Less than 20 years after the Eight-Power Alliance burned the Yuanmingyuan, 5 countries weakened, 2 regretted it, and 1 country disappeared
History is always surprisingly similar, the last years of each dynasty are accompanied by civil strife and foreign wars, and then there are years of war, the most bitter of which is the people, the wheel of history is crushed from the people every time, the country and the family are devastated, the people are not happy, in the recent historical events from us, the last years of the Qing Dynasty are still in front of us.
The main feature of the late Manchu Qing Dynasty was indemnity. After the Eight-Power Alliance entered Beijing, it not only looted all the family property of the imperial court and the people, but also destroyed precious works of art that could be taken away and could not be taken away on the spot. If war damage is inevitable, it is clearly a post-war vandalism. The Japanese stole 6 million taels of silver from the household department, the French stole 20 million taels of silver from the military department, and other coalition forces looted in various places.
The atrocities of the Alliance of Eight are much more than that. In the name of eliminating the Boxers, the Eight-Power Coalition slaughtered tens of thousands of Chinese simply because they were in the way or did not look good. Even when Qing officials hid in their homes, they were searched one by one and then beheaded or shot. Some troops thought bayonets and rifles were too slow. They drove a large number of Chinese into the wooden house and then set it on fire. According to available statistics, after the Eight-Power Coalition entered Beijing, the population decreased by 30%, about 1/3 of the people died, and the rest were homeless and fled elsewhere.
When Li Hongzhang signed the Xinugu Treaty, there was no place for the entire Forbidden City to live, and Li Hongzhang had to live in the nearest temple. As for the Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi, they had already gone to the Manchu homeland of Guanwai for a "vacation", leaving only Yi Xun and Li Hongzhang to clean up the mess.
What happened to the eight countries that invaded China? Less than 20 years after the Eight-Power Alliance entered Beijing, World War I broke out. After World War I, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, one of the Eight-Power Alliance, was completely destroyed after being divided into many small states. Germany ceded much of its territory. After the collapse of the Russian Empire, the Soviet Union was established in the midst of a revolutionary wave. After the founding of New China, the British and French colonies became independent one after another, and the strength of the two countries gradually weakened. Most embarrassingly, Japan was castrated into a country without an army after its defeat.
Not long ago, when there was war in African countries, the Chinese government first dispatched several chartered planes and took the lead in evacuating all overseas Chinese from war-torn African countries. When the charter flight landed safely and smoothly at the domestic airport, and the Chinese citizens who had just escaped from the battlefield stood on the land of the motherland, all the Chinese citizens shed tears of excitement, which of course was for the strength of the motherland.