Without any resistance, the whole capital bypassed Andingmen and Deshengmen in Beijing, occupied Haidian area and invaded Yuanmingyuan. Yuanmingyuan, located near Haidian in the western suburbs of Beijing, was built in the Ming Dynasty. Later, it was recruited by emperors such as Qianlong and Yongzheng in the Qing Dynasty. It consumed countless gold and silver and was expanded and renovated. It has been carefully managed for 150 years and has become the most beautiful and magnificent royal garden in the world.
The invading army who broke into the garden did not find the emperor, but found countless precious cultural relics and gold and silver jewelry. At the sight of the splendid treasure of 5,000 years, the invaders immediately became red-eyed. They rushed forward, packed them in bags and stuffed them around their waists. When they can't hold it, they take the silks, satins and embroideries as a burden and pack the cultural relics and jewels as much as possible. There are too many things to pack. When you see gold, you have to throw away silver. When you see jewelry, you have to throw away gold. Valuable porcelain and enamel bottles are too big to move and simply broken; Nanmu utensils, bronzes and ivory carvings were also vandalized with gun butts.
Every French soldier snatched precious items worth about 30,000 to 40,000 francs from Yuanmingyuan. A French corps commander plundered treasures and diamonds worth more than 800,000 francs. At that time, the French army barracks were filled with all kinds of clocks, colorful silks and satins and countless precious cultural relics worth 30 million francs. The forty scenes of Yuanmingyuan painted by Shen Yuan and Tang Dai were also taken away by them and collected in the National Library of Paris, France.
During this period, Grant, the head of the British invading army, publicly ordered that officers be allowed to plunder Yuanmingyuan in batches; A few days later, he ordered the whole army to "plunder freely". In the past few days, all movable gold, silver, jewels and precious cultural relics in the garden have been robbed. Helisz, a second-class British officer, grabbed gold worth 22,000 pounds, and the 1 foot-high golden tree and the 7-foot-high golden pagoda were not among the stolen goods. Gu Kaizhi, a great painter of the Jin Dynasty, also fell into the enemy's hands and is still hidden in the British Museum in London.
After the cruel plunder and destruction of Yuanmingyuan, in order to cover up the crime and let the Qing government see their power, the British plenipotentiary Erkin ordered the Yuanmingyuan to be burned.
10, 18, 19 these days, three or four thousand British cavalry went out together and set fire to Yuanmingyuan. In an instant, smoke billowed and flames soared. Black smoke forms a cloud and flows southeast for more than 100 miles in the sky. There is no light in the sun and the moon, so it is difficult to distinguish the sun.
The evil invading army then robbed Changchun Garden and Haidian Town, looted yanshou temple (now Summer Palace), Jingming Garden (now Yuquan Mountain) 16 Scene, Jingyi Garden (Xiangshan) 28 Scene and the 8 1 Bronze Hall attached to Yuanmingyuan, and then set them on fire.
The world's most beautiful and magnificent royal gardens, the largest collection museum, world-class wonders and wonders, and the painstaking efforts of generations of China people have been reduced to ashes and no longer exist with the smoke drifting away.