Tortures of the French prisoners in China.
--The
feuilleton of the Moniteur gives some frightful details of the tortures to which some of the prisoners in
China were exposed before their death. M. d'escayrac de Lauture, chief of the
French scientific mission in
China, escaped death by a miracle; three times he was threatened with execution, and some red-buttoned Mandarins gave orders for a bed of straw to be laid in the middle of the
Court, ‘"in order that the blood of the barbarian might not sully the soil."’ The approach of the Allies frightened the executioners.
After having given the prisoner blows with their fists and the flat of their sabres, he was tied with cords, his legs bent up to his chest, the arms against his legs, and the hands and feet bound together, and wooden wedges driven between the flesh and the ropes.
All the prisoners, treated in the same manner, were placed in carts, with points of nails sticking through them, and driven over rutty roads.--After traveling in this way for twenty-four hours they arrived at
Pekin.
They were conveyed for five hours in the streets, in the midst of an immense concourse of people, whose sanguinary rage could with difficulty be restrained; after which they were placed in the prisons of the city, separated from each other, and chained in a room amidst thieves, incendiaries, and murderers. M. d'escayrac remained in a cell until the Chinese became terrified by the victories of the Allies.
According to information which he received,
Colonel Grandchamps, Mm. Dubut and Ader, were killed on the 18th, while defending themselves against those who endeavored to take them.
The
Abbe Duluc and an English official are said to have been beheaded in the
Tartar camp on the 21st, at the affair of Paly-Kya-Ho.
Mr. Bowlby, the correspondent of the
Times, and
Mr. De Norman, secretary to Lord Elgin, appear to have suffered most.
