Cixi's life before her death was notoriously "luxurious", and the funeral after her death was as beautiful, atmospheric and graded as ever. How magnanimous is Cixi's "Century Luxury Funeral"? See what the records say
Cixi's funeral procession was lined up in columns, stretching for 20 miles, and the smell was so bad that many people covered their noses and marched forward. What's in the funeral procession?
The first to appear was: the leading leading honor guard cavalry thousands of people, carrying hundreds of "umbrellas for all people, flags for all people". Behind them were the hundred and ten members of the "instrument class" who played mourning music. In the back, there is Cixi's huge coffin, this gold-coated coffin, which needs hundreds of people at the same time to carry forward.
What we want to solemnly introduce is: 9720 servants carrying coffins, why are they so many? Cixi's spirit was buried in the Imperial Pole Hall of the Forbidden City, and was to be buried in the Qing Tombs of Zunhua, Hebei, more than 240 miles away. Servants were required to take turns carrying the coffins, marching for four or five days to arrive, with a maximum of 128 people carrying coffins in each wave.
Further behind the procession were the royals and the ministers: the coffin was followed by 1142 palanquins and carriages of the relatives of the royal family, and 205 palanquins and carriages of the maharajah's ministers. After that, there was Cixi's massive amount of sacrifice supplies and funeral supplies, which was the largest wave of people in Cixi's funeral procession, and the servants dragged horses, camels, and cattle to transport.
Look at the luxurious material transport team: what is to be burned alone is worth nearly 1 million taels of silver, which is equivalent to burning a cruiser. For example, there is a paper-bound french boat, 72 meters long, completely as big as a real dragon ship, and finally it is to be burned by a fire, and it takes 100 pack horses to transport this paper-tied french boat alone. Nearly 10,000 horses and camels were transported for funerary goods.
Around the front and back of the funeral procession, there are thousands of majestic escort cavalry, who are responsible for the safety and security of the entire funeral procession.
There was a special group of servants, several thousand of them, scattered in the crowd, specializing in collecting the dung of horses and camels. The excrement of tens of thousands of livestock could not be cleaned up, and the ticking and ticking along the way made the entire funeral procession stink, and the dignitaries had to cover their noses and move forward.
Cixi died in November 1808, when Guangxu also died, Puyi then wanted to ascend the throne, there were still many things in the Manchu Qing, and Guangxu's funeral could be exquisite, cixi's could not. In order to give Cixi's funeral, a huge amount of funerary goods were prepared, and it took a whole year to toss it. It was not until November 1809, a year after Cixi's death, that preparations were made.
The cost of Cixi's funeral, coupled with funeral items, is conservatively estimated to have cost one-third of the Manchu Treasury, which can be called the "century luxury funeral".
The stench at Cixi's funeral, the situation of people covering their noses, was seen by people, and various theories spread. What body rots and stinks, what funeral tribute meal stinks, what Cixi stinks for ten thousand years... All of them were grinning, in fact, there were too many horses and camels, and there was too much and urine. The feces and urine of tens of thousands of livestock on tens of thousands of heads are at least tens of tons on this road, which is terrifying to think about, and it also shows that Cixi's funeral pomp is unprecedented.