In August of the tenth year of Xianfeng (September 1860), the Anglo-French army successively defeated the battalions under the command of Sengling Qin, Ruilin and Shengbao, and marched to Beijing. On September 22, the 31-year-old Xianfeng Emperor took his courtiers and concubine Canghuang to escape the Rehe Summer Resort.
On October 6, coalition forces entered the Old Summer Palace and ransacked it; On October 18-19, coalition forces set fire to the Old Summer Palace. The area around the northwest sea lake has been burning for many days, and half of the wall is red. The city of Beijing was full of gunfire, cries, looting, fleeing, and the people were in chaos.
Anglo-French forces attack the city of Beijing
On August 22, 1861, the Xianfeng Emperor was in the summer villa and returned to the west. On his deathbed, he dictated his will, making Zai Chun, the prince born to the concubine Nara clan, the crown prince, and gave two seals at the same time, one "reward" to the empress Niuhulu clan, and the other "Tongdaotang" to the young emperor, which was controlled by his mother Yiguifei Nara clan. A will is also made: All the emperor's edict is valid only if it begins with "imperial reward" and ends with "Tongdaotang".
More than 80 days later, Nara and others staged a coup d'état, the eight ministers of Gu Ming were cleaned up, and the Empress Dowager of the Two Palaces obeyed the government, and from then on, Cixi (emblem) stepped onto the political stage in the Great Qing Kingdom.
The Qing Empire lasted for 268 years, 47 of which were ruled by a woman of the Yehenara clan, Cixi, from 1861 to 1908, and no courtiers opposed her.
Anglo-French forces attack the city of Beijing
In the past 47 years, Cixi staged two coups, obeyed the government three times, twice defeated the crown prince, and Qian Gang made arbitrary decisions. So, what kind of person is Cixi? What ability does she have to rule the country of Noda? Many wild histories, TV series, etc. portray Cixi as a ruthless woman, but the real Cixi has another unknown side.
First, be good at learning how to govern the country.
According to the Nara family tree, she was born on October 10, 15th year of Daoguang (November 29, 1835). His father, Hui Zheng, was a middle-ranking official of the Qing Dynasty, and his mother was a Manchurian clan of the Fucha clan. At the age of 17, he entered the palace, and was concubine Yi by the Lan nobleman, and then Yi concubine, and then Yi Guifei. At the age of 21, she gave birth to the first prince for Xianfeng. Since then, the mother has been pampered by her son, and she has been pampered by Xianfeng.
Cixi was only 27 years old when he came to power, and did not have the sophisticated political skills and political experience of Wu Zetian, nor did he have the experience of helping Wu Zetian's husband manage the imperial government when he was alive.
She wanted to defend the country for the Great Qing Dynasty. On the days when the curtain was obedient, Cixi got up at four or five o'clock in the morning, lest the princes and ministers gossip. Then go to the minister's government affairs and give the will.
Empress
At that time, there was no precedent for asking questions about politics in the 200 years of the Qing Dynasty. If you want to govern, you must centralize power, and in the hands of Cixi, everything has changed, and the core is that all government affairs are decided by the Empress Dowager of the Two Palaces, and great power is concentrated in one.
With the help of Prince Gong and other ministers, Cixi began to learn to clean up internal and external troubles: at that time, the capital of the Taiping army was Nanjing, the twister army was still active, the Central Asian country of Kokand Aqubo invaded Xinjiang, and Tsarist Russia invaded Ili...
If she did not understand, she asked the ministers to take their opinions, and in the end, she would decide; The ministers were divided into two factions, and when they could not argue about something, she took a compromise approach and let both factions try.
In the end, during her reign, these challenges were resolved.
She can speak Manchu, but not Manchu. She was proficient in Chinese, but not proficient. Therefore, Cixi invited two eunuchs from Xiucai to sit in the palace all year round, and she had to tell a history book for one or two hours during her nap and evening to improve her ability to use history to learn from history. Later, he felt that his knowledge was insufficient, and the two Xiucai did not have enough knowledge, so he found more learned people to take turns to read for them.
