Missionary effort in China--First arrival of the Jesuits--Landing of
Michael Roger--Adam Schaal appointed Chief Minister of State--The
scientific work of the Jesuits--Affection of the young Emperor Kang-Hi
for them--Arrival of other monks--Disputes between them and the
Jesuits--The Pope interferes--Fatal results for the Christians--Speech
of Kang-Hi--Expulsion of the Jesuits--Concessions to Europeans in
newly opened ports--Hatred of foreigners at Tien-tsin--Arrival of
French nuns--Their mistakes in ignoring native feeling--Chinese
children bought by the Abbé Chevrier--A Chinese merchant's views on the
situation--Terrible accusations against the Sisters--Murder of the French
Consul and his assistant--The Governor of Tien-tsin responsible--Massacre
of the Abbé Chevrier and one hundred children--The Lady Superior and her
nuns cut to pieces and burnt--The guilty Governor Chung-Ho sent to Paris
as envoy--No proper vengeance exacted by the French--Other Sisters go to
Tien-tsin.
There is no more pathetic, no more thrilling story in all the annals
of Christianity than that of missionary effort in China, and those who
remember the sad fate of the French Sisters at Tien-tsin, and of many
other devoted women, will not fail to accord their tribute of admiration
to the noble devotion which has inspired so many to lay down their lives
in the sacred cause of the propagation of the Gospel in the Celestial
Empire. That the crop of proselytes yielded by a soil fructified with the
blood of virgin martyrs is altogether out of proportion to the expenditure
of life and money involved in winning them, is indeed a melancholy fact;
but undaunted by the terrors of the past, fresh bands of eager zealots are
ever ready to take the place of those worsted in the struggle, and at the
present moment there seems hope that the religion of the Redeemer may yet
take real root in the districts newly opened to European trade.
As is well known, it was the Jesuits who were the first to succeed in
introducing Christianity into China. Far more enlightened and worldly-wise
than the monks of the rival orders, they obtained a footing where so many
others had failed, by their tact in giving out that they were pilgrims
from the West who had heard of the wonders of the Celestial Empire, and
had come to it to see those wonders with their own eyes.
[Sidenote: A MISSIONARY PIONEER]
The pioneer of these astute followers of Ignatius Loyola was a certain
Michael Roger, who landed in China in 1581, and although some of his
successors were beheaded in 1615 the work they had done bore fruit in the
erection of a church at Kei-Fung-Fu, on the Yellow River, in which quite a
number of converts attended the Roman Catholic services. This church was
destroyed through the bursting of a dyke, and the Jesuit missionary then
in charge of it was drowned in trying to save his little flock. In spite
of this catastrophe, however, the Jesuits continued to gain ground, and
during the reign of the Emperor Shun-Che, who occupied the throne from
1644 to 1662, China was actually for some little time governed by Adam
Schaal, a member of that community, who had been made Chief Minister of
State on account of his wisdom. Another Jesuit, Father Ferdinand Verbiest,
held a high astronomical appointment, for then as now the heavenly
bodies were studied with intense eagerness in the Celestial Empire, and
many officers of State were specially told off to report on everything
connected with them.
[Sidenote: PUERILE DISPUTES]
The successor of Shun-Che, his son Kang-Hi, who was only eight years old
when he came to the throne, showed special aptitude for astronomy, and
was never tired of listening to the instructions of Father Verbiest. As
he grew older he worked with him and the other missionaries at geometry
and the kindred sciences, gaining year by year in scientific knowledge.
