It was not difficult to foresee

It came to light eventually that various authorities throughout the province had sent direct written instructions to put the Chinese to death; and that killing the unfortunate people singly and wholesale had been carried out in many villages by the peasants, and in Cossack settlements by the Cossacks. Several officials won notoriety by their instructions to their subordinates on this head—Volkovinsky (the colonel of Cossacks), Captain Tusslukov, and the stanovoi prìstav (commissary of rural police) Volkov, among others Office Furniture.. bedient to the will of their superiors, the Russian peasants and Cossacks armed themselves as they could, and began the work of destruction. I cannot undertake to describe what went on in the Manchurian territory on the Seya—a strip of land not far from Blagovèstshensk, the inhabitants of which, though living on Russian soil, were Chinese subjects and (by a diplomatic arrangement) paid taxes to China. Enough to say that altogether sixty-eight villages were burnt to the ground, that of their inhabitants, some were drowned, some barbarously murdered, that property was looted, and cattle were driven off by the Russians. In perpetrating these and other brutalities—either on their own initiative or following out instructions—our peasants thoroughly believed that they were fulfilling their duty as loyal subjects. “That is how we ought to serve our Tsar and country,” one stalwart hero concluded his narrative. Persons who in time of peace were merciful even to dumb animals were changed by those days of horror into stark barbarians. Here is an example: In one Russian village an old Chinaman had lived for years in the service of a shepherd, and all the peasants were most friendly with him. The report reached them that “all Chinese must be killed.” They therefore called a village council and consulted as to what should be done with the one Chinaman in the place; and although everyone agreed that he was a good and honest old man, it was decided that he must be put to death. When the people with whom he lived broke the news to him he humbly submitted to the decree, only begging that they would accompany him to the place where he was to die business registration in hk. “I am a lonely old man,” he said. “I have neither kith nor kin. Do you replace my family and go with me to the grave, as is the custom of my people.”The shepherd and his wife acceded to his request, and went with him to the outskirts of the village, where the peasants then slew the unresisting old man. After a fortnight or so of these massacres, when the thirst for blood began to be appeased, and the authorities ceased to spur the people on to deeds of violence, they began to collect together and bring into the town the few Chinese who remained alive, half-dead with hunger and mad with terror. These poor wretches, scarcely able to move for exhaustion, and those of the Chinese townspeople who for one reason or another had been allowed to survive—some few dozen persons—were all that remained of the many thousand Chinese who had dwelt in Blagovèstshensk and the neighbourhood dermes vs medilase. what character the war would assume when our soldiers and Cossacks passed over into Chinese territory. Scarcely had they crossed the Amur on August 3rd and taken possession of Saghalien (from which place the inhabitants had fled betimes to the interior of the country), when they set everything on fire. During the two following nights the flames illuminated the river for a long distance; and in place of a prosperous community which supplied Blagovèstshenk with foodstuffs at very moderate rates, nothing was to be seen on the Chinese bank but blackened posts and crumbling ruins.