An executioner stood by the corpse of a publicly executed headless criminal in China, holding an uplifted sword raised in the air. A Westerner watched the public execution near a scattering of decapitated torso. Tragic street photographs of the bodies of the violently slaughtered members of the Yihe Dan recreated the tragic circumstances of the time. The Yihe Dan were captured and routinely executed with more than the usual cruelty. The vacant eyes of the Yihe Dan prisoners were set against a background of extreme poverty, dirt and dust.
The Yihe Dan rebellion quickly erupted in Beijing and Tianjin in 1900. The burning hostility of the Yihe Dan was met with the exclusion of missionaries and foreigners. The Eight-Nation Alliance (Russia, the United States, Germany, Britain, France, Japan, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) stationed in Tianjin dispatched the world's first allied force to overthrow the Yihe Tung on September 8, 1900. On June 21, 1906, Empress Dowager Xi, in conjunction with the Yihe Dan, declared war on all Europeans. However, the Qing Empire was already severely weakened by the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. Initially, it attacked the Yihe Dan in reverse, but the Qing government vaguely collaborated with the Yihe Dan. The joint killings by the Octagon and the Qing government took a heavy toll on Yihe Dan. The Eight Allied Forces swept away the Yihegong and occupied Beijing on August 1, 1900, while the Qing government fled to Xi'an. Initially, the Yihe Clan set out to oppose the Manchu Dynasty and drive out Christians and foreigners from China. The troops included poor peasants, Taimu artisans, unemployed laborers, demobilized soldiers, and women known as red lanterns.
The number of foreigners killed by the Yihe Dan was only a few thousand. On the contrary, more than 500,000 Chinese religious people were massacred. It was only natural that the armed might of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, which was said to be invincible, could not match the armed might of the foreigners. All of Taiping Heavenly Kingdom's patriotism became cannon fodder. The Yihe Dan rebellion was crushed and the lives of the Chinese people deteriorated significantly. The Qing government was ordered to pay compensation, execute all traitors, and set military restrictions. Even before a peace treaty was signed, discord broke out in the allied camps, leading to the Russo-Japanese War of 1904.
