The Old Summer Palace is a famous royal garden in the Qing Dynasty. In the forty-eighth year of Kangxi's reign (1709), Emperor Kangxi (i.e. Xuanye, the Holy Ancestor of the Qing Dynasty) gave his fourth son Yinzhen a garden one mile north of Changchun Garden in the northwest suburbs of Beijing, and personally inscribed the garden "Old Summer Palace". In the third year of Yongzheng (1725), Emperor Yongzheng (i.e. Zong Yinzhen of Qing Dynasty) built an additional palace office in the south of Old Summer Palace, and the area was expanded from more than 600 acres to more than 3,000 acres. Since then, the Old Summer Palace has not only been a place for Qing emperors to rest and visit, but also a place for them to meet with ministers, receive foreign envoys, and handle daily government affairs. After Emperor Qianlong (namely Hongli, Emperor Gaozong of Qing Dynasty) came to the throne, he adjusted the garden landscape in Old Summer Palace, added architectural groups, and built Changchun Garden and Qichun Garden (renamed Wanchun Garden during Tongzhi) in the east and southeast neighbors of Old Summer Palace. . These three gardens are all managed by the ministers who manage the Old Summer Palace, and are called the Three Gardens of the Old Summer Palace.
The Three Yuanming Gardens cover an area of ??more than 5,200 acres and have more than 150 scenes. Among them, the most famous are the Zhengda Guangming Hall where the emperor listened to government affairs, the Anyou Palace where ancestors were worshiped, the high mountain and long water tower where banquets were held, the Pengdao Yaotai that simulated the "Fairy Mountain Pavilion Picture", and the spring scenery of Wuling in the realm of "Peach Blossom Spring". Some famous gardens and scenic spots in the south of the Yangtze River, such as the Lion Forest in Suzhou and the Ten Scenes of the West Lake in Hangzhou, have also been imitated in the gardens. There is also a group of European-style buildings in Changchun Garden, commonly known as Western-style buildings. The Old Summer Palace is also a large royal museum that houses many treasures, books and artistic masterpieces.
In August of the 10th year of Xianfeng (1860), the British and French forces invaded Beijing. On October 6, the Old Summer Palace was occupied. From the next day onwards, officers and soldiers went on a rampage of looting and destruction. In order to force the Qing government to accept the peace terms as soon as possible, British Minister Elgin and British Commander-in-Chief Grant used the excuse that the Qing government had imprisoned British and French prisoners in the Old Summer Palace, and ordered Lieutenant General Michael to lead an invasion force of 3,000 troops on October 18. More than five hundred people went straight to the Old Summer Palace and set it on fire. The fire lasted for two days and two nights.
During the Tongzhi period (1862-1874), Emperor Tongzhi prepared to restore the Old Summer Palace for Empress Dowager Cixi to live. Later, due to financial difficulties, it was forced to stop and rebuild other buildings. In 1900, the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing and the Old Summer Palace was destroyed again. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, some warlords, politicians, and bureaucrats stole building materials from the Old Summer Palace, causing further damage to the Old Summer Palace site.
