On August 14, 1900, the Russian army bombarded the west gate of Beijing with artillery, and the US army built a ladder at the east gate, and the two sides seized the first place to capture Beijing.
In the early morning of the same day, the US military first planted the Stars and Stripes on the city gates of Beijing, and then opened the city gates to welcome the Eight-Nation Coalition into Beijing.
After the coalition forces entered Beijing, they burned and looted, and carried out inhumane massacres against unarmed civilians, and the war lasted until September 7, leaving China with a terrible disaster.
China today is very different from a hundred years ago, so what about the eight countries back then?
At the end of the 19th century, as the Western powers continued to open China's doors, sharp contradictions between the low-level people and foreign invaders were set off.
Starting from Shandong, the Boxer Rebellion gradually emerged, and most of them were homeless people, who gathered together to practice boxing and drive away foreigners.
These people only beat foreigners, not the Qing court, and soon attracted the attention of the Qing government.
At that time, the Empress Dowager Cixi did not want to offend the Western powers on the surface, so she simply let the Boxers be the invisible hand of the government.
For a time, from Shandong to Henan, and from Henan to Zhili, the Boxer Rebellion became more and more vigorous.
This move seriously affected the interests of the Western powers in China, and they demanded that the Qing government dispose of these people as soon as possible.
But at this time, the main war faction in the court had the upper hand, and they planned to fight the foreign powers to the end.
The Empress Dowager Cixi even opened the city of Beijing and let more than 100,000 Boxers directly enter the capital, and the foreigners in the city of Beijing were terrified and asked for help directly from their country.
The Western powers had long been accustomed to the Qing government's obedience to their orders, and they were greatly annoyed by today's military rebellion.
In particular, this operation has seriously affected their faces and interests.
The soldiers of various countries gathered at the mouth of Dagu quickly assembled, and Tsarist Russia and Japan also requisitioned regular troops from their homeland to support.
Soon, the Western powers formed an eight-nation coalition of 18,000 troops and marched towards Beijing.
At this time, Cixi was already panicked, and she directly ordered the Boxers to be the meat shield of the Qing army.
At that time, there were more than 200,000 Qing troops and Boxers in Beijing, and the Qing army directly fought against the Boxers and the Eight-Nation Alliance.
Behind them were the Eight-Nation Coalition Army with machine guns, and behind them were the Qing troops with red tassel guns, and the people of the Boxers had no way to retreat, and in the first round of fighting, more than 100,000 people were almost all killed.
After the Boxer Rebellion was completely wiped out, the coalition army directly fought head-on with the Qing army, but the Qing army, which was ten times larger than the enemy, could not defeat the motley army of the Eight-Nation Alliance!
You must know that in addition to Russia and Japan, the other six countries did not send regular troops at all.
Britain and France sent colonial troops from Southeast Asia, the United States sent American troops to the Philippines, German regular troops were still on their way to Asia, and Italy and Austria-Hungary were directly conscripted in China.
However, the Qing army at that time was afraid of foreigners, like a tiger, and even surrendered without a fight.
As a result, the Eight-Nation Coalition quickly approached the city of Beijing, and in the early morning of August 14, Tsarist Russia and the United States entered the city from the west gate and the east gate respectively.
At this time, Cixi had already fled to Xi'an with Emperor Guangxu.
In the competition between Tsarist Russia and the United States, the American army took the lead in climbing the city wall and raising the Star-Spangled Banner.
Soon, the gates of the capital were opened, and the Eight-Nation Coalition troops rushed into Beijing.
The innocent people who had been tragically sacked by the Boxers before ushered in a catastrophe of life and death again.
The Eight-Nation Coalition directly divided the city of Beijing into eight places, which were burned and looted in their respective areas.
Six of these countries have explicitly declared that soldiers are required to burn, kill, and loot for three days and three nights.
These people broke into the homes of innocent people with guns and ammunition and took away all the valuable belongings in the homes.
They even went so far as to hunt down young women in their respective districts, then arrest them and detain them en masse in hutongs to do whatever they wanted.
In addition to the homes of ordinary people, they also ransacked the palace and the trading houses of the time, whether it was paper, calligraphy and painting, porcelain and silk, as long as they took their fancy to it.
At the time, the trucks carrying the finances were traveling between Beijing and the coast, and the damage on the road alone was enough to support a museum.
