Japanese, British, French, and American soldiers captured Beijing before the German force had arrived at the city. Praxis of barbarism The eight-nation alliance sacked Beijing in vengeance for the Boxer Rebellion; the magnitude of the rape, pillaging and burning indicated "a sense that the Chinese were less than human" to the Western powers. About the sacking of the city, an Australian in China stated: "The future of the Chinese is a fearful problem. Look at the frightful sights one sees in the streets of Peking... See the filthy, tattered rags they wrap around them. Smell them as they pass. Hear of their nameless immorality. Witness their shameless indecency, and picture them among your own people — Ugh! It makes you shudder!" British admiral Roger Keyes recalled: "Every Chinaman... was treated as a Boxer, by the Russian and French troops, and the slaughter of men, women, and children, in retaliation, was revolting". The American missionary Luella Miner reported that "the conduct of the Russian soldiers is atrocious, the French are not much better, and the Japanese are looting and burning without mercy. Women and girls, by the hundreds, have committed suicide to escape a worse fate at the hands of Russian and Japanese brutes." From contemporary Western observers, German, Russian, and Japanese troops received the greatest criticism for their ruthlessness and willingness to wantonly execute Chinese of all ages and backgrounds, sometimes by burning and killing entire village populations. The Americans and British paid General Yuan Shikai and his army (the Right Division) to help the Eight Nation Alliance suppress the Boxers. Yuan's forces killed tens of thousands of people in their anti-Boxer campaign in Zhili Province and Shandong after the Alliance captured Beijing. The British journalist George Lynch said that "there are things that I must not write, and that may not be printed in England, which would seem to show that this Western civilization of ours is merely a veneer over savagery". The expedition of German field marshal Waldersee arrived in China on 27 September 1900, after the military defeat of the Boxer Rebellion by the Eight-Nation Alliance, yet he launched 75 punitive raids into northern China to search for and destroy the remaining Boxers. The German soldiers killed more peasants than Boxer guerrillas because by that time, the Society of the Righteous and Harmonious Fists (the Boxers) had posed no threat. On 19 November 1900, at the Reichstag,