The suppression of the Boxer Uprising in China between 1900 and 1901 involved Poles serving in the armies of the partitioning powers: Germans and Russians. A few accounts written down by Poles from the Russian army have survived, while memories of Poles from the German army are missing.

The poor against the missionaries

In 1898, Berlin was anxious to hear from China about the formation of the Union of Righteous and Compliant Fists, which evolved into the paramilitary Justice and Peace Troops (Yiehetwan). Union members practised Tai Chi Chan - Absolute Best Boxing - which evolved into a traditional style of hand-to-hand or white-armed martial arts known as kung-fu. It originated in the Shaolin monastery. Europeans called the union members as The Boxers.

SIGN UP TO OUR PAGE The Boxers, recruited from the rural poor, artisans and porters, rose up to murder foreigners, especially Catholic and Protestant missionaries and Chinese who had converted to the Catholic faith. By the end of the 19th century, there were more than 80,000 of them in China. The Boxers burned and destroyed churches and missions, murdering Christians and their relatives and acquaintances, who often had nothing to do with Christianity.

The Boxer Army consisted of male troops commanded by Chang Te-cz'enga (Zhang Dezheng) and Cuo Fu-tien (Zuo Fudian) and female troops grouped in the Red Lanterns (unmarried girls and women) and the Blue Lanterns (married and widows), led by Huang Lian.

It was not only the Germans who were concerned about this situation, but also the Russians, the British, the French, the Belgians, the Americans and the Japanese. All who were involved in China in the second half of the 19th century in the economic, rail transport and military spheres. The nineteen railway concessions granted to foreigners covered ten and a half thousand kilometres of track crossing the country. Britain had the most, nine concessions, controlling four and a half thousand kilometres of track, Russia had three concessions with two and a half thousand kilometres of railway, the German Empire had two concessions with over one thousand one hundred kilometres of railway.

When the Chinese murdered two German missionaries in the autumn of 1897, Kaiser Wilhelm II's warships under Rear Admiral Otto von Diederichs occupied the port of Qingdao (formerly Latinised as Cingtao or Tsingtao). After a few months, the German authorities forced the Chinese government to lease the port, bay and land reaching 50 km inland and obtained concessions to exploit mines and build railways in Shandong province.

Conscription was ordered in the German Empire, particularly for the navy.

From Grochowiska to China

My great-grandfather Jan Kledzik, born in 1827 in Dziembowo, Greater Poland, had two wives. With the first, Franciszka (née Dzikowska), they had five children, and with the second, Barbara (née Goździewicz), two, Waclaw and Marianna. Waclaw is my grandfather. Born in 1878 in Bąbolin near Ostrów (the German partitioners used the name Bombolin), he spent his youth in Grochowiska near Rogów, in the vicinity of Bydgoszcz (Bromberg). At the age of 21 he was called up for military service in the German Empire. He began his service in the autumn of 1899 in the navy. A photograph of him from that period in a sailor's uniform has survived.

He wrote to his parents in good Polish, but in telegraphic shorthand, in mid-September 1899 on a card with the MS cruiser Bismarck:

„Dear Parents!
Tomorrow morning we're leaving for Wilhelmshafen that we're putting him out of service because we'll be coming to another ship the one on this card isn't finished yet
I kiss your hands and stay loving W. Kledzik”.

He sent another card with the MS cruiser Victoria Luise on 17 September already from Wilhelmshafen:

„Dear Parents!
I have received the letter for which I thank you and I infer that on Monday I will come to this ship which is (illegible) standing on this card I do not know how it will be in these days I have had enough work because in four days we were on duty I kiss my dear family's hands and ask for a reply - and Marynia [sister - M.K.] should send me fifty marks in (illegible) extra money, because now I have no money and (illegible) I am to come"..

At the top written upside down: "These papers I sent, did you receive them".

I will not solve this puzzle any more as to what grandfather intended and what papers he sent and to whom.

The slaughters perpetrated by The Boxers on Chinese Christians and missionaries continued in China. The Boxers tore up tracks, destroyed railway stations and buildings erected by Europeans, Japanese and Americans, knocked over telegraph poles and demolished everything brought to China from Europe and Japan. This information reached countries all over the world.

In May 1900, the Boxers, together with troops of the regular Chinese army, massacred merchants who traded European and Japanese goods. When they destroyed Beijing's rail links to Tianjin, the powers investing in China sent warships to the port of Taku (Dagu).

On 4 June, twenty battleships and cruisers entered the harbour roadstead, including three Russian battleships and four cruisers, two British battleships and four cruisers and five German cruisers under the command of Vice Admiral Felix von Bendemann. Command of the entire navy was assumed by British Vice Admiral Edward Hobart Seymour.

And he was the one who, on 10 June, set off by rail with an expeditionary corps of more than 2,000 men to help eight embassies in Beijing's diplomatic quarter threatened by the Boxers attack. The corps did not reach Beijing stopped by Chinese troops. The diplomatic quarter was defended by 534 soldiers and volunteers.

On 19 June, the Chinese government broke off diplomatic relations with all countries that had sent warships to Taku and ordered troops to co-operate with the Boxers. The following day, a Chinese corporal assassinated German ambassador Klemens August von Kettler in a street in Beijing; another Chinese soldier killed Ito Sugiyama, a councillor to the Japanese embassy. The following day, China declared war on Britain, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy, Japan and the United States of America.

