The Sun.
London, England, 1862-07-11 00:00:00

EXECUTION OF TAEPING PRISONERS.

The following account of the brutalities commit-
ted on the Taepings by the Imperialists, is from
the pen of an Englishman, who was present, in
company with both English and French officers
and soldiers, at the execution by disembowelment
of Taeping prisoners :
" I went with the crowd to see the execution of tl-,e Tae-
ping prisoners that had been given up for execution into the
hands of the mandarins by the English and French autho-
rities ; or, what is the same thing, they took no measures to
prevent the ruthless butchery of those they lent their aid to
capture ; when, horror of horrors, how am I to describe the
dreadful scene, or will it ever leave my memory ? Among
these wretches were young and old, of both sexes, and of
all ages and sixes, from the infant recently born to the man
of eighty, tottering on his staff; from the enciente woman
to the young maiden from ten to eighteen. The latter were
pushed out by the guards among the crowd of ruffians as-
sembled, and were taken into sheds and by-places and de-
bauched, and again dragged back by the hair of the head to
the Chinese guards, to await their turn for execution. Some
of them had fainted, and were pulled along the ground to the
executioners, who threw them on their backs, tore off their
clothes, and ripped them from the lower part of the abdomen
to the breasts, which were cut off and dashed with a curse in
their faces. The bowels, as a matter of course, gushed out;
but the cut was made in such a way—so skilfully and with
such expertness, that the intestines were seldom injured.
After a little time in this state of excessive torture, the exe-
cutioner thrust his hand into the chest and tore out the
reeking heart, his victim looking him in the face all the
while. A young female, apparently about eight months
pregnant, who never uttered a groan or a sigh at all the
previous cruelties she bad endured from the surrounding
mob, had her infant cut out of her womb, and held up
in her sight by one of its little hands bleeding and quiver-
ing ; when at the sight she gave one heart• rending pierc
ing screech that would have awakened pity in a tiger,
and after it had been in that state dashed on her breast,
she, with a last superhuman effort, released her arms
from those holding her down, and clasped her infant to
her bleeding heart and died, holding it there with such
force that they could not be separated and when thus
thrown together on the pile of other carcasses. Ano-
ther young woman among the prisoners awaited her
turn to be disembowelled, with a fine boy of ten months
old, crowing and jumping in her arms, had him snatched
suddenly away from her, and flung to the executioner,
who plunged the ruthless knife into his tender breast
before his mother's eyes. Infants but recently born were
torn from their mother's breasts, and disembowelled before
their faces. Young strong men were disembowelled,
mutilated, and the parts cut off thrust into their own
mouths, or flung among the admiring and laughing crowd
of Chinamen. But no more, I can write no more of these
scenes; I can now only regret for ever that I looked on
the dreadful sight. lam no longer fit to be a soldier. I
have been in many battles during the last twenty years,
and in the thickest of the fight in most of them,where a rage
and thirst for carnage is dreadful to reflect on afterwards,
but nothing heretofore that I have seen or heard of, or even
read of, could be compared to the dreadful cruelty of the
disembowelling execution. May God forgive England for
the part she is taking in this war, and may the sin of the
enormities she has assisted in perpetrating on the defence
less women, and innocent and helpless child, be removed
from her door; and after the treatment English worsen
and children met with from the hands of the blacks in the
Sepuy mutiny, it is truly wonderful that Englishmen should
join in or countenance similar atrocities here. It is now
ascertained for a certainty that B— and his companions,
after having been tortured in every way that Chinese inge-
nuity and cruelty could devise, were afterwards mutilated
and then disembowelled by the Imperialists; and for that
reason the Chinese authorities would not produce their
dead bodies, Poor F—, who came with me to see the
execution, fell down in a fainting fit, and was in that state
carried away, and ,is now a raving maniac from the effects
the dreadful sight had on him. We are now, with the
money wrung from the starving poor of England, assisting
those very monsters whose hands are dyed red in the blood
of our countrymen, and for what ? For the sake of the
golden trade derived from their country. Englishmen,
what would be your 'feelings, had your fathers, mothers,
brothers, sisters, wives, and children, been served by
Frenchmen or Russians as described above? Would you
think that any amount of revenge you could take on them
would be halt sufficient ? But God, who looks with pity on
the sufferings of Ills creatures, sees all this, and hears all
their cries of despair and agony ; and yet it must be all
right, or else He would not permit it. I am well punished,
you will say, for neglecting my kind good uncle's anxicus
desire for me to leave the army, and join him in Australia,
and I feel so myself."

BANQUET TO M. ROUHER.—An invitation was last
week, addressed byls7 members of both sides of the House
of Commons to M. Rouher, the French Minister of Com-
merce, then on a visit to London, to a banquet in honour
of his eminent services to the cause of Free Trade. On
receipt of this invitation M. Rouher returned to Paris, and,
with the full approbation of the Emperor of the French,
has now formally accepted it. The entertainment will
take place at Willis's Rooms, on the 16th instant, Mr.
Milner Gibson, as President of the Board of Trade, presid-
ing. Places have been reserved on this interesting occasion
for the Presidents of the various Chambers of Commerce of
the United Kingdom.

A wooded country is almost invariably a wet
country. The climate of Italy has been much improved by
cutting down many of the Appenine woods; and Germany,
owing to the clearing away of its dense forests, has obtained
a similar blessing. Most likely this change has passed over
our own country; many pacts of it in ancient times were
covered with forests, of which prehistoric traces may
be often seen in quarries, and historic remains are occa-
sionally disclosed at a very low tide, or when a bog is
being drained. Of late years the Brazilian Government
deemed it necessary to forbid any more wood to be cut on
the Organ moutains, for it was found that the rainfall of
Rio Janeiro, which lies at their base,
was thereby bein
inconveniently lowered.—Once a Week.