The Taiyuan Massacre, Forty Five Executed at a Governor's Yamen

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Forty five Christian missionaries and their family members, Protestant and Catholic, were executed in the courtyard of the governor's yamen at Taiyuan, the capital of Shanxi (Shansi) province, on July 9, 1900, during the Boxer uprising. Governor Yuxian, appointed to Shanxi that March and already known for anti-foreign sentiment, had invited the missionaries to the yamen promising them protection from the Boxers, then had them beheaded on his own order, acting under the Qing court's June 1900 declaration of war on the foreign powers.

The Taiyuan killings were followed through the rest of the summer by further attacks on missionaries and Chinese Christian converts across Shanxi province under Yuxian's governorship, claiming as many as two thousand further Chinese Christian lives. The killing was the opening act of that summer-long campaign, and foreign observers at the time blamed Yuxian personally, earning him the epithet "the Butcher of Shanxi."