In October 1860, anglo-French forces invaded Beijing. British Minister Erjin ordered that the royal garden, the Yuanmingyuan, be burned to the ground.
The Yuanmingyuan was founded in the Kangxi Period and consists of three parts: the Yuanmingyuan, Changchun Garden, and Qichun Garden. Later, Kangxi gave the garden to his fourth son Yin Chan (禛讀 zhēn, Yin Chan was the later Yongzheng Emperor), and after the efforts of the four dynasties of Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing, and Daoguang, it cost more than 200 million silver to build this royal garden covering an area of more than 5,000 acres and more than 100 chinese and Western landscapes.
In 1793, the Qianlong Emperor received Magalni, the first British envoy to china, and asked him to tour the whole garden. As a result, Yuanming was even known as the "Summer Palace" of the Qing Dynasty in Europe. The famous French writer Victor Hugo once compared the Yuanmingyuan to the Parthenon Temple of rational art, which is like the castle of the Moon Palace. Every summer, the emperor came here to escape the summer, listen to the government, and deal with military and political affairs, so it was also called "summer palace".
The Yuanmingyuan is grand in scale, has many treasured cultural relics, and combines Chinese and Western architectural specifications, reaching the peak of ancient Chinese garden art. Most of the western-style buildings in the Famous Yuanmingyuan were built using Western architectural specifications. The British burned down the Yuanmingyuan because the Qing government did not give preferential treatment to British prisoners of war, and in anger, they wanted to teach the Xianfeng Emperor a lesson. The British prisoners of war mentioned here refer to the British governor in Shanghai, Pasha Li, and his 40 retinue.
Pasha Li came to Beijing this time to serve as the Chinese secretary of the British minister Erjin, but because Erjin did not want to show his face, he always sent Pasha Li to consult with the Qing government on various matters, and the Qing monarch mistakenly thought that he was the supreme decision-maker of the British army, so he took advantage of the opportunity of negotiations with the Qing government before the British army marched into Beijing and detained him, thinking that this would make the British army confused and then cancel the plan to enter Beijing.
However, this did not stop the British and French allies from advancing, and they entered Beijing effortlessly and then forced the Qing government to release them. However, the prisoners were dissatisfied with the British invasion and cruelly treated Pashali's entourage, some of whom were tortured in water prisons, and some were even dismembered, and less than half of them survived. Enraged, Erjin decided to give the Xianfeng Emperor a permanent "lesson" in order to avenge the "brutality" of the Qing Dynasty. He originally wanted to burn the Forbidden City, but he was also worried that if the Palace was reduced to ashes, the Qing government would lose face and collapse, so the benefits promised to britain would not be fulfilled. So in the end, Erjin finally chose the Yuanmingyuan.
On October 18, 1860, Erjin sent a division of troops to the Yuanmingyuan to set fire. He wanted to invite the French to join him, but the French felt that the move was "uncivilized" and refused to participate. In a short time, dozens of thick smoke rose, and the Yuanmingyuan became a sea of fire, burning for three days and three nights. Hundreds of eunuchs, palace women, and craftsmen were killed, and the Yuanmingyuan and the nearby Qingyi Garden, Jingmingyuan, JingyiYuan, ChangchunYuan and Haidian Town were all in ruins.
The various rare treasures in the Yuanmingyuan were almost robbed as early as the first few days of the British and French coalition forces entering Beijing. The French, who regarded arson as an uncivilized act, were no different from bandits when they looted.
Immediately after that, the destruction began. In 48 hours, the Old Summer Palace became the target of an "organized raid." Soldiers smashed vases and mirrors, tore off paintings and scrolls, they broke open warehouses to snatch silk and bandaged horses with these precious fabrics; they wrapped them in the queen's phoenix robes, and their pockets were filled with rubies, sapphires, pearls, and crystals. Russi records that in two days I received 30 million francs worth of silk, jewelry, porcelain, bronzes and sculptures, a staggering and psychedelic, like the illusion of a cannabis addict.
A French journalist recorded that the French soldiers at that time scrambled, wrestling with each other, stumbling, insulting, shouting, and each taking away his booty. Some people have the queen's red lacquer box on their heads, some people have silk wrapped around their bodies, some people fill their pockets and hats with various crystal gems, and some people smash furniture and take away the gems on them... An ordinary French officer robbed 600,000 francs worth of belongings.
Compared with the chaos of the French army, Britain was more "orderly". The officers took turns robbing, and each regiment had half of the officers in line to rob in the morning, but had to return before noon so that the remaining half could go in the afternoon to rob. After the officers have finished snatching, they will be uniformly put into the soldiers.
