At about two o'clock in the afternoon of November 15, 1908, Empress Dowager Cixi died in the Yiluan Hall in Qingxiyuan. She ruled the Qing Dynasty for half a century and was the last de facto ruler in thousands of years of feudal history. Her death marked the end of an era. And as the most powerful person at the end of the Qing Dynasty, how did she spend her last day?
Guangxu was emperor for 34 years, but in fact he was always obeyed by Empress Dowager Cixi. Although Empress Dowager Cixi announced that she would return to Guangxu since Guangxu became pro-government, this was just a false statement by Empress Dowager Cixi, and she never intended to give up power. Guangxu did not want to be a titular emperor, but Empress Dowager Cixi was unwilling to give up power, which was an irreconcilable contradiction between their mother and son, which also doomed them to impossible to live in peace.
After the death of the Tongzhi Emperor, Empress Dowager Cixi personally selected Guangxu as emperor, and in his original plan, he really wanted to cultivate Guangxu as a successor, because Guangxu was his own nephew, and there was a deep blood relationship between the two. However, Empress Dowager Cixi's thinking was conservative, and the Guangxu Emperor's new ideological tide, this ideological and conceptual confrontation also created an irreparable gap between them. This mother and son fought for more than ten years, and the final result was that although the Guangxu Emperor was not deposed, he had been under house arrest in Yingtai, and Empress Dowager Cixi still held the power of the imperial court. Although the Guangxu Emperor was placed under house arrest, he was not in a hurry, because he was much younger than Empress Dowager Cixi and would one day be able to survive Empress Dowager Cixi.
However, the Guangxu Emperor underestimated Empress Dowager Cixi's determination. When she felt that her time was running out, in order to avoid being liquidated by Emperor Guangxu after her death, she actually poisoned Emperor Guangxu and ordered people to poison Guangxu with arsenic. And the reason why Empress Dowager Cixi poisoned Guangxu was also very simple. In addition to the decades-long grudge between the two, he was afraid that the Guangxu Emperor would settle accounts with him. The Guangxu Emperor, who was unrewarded, died suddenly at the age of 38. He had the ideal of reviving the Qing Dynasty and the ambition to shine for all generations. But with his sudden death, all this became a dream. Before he died, he also wrote a letter to Princess Delin, in which he said helplessly, I intend to revitalize China, but you know, I can't be the master, I can't do what I want. When the news of Emperor Guangxu's death reached Empress Dowager Cixi's ears, she did not show much surprise, knowing that time was running out, she began to arrange the aftermath. The first thing he did was to announce that Puyi, the son of the regent Zaifeng, would pass on to the Tongzhi Emperor Zaichun, and at the same time inherit the pick of the Guangxu Emperor, which was equivalent to one person picking two parties. In this way, Puyi's succession to the throne seemed justified. After dealing with the affairs of the heir to the throne, the time had come to the second day, which was also the last day of Empress Dowager Cixi's life. That morning, she began to order people to deal with the aftermath of Guangxu. But at that time, the people in the palace were busy preparing for her aftermath, and the descendants of the Guangxu Emperor were not cared about. In the evening, the descendants of the Guangxu Emperor were still in chaos, and Empress Dowager Cixi couldn't care less, she had run out of oil and lamps, she leaned on the bed early, and took the precious night pearl in her mouth. Soon after, the last real power figure in feudal history closed his eyes, and an era finally ended.
Emperor Xuantong was young, and all the princes and ministers were busy with the succession of the new emperor, and there was no time to deal with the future affairs of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi. When Empress Dowager Cixi's adopted daughter, Princess Rongshou Gulun, went to the palace to mourn, she saw the bodies of the emperor and the empress dowager parked on the bed board left and right, without pretending to have faces, and the eunuchs were in a mess outside the door. The room was empty. Seeing this, the eldest princess was furious, first scolded the eunuchs, and then went to the regent's palace to scold the regent Zaifeng. The eldest princess had a reputation in the royal family, and Zaifeng was scolded and did not dare to refute it, so he had to urgently summon the princes and ministers to become a funeral committee. However, Zaifeng's personality is too scattered to deal with this kind of royal funeral with cumbersome etiquette. In the end, it was under the arrangement of the eldest princess that the funerals of the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi ended smoothly.
Cixi has been on the way to power for nearly half a century, and she used her wisdom to firmly hold the rule of the Qing Dynasty in her hands, which is her personal political success, but because of the limitation of her vision, she did not bring China into the threshold of modernization, which is not only her personal tragedy, but also the great regret of the Chinese nation.