It is said that on the evening of October 21, 34 years old, The 34-year-old Qing Dezong Guangxu died in the Yingtai Hanyuan Hall. Coincidentally, less than a day later, Lafayette Cixi also died one after another.
The young Guangxu died in front of the 74-year-old Cixi, and since then there have been rumors that people do not think it is a coincidence, but a deliberate conspiracy. Various rumors followed, and many people suspected that Cixi was afraid of Guangxu returning to power after his death, so he took the lead and acted first. To this day, this claim is still popular.
But is this the case? What I can't see is that Cixi killed him, the Qing Dynasty is only a hundred years away, many materials are well preserved, if you look closely, there are many clues and traces for posterity to examine.
According to the book "Pathogens", Guangxu at the age of 37, personally said to the imperial doctor that he had a "sperm" disease, this disease accompanied him for twenty years, the first few years of the month sperm more than a dozen times, the next few years of the month sperm two or three times, often no dream and self-leakage, summer is better, winter is more serious, often feel the waist, legs and shoulders back heavy numbness, slightly encounter wind chill headaches, tinnitus phenomenon also for ten years.
It can be seen from the above that Guangxu is a typical sick man who has been in poor health, which has been recorded many times in the diary of his teacher Weng Tonggong.
Twenty-six years after Guangxu (1900), his condition did not improve, but worsened. The Qing Palace archive "Pulse Case" records that in the ninth day of March in the thirty-fourth year of Guangxu (1908), when the imperial doctor Cao Yuanheng examined the pulse for the emperor, he found that his liver and kidney were weak, his spleen and yang were insufficient, his qi and blood were white, there was no blood on his face, and he would be breathless after walking a few steps. Neither cold medicine nor warm tonic medicine can be used, and there is no medicine available.
On the tenth day of the first month of May, the imperial doctor Chen Bingjun wrote in the "Pulse Case": "Conditioning for a long time, but no inch effect".
At this time, the imperial doctors were already powerless against Guangxu's illness, and could only delay it again and again, trying various formulas to make up for it. By September, Guangxu's illness was more complex and changeable. The function of the internal organs has been completely out of balance, and when people reach this point, death is sooner or later. During this period, some people proposed to invite foreigners to come for diagnosis and treatment, but they were refused. By October, Guangxu had struggled to stand up, and he had symptoms of pneumonia and heart failure.
On October 17, Zhou Jingtao, Lü Yongbin and other imperial physicians consulted the emperor at the will of the empress, but unanimously agreed that the emperor was extremely weak and could not recover his vitality, and recorded in the "Pulse Case" that "within four days, there will be danger."
On October 19, Guangxu appeared to have chest tightness and shortness of breath, coughing non-stop from morning to night, cold hands and feet, sometimes convulsing and sometimes straight, and the facial state was extremely painful. Thirsty and unable to speak, he could only use his fingers and whimper.
By the twentieth day, Guangxu's eyelids were slightly open, and the corners of his mouth that were drooling could only shake slightly. At this time, except for the two little eunuchs, there was no one else to serve him, which was very miserable.
That night, Guangxu entered a state of dying, reaching out and grabbing randomly, his limbs were as cold as ice, his white eyes were turned up, his teeth were closed, and he was unconscious.
At noon on the twenty-first day, Guangxu suddenly opened his eyes to look around, and after the imperial doctor examined his pulse, he found that his pulse was intermittent, and his eyes changed from chaotic movement to direct vision. In the evening, Guangxu passed away and his soul returned to western bliss.
The archives of the eight years before Guangxu's death have all been preserved, and from the archives it can be clearly seen that the body of emperor Dezong has been bad, and it is very bad, and the condition has deteriorated step by step, not suddenly deteriorated, and from the perspective of these archives, Guangxu should be a normal death.
During the imperial doctor's treatment of Guangxu, Cixi would ask the emperor about the situation every time, and although the two were not harmonious, Cixi was still very concerned about him. If you want to kill Guangxu, you can kill him in advance, there is no need to wait until the last day to kill him. Besides, what good would it do to kill her, he was already a person who was about to be buried, was it difficult to be afraid that Guangxu would dig her grave? She knew Guangxu's personality too well, even if she lent him a few guts, he wouldn't dare.
If we have to say that Guangxu died of poisoning, then the most likely poisoned person is not Cixi, but Yuan Shikai. When Guangxu was in Yingtai, he said several times that he would have to kill Yuan Thief when he had the opportunity in the future. If you really want him to be pro-government again, Yuan Shikai is bound to die, Yuan Shikai's power at that time was already very large, it can be said that he only covered the sky with one hand, and killing Guangxu was as easy as a palm for him. It is not unreasonable for many historians to list Yuan Shikai as the first murderer.