His wounds were photographed;
and the pictures were circulated with a view to exciting the mob.
Gentry and populace held meetings for the purpose of screwing their
courage up to the required pitch--governor and mandarins kept carefully
in the background--and on the fifth day the mission buildings were
destroyed and the priests killed. An English missionary, his wife
and daughter, living not far away, were set upon and slain, not
because they were not known to belong to another nation and another
creed, but because an infuriated mob does not care to discriminate.
English and French officials proceeded to the scene in gunboats to
examine the case and arrange a settlement. The case of the English
family was settled without difficulty; but that of the French mission
was more complicated. Among the French demands were two items which
the Chinese Government found embarrassing. It had accepted the
theory of murder and hastily conferred posthumous honours on the
deceased magistrate. The French demanded the retraction of those
honors, and a public admission of suicide. To pay a money indemnity
and cashier a governor was no great hardship, but how could the
court submit to the humiliation of dancing to the tune of a French
piper? An English surgeon declared, in a sealed report of autopsy,
that the wounds must have been self-inflicted, as their position
made it impossible for them to have been inflicted by an assailant.
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