Chapter 14 Chapter Thirteen: The Beginning and End of the Opium War

In the late Qing Dynasty, China's autocratic imperial power system had fallen into a period of decline. This decadent social system seriously hindered the progress of history.At this time, the Western world grew rapidly due to the emergence of new social productive forces and social systems.The rapid economic development made them seek foreign expansion, and quickly set their sights on China under the rule of the Qing Dynasty. At first, due to the Qing government's policy of "closing the country to the outside world" that restricted the development of Sino-foreign trade, it was difficult for British industrial products to be dumped in China, and there was almost no market.However, China's tea, silk and other local products are favored abroad, and the export volume is increasing year by year.In the Sino-British trade, China has long been in a favorable position of exporting more than importing, and silver flows inward. This development trend annoys the Western powers.When general commodities could not open the market in China, British businessmen soon found a new commodity, which was opium.

Opium, commonly known as marijuana, is a kind of anesthetic made from the juice of poppy, and it is a drug for smoking.Opium not only has high profits that are many times higher than the cost, but also has the consequences of long-term smoking and addiction. It can make a large number of Chinese people dependent on opium, which undoubtedly opens up a huge market for themselves, and the profits will continue to roll in for a long time come.So British businessmen began to smuggle large quantities of opium into China.The United States, Russia and other Western powers saw it, and they also joined in this profitable "trade".

The smuggling of opium into China brought serious disasters to Chinese society, the Qing government and the general public. The physical and mental health of the Chinese people was seriously damaged, and social productivity declined sharply.Once opium arrived in China, it was first accepted by many civil and military officials of the Qing Dynasty. Due to their addiction to opium, these officials no longer had the heart to deal with government and military affairs. As a result, the government of officials became darker and more corrupt, and the combat effectiveness of the army was once weakened.In order to meet the consumption of opium, the officials desperately extorted money from the people, and the life of the people became even more impoverished.At the same time, due to the massive import of opium, a large amount of domestic silver began to flow out.The influx of opium has a long history. During the Yongzheng period, 200 boxes of opium were smuggled every year. During the Qianlong period, the number increased to 1,000 boxes. During the Jiaqing period, the number increased to 4,000 boxes. Thirty million taels, which made the Qing government's already tight finances even more difficult.

The evil opium trade has caused such a serious disaster to China, it has intensified the contradictions between the Chinese people and foreign invaders, and the voice for banning smoking has become louder and louder. As for opium drugs, as early as the Yongzheng period, Yongzheng began to ban smoking, Qianlong also issued a ban on smoking, and Jiaqing also repeatedly ordered smoking bans, but all had little effect and intensified.By the time of Daoguang, opium had been rampant, and the demand for a smoking ban had become the consensus of the whole country.Emperor Daoguang also realized the seriousness of the problem. If opium is not controlled, the people will not be able to live in peace, and the regime of the ruling class will be in danger of being overthrown.At this critical juncture, Emperor Daoguang appointed Lin Zexu as imperial envoy to Guangdong, where opium smuggling was most rampant, to ban smoking.

Lin Zexu, a native of Houguan County, Fujian Province, was born in a lower-class intellectual family.It is said that when Lin Zexu was born, the new governor of Fujian, Xu Sizeng, happened to pass by his house in a sedan chair surrounded by guards. Lin Zexu's father thought it was a good omen, so he named his son Zexu. I hope that when he grows up, he can study and become a high-ranking official like Xu Sizeng, honoring his ancestors. Lin Zexu entered a private school at the age of four and began to study at the age of seven. He was intelligent and precocious. , river governor, governor, governor and imperial envoy and other official positions.

In March 1839, after Lin Zexu arrived in Guangzhou, he strictly investigated the tobacco dealers, rectified the Navy, punished unjust officials, and told foreign businessmen to surrender opium.At that time, the British businessmen ignored the sovereignty of the Chinese government, and the local people in Guangdong were outraged. Many people came to the British embassy and demanded that Minister Elliott hand over the big opium dealer who fled here. Stones and tiles became the weapons of the Chinese people. With the support of the people, the anti-smoking campaign led by Lin Zexu finally forced the British and American tobacco merchants to hand over more than 1.1 million kilograms of opium. From June 3rd to 25th, Humen Beach lit a The fire was raging, and all opium was destroyed in public. This is the "Humen destruction of opium" that shocked the world.It shows that our national dignity and righteousness are sacred and inviolable.

