After the coup d'état, Cixi's disappointment and sadness towards Guangxu were overflowing. Regardless of whether Guangxu participated in her ** or not, Cixi deeply felt that she had worked hard to raise him, but he joined forces with outsiders to deal with her.
Since he was not filial, Cixi was no longer merciful. In September 1898, at the instigation of diehards such as Fortitude and Xu Tong, Cixi impulsively announced that Guangxu was seriously ill and would die soon.
The country can't be without a king for a day, so she plans to appoint Pu Jun, the son of Zaiyi, the king of Duanjun, as the new emperor.
Cixi wanted to depose Emperor Guangxu, but the local governors of the Qing Dynasty and ministers from various countries opposed it. Cixi insisted that this was a private matter of the Aisin Jueluo family, but the great powers believed that it was a state affair and that they had the right to interfere as major shareholders.
Empress Dowager Cixi originally planned to depose Emperor Guangxu, but it was suspended due to opposition from the foreign powers, and just as the incident subsided, the Boxer Rebellion in the north arose. At first, the Qing ** had different attitudes towards the Boxers, with some ** such as Yuan Shikai opposing the Boxers, while Yuxian supported them.
However, when Yuxian suggested using the Boxer Rebellion to counterbalance the powers, the Empress Dowager Cixi became interested. She issued an edict defending the Boxers and acquiesced in the rapid development of the Boxers in the Zhili region.
Cixi announced at the meeting of princes and ministers that due to the poor health of Emperor Guangxu and the lack of heirs, it was decided to appoint Pu Jun as the crown prince. She planned to hold Guangxu's abdication ceremony on January 31, a move seen as a way to use the Boxers as a counterweight to the powers.
Relations between the Empress Dowager Cixi and the Guangxu Emperor were strained, and ministers from various countries once again strongly opposed Cixi's plan to depose Guangxu. Under these circumstances, Cixi feared losing power, so she decided to use the Boxers against the foreigners.
She was influenced by the people around her and developed trust in the Boxers, but after blindly deceiving herself, she led to a large number of people** and angered the Great Powers. Under pressure from ministers from various countries, Cixi was forced to order the dissolution of the Boxers and declare the return of power to the Guangxu Emperor.
However, when she received false information, she angrily announced the reorganization of the army for war, and asked the local governor to send troops to King Qin.
She only said that she was going to fight the invaders, but did not specify the specific target, and did not declare war on the eleven countries as fictionalized in the TV series. ”
In the Qing Dynasty, the edict of declaration of war was not an official document, but in the official edict of declaration of war, there must be words such as "proclamation to the world". For example, Guangxu's edict on the declaration of war issued in the first year of the First Wu Dynasty contained these contents.
In the edict of declaration of war issued by Cixi in the year of Gengzi, she did not clearly specify the target of the declaration of war, but only notified the local governor to prepare to face the foreign devils. This decree declaring war was actually an internal notice and was not officially submitted to the ministers of various countries, so the Qing ** did not declare war on the countries, and the two sides were in a kind of situation"War without declaring"status.
It turned out that the confusion and contradictions in the edict of Gengzi's declaration of war led to the local governor receiving an inconsistent edict. During the Boxer Rebellion, the telephone pole was pulled out, resulting in the imperial court's edict could not be issued through the telegraph office, and could only be sent to Baoding with 600 li urgently, and then to various places.
This left the governors speechless, for they had received two telegrams with diametrically opposed meanings. What exactly does the imperial court mean? In this case, Li Hongzhang, the governor of Liangguang, and Liu Kun, the governor of Liangjiang.
1. Zhang Zhidong, Governor of Huguang, Xu Yingqi, Governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, Yuan Shikai, Governor of Shandong, Liu Shutang, Governor of Zhejiang, Wang Zhichun, Governor of Anhui, and Deshou, Governor of Guangdong, decided to follow the will of the imperial court to protect the embassy, judge the situation, and protect the territory.
They invited consuls from various countries in Shanghai to hold a meeting, and agreed on nine articles of the "Southeast Protection Covenant" and ten articles of the "Regulations for the Protection of Shanghai Inside and Outside the City". The governors of the nine southeastern provinces expressed their neutrality to the foreign powers and did not participate in the war.
This event was called "Southeastern Mutual Insurance".
The Empress Dowager Cixi did not pay too much attention to the early days of the Southeast Mutual Insurance, because she was also in chaos at that time, and she could not make a decision about whether to fight or make peace. In order to appease the governors, she issued an internal notice explaining the origin of the edict of declaration of war, saying that it was to calm the emotions of the people, including the Boxers, to understand the hardships of the imperial court.
However, with the death of Nie Shicheng, the governor of Zhili, and the fall of Tianjin, Cixi's attitude began to change and she began to severely punish the lords and bureaucrats. At the same time, she also began to ask the southern governor to send troops to support the capital, and her tone was very resolute.
Among the nine provinces participating in the southeast mutual insurance, Shandong was the closest to the capital, so Yuan Shikai received the most telegrams.
Yuan Shikai was unwilling to participate in the Beiyang New Army to resist the Eight-Nation Alliance, and sent 4,000 green battalions to die. Cixi asked Li Hongzhang to go to Beijing to negotiate peace with the ministers of various countries, but Li Hongzhang resolutely refused, believing that in order to negotiate peace, he must first remove the diehards from their posts.
Because Cixi did not want to remove Gangyi and others, resulting in a delay in time, the coalition army invaded Beijing, and Cixi fled to Shanxi with Guangxu.
In exile, Cixi's reputation fell to a low point, and she lost confidence in the Boxers' ability to resist them, so she issued an order to completely suppress the Boxers. She appointed Li Hongzhang by telegram as plenipotentiary to negotiate peace with the foreign powers.