It was during his reign that the Jesuit missionaries, Bouvet, Regis,
Fartoux, Fridelli, Cardoso, and others, made their celebrated survey of
the whole of China on trigometrical principles, which is still looked upon
as absolutely correct by geographers, and there is little doubt that had
the gifted young Emperor been left entirely under the guidance of these
enlightened fathers, they would, through the door opened by science,
have introduced Christianity, or rather their form of Christianity,
throughout the entire Empire. During the minority of Kang-Hi, however,
the four ministers appointed to govern the country did all in their
power to counteract the influence of the foreigners, and restore all the
old-established customs. Their efforts were aided by the fact that monks
belonging to other orders had now established themselves here and there in
the country, and between them and the Jesuits a bitter feud was waged as
to the way in which Christian worship should be performed, and the meaning
of certain Chinese words. To give but one or two instances of the puerile
nature of the quarrel which jeopardized the cause that should have been
sacred to all the disputants, one side claimed that the word _Chang-ti_
signified the material heaven, the other that it referred to the God
inhabiting heaven; one side considered the honour shown to ancestors and
the reverence in which the doctrines of Confucius are held to be religious
duties, whilst the other looked upon them as mere civil or political
customs. That it was of little consequence which was right was patent
to any but the most prejudiced observer, yet the foolish monks referred
their differences for arbitration to the Pope and the Emperor. The former
decided in favour of the Dominicans, the latter in that of the Jesuits,
and the Chinese literati not unreasonably asked how the missionaries could
expect to be listened to by the natives if they could not agree amongst
themselves.
All might, however, even yet have been well, and the Jesuits might
have continued their education of the young Emperor had not the Pope
unfortunately sent a legate to Pekin charged with the difficult task of
making the Jesuits conform to the views of their opponents. This roused
the wrath and jealousy of the Emperor, who, of course, knew nothing about
the Pope, and did more to undermine the power of his hitherto trusted
advisers than anything else could have done. He had, he said, allowed
Christianity to be preached just as he had had other religions, but only
on condition that the moral precepts inculcated by the first philosopher
of the country, and accepted by all the most enlightened amongst his
people, were left unquestioned, yet here was an envoy sent from some
unknown land with instructions to tamper with the belief of his subjects.
An Imperial edict was therefore issued in 1706, ordering the expulsion
of all missionaries without distinction of sect; the Christian churches
were desecrated and destroyed, and all natives who had embraced the new
doctrine were persecuted with the utmost severity, fined, imprisoned, and
in some cases put to death. Then the Pope from his distant throne in Rome
sent yet another legate, bearing a letter protesting in the strongest
terms against these severe measures, but Kang-Hi, who certainly had
considerable reason on his side, called his notables together, and having
informed them of the contents of the Holy Father's missive exclaimed:
"This epistle ignores every one but these vile Europeans, yet how can
they decide anything about the great doctrine of the Chinese, whose very
language these people from Europe do not understand? From the way these
Christians behave, it strikes me that there is some resemblance between
the practices of their sect and those of certain impious bonzes of our own
land. We must now forbid Europeans from preaching their faith amongst us
if we wish to prevent the recurrence of disagreeable events." The division
of the sexes until after marriage was then, as now, one of the most
rigidly-observed customs of the Celestials, and it is probable that the
"evil practices" referred to in the speech quoted above, were the meeting
of men and women for worship in the same building. This was more shocking
to Chinese public opinion than anything else, and may have had something
to do with this final failure of missionary effort.
[Sidenote: A CHINESE DICTIONARY]
Kang-Hi was, there is no doubt, a very enlightened ruler, and, moreover,
himself a writer of considerable talent. He compiled a dictionary of the
Chinese and Manchu dialects, translated the five sacred books of China
into the Tartar language, and wrote many interesting essays on various
subjects. Moreover it was thanks to his initiative, that a very complete
Chinese dictionary was produced by thirty of the chief literati of his
time.
Kang-Hi, who, in spite of the fulmination of the great edict against
the Christians, still in his heart cherished a strong affection for the
Jesuits, who had won his love through the interest they had taken in his
favourite pursuits, was succeeded by his son, Young-t-Ching who inherited
none of his father's sympathy for Europeans, and persecuted the Christians
with the utmost severity. His advisers represented to him, "that the
missionaries had deceived the late Emperor, and that the monarch had lost
a great deal of _prestige_ by his encouragement of the Jesuits." Moreover,
the viceroys of outlying provinces sent accounts of the iniquities of the
converts to the new faith in their districts, the governor of Fu-Kian
distinguishing himself especially by the bitterness of his rancour against
them. He begged the Emperor in the interests of his people to banish all
foreigners without distinction to Macao, then already occupied by the
Portuguese.
