In the late Qing Dynasty, the whole of China was basically monopolized by Empress Dowager Cixi alone, and the fact that she took power from the young Guangxu Emperor through political struggle has been clearly explained in the history of Zhengshi, and next, we will talk about some unknown secrets between Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor.
People who know China's modern history know that although the Guangxu Emperor was young, he was also a very ambitious emperor, and as the emperor of old China, watching the country being destroyed into this appearance at the hands of Empress Dowager Cixi, Guangxu was very sad in his heart, and resolutely led a group of people of insight to start the activities of changing the law.
Unfortunately, Guangxu's understanding of politics was still too shallow, and it was not long before Empress Dowager Cixi stripped away all the power belonging to the emperor, and if it were not for Princess Rongshou's intercession, she would almost be directly killed by Cixi. However, although Cixi did not kill Guangxu, she put him under house arrest, and the life of this house arrest was also tortured.
Guangxu's life under house arrest is actually not recorded much in the main history, but in the "History of the Qing Dynasty", there are relevant records.
The credibility of the record in this "History of the Qing Dynasty" is still very high, because of its author Hu Jichen. Hu Jichen wrote in the book that although Wang Yongqing did not have the opportunity to enter the Qing Palace, he knew a worker who specialized in repairing wires in the palace.
Because this worker has lived in the palace for a long time, he knows a lot about the affairs in the palace. Among them, there is a story about Guangxu's house arrest, in other words, perhaps more appropriately— how Cixi tortured Guangxu.
Let's start with the first story, Guangxu Filling. The book records that a folk dentist in the capital was invited by a mysterious person to go to the palace to give people teeth. The dentist was led by this man to the depths of the palace, and went all the way to a very remote place, only to see a very pitiful man sitting in the courtyard with a face like dust, and blood in his mouth.
The dentist looked at this person in great pain, did not dare to be sloppy, and immediately gave him teeth to make the person no longer cry. After the dentist finished, he was smuggled out of the city by the mysterious man who turned left and right.
At that time, the dentist did not think much about it, but only thought that this person should be a eunuch who had committed a crime, and secretly had his teeth set for fear of being seen by the royal family, and did not pay attention to it.
The next day, the mysterious man came again, and brought silver two and gifts to the dentist as a token of thanks to the dentist's incision, and thanked the dentist for his skill.
Originally, the dentist thought that the matter should have passed, but he did not expect that on the third day, another person came, saying that the mysterious person was his brother, the eunuch who served the Guangxu Emperor in the palace, and the person with the teeth was Guangxu. The reason why Guangxu was so miserable was that he was beaten by Empress Dowager Cixi. And his brother was also killed because he helped Guangxu find someone to set his teeth, and the body is still in the wild, and there is no money to collect the body.
The second thing is that Cixi gave food. According to the custom, Guangxu wanted to go to Cixi to ask for peace, and it happened that Cixi was eating tangyuan. Cixi asked Guangxu if he had eaten, and the Guangxu Emperor was afraid, although he had already eaten, but he could only answer no, so Cixi rewarded Cixi with a tangyuan to eat.
After Guangxu finished eating one, Cixi asked him if he was full, and although Guangxu was full, he could only say that there was none, and he was rewarded with a tangyuan again. After eating several pieces of Guangxu like this, he really couldn't eat it, so he put TangYuan into his sleeve when Cixi wasn't paying attention. By the time Guangxu came back, the sleeves were already filthy.
Guangxu originally planned to change into clean clothes, but he did not expect that the clothes were all taken away by Cixi, and in desperation, a generation of emperors could only live in dirty clothes. In the end, a eunuch next to him found him a dress outside, so that Guangxu could put on clean clothes.
Not only Guangxu, but even the descendants of the Hongli Emperor were almost killed because they did not dare to refuse Empress Dowager Cixi's food, resulting in a direct serious illness that took more than a month to get better. This authoritarian Empress Dowager Cixi had already been rampant to such an extent.
As an emperor of a generation, Guangxu not only could not contact others at will, but even his own brother could not. The two brothers had a good relationship, and in order to be able to get in touch, they left a letter in a box where they all had keys and chatted in the letter.
The content of their chat was some insignificant little things, at most, to let Guangxu know some external things, but after being discovered by Cixi, it still annoyed her old man and directly cut off all contact between the two.
The place where Empress Dowager Cixi placed the Guangxu Emperor under house arrest was also very simple, and if it were not in the palace, it would not be suspected of being the home of ordinary people - the furniture was very simple, only a bed and a stove. Even the paper pasted on the walls of the house was already in tatters, which made people sigh.