I can hardly describe the consternation of these unhappy people when told they must go to the police office. Hastily collecting their belongings, they followed the Cossacks with faces of unspeakable dismay; and when taking leave of their European friends they gave them their money and goods to take care of, in many cases begging them to discharge some debt, or even giving them the free disposition of their effects—perhaps houses and shops full of valuable property. Foreseeing their tragic fate, many asked on the way, “Will they behead us?”
They were not mistaken in their fears. Murder in cold blood awaited them; and only during the Middle Ages, at the time of the Inquisition and the persecution of heretics, Jews, and Moors in Spain, have such inhuman proceedings as now followed been equalled.
Some versts above Blagovèstshensk, on the left bank of the Amur, there is a Cossack settlement. Thither before sunrise several thousand Chinese, among them old men, cripples, invalids, women, and children, were driven by the Cossacks and police. Those who for sickness or fatigue could not get so far were stabbed on the road by the Cossacks. One man, a representative of the great Chinese firm Li-Wa-Chan, refused to proceed, demanding to be taken to the governor, who had promised the Chinese delegates safety for all who remained on Russian soil; but for answer the Cossacks killed him then and there. The deputy-prìstav, Shabanov, was present, and uttered no word of protest against this iniquitous deed.
When the miserable Chinese had been driven down to the shore of the Amur, they were commanded to go into the water. Means there were none for reaching the opposite Chinese shore; the river at this point is more than half a verst (about one-third of a mile) in width, and flows with a strong current. One can picture what terror seized on the poor creatures at the water’s edge. Falling on their knees, with hands raised to heaven, or even crossing themselves, they implored to be spared such a death. Many vowed to become Christians and to be naturalised as Russian subjects. But the only response vouchsafed to their prayers by the merciless fulfillers of official orders were bayonet-thrusts, and blows with the butt-end of rifles or with swords, to drive them into the river-depths; any who still continued to resist were simply murdered on the spot.
Persons who by chance were eye-witnesses of this wholesale drowning and massacring, which proceeded on several successive days before the rising of the sun, tell of frightful and heartrending scenes. One Manchurian family that was driven into the water consisted of father, mother, and two little children. The parents each took a child, and tried to swim across the Amur, but all were soon sucked down by the current. In another family there was one child; the mother besought the murderers and the bystanders at least to take the little one and spare its life, but no one would do so. She then left it on the bank and herself entered the water, but after a few steps returned, seized her child, and carrying it went back into the river, then again returned and laid down her precious burden. Here the Cossacks intervened to end her vacillations, stabbing both parent and child. The tortures of this wretched mother and of all the victims thus driven to their death can be imagined by everyone not dead to all human feeling. Even the above-mentioned police officer, Shabanov, declared that he could not remain to the end of this scene of horror.
ON THE AMUR NEAR BLAGOVESTSHENSK—THE SCENE OF THE MASSACRE
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But very few of that immense multitude, and those only the strongest swimmers, succeeded in getting anywhere near the Chinese shore; yet even of these but a small number survived. When the Cossacks saw that they were likely to save themselves they sent a few well-planted shots after them; and Chinese marksmen, too, posted in trenches on the opposite side, fired on the swimmers—either because they took them for Russians, or because they considered as enemies all Chinese who had remained in a Russian province after, as was asserted, a proposal had been made to them that they should return to their homes long before the beginning of hostilities.
When, on July 17th, great numbers of corpses became visible floating down the Amur it was clear to everyone in Blagovèstshensk that these peaceful unarmed Chinese inhabitants of the town, whom the governor himself had advised not to return to China, but to trust in his promise of protection, had been done to death. Scarcely two days after the guarantee had been given, General Gribsky had faithlessly broken his word, by giving the verbal order to “send back the Chinese subjects to China.”