[Sidenote: A WISE EMPEROR]
It was, however, fortunately for the Chinese as well as for the
foreigners, one thing to issue these sweeping denunciations, and another
to have them fully carried out. Europeans were too useful at the Court of
Pekin for the Emperor to be willing to part with them all, and he naïvely
decided to keep those about him who were of any service to him, but to
banish the rest. The missionaries of the capital who were thus reprieved,
hoped to win help for their colleagues of the provinces by writing to a
brother of the Emperor, who they believed to be favourable to them, and
they received the following disinterested reply: "We have no intention
of imitating your way of going on in Europe; your disputes about our
customs have done you a great deal of harm, and China will miss nothing
when you are no longer there." Moreover the Emperor added a postscript
to this letter, which ran thus: "What would you say if I sent a troop of
Buddhist priests into your country? When your Father Ricci was here there
were only a few of you; you had not then disciples and churches in all the
provinces. It was only during the reign of my father that you increased
with such rapidity; we saw it then, but we did not dare say anything about
it. If, however, you deceived my father, do not hope that you will deceive
me too.... You want all the Chinese to become Christians; your religion
requires it, I know, but what would become of us then? In times of trouble
the people would listen to no voice but yours." This naïve and unanimous
testimony to the potency of the Christian faith must have been rather
cheering than depressing to those to whom it was addressed, and that they
did not fail to perceive that their Imperial enemy was no ordinary man
is proved by the eulogy pronounced on him by Father Du Halde, who says:
"It is impossible to help admiring his indefatigable application to work;
day and night his thoughts are occupied on the establishment of a wise
government which will secure the well-being of his subjects; to please
him, you have but to propose some project of public utility.... He has
made several very good regulations with a view to doing honour to merit,
and recompensing virtue, for promoting emulation amongst the labouring
classes, and to help the people in barren years. These qualities have won
for him in a very short time the respect and love of all his subjects."
These quotations throw a luminous side-light upon the character of the
Emperor, and make it the more evident how short-sighted was the conduct
which led to the breach between his father and the Jesuits. Had the latter
continued the policy with which their predecessors had begun, conciliating
public opinion by the study of the arts and sciences to which Government
and people were alike devoted, instead of splitting straws about doctrine
and phraseology, the sad stories of the massacres of defenceless women
and children would never have had to be written. It was one of the Jesuit
Fathers who gave Kang-Hi his first clock, and another who won the hearts
of all the ladies of the court by making a camera-obscura, which enabled
them to see something of the outside world from which they were so
rigorously excluded. With the expulsion of the Jesuits in the eighteenth
century all the work done by them was destroyed, and the missionaries who
succeeded them had to contend with the prejudices their short-sighted
policy had aroused, as well as with the difficulties inseparable from
every attempt to introduce a new religion.
[Sidenote: CONCESSIONS TO FOREIGNERS]
In every port thrown open of recent years to European commerce the
Imperial Government sets aside what are called concessions to the foreign
residents, whom the authorities still look upon as unwelcome intruders,
though the citizens are not slow to appreciate the difference between
their own unsavoury and crowded quarters, and the well-built, airy streets
occupied by the English, the French, or the Germans. In these concessions
missionaries of pretty well every sect have, of course, hastened to obtain
a footing, and volumes might be filled with the record of their struggles,
their difficulties, their triumphs, and their defeats. It will be enough
for our present purpose to tell of the massacre, referred to above, of the
French Sisters at Tien-tsin, for it was alike one of the most horrible
and most typical of modern times. By the treaty signed therein 1858 the
port was thrown open to foreign trade, and in 1861 a British consulate was
established in it. The memory of the sack of Pekin by the Anglo-French
forces was still fresh, and the hatred of the foreign devils was fiercer
and if possible more bitter in Tien-tsin than elsewhere, for so far its
people had had very little intercourse with Europeans. Only amongst the
more enlightened of the Chinese was the fact recognized that the time for
opposition to the entry of foreigners was gone by, and that if the country
were not opened from within, it would be forced from without, and the
dismemberment of the Empire become inevitable.
Situated on the right bank of the Pei-ho, Tien-tsin is the port of the
capital, from which it is eighty miles distant. It is therefore one of
the keys of China, and even before the opening of the railway from it to
Pekin in 1897, it was of immense strategic importance. All this of course
intensified the jealousy of the Chinese, when the lock was forced, so to
speak, by the white skins, and great indeed was the courage needed to face
the turbulent population, and endeavour to win proselytes from amongst
them. Even in Shanghai, comparatively inured to the presence of the
foreign element, nuns had been insulted; a native spitting in the faces of
two holy women in the streets, who had done absolutely nothing to provoke
hostility.
