The Yuanmingyuan is a wonderful masterpiece in the history of Chinese garden architecture, it will be ancient and modern, north and south, The beauty of Chinese and Western architecture harmoniously integrated, was poeticized as "the heavens on earth, move the heavens into the king's huai" o Yuanmingyuan fame also spread to Europe, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens" o French literary hero Hugo once commented: "You just have to imagine that it is a fascinating, like the castle of the Moon Palace, the Summer Palace (referring to the Yuanmingyuan) is such a building." It is often said that Greece had the Parthenon, Egypt had pyramids, Rome had the Colosseum, and the East had summer palaces. This is a breathtaking masterpiece of unparalleled proportions.
In July of the Xianfeng Decade (1860), the British and French invading forces approached Beijing, and the Xianfeng Emperor Cangchao fled from the Yuanmingyuan to the summer resort. On October 6, the British and French invading forces directly attacked the Yuanmingyuan on the northwestern outskirts of Beijing. The ministers and bodyguards guarding the Yuanmingyuan were martyred. Officers and soldiers of the invading army poured into the Yuanmingyuan from all directions to rob them wantonly. In order to rob the treasure, they beat each other, even armed. Because there were too many treasures in the garden, they didn't know what to grab for a while, some moved cloisonné porcelain bottles, some earthen pieces of the king's wall clock, some large pockets filled with various gold and silver jewelry, some half wrapped in brocade satin, some hanging jade collars around their necks.
A British officer snatched a golden Buddha statue worth tens of thousands of pounds. A French officer robbed property worth 600,000 francs. The son of the French commander-in-chief Montauban snatched the treasure and filled several carriages. A British officer named Helith robbed 2 golden pagodas, made a fortune, enjoyed them for life, and earned the nickname "Chinese James". The French soldiers then grabbed sticks and smashed everything they couldn't take with them. On October 18 and 19, 3,000 or 4,000 invading troops set fires everywhere in the park, and the fire burned for three days and three nights, and the whole park turned into a sea of fire, covered with smoke and flames. The sky over Beijing, more than 20 miles away, is dim, like an eclipse. This world-class masterpiece of garden and a rare art treasure at home and abroad has been torched.
After the Yuanmingyuan was destroyed, Empress Dowager Cixi rebuilt part of it. In 1900, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded Beijing, Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor fled to Xi'an, the order in Beijing was chaotic, the Eight Banners soldiers and bandits took advantage of the fire and looting, about 100 buildings remaining and restored in the Yuanmingyuan were demolished and looted, and the buildings and ancient trees of the Yuanmingyuan were completely destroyed.