worse.”[III]

Dr. Ernest Morrison, a reporter for The Times newspaper of London, was an eyewitness of the evil as approximately 6,000 Chinese Christians were butchered in the streets and alleys of Beijing.[IV] Morrison’s report provides us with a clear picture of one of the darkest days in the history of Christianity in China….

“THE MASSACRE OF NATIVE CHRISTIANS

As darkness came on the most awful cries were heard in the city, most demonical and unforgettable, the cries of the Boxers—Sha kuei-tsz (kill the devils)—mingled with the shrieks of the victims and the groans of the dying. For Boxers were sweeping through the city, massacring the native Christians and burning them alive in their homes. The first building to be burned was the chapel of the Methodist Mission in the Hata-men Street. Then flames sprang up in many quarters of the city. Amid the most deafening uproar, the Tang-tang or East Cathedral shot flames into the sky. The old Greek Church in the north-east of the city, the London Missionary Society buildings, the handsome pile of the American Board Mission…. It was an appalling sight.

On the 15th [of June] rescue parties were sent out by the American and Russian Legations in the morning, and by the British and German Legations in the afternoon, to save if possible native Christians from the burning ruins of the Nan-t’ang. Awful sights were witnessed. Women and children hacked to pieces, men trussed like fowls, with noses and ears cut off and eyes gouged out. Chinese Christians accompanied the reliefs and ran about in the labyrinth of network of streets that formed the quarter, calling upon the Christians to come out from their hiding-places. All through the night the massacre had continued, and Boxers were even now shot red-handed at their bloody work….

But to our calls everywhere no reply was given. Refugees, however, from the east city had managed to escape miraculously and find their way, many of them wounded, to the foreign Legations, seeking that protection and humanity that was denied them by their own people. As the patrol was passing a Taoist Temple on the way, a noted Boxer meeting-place, cries were heard within. The temple was forcibly entered. Native Christians were found there, their hands tied behind their backs, awaiting execution and torture, some had already been put to death, and their bodies were still warm and bleeding. All were shockingly mutilated. Their fiendish murderers were at their incantations burning incense before their gods, offering Christians in sacrifice to their angered deities.” [V]

All that was left of the Presbyterian Mission compound in Beijing.

Many individual stories of martyrdoms in Beijing appear on the following pages, but some of the lesser-known victims included six family members of a prominent Christian named Li Changchun at Shunyi County. Li managed to escape the Boxer slaughter, he later reported the tragic event. He also witnessed the martyrdom of a Mrs. Fu: “I saw her lie down in a depression in the ground, saying, ‘I want nothing else; I wait for the Boxers to give my life to them.’ Soon Boxers came and hacked her to death, burying her in the hole where she lay.”[VI] In total, only twelve of the 65 Christians at Shunyi escaped death.

One of the 53 martyrs was Mrs. Li, who was last seen “walking through the streets of the city nearly a mile to a Boxer altar, her hands tied behind her, rough men on every side. Over and over she sang the one hymn she knew, ‘Jesus loves me, this I know.’ Confident in the great love which did not fail her, she went down into the dark valley.”[VII]

A young Christian schoolteacher near the Great Wall was left in charge of 17 schoolgirls when the missionary fled because of the Boxer threat. Some of the rich families in the city offered to hide her, “but she refused to leave the girls who could not get to their homes. Hiding in fields and caves, they were hunted like wild animals. Finally they were captured and led to a Boxer temple for execution.”[VIII]

At Pinggu an unnamed Christian man was captured by the Boxers along with another believer. For some reason the Boxers decided his friend should die, but that he would be released. He “turned away and went off a little distance, then came back to the Boxers. ‘What are you coming back for? You can go,’ they said. He replied, ‘Kill me too! I too am one of them!’ And they led him to where his friend had died and there killed him.”[IX]

The Boxers captured a Christian woman belonging to the American Board in Beijing. Standing there with her child in her arms, she was given a chance to gain her freedom by denying Christ. She replied, “I can not do that, sir, but I can die for my Lord.” She was immediately cut to pieces, and received the crown of life that Jesus promised to all who endure to the end. Wang Jinglin was a medical student in Beijing. “He was put to death in the city, and it was reported that his body was cut in six pieces.”[X]

Some of the missionaries trapped in the British Legation for eight weeks during the summer of 1900.

