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 attahnedssameuer time
that we know perfectly well commands
cre-
dence—feeling disposed rather to attribute these
theosef
loathsome details of anguish to the wanderings
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 evening—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
permission of the Emperor HIEN FUNG'S own Bro-
ther, Prince BUNG, or of the Tartar Commander-
in-Chief, Prince SANG.RO-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
beards 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.