Yet there were found devoted women who came to reside in Tien-tsin,
carrying their lives in their hands, knowing full well what they had to
expect, yet determined to face unflinchingly not only the hostility of
the natives, but also the rigours of the inhospitable climate, for the
river is blocked with ice from December to May, and before the opening of
the railway there could be no hope of help from without in the winter, no
matter what the emergency.
[Illustration: FIG. 45.--A TEMPLE AT TSIN.]
[Sidenote: THE PURCHASE OF GIRLS]
The Sisters, however, set to work directly they arrived, aided by the
French Abbé Chevrier, M. Fontanier, the French Consul, and his assistant,
M. Simon. They quickly organized their plan of campaign; some opening a
hospital where all sufferers were received, no matter of what nationality
or religion, whilst others devoted themselves to the education of the
little girls bought by the Abbé with the fund known in France as that of
the _Sainte-Enfance_ or Holy Infancy. In the school kept by the devoted
ladies, the Chinese maidens were lodged, fed, and taught to do different
kinds of needlework, as well as educated in the Roman Catholic religion.
It was the purchase of the pupils that was really at the root of the
terrible troubles which overtook the Mission. The Celestials, as has
already been explained above, are in the habit of buying girls, but for a
very different purpose to that of the devoted priests and Sisters. They
too have hospitals for the indigent and infirm, but they could not be
brought to believe that the missionaries received the children merely to
feed, educate, and make Christians of them. The rumour quickly spread,
not only in Tien-tsin, but in Shanghai and elsewhere, that good money
was to be got by selling children to the Sisters, and certain natives
at once set to work to kidnap little ones with a view to securing what
they thought would be a lucrative trade. So many girls were stolen, and
the missionaries lent so much colour to the accusation against them of
connivance by the increasing number of their _protegées_ that public
feeling was thoroughly aroused. The cry of "Stealers of children" was
raised, and foreigners, especially the French, had stones thrown at them
in the streets.
There is no doubt that if the missionaries had been wise, they would
have given up receiving children for a time, whether in the orphanage
or the hospital, but religious zeal was not in this case tempered with
discretion, and terrible indeed were the results of this short-sighted
policy. Of course all the girls rescued by the nuns were not bought, but
a great many of them were, for the Chinese law encourages the selling of
female children. Moreover, if calumnies were circulated about foreigners,
they in their turn did not hesitate to spread reports of the unnatural
way in which Chinese mothers treated their children, and much was written
on the subject in the reports sent home. I, however, can testify from
personal inquiry that these were quite unfounded libels. In Canton every
one I questioned on the subject repudiated the accusations with the
greatest indignation. There was, however, the question to which I never
could get a satisfactory reply, and that was, "Is it true that the Chinese
cause the death of deformed children at their birth?" Evasive answers
were always made to this downright inquiry, but with regard to healthy,
well-formed infants of either sex, I will quote verbatim what a wealthy
Chinese merchant of very influential position said to me:
[Sidenote: A FALSE ACCUSATION]
"It is unfortunately true," he said, "that children have sometimes been
abandoned by Chinese mothers, but only under very sad circumstances,
generally the failure of the harvest. Do you know what has led to some
of your priests accusing the Chinese of being unnatural parents, mere
brutes resembling cats and dogs? It is because now and then our teeming
population of four hundred million souls is visited by terrible and
extraordinary misfortunes, such as a sudden outbreak of the cholera or the
plague, which are, however, among the least of our troubles, for even more
frequent, more destructive to life, is the famine which occurs every year,
now in the north, now in the south, now in the east, now in the west. If
the rice-crop fail through a dry season, thirty or fifty millions of human
creatures are in danger of perishing from hunger if sufficient relief
does not reach them in time. We have not the means you in Europe have of
speedy communication between our provinces; we have no railways, no fleets
of steamers to take grain from one place to another. Well, what happens?
