Behind the scenes in Peking : $b Being experiences during the siege of the LegationsHooker, Mary
History
Behind the scenes in Peking : $b Being experiences during the siege of the Legations
Hooker, Mary
Beijing (China) -- History -- Siege, 1900
Mr. Pethick and Mr. Cheshire would raise their voices in Chinese and
tell the terrified people to come with them and they would be saved.
Sometimes it was necessary to go into the houses to assure the people of
this help. On entering the houses they saw many horrible sights—women
and children whose lives it was too late to save. There was one small
square compound that the Boxers had burned, while in the inside there
was an entire family of Chinese Christians. The four walls were on fire,
and these people were tied hand and foot. Our men were unable to save
them in any way, and hastened to other places where they would not be
too late. Babies were seen being torn in two. The result of this
morning’s work was the rescue of about one thousand Chinese Christians,
who otherwise would certainly have been burned or killed within a few
hours.
The officer in charge had them brought up Legation Street, which has
lately been barricaded, and, except foreigners, no one is allowed to
walk or pass. Two big barricades have been made at each end, one beyond
the Dutch Legation, the other below the Italian Legation. And such a lot
of poor, wretched people I hope never to see again. Half starved,
covered with soot and ashes from the fires, women carrying on their
breasts horribly sick and diseased babies, and in one case a woman held
a dead baby. One man of about fifty years old carried on his shoulders
his old mother, who must have been every day of ninety years. She looked
so withered and wrinkled, one had to think of the burning of Troy and
Æneas. A great many of these people were terribly wounded—great
spear-thrusts that made jagged wounds, scalp-cuts and gashes on the
throat where the victim had been left for dead.
Dr. Lippitt, who came up with the marines, and the English and Russian
surgeons set to work, and tried to patch these poor people together
again, and they toiled, the three of them, steadily for many hours. I
have never imagined that such stoicism as these wretched creatures
exhibited could exist. They never uttered a cry or moved even when the
surgeons were operating on them.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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