The construction of the Old Summer Palace
The Manchu people have thrived in the Heilongjiang Basin in Northeast China for generations. In the middle of the 17th century, they invaded North China on a large scale and completely overthrew the Ming Dynasty. They entered the Customs from the Northeast and made Beijing their capital, seized power across the country, and established the last feudal ruling dynasty in history - the Qing Dynasty. Because the Qing Dynasty rulers lived in the Northeast before entering the Customs Nomadic life, there are forests and snowfields in winter, and the climate is cool in summer. After entering the customs, they were not accustomed to the dry and hot climate in Beijing in midsummer. Although the Forbidden City was splendid and magnificent, the Qing emperors felt that it was dull and stuffy. Especially in the early years of Kangxi, after a fire broke out in the Forbidden City, high palace walls were built to prevent fires and palace riots. The inner and outer courtyards of the palace were incompatible with each other, and the water flow in the creek was too gentle, almost becoming a stagnant water. At that time, the imperial city was known as "red walls, green tiles, and black ditches". This made the emperors somewhat tired of the palace life enclosed by high walls, so they began to build gardens in the early years of Kangxi. This kind of construction project lasted for more than 200 years. In the western suburbs of Beijing, there are continuous beautiful peaks of the Western Mountains: Yuquan Mountain, Wanshou Mountain, Wanquanzhuang, Beihaidian and other terrains. Artesian springs are everywhere, and they form large and small lakes and swamps in low-lying areas. Yuquan mountain water flows from west to east along the mountain slope into Kunming Lake, becoming the largest water surface in the western suburbs. In ancient times, working people lived and worked hard here, cultivating large areas of rice fields and forming a natural scenic area. As early as the Liao Dynasty, feudal emperors chose this place to build their Yuquan Mountain Palace. By the Ming Dynasty, the natural scenery here attracted more tourists, so some dignitaries occupied the countryside to build villas, and large tracts of land were occupied piece by piece. During the Wanli period of the Ming Dynasty, Li Wei, the prince of the Qing Dynasty and a relative of the Emperor Ming Dynasty, built a large-scale construction project here. He first built the magnificent Tsinghua Garden, known as "the most famous garden in Beijing" (the former site is outside the west wall of Peking University today). Later, Mi Wanzhong guided the lake water outside the east wall of Tsinghua University and created an elegant and beautiful "Spoon Garden", which means "a spoon in Haidian". In the open countryside, pavilions and pavilions appeared, complementing the lakes and mountains, making it a famous garden gathering place in the suburbs of Beijing. In the Qing Dynasty, the emperor also took a fancy to the western suburbs, which was an excellent land for gardening. This is how large-scale garden construction began.
The Old Summer Palace is located to the north of Guajiatun, about a mile away from Changchun Garden, which is now north of Peking University and west of Tsinghua University. The Old Summer Palace in the Kangxi era had water surfaces such as the Front Lake and the Back Lake, and landscapes such as the "Peony Terrace" and "Natural Pictures" were built inside. When the Old Summer Palace was still a vassal-granted garden, its regulations could not exceed the emperor's Changchun Garden, so there were not many scenes built and its reputation was not great, far inferior to Changchun Garden. But later, with the accession of the owner to the throne, the peaceful and prosperous age of the Qing Dynasty came. After more than 60 years of continuous expansion, the most magnificent royal garden in China's history was finally built.
The chief designer of the Old Summer Palace was an architect named Lei Jinyu, who was spotted by Kangxi when he was building the Forbidden City. But in the actual construction, most of them were based on the emperor's opinion, and whether it was Kangxi, Yongzheng or Qianlong, they all personally guided it.
Architectural Features of the Old Summer Palace
Most of the garden landscaping in the Old Summer Palace is water-themed, and water is the source of interest. Many of them directly draw on the interest of the famous waterscapes in the south of the Yangtze River. The Back Lake Scenic Area of ??the Old Summer Palace has nine small islands built around the back lake, which are symbols of the "Yu Gong" and "Nine Continents" in the country's territory. The small gardens or landscape groups built on each island not only have their own characteristics, but also borrow from each other to create scenery. The skylight above and below the north bank is like climbing the Yueyang Tower to have a panoramic view of Dongting Lake. "A hanging rainbow dominates the lake, winding for hundreds of feet, with railings and wings, and a wide pavilion in the middle. The reflection of the pattern, between the lintel sills, overlooking from the sky, a Vast expanse of green." The openness on the west bank resembles that of Yuquan Fish Watching in Hangzhou, commonly known as the Goldfish Pond. "The pond was dug to be a paradise for fish. Under the houses around the pond, there are thousands of brocade scales." In the west of the Yuanmingyuan, Wanfang Anhe, the houses are built in the lake, shaped like The swastika is warm in winter and cool in summer. Looking at the other shore, the strange flowers are as delicate as embroidery. Emperor Yongzheng liked to live here. The Shuimu Mingse in the north of the Old Summer Palace uses the Taixi (Xize) water method to introduce water into the room and turn the fan. "Lin Sese, the water is cold, the stream wind is roaring, and the mountain birds are chirping." Emperor Qianlong liked to cool off here. Haiyue Kaijin in the West Lake of Changchun Garden has a three-story palace built on a huge round white jade platform, which looks like a mirage from a distance.
