In August 1900, after invading the city of Beijing, the Eight-Power Alliance began a frenzied retaliatory killing.
According to the diary of the American Mede, who was in Beijing at the time, "The Russian army was extremely brutal, the French army was not much better, and the Japanese army was brutally burning and looting.
Hundreds of women and girls committed suicide to avoid being humiliated and tortured at the hands of russian and Japanese bestials.
There are 12 girls in a well in Tongzhou, and in a large pond, a mother is drowning her two children."
Italian Minister Savago also said that after the Eight-Power Coalition captured Beijing, a junior official from Prime Minister Yamen came to the embassy and told them about the heinous atrocities that had taken place west of Hadmen Avenue.
Later, Savago himself went there and saw children with their heads split, women stripped naked, murdered and, possibly raped first.
After witnessing this, Savago said bitterly: "I wish I could deny all this, but I have to admit that it is all a fact".
At this time, Beijing was already like hell.
The chaos of the Boxers, the looting of the defeated Qing army, the massacre of the Eight-Nation Alliance, the streets of Beijing are full of corpses, and some places are even piled up in mountains, which is unbearable to see.
Since it was the hot summer season, once the body decayed, it was not only smelly, but also easily caused plague.
The foreign soldiers went to the street to forcibly arrest people and carry the corpses out of the city to bury them, whether they were high-ranking officials and nobles or ordinary people, as long as they caught them, they forced them to carry the corpses, and if they were slightly unhappy, they would use leather whips to violently whip them.
The devastation caused by the war goes far beyond massacres. The Japanese Uematsu Ryozo said in the "Beijing Post-War Chronicle":
"The tragic situation inside and outside Beijing is quite a good reporter. ...... The inhabitants fled on all sides, their brothers and wives scattered, their faces seeping, their goods plundered, and women abused.
Even more hateful, the coalition forces that entered Beijing this time are no longer the strict discipline of the past. The general led the sergeant, the sergeant was about the same generation, and the day was openly plundered, which I and others saw firsthand.
...... According to a certain Chinese yun: Women in the Northern Qing Dynasty were afraid of being humiliated, and often there were many self-practitioners under the deep window, and those who had not been affected by the disaster only planted a small banner of a certain country and a submissive people outside the house, and they closed the door and survived, and they were very compassionate.
Unfortunately, when a plundering soldier comes, he will give up his money in order to save his life."
Shiren Luo Huan also recorded in the "Aftermath of The Fist Change":
Three-fourths of the people burned inside and outside the city, and the coalition forces plundered, and few of them were spared. The treasures are all looted, and the inconvenient box collectors are sold at a low value.
Some officials and their families committed suicide wearing imperial robes and phoenix crowns, and the bodies were left unattended, even to the point that their heads and necks were broken, and the tragic situation can be known.
As for the foreign soldiers who break into people's houses and rob them, it is common to encounter wells filled with dead people.
According to qing notes such as the "Records of the Chongling Transmission" and the "Records of the Beginning and End of the Western Tour", many officials committed suicide after the destruction of the city of Beijing.
Advocating xenophobia, Shang Shu Chongqi fled to Baoding and heard that all his family members had committed suicide, and then committed suicide by taking poison at Baoding Lotus Pond Academy.
Anhui Inspector Furun's entire family committed suicide, including his ninety-something mother.
The sacrificial wine king Yi Rong and his wife and daughter-in-law committed suicide together. The chief minister, Wang Tieshan, and the sacrificial wine Hee-won also committed suicide.
Zongmu and Hanlin Yuan Shu Ji Shi ShouFu committed suicide by taking poison together with their two younger sisters and maids, and his brother Fu Shou also calmly committed suicide with a knife after disposing of the corpse.