Speaking of the last empress, people often think of Puyi's empress Wanrong, but she married the last emperor Puyi in 1922, when it was already the eleventh year of the Republic of China, and the Qing Dynasty had long since perished. Therefore, she is not the last empress of the Qing Dynasty.
The last empress of the Qing Dynasty was the niece of the famous Empress Dowager Cixi, the empress of the Guangxu Emperor,also known as Empress Longyu, who was also the last empress dowager of the Qing Dynasty.
Image of Empress Takahiro
According to legend, when Nurhaci attacked Yehebu in the late Ming Dynasty, the leader of Yehebu, Buyangu, swore to heaven before his death: "Even if there is only one woman left in Yehenara, I will destroy the Jurchens of Jianzhou." It was called "The Curse of Yehenara". Therefore, the folk have always been rumored to have yehenara and ai xinjueluo for generations, and the concubines in the Qing court palace also have the ancestral system of not choosing Yehe.
But this is a legend, because the Queen Concubine of the Yehenara clan later appeared in the Qing Palace, and the favored concubine of the Qianlong Emperor, Concubine Shu, was the Yehenara clan. There are also many examples of marriages between the Yehenara clan and the Aisin Kyaw Lo clan.
But it was indeed the Yehenara clan that ended the rule of the Qing Dynasty, that is, the Empress Longyu to be talked about today.
Photo of Empress Dowager Longyu
Empress Dowager Longyu of the Yehenara clan, a Manchurian yellow flag bearer, named Jingfen, nicknamed Xizi. His father was Empress Dowager Cixi's younger brother, the vice-governor Yehenara Guixiang, and his aunt was Empress Dowager Cixi and Yehenara Wanzhen (the biological mother of the Guangxu Emperor).
She was born in the seventh year of Tongzhi (1868), three years older than Guangxu, and was Guangxu's cousin. In the fourteenth year of Guangxu (1888), he was hand-picked by Empress Dowager Cixi to marry Guangxu. The following year, the two were married, and it is said that one late winter night before the wedding, a fire broke out in the Forbidden City, burning the Taihe Gate in front of the Taihe Temple. In order to ensure that the wedding was held as scheduled, Empress Dowager Cixi actually ordered the craftsmen to rush to work day and night, and built a tent at the fire site that could fake the real Taihe Gate, and those who walked in the inner court for a long time were suddenly difficult to distinguish between true and false.
On the 27th day of the first month of the fifteenth year of Guangxu (February 26, 1889), the Guangxu Emperor and Longyu were officially married, and the empress was welcomed into the palace by The Taihe Gate. At the same time, the two sisters Jin and Zhen were also welcomed into the harem by the Shenwu Gate and were named Jin Concubine and Zhen Concubine, who were also the only two concubines in the guangxu emperor's life. In this year, Empress Yehenara was 21 years old, Concubine Jin was 15 years old, Concubine Zhen was 13 years old, and The Guangxu Emperor was 18 years old.
Three women of the Guangxu Emperor
After entering the palace, Empress Yehenara did not live in Kunning Palace, and since the death of the second empress of Kangxi, Niu Hulu, successive empresses did not live in Kunning Palace again, but chose to live in a palace in the East and West Six Palaces. LongYu lived in zhong pu palace, one of the six eastern palaces. Concubine Jin lived in the Yanxi Palace, and Concubine Zhen lived in the Jingren Palace.
Empress Yehenara was not outstanding in appearance, and her personality was soft and cowardly, and she was also an empress forced by Empress Dowager Cixi to marry back, so the Guangxu Emperor disliked her very much, and he preferred the young and lively Concubine Zhen.
It was recorded in the "National News" that after Guangxu's great marriage, he was not very close to the empress, but was indifferent to Concubine Jin. However, Princess Zhen was well-behaved and pleasing to others, gongHanmo, good at chess, and served the emperor around the day, eating and drinking with the emperor, and Emperor Dezong was particularly fond of her.
Guangxu and Zhenfei
On the first day of the first lunar month in the twentieth year of Guangxu (1894), Empress Dowager Cixi celebrated her sixtieth birthday, and Concubine Jin was enthroned as Concubine Jin, and Concubine Zhen was enthroned as Concubine Zhen. In October of this year, Guangxu used pearls and jadeite from stocks to make a pearl cheongsam for Zhenfei, which was dazzling in the sun. Unfortunately, she was bumped into by Empress Dowager Cixi, who was furious and demoted Zhenfei and her sister Concubine Jin to nobility together with her admiration for glitz and frothiness and disrespect for family law. According to the qing palace archives, the day before she was demoted to a nobleman, Princess Zhen was also subjected to a "scepter", that is, stripped of her clothes and beaten. The imperial concubine was punished in this way, which was extremely rare in the Qing Dynasty.
At the insistence of the Guangxu Emperor, the following year, the titles of Zhenfei and Jinfei were restored.
Empress Yehenara was not liked by Emperor Guangxu, nor did she please Empress Dowager Cixi in the palace, nor did she have much prestige when she met with princesses of the various orders on weekdays, and she and Princess Zhen, who was favored by Guangxu, were even more contradictory.