After the "Humen destruction of opium", Lin Zexu ordered the resumption of Sino-British trade, but resolutely prohibited the import of opium.He implemented the policy of "those who follow the law come and those who break the law go" for foreign merchants. Merchant ships from any country are allowed to import as long as they do not carry opium. Elliot, on the other hand, took advantage of various opportunities to expand the situation.He ordered that all British merchant ships are not allowed to import and do business, and asked the British government to send troops to prepare for a forceful solution. In July 1839, a British sailor murdered and injured a person in Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon. Villager Lin Weixi was seriously injured and died.Lin Zexu demanded that the British side hand over the murderer, but Elliot unreasonably refused. In September, he led the British ships into Kowloon and took the opportunity to provoke a war. They bombarded the Kowloon Pass.In October, Elliot led a British ship into the mouth of the Pearl River, blocked British merchant ships in the Chuanbi Ocean, and fought with the Chinese navy. This is the Battle of Chuanbi.Since then, the British army invaded the Chinese army's garrison six times within ten days, all of which were repelled.

In December 1839, Emperor Daoguang ordered to stop the Sino-British trade after receiving the report of the Battle of Piercing the Nose. In January 1840, Lin Zexu ordered to cut off the Sino-British trade. However, the British bourgeoisie had long planned to provoke a war of aggression, and the issue of smoking ban became the fuse of their war.As early as 1832, the British ship "Amster" came to China to measure the shipping lanes of coastal bays, investigate the conditions of coastal ports, and draw a map.At the same time, spy on China's military, politics and economy. In 1835, Hu Xiami, the captain of the ship, proposed to the British government an armed invasion of China and provided a specific combat plan.

As soon as the Humen smoking incident spread to the UK, the British cabinet held a meeting on October 1, 1839, and made a decision to "send a fleet to China". In February 1840, the British government appointed Admiral George Elliot, who had served as commander-in-chief of the Cape of Good Hope Fleet, and Charles Elliot, the commercial supervisor, as the full and deputy plenipotentiaries, and Yilu was the commander-in-chief of the British invasion of China.In April, the British Parliament officially passed a resolution to launch a war of aggression against China. In June, an expeditionary fleet composed of 48 ships, 540 cannons and 4,000 soldiers invaded the sea of ​​Guangdong, China from India.A "war against China aimed at maintaining the opium trade" provoked by the British bourgeoisie officially broke out.

The war started in late June, 1840 and ended in late August, 1842, and is known as the "First Opium War" in history.The war went through three phases: The first stage lasted seven months from the blockade of the Pearl River Estuary by the British army in late June 1840 to January 1841 when Elliot issued the Treaty of Piercing the Nose.The process is: After the British army reached the Chinese sea, they blocked Guangzhou. Under the leadership of Lin Zexu, the soldiers and civilians in Guangzhou took strict precautions against the invading British army.In July, the British army invaded Xiamen, Fujian. Deng Tingzhen, the new governor of Fujian and Zhejiang, was prepared, but the British army failed.The British ships continued to sail north, invaded Zhejiang, and captured Dinghai, which was weakly defended.Then some of the warships went north and arrived at Baihekou, Tianjin in August. Here, Yilu submitted a note from the British government to the Qing court. In the note, the British asked for compensation, land cession, and free trade. "Continuous battle".

