In 1900, the Boxers, under the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the foreigners", killed foreigners and besieged the embassy in Minxiang in the eastern suburbs, and the Western powers repeatedly urged the Qing court to suppress the Boxers and protect the lives of foreigners in China. Empress Dowager Cixi, who was oppressed by the foreigners during the "Wushu Coup", was deeply seduced by Wang Zaiyi of Duanjun and others, believing that the boxers were useful and showing acquiescence to their illegal acts of killing foreigners indiscriminately. Encouraged by this, the Boxers eventually caused chaos, causing the situation to spiral out of control. The Western powers formed an eight-power alliance, invaded Beijing, and captured the Forbidden City. 1900 is the year of Gengzi in the lunar calendar, and this unprecedented national disaster is also known as the "change of Gengzi".
On August 14, the Eight-Power Coalition launched an attack on Beijing, breaking through the inner and outer cities in only one day, and occupying the Forbidden City on the 15th, and the commander of the coalition forces and the German Marshal Wadsi chartered soldiers to rob for three days, and then the armies of various countries looted for many days. The Coalition army hated the Boxers the most, and adopted the principle of shooting and killing the captured Boxers, and many innocent civilians were killed by mistake, and one of the ten masters of the late Qing Dynasty, The Great Dao King Wu, was beheaded and shown to the public. The British recorded: "Beijing became a real cemetery, full of dead people, no one buried them, and let the wild dogs eat the lying corpses."
After the capture of Beijing, the Eight-Power Alliance implemented divisional guards, the soldiers raped and plundered, and did all kinds of evil, the treasury of the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Households was plundered, a large number of treasures in the Summer Palace and the Forbidden City were also plundered, and the greedy soldiers even scraped the gilded water tanks in the palace with knives. Prince Chuang Zaixun was always supportive of the Boxers, and his palace was set on fire by the coalition forces, and hundreds of men, women and children were burned alive. There is only one place in the city of Beijing that is safe and sound, and that is the harem part of the Forbidden City.
The Forbidden City is divided into two parts, the former dynasty and the harem, which was plundered by the coalition forces, and the harem was safe and sound thanks to the Japanese ronin Kawashima wave speed. Kawashima Nanasu was the adoptive father of the traitor Yoshiko Kawashima, who served as the chief of military and political affairs in the Japanese occupation zone after the allied occupation of Beijing, and the Forbidden City happened to be guarded by the Japanese army. In order to "peacefully" hand over the Forbidden City in order to claim higher reparations and privileges from the Qing government, under his strong mediation, the harem was safe and unharmed and never plundered.
When Empress Dowager Cixi fled Beijing, she took emperor Guangxu, empress dowager, and concubine Jin with her, and instructed the eunuch Cui Yugui to throw concubine Zhen into a well and drown her, and six other concubines remained in the harem, namely The Xianfeng Emperor's Qi Gui concubine Tong Jia and Ji Fei Wang, and Emperor Tongzhi's Dun Yi Rongqing Emperor's concubine Fu Cha, Yu Guifei Hesheli, Xun Guifei Alut, and Concubine Xilin Jueluo. Presiding over the affairs of the harem was the Noble Concubine Herscheli, who sent the Minister of the Interior to negotiate with the coalition forces to protect the harem from being attacked by soldiers.
After the Eight-Power Alliance entered Beijing, most of the princes and ministers fled Beijing, and only Xu Tong, a university scholar, hanged himself, Andibu Shangshu Qixiu and Xu Chengyu, the left attendant of the Punishment Department, were arrested by the Japanese army, and later beheaded by the Qing government as the "culprit of the disaster". Tongzhi Emperor's father-in-law, the Mongolian Emperor Chongqi, heard the bad news that an old and young family had set themselves on fire behind closed doors, and hanged himself at the Baoding Lotus Pond Academy, and there was no claim that the prince and minister had been killed or injured countless times.
On the contrary, during the peace talks, the Qing government killed many princes and ministers in the treatment of the first batch of "scourge culprits". Prince Zhuang Zaixun, Duchayuan Zuo Du Yushiyingnian, and Shangshu Zhao Shuqiao of the Punishment Department committed suicide; Shangshu Qixiu of the Ministry of Rites, Xu Chengyu, the left attendant of the Punishment Department, and Yu Xian, the inspector of Shanxi, immediately brought to justice; Wang Zaiyi of Duan Commandery and Zailan of Fuguo were exiled to Xinjiang and imprisoned forever; Shangshu Gangyi, a non-commissioned official of the university, was executed and sentenced to pursue the former official because he had already died of illness; Xu Tong, a university scholar, and Li Bingheng, the former governor of Sichuan, were beheaded and waited, because the two had committed suicide and were dismissed from their posts, and all the pensions were revoked; dong Fufan, the viceroy of Gansu, was immediately dismissed from his post. Four months later, a second batch of 56 "culprits" was promulgated, most of whom were middle- and high-ranking officials such as inspectors and envoys.
Many people may have questioned why the name of Empress Dowager Cixi is not on the list of culprits. Originally, the coalition forces really put Cixi on the list, but after the strong mediation of Li Hongzhang and Qing Wang Yili, Cixi's name was finally removed from the list. After all, she is still the face of this country, and it is inevitable that she will end up with a fish dead net, which is not the result that foreigners hope to see, they hope to obtain a steady stream of wealth and benefits from the decaying Qing Dynasty.