Comrade Guevara
One day in the 31st year of the Republic of China (1942), in the mansion of Dali Zaya, the prince of Zasak and Shuo in Alxa Banner, Inner Mongolia, an elderly man named Huazi died of illness in the stable. When the servant informed the prince of the news, Darizaya's face did not show a sad look, but let out a long breath, and there seemed to be a flash of joy between his eyebrows. For Darizaya, although the deceased was his uncle, he had always been poor and did not do his job, and he had been eating and drinking in the palace for many years, which was really annoying.
Alxa and Prince Shute Palace
Later, the body of the deceased was sent to the local Jiaxing Temple funeral home, and after a simple funeral ceremony, it was buried in the open space in the backyard of the temple. The funeral was very deserted, with few people attending except for the deceased's wife and children and a very small number of relatives and friends, and the prince did not show up from beginning to end. It is no exaggeration to say that the dead have been completely forgotten by this world before they are buried in the earth.
However, few people know that the identity of the deceased before his death was very unusual, and even the prince was three points shorter than him. This person is the last crown prince of the Qing Dynasty and the "alternate" emperor Aixin Jueluo Pujun. So the question is, how could the noble Pu Jun end up in such a bleak end? Everything has to start with Pu Jun's life experience.
Pu Jun's background is extraordinary, his great-grandfather is Emperor Daoguang, his grandfather is Prince Yi Cheng, and his father is Duanjun Wang Zaiyi, who belongs to the royal family. According to some historical books, Pu Jun's mother was the niece of the Empress Dowager Cixi and the daughter of Yehenara Guixiang, the third-class Chengen Gong. However, according to authoritative historical records, none of Guixiang's three daughters married Zai Yi, and none of Zai Yi's three wives and concubines had the surname Yehenara. From this, it can be seen that Pu Jun is the nephew and grandson of the Empress Dowager Cixi, which is nonsense.
溥儁旧照
Although Pu Jun had no relationship with the Empress Dowager Cixi, it did not prevent him from soaring and becoming an "alternate" emperor for a time. All this, of course, thanks to his father Zaiyi. It turned out that Zai Yi was good at martial arts since he was a child, and he showed outstanding talent when he led the Shenji Battalion composed of the children of the Eight Banners, unlike other princes who were clerical and flashy. Zai Yi's performance was deeply rewarded by the Empress Dowager Cixi, and since then, the official position and title have become bigger and bigger, and even his son Pu Jun has been favored by the Empress Dowager.
However, Pu Jun is very different from the image of his father Zaiyi, who neither reads nor practices martial arts at home, but indulges in the sound of dogs and horses, and belongs to a typical gentleman, and he is surrounded by some villains with low moral character. After entering the palace, Pu Jun's behavior was even more absurd and uninhibited, often going out on private trips with eunuchs, and even plucking the queen's hairpin in the palace, and often messing around with the palace maids, causing a lot of scandals. However, it was such a bastard that he almost climbed onto the dragon chair and replaced Emperor Guangxu in the world.
Guangxi Emperor Image
The Empress Dowager Cixi wanted to replace Emperor Guangxu, which was undoubtedly directly related to the "Wuxu Change". In this short-lived change that lasted for more than 100 days, Emperor Guangxu changed the "ancestral law" at the same time, and it was also the proper meaning of the question to seize power from the hands of the queen mother, which made the power-hungry Cixi endure? Therefore, at the instigation of the stubborn old school, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who extinguished the reform and reform, first imprisoned Emperor Guangxu, and soon had the idea of setting up a new monarch. Since Emperor Guangxu had no heirs, the Empress Dowager Cixi screened the members of the "Zai" generation in the royal family and finally selected Pu Jun.
The Empress Dowager Cixi is a "strong woman" who values execution, and once she decides to change the emperor, she will naturally not procrastinate. Therefore, only one year after the failure of the "Wuxu Reform", that is, in December of the 25th year of Guangxu (1899), the Empress Dowager Cixi issued a decree ordering Pu Junjin to succeed the late Emperor Tongzhi as an heir, and gave him the title of "Big Brother", just like a prince. Immediately afterwards, the Empress Dowager Cixi began to plan for the abolition of the throne, planning to hold a ceremony on New Year's Day of the following year, forcing Emperor Guangxu to cede the throne to Pu Jun and change the yuan to "Baoqing".
慈禧太后
Although preparations for the abolition of the Legislature were carried out in secret, the ministers of Europe and the United States still received rumors, and out of sympathy for Emperor Guangxu and dissatisfaction with the autocratic power of the Empress Dowager Cixi, they expressed their opposition one after another when they met with the scholars Ronglu and Prince Qing. Rong Lu and Yi Xuan saw that the matter was serious, so they informed the Queen Mother of the ministers' objections, hoping that she could think twice. Under the strong pressure exerted by European and American countries, the Empress Dowager Cixi was forced to stop the abolition of the matter, and the emperor dream of the "alternate" emperor Pu Jun was ruined by foreigners.
The foreigners openly obstructed the affairs of the Celestial Empire, which made the authoritarian and good-looking Empress Dowager Cixi deeply humiliated, and the emperor's dreamed of Zaiyi's father and son naturally hated European and American countries even more, and always wanted to find an opportunity to give the "foreign devils" some "color" to see. At this time, the Boxer Rebellion, which originated in Shandong Province, was surging, and they poured into Zhili, Beijing, and other places under the banner of "helping the Qing Dynasty to destroy the foreigners," killing foreigners and parishioners everywhere, and they were very arrogant. Unlike people of insight who are worried, Zaiyi's father and son see a good opportunity for revenge.