The Old Summer Palace also has a distinctive feature, that is, it is built with a large number of imitations of many famous gardens and scenic spots from all over the country, especially those in the south of the Yangtze River. Emperor Qianlong Hongli visited Jiangsu and Zhejiang six times in the south, Wutai in the west, Daiyue in the east, and Rehe, Shengjing (ie Shenyang), Panshan and other places many times. Everywhere he went, he would have the accompanying painters copy the famous mountains, rivers, and gardens that he liked, and then build replicas of them in the gardens after he returned to Beijing. According to incomplete statistics, there are no fewer than forty or fifty direct copies of the garden scenery of the Old Summer Palace. The ten scenic spots of West Lake in Hangzhou, including their names, are all replicated in the park without changing their names. As the saying goes: Who knows the beautiful scenery in the south of the Yangtze River, it will move the sky and shrink the earth in your arms.
After Emperor Qianlong’s southern tour, four famous gardens in the south of the Yangtze River were imitated in the Old Summer Palace. One of them is Anlan Garden in the northwest of Fuhai. During the 27th year of Qianlong's southern tour, he used Chen's Yuyuan in Haining as his residence and named it "Anlan Garden". Emperor Qianlong liked the garden's beautiful structure very much. After returning to Beijing, he renovated and added buildings near the Siyi Bookstore in Yuanmingyuan, imitating its location. After the garden was completed, it was also named "Anlan Garden". The other three famous gardens imitated at that time were all in the Changchun Garden. One is the Xiaoyoutian Garden built in the east courtyard of Siyongzhai in the 23rd year of Qianlong's reign, modeled after Wang's Garden in West Lake, Hangzhou; the other is the Xiaoyoutian Garden built in the 32nd year of Qianlong's reign, modeled on the Zhanyuan Garden in Jiangning (Nanjing). Garden; one is the Lion Grove, which was built in the 37th year of Qianlong's reign and modeled on the famous gardens in Suzhou. Ruyuan and Lion Forest both have more than 16 scenic spots. The beautiful west peak of the Old Summer Palace was the place where Emperors Yongzheng and Qianlong held a Qixi Festival banquet every seventh day of the seventh lunar month. Here you can enjoy the scenery of the Western Mountains. On the west bank of the river, there is a group of overlapping mountains with steep pines and steep mountains and rapid waterfalls in the mountain streams. Looking up at it, it looks like the majestic majesty of Mount Lu, so it is named "Xiao Kuang Lu". Sitting on a stone facing the stream, it is imitated from the Orchid Pavilion in Shanyin, Kuaiji, Shaoxing. Built in the Yongzheng Dynasty, it is commonly known as Liubei Pavilion. Wang Xizhi of the Eastern Jin Dynasty and other literati met in the Orchid Pavilion of Kuaiji on March 3rd of the ninth year of Yonghe (that is, Shangsi day), drank wine in a meandering stream, composed poems and repaired wedges (sacrificial activities), and it was passed down as a good story. The Orchid Pavilion in the Old Summer Palace is an open pavilion with three bays and double eaves. In the forty-fourth year of Qianlong's reign, 6 pieces of "Lanting Preface" calligraphy by famous calligraphers of all dynasties were collected. Together with the handwritings of the great scholar Yu Minzhong and Emperor Qianlong himself, they were combined into the "Lanting Eight Pillars Volume". Emperor Qianlong ordered the pavilion to be rebuilt into eight directions and replaced with stone pillars. Each pillar was engraved with one post. These are the famous eight pillars of the Orchid Pavilion of Yuanmingyuan. Kuoran Grand Duke, later also known as Shuanghezhai, was built after the Jichang Garden in Huishan, Wuxi. The northern half of this scene was built in the middle of the Qianlong period, imitating the rocks in the Yunlin Stone Chamber of Panshan Jingji Villa.