Just what occurs when some town or island is blockaded in war. Old men
and children perish first, and if a few of the infants do survive, what
can the mothers do but thrust them away from them when the milk in their
breasts is all dried up? Under these circumstances you may see able-bodied
men eating such things as rats, snakes, and vermin, which the Chinese are
accused of devouring with delight even in times of plenty. I know nothing
about the history of your country, but you ought to know it well. Will
you swear to me that there has never been a time when women have been
driven to let their children die for want of nourishment and warmth? You
do not answer. So it is evident that terrible things such as this have
happened in Europe. Well now, would it not be downright unfair of me, if
knowing this to be truth, I turned your silence against you by preaching
throughout China that French mothers, like those in China, fling their
children into the gutter?"
Was not this a sensible speech?--and would it not be well if missionaries
were equally wise in their way of looking at things? Is it not a pity
that so many enthusiastic young men and women should be sent to meet a
terrible death in a vain effort to alter what cannot be changed? Those who
sanction the going forth of these bands of devoted martyrs do not make
sufficient allowance for the fact that the indifference of the Chinese
to Christianity is really a part of their own religion. They cultivate
stoicism, they never allow anything to upset their _sangfroid_, but
meet torture and death with equal composure. It is a hopeless task to
endeavour to rouse them to enthusiasm about anything. It would be wiser
to leave their conversion alone. All this does not, however, detract in
any way from the heroism of the Sisters at Tien-tsin, who, in spite of the
ever-increasing hostility to them, went on doing their charitable work,
unheeding the danger in which they must have known they stood.
[Sidenote: CHUNG-HO]
It was on June 22, 1870, that fatal year for France, just before the
breaking out of the Franco-German War, when the relations between the
French Government and that of Pekin were considerably strained, that
the long-smouldering fire broke into flame in Tien-tsin. The Governor,
Chung-Ho by name, a Tartar by birth, a kindly man enough, but far too
weak for the position he held, was really responsible for the massacre,
though he endeavoured to shelter himself from responsibility behind the
mandarins, whom he ought to have controlled. The rising against the
foreigners had evidently been preconcerted, for there was really no
apparent cause for the sudden rush of the bravos upon their victims. It
has been said that the French Consul, M. Fontanier, who was the first to
fall beneath the blows of the assassins, really gave the signal for the
massacre by presenting his revolver at the head of the Governor, but this
of course was only an excuse, and nothing could really have averted the
catastrophe.
From nine in the morning to five in the afternoon of the terrible day the
killing went on, the French being hunted through the streets and struck
down, often on the very thresholds of their houses. After the murder of
the French consul, his interpreter, M. Thomassin, and his young wife
were attacked; and in a futile attempt to save the latter Thomassin was
terribly wounded. He managed to fling himself into the canal, which flows
near the Consulate, but the literati were determined that he should not
escape, and he was dispatched in the water. Meanwhile, as a shepherd calls
his flock together when the wolves are threatening, the Abbé Chevrier had
collected around him the orphan children to the number of one hundred then
under the care of the missionaries; but they were all massacred, the good
priest dying amongst them. A French merchant and his wife, with three
Russians who were mistaken for Frenchmen, were also murdered.
The Sisters in the orphanage and hospital were, strange to say, the last
to hear of the awful scenes being enacted in the streets. Secure in their
belief that they had done no evil, and that, therefore, no one could wish
to harm them, they quietly went on with their work, and did not even
demand the protection of the Chinese authorities. This would, however,
probably have been powerless to save them; for it was the mandarins who
had been most active in circulating slanders against them, saying that
they used the eyes of children for making some of their medicines, and
spreading all manner of other silly reports. The simple-minded Sisters had
only laughed when told of these slanders, but they would have been wiser
to try and refute them, for they were believed by the common people as
readily as stories about witches were in Europe not so very long ago.
[Sidenote: MURDER OF THE SISTERS]
The sun was already setting, lighting up the streets reddened with the
blood of the innocent, when the murderers, their rage increased by the
ease with which they had killed their victims, seem suddenly to have
remembered that there were defenceless women at the orphanage still to be
destroyed, and with one accord they rushed to the doors clamouring for
admittance. Their shouts being unheeded, they lost no time in breaking
down the door, and found the Superior of the Sisterhood calmly waiting to
receive them. Alas! her fortitude availed her nothing; she was brutally
seized, dragged to a post not far off and bound to it. Then ensued a scene
too horrible for description; the fiends in human shape danced round
their helpless victim, and inflicted on her all the tortures in which
the Chinese are so terribly skilled, finally cutting her body into small
pieces. The terrified nuns kneeling on the steps of their little chapel in
agonized prayer were one and all first outraged and then murdered, their
home and church were set fire to, and their mangled bodies flung into the
flames. One poor young girl had had the sense to disguise herself as a
Chinese, and was hastening towards the English Consulate to take refuge
there, when unfortunately she was recognized and murdered by some Chinese
soldiers. Not one French man or woman escaped, and the indignation
throughout France when the terrible news arrived can be imagined.
