The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1901-02-16
THEY DIED LIKE STOES.
DETAILS OF EXECUTIONS Al
PAOTING-FU
Surrounded by Foreign Troops Manda-
rims Pay the Penalty of Death for
Boxer Atrocities.

The Shanghai Mercury publishes the
following translation of a German cor
respondents account of the executions
of Chinese officials who were concern
ed in the atrocities at Paoting-Fu:
Upon a large open place, in which
great number of Chinese grave-mounds
stood about 800 metres from the place
where the walls were blown up, the
last act of the punishment was to take
place; here the unhappy Christians had
been murdered, here the heads of the
guilty mandarins were to fall A large
square was formed by the German and
French troops, a company of Infantry,
a squadron of our heavy Cavalry, and
squadron of the picturesque French
Chasseurs d'Afrique and a battery of
Artillery had taken up positions around
the open place. Besides, the whole Of
ficers' staff and many men from the
Paoting-Fu garrison We're on the spot;
of Chinese there were hardly any to be
seen. By a strange coincidence, just
as our band was playing the National
Lyman, the procession with the con-
demned men marched into the square,
close in front of the band and the
music was therefore suddenly ordered
to stop.
THE condemned men went on foot,
in the midst of the escort of the Ger
man prison-guard; behind the process
sion three large Chinese collins were
carried. We had no sympathy with
the criminals, but we could not WITH
hold a certain respect for the stoical
indifference with which they went TO
their death. They went quickly with
the soldiers to the place of execution
The Fantai and the S3-year-old Tartar
General were ashy pale in their faces,
and walked on more or less mechanical
ly; the cavalry Colonel, however,
large stout man-walked upright to the
place of execution, very erect as if in
wild defiance.
After the reading of the sentence the
drums rolled and the condemned men
We're conducted into the center of the
square, and suddenly from a hollow in
the ground which had hitherto hidden
him from our eyes, the executioner
emerged with his assistants. They be-
gan their dreadful work first with the
Fantai. He was made to kneel on the
bare ground; then an assistant put a
black cloth around his fur collar, so
that the neck was free. The eXecu-
toner himself bound up the condemned
mans face with black silk cloth, at
which the Fantai shouted something to
him, to which the eXecutioner replied
affirmatively. AS I afterwards learned,
Ping-yung asked the headsmen to deal
with him gently. Then three assistants
took hold of the kneeling Fantai by the
shoulders and hips, and bent him back
wards whilst another pulled his head
forward by the tail.
THE headsmen, a powerful, brutal
fellow of almost repulsive exuberance
OF strength, made a very theatrical mo-
ton to the sun, then a second motion to
General Bailloud, after which an assis-
tant handed him the sword-a broad,
long choppfrg knife with a short han
die, which until then had been wrapped
up in a blood red cloth. The execu-
toner laid it on the neck of the Fantai,
then he lifted it hardly a foot high, and
brought it down heavily. At the same
moment the three assistants who held
the body from behind tilted over the
trunk on to the ground, and the fourth
placed the struck off head in the hands,
which We're bound together on the back
of the executed man.
1.-THE other two Mandarins, who had
been turned round during the execution
We're then behaded in even less time;
their faces, however, We're not bound
up, and the Colonel went himself to his
place and knelt down.
THE heads were tied up by their tails
on to poles, and remained exposed I'M
til the evening; the relatives and
friends were allowed to take away and
bury the heads and the corpses, the
latter having been laid in the collins
Immediately after the execution, at the
foot of the poles"