The fall of Dinghai shocked the Qing court greatly. Emperor Daoguang was very panicked and decided to implement a win-win policy against the British army, hoping for peace talks, and sent Qishan, governor of Zhili, to Baihekou, Tianjin to negotiate with the British army.Qishan bowed his knees to seek peace during the negotiations. He said: Lin Zexu and others "acted too hastily" in banning opium in Guangdong. the result of. After receiving Qishan's assurance, the British invaders turned back to the south in mid-September.On September 17, Emperor Daoguang appointed Qi Shan, who had "done meritorious service in repelling the enemy", as his imperial envoy to Guangdong to continue the Sino-British negotiations.At the same time, Lin Zexu and Deng Tingzhen were dismissed and investigated for "poor management".As a result, the resistance faction was hit hard, and the compromise faction began to gain the upper hand. After Qishan arrived in Guangzhou, he agreed to all the unreasonable demands made by Elliot, but he dared not make decisions about the ceding of Hong Kong, saying that he would "represent the holy grace on his behalf." In January 1841, the British army launched a sudden attack and occupied the Dashajiao Fort by force. The fort guard Chen Liansheng and others resisted tenaciously.In the war, Chen Liansheng died for the country.However, Qishan ordered the retreat of the guards of the forts.On January 20, Elliot unilaterally announced the "Puanbi Grass Treaty", which included the Qing government's cession of Hong Kong and compensation of 6 million taels of cigarette prices.On January 26, the British army forcibly occupied Hong Kong. The second stage, which lasted four months from the declaration of war by the Qing government in January 1841 to the conclusion of the "Guangzhou Peace Treaty" in May, was as follows: On January 27, the news of the fall of the Dashajiao Fort reached Beijing. Emperor Daoguang was very annoyed, feeling that Dinghai had not yet been handed over, and the British army was provoking again in Guangdong, so he immediately issued an edict to declare war on Britain.He dismissed Qishan and questioned him, appointed Yishan as General Jingni, Hubu Shangshu Longwen, and Governor of Hunan Province Yang Fang as counselors, and mobilized 17,000 troops to Guangdong to resume the war. After hearing the news of the Qing government's deployment of troops, Elliot pre-emptively launched an attack on the Humen Fortress in late February. The 62-year-old navy admiral Guan Tianpei went to the fortress himself and led his troops to resist bravely.In the battle, he was wounded in many places, his armor was stained with blood, but he still stood firm and vowed not to retreat.At this time, Qi Shan, who was still in charge of the army on the front line in Guangdong, refused to send reinforcements.Guan Tianpei died heroically along with hundreds of defenders due to his isolation and lack of ammunition and food. In April, Yishan and other talents led the army to Guangzhou.In late May, a night attack on the British ship was rashly launched without real preparation, and the result was defeated and fled back to Guangzhou.The British army took the opportunity to counterattack, barely encountered any resistance, and easily occupied the mud city on the outskirts of the city, the four forts, surrounded the city of Guangzhou, and bombarded the city.So Yishan and others hoisted the white flag high, and sent Yu Baochun, the prefect of Guangzhou, out of the city to sue the British army for peace. On May 27, Yishan signed the humiliating "Guangzhou Peace Treaty" with the British army.The peace treaty stipulated that the Qing army would withdraw from Guangzhou within six days, pay six million taels of "redemption fee" within seven days, and compensate the loss of 300,000 taels of the British business house. The third stage lasted twelve months, from January 1841 when the British army attacked Xiamen again to August 1842 when the Treaty of Nanjing was signed. In April 1841, the British government was very dissatisfied with the content of the "Putting the Nasal Grass Treaty" issued by Elliot. They believed that the rights and interests obtained in this treaty were too small, so they decided to withdraw Elliot and reassign Web Ding, who had served in India. Check as Minister Plenipotentiary. In late August, Web Dingcha led an army to invade Xiamen, and Jiang Jiyun, the commander-in-chief, led troops to defend against the enemy, fought hard and died, and Xiamen fell.In September, the British army invaded Dinghai again. General soldiers Ge Yunfei, Wang Xipeng, Zheng Guohong and others led their troops to resist for six days and nights, severely injuring the British army.On October 1, Dinghai fell again, and three general soldiers were killed one after another.In mid-October, the British army attacked Zhenhai.Yu Qian, the governor in charge of Zhenhai's defense, led the army to resist, but Yu Buyun, the admiral of Zhejiang, escaped. Zhenhai fell, and Yu Qian threw himself into the water.Subsequently, the British army captured Ningbo again. The fall of the three cities in eastern Zhejiang greatly shocked the imperial court.In order to keep the area of ​​wealth in the south of the Yangtze River, Emperor Daoguang ordered to fight again.On October 18, he appointed Yijing as General Yangwei, and mobilized 20,000 troops from many provinces to rush to the front line of Zhejiang. Yijing traveled all the way to Shaoxing in February 1842.Later, like Yishan, without making serious preparations for the war, the troops divided into three