In 1980, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage decided to carry out a rescue excavation of Chongling, which was another time since Chongling was stolen by warlords in 1938, and the owner of this mausoleum was the Guangxu Emperor in the last years of the Qing Dynasty.
In the history of the Qing Dynasty, Guangxu was a rare puppet emperor, and during the thirty-eight years of his reign, the power was basically controlled by Empress Dowager Cixi, and after the Penghu Reformation, he was imprisoned in Yingtai. In 1908, at the age of 37, the Guangxu Emperor was poisoned by Empress Dowager Cixi, ending his repressive life.
Subsequently, the Guangxu Emperor was buried in Chongling. After the new China, chongling has always been under the protection of the state because the state has always had the rule of not taking the initiative to excavate the emperor's mausoleum.
Until 1980, when Chongling was once again stolen by tomb thieves, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage decided to carry out rescue excavations of Chongling, but the excavation results surprised everyone at the time, and the archaeological teammates present first vomited disgustingly, but boiled, what is this?
The Chongling Tomb was stolen many times, and the archaeologists vomited as soon as they entered the mausoleum palace
After the Guangxu Emperor died in 1908, his mausoleum had not yet been built. Construction began in 1909 and was not completed until three years after the qing dynasty had collapsed in 1915, when the tomb of the Guangxu Emperor was successfully completed.
In 1928, the tombs of Empress Dowager Cixi and Qianlong were blown open by the warlord Sun Dianying, and the funerary goods in the mausoleum were looted, and the Guangxu Emperor naturally could not escape the fate of theft.
In 1938, a group of tomb robbers excavated the tomb of the Guangxu Emperor, and the burial goods of the Guangxu Emperor and his empress Longyu were looted.
After the founding of new China, under the official protection, Chongling has been peaceful for decades, until April 1980, archaeologists in Baoding, Hebei Province, routinely surveyed and measured Chongling, and found that the underground palace had been seriously stolen in recent months.
In June, with the approval of the authorities of Baoding And county, a special excavation team was formed to formally carry out rescue excavation and cleaning of the Guangxu Mausoleum. It was difficult to open the Chongling Underground Palace, and the tragic situation in front of them made everyone present feel heartache. The destruction of the Chongling Underground Palace was very serious, and the wooden boxes in the interior were pried to pieces.
The coffin of the Guangxu Emperor had long been pried open, and one of the legs was hanging at the entrance of the cave. Empress Longyu's coffin was also pried open. However, while handling the coffin of Empress Longyu, a disgusting scene occurred.
Archaeologists searched the remaining artifacts around the coffin with their hands and found that there was a wire-like viscous substance around the corpse, which instantly made the archaeologists present vomit.
Later, after the archaeologists studied, this viscous wire-like object was actually an object made of preservatives and wood chips, mixed with the spices around Queen Longyu, and emitted a strange and disgusting smell.
The hidden "golden well" made the archaeologists present boil up!
Through their own search and observation, the archaeologists were still depressed. The coffin of the Guangxu Emperor and the jewels worn around him were all hollowed out, leaving only the jade ring and the lotus jade held by the Guangxu Emperor in his hand. These two treasures may have been the two favorite jewels of the Guangxu Emperor during his lifetime, but why they were not stolen by tomb thieves is unknown.
Just when archaeologists were at a loss, things took a turn for the better. While moving the coffin of the Guangxu Emperor, archaeologists found a golden well hidden underground.
The tomb robbers did not notice the existence of the golden well, so the cultural relics inside were very well preserved, and there were more than a hundred precious cultural relics such as jade and jadeite, which made the archaeologists present boil up.
The so-called "Golden Well" is the passage to the Canghai, because the emperor is the True Dragon Heavenly Son, and after his death, the True Dragon will return to the Canghai. Its essence is a treasure cave with a diameter of fourteen centimeters and a depth of forty centimeters, and the cave is surrounded by a layer of golden satin, which is for the "golden well jade burial".
However, another major discovery of this archaeology is to reveal to us a hundred-year-old unsolved case - the mystery of the death of the Guangxu Emperor. When the coffin of the Guangxu Emperor was opened, although his body was already rotten, his hair was still scattered around the coffin. The cause of death of the Guangxu Emperor was revealed
On November 10, 1908, the Guangxu Emperor urgently issued two urgent edicts to the Ministry of Internal Affairs to urgently call for doctors, but the doctors who rushed to the hospital were stopped from Zhongnanhai
The next morning, the Western physician Qu Guiting was ordered to enter the Guangxu Emperor's bedroom and found the Guangxu Emperor rolling on the ground in pain. However, at this time, Qu Guiting did not take any rescue measures against the poisoned Guangxu Emperor, and only said that "warm water was applied to the abdomen" and hurriedly withdrew. At six o'clock in the evening, the Guangxu Emperor finally died in pain.
The cause of death of the Qing Guangxu Emperor has been the focus of debate in the field of historiography for a hundred years. After an appraisal of the Guangxu Emperor's hair, the Qing Guangxu Emperor's death investigation team released a 10,000-word report in 2008.
The report used modern forensic technology to conduct substance detection and analysis on the hair of the Guangxu Emperor, and finally found that The Guangxu hair contained a high concentration of arsenic, and the average value of each section of hair was not equal, the highest of which reached 2404 micrograms, while normal human hair only contained 0.6 micrograms. Therefore, the final conclusion is: guangxu emperor arsenic poisoning death.
This report reveals the mystery of the cause of death of the Guangxu Emperor. And the people who had the ability to poison the Guangxu Emperor could be said to be able to count with their fingers. The "Identification of the Cause of Death of the Guangxu Emperor of the Qing Dynasty" compiled by the National Qing Dynasty History Committee also basically determined that the person who poisoned the Guangxu Emperor was Empress Dowager Cixi.
What is even more outrageous is that when the Guangxu Emperor was poisoned and did not have an attack, Empress Dowager Cixi had already ordered someone to prepare for the funeral.
brief summary:
The life of the Guangxu Emperor was undoubtedly tragic. When the Qing Dynasty was humiliated by the great powers, he wanted to change the law in order to strengthen the country, but it touched the interests of Empress Dowager Cixi, and she was imprisoned until her death after seizing power.
Even the mausoleum built for himself was visited twice by tomb robbers, and after the treasure was hollowed out, his body was not spared and humiliated. When the cause of Guangxu's death was finally revealed, we couldn't help but feel hairy behind Cixi's cruel practices, and the so-called imperial family was nothing more than a vortex of power without affection and indifference.
In general, the Guangxu Emperor was a bright spot in the political arena of the late Qing Dynasty. It was a brilliant and tragic lightning bolt that once appeared in the sky of China, and he was a failed hero.