The invasion of China by the Eight-Power Alliance was one of the largest wars attacked by the imperial powers in China's modern history, and its influence was second only to the later Japanese invasion of China. In this war, the 8 imperialist countries that had long been eyeing China sent troops to capture Tianjin and Beijing and control the province directly under the central government; at the same time, Tsarist Russia also took advantage of the fire and robbery and sent troops alone to invade and occupy the three eastern provinces, leaving the already devastated
The Qing government made matters worse. The picture shows the soldiers of the Eight-Power Alliance in 1900, from right to left: Japan, Italy, Russia, France, Germany, India, Austria-Hungary, and the United States. India was a British colony at the time, so it was not officially reflected, but India's troop intake was several times more than that of the British mainland.
At the end of the 19th century, foreign missionaries poured into China in large numbers, and soon developed a large number of foreign believers, according to incomplete statistics, before the invasion of the Eight-Nation Alliance, the number of Catholics, Christians, Orthodox Christians and other believers in the country exceeded 800,000. In many places, there have been cases of foreign priests inciting believers to oppress the local people, thus provoking the revolt of the people, so they began to kill the parishioners, arrest the priests, and burn churches. These anti-Foreign forces gradually developed into organized and bannerd "Boxers." The imperialists saw this and began to put pressure on the Qing government, and in May 1900, the 11 state ministers sent a note to the Qing government, saying that they would send troops to protect the embassy After the Qing government was forced to agree, the Eight-Power Alliance began to invade at the end of May, while hunting down and killing a large number of Boxers. The picture shows two British soldiers executing a nominal and regimental member in the field.
On June 17, 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance launched an attack on Dagukou, and after the death of the defender Luo Rongguang, the Eight-Nation Alliance not only burned all the houses, but also drove all the people together and killed them with artillery. Subsequently, the coalition invaders would use similar methods to kill the local unarmed people everywhere they went, and after the town of Tanggu, which had more than 50,000 people, was captured, it soon became a ruin that even no one could see, and the evil deeds of the invaders were already revealed. The picture shows a section of the city wall in Beijing and Tianjin, near the Chinese people who were killed, and the invaders watched from a distance after killing people, and they had lost their minimum humanity.
On June 21, the Qing government declared war on the Eight-Nation Alliance, the victims were still the common people, countless people not only their homes were destroyed, their lives were also ruthlessly deprived, the Qing court defenders in many places collapsed without a fight, Cixi saw this and immediately sent people to ask for peace, the result was rejected by the coalition forces, the coalition forces then invaded Beijing, Cixi fled with the Guangxu Emperor. The picture shows the tragic situation of a certain place in Tianjin being destroyed by the Eight-Nation Alliance, two survivors crouching by the wall, with a desperate look on their faces, they have no love.
Because of the hardships of the people in China under the rule of the late Qing Dynasty, when the Eight-Power Alliance attacked the city of Beijing, it bought a lot of Chinese with very little money or grain to help them "work", help them cross the river, and help them transport weapons with trolleys. It sounds ironic that the people of the Qing Dynasty helped the invaders attack the Qing government by helping the invaders, and the behavior of these people may be classified as traitorous acts today, but at that time, they may have only survived to have a bite to eat.
After the eight-power coalition invaders invaded the city of Beijing, the leader of the coalition army, Wadsi, openly ordered a robbery for three days, during which Beijing, including the Forbidden City, lost countless national treasures, and only the treasures stolen from the Summer Palace were transported by the coalition invaders in camels for several months before being transferred to Tianjin. In addition to looting property, the invaders also killed people indiscriminately, and even hired Chinese as executioners to kill their own compatriots for "fun", while the invaders watched from the sidelines. A group of British soldiers watching their hired executioners execute "criminals" in the street.
The shameless coalition invaders treated the women they had seized, young and old, and drove them all to the back alleys, leaving all the soldiers to rape and play, and it was even more indescribable that they went to the homes of the people to treat the women. Many women do not want to fall into the devil's cave themselves, commit suicide in despair, hang themselves, throw wells, take poison, and corpses are everywhere. The picture shows a Japanese soldier robbing a young woman in the courtyard of a commoner, it seems that the girl is probably not yet an adult, her family fled from behind the ghost, and did not have the courage to save people.
Some of the women, though favored by the coalition leaders and lucky not to be killed immediately, still did not have a good outcome, because the demons were only curious about this littlefoot woman who had never been seen before, and once their curiosity and animal behavior were satisfied, the women would be insulted by many people and then killed. The picture shows an aggressor leader holding a Chinese girl, her face full of fear, and it is difficult to imagine her final outcome.
The invaders also killed in a variety of ways, the French soldiers drove the people into an alley, shot and strafed for ten minutes, no one could survive, and some Japanese soldiers had a more cruel method, they lined up the people, tested a bullet with various guns to penetrate several people, or shot at various non-fatal places on a person's body, testing that place injury would make people more painful, let people finally die in pain, and the photographer standing on the side would record all the details with photographs. The heinous crimes they have committed are truly uncountable. The picture shows a group photo of the soldiers of the Eight-Nation Alliance holding weapons.
In this war, the death toll of the Eight-Nation Alliance was about 600-2500, the death toll of Qing government soldiers was about 20,000, but the people who were killed could not be counted, and finally under Cixi's proposition of "measuring China's material strength and marrying the happiness of the country", Li Hongzhang and others signed the "Xinugu Treaty" with 11 countries, both to pay compensation and to cut off land, so that China was completely reduced to a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society, and the people's lives changed from unilateral oppression to double oppression, which was even more miserable. Nowadays, when people mention national hatred and hatred, the first thing that comes to mind is the Japanese aggressors, and we must not forget this historical account of the aggressors of the Eight-Power Alliance.