The Anglo-French army burned the Yuanmingyuan

After the Taiping Army established the capital of Tianjing, it held the Northern Expedition and the Western Expedition. The Northern Expedition fought all the way to Tianjin, fighting alone and bloodily, insisting on more than two years, while the Western Expeditionary Army moved to anhui, Jiangxi, Hubei, and Hunan provinces, and controlled the middle reaches of the Yangtze River. Just when the Qing government was overwhelmed by the Uprising of the Taiping Army, the foreign invaders were looking for opportunities to threaten the Qing government in various ways in an attempt to further open the door to China and expand their aggressive interests in China. On October 8, 1856, the sixth year of Xianfeng, the Guangdong Admiralty arrested 12 pirates and suspects aboard a Chinese ship, the Yaluo. The British consul in Guangzhou, Bashari, under the pretext that the Yarrow had obtained a British registration certificate in Hong Kong, interfered with the inspection vessels of the Guangdong marine division, and also fabricated plots to frame Chinese officials for tearing up the British flag on the Yarrow, and the British government used this excuse to provoke the Second Opium War. After the outbreak of the war, the confused governor of Liangguang, Ye Mingchen, actually did not fight, did not fight, did not defend, so that the city of Guangzhou quickly fell into the hands of the enemy. In order to make the Qing government obedient, the British and French invaders invaded Dagukou in May 1585, forming an offensive against Tianjin. The rulers of the Qing Dynasty were terrified, and hurriedly sent people to seek peace, and signed the Treaty of Tianjin with the representatives of Britain, France, Russia, and the United States. Taking advantage of the fire and looting, Tsarist Russia forced the Qing government to sign the Sino-Russian Aihui Treaty by force, ceding a large area of Chinese territory north of the Heilongjiang River south of the Xing'an Mountains. After the signing of the treaty, the matter was not over, and the British and French governments were not satisfied with the content of the treaty, and they were ready to take advantage of the opportunity to change the treaty in Beijing to reorganize the Anglo-French coalition army to provoke war again. In August 1860, the Anglo-French army occupied Dagukou and tianjin and threatened to go north and push straight for Beijing. The Xianfeng Emperor was frightened and quickly fled with a large group of bureaucratic ministers to Rehe for refuge. A month later, the British and French allies marched into the city of Beijing in a murderous spirit, and the bandits burned and plundered everywhere, raped and committed all kinds of bad deeds, and it was at this time that the Yuanmingyuan in civilized China and abroad was devastated. Yuanmingyuan is located in the western suburbs of Beijing, by the Yuanmingyuan, Wanchun Garden, Changchun Garden three gardens, so also known as the Yuanming Three Gardens this royal garden began to build in the Ming Dynasty, after the Qing Dynasty Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong, Jiaqing, Daoguang, Xianfeng Six Dynasties, more than 150 years of continuous expansion, becoming the world's most magnificent royal garden. Inside the garden, there are elegant Chinese-style wooden structures, and there are very spectacular Western-style stone buildings, with harmonious layouts, beautiful scenery and beautiful scenery. There are more than 100 famous scenic fields in the three gardens, and more than 140 palaces, pavilions, pavilions, inscriptions, bridges and water pavilions, and ancient tombs and rivers cannot be counted. The Yuanmingyuan is not only magnificent in architecture and picturesque, but also collects countless gold and silver jewelry, exquisite art crafts, a large number of archival documents and countless diluted precious cultural relics, such as bronzes of the Shang Zhou Dynasty, calligraphy and paintings of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, etc., it can be said that it is the largest museum in the world. However, this Yuanmingyuan, which has been in operation for hundreds of years, was brutally destroyed by the British and French coalition forces, which claimed to be Western civilizations. On the evening of October 6th, the French invading army first broke into the Yuanmingyuan, they were stunned by the huge treasure house in front of them, they suddenly had evil thoughts, and they robbed them that night, and all valuable items were put into their pockets and carried back to the camp where they lived. Wen Feng, the head of the Yuanmingyuan, could not stop the bandits from being angry and jumped into the lake of the round table to commit suicide. Early the next morning, handsome men followed, and a French officer who was walking out of the garden cheerfully said to the British officer standing at the door, gentlemen, why don't you come in here and are not forbidden to enter, you see! He reached out and took a golden bar of gold from the wide pocket of his coat and said, This is gold, real gold. Therefore, the leader of the British army, Grant, publicly ordered the officers to enter the garden in batches to rob, and then ordered the whole army to freely rob a group of bandits who were fighting with open fire. Maybe it's because there are too many cultural relics and treasures in the garden, and I don't know what to take. They snatched gold and silver for a while, and then they grabbed pearls and jade gems, and there were too many things to grab, and they often threw away the silver for the sake of gold, took the jewelry and threw away the gold. Because the robbery time was too short, many cultural relics were too late to be carefully identified, and things like gold were destroyed by mistake for brass. What's more, some of the valuable manuscripts were burned in vain as waste paper to light pipes. The Anglo-French coalition took away almost everything that could be moved, and all the cultural relics that could not be moved or could not be taken away were broken with sticks and destroyed a large amount of stolen goods stolen by the robbers. Some were auctioned live, and the money from the auction was distributed to officers and soldiers according to rank, some were transported back to their home countries, and some were presented as gifts to the King of England and the Emperor of France. Until now, a considerable part of the collections of Chinese cultural relics in British and French museums have come from the Yuanmingyuan. In order to cover up the crime after the crazy looting and destruction of the Yuanmingyuan, and even more in order to force the Qing government to agree to the surrender conditions they had imposed, the British and French coalition forces decided to burn the Yuanmingyuan to the ground. In the early morning of October 18, 3,500 British cavalry began to carry out a planned cemetery operation, and they went out together to break into the Yuanmingyuan and set fire to it, and the magnificent Yuanmingyuan suddenly became a sea of fire. Black lava rose from the trees, formed a cloud of smoke, shrouded the sky over the northwest of Beijing, and then slowly drifted with the wind in a southeasterly direction, stretching for more than fifty kilometers, and even the days were dim, and the fire continued to burn for three days and three nights. In this way, this famous garden, known as the garden of ten thousand gardens, condensed with the wisdom and blood and sweat of the Chinese people, was burned by the British and French allies, leaving only a pile of rubble and ruins. Three days after the Yuanmingyuan was burned, the corrupt Qing government completely succumbed and signed the Treaty of Beijing with the British and French invaders.

In addition to recognizing the validity of the Treaty of Tianjin, the Treaty of Beijing also opened Tianjin as a treaty port, increased the compensation for British and French military expenses to 8 million taels, ceded the Kowloon Peninsula to Britain, allowed French missionaries to preach in the provinces, and further transformed China into a semi-colonial and semi-feudal country.