There are many unsolved mysteries in the history of our country, and even some mysteries will be buried forever, and the mystery of the cause of death of Empress Dowager Ci'an is one of them. Empress Dowager Ci'an, who has always been healthy, just looked at the front foot, and the back foot returned to the palace was announced to have died. Many ministers of the Qing Dynasty expressed doubts about the death of Empress Dowager Ci'an, and the most commonly said mystery about the cause of Empress Dowager Ci'an's death was that she was poisoned by Cixi!
Empress Dowager Ci'an was poisoned by Cixi
In the history of the Qing Dynasty, the Eastern Empress Dowager Ci'an, like the Western Empress Dowager Cixi, was a pivotal figure. However, on the tenth day of the first month of March in the seventh year of Guangxu (April 8, 1881 AD), the Eastern Empress Dowager Ci'an, who had always been healthy and disease-free, suddenly fell ill and died violently within 12 hours, which was really unexpected. Since then, the mystery of the death of Empress Dowager Ci'an has become a mystery in history.
On the day of Empress Dowager Ci'an's death, the chancellor Of the Privy Council, Zuo Zongtang, The Scholar Zuo Zongtang, the Shangshu Wang Wenshao, and the assistant university scholar Li Hongzao all saw Ci'an without a medical condition, but her cheeks were slightly red, as if she were drunk, and there was nothing special about it. In the afternoon, the military ministers retreated, and the inner court suddenly announced that Empress Xiaozhen had died, and ordered the people of the Cardinal Palace to quickly enter the discussion, and the ministers were astonished.
Because in the past, the empress was ill, and she always passed on the imperial medicine under the inspection of the military aircraft. And the news of the sudden death of the empress dowager this time is indeed very strange. When the courtiers entered the Ci'an Palace, they saw Cixi sitting on a low chair, looked at Ci'an's small face, and said very calmly: "The Eastern Empress has always been healthy, how could she suddenly die?" When he spoke, he wept slightly, and all the courtiers suddenly looked at each other with consolation, and none of them dared to ask about his symptoms. The mystery of the cause of death of Empress Dowager Ci'an was a doubt in the hearts of many ministers at that time, and finally the funeral was hastily completed.
Based on Cixi's above performance, it is believed that the mystery of the cause of the death of empress Dowager Ci'an is that Cixi poisoned Ci'an. Moreover, legend has it that the Xianfeng Emperor left Ci'an a secret edict asking her to execute Cixi if necessary, and Ci'an burned the secret edict under Cixi's cajoling, destroying one of his greatest weapons against Cixi, and Cixi poisoned her.
The specific cause of the mystery of the cause of death of Empress Dowager Ci'an is still controversial, in addition to the theory of poisoning, there are also suicide, natural death and so on. The theory of "suicide" comes from the "Qing Barnyard Banknotes", which says: "Or: Xiao Qin empirically used bribes to sell instructions and intervened in the government's politics, and the language was quite agitated. Filial piety cannot be tolerated, and Imuna cannot argue with it. He committed suicide by swallowing a snuff bottle. In the "Great View of the Wild History of the Qing Dynasty", it is also used to explain that Ci'an used "wrong medicine to cause death" to explain that Ci'an used "wrong medicine to cause death".
Whether it is "poisoning a theory" or "suicide" or "wrong medicine to kill", there is one common point, that is, Cixi killed Ci'an. However, some scholars believe that Ci'an is a "natural death", and Xu Che's "Great Biography of Cixi" tends to say "death from illness". First of all, the author believes that Ci'an is not good at government, for example, when summoning a courtier, the words she says are not enough, and she will only inquire about her physical condition, distance and so on, so she will not hinder Cixi's political power at all, and Cixi does not need to kill her.
Xu Che presented two accounts of Ci'an's illness in Weng Tong's Diary as evidence. One is that when Empress Dowager Ci'an was 26 years old, she suffered from "hepatosis-like" disease for 24 days, even reaching the level of "inability to speak". The other is that on the fourth day of the first month of December in the eighth year of Tongzhi (1869 AD), Empress Dowager Ci'an "attacked an old disease and rebelled for half an hour.". "Seizures" are mainly manifested as sudden coma, unconsciousness, cold limbs, fainting time is short, heavy people will not wake up or even die.
But this is only the words of Xu Che's family, as for the real reason for the mystery of the cause of the death of Empress Dowager Ci'an, it can only be that the mystery of the Qing Palace has become the topic of people's tea and dinner.