groups and attacked the three cities in eastern Zhejiang, but they were defeated.Yijing and others fled back to Hangzhou, and never dared to fight again. Therefore, Emperor Daoguang turned from sudden war and peace to seeking peace with all his heart, ordered the coastal provinces not to allow troops to enter, and appointed General Qiying of Shengjing as the imperial envoy to the front line of Zhejiang to handle peace talks and armistice matters.However, the British invading army rejected the request for peace and began to invade the Yangtze River Basin on a large scale.In May, the British army captured Zhachong, an important coastal defense town.In June, British ships attacked the Wusongkou Fortress. Admiral Chen Huacheng, who was nearly 70 years old, led 5,000 defenders to resist tenaciously.Subsequently, Shanghai and Baoshan fell one after another.The British ships went back to the west of the Yangtze River and captured Zhenjiang in July.In early August, British troops invaded the Xiaguan River in Nanjing.Qiying arrived in Nanjing and begged for surrender to the invaders.In his report to Emperor Daoguang, he said: "The barbarian boats are strong and fierce. I heard the rumors at the beginning. Now that I have personally boarded the boat and witnessed the cannons, I know that it cannot be subdued by troops." So Qiying accepted all the terms proposed by Web Dingcha and dared not raise any objections.On August 29, the "Nanjing Treaty" was signed with the British army, which humiliated the country, ceded land, paid compensation, lost sovereignty, and gave privileges to the British invaders.This was the first unequal treaty in modern Chinese history, and it was an important sign that China had become a semi-colony. More than ten years after the first Opium War, the Western powers discovered the nature of the Qing Dynasty's weakness and incompetence, so they pressed harder and harder to expand their interests in China.Although the Qing government made repeated compromises and concessions, it could not satisfy the insatiable appetite of the invaders at all.In order to expand the rights and interests gained in the Opium War and further open the door to China, Britain and France prepared to launch another war of aggression against China after careful planning.In order to create an excuse for war, Britain, France, and the United States successively proposed to the Qing government to "amend the treaty" in 1854 and 1856, but they were all rejected by the Qing government. In February 1856, French missionary Marai Tsang came to Xilin County, Guangxi Province to carry out illegal activities in the name of preaching. He was executed by the local government because of his many evils and great public outrage.In October of the same year, the Chinese smuggling ship "Arrow" was hunted by the Guangdong navy for harboring pirates. The British acting consul in Guangzhou intervened, falsely claiming that the ship was a British ship and falsely accusing the Chinese navy of insulting the British flag.In this way, the French and British governments blatantly used the "Ma Shenfu" incident and the "Yarrow" incident as excuses to form an Anglo-French coalition force and brazenly launched a new war of aggression against China.Because this war was waged under the guise of comprehensively revising the treaty signed by the Opium War, it was called the Second Opium War in history. The war began in October 1856, when the British army used Hong Kong as a base and launched a frantic and violent attack on forts around Guangzhou.In December, France sent troops to China to cooperate with the British army to fight against the Chinese defenders. Seeing this, the United States and Russia also sent troops to act as accomplices and openly supported the aggression of Britain and France. It didn't take long for these foreign aggressors to occupy Guangzhou. In April 1858, Britain, France, the United States, and Russia made more progress and became more unscrupulous. They sent a large number of warships to drive straight in, and went north along the coast to Dagukou. ".Under the intimidation of the invaders, the Qing government once again bowed its knees and surrendered, and was forced to sign the "Tianjin Treaty" with the United States, Russia, Britain, and France in June, and once again ceded land and paid compensation in exchange for a temporary peace. In June 1859, the aggressors took advantage of the treaty exchange to further expand their war of aggression against China. In August 1860, the mighty British and French warships, led by the Russians, occupied Beitang, then occupied Tianjin, and approached Beijing.The whole Qing court panicked and scrambled for their lives.On September 22, Emperor Xianfeng led his concubines and ministers to flee to Chengde Mountain Resort and ordered Prince Gong Yixin to seek peace from the invaders.In October, the British and French allied forces took control of Beijing and wantonly burned, killed, raped and looted in the Beijing-Tianjin area.The Old Summer Palace, known as the "Garden of Ten Thousand Gardens", was completely looted by the invaders and then set on fire.In late October, under the coercion of the British and French allied forces and the intimidation of Tsarist Russia, the Qing government had to exchange the "Tianjin Treaty" with Britain and France.Then signed the "Beijing Treaty" with Britain, France, and Russia, and the Second Opium War ended. In the second Opium War, Tsarist Russia took advantage of the fire to coerce the Qing government to sign the "Sino-Russian Aigun Treaty", "Beijing Treaty", and "Sino-Russian Exploration and Division of the Northwest Boundary".Just a few years later, Tsarist Russia easily plundered a large area of ​​1.5 million square kilometers from China, and the United States also took the opportunity to plunder the same aggressive privileges as Britain and France. The Second Opium War further deepened the semi-colonialization of Chinese society politically, economically and culturally. There was a process of understanding the reasons for the failure of the Opium War. At first, some people believed that the responsibility lay with the Strict Ban faction and the main combat faction. Lin Zexu was their representative. Emperor Daoguang dismissed Lin Zexu as an official and exiled him to Yili, Xinjiang. Later, some people believed that the responsibility lay with the Relaxation Sect and the Zhuhe Sect, whose representatives were Mu Zhang'a, Qi Shan and others.It should be said that the understanding of the latter is a step further than the former, but there is still room for in-depth exploration. During the Opium War, the western powers were indeed more advanced and were in a period of rising capitalism, but the Qing government’s economic backwardness, autocratic monarchy, corrupt officials, and backward military equipment were the main reasons.But things still have their particularities. It is necessary to conduct a specific historical analysis of specific historical events. From the two aspects of strategy and tactics of the Opium War, it was possible for the Qing Dynasty to win, rather than a weak country that would inevitably fail. Qing Daoguang had a population of 400 million, and it seemed to be a big country in the East. At that time, countries such as Britain and France were not too powerful to resist.In terms of military affairs, Britain, France and other countries crossed oceans and drove long distances to attack, using movement against static, labor against leisure, and there were few soldiers.The weapons used by the British and French armies at that time, for example, although the navy was equipped with steam engines, many of them were sailboats. Although the army used breech-loading muskets and artillery, which were slightly more advanced than the Qing army, the gap was not as big as it was later.On the contrary, the Qing Dynasty fought on the homeland defense, using static to move, leisure to work, and there were many soldiers.From the point of view of the people, Britain and France are the aggressors, and the Qing Dynasty is the anti-aggression party, and they have the support of the people. Moreover, there are many examples in history of the weak overcoming the strong and the few overcoming the many.The ancestors of Emperor Daoguang and Emperor Xianfeng fought the battle of Sarhu and Songjin in those years, and the Eight Banners Army defeated the strong with the weak and the many with the few. There are similar examples abroad.In the 20th year of Guangxu (1849), Italy looked for an excuse to invade Ethiopia in Africa. King Menelik II of Ethiopia called on the army and the people to resist the aggression, and issued an announcement: "I am determined to defend our country and give the enemy a counterattack. Come with me." Subsequently, Menelik II actively prepared for the war, and the Ethiopian army and civilians also united unprecedentedly. The powerful contributed—referring to joining the army, and the rich contributed money—pointing to clothing and food. Cannon army.After two years of hard work, the Ethiopian army and civilians killed and wounded more than 11,000 Italian soldiers with outdated weapons, defeating the Italian invaders.Italy had to beg for peace and signed the "Ados Ababa Peace Treaty", recognizing Ethiopia's complete independence and paying 10 million lire in compensation. Therefore, it was possible for the Qing Dynasty to defeat Britain and other Western powers both strategically and tactically, but the Qing Dynasty failed.The main reason and responsibility for this failure should be attributed to the corruption of the Qing Dynasty. Emperor Daoguang ascended the throne at the age of thirty-nine and reigned for thirty years. He had no talents, only knew hardship and simplicity, and his trousers were patched.The ministers in the court competed to imitate each other, and went to the court in worn-out clothes. At a glance, the court was not very prosperous.He couldn't accept honest advice, couldn't make correct decisions at critical moments, and was too ignorant of foreign powers, so he asked his subordinates: "Is there any dry road from England to Xinjiang?" This is a common sense problem that has been solved as early as the Kangxi period. He knew nothing about Western politics, economy, military, and geography, but the ignorant was fearless, and he still dismissed Britain's strong ships and guns.He is too brave, if he had the spirit of Nurhachi to personally command the Sarhu war, Huang Taiji's will to personally command the Songjin war when he was ill, and Kangxi's boldness to personally conquer Galdan three times, lead the army to conquer, and mobilize the king of Qin After the invading army landed at the Dagu port in Tianjin, they would gather together and wipe them out. The first Opium War would not be lost. Of course, there would not be the shame of the "Nanjing Treaty". Between the war and the war, the Great Wall was self-destructed. Therefore, Emperor Daoguang should bear the main historical responsibility for the failure of the first Opium War and the signing of the "Nanjing Treaty" that humiliated the country.Daoguang was the first