The Sun.
London, England, 1860-12-18 00:00:00

•
even in vague conjecture) by a record of actual facts
but just now brought to light—by an authentic
description of cruelties only a very few weeks since
deliberately perpetrated by the Chinese, or by
those conquerors and oppressors of the Chinese
race—the Tartar soldiery. The corroboration of
these old discarded tales of Chinese or Tartar bar-
barity, coming to us through the authoritative
medium of the London Gazette of Friday the 14th
of this present month of December.
The narrative of the dreadful sufferings under-
gone by our fellow-countrymen, during this last
October, either in the City of Pekin or its imme-
diate neighbourhood, cannot but be read with pecu-
liar horror here in the calm and tranquillity of our
own peaceful homes at this genial and joyous
season of Christmas. It is difficult, although we
read the account of these calamitous incidents in
the London Gazette, duly authenticated with the
signatures of several among the sufferers who have
happily survived and returned to the Allied camp
from their dead or lost companions in misfortune—it
is difficult to believe the accuracy of the accounts
there given to us upon testimony at the same time
that we know perfectly well commands our cre-
dence—feeling disposed rather to attribute these
loathsome details of anguish to the wanderings of
some distempered imagination.
The amplest account yet furnished to us from
that little cluster of survivors—snatched almost
at the last gasp from the jaws of destruction—is
the one penned with singular lucidity and com•
pleteness by Mr. HENRY LOCH, the Private Secre-
tary of Her Britannic Majesty's Ambassador, out
at China, and Minister Plenipotentiary. Accord-
ing to the distressing narrative written by Mr.
LOCH immediately upon his return to the
camp of the Allies, and addressed to his Excellency
Lord ELGIN—by whom it has been transmitted
pro forma to her MAJESTY'S Government, to be
afterwards duly published in the London Gazette
of Friday tvening—the insults and torments in-
flicted upon the Anglo-French prisoners, lawlessly
seized by the Tartar horsemen, although bear-
ing a flag of truce, and invested with the sanctity
appertaining to diplomatic emissaries the
insults and torments inflicted upon those Anglo-
French prisoners were of a character the most
brutal and barbarous imaginable. Let it be re-
marked first of all—that is, before we attempt
anything like the merest epitome of some of the
most appalling of these cruel sufferings—that the
record furnished to the British Ambassador by his
Private Secretary is borne out in a very dreadful
manner by the more brief but hardly less suggestive
descriptions dictated by two of the Indian troopers
in that noble band of cavalry known as FANE'S
Horse ! The evidence of the first of these, MAHOMED
KHAN, and the evidence of JOWALLA SING, his
companion, being clubbed together in the Gazette
under the title of The Sowar's Statement.

Deriving our " facts," then, entirely from Mr.
LOCH'S Narrative, and from the Sowar's State-
ment, we learn, among other particulars,
that thus were the English Prisoners tor-
tured by the Chinese or Tartars, either by' the
express orders or with the ready acquiescence and
per Mission of the Emperor HIEN FUNG'S own Bro-
ther, Prince KUNG, or of the Tartar Commander-
in-Chief, Prince SANG.KO-LIN-SIN. These English
Prisoners of the Chinese, then, be it now related,
were dealt with by their captors, as recently as this
last October, in the manner following :—They were
violently torn from their horses—thrown heavily
upon the ground with their faces downwards—their
hands being then lashed together at the wrists as
tightly as the cords could be drawn into a knot!
So tightly, in fact, that, as we shall presently see
the bones of the wrists, after a few days
of this torture, became visible, the nails
and fingers burst, and maggots (generated
in the wounds by mortification) battened upon
the flesh of the living man, and crawled over his
body, the poor victim then, happily for him, being
in a state of delirium ! Thus pinionel, they were
dragged into the presence of one petty mandarin
after another—but, in the first instance, into that of
the Tartar Generalissimo, SANG 'KO-LIN-SIN. Upon
each of these occasions they were railed at con-
tumeliously by the ruffian into whose presence
they had been hauled ignominiously. They were
forced down upon their knees while undergoing
these insults. They 'were knocked brutally from a
kneeling into a prostrate position, and then had
their faces rubbed in the dirt at the feet of
those Chinese•or Tartar authorities. Incidents like
these occurred not once but again and again for the
gratification of a succession of these brutal tor-
mentors. Sometimes a swarm of ruffians suddenly
rushed in upon them, tearing the hair and the
beailds of the pinioned prisoners, and brandishing
swords about their heads as if immediately
prior to their execution. Sometimes they would
throw these unhappy victims (always, remember,
in the most helpless condition, with their arms tied
tightly behind them as if by a tourniquette), some-
times they would throw them into a common cart,
without springs, and take them over rough roads at
a gallop, with a result in bodily torture, as we can
readily believe, actually beggaring description.
When dragged out of these carts their
arms would be violently lifted, producing a
sensation as if they were being torn out of their
sockets. For three days consecutively they would
be left to • lie upon their faces (their wrists still
fastened inexorably behind them), they would be
left to lie thus for three days together in the open
air, under the broiling sun of noon, under the dews
and frosts of night, without one morsel of food
to eat, without one drop of water to quench
their thirst—until one of them, as we have said (it
was no other than poor Captain ANDERSON),
became at length (nor surely can it bewondered at)
delirious ! If the sufferers cried mit at last for
food, dirt was'crammed into their mouths! They
were manacled with heavy chains—an iron collar
clasped round the neck was connected with rings
round the ancles by heavy links incumbering them
at every movement. Thus manacled they were again
hauled before the examiners, compelled to kneel,
torn by the hair, knocked down and kicked on the
head when prostrate ! Afterwards they were thrust
among murderers, parricides, and others of the
worst kind of malefactors, creatures loathsome with
theitch and swarming with vermin. Here it was
that Mr. Loon, chained to a plank (which was his
bed), found himself tended upon by three criminal,
—two of them murderers, the third having bitten
his father's finger off! It is SOWALLA SING who
relates that horrible climax to the sufferings of
poor Captain ANDERSON, already referred to
ineidentall
y—telling us that two days: prior
to his death his nails and fingers burst
from the tightness of the cords, and morti-
fication set in, the bones of his wrists being ex-
posed—the sowar aiding that, while poor Capt.
ANDERSON was yet alive* worms were generatedin
his wounds, and crawled over his body—he himself
(we are only consoled to think) being at that time
Of the heroism
delirious. with
which
all these frightful sufferings were endured
by these dauntless Englishmen and by their no
less gallant Sikh companions, we have no words
in which adequately to express our admiration.
Mr. PARKES'S noble fidelity to his comrade, Mr.
Locii—a fidelity that alone, under GOD, led at