Yuxian

Yuxian (1842–1901) was a Manchu high official of the Qing dynasty who played an important role in the violent anti-foreign and anti-Christian Boxer Rebellion, which unfolded in northern China from the fall of 1899 to 1901. He was a local official who rose quickly from prefect of Caozhou to judicial commissioner and eventually governor of Shandong province. Dismissed from that post because of foreign pressure, he was soon named governor of Shanxi province. At the height of the Boxer crisis, as Allied armies invaded China in July 1900, he invited a group of 45 Christians and American missionaries to the provincial capital, Taiyuan, saying he would protect them from the Boxers. Instead, they were all killed. Foreigners, blaming Yuxian for what they called the Taiyuan massacre, labeled him the "Butcher of Shan-hsi [Shanxi]".