Jiaqing poems praised "Shuanghezhai": its structure is modeled after Huishan, and its famous garden conveys a tranquil environment. The winding roads are steep, the sycamore pines are especially luxuriant, the small caves are rugged and the rocks are not stubborn. People know that the Harmony Garden in the Summer Palace was modeled after the Jichang Garden in Huishan. In fact, a replica of the Jichang Garden was also built in the Old Summer Palace at that time. It's just that the two imitations have different artistic conceptions. The spring scenery of Wuling imitates the artistic conception of Tao Yuanming's "Peach Blossom Spring". It was built in the late Kangxi period and was called Taohuawu during the Yongzheng Dynasty. It was once the place where Hongli studied, and the study room was called "Leshan Hall". This scene is said to have thousands of mountain peaches. There used to be Taohuawu in Changmen, Suzhou, which was said to be the former residence of Tang Bohu. Although Taohuawu in the Old Summer Palace bears its name, the splendor of the peach blossoms is far beyond what Wu Xia can compare with. There are more than 100 gardens within gardens and scenic building groups in the Three Gardens of Yuanming Dynasty, which are commonly referred to as 100 sceneries. It integrates various garden buildings such as halls, pavilions, pavilions, pavilions, pavilions, corridors and verandas, covering an area of ??approximately 160,000 square meters. It is 10,000 square meters larger than the entire construction area of ??the Forbidden City. The buildings in the park not only draw on the advantages of palace-style buildings in the past dynasties, but also break through the constraints of official norms in terms of plane configuration, appearance shape, and group combination. They are widely collected and come in various forms. It has created many architectural forms that are extremely rare in the south and north of my country, such as Zixuan, Meiyuexuan, Tianzidian, fan shape, bow shape, round mirror shape, I shape, mountain shape, cross shape, square shape, etc. Victory shape, scroll shape, etc. In addition, in the layout of the garden, the scenery changes with the situation, and the scenery is in various shapes; the scenery in the garden is surrounded by each other and deepens layer by layer, forming a rich, colorful, natural and harmonious overall beauty. French missionary Wang Zhicheng once gave a vivid description. He said: The architecture of the Old Summer Palace has many changes in form, and is uneven and unconventional. Each of its small palaces seems to be made according to strange models, as if arranged at random, and no one is the same as the others. Everything is so interesting that one cannot take in the scene at a glance, but must study it carefully bit by bit.
The temple gardens of the Old Summer Palace also reflect an aspect of ancient Chinese culture. Anyou Palace (Hongci Yonghu) was built according to the old practice of Jingshan Shouhuang Palace. It is used to worship the "Shenyu" of Emperors Kangxi and Yongzheng. It is the royal ancestral temple in the garden. The palace has nine rooms, with a main ridge and double eaves resting on the mountain, and a roof covered with yellow glazed tiles. It is the largest building in the garden. There are pine trees and caps around it, and there are two pairs of Chinese tables at the south end of the central axis, giving people a sense of solemnity. The Fanghu Scenic Spot, located on the shore of the northeastern bay of Fuhai, was built according to the fantasy fairy mountain Qiongge. According to historical records, here There are more than 2,200 Buddha statues enshrined and more than 30 pagodas. The front base of this building is built with white marble in the shape of a "mountain" and extends into the water. The whole building is huge and magnificent. Whenever the mist begins to rise in the morning, the building disappears and appears in the smoke, just like a Qiongge Yaotai. The style and momentum of this building are rare among existing garden buildings in my country. Savatthi City is a typical Buddhist building. It is said to be built after the layout of the capital of the ancient Indian state of Qiaosara. There are 326 palaces and houses in the city. Since the Kangxi reign, whenever the emperor, empress dowager and empress dowager celebrate their birthdays, the Buddha statues enshrined by princes, princes and ministers have been stored here. Among them are pure gold, silver-plated, jade carvings, and bronze sculptures. Year after year, there are hundreds of thousands of them. The Old Summer Palace was looted and burned. The damage caused by this single place, whether in terms of economic value or cultural and artistic value, is difficult to estimate in numbers.
The Old Summer Palace embodies the essence of ancient Chinese gardening art and is the most outstanding large-scale garden at that time. Emperor Qianlong said of it: "This is the area where the real treasures of the earth and the emperor travel, and there is no way to surpass this." It also occupies an important position in the history of world garden architecture. Its fame spread to Europe and it was known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens". The great French writer Hugo made this comment in 1861: "You just have to imagine that it is a fascinating building like a castle like the Moon Palace. The Summer Palace (referring to the Old Summer Palace) is such a building." People often do this. Say: Greece has the Parthenon, Egypt has the pyramids, Rome has the Colosseum, and the East has summer palaces. This is a breathtaking and unparalleled masterpiece.
