The mother was a nobleman's child, and Cixi was quickly promoted to be an imperial concubine. After Tongzhi succeeded to the throne, she was honored as the Western Empress. Considering that his son was only six years old, Xianfeng appointed eight ministers to assist the little emperor in handling state affairs before he died. To Xianfeng's surprise, not long after his death, Cixi joined hands with Empress Dowager Ci 'an and Prince Gong to kill the minister of Fuzheng and began to listen to politics.
When Ci 'an was alive, Cixi had some restraint and dared not be too presumptuous. But as soon as Ci 'an died, he dismissed Prince Gong, and he was in power from then on until he closed his eyes. Throughout the decades when Cixi was in power, the Qing Dynasty was almost hanged, signed many treaties that humiliated the country, cut a lot and lost huge amounts of silver, but Cixi's personal life was extremely luxurious.
The Sino-Japanese War broke out in 1894. Coincidentally, Cixi was just sixty years old this year. If it were anyone else, they would put national affairs first, win a great victory and live a long life. If they are defeated, they will certainly be ashamed to live a hundred years. However, Cixi did not think so. Not only did she never want to stop her birthday temporarily, but she also wanted to hold a grand birthday for herself by misappropriating the military expenses of Beiyang Navy.
Faced with this situation, ministers dare not say no even if they are dissatisfied, and rack their brains to prepare birthday gifts for the queen mother in order to win the favor of the queen mother. On her birthday, a minister came to Cixi in a panic and said incoherently, "Report to Lafayette, someone wrote a couplet on an abandoned wall in Beijing to celebrate your 60th birthday. Judging from the handwriting, it should be written. "
Cixi secretly rejoiced, thinking that the scholar was a plastic talent, and asked, "What is the content of the couplet?" The minister replied with trepidation: "Part One: Long life is boundless, and the whole world celebrates;" Bottom line: the three armies are defeated, and the land is divided into peace. "At first, I only heard the minister say the first couplet. Cixi was so happy that she even planned to let him be an official. But after listening to the second couplet, I almost vomited blood and shouted angrily, "We must find the scholar who wrote the couplet and punish his nine families. "Finally, I didn't find this person. Although Cixi was angry, the matter went away.
In A.D. 1908, Cixi died in Yiluan Hall, and was buried in a mausoleum that she built for herself with a huge sum of money before her death, and put a huge amount of funerary objects in the tomb, hoping to continue to enjoy the imperial life after her death. However, people are not as good as heaven. Twenty years later, Sun Dianying and his men dug up the tomb of Cixi, not only swept away the funerary objects inside, but also threw her body aside. Some people joked that this may be the so-called karma.