The Sun.
London, England, 1863-09-23 00:00:00

The Chinese and their Prisoners,

(From the Gazette of last evening.)
FOREIGN OFFICE, SEFT. 22.
A despatch, of which the following is an extract, from
Major •General Brown, commanding the British troops in
China, has been communicated to Lord Russell by the
Secretary of State for War :

" Various statements having appeared in the several
journals published at Shanghai, concerning the treatment
de,l have
b y allegedcspta. Murray, it A., command-
ethetorture
honourof some
tastate, that enat
the a
t
il rrsiesmoo nfa
deTresa,i to am few k
tsna
a
ot
hf er
reportecbapl p rebel
e
ing a Field Force in support of the attack on Taitean, soon
t a
after his return to headquarters, of the Imperialists' cruel
treatment of their prisoners.
"I took the report to her Britannic Majesty's Consul
(Harvey) without delay, and expressed my desire that the
Foutai should be informed of the same, *tad to urge upon
him to send out an order at once to all his mandarins in
command, forbidding any cruelty to be exercised upon cap.
tured prisoners ; and further, if any report was again made
to me of a similar nature, I would cease to act with his
troops. Lieut. R. Cane, R.A., who has been six years in
China, and has soma knowledge of the Chinese language
and customs, was the first who reported the circumstance
to Captain Murray, and the letter of the former
officer, called for by me for report, is here annexed, and de-
tails, I think, everything most clearly.
" I have no reason to believe otherwise than that the
Foutai is equally anxious to be as humane as possible to his
prisoners; some hundreds were lately captured at QUatlg-
gati, and so far from being cruelly or severely dealt with,
have actually, to a great extent, been incorporated by
Major Gordon into his own regiment; and I have also
asked for some to be sent down to me from Quang.ean to
be drilled with, and attached to, the batteries of Chinese
artillery gun Lascars, which are under the command of the
officer commanding Royal Artillery, who reports them most
useful and efficient.
"Major Gordon was also lent by me some fifty of these
g-san, and
speaksdrilled gun Lascars
highly
for his attack on Quan
of them. I have now only to draw
attention to ' eye witness' statement, who would actually
allow the public to believe that men undergoing extreme
torture, such as he describes, with various wounds, from
whence issued copious streams of blood, and could not only
exist from 11 a.m. till sunset, but then to be able to ba led
outsen tfotrheexNevchuetlie time;leavingon whereas the editor, in his remarks
on the bishop's letter, to remove any apprehension as to the
non-influence of British officers who were on the spot,
states that the treatment the prisoners were under-
going was only discovered ten minutes before their execu-
tion. This alone, I suornit, stamps the whole statement as
highly coloured and greatly exaggerated.''

Iv closure.

inquiry of. the Major-General Com-
manding. Shanghai, June 11, 1863.
to inform you that on May 3,
1863, I was present at Wei ongsuna, as Acting Field Ad-
jutant Sii r
nI
hr reply
Loot he
honour c
. In the afternoon of that day I was taking
to a force under command of Captain A. Murray,
Royal Artillery
a walk for exercise, with several other officers, along the
main road towards lio-lung-suud, and in passing between
two Imperialist stockades our attention was attracted by
a number of men, I think seven or eight, naked and tied to
rebelsspoons te
rs 's
,0
fOl all
on
n approachingwith
standing) t
and with the very peculiar com-
plexion and physiognou3Y which have been frequently no-
tieed as acquired by wen who have spent much time among
the Taepings.
These men had evidently been sentenced to the punish-
ment of the " Ling-che,, : or " slow and ignominious death,"
what we call "cutting into a thousand pieces," and it was
also evident that they had been hvery
long
' I
hair found they were Changman pri-
r (showing that they were
n spared as much as possible,
and little more than the form of this horrible punishment
carried out. Each mars had a Piece of skin, not flesh, about
stripped from one arm and hang-
ing down, and one or two arrows had been pushed (ap-
parently not shot) through the skin in different places.
There was very little. blood about the ground, and the men
four inches by two, partly
that he was a Coolie and ought not to be put to
did not appear to
behelhnad
ShanghaiPaln; one was crying out very loudly
death as a ' however very long hair. I asked
a low Chinese officer present what they were, he told me
they were old and well-known rebels, two of them officers,
and they were about to be beheaded ; he said that they had
been exposed from mid-day (it was about half-past four or
five o'clock p.m., when I saw them). At the same time I
saw an official approaching to superintend the execution,
and not being anxious to witness the spectacle, which I had
often seen before, I withdrew. From what other officers
who remained informed me, I gathered that decapitation
was performed at once in the usual manner, except that the
sword employed was blunt, and the executioner inexpert.
I saw no other signs of torture whatever, and considered
that these men were, taking into account Chinese law and
customs, rather mercifully dealt with. A dead Changman
lay some distance off, who had been treated in a similiar
manner to the other, in addition a slight incision had been
made from his breast to his groin, but, from the absence of
blood, I think this was done after death.
On my return to Waikong I reported what I had seen to
Captain Murray, commanding, who desired me to visit the
camp next morning, and to take notice of the occurrence,
which I did by mentioning it to a fourth rank military field
officer, the senior in the camp. I told him we English did
not like such punishments; that if a man deserved death
we executed him at once, and did not expose or mutilate
him. I expressed general disapproval of what had been
done, and said the English commanding officer was much
displeased at it, 1
all '-) if anything of the sort was attempted
again, would march up and put a stop to it ; and that I hoped
it would not again occur during our stay. He replied that he
did not himself approve of it, but that I must recollect that a
large number of the rebel prisoners taken at Taitsan had
been pardoned by the High Imperial officers, permitted
to shave their heads, and employed as soldiers or labourers;
and that it was not possible to restrain the Imperial sol-
diers from taking some vengeanee for the treatment which
the rebels had inflicted on 300 or more of their comrades,
who had been entrapped into Taitsan on a false promise of
the surrender of the place. These men, he said, were
almost all put to death, and very many of them had their
" bodies wounded, and cotton put over their wounds and
set on fire," and Were otherwise badly tortured, (Ills I