Because there were too many treasures in the garden, they did not know what to take for a while, some moved cloisonné porcelain bottles, some coveted embroidered robes, some chose high-end leather coats, and some went to get wall clocks inlaid with pearls. Some carry large pockets and fill them with treasures of all kinds. Some had gold bars and gold leaves in the wide pockets of their outer coats; some were half wrapped in brocade satin; some had hats filled with red sapphires, pearls, and crystal stones; and some had jade collars around their necks. In one of the compartments, there was a mountain of high-grade silk, said to be enough for half of the residents of Beijing, and was transported by soldiers in large carts. Because of the distribution of tasks, some soldiers failed to participate in the robbery, and in order not to disappoint them, the spoils of war had to be distributed fairly, and for this reason, the Anglo-French coalition army also set up a special committee. Of course, the best things are left to the Queen of England and the Emperor of France. Later, when the Anglo-French forces retreated, large carts carrying stolen goods lined up for several miles.
A British officer grabbed a golden Buddha statue from a temple with 500 deities, worth £1,200. A French officer robbed property worth 600,000 francs. The son of the French commander-in-chief Montauban had looted a treasure worth 300,000 francs and filled several carriages. A British second-class soldier named Helith stole two golden pagodas (both three-story, one 7 feet high and one 6.4 feet high) and other treasures from the garden at one time, and found 7 strong men to carry them back to the barracks for him. The man became rich from looting in the Yuanmingyuan and enjoyed it for life, earning the nickname "Chinese James".
In addition to the plundering of the invaders, there are countless things that have been trampled on by them. Several houses were filled with satin clothing, which were dragged out of boxes and thrown to the ground, and people entered the house, almost covering their knees. The sappers, armed with large axes, smashed all the furniture and removed the gems on the top. Some smashed large mirrors, while others shot ferociously at the candelabra for fun. Most of the French soldiers were armed with sticks and smashed everything they could not take with them. When French troops temporarily withdrew from the Old Summer Palace on October 9, the beautiful garden had been destroyed to the point of lupus. Finally, on 18 October, the British commander, James Bruce, the eighth Earl of Erkin (son of the infamous collector of ancient Greek stone carvings, count VII), ordered that the Old Summer Palace be burned to the ground. For the next two days, soldiers were assigned to various palaces, pagodas, and other buildings to set fires. Particularly heavy was the imperial library and archives, some 10,500 volumes of books and archives, including the rarest and most exquisite works on Chinese history, science, technology, philosophy and art, all of which were destroyed in the fires of Erjin. Because many of the pavilions are made of flammable pine wood, thick smoke with rosin incense fills the sky on the northern outskirts of Beijing for several days. "There is no longer a pair of eyes that can bear witness to the artistic gifts and tastes of another era," wrote Robert McGhee, a British military chaplain, in a tone without guilt, "not a single one, not a single house left, let there be no trace of a palace here." Now, let's go back to Beijing, and the work is done. Afterwards, according to the qing officials, only 20 or 30 temple pavilions and temples, official gates, duty houses and other buildings in the vast Yuanming Three Gardens survived, but many doors and windows were uneven, and the interior furnishings and several cases were looted. At the same time, some buildings in The Qingyi Garden of Wanshou Mountain, the Jingyi Garden of Xiangshan Mountain and the JingmingYuan of Yuquan Mountain were also burned.
The Imperial Approval of the Xianfeng Emperor after the Anglo-French coalition army burned the Yuanmingyuan
According to relevant materials, on October 18, when the British invading army burned down The Anyou Palace, because they came suddenly, the chief eunuch locked the gate of The Anyou Palace, so at that time, there were 300 eunuchs, palace women, craftsmen, etc., who were burned alive in the Anyou Palace.
When the Yuanmingyuan fell into a sea of fire, Erjin triumphantly declared: "This move will shock China and Europe, and its effect is far beyond the imagination of people thousands of miles away." The Messenger of the Lord of the arson regarded this act as a despicable achievement, while the righteous people of the whole world were outraged by this barbaric crime.
While the Yuanmingyuan was still burning, Prince Gong Yixuan, who was ordered to stay in Beijing, promised all the conditions of the invaders. Soon after, the texts of the Tianjin Treaty were exchanged with Britain, France, and Russia, and the Treaty of Beijing was signed. In this way, the imperialist powers seized China's Kowloon Peninsula and a large area of territory in the north, extorting a huge amount of military indemnity of 16 million taels of silver.
In 1988, the Beijing government built the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park on the site of the Yuanmingyuan, and the rockery and carving remnants of that year are still visible.
After the Yuanmingyuan was reduced to ashes, countless Chinese cultural relics flowed into the West, and later some were collected by connoisseurs, some stored in museums, and some were exiled to various auction markets.