The Imperial Government immediately on the occurrence issued an edict describing the massacre as "a quarrel between the people and the missionaries resulting in a fight," but were promptly driven from that position and pressed, not only by the French, but by all the foreign representatives, to investigate and do justice in the case, Count Rochechouart demanding the capital punishment of the three mandarins who had instigated the massacre. On this the Chinese Government remarked in a secret edict, "Rochechouart, with boundless arrogance, demands the execution of the Fu and Hsien, a demand ten thousand times to be rejected." Under pressure, however, the Government ordered the governor-general, Tsêng, to proceed to the spot and investigate. After a protracted journey he reached Tientsin and commenced to take evidence, not of the crime committed, but of the suspicions which had been excited against the Sisters of Mercy, whom, after ransacking their cemeteries for mutilated children, he eventually acquitted. He then suspended the magistrates pro formâ, and spoke of sending for troops to catch the rioters! On receiving the viceroy's report another imperial decree was issued repeating the original falsehoods, and causing much disappointment to the foreign Ministers. Renewed pressure from them, not without hints of stronger measures, resulted in the offer of fifteen of the mob to be executed, which, being unanimously rejected, the Chinese Government, apparently thinking it was the number that was inadequate, threw in five more, making twenty in all. Sixteen were actually beheaded, the remaining four being saved by the timely arrival of the Russian Minister, who protested against the execution of the men accused of murdering the Russians, because he did not believe in their guilt. Compensation was paid by the Chinese officials to the families of the executed men, which, with the honours done to their dead bodies, showed that they were sacrificed not for crime, but for reasons of State. Of course pecuniary compensation was made on account of the victims of the massacre, the Chinese Government being never hard to deal with where money is concerned. The prefect and the magistrate who had busied themselves after the tragedy in torturing Christians, in order to extort from them confessions which would justify the massacre, were nominally banished, though it was perfectly understood that this was a pure matter of form.
RUINS OF FRENCH CATHEDRAL AT TIENTSIN, BURNED JUNE 20, 1870.
As part of the reparation for the massacre the Imperial Commissioner for Northern Trade, Chunghou, was despatched in the early part of 1871 on a mission to France to express the regret of the Chinese Government for what had occurred. This official, the first man of rank who was ever sent out of China, received but an indifferent reception from the President of the French Republic. Being the highest authority in Tientsin at the time of the massacre, and having known of the preparations for an outbreak of some kind, Chunghou was severely blamed by Europeans on the coast of China, who alleged that the massacre could have been prevented had he put forth his authority. Meetings were even held on the subject in Shanghai, and remonstrances were sent to Europe against Chunghou's being received anywhere as an ambassador until he should exonerate himself from all share in the Tientsin atrocity. These representations, no doubt, had something to do with the attitude of the French Provisional Government, which, on other grounds also, was probably little disposed in that year to occupy itself with the affairs either of the Church or of China.
There is reason to believe, however, that Chunghou's conduct during the affair of Tientsin was not inconsistent with innocence; for although he was a man in authority, it was only as superintendent of trade, having no control whatever over the hierarchy of territorial officials, who were under the orders of the viceroy, Tsêng Kwo-fan. Beyond his personal attendants it is not probable that Chunghou could move a corporal's guard in Tientsin, and his position was such that the local authorities and their myrmidons looked with the keenest jealousy on any departure of the superintendent of trade from the strict line of his own functions. He dared not, in fact, move a finger against officers who owed allegiance to the viceroy, and in apprising the Peking Government of the rumours which were current, Chunghou probably considered that he had gone as far as public duty warranted. These somewhat anomalous relations between two high dignitaries of the empire were put an end to when Li Hung-chang succeeded Tsêng Kwo-fan as viceroy of Chihli; for he was appointed also the successor of Chunghou as superintendent of trade, and resided for the most part of his time in the commercial port, Tientsin. The two offices continue to be combined in one person.
Most of the typical features of a missionary outrage were in this case exemplified—ferocious placards and brochures, circulation of calumnies against the missionaries, guilt of the local authorities, their immunity from punishment, and the official publication of travestied versions of the occurrence. There was also, we may add, a lurking disposition on the part of foreign Governments to give credit to the Chinese charges against the missionaries. Finding themselves unable by pressure on the Chinese to obtain satisfaction for past or security against future outrages, they were seldom indisposed to cover their impotence by throwing the blame on their own people.
There was, consequently, readiness in certain foreign official quarters to dwell on undefined "indiscretions." It was too easily assumed in the beginning that the practice of the Sisters of Charity of purchasing destitute children reasonably excited the suspicions of the people. As a matter of fact, however, as was admitted afterwards, this alleged practice of the Sisters was entirely imaginary. It was also assumed that the massacre was a spontaneous act of the populace, who believed the stories of kidnapping. But in view of the fact that these agitations arose simultaneously in distant parts of the empire, this theory of sporadic action could not be sustained: besides, as Tsêng Kwo-fan himself shrewdly enough pointed out, no child had been missed from any family at Tientsin, and the idea of a disciplined fire brigade and a great city mob being suddenly roused to fury by the abstract idea that somewhere children had been kidnapped by somebody is too altruistic for ordinary belief. The mob needed an instigator, and the instigator was well known.
In the diplomatic correspondence which ensued, admitted on all hands to be most unsatisfactory, the British chargé d'affaires had occasion to complain to Prince Kung that in the communications that passed foreign Ministers and their Governments were spoken of as vassals, which, coming two years after Mr Wade's warm support of the Burlingame mission, was instructive as regards the progress in liberal ideas which had been claimed for the Chinese.
Another consequence of this affair may be noted. The instructions to British naval officers in China, which had been dictated by Mr Burlingame in 1869, were virtually reversed after the Tientsin massacre.