In the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), after the British and French allied forces captured Beijing, they occupied Yuanmingyuan. China's defenders were outnumbered, and Wenfeng, the chief minister of Yuanmingyuan, committed suicide by throwing himself into Fuhai. Chang Ai, who lived in the garden, was scared to death. With the support of British Prime Minister Pa Max Don, British leader Elgin ordered the burning of Yuanmingyuan.

3,500 British and French troops rushed into Yuanmingyuan and set fire to it. The fire didn't go out for three days. Yuanmingyuan and its nearby Qingyi Garden, Jingming Garden, Jingyi Garden, Anyou Palace, Changchun Garden and Haidian Town were all burned into ruins. The fire burned for three days and nights, making this world-famous garden in ruins and becoming a rare atrocity in the history of world civilization.

According to rough statistics, the number of cultural relics robbed in Yuanmingyuan is about 6.5438+0.5 million, ranging from bronze ritual vessels in the pre-Qin period in China to famous paintings and calligraphy in the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties and all kinds of rare treasures. Only the architectural site is left, and the Yuanmingyuan Ruins Park has been established.

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In the eyes of British and French invaders, burning Yuanmingyuan can give the Qing government a great shock and force it to surrender as soon as possible.

The Yuanmingyuan in the Qing Dynasty, as the emperor's resting place, has a special political status: it is equivalent to the second palace of the Qing emperor and is the political center where the rulers of the Qing Dynasty often live and give orders to the whole country. From Yongzheng, Qianlong and Jiaqing to Daoguang and Xianfeng emperors, they lived and lived in Yuanmingyuan for most of the year, handled government affairs, summoned ministers and received foreign envoys and leaders of ethnic minorities in the park.

In a sense, the influence and status of Yuanmingyuan in the eyes of the Qing emperor is no less than that of the Forbidden City. The British know this very well. Parkes metaphorically said that Yuanmingyuan is to China people, "just as Buckingham Palace is to us" (Jiang Meng quoted from the Second Opium War, page 2 19); Er Jin knows more clearly that "Yuanmingyuan is the favorite palace of the Qing emperors" (Dai Yi's Modern History of China, Volume I, page 338). It is precisely because of this that the invaders knew that burning Yuanmingyuan was enough to effectively attack and shake the Qing government.

Baidu encyclopedia-burning Yuanmingyuan