After receiving the telegram, Li Hongzhang realized the seriousness of the situation and immediately left Guangzhou to begin a difficult negotiation journey. On October 11, 1900, he arrived in Beijing and reached an agreement with the Eight-Nation Alliance, known as the Treaty of Xincho.
Although some of the previous ** treaties had a certain relationship with him, the signing of the "Xinchou Treaty" had nothing to do with him.
Behind the signing of the Treaty of Xincho, Cixi escaped the responsibility of the foreign powers, mainly thanks to Li Hongzhang's arguments. At that time, ministers from various countries demanded that the Qing Dynasty severely punish the diehards who had supported the Boxers, and even demanded the execution of Cixi's cronies, including Zai Yi, Xu Tong, Gangyi, and 142 others, and also punished 142 people.
No matter how you look at it, Cixi is the number one person responsible, but Li Hongzhang insisted on taking the blame for Cixi's wrong decision and helped her avoid accountability. Therefore, Cixi was grateful to Li Hongzhang and did not pursue his acts of resistance during the war.
In addition, Cixi did not hold the other governors accountable. On the one hand, the mutual protection of the southeast and the south preserved the nine southern provinces from the impact of the war, which in Cixi's view, the governors made a great contribution.
On the other hand, Cixi was only a bare-bones commander at this time, and even if she wanted to be held accountable, she was powerless to pursue it. In general, Cixi was able to escape accountability, partly because of Li Hongzhang's arguments, and partly because she recognized the importance of the southern governor.
After the war, Cixi's first task was to raise money for reparations, and the preservation of the south was crucial to her rule. As a result, Cixi could only rely on local governors, and Yuan Shikai and Song Qing, participants in the Southeastern Mutual Insurance, became her important allies.
Cixi's relationship with the governors involved in the mutual protection of the southeast is intertwined. Li Hongzhang is the leader of the Huai army, Liu Kunyi is the boss of the Hunan army, Zhang Zhidong has a good relationship with the Hunan and Huai factions, Yuan Shikai is Li Hongzhang's protégé, and Xu Yingqi's clan uncle Xu Xiangguang once suppressed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom with the Hunan army and maintained good relations with the Hunan and Huai factions.
These governors supported each other in private, and Cixi did not dare to touch any of them lightly, as this could cause a chain reaction with uncontrollable consequences.
For example, Jang Zhidong once proposed a rebellion. In late June 1900, after receiving the edict declaring war, Zhang Zhidong immediately considered promoting Li Hongzhang as the greatest, if Beijing was not guaranteed and Cixi died, he would let Li Hongzhang become China's first-class and preside over the overall situation in the southeast.
Therefore, after the Gengzi national disaster, Cixi's attitude towards the nine southeastern provinces was "stability" and first stabilized the situation. Accountability is unrealistic and unnecessary. However, the fact that Cixi did not immediately pursue responsibility does not mean that she does not want to be held accountable.
After all, the Southeastern Mutual Protection was the first time that the Xinjiang ministers openly united against the imperial court after the rebellion of the three feudatories. If there are no checks and balances, the local government will remain semi-independent for a long time, and the Qing Dynasty will be completed sooner or later.
Therefore, in January 1902, after Cixi returned to Beijing, she began to dismantle the Southeast Mutual Insurance. At that time, Li Hongzhang and Liu Kunyi died one after another, and Rong Lu, who supported the Westernization faction, also died.
With the death of the bigwigs, Cixi promoted a group of young Eight Banner nobles to help them enter the political arena and fill the vacancies. One of the best was Murcha Tieliang, who was born in Manchuria with a white flag.
In 1903, Xu Yingqi and Deshou died of illness one after another, and Wang Zhichun was transferred to Guangxi as governor. At that time, most of the governors in the south had already changed, and when the time was ripe, Cixi sent Tieliang to the south twice, in the name of checking the finances of the provinces and rectifying the arsenals, on the one hand, disbanding or adopting the local armed forces in the south, and on the other hand, they carried out a large-scale raid on the small coffers of the Hunan and Huai departments.
For example, the Jiangnan Manufacturing Bureau, which is the small treasury of the Huai Army, was searched by Tieliang for 800,000 taels of silver. After cleaning up the head of the southern army, Tie Liang was used as a pawn by Cixi again, and secretly competed with Yuan Shikai, the representative of the head of the northern army, everywhere.
In 1906, Yuan Shikai compiled the Beiyang No.
The third, fifth, and sixth towns were pocketed by Tieliang. Only the first section is kept.
2. Command of the four towns. Tie Liang jumped out from time to time to sing the opposite, which made Yuan Shikai angry, so he joined Prince Qing Yixuan to participate in Tie Liang's book, saying "If you don't go to Tie, the new deal will be obstructed."
However, Tie Liang was originally a pawn arranged by Cixi, how could Cixi cut off her arm? As a result, Yuan Shikai was self-defeating, and was secretly demoted by Cixi Mingsheng, and was reappointed as the Minister of Military Aircraft and the Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and lost his military power.
In 1907, Yuan Shikai and Zhang Zhidong were transferred to the Military Aircraft Department together, and the situation of mutual protection in the southeast seven years ago disappeared under the collapse of Cixi. However, Cixi still did not save the Qing Dynasty after all.
On November 15, 1908, Cixi died of illness in the Yiluan Hall in Beijing. When he was dying, because he couldn't bear his death, Guangxu was reinstated, liquidated himself, and Cixi "took away" Guangxu.
After Cixi's death, without her careful planning, the young generation of the Eight Banners seemed powerless in the complex politics. After another three years, the Qing Dynasty announced the end of its life, ending its performance on the stage of history.
As the only remaining governor of the Southeast Mutual Insurance, Yuan Shikai stood out in this contest and became the final winner.