In 1900, the year of the Gengzi Rat, the Great Chaos in China. An alliance of eight countries, including Britain, the United States and France, invaded China. Since the Opium War in 1840, China was forced to open its doors, and after two Opium Wars and the Sino-Japanese War, China has cut off land and paid reparations many times, and the Qing government has retreated step by step, and has continuously signed treaties that humiliate the country.
Huge reparations have overwhelmed the people, opposition is frequent everywhere, and social unrest is rife. At the end of the 19th century, a peasant movement against the aggression of the great powers arose, the Boxer Rebellion, the Tuanmin actions included burning churches, boycotting foreign goods, etc., and western countries demanded the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion's anti-imperialist movement, but did not get an effective response from the Qing government. In 1900, on the pretext of suppressing the Boxer Rebellion, the great powers formed a coalition of many countries and sent troops to China, in fact killing people, setting fires, burning and looting, doing all kinds of evil, and the empress dowager also held the emperor hostage and fled west. In the end, peace was negotiated again, the treaty was signed, and the Qing government was reduced to the court of foreigners.
When the Eight-Power Coalition invaded Tianjin and Beijing, everywhere it went was a painful scene. Wang Zhendong, an ordinary citizen in the capital, personally experienced this incident, and later had the privilege of surviving, and in his later recollections, described what he saw and heard in the Gengzi Incident, which can also be used as an auxiliary historical material for studying the period of the Eight-Nation Alliance's invasion of China.
Wang Zhendong recalled: At the age of 25 when the Eight-Power Alliance attacked China, he was bedridden and could not escape in time, so he saw everything that happened in Beijing. After the defeat at Dagukou, Tianjin fell, and many people did not believe that the coalition army dared to invade Beijing, which was not only inhabited by the empress dowager, but also by the Boxers.
At that time, there were many people who joined the Boxer Rebellion, and they did not have any identity, and there were everyone in the regiment. Every day, the Boxer master brother practiced at an altar in the city, and many people practiced boxing with them. The Boxers played the slogan of "supporting the Qing Dynasty and destroying the foreigners," but the "annihilation of the foreigners" was really too much. Before the coalition army entered the city, they killed foreigners in the city, boycotted foreign goods, and even Chinese who repaired foreign things, and the Boxers killed their families. Several students on the street fled in a hurry, and because they were carrying pens and foreign papers, they were beheaded. Some people on the road with paper cigarettes, glasses, and foreign fires were hacked to death with knives.
Later, the Boxers burned an American and French church, and as a result, the fire was lighting nearby houses, and the fire burned for a long time. I heard that a Japanese man went to them and was theorized to have been killed, and a few days later, he heard that another German minister had also been killed.
Kill someone else's official, can they spare you? People on the street are talking about it, but after all, the days will pass, and everyone will not take it seriously. As a result, on August 13, 1900, the coalition army really hit the gate of Beijing, the artillery fire was incessant, everyone fled for their lives, on August 14, the city of Beijing fell, I expected the empress dowager and the emperor to sit in town, but later heard that the empress dowager was on the way to the west early in the morning.
I was sick and couldn't get out of bed, and when I could get out of bed, I went out to see that the coalition forces had already entered the city, but this was not only the Eight-Nation Alliance, the streets were full of foreigners, dressed in different costumes, carrying big guns, very arrogant. These foreigners' armies began to rob everywhere in the city of Beijing, and all the families of those who bought and bought people's homes and some inheritances of their ancestors were looted, and taking advantage of this moment, those hooligans on the street usually followed the foreigners' butts to rob, and the slightest resistance to their lives may be lost, which is really frightening.
Empress Tongzhi's father, Chongqi, ran out of beijing after Cixi fled west, and when she heard that she had gone to Baoding, Chongqi's wife dug a big pit in her home, and her family jumped into the pit in turn, immolated herself and died. Wu Ren's old wives are all over half a hundred years old, the foreign soldiers do not let her clean herself and burn the fire, ordinary civilian women are afraid of humiliation, many of them hanged themselves in the well, and the women who were taken away were taken to the mounting alley, allowing the foreign soldiers to have fun, the scene at that time was really miserable.