On October 6, the British and French allied forces passed through the northeastern suburbs of Beijing and headed towards the Old Summer Palace. At that time, the remnants of Seng Gelinqin and Ruilin made some resistance in the north of the city and then fled. The French army went ahead and passed through Haidian in the afternoon of the same day. In the evening, they broke into the Grand Palace Gate of the Old Summer Palace. At this time, there were more than twenty Jiyong eunuchs from the Yuanmingyuan engaging in battle with the enemy inside the Xianliang Gate. "Don't be afraid of danger and move forward with all your strength", but in the end they were outnumbered. Ren Liang, the "eighth grade leader" of Yuanmingyuan's technical and bravery, and others died in the line of duty. By 7 p.m., the French invading army captured the Old Summer Palace.
Wen Feng, the minister in charge of the garden, threw himself into Fuhai and died.
On October 7, after the British and French invaders broke into the Old Summer Palace, they immediately "sent three British and French committee members to discuss the distribution of the treasures in the garden." The French commander Monttopin wrote to the French Minister of Foreign Affairs that day. : "The French commissioners are ordered to take note of the items that are most valuable in art and archeology first. I will dedicate items that are extremely rare in France to His Majesty the Emperor (Napoleon III) and hide them in the French Museum." British Commander Grant immediately "sent officers to try their best to collect objects that should belong to the British." The day after the French and British invaders entered the park, they could no longer resist the temptation of the objects. Officers and soldiers rushed forward in groups. Robbery the gold and silver treasures and cultural and artistic treasures in the garden.
According to the descriptions of the British and French officers, priests, and reporters who witnessed the looting scene: Officers and soldiers, British and French, poured into the Old Summer Palace from all directions in order to seize treasures, taking whatever they wanted. I was in a hurry to seize it, and there were all kinds of things. In order to rob the treasure, they beat each other and even had armed fights. Because there were so many treasures in the garden, they didn't know what to take. Some moved the cloisonné porcelain vase, some were greedy for embroidery, some chose high-end fur coats, and some picked up the wall clock inlaid with pearls and jade. Some carry large bags filled with all kinds of treasures. Some put gold bars and gold leaves into the wide pockets of their coats; some had brocades and satins wrapped around their bodies; some hats were filled with rubies, pearls and crystal stones; some had emerald necklaces hanging around their necks. There was a mountain of high-end silk and satin in one wing, which was said to be enough for half of the residents of Beijing. All was transported away by soldiers on carts. A British officer plundered a golden Buddha statue worth ￡1,200 from a temple with 500 statues. A French officer robbed property worth 600,000 francs. The treasure plundered by the son of the French commander-in-chief Montauban was worth 300,000 francs and filled several carriages. A second-class commander of the British army named Hellis stole two golden pagodas (both three-story, one 7 feet high and the other 6.4 feet high) and a large number of other treasures from the park in one go. A strong man carried him back to the military camp. This man became rich by plundering the Old Summer Palace and enjoyed his life, so he was nicknamed "Chinese James". In addition to looting, the invaders also destroyed countless things. Several houses were filled with silk and satin clothing. Clothes had been pulled out of boxes and thrown on the floor. When people walked into the house, they could barely cover their knees. The engineers brought big axes, smashed all the furniture, and took off the gems on it. Some people amused themselves by breaking large mirrors, while others shot viciously at the menorah. Most of the French soldiers used wooden sticks in their hands to smash everything they could not take away. When the French troops temporarily evacuated the Old Summer Palace on October 9, this beautiful garden had been completely destroyed.
Just when the Qing government bowed its knees to the invaders and agreed to accept all the "peace" conditions and set a date to sign the contract, Elgin and Grant, the leaders of the British invasion of China, in order to leave a "demonstrably harsh" legacy for their invasion of China "Then he blatantly ordered the burning of the Old Summer Palace on the pretext that his captured personnel had been mistreated. On October 18th and 19th, three to four thousand British troops set fires everywhere in the country, and the fires did not go out for three days and nights. This unique garden masterpiece and a rare art treasure at home and abroad was burned to the ground. Afterwards, according to investigations by Qing Dynasty officials, only twenty or thirty palaces, pavilions, temples, official gates, duty rooms and other buildings survived in the huge Three Gardens of Yuanming Dynasty. However, many of the doors and windows were uneven, and the indoor furnishings and cases were all missing. All were robbed. Since then, some buildings in Qingyi Garden on Wanshou Mountain, Jingyi Garden on Xiangshan Mountain and Jingming Garden on Yuquan Mountain have also been burned down.
