The Redwood gazette. [volume] (Redwood Falls, Minn.) 1873-1940, 1892-02-11
HORRORS IN CHINA.
Wholesale Bntchery OF Men, Women and
Children by Rebels-The Latter Captured
and Reheaded by Hundreds.

Wholesale Butchery Of Men, Women and
Children by Rebels-The Latter Captured
and Reheaded by Hundreds.
SAN FRANCISCO. Feb. 5.-A Shanghai
correspondent gives details of ter
rible atrocity committed by Chinese
rebels on the border of Manchuria and
of equally terrible punishment in.
tlicted by government troops upon the
captured rebels. These rebels were
led by several Buddhist priests,
and they were especially savage
against native Christians. At one
place they burned sixty children and
butchered nine Chinese nuns. At an
other they cremated sixty men whom
they imprisoned in barn. Their ex-
petitions were solely for plunder and
without political purpose. Viceroy Ii
sent large army against them and
their strength was broken. Hundreds Of
prisoners were taken.
The punishment meted out to the
rebels by their con4 uerors was most
revolving and the executions were con.
Quoted on wholesale scale. Men
were beheaded by hundreds, and entire
trunks of trees were utilized as blocks
along which prisoners were ranged in
lines and their executioners simply
moved off their heads when the signal
was given. Generally in China the con.
demned are ranged in small knots
kneeling before the executioner but
here the wretched miscreants were too
numerous for the usual rules to he OBJ
served and they were seized by their
queus by soldiers from the other side
of the lately improvised blocks and
their heads Topped off. They were not
even tied and the headless trunks fell
against the block or tumbled back
ward or to one side when the fatal
sword severed the neck. The heads
were hung in long rows on poles as a
warning to others.
The rebels, it appears, were mostly
bandits, who roam the country just
outside the wall of China Last spring
they joined forces and entered upon a
regular plan of campaign of plunder.
They were all we'll armed, and being
mainly composed of prescribed Chinese
criminals they fought desperately
whenever pitted against the Chinese
troops, and for long time always de.
feated their adversaries. One of the
most notorious of the priestly maraud
ers was Han Chan Chung, who recent
ly lost his life at Mo Wo Kun, a place
about 200 miles northeast of Keehol,
during fierce engagement with the
Chinese troops. The most horrible
atrocities were perpetrated by
these wandering desperadoes Eye.
witnesses state that aim ost the entire
population of villages was cruelty NAL.
treated and murdered. The burning OF
children alive, the brutal treatment
and murder of women, the carrying of
of everything from the homes of the
wretched people, was the general line
of conduct of these inhuman fends.
A case in point is the occurrence at a
village called Kutulan, in the Jeho]
pre- lecture, Manchuria. A band of soc
marauders swooped down upon this
place in the dead of night, captured all
whom they did not kill outright, and
finally carried away with them all
the women Before going they put
sixty men in a large barn, securely
fastened all places of egress, and sci
fire to the place. The shrieks Of those
being burned alive reached the ears o1
few persons who had escaped to the
hills. The scene was frightfal in the
extreme. This, however, is only one
Of a dozen such incidents. The
rebels raided and destroyed
| Christian and heather villages
alike, but to captives of the
former places they acted in &
particularly ferocious manner. Al
Talijow, which has been Christian fol
two centuries, they massacred nine
Chinese sisters, nuns, and burned the
orphanage, which contained sixty little
inmates. The piercing of the bodies o.
the captives with heated bayonets ane
spears, the gouging out of eyes, the
disemboweling or burying alive of vic
Tins, were among the atrocities prac
| ticcd by the rebels