6/29/2023 0 Comments Boxer rebellion![]() ![]() Fires are started daily, although the shelter will be much needed if the troops are to hold the country during the winter. The villages to the southward are even worse despoiled. The inhabitants, without food or clothing, were huddled in back yards in a pitiable condition. Several bodies lay in the streets, apparently those of non-combatants. The few who dared to protest were kicked about. Most of the Chinese were submitting to all this in abject fear. Parties of soldiers of every nationality were roaming about unrestricted, and, presumably, were doing much wanton destruction, in the spirit of deviltry, smashing furniture and glassware, and trampling books and pictures under foot. In the overcrowded famine-threatened districts, away from the river, their lives and small possessions are at the mercy of bands of soldiers traveling about without officers. Now the people are returning to their homes, only to find no shelter, or rice, or occupation. While the international forces were advancing, the commanders, notably the Japanese, American, and British, enforced a certain degree of protection. Along the river and the roads traveled by the foreign troops between Tientsin and Pekin an orgie of looting and destruction continues, with much useless slaughter of unoffending inhabitants. The retribution they are suffering exceeds the ordinary penalties of the war. The Chinese in the Pei-ho Valley are paying dearly for the folly of their government. 3, 1900:Ĭopyright, 1900, by the Associated Press. Finally, a rescue force of eight nations crushed the uprising, but created their own brand of havoc in the process. When the diplomats sent out calls for their own national troops, the Manchu government declared war against the foreign powers. Houses, schools and churches were burned, and official residences of foreign diplomats besieged. Foreigners, including missionaries, were slaughtered, as were those Chinese thought to support Western ideas. In 1900, the Boxers - dubbed so by foreigners because of their boxing and calisthenic rituals - set out to destroy everything they considered alien. The spread of foreign influence in China led to a bloody uprising by a group of government-sponsored peasants in what became known as the Boxer Rebellion. Excerpts from "the first rough draft of history" as reported in The Washington Post on this date in the 20th century.
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