Guangxu and Longyu
In the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (1898), the Pengshu Reform Law failed, the Guangxu Emperor was imprisoned in Yingtai, and Zhenfei was also implicated, and was once again given a cloaked staff and claustrophobic in the Beisan Shou Pharmacy behind the Zhong Pu Palace, which is said to be the place where the Ming Dynasty nurses lived for the elderly. Princess Jane was subjected to all sorts of inhuman abuse here, when she was only 22 years old.
In early August of the twenty-sixth year of Guangxu (1900), the Eight-Nation Alliance attacked Beijing, and Empress Dowager Cixi fled in a panic with the Guangxu Emperor and Empress Yehenara. Before fleeing, the eunuch Cui Yugui summoned zhenfei who was in seclusion and asked zhenfei to commit suicide, but zhenfei did not comply, so Cixi ordered the eunuchs to push her into the well located in the Zhenshun Gate behind Ningshou Palace and drown. At that time, Zhenfei was only 24 years old.
The 29-year-old Guangxu Emperor looked at all this and was heartbroken, but he couldn't help it. Maybe the day the change failed, he was already dead. The 32-year-old Queen Yehenara watched the young Concubine Zhen being forced to jump into the well, and did not know how to feel. Perhaps it is more sad to get what you want.
The now restored Zhenfei Well
The following year, in the spring of 1901, the Qing court made peace with the Eight-Nation Alliance, and Cixi and Guangxu returned to the Forbidden City. Cixi ordered that the bones of Concubine Zhen be salvaged out, buried in a coffin, and buried in the palace maid cemetery south of the Enjizhuang Eunuch Cemetery outside Fucheng Gate. In the name of "Martyrdom of Chastity", he covered the ears of the world and posthumously crowned Zhenfei as a precious concubine.
On October 21, the twenty-fourth year of Guangxu (1908), the Guangxu Emperor died, completing his life of repression and humiliation, at the age of 38. At this time, Empress Yehenara was 41 years old, and she and Guangxu had been married for twenty years, but there was no love between husband and wife.
Portrait of the Guangxu Emperor
Empress Dowager Cixi left Prince Zaifeng (Guangxu's half-brother) 3-year-old son Puyi as the new emperor, her father Zaifeng as the regent, and Empress Dowager Cixi as empress dowager. The title of "Xiaoqin Cixi Duanyou Kangyi Zhaoyu Zhuang Chengshou Gongqin Presents Chongxi with Tianxing Shengxian Empress", referred to as "Empress Xiaoqinxian", with a total of 22 characters, is the most empress of the Qing Dynasty and China.
After Puyi ascended the throne, the era name was proclaimed, and Empress Yehenara was honored as the empress dowager, known as "Empress Dowager Qimu", with the upper emblem title "Longyu", and the history was called Longyu Empress. Because Puyi was only three years old, he was raised by the empress. At the same time, Empress Longyu also practiced curtain-raising and obedience, and the regent Zaifeng co-presided over the stormy Qing Dynasty.
Prince Zaifeng
After Xuantong succeeded to the throne, Empress Dowager Longyu made Concubine Jin a "Concubine of Emperor Kaojin" and posthumously honored the dead Concubine Zhen as Emperor Keshun's Concubine. Perhaps at this time, she has no resentment towards the Zhenfei sisters, only endless sympathy and lamentation.
Three years after the declaration of reunification (October 1911), the Xinhai Revolution broke out. On December 6, Empress Dowager Zaifeng resigned as regent of the Jianguo State, and Empress Dowager Longyu became the de facto supreme ruler and ultimate responsible person of the Qing Dynasty. Seeing that the Qing Dynasty had exhausted its strength and that democracy and republicanism were the trend of the times, on February 12, 1912, Empress Longyu promulgated the Edict of abdication of the Qing Emperor, personally ending the 276-year rule of the Qing Dynasty and the more than two thousand years of feudal dynasty rule in China.
Two years later, in the second year of the Republic of China (February 22, 1913), Empress Longyu died of illness at Changchun Palace, one of the Six Palaces in the West, at the age of 46, with the title of Empress Xiaodingjing. The government of the Republic of China buried him with the Guangxu Emperor in the form of a national funeral (one of the Qingxi Tombs in Yi County, Hebei).
In the fourth year of the Republic of China (1915), Concubine Jin (then Emperor Kao Jin) moved Zhenfei to the Garden of Guangxu Chongling concubines, and arranged a small spiritual hall for her in the gatehouse on the north side of Zhenfei's well to enshrine Zhenfei's tablets, and hung a plaque on the spiritual hall with the inscription "Jingwei Tongcheng" to commemorate her sister Zhenfei's true feelings for the Guangxu Emperor.
On September 22, 1924 (October 20, 1924), Princess Jin died of illness in the Yonghe Palace at the age of 51, and was buried as a noble concubine of the Duankang Emperor in the Chongling Concubine Garden, and finally added "Wen Jing".
Chongling Monument