In the tenth year of Xianfeng (186), after the British and French allied forces captured Beijing, they occupied Yuanmingyuan. China's defenders were outnumbered, and Wen Feng, the chief minister of Yuanmingyuan, committed suicide by throwing himself into Fuhai, and Chang Ai, who lived in the garden, was frightened to death. With the support of British Prime Minister Pa Max Don, Erkin, the leader of the British army, ordered the Yuanmingyuan to be burned down.
3,5 British and French troops rushed into Yuanmingyuan and set fire to it. The fire did not go out for three days, and the Yuanmingyuan and its nearby Qingyi Garden, Jingming Garden, Jingyi Garden, Anyou Palace, Changchun Garden and Haidian Town were all burned into ruins. The fire burned for three days and three nights, making this world-famous garden in ruins and becoming a rare atrocity in the history of world civilization.
roughly speaking, the number of looted cultural relics in Yuanmingyuan is about 1.5 million, ranging from bronze ritual vessels in China in the pre-Qin period to famous paintings and calligraphy in the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and all kinds of rare treasures. There are only architectural sites left, and the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park has been established.
Extended information:
In the eyes of the British and French invaders, the burning of Yuanmingyuan can give the Qing government a great shock and force it to surrender as soon as possible.
The Yuanmingyuan in the Qing Dynasty, as a resting place for emperors, has a special political position: it is equivalent to the second imperial palace of the emperors in the Qing Dynasty, and it is the political center where the rulers of the Qing Dynasty often live and give orders to the whole country. From Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing to Daoguang and Xianfeng emperors, they lived and lived in Yuanmingyuan for most of the year, handled government affairs, summoned ministers, and received foreign envoys and leaders of ethnic minorities in the park.
In a sense, the influence and position of Yuanmingyuan in the eyes of the Qing emperors is no less than that of the Forbidden City. The British are very clear about this. Parkes metaphorically said that Yuanmingyuan is "to China people, just as Buckingham Palace is to us" (Jiang Meng quoted the Second Opium War, page 219); Erjin knows more clearly that "Yuanmingyuan is the favorite palace of the Qing emperor" (Dai Yi's Modern History of China, Volume I, page 338). It is precisely because of this that the invaders knew that the burning of Yuanmingyuan was enough to effectively strike and shake the Qing government.
Baidu Encyclopedia-Burning Yuanmingyuan