Nieh Shih-ch'eng

Nieh Shih-ch'eng (聂士成; pinyin: Niè Shìchéng) (1836-July 1900) was a Chinese general who served the Imperial government during the Boxer Rebellion.

Rising from obscure origins, Nieh Shih-ch'eng held a highly distinguished military and civil service under the Imperial Chinese government when he was appointed command of the Wuyi army stationed in the Chihli province (near present day Beijing) in 1897. Following the outbreak of the Boxer Rebellion in 1899, despite the poorly trained and ill-equipped state of the Wuyi army, Shih-ch'eng began an offensive against rebel guerrilla forces in early 1900. Condemned by the pro-Boxer faction of the Imperial Court, Shih-ch'eng achieved impressive success inflicting large numbers of casualties and taking large numbers of rebel prisoners during the year.

After defeating the first attempt to storm Peking (Beijing) by British Admiral Edward Hobart Seymour, commanding a force of over 2,000 men, at the Battle of Tang Ts'u on June 26, 1900, Shih-ch'eng would be killed less than a month later in July during fighting outside Peking. With his death, the army of Wuyi declined greatly contributing to the fall of Peking.

References

*Dupuy, Trevor N. "The Harper Encyclopedia of Military Biography". New York: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 1992. ISBN 0-7858-0437-4