Some treasures that could not be taken away, such as porcelain or large carvings, were smashed by direct shooting.
In the original magnificent palace, now there is only a mess all over the ground, and there are panicked palace maids and eunuchs who don't know how to be good.
The Forbidden City, the palace that condensed the efforts of the emperors of the Ming and Qing dynasties, was smashed for a while.
Even when they see a beautifully carved palace, they will set a fire and burn it directly.
Unfortunately, after these exquisite treasures were looted, the coalition forces still refused to be satisfied, and they even branded the idea of the dead.
At that time, some people told them that the Chinese had the custom of thick burials, and the Eight-Power Alliance even opened the tombs of many imperial generals, took away all the jewelry accompanying the burial, and threw the bodies on the ground.
The Eight-Nation Coalition was also the first tomb robber in Chinese history to enter the Qing Dynasty.
Just when the emperor of the Qing Dynasty was in power, the mausoleum of the ancestors was opened in a grand manner.
Even the royal family was still like this, and the officials and the common people were even more miserable.
The people of the entire city of Beijing are in dire straits, and if they are not careful, they will be destroyed.
A large number of officials and civilians who did not flee did not want to be humiliated, and chose to commit suicide directly before the sack of the Eight-Nation Alliance, especially young women.
This tragedy lasted until September 7, when the Eight-Nation Coalition was finally willing to negotiate with the Qing government.
Realizing the seriousness of the matter, Cixi immediately signed a contract with them, and the Treaty of Xinchou once again pushed China into a new abyss
A hundred years have passed, and until now, when recalling this humiliating history, many people still can't help but feel like a knife.
Fortunately, after hard work and struggle, the Chinese people have finally shaken off the situation of poverty and weakness.
Today's China is prosperous and powerful, and it is already the world's leading power, but many of those countries that once invaded China have begun to go downhill, and even two countries have gone extinct.
The first to perish was Austria-Hungary.
Austria-Hungary was once a great power entrenched in Europe, and during World War I, together with Germany and Italy, it established the Axis powers and launched a frenzied attack on European countries.
After its victory in World War I in 1918, Austria-Hungary was tried by the Allies as a defeated country.
According to the 14 principles of the United States, Austria-Hungary was completely divided on January 3 and finally divided into many countries, including Austria and Hungary.
The other one that collapsed was Tsarist Russia.
Tsarist Russia was also once a great power entrenched in Eurasia, especially during the Catherine period, when its national power reached its peak, and the national territory could span the entire Eurasian continent, and it continued to annex the surrounding territories.
Beginning in 1840, Tsarist Russia annexed more than 1.5 million square kilometers of China's land.
And when the Eight-Nation Coalition entered Beijing, due to the close distance, Tsarist Russia, like Japan, sent a large number of regular troops, and was the most crazy in the process of sacking the city of Beijing.
But the treasure had just been transported back to China, and before the tsar could enjoy it, the revolution was triggered by perverse behavior.
In addition to these two disappeared countries, Britain and France, which had repeatedly sacked China, gradually declined in World War II, and the glory of the old capitalist countries was gone, and even if they now occupy a place in the P5, their political status and power are far inferior to those of the other three.
As for Italy and Germany, both were affected by World War II.
As the initiator of the two world wars, Germany was directly divided into two by the United States and the Soviet Union after the defeat of the war, from the army to the economy, and even the industrial system suffered unprecedented heavy losses.
Although Italy was spared with their superb surrender skills, they also affected their international reputation because of these two teams.
Today's Italy is still fashionable and civilized, and has made small achievements in the field of light manufacturing, but it can't get rid of the influence of the entire European environment, and its national strength is not as good as day by day, and even its presence in Europe is not as good as before.
As for Japan, at the end of World War II, under the bombing of the atomic bomb, it directly dealt a heavy blow to the development of the next decades.
Since World War II, Japan has directly lost some of its rights and interests as a sovereign state, and has been under the full control of American General MacArthur.
The United States, on the other hand, has risen from the end of the war to become the world's top power, but even if the United States is invincible, it has now gone downhill, while China is thriving, and the gap between the two countries is getting smaller and smaller.
The so-called 30 years in Hedong and 30 years in Hexi, after a hundred years, China has finally witnessed the day when the country is prosperous and strong, and those who have bullied China have also embarked on a trajectory of decline at important historical nodes.