Fire and Sword in Shansi Author:E. H. Edwards Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: INTRODUCTION DURING the summer of 1900, while the eyes of the civilised world were turned towards Peking anxiously awaiting news of the beleaguered Legations,... more » far away in the province of Shansi helpless men, women, and children—European and American—were being done to death. The siege of the Legations lasted from aoth June to I4th August; and as during that time they were almost completely cut off from communication with the outside world, their probable fate was the all- absorbing topic. The reports that the besieged had been massacred were believed; biographical notices of the more prominent among them were written, and memorial services arranged for. The joy with which the news of the relief was received was commensurate with the previous suspense, and the excitement was so great that contemporaneous events in other parts of China were almost overlooked except by those immediately interested. Even now there are but few who realise that in the one province of Shansi alone one hundred andfifty-nine foreigners were massacred—the majority of them at the time the Legations were besieged, but quite a number even after the Allies had taken possession of Peking. The one man responsible for those atrocities was the Manchu Governor Yii Hsien. When he was appointed to that post his character was well known to the Ambassadors; but they,having "protested" because of his anti - foreign proclivities, evidently considered that all had been done that was necessary to protect the missionaries in that province from the rage of the man who has not been inaptly described as the " Chinese Nero." After the cessation of hostilities the new English Ambassador did not think it advisable that there should be a judicial inquiry into the massacre of some one hundred British subjects! " The mission...« less