According to relevant records, when the British invaders burned down the Anyou Palace on October 18, because they arrived suddenly, the eunuch in charge locked the door of the Anyou Palace. Therefore, there were eunuchs, maids, and The craftsmen and other 300 people were burned alive in Anyou Palace.
When the Old Summer Palace was in flames, Elgin proudly declared: "This move will shock China and Europe, and its effect is far beyond what people thousands of miles away can imagine." The perpetrators of the arson regarded this act as a great achievement, but decent people around the world were outraged by this barbaric crime. Hugo wrote in 1861: "One day, two robbers walked into the Old Summer Palace. One robbed something and the other set fire to it. It was as if victory in the war meant they could engage in robbery... In the face of history, these two robbers , one is called France and the other is called England." This passage represents the voice of millions of upright people.
While the Old Summer Palace was still burning, Prince Gong Yi, who was ordered to stay in Beijing, promised all the conditions of the invaders.
Soon after, the texts of the "Tianjin Treaty" were exchanged with Britain, France, and Russia, and the "Beijing Treaty" was signed. In this way, the imperialist powers occupied China's Kowloon Peninsula and a large territory in the north, extorting huge military compensation of 16 million taels of silver.
Why did the British and French forces burn the Old Summer Palace? Or what reason or pretext did the British and French allied forces use to burn down the Old Summer Palace?
On the one hand, people think that the blood and fire nature of imperialism’s external expansion determines the barbaric behavior wherever they go. .
On the other hand, it is caused by "kowtow diplomacy". At that time, Britain and France requested negotiations with the Manchu Qing Dynasty, "embassy in Beijing, travel inland, and trade on the Yangtze River." In other words, they wanted to establish diplomatic relations with you and establish embassies and consulates in each other's country. Foreigners can travel to mainland China and do business with China.
At that time, Britain and France requested negotiations with China on the above three points. According to current understanding, various disputes between China and Britain are very normal in the relations between countries and should be resolved through bilateral consultation and negotiation. be solved.
However, the Chinese emperor believed that China had been the center of the world since ancient times. The emperor was the master of the world, and all countries were vassals of China. Everyone who saw the emperor must kowtow to show submission. The traditional diplomatic theme of the Qing Dynasty was to let the barbarians come to kowtow, and thus established a complete diplomatic model that Fairbank called the "tribute system." So, the trouble is that Yi Di refuses to kowtow, and they have to stay in Beijing permanently. The minister's stationing in Beijing would inevitably lead to an audience with the emperor, and failure to kneel and worship the emperor would go against the concept of "unification of the world." At that time, the British and French allied forces requested negotiations with the Qing Dynasty, and if they wanted to negotiate, they would have to meet the emperor; meeting the emperor, according to traditional foreign policy Envoys were required to kneel when meeting the emperor, that is, to kowtow or not to kowtow.
The culprit behind the burning of the Old Summer Palace was the British Earl of Elgin (James Bruce, the 8th Earl of Elgin). Elgin ordered the burning of the Old Summer Palace in retaliation for the Qing government's arrest of ministers and mistreatment of prisoners of war. In September 1860, British Minister Harry Parkes and Elgin's personal secretary Henry Loch went to Tongxian County to negotiate with the Qing government under the white flag of armistice. They were arrested by Zaiyuan and Senggelinqin. Together with a group of British and French soldiers who had been captured alive in an ambush, they were taken to Beijing and imprisoned for more than a month. The Manchu emperor and the government had always regarded Parkes as the supreme commander of the British and French forces. According to the traditional strategy of "capture the thief first, capture the king", they planned to trap Parkes before the Tongzhou negotiations, hoping that after Parkes was captured, The British and French forces were leaderless and would inevitably be in chaos. They would then seize the opportunity to launch a massive attack and ensure victory. During their imprisonment, these people were tortured and humiliated in various ways. Of the 39 prisoners, 20 died in custody, including London Times reporter Thomas Bowlby.