Exterminate without mercy

News of Ambassador von Kettler's death shocked German society. Kaiser Wilhelm II, on 27 July, in his farewell speech to soldiers sailing on warships to China, said, among other things: "Exterminate without mercy, take no prisoners, whoever has fallen into your hands, let him perish. Just as a thousand years ago the Huns gained renown under the leadership of their king Attila, which to a large extent still appears today in accounts and legends, so you will make the name of the Germans known in China for thousands of years in such a way that no Chinese will ever dare to even look at a German in the wrong way".

A fleet of four battleships, six cruisers and three torpedo boats under the command of Rear Admiral Richard Geissler set sail from the port of Bremerhaven for China. The expeditionary corps of 19,000 men was commanded by Marshal Count Alfred von Waldersee. Germany thus became the second most numerous military expedition against China after the Russians.

The Allies began their march on Beijing on 4 August. Under the command of Russian General Nikolai Linievich, 19,000 Russians, British, French, Japanese, Americans, and small detachments of a few dozen Italians and Austrians marched.

There were no Germans among them, who at that time began the pacification of Shandong, the province from where the Boxers originated. Remembering the words of Kaiser Wilhelm II, they slaughtered the population in the towns they demolished and in the villages they burned, requisitioning cattle, pigs, poultry, rice and grain. Works of art, gold and jewellery were looted.

A letter from a German soldier has been preserved and he wrote: "Dear Mother, it is difficult to describe what is going on here, how monstrous murders and slaughters are carried out here. The Chinese are outlawed, they are not taken prisoner. In order to save bullets, they are not shot but stabbed with bayonets on Sunday afternoon, presumably in order to fully celebrate the feast of Sunday".

In the first days of the pacification, the Germans murdered tens of thousands of Chinese, and this was only the beginning. In a preserved image, German sailors murder Chinese in Tentsin.

The mystery of porcelain figurines

I imagined that my grandfather Waclaw was among them and at that point I gave up writing the story. Such a picture of Waclaw Kledzik could not be passed on to the family and the next generations.

I returned to writing when my cousin Mark convinced me that our grandfather was definitely not there. He was employed in the engine room of the cruiser and had to be on duty all the time at the ship's furnaces and steam boilers. He could not take part in the pacification.

Fine, but how did he come into possession of the objects, undoubtedly valuable, that have been preserved in the family? Marek keeps a porcelain vase inherited from Zygmunt, Waclaw's eldest son, Michal a porcelain Chinese figurine given to Marianna (his grandmother) by Waclaw, Piotr two beautifully carved picture frames. Left with me by my father, Waclaw Alfred, Waclaw's third son, is a porcelain cup from a Chinese tea service that survived two wars and the communist era. The question of how Waclaw came into their possession without participating in the pacification - will remain unanswered.

The Boxer Uprising ended with the Allied capture of Beijing on 15 August and the release of the defenders of the diplomatic quarter. In contrast to the earlier massacres and murders, the Russians and Germans engaged exclusively in looting works of art, gold and jewellery. Only Japanese troops did not take part in the looting and plundering.

The allied forces' fleet numbered several hundred warships, including 16 battleships and 78 cruisers. It controlled the entire coast of China. The cruiser with my grandfather sailed to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), from where Waclaw sent a commemorative card to his parents in Grochowiska.

The Boxer uprising claimed a huge number of dead and murdered. It is estimated that the Boxers murdered around 30,000 Chinese-Christians and 100,000 suspected pro-European sympathisers. Some 100,000 insurgents and Tsarist soldiers were killed in armed clashes, which, together with executions of prisoners of war and famine victims after the collapse of the uprising, exceeded 4 million men, women and children by the end of 1901.

Allied losses in suppressing the uprising, including defenders of the diplomatic quarter in Beijing and missionaries, did not reach 4,000 dead, wounded and missing.

That China survived as a state is due to the antagonism and escalating conflicts between Russia and Japan, which led to the 1904-1905 war between the two countries. A revolution in December 1911 swept across China, overthrew the dynasty and led to the proclamation of the Blossoming Central Republic.

From Berlin to the Free City of Gdansk

After returning from China, Waclaw settled in Berlin. He put to good use the profession of steam engineer he had acquired while sailing on German cruisers, becoming a specialist in railway steam locomotives. He married a Polish woman, Helena Kazimierska, who was two years older. They lived to have six children, four sons and two daughters. The Kledzik family returned from Berlin to the Polish Republic at the end of 1919. They settled in Nakło on Notec. Grandfather Waclaw took up a job there as head of the steam depot. Later the family moved to Bydgoszcz, and grandfather became a receiving commissioner for Polish locomotives in the Free City of Gdansk.

The railways were under Polish administration and, based on the provisions of the Treaty of Versailles, Poland was allowed to renovate a certain number of locomotives in the Free City. Grandfather rented a flat in Oliwa on Wita Stwosza Street (the house still exists today). He died suddenly in January 1931. The family suspected that he might have been poisoned in the Free City of Gdansk. He was an uncomfortable opponent for the Germans. He spoke perfect German ( with a Berlin accent). Without an autopsy, he was buried in a family grave in Bydgoszcz.

– Maciej Kledzik
-Translated by Tomasz Krzyżanowski

TVP WEEKLY. Editorial team and jornalists

Photos from the family collection of Marek and Maciej Kledzik, Chinese porcelain souvenirs in the collection of Marek Kledzik, Michal and Piotr Kaczmarek

I have used the studies: D. Fierla 'The Boxer Uprising 1889-1901', Warsaw 2007; P.P. Wieczorkiewicz 'History of naval warfare. The Age of Steam', London 1995.