As usual, the Imperial Government was profuse in apologies and excuses,
for well did the Emperor and his advisers know how terrible might be the
vengeance exacted by France for the blood of her children. A few Chinese
heads were cut off--in China heads are of little account,--and it was
determined at Pekin that a very high official should be sent to Paris to
make due apology, and promise that nothing of the kind should occur again.
It was of course difficult to decide who should be entrusted with this
delicate mission, and the choice actually fell on Chung-Ho, the Governor
of Tien-tsin, the very man, as has been seen, to whose culpable neglect
the tragedy was due. But for the fact that the unfortunate country of
France was then in the throes of her most awful experience of modern
times, the probability is that the blood-stained Tartar would have met
with a reception in its capital very little to his taste. As things were,
however, no one in France suspected who he really was, public attention
was concentrated on the war. The death of the French missionaries in
remote Tien-tsin was already forgotten in the anguish of defeat, and
the necessity for organizing the defence against the ruthless invaders.
The Empire had fallen; the Emperor was a prisoner in the hands of the
Germans--safer there than he would have been amongst his own disillusioned
subjects. The interview with M. Thiers was put off again and again,
until at last a comparatively leisure time was secured. Then, alas! that
I should have to write it, the Chinese traitor was presented to the Chief
of the State with all the ceremonial due to foreign ambassadors. He was
escorted to the Elysée in a state-carriage by a guard of cuirassiers, and
received with all the usual honours.
[Sidenote: TWO PRIESTS BURNT ALIVE]
No good result ensued for French interests in China from this interview,
and soon after the return of the envoy to his native country, yet another
missionary, M. Hué, was assassinated in the province of Se-Tchuen; whilst
not far from the scene of the murder of Margary, related in a previous
chapter, two priests were burnt alive, and four of their proselytes cut to
pieces.
But enough of these horrors, I must dwell on them no more, for I have no
wish to intensify race hatred, or to raise French feeling against a nation
with which we have a treaty of peace. I must, however, add just one word
to show how indomitable is the missionary spirit in the religious orders
of France. In 1876, when the country was beginning to settle down after
the awful events of the preceding years, that is to say, six years after
the massacre at Tien-tsin, another party of Sisters went to that very town
to begin again the work of charity so tragically interrupted, although
it was well known that there was no abatement in the bitterness of the
feeling against foreigners, and that the mandarins were especially averse
to female missionaries. The unselfish devotion, seeking for no earthly
reward, of the saintly nuns is well illustrated by the reply made to me
when I went to the head-quarters of the Sisterhood in the _Rue de Bac_,
Paris, and asked the Lady Superior to give me the names of the martyrs of
1870 that I might render to them the honour so justly due. Those names
were refused, "for," said the austere head of the order, "our nuns have
won the greatest of all rewards already, and that is enough."
The new-comers to the site watered by the blood of the innocent, have
proceeded exactly on the same lines as their predecessors; they opened a
hospital and some schools, apparently in total ignorance of the dangers
surrounding them. A tri-colour flag floats once more from the buildings
under their control. The "Cyclamens," as lovers of flowers call the caps
worn by the devoted Sisters, are once more familiar objects in the streets
of Tien-tsin. May their labour of love be rewarded as it deserves, and may
God temper the wind to them as He does to the lambs shorn of their fleece,
for truly they sorely need the protection of Heaven in their defenceless
condition! Fortunately, however, they are no longer so isolated as were
the pioneers of missionary effort in 1870. In 1881 the port of Tien-tsin
became connected by telegraph with Shanghai, where there is a large
foreign population, and the Chinese have of late years had so many proofs
that foreigners are not to be massacred or in any way injured with
impunity, that there is some hope of the avoidance for the future of such
tragedies as that we have recorded here.