After Elgin learned of the atrocities committed by the Qing government, he decided to take revenge. Elgin planned to burn down the Forbidden City, but after several days of deliberation, he chose the Old Summer Palace as the target of his revenge. Elgin's decision to burn down the Old Summer Palace instead of the Forbidden City had a deeper meaning. Elgin believed that the Forbidden City was the seat of the Chinese government (at that time, Britain and France were negotiating the Treaty of Beijing with the Qing government); and the Old Summer Palace was a royal garden, privately owned by the Chinese emperor. Elgin wanted to send a message by burning the Old Summer Palace: it was the Chinese emperor and his lackeys, not the Chinese people, who were responsible for atrocities such as arresting ministers and mistreating prisoners. A few days before the retaliation, Elgin ordered the following announcement to be posted throughout Beijing, declaring the purpose of the British and French forces to burn the Old Summer Palace: "No one - no matter how high his status - commits fraud and atrocities, can escape responsibility and responsibility. Punishment; the Old Summer Palace will be burned down on the 18th (October 1860) as punishment for the Chinese emperor's betrayal; only the Qing imperial government should be responsible for this, and people who have nothing to do with the atrocities need not worry about being harmed." (Translated from English)< /p>
The detention and torture of British and French diplomats not only violated Western international law in the eyes of Lord Elgin, but also violated China's code of conduct since ancient times: "When two countries engage in war, they will not kill envoys." The damage caused by the burning of the Old Summer Palace was not only the crime of the British and French forces, but also the historical reason caused by the pedantry and incompetence of the Manchu emperor and government.
After the destruction of the Old Summer Palace, it remained a forbidden royal garden. During the Tongzhi period, under the instruction of the Empress Dowager Cixi, an attempt was made to rebuild the temple.
At that time, the planned construction scope included more than 20 sites and more than 3,000 temples, mainly concentrated in the front area, Houhu area, west and north areas of the Old Summer Palace, as well as the Wanchun Garden Palace Gate area, Qingxia Hall at the entrance of Fuchun Hall, etc. . However, less than 10 months after the construction started, it was forced to suspend repairs due to depletion of financial resources. After that, although Empress Dowager Cixi built the Summer Palace, she did not completely give up on repairing the Old Summer Palace. From the 22nd to the 24th year of Guangxu, she also repaired the Shuanghezhai, Ke Nongxuan and other scenic spots in the Old Summer Palace. In 1900 (the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu), the Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing. Empress Dowager Cixi took Emperor Guangxu and fled to Xi'an. The order in the capital was in chaos. Eight Banners soldiers and bandits took advantage of the situation and looted the remaining nearly 100 temples in the park that had been basically restored. The buildings were all demolished and looted, resulting in the complete destruction of the buildings and ancient and valuable trees in the Old Summer Palace.
Since then, the relics of the Old Summer Palace have been robbed by bureaucrats, warlords, profiteers, and even systematically destroyed by government authorities. The dignitaries of the Beiyang government, including some who were responsible for the protection of the Yuanmingyuan ruins, relied on their power to transport large quantities of stone sculptures, Taihu stones, etc. from the garden to build their gardens and residences. For example, Wang Huaiqing, commander-in-chief of the Gyeonggi garrison, Cao Kun, the patrol envoy (later bribed to be elected as the president of the Republic of China), Nie Xianfan, commander of the infantry, Che Qingyun, commander of the gendarmerie of the capital, and Wang Lanheng, secretary-general of the government, all had such misdeeds, only Jing Zhaoyi (who was quite Liu Menggeng, later mayor of Peking City, forcibly removed 623 carts of Taihu stone from Changchun Garden and 104 carts of Yunping stone from Qichun Garden within 25 days in the autumn of 1922. At that time, the 13th and 16th Army Divisions, the 11th National Army Division, the 53rd Army of the Northeast Army, and the 29th Army of Song Zheyuan were garrisoned in the Xiyuan area. The walls of the Old Summer Palace were forcibly demolished, and the bricks and stones were sold privately or used to build the Xiyuan playground. A large number of stone pieces were also removed from the Summer Palace, Zhongshan Park, Yanjing University, Peking Library and other places. In the early 1930s, when the stone ballast highway from Haidian to Yuquan Mountain was being renovated from the Gaoliang Bridge, with the approval of the Peking City Special Government, all the tiger-skin stone walls to the south (4,800 meters) and east of the Old Summer Palace were demolished and smashed into stone ballast for use. paving. Prior to this, the city's Dacheng bricks, tiger skin stones, cloud flake stones, and even the remaining marble pillars of the Western-style building were publicly sold at wholesale prices for many times. In this way, the Old Summer Palace was reduced to ruins.