At the age of 40, Cixi wrote a poem congratulating her mother on her 70th birthday: "Parents in the world have the deepest love, and tears and blood dissolve into their children." Exhaustion to become a son in the end, pity the hearts of parents in the world. Preserved in the world.
Second, she is resolute by nature, extremely confident, persistent, but very self-controlled.
In the eighth year of Tongzhi (1869), An Dehai, a popular eunuch who was favored by Empress Dowager Cixi, wanted to go out of the palace to play and take advantage of the opportunity to accumulate wealth because he had been in the palace for a long time.
This An Dehai is usually pampered and arrogant, although he is only a sixth-grade Lanling eunuch, but even the little emperor Zaichun, Prince Gong Yixin and other ministers of the imperial court do not pay attention to it. He also often played right and wrong, provoking the mother-son relationship between Tongzhi and Empress Dowager Cixi, so that the little emperor was often reprimanded by Empress Dowager Cixi. He had no emperor in sight, and he had exceeded his power and acted arbitrarily, to the point where the Tongzhi Emperor and all the courtiers could not bear it.
To leave the palace, he had to make an excuse, and An Dehai, under the pretext of preparing for the wedding ceremony of the Tongzhi Emperor, asked Empress Dowager Cixi to send him to Jiangnan to buy dragon robes and wedding items in the palace, and obtained Empress Dowager Cixi's permission.
With the support of the Empress Dowager, An Dehai led a group of retinues and left Beijing in front of the other. Along the way, he was majestic and wanton to accumulate wealth, so unhappy.
While passing through the territory of Dezhou, Shandong, he was captured by local officials and sent to Ding Baozhen, the governor of Shandong. Ding Baozhen personally interrogated, but An Dehai was very arrogant.
In the Great Qing Ancestral System, the eunuch level is only four grades, and he is not allowed to leave the imperial city without authorization unless he is sent, and those who violate it will be killed without amnesty.
After learning that although An Dehai was known as a chincha, he did not carry any official documents. Ding Baozhen followed this ancestral system and killed An Dehai.
eunuch
When he heard that his henchman eunuch had been killed, Cixi was so angry that he patted the table to clean up Ding Baozhen and let the military ministers come up with opinions on how to deal with it.
But when the courtiers said that according to the ancestral family law, An Dehai should be killed and should not deal with Ding Baozhen, Cixi had to endure.
Ding Baozhen wisely killed the power supervisor An Dehai, shocked by the government and the public. After that, Cixi did not bother Ding Baozhen.
In the sixth year of Guangxu (1880), Cixi's personal eunuch Li Sanshun went to Cixi's sister, Fu Jin's house, to deliver rewards. Li Sanshun relied on himself as a person close to Cixi and did whatever he wanted. I wanted to go from the noon gate.
According to the ancestral system, eunuchs entered and exited by the side gate, and were not allowed to go through the noon gate, and the escort on duty was blocked according to the rule. Li Sanshun ran back to the inner court after clashing with the escort and cried to Cixi.
Cixi was ill and cursed bitterly: I am not yet dead, and there is no me in the eyes of the guards. I must not spare them. So she sent someone to invite Empress Dowager Ci'an to her Chuxiu Palace, crying that she was bullied, claiming: If you don't kill this escort, your sister doesn't want to live.
When Ci'an heard this, he immediately summoned Shangshu Pan Zuyin of the Criminal Department and ordered that he would be executed by beheading. After Pan Zuyin understood the situation, he felt that the escort should not be killed and refused to violate the law. Empress Dowager Xi summoned him with illness, cried hotly, and beat the bed like a village woman and scolded him for having no conscience. Pan Shangshu returned to the criminal department, crying bitterly, but still refused to give a verdict.
Chen Baochen and Zhang Zhidong, who knew what happened, folded up on the same day, citing 200-year examples, and reiterated that the ancestral system "castrating things is the great precept of the Gangji." Call on the two empress dowagers to take back their lives. In the end, the escort fell from leniency, and Li Sanshun gave a cane.
Cixi finally controlled himself, did not blame the officials for this, and did not "unwilling to live" because of this.