Tianjin Massacre

The incident nearly precipitated a war and marked an end to relative cooperation between foreign powers and the Tongzhi court, and adversely affected the ongoing renegotiation of the Treaties of Tientsin, first signed in 1858.

The Holy Childhood Association (L'Oeuvre de la Sainte Enfance) was a Catholic charity founded in 1843 to rescue Chinese children from infanticide.

Rioting sparked by false rumors of the killing of babies led to the death of a French consul and provoked a diplomatic crisis.

In keeping with the Holy Childhood program popular at that time, the mission continued the practice of teaching and baptizing sick and abandoned children.

[1][2] False rumors circulated for years that the missionaries killed children in order to remove the eyes for the manufacture of some expensive medicines.

[3] In June 1870, rumors spread throughout China concerning Catholic nuns who used to give small cash rewards to people who brought homeless or unwanted children to their orphanages.

Chinese officials met with their French counterparts, who had assumed responsibility for the Catholic missions to China since the Arrow War.

Chinese Catholic converts begged the French Consul, Henri-Victor Fontanier, to appeal directly to the county magistrate, Chonghou, for public calm.

The mob then proceeded to the mission property next door, which housed the recently completed Church of Our Lady of Victory, the presbytery, the convent, and orphanage.

The riot only ended after a number of Catholic institutions and foreign buildings, including the Tientsin Cathedral and four British and American churches, were burned down.

The situation was more complex than Zeng originally thought; he interrogated the orphans, who denied they had been kidnapped, and proclaimed the nuns innocent.

Foldable hand fans began to appear depicting the murder of the French Consul near the door of the church as political propaganda expressing resistance to Western countries and their religions.