In June 1900, thousands of foreign and Chinese Christians rushed to the foreign Legations around the city. A legation in those days was somewhat equivalent to an embassy today, in that the land it occupied was considered the sovereign territory of that foreign country, and they were therefore permitted to operate according to the laws of their respective lands, including having their own troops for security.

The legations in Beijing in 1900, however, were different from most embassies today in that they generally covered a large area, with numerous buildings surrounded by stout walls and towers. In many ways they were like mini-cities within another country. The height of the various legation walls ranged between twelve and fifteen feet (3.6 to 4.6 metres). In many ways the legations were mini-cities within another country.

The British Legation covered an area of six acres (24,280 sq. metres). Inside the walls were found streets with many houses, a library, post office, shops, stables, graveyard, and a church. It was there that more than 2,000 people—mostly Christians—fled for refuge. The Boxers and Chinese soldiers laid siege to the British Legation for eight weeks in the summer of 1900, yet somehow by the provision of God the Chinese were never able to enter inside the walls and massacre its inhabitants.

The stress on the refugees huddled inside was immense. In addition to the mid-summer heat approaching 40° C. (104° F.), the men and women, boys and girls who were cramped into the quarters daily had cannon balls and thousands of bullets fired above their heads, a lack of food and water, flies and filth; and perhaps worst of all, the fear and uncertainty of not knowing what would happen next. When a multi-national force of soldiers finally arrived in Beijing and liberated the captives on August 14th, the conditions inside the legations were horrible. Mrs. C. E. Ewing describes what it was like on one of the first nights of the siege:

“At about 8 o’clock such a din arose as I never heard before in my life, and hope never to hear again. The terrible noise was the shouting of a mob just outside the gate. One continuous yell of ‘Kill, kill, kill the foreign devils.’ We were so close that it seemed at first as though the mob were surely inside the gate, and would be upon us any minute…. The hideous yelling kept up for two hours.”[XI]

Mrs. John Inglis, whose daughter Elizabeth was killed, said,

“Strong men turned pale, children looked at their parents with wondering eyes, while the mothers shrank back into the shadowy corners of the church, with sleeping babes drawn close against their throbbing hearts. Never shall we who waited within our walls those awful nights forget them while memory lives. More painful and more dangerous nights were to follow, but none so frightful.”[XII]

After eight stressful weeks a multi-national army liberated Beijing and the siege of the legations ended. The missionaries could never understand why the Chinese kept shooting their bullets so high above the compound walls. They were later told by Boxers and Chinese troops that they had been bothered by the presence of white-clothed men standing on top of the walls and towers, and so had spent much of their ammunition on them. The more they shot at these “men,” however, the more there seemed to be. No men were ever atop the walls during the whole eight-week siege.

Later, it was estimated that some 3,900 mortar shells had been lobbed at the Legation during the eight-week ordeal, yet not a single person had died from any of them! M. Pichon, the French Minister, summed up the siege in his dispatch. He wrote, “A general massacre was averted only by a series of extraordinary events the origin of which was perhaps due less to the will of man than to a combination of circumstances impossible to foresee.”[XIII]

I Marshall Broomhall (ed.), Martyred Missionaries of the China Inland Mission: With a Record of the Perils and Sufferings of Some Who Escaped (London: Morgan and Scott, 1901), 261.
II Bryson, Cross and Crown, 101.
III A. H. Mateer, Siege Days: Personal Experiences of American Women and Children During the Peking Siege (New York: Fleming H. Revell, 1903), 74.
IV Latourette states, “In the historic cemetery just to the west of Beijing, in grounds in which evidences of Boxer desecration are still visible, lie buried the remains of six thousand or more martyrs of that one fateful year.” Latourette, A History of Christian Missions in China, 510.
V The Times, October 15, 1900.
VI Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 283.
VII Miner, China’s Book of Martyrs, 290-291.
VIII Hefley, By Their Blood, 34.
IX Smith, China in Convulsion, Vol.2, 672-673.
X Smith, China in Convulsion, Vol.2, 696.
XI Mateer, Siege Days, 89.
XII Mateer, Siege Days, 89.
XIII Mateer, Siege Days, 401.