There are a total of four Catholic churches in Beijing, located in the east, west, south, and north, with the northern one called Beitang, where the bishop resides. Before the embassy was besieged, there were only two places in Beijing that had not been attacked or subjected to violence: one was Beitang, and the other was the American church and the Beijing School. Starting from June 20, people from various countries moved into the British embassy, and the American church was abandoned, soon after which it was burned down. At that time, the only places available for Christian worship were the British embassy and the British church. The southern Catholic church is the Portuguese Catholic church, making it the oldest church in Beijing. Next is the East Church, followed by the West Church, and finally Beitang. Both the East Church and Beitang were established by Bishop Favre of the Catholic Church.
The construction of Beitang was quite complex. In 1864, there was only one Catholic church in Beijing's inner city, and it was very close to the imperial palace. The church's dome was so high that it allowed a view of the palace, which rendered it subject to imperial taboos, and a high wall was later built to block it. Subsequently, the French ambassador requested to move the church to another location. It was not until 1886 that twenty acres of land were obtained in the inner city, along with funding of seventy-five thousand pounds, making this church the most recent of the four.
After the Boxer Rebellion broke out, on June 13 of the Gregorian calendar, which was the third day after May 17, the three Catholic churches in the east, west, and south were burned down. Beitang is approximately an hour's walk from the other embassies, yet the two locations had no communication for two months.
Trapped in Beitang were thirty French Marines, ten Italian Marines, thirteen French priests, twenty female missionaries, and three thousand two hundred Chinese believers. Normally, the available food was sufficient for five hundred people, but after being besieged, the number increased to more than six times that, so at first, the Chinese were able to receive eight taels (a traditional Chinese unit of weight) of food daily, which later dropped to three taels, barely sustaining the group. On June 15 of the Gregorian calendar, which was May 19, the Boxers launched an attack, which resulted in the deaths of forty-eight individuals.
On the 20th, the war broke out between China and foreign powers. Our Chinese army used cannons to attack, but the enemy's navy charged out, seized a cannon, and then retreated. Every day, we used the remaining cannons to fend off the enemy until the siege was finally lifted. When the British embassy was under cannon fire, only three cannons were used against it at most. However, on the Beiting side, the Chinese army set up cannons, firing up to fourteen in a single day for three consecutive days! Typically, there were at least four cannons, sourced from various places including the Imperial Palace and the Li Wang Mansion.
Beiting was surrounded for twenty-eight days, defended by just thirty French soldiers and ten Italian soldiers. The landmines planted by our army detonated four times, one of which killed over eighty people. In total, the four explosions claimed over four hundred lives, including one hundred and twenty children, the majority of whom were Chinese converts. At the beginning, six hundred Chinese converts armed themselves with whatever they could find, including knives and forks, with just forty rifles and one cannon in the hall, to face off against three thousand foreign rifles and over ten cannons, and they remarkably held out until July 22nd when the siege was finally lifted!
