The Yuanmingyuan is the most famous imperial garden during the Qing Dynasty, he is located in the northwest suburbs of Beijing, originally a garden given to Yongzheng by the Kangxi Emperor, the emperor of the Qing Dynasty would come here every summer to listen to the government and deal with military and political affairs, so it also had the reputation of a summer palace. The Yuanmingyuan has been expanded and built by the emperors yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing and Daoguang, forming a "garden of ten thousand gardens" covering an area of 3.5 square kilometers, a construction area of 200,000 square meters, and more than 150 scenes in the garden.
After more than 150 years of creation and operation by the Qing Dynasty royal family, the Yuanmingyuan not only has a grand scale and outstanding construction skills, but also treasures countless precious cultural relics and gold and silver treasures, which is the peak of ancient Chinese garden art. The famous French writer Victor Hugo praised it as "a model of ideals and art". It was such an artistic garden that embodied the countless wisdom of ancient Chinese craftsmen that was burned down by the British and French forces during the Second Opium War, and many precious cultural relics in the garden were looted by them.
In 1856, the Anglo-French coalition army, with the support of Russia and the United States, launched the Second Opium War against China with the Yaro Incident and the Ma Shenfu Incident, which was a naked plunder war against the Chinese people. In 1860, the Qing army and the British and French forces fought fiercely at the Bali Bridge, and the commander-in-chief Monk Greenqin led his troops to escape, which eventually led to the total annihilation of the Qing army, and the Xianfeng Emperor fled the city of Beijing with the empress and concubines to take refuge in the Chengde Mountain Resort. The Anglo-French army invaded the city of Beijing from Andingmen, and immediately occupied the Yuanmingyuan, which was plundered and destroyed by the next day.
After entering the Yuanmingyuan, the leaders of the Anglo-French coalition were stunned by the spectacular garden and the tens of thousands of treasures inside, and immediately set up a committee of three People from Britain and France to discuss how to distribute the treasures in the garden. At first they plundered only the most valuable and rare works of art and archaeology, but the next day they could no longer resist the temptation, and the officers and soldiers rushed forward in droves to rob the garden of gold, silver and precious artifacts. In order to rob the treasure, they even began to fight with each other, and it is still impossible to say how many treasures were robbed.
In addition to the large-scale looting of the British and French troops, there were countless things that they destroyed and ruined, and all kinds of silk satin and embroidered robes were thrown to the ground. Some soldiers smashed all the furniture with axes, took off the gems on them and took them away, and for those things that could not be taken away, the soldiers took wooden sticks and smashed them all. After a few days of looting, this beautiful garden has been devastated. Finally, the British commander James Bruce made up a high-sounding reason, saying that their British expatriates and sirs had been imprisoned with them, and burned the Yuanmingyuan to the ground with a single fire.
These reasons were only a way to cover up their plundering crimes, so many soldiers began to set fire to the Yuanmingyuan and various nearby gardens, and the fire burned for three days and three nights, illuminating the whole city of Beijing. What was even more tragic was that because the British and French troops set fire suddenly, the eunuch in charge locked the palace door again, and hundreds of palace women and eunuchs living in the Anyou Palace on the northwest side of the Yuanmingyuan had no time to flee and were burned alive by the fire.
When James Bruce returned to England, he was rewarded by the Queen of England and was soon promoted to governor of India. James Bruce was also very arrogant in India, plundering local artifacts, but only a year later, his retribution came. The Indian town where James Bruce lived at the time was often struck by lightning, and suddenly one day, the house where he lived was struck by lightning and began to catch fire, and james Bruce, who was in a panic, had a heart attack and could not escape, and was eventually burned alive. Perhaps it was Providence in the darkness, and his death was deserved.
"Do not do what is good and small, and do not do it with evil." Maybe there are many things that have their own fixed numbers. For you and me today, doing good is a kind of cultivation, but also a virtue, a person only has good thoughts, in order to make themselves have a good character, "to do great things must first cultivate their virtue" This sentence is the best interpretation of our handling of people.