What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
A view of the Old Summer Palace before it was burned
In 1860, after the British and French allies occupied Tianjin, they marched into Beijing, the Qing Emperor fled to Chengde, the Anglo-French coalition army burned all the way, invaded Beijing, broke into the Yuanmingyuan, where the magnificent buildings and dazzling treasures stunned the invaders, they scrambled, plundered the treasures, robbed the things, they smashed, to cover the eyes and ears, they set fire to the Yuanmingyuan for three days and three nights, the glorious palace, the towering ancient trees, all turned to ashes.
The scene of the Burning of the Eight-Power Alliance
The Yuanmingyuan after the Eight-Power Alliance burned
The Yuanmingyuan, which was so magnificently built, turned into a ruin in an instant, but how many people know that when the Eight-Nation Alliance burned the Yuanmingyuan, there was a Chinese leading the way, and we all know this father who Chinese. Aren't you surprised? We say that a person becomes famous, it may be because of a sentence, a poem, or a work, a historical event, etc., after becoming famous, it is well known, but there are many historical stories behind the celebrity, but few people know. For example, the person who led the way to burn the Yuanmingyuan is Gong Zizhen's son----- Gong Banlun, maybe Gong Banlun we don't know, but Gong Zizhen Most people know, in order to further familiarize themselves with who is Gong Zizhen, we will briefly introduce it.
Gong Zizhen (22 August 1792 – 26 September 1841) was a Han Chinese from Renhe (present-day Hangzhou, Zhejiang). In his later years, he lived in Kunshan Yuxuan Mountain Pavilion, also known as Yuxuan Mountain People. Qing Dynasty thinker, poet, writer and pioneer of reformism. "Kyushu is angry and thunderous, and Wan Maqi is sad. I advise Tiangong to shake things up and demote talents in an eclectic manner. This is a famous poem by the patriotic poet Gong Zizhen of the Qing Dynasty who was selected into the textbook. Gong Zizhen was a Qing Dynasty thinker, writer and pioneer of reformism. He was a mid-27-year-old and a mid-career at the age of 38. He served as the secretary of the cabinet, the head of the shogunate, and the head of the ceremonial department. Advocating the elimination of maladministration and resisting foreign aggression, he fully supported Lin Zexu in banning opium. At the age of 48, he resigned from the government and returned to the south, and died violently in the following year at the Yangyunyang Academy in Jiangsu Sultan. His poems advocated "changing the law" and "changing the map", exposing the decay of the Qing rulers, full of patriotic enthusiasm, and was praised by Liu Yazi as "the first class in three hundred years".
The Eight-Power Coalition burned the Yuanmingyuan
A great patriotic poet like Gong Zizhen never expected that his son Gong Banlun was a prodigal prince and arrogant by nature. In the chaotic years of war, he did not develop well, went into exile in Shanghai, defected to the British minister Wittema, and when the Anglo-French coalition invaded Beijing, he introduced the coalition army to the Yuanmingyuan, followed by the fire that made hundreds of millions of Chinese eternal heartache. At this point, he has become a sinner of the Chinese nation, which is in contrast to his famous father. This made his father's name ruined by him, how could there be such a big contrast, it really made his father's face humiliated. However, the father is the father, the son is the son, and we should still treat and evaluate it with a fair and just heart when judging.
History is complex, especially in our ancient country with thousands of years of history, and future generations have analyzed it from a variety of historical materials, and the information obtained may be completely different from our ordinary cognition, but it is the information that is closer to the truth. Perhaps from this information, we can really enlighten through history and enhance our cognition through history.