In 1901, it was a difficult and ugly year, and the Qing Dynasty and the great powers signed the most humiliating treaty in history, the "Xinugu Treaty". Many people say that the "Xinugu Treaty" knows that they have to pay 450 million taels of silver, but after really reading the whole text, they find that in the whole treaty, more insulting clauses than losing money abound, and they really want to make people out of the brain thrombosis.
[Treaty of Xinugu with 11 fire paint seals]
After the failure of the Boxer Rebellion, the Eight-Nation Alliance invaded the capital, and the empress dowager fled to Xi'an with the emperor. On September 7, 1901, the Qing Dynasty and 11 countries, including Britain, France and Russia, signed the unequal "Xinugu Treaty", also known as the "Xinugu Treaty of Peace". In these 11 countries, there are both veteran powers such as Britain, France, Russia and other countries that have coveted China for a long time, and there are also Belgium who play soy sauce. The entire treaty consists of 12 paragraphs, which are divided into four parts, namely apology, punishment, amendment and diplomatic reform.
To apologize is to ask the Qing Dynasty to apologize for the killing of German Minister Klinder and Japanese diplomat Sugiyama Bin, and this apology is not as simple as verbal words. Article 1 of the first paragraph of the treaty stipulates that the Qing Dynasty shall send the Prince zaifeng of Alcohol to Germany to apologize for the killing of Klinder; and send the outdoor attendant Natong to japan to apologize for the murder of Sugiyama Bin.
[The archway built for Klinder and others should be "full of streets"]
In addition to apologizing, the Qing Dynasty also built a monument in the place where the two people were killed, the inscription should be written by the Qing Emperor himself, to express the Qing Emperor's regret for the murder, the inscription was inscribed in Chinese, German, and Latin, and at the same time, in the place where the two were killed, the archway should be built to commemorate, the monument and the archway should match the taste of their people, and the regulation of the archway should be "full of streets".
In addition, all cities where foreigners were killed were to stop the civil and military examinations for five years, which involved dozens of prefectures and counties in 9 provinces. Why the foreigners were killed, I will not repeat it here, and it is really infuriating to kill the robbers and apologize to the robbers. But then there's something more infuriating.
[The empress dowager and the emperor returned to the Beijing Division from Xi'an, carrying a foreign gun to welcome Yuan Shikai's military guards]
Starting from the second paragraph, it is the punishment part, and the familiar compensation of 450 million taels of silver is in this part. Some people say that 450 million taels of silver were derived from the figure of one person and one person and one person in China's 450 million people at that time, but this is not the case. In the treaty, the amount of money of each country is described in detail and converted into silver. For example, 1 pair of silver is equivalent to 3.05 HORSE Dollars, 0.742 US dollars, 0.3 pounds, 3.5 francs, 1.412 rubles and 1.047 yen. After all the calculations, it was exactly 450 million taels of silver, but in fact, the Qing Dynasty had to lose far more than that.
In 1901, the financial revenue of the Qing Dynasty had just exceeded 200 million taels of silver, and it would take more than two years to lose money without eating or drinking, so it was obviously impossible to lose money in this way. The treaty stipulates that the reparations shall be paid in 39 years, with customs duties and salt taxes as collateral, and the annual interest rate will be 4%, which translates to a total of 980 million taels of silver. Counting the 20 million taels of silver that each place needs to pay separately, the actual total amount of compensation reaches a staggering 1 billion taels of silver.
This was the largest loss the Qing dynasty had since the Opium War was forced to sign an unequal treaty. After losing money, it is time to deal with people. The Great Powers drew up a list of 174 men, all of whom were heavy warriors. Some of these people were sentenced to death (beheading), such as University Scholar Gangyi, University Scholar Xu Tong, Governor of Sichuan Li Bingheng, Governor of Shanxi Yuxian, Governor of Gansu and Shaanxi Dong Fuxiang, and so on; some were sentenced to death by suspension (beheading of prison), such as Wang Zaiyi of Duan County, and Zailan of Fuguo. Others include death, eternal imprisonment, exile, dismissal, etc.
These people were all the main war faction, and even if they were the last bit of backbone left in the imperial court, none of the great powers wanted to let go. When the treaty was signed, xu Tong, a university scholar, had already died of illness, and the empress dowager ordered his son Xu Chengyu to be arrested and beheaded, which was considered to have fulfilled the wish of the foreigners. The empress dowager took this opportunity to kill more than 120 ministers of the main war faction in one go, and the main war faction in the DPRK and China was slaughtered, and the great powers had no worries about the future.
【Li Zhongtang who rushed to sign the contract】
However, the great powers did not give up at this end, so the treaty also stipulated that the arms embargo on China, the dismantling of all forts along the passage from the Beijing Division to the sea, the fact that the Beijing Division was garrisoned by various countries, that the Qing Dynasty was not allowed to garrison the Beijing Division, and that the Beijing Division had demarcated a public concession, only to leave a back road for themselves to come and go freely and to enter and exit in the future. At this time, the great powers did not completely annex the strength of the Qing state, but through this treaty, they achieved complete control over the Qing state, and the empress dowager and others were completely reduced to the tools of the great powers to rule the Qing country.