Title: The First Burning of the Old Summer Palace
Author: ........
Time: 1860 (the 10th year of Xianfeng)
Content: After the Second Opium War, Western capitalist countries forced the Qing government to sign the first batch of unequal treaties. After the British and French forces captured Beijing in 1860, they occupied the Old Summer Palace on October 6. The Chinese defenders were weak and outnumbered. After two days of looting, the British and French troops marched into the city. On October 11, the British army sent more than 1,200 cavalry and an infantry regiment to sack the Old Summer Palace again. The British Plenipotentiary James Bruce used the Qing government's imprisonment of Park Lane and others in the Old Summer Palace as an excuse to include the burning of the Old Summer Palace as a prerequisite for peace talks. condition. On October 18, 3,500 British troops rushed into the Old Summer Palace and set it on fire. The fire lasted for three days. The Old Summer Palace and the nearby Qingyi Garden, Jingming Garden, Jingyi Garden, Changchun Garden and Haidian Town were all burned to the ground. In Anyou Palace, nearly 300 eunuchs, maids, and craftsmen perished in the flames. It became a rare atrocity in the history of world civilization. The second time the Old Summer Palace was burned was in the 26th year of the reign of Emperor Guangxu of the Qing Dynasty (1900). The Eight-Power Allied Forces invaded Beijing and set fire to the Old Summer Palace again. The 13 remaining royal palace buildings here were looted and burned again.
Evaluation: The behavior of Western powers is brutal and crazy, depriving China of property and destroying Chinese buildings, which is outrageous