The culprit of the "Gengzi National Change" is Zaiyi
For the Boxers that ravaged the two provinces of Zhilu, the imperial court was undecided on the issue of whether to suppress or appease, and Zai Yi, out of resentment towards European and American countries, united with the main battle faction of Manchu magnates such as Prince Zhuang Zaixun, Fuguo Gong Zailan, and University Scholar Gangyi, and desperately advocated that the Boxers were "righteous people" in front of the Empress Dowager Cixi, which could help the imperial court expel foreigners and restore the old system of ancestors. Not only that, Zai Yi also instructed the military aircraft Zhang Jing Lian Wenchong to fabricate a diplomatic note from the foreign powers to the Qing government, demanding that the Empress Dowager Cixi return to the Guangxu Emperor, otherwise they would jointly take tough measures.
Sure enough, this fabricated diplomatic note would cause the Empress Dowager Cixi to fall into extreme anger and fear, and when the important ministers Gangyi and Xu Tong, who had been ordered to investigate the Boxers, brought the news that the organization was indeed loyal to the Qing Dynasty and possessed the magic of "invulnerability", she naturally agreed to the plan proposed by Zai Yi and others. As a result, the Empress Dowager Cixi announced her decree on June 20, 1900, officially declaring war on 11 countries, including Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Russia, and Japan, and ordered the Qing army Dong Fuxiang and the Boxers to jointly attack the embassy area of Dongjiaomin Lane. The "Gengzi Boxing Rebellion" broke out as a result.
Boxer
However, this stupid move has brought catastrophe to China. Soon, Britain, the United States, France, Germany, Italy, Austria, Japan, and Russia formed an alliance to attack China, and the Qing army was defeated on the battlefield in successive battles, and soon lost Tianjin, Beijing and other places. Before the fall of Beijing, Cixi took Emperor Guangxu hostage and fled to Xi'an, known as the "Two Palaces and Western Hunting". On the one hand, she promulgated the edict to exterminate the Boxers, on the other hand, issued a statement of "begging for peace" to the foreign powers, and entrusted Li Hongzhang, then governor of Liangguang, to be in charge of peace negotiations.
In the process of negotiating peace between China and foreign countries, the coalition forces drew up a list of 147 "war criminals" and demanded that all of them be executed by the Qing court, and the top of the list was Zai Yi. At this time, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who was in Xi'an, was very angry at Zai Yi's previous behavior of deceiving herself and starting the war lightly, so she removed Zai Yi's title from the charge of "indulging in righteousness and fists, and offending the ancestors", and deposed Pu Jun's title of "Big Brother". At this point, Pu Jun, who was only one step away from the throne, was abandoned by the empress dowager and soon exiled to Xinjiang with his father.
Signing of the Treaty of Xincho
In December, after inheriting the order of the Queen Mother, Pu Jun became Mu Zonghou and was called "Big Brother...... On New Year's Day next year, the Great High Hall and the Fengxian Hall salute to Pu Jun. It is rumored that the edict will be issued, and the scholar Ronglu and Prince Qing have similarities and differences with the ministers of various countries, and admonish. …… Fate Yixuan and the scholar Li Hongzhang negotiated peace, and the eyes of the countries were the first disaster. In December, he seized the title and conquered Xinjiang. In October of the twenty-seventh year, the Empress Dowager returned to Beijing. The second Kaifeng, the edict: "Zai Yi Zongyi and fist, the ancestor was offended, and his son Pu Jun should not be allowed to save the position, and the name of 'Big Brother' should be abolished." See "Qing Historical Manuscripts: Biography VIII".
However, the Empress Dowager Cixi did not really intend to exile Zaiyi's father and son to Xinjiang, but ordered someone to release them halfway and let the two take refuge in the palace of King Qiluo of Alxa (Pu Jun's father-in-law). A few years later, when Pu Jun heard that the wind in Beijing was gradually relaxing, he returned to Beijing with his wife to live and continued to live a good life. However, after the fall of the Qing Dynasty, especially after the last emperor Pu Yi was driven out of the Forbidden City, Pu Jun's life plummeted, his real estate and houses were sold out, and he finally fell into a situation of begging for a living.
In the early years of the Republic of China, Pu Jun took a group photo with his family
In order to beg for food, Pu Jun successively defected to his uncle Belle Zaiying and his wife's uncle Tawang Buri Jala. When King Ta was alive, he took great care of his brother-in-law Pu Jun, not only took their family to live in the palace, but also sent money to help them on a monthly basis. However, after the death of King Ta in 1931, Bian Fujin, the mother of the new prince Darizaya, began to dislike the Pu Jun family, not only greatly reduced the relief money, but also drove the family to live in the stable. Pu Jun was treated coldly, depressed, and his health deteriorated, and finally died of illness in 1942 at the age of 57.
bibliography
1. [Qing] Li Xisheng, "The Transformation of Gengzi Kingdom", Shanghai Bookstore, 1982 edition.
2. [Qing Dynasty/Republic of China] Zhao Erxun: Qing Historical Manuscript, Zhonghua Book Company, 1998 edition.
3. Jin Yi and Shen Yiling, "Records of the Palace Maids", Forbidden City Publishing House, 1992.