The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-14 00:00:00

THE SUN.
LONDON, FRIDAY, DEC. 14, 1880.

The Chinese Mails have in due course reached us
this afternoon, in fulfilment of our own confident
expectations,but contrary to the opinions expressed
this morning by our contemporary, the Times—
" the wish" there being probably " father to the
thought" of what would doubtless have been to our
morning contemporaries generally a little opportune
postponement.
The telegrams already received during the past
week are now—by the detailed particulars con-
veyed to us through the Mails come to hand this
afternoon—in one sense gloriously-, in another
frightfully corroborated.
Pekin, we now learn is completely, not merely
a couple of the gates of it, but the very capital
itself, in the possession of the Allies. The tricolour
and the union jack flutter there from the public
buildings of that mysterious Chinese metropolis
hitherto impenetrable to the armed bands of the
Europeans. Where the foreigner's footsteps have
never before penetrated save under the shelter of
the garb of the Jesuit missionary, the soldiers of
VICTORIA and NAPOLEON are firmly established as

conquerors.
It appears now that from the 22d of September
up to the 3d of October, the Allies remained at a
distance of a few miles from Pekin, waiting for the
siege train slowly coming up towards them from
Tien-tsin. Nay, the advance upon the Chinese
metropolis even then can hardly be said to
.have been commenced in real earnest until the 6th
or 6th of October the previous days having
brought the invaders only for a few minutes face
to face with a few of the pickets of the army of
SAN-KO-LIN-SlN—the said pickets being hurriedly
withdrawn as the army itself was, en masse, after-
wards. On the 6th, however, the Allies threw up
an earthwork near the city, and gave evidence at
• length of their resolute determination to set them-
selves in earnest to the terrible work of the bom-
bardment. Before another week had elapsed a
formal and peremptory demand was sent in to the
authorities, requiring them forthwith to give up
unconditionally the prisoners they had so long
and so lawlessly held in durance, and to succumb
to the other requirements of the Angle-French
Ambassadors and Commanders-in-Chief. An alter-
native was certainly allowed to the Chinese autho-
rities, but that alternative was simply to be
expressed_in one word—bombardment. A certain
hAr of the eleventh of October was fixed moreover
as the extreme limit of the time during which the
enemy—then threatened by the brass rifled cannon
of the French, and by our still more formidable
English Armstrongs—could have any choice what-
ever allowed to them in regard to this alternative.
Upon the verge of the last moment only—it is
so like the Chinese !—the Pekinese " gave in" upon
the 11th of October. Our demands in reference
to the return of the prisoners were partially
complied with—our other demands being complied
with entirely and unconditionally. As to the pri-
soners—about a dozen appear to have been returned
into the camp of the Allied armies then close under
the walls of Pekin. Her MAJESTY'S Consul, Mr.
HARRY PARKES, was there in that welcome group
—snatched from the jaws of destruction. There
too was Mr. LOCH, Lord ELGIN'S private
Secretary. Besides these two gentlemen, the
Chinese restoring to the Allies a French officer
and nine Sowars of our Sikh cavalry. Now,
however, comes the horrible part of the story to
be told of these and of all the other prisoners—
two of them known to have died under the effects
of the brutal treatment to which they had been
subjected, together with their companions—the
rest unaccounted for in any way, and by this time
we fear, long since snatched from the inhuman
hands of their tormentors by a kinder foe than the
Chinese—Death. All the prisoners there
be it related now—all the prisoners, without
exception, prove to have been most impartially
dealt with by their barbarous persecutors, to have
been most infamously treated quite indiscriminately.
Among other tortures to which they appear to have
been all of them alike subjected, the wrists of each
prisoner were, we are told, tied tightly round with
cord. The food allotted to them seems to have been
vile and insufficient. Her MAJESTY'S Consul and
her Ambassador's Secretary appear to have fared
with the worst—Mr. PARKES being beaten with
bamboos like a dog if he answered not immediately
—Mr. LOCH being caned in like manner, for what
offence ? for not knowing how to speak Chinese !
Mr. PARKES, and Mr. LOCH are further
described as having been compelled to
kneel down before every wretched little peddling
Mandarin—and the Consul of the Queen of
ENGLAND and the Secretary of her Britannic
MAJESTY'S Ambassador were, besides this, forced
down into a yet more grovelling position—
having their faces rubbed in the dust before these
miserable MANDARINS. Surely such details as to
the treatment, of the prisoners lawlessly seized
upon and carried off by the Chinese in direct vio-
lation of all the usages in vogue among the various
civilised races of both hemispheres—surely, these
details here given as to the cruel and
brutal treatment to • which our countrymen
have been subjected at the hands of these
Chinese ruffians, are enough to make the blood of
any Englishman worthy of the name of an Eng-
lishman boil with indignation. We may be certain
of this, that the knowledge of these facts will nerve
the arm of every gallant tar, of every dauntless
soldier out there at the actual seat of war in the
northern part of China, 'will serve effectually
until the end of that war to hearten them to
deeds of daring against an enemy so base and
dastardly as this ! Wo.s it not only a few days
sinceariaevtthat Sir FRANCIS DOYLE celebrated in
verse ringing,
with manly scorn for the dastards
honour for the brave dead, the execution of that
of the Buffs, who died not long since out
there in the
East rather than perform the
kotou to his ar off
Chinese° torturers

" Last night, among his fellow roughs,
He jested, quaffed, and swore ;
A drunken private of the Buffs,
Who never looked before.

TO-day, beneath the foeman's frown,
die stands in Elgin's place,
Ambassador lioin Britain's crown,
And type of all her race,"

straits
Einnaglllishth:t
bAultliedinArtmhey 0:11":
Not a manut
French or
would do likewise. Not a man among them but
will burn to avenge these later indignities.
Upon the afternoon of the day which witnessed