Democratic Sentinel, Volume 16, Number 4, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 12 February 1892 — AWFUL DEEDS IN CHINA [ARTICLE]

AWFUL DEEDS IN CHINA

HUNDREDS ARE BURNED ALIVE BY REBELS. Almost Incredible Massacre of Men, Women and Children, followed by Wholesale Executions or the Barbarians, Whose Heads Were Mowed Off by Scores. In a Heathen Land. A Shanghai correspondent gives details of a terrible atrocity committed by Chinese rebels on the border of Man-., churia, and of equally terrible punishment inflicted by government troops upon tho captured rebels. These rebels were led by several Buddhist priests, and they were especially savage against native Christians. At one place they burned sixty children and butchered nine Chinese nuns. At another they cremated sixty men whom they imprisoned in a barn. Thoir expeditions were solely for plunder and without political purpose. Viceroy Li sent a largo army against thorn, and their strength was broken. Hundreds of prisoners were taken. The punishment meted out to the rebels by thoir conquerors was most revolting and the executions were conducted on a wholesale scale. Men were beheaded by hundreds, and entire trunks of trees were utilized as blocks along which prisoners were ranged In lines and '.heir executioners simply mowed off thoir heads when the signal was given. Generally in China tho condemned are rangod in small knots kneeling before the executioner, hut here tho wretched miscreants were too numorous for the usual rules to be observod and they wore seized by their queues by soldiers from the other sklo of (he lately Improvised blocks and their heads lopped off. Thoy were not evon tied and the headless trunks fell against tho block or tumbled backward or to one side when (he fatal sword severed the neck. Tho heads were hung in long rows on polos ns a warning to others, and in a short time Intense cold froze the bodies stiff, but not before oamp followers und ghouls had stripped them of every atom of olotlilng.

Tho rebels, It appears, were mostly bandits, who roam the country just outside tho walls of China. Last spring they joined forces and entered upon a regular plau of campaign of plunder. The most horrible atrocities were perpetrated by those wnndorlng desperadoes. Eyo witnesses state that almost tho entire population of villages was craolly maltreated and murdered. The burning of children alive, the brutal treatment and murder of women, tho carrying off of everything lrorn the homes of the wretched people, was the general line of couduct of those inhuman fiends, A ease In point is tho occurrence at a village called Kutulan, in tho Jeliol prefecture, Manchuria. A band of 300 marauders swooped down upon this place In tho dead of night, captured ull whom thoy did not kill outright, and finally carried away with thorn all the women. Beforo going, thoy put sixty men in a largo barn, socuroly fastened rdl places of egress, and sot fire to tho place. Tho shrieks of those being burnod alive roached the ears of a few norsoiiß who had escaped to the hills. The scene was frightful In tho extreme. This, however, is only one of a dozen such incidents. The rebels raided and destroyed Christian and heathen vllluges uliko, but to captives of tho former places they acted In a particularly ferocious manner. At Talljow, which has boen Christian for two centuries, thoy massacred nine Chinese sisters, nuns, and burned tho orphanage, wldoh contulnod sixty little Inmates. The piercing of the bodies of captives with heated bayonets and spears, tho gouging out of eyes, the disemboweling or burying alive of victims, were among tho atrocities praoticod by tho rebels. Ono band is said to havo been led by a huge amazon, who rode astride her horse like a man. It was reported among liet followers that sho drank the blood of victims •in order to maintain hor courage. Tiio suppression of the revolt is not entirely duo to tho efforts of the Chinese Government. It wds really the extreme cold that had the most to do with it. The robbers oould not stand the campaigning In the winter weather, and they retired to their strongholds in the hills.