Kansu Braves

rdf:langString Kansu Braves

rdf:langString Gansu Braves

rdf:langString Kansu Braves

rdf:langString Three Muslim soldiers from the Gansu Army

rdf:langString Krupp artillery, Mauser rifles, swords, halberds

rdf:langString Gansu, then Beijing

rdf:langString Gam1 Gwan1

rdf:langString Gansu Army

rdf:langString Kansu Braves

rdf:langString Gān Jūn

rdf:langString "Secondary Devils "—the term used to describe Chinese Christians. Of the family in one of the main rooms, and told them not to get excited or scream. I had scarcely mustered them when nineteen of the Kansu braves came rushing in. Their swords and clothes were still dripping with blood, as if they had come from a shambles. I went forward to meet them, saying politely: 'I know what you have come for: you are looking for secondary devils. However, none of us have "eaten" the foreign religion. You will see that we have an altar to the kitchen god in our back premises. The whole of our family is now here; will you not take a look through the house to see if there are any Christians in hiding?' I meant by this to imply that we should offer no opposition to their looting whatsoever they pleased. I also called a servant to prepare tea. Our guests received these overtures pleasantly enough, and after a few minutes of energetic looting they returned to my guest room, and some of them sat down to take tea. One of them remarked: 'You seem to be thoroughly respectable people: what a pity that you should reside near this nest of foreign converts and spies.' After a brief stay they thanked us politely, apologising for the intrusion, and retired with their booty. It was then about 2 p.m. We lost about $4,000 worth of valuables. Shortly afterwards, flames were bursting from our neighbour's premises, so I made up my mind to remove my family to a friend's house in the north of the city. In spite of these deeds of violence, even intelligent people still believed that the Kansu soldiery were a tower of defence for China, and would be more than able to repel any number of foreign troops. A friend of mine reckoned that 250,000 persons lost their lives in Peking that summer. I used to revile the Boxers in the family circle so much that my own kinsmen, who sympathised with them, would call me an 'Erh Mao Tzu,' and my cousin, fearing that the Boxers would murder me, induced me one day to kotow before one of their altars in the Nai Tzu-fu. To this day I have regretted my weakness in thus bowing the knee."

rdf:langString Late in the afternoon it transpired that the Empress Dowager was not in the Imperial city at all, but out at the Summer Palace on the Wan-shou-shan--the hills of ten thousand ages, as these are poetically called. Tung Fu-hsiang, whose ruffianly Kansu braves were marched out of the Chinese city--that is the outer ring of Peking--two nights before the Legation Guards came in, is also with the Empress, for his cavalry banners, made of black and blue velvet, with blood-red characters splashed splendidly across them, have been seen planted at the foot of the hills. Tung Fu-hsiang is an invincible one, who stamped out the Kansu rebellion a few years ago with such fierceness that his name strikes terror to-day into every Chinese heart.

rdf:langString Peking, Oct, 30. The Kansu troops encamping to the South of Peking are preparing to retire.

rdf:langString It is, therefore, becoming patent to the most blind that this is going to be something startling, something eclipsing any other anti-foreign movement ever heard of, because never before have the users of foreign imports and the mere friends of foreigners been labelled in a class just below that of the foreigners themselves. And then as it became dark today, a fresh wave of excitement broke over the city and produced almost a panic. The main body of Tung Fuhsiang's savage Kansu braves—that is, his whole army-—re-entered the capital and rapidly encamped on the open places in front of the Temples of Heaven and Agriculture in the outer ring of Peking. This settled it, I am glad to say. At last all the Legations shivered, and urgent telegrams were sent to the British admiral for reinforcements to be rushed up at all costs.

rdf:langString But it is grave notwithstanding the laughter. Once in 1899, after the Empress Dowager's coup d'etat and the virtual imprisonment of the Emperor, Legation Guards had to be sent for, a few files for each of the Legations that possess squadrons in the Far East, and, what is more, these guards had to stay for a good many months. The guards are now no more, but it is curious that the men they came mainly to protect us against— Tung Fu-hsiang's Mohammedan braves from the savage back province of Kansu who love the reactionary Empress Dowager—are still encamped near the Northern capital.

rdf:langString 甘军

rdf:langString Charles Clive Bigham Mersey (Viscount), A Year in China, 1899–1900, p. 177.

rdf:langString United States. Adjutant-General's Office. Military Information Division, Publication, Issue 33, p. 528.

rdf:langString The Boxer Rising: A History of the Boxer Trouble in China, pp. 59-60. The Boxer Rising: A History of the Boxer Trouble in China. Reprinted from the "Shanghai Mercury.", pp. 46-7.

rdf:langString Indiscreet Letters from Peking, Bertram Lenox Simpson, p. 12

rdf:langString Indiscreet Letters from Peking, Bertram Lenox Simpson, pp. 36-7.

rdf:langString Hosea Ballou Morse, The International Relations of the Chinese Empire, Volume 3, p. 151.

rdf:langString The Japan Daily Mail

rdf:langString Indiscreet Letters from Peking, Bertram Lenox Simpson, p. 10.

rdf:langString China and the Boxers: A short history of the Boxer outbreak, with two chapters on the sufferings of missionaries and a closing one on the outlook, Zephaniah Charles Beals, pp. 73-5.

rdf:langString Alan Campbell Reiley, History for Ready Reference: From the Best Historians, Biographers, and Specialists; Their Own Words in a Complete System of History ..., p. 95.

rdf:langString Sir Edmund Backhouse & John Otway Percy Bland, Annals & memoirs of the court of Peking: , Act III, Scene I.

rdf:langString 甘軍

rdf:langString Gansu Braves

rdf:langString Kan¹ Chün¹

rdf:langString Gām Gwān

rdf:langString The Gansu Braves or Gansu Army was a unit of 10,000 Chinese Muslim troops from the northwestern province of Kansu (Gansu) in the last decades of the Qing dynasty (1644–1912). Loyal to the Qing, the Braves were recruited in 1895 to suppress a Muslim revolt in Gansu. Under the command of General Dong Fuxiang (1839–1908), they were transferred to the Beijing metropolitan area in 1898, where they officially became the Rear Division of the Wuwei Corps, a modern army that protected the imperial capital. The Gansu Army included Hui Muslims, Salar Muslims, Dongxiang Muslims, and Bonan Muslims. The Braves, who wore traditional uniforms but were armed with modern rifles and artillery, played an important role in 1900 during the Boxer Rebellion. After helping to repel the Seymour Expedition, a multinational foreign force sent from Tianjin to relieve the Beijing Legation Quarter in early June, the Muslim troops were the fiercest attackers during the siege of the legations from 20 June to 14 August. They suffered heavy casualties at the Battle of Peking, in which the Eight-Nation Alliance relieved the siege. The Kansu Braves then guarded the Imperial Court on their journey to Xi'an.