emperor to sign a humiliating treaty with Western powers in the 2,000-year imperial history of China. Daoguang's son, Xianfeng, is even more courageless, ignorant, lacking in vision, talent, and inaction.He has been the emperor for eleven years, which is obviously a historical misunderstanding.A historian once used the three "mistakes" in Lu You's "The Hairpin Head Phoenix" to evaluate the three characteristics of his eleven-year emperor's life: "Wrong...wrong...wrong!" His first mistake was sitting on the throne of the emperor by mistake.In Daoguang's later years, he was hesitant about the important matter of establishing a crown prince, and he hesitated between the fourth son of the emperor Yi Chi and the sixth son of the emperor Yi Xin.The fourth son of the emperor, Yi Chi (that is, Xianfeng), is "long and virtuous", that is, he is the oldest and very benevolent and filial; the sixth son of the emperor, Yi Xin, is born of a concubine, but the family law is passed on regardless of the concubines, and he is "talented and intelligent" , capable of writing and martial arts.Legend has it that Emperor Daoguang doted on Yixin's biological mother, the imperial concubine Xiaojing, so he wrote an edict to establish Yixin, but when he wrote it, he was caught by the eunuch, and the last stroke of his specialty was guessed to be the word "thing" instead of "詝". "Word, this matter spread, Emperor Daoguang was very upset, so he changed his name to Yi Chi.Although this is a legend, it illustrates a truth. Daoguang should stand on the throne instead of standing on the throne. Xianfeng wrongly sat on the throne of the emperor. The sixth son of the emperor, Yixin, is in good health, smart, good in writing, and good in martial arts. He has invented and created, but Yi Chi has only a little bit of benevolence and filial piety. According to unofficial history records: Daoguang was seriously ill in his later years. One day, he summoned the fourth son of the emperor and the sixth son of the emperor to be in a match to decide the crown prince.Both princes asked their masters how to deal with it.Zhuo Bingtian, the master of Yixin, said: "If the emperor has any inquiries, he should know everything, and he can talk all kinds of things." Du Shoutian, Yipin's master, said to Yipin: "My elder brother is like Chen Shizheng, but my knowledge is no match for my sixth elder brother. There is only one strategy, if the emperor is here soon, my elder brother will fall to the ground and shed tears to show his sincerity." The two brothers did as their master said.As a result, Daoguang was very happy with the words of the fourth son of the emperor, Yi Chi, and thought that the fourth son of the emperor was benevolent and filial, so he made Yi Chi the crown prince.This is the story of "Hiding Clumsy and Showing Benevolence" contained in "Drafts of Qing History Biography of Du Shoutian". In short, it is generally believed that Yixin should sit on the throne left behind by Daoguang, and that Yixin, the sixth son of the emperor, is the best among Daoguang's princes in terms of virtue, civil and military talents.In the end, Yi Chi mistakenly sat on the throne of the emperor. The second mistake of Emperor Xianfeng was that he fled the imperial capital Beijing when the British and French allied forces invaded.One of the reasons why Ming Chengzu Zhu Di moved his capital to Beijing was that "the Son of Heaven guards the gate of the country" to resist invasion.Emperor Chongzhen of the Ming Dynasty, when the country was in danger, neither moved the capital to escape nor resisted. Instead, he climbed Meishan and hanged himself to death.However, when the enemy invaded, Xianfeng did not fulfill his duties and did not guard the gate of the country. He led his wives, sons, princes and ministers to escape, and called him "hunting patrol".What did he do when he fled to the summer resort?All the historical records show that he was greedy for female sex, silk and bamboo, fine wine, and opium in the villa. Emperor Xianfeng was a person who had no sense of mission as a monarch and no sense of historical responsibility.He not only had a history of the invasion of Beijing by the British and French allied forces, but was also guilty. The third mistake of Emperor Xianfeng was to wrongly appoint Minister Gu Ming.Before he died, he failed to correctly balance the relationship between the main political forces, which led to the Xinyou coup, and thus the situation where the empress dowager "listened to politics behind the curtain", which affected Chinese history for nearly fifty years! The administration of a talented and bold person can lead the country to become strong, while the administration of a fatuous and incompetent person will lead the country to become weak and decline.The choice of politicians must not be careless! The reflection left by the Opium War will be forever.It not only exposes the servility of the Qing government and some capitulation bureaucrats and nobles, the incompetent government is a great harm to the country, but also shows the national integrity of some patriotic ministers and generals to resist foreign aggression, the great Chinese nation The fighting spirit of indomitable defense of the country is indestructible.And the barbaric behavior shown by the Western powers in the Opium War also showed people the fact that Western civilization developed in a deformed way.When the Union Jack flag was lowered in Hong Kong 150 years later, no matter how high-sounding the Crown Prince's speech was, he would definitely feel uncomfortable in his heart.