Alphonse Favier

[2] Alphonse Favier sailed from Toulon, France on 20 February 1862 on the Descartes, travelling with Bishop Mouly, and three other missionaries (including Jean Pierre Armand David C.M.

After sailing east across the Mediterranean to Alexandria, Egypt, the missionary band travelled overland to the Red Sea, where they embarked on the Japon for their journey to China.

[21] The second rank wore "a red coral button and robe embroidered with a golden pheasant; the girdle clasp of gold set in rubies".

[24] In 1900, Favier wrote in an updated edition of his Peking, histoire et description: Once again we have seen the necessity of French protection of the Catholic missions as it has always been exercised and which the Church has never wanted to end.

"[29] George Ernest Morrison, the correspondent for The Times, no great fan of missionaries, "was full of praise for the foresight and preparedness of Bishop Favier.

"[31] John Stuart Thomson agreed: "No foreigner in China was as accurate in his prophecies of coming political and massacres as the Roman Catholic bishop of Peking, Monsieur Favir [sic.].

Last night, again, forty-three poor women, with their children, flying from massacre, arrived at the Sisters' home; over 500 people accompanied them, telling them that, although they had succeeded in escaping once, they would soon all perish here with the rest.

People who were present at the massacres in Tientsin 30 years ago are struck by the similarity of the situation then with that of to-day; there are the same placard's, the same threats, the same notices, and the same want of foresight.

[44] Martin explains: Not until the siege was raised, however, had we any conception of the severity of the conflict that devoted band had to wage in order to keep the enemy at bay; for from us, though separated only by an interval of two miles in a direct line, they were cut off from communication as completely as if they had been situated at the north pole.

Believing the cathedral would be attacked by the Boxers, from mid-May Favier was able to collect huge stores of food, weapons and ammunition, but the large numbers of refugees necessitated severe rationing until the siege was lifted on 16 August 1900 by the Japanese military.

[47][48] During his trip to China in the summer of 1901, missionary statesman Arthur Judson Brown (1856–1963) interviewed Favier, who gave detailed description of the damage inflicted during the siege: I called on the famous Bishop.

[54] Xiang adds: "After the rampage, the Gao Luo Boxers went to a neighboring county and burnt several houses belonged to the converts, but killing nobody.

[54] Further, Xiang asserts that Favier's myopic view of riots distorted his perception of the causes, only blaming the non-converts for disputes, and insisting that only they be punished, thus creating increased resentment: "The relationship between the government soldiers and the local population deteriorated rapidly.

"[56] One of Favier's subordinates, Vincentian Father P. Pasquale Raffaele d'Addosio (born 19 December 1835 in Brescia, Italy; martyred 15 August 1900 by the Boxers in Beijing),[20][57][58] often criticised Favier to Marquis Giuseppe Salvago-Raggi, the Italian minister to China since 1899, accusing him of being power-hungry, thus confirming "the Italian minister's suspicions about the insincerity and ulterior motives of the Catholic missionaries.

Despite pillage and the confiscation of private property being prohibited explicitly in the Hague Conventions of 1899, which each nation of the Eight-Nation Alliance had signed,[59] James Hevia indicates that "looting in 1900 was a major point of contention and public debate in China, the United States, and Western Europe.

"[60] Historian Thoralf Klein explains the paradoxical nature of the actions of the Eight-Nation Alliance: The Qing Empire had been represented at the Hague Peace Conference in 1899, but the Chinese delegate had not signed its most important document, the Laws and Customs of War on Land.

Legal discourse thus created a double ambivalence on the Allied side: at a theoretical level, the intervention was designed to enforce international law in a country that refused to acknowledge it.

[61] Favier condemned the international relief expedition's excessive use of force against the Chinese rebels,[6] however looting was commonplace and extensive in the aftermath of the Boxer Uprising.

"[62] Payson Jackson Treat (1879–1972)[63] observed that "with few exceptions all the foreigners, military and civilians, took part in the loot, either directly or by purchases from the original marauders.

[66] One of the first to publish accusations against Favier, and other missionaries (including William Scott Ament of the Protestant American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions) was Wilbur J. Chamberlin, the correspondent for the New York Sun, who, in a letter to his wife in December 1900, wrote: Since the raising of the siege in Peking the Catholic Cathedral here has at times been turned into a salesroom for stolen property.

The 10 February 1901 edition of The New York Times reported accusations against Favier by "the family of Lu-Sen (Chinese Minister of Foreign Affairs executed by the Empress Dowager because he would not sanction the anti-foreign movement), that the Archbishop had looted their house of money and valuables aggregating in value a million taels the day after the siege was raised.

"[3][68] "Lu-Sen" was actually Yuan Chang (Chinese: 袁昶) (born 1846; executed 29 July 1900), a qing (minister), who according to Article II of the Boxer Protocol signed on 7 September 1901, "was the Vice-President of the Court of Sacrifices, who had been "put to death for having protested against the outrageous breaches of international law of last year".

[citation needed] According to Klein:In July 1900, the high-ranking officials Yuan Chang and Xu Jingcheng repeatedly warned the throne that the murder of envoys was not only forbidden by the "Spring and Autumn Annals", but also by international law, and that a punitive action by the powers was sure to follow.

"[73] Investigative journalist Sterling Seagrave asserts that "great fortunes were made by those like Herbert Squiers, who knew where to find the richest pickings and chose his loot as a connoisseur".

[75] Among those critical of the origins of Squiers' donation to the Metropolitan Museum was the New Outlook magazine, which claimed the "collection of fine Chinese porcelain [was] known to have been looted from palaces in Peking.

[80][81][82] The method of which Squiers used to acquire his collection of Chinese art continued to be criticized as lately as 2003, with journalist Sandy English writing that "much of the Squires [sic.]

[88] Favier indicated in his apologia that on 16 August 1900 there were about six thousand Christian survivors of the Peking siege, and that after sixty days were "now without either shelter, clothing or food."

"[5]Favier indicated that he could not locate anyone named Lu-Sen, but believed it was Yuan Chang (here romanized as Yan Li Chan), who "had a fairly good residence near my own.

Favier concluded that he was held in such esteem as a result of his efforts that he had received numerous testimonials and addresses of thanks from grateful pagans, and that a great number of them had converted to Christianity, with 1,400 baptised and over four thousand enrolled to become Catholics.

[4] However, this did not prevent the Vietnamese Communist revolutionary Hồ Chí Minh, then an instructor at the Whampoa Military Academy in Canton using the same material to criticise Favier in his 1925 article, "Le Procès de la Colonisation Française", for his "pillaging" of property.