Xianfeng Emperor

Yizhu (奕詝, 1831–1861), known by his era name Xianfeng and the temple name Wenzong, reigned from 1850 to 1861. He was the seventh emperor of the Qing dynasty to rule China from Beijing.

His short reign was dominated by crisis: the Taiping Rebellion in the south, the Nian Rebellion in the north, and the Second Opium War, which ended with British and French troops in Beijing. He was the last Qing emperor to rule in his own right. After his death, real power passed to his consort, the future Empress Dowager Cixi, and remained largely in her hands until 1908.

Family and Early Years

Yizhu was born in 1831 at the Yuanmingyuan, the Old Summer Palace outside Beijing. He was the fourth son of the Daoguang Emperor. His mother, of the Niohuru clan, was raised to empress in 1834 and is known by her posthumous title, Empress Xiaoquancheng.

Daoguang chose Yizhu as his heir in preference to his able younger brother Yixin, later Prince Gong, having been impressed by his conduct and learning.

Accession

Yizhu came to the throne in 1850, at the age of eighteen, and took the era name Xianfeng, usually translated as "universal prosperity". The name proved sadly inappropriate. He inherited a state weakened by the First Opium War, by corruption and by rural poverty, and within months of his accession the empire was facing the largest rebellion in its history.

The Taiping and Nian Rebellions

The Taiping Rebellion began in Guangxi at the turn of 1850 and 1851. Its leader, Hong Xiuquan, was a Hakka who had failed the civil service examinations and came to believe he was the younger brother of Jesus Christ. His followers defeated the local forces sent against them, and he proclaimed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom.

The Taiping armies marched north through Hunan and down the Yangzi, and in 1853 they took Nanjing, which became their capital for the next eleven years. A Taiping expedition that year pushed north to within reach of Tianjin before it was destroyed. The fighting devastated the richest provinces of the empire and cost millions of lives.

The regular Qing armies proved largely ineffective. The court came to rely on new provincial armies raised by Han Chinese officials, above all the Hunan Army of Zeng Guofan, which slowly turned the tide. The rebellion was not finally crushed until 1864, three years after Xianfeng's death.

At the same time the Nian Rebellion spread across the north China plain. The Nian, unlike the Taiping, had no religious programme and little political organisation, but their mounted bands were highly mobile and threatened the approaches to the capital. Qing forces suffered repeated defeats against both movements.

The Second Opium War

The Second Opium War (1856–1860), also called the Arrow War, grew out of British determination to extend the trading rights won in the First Opium War, which had ended with the Treaty of Nanking in 1842. The seizure of the ship Arrow at Canton in 1856 gave Britain its pretext, and France joined the war after the execution of a French missionary. The background is covered in our article on the Opium Wars.

The Treaties of 1858

After Canton fell and the Anglo-French fleet took the Dagu forts guarding the approach to Tianjin, the Qing agreed in June 1858 to the Treaty of Tianjin. It opened further ports to foreign trade, allowed foreigners to travel in the interior, gave Christian missionaries freedom to work there, and allowed foreign envoys to reside in Beijing. The opium trade was legalised under tariff agreements concluded the same year.

A month earlier, in May 1858, China had signed the Treaty of Aigun with Russia. It moved the border to the Amur River and restricted navigation on the Amur, Sungari and Ussuri rivers to Chinese and Russian vessels.

The Fall of Beijing and the Burning of the Palaces

The court, and the emperor himself, resisted above all the idea of foreign envoys living permanently in the capital. In June 1859, when British and French envoys arrived to exchange ratifications, their fleet was refused passage at Dagu and suffered heavy losses in the attempt to force it.

The allies returned in greater strength in 1860. In August they took the Dagu forts, then Tianjin, and advanced on Beijing. In September the emperor left the capital for the summer retreat at Chengde in Jehol, officially for the autumn hunt, leaving his brother Prince Gong to negotiate. His health, already poor, declined further there, and rival factions formed at court.

In October 1860 Anglo-French troops entered Beijing and looted the Yuanmingyuan, with its vast imperial collections. In reprisal for the torture and killing of allied prisoners, the British envoy Lord Elgin ordered the Yuanmingyuan burned, and the nearby Qingyiyuan, the site of the later Summer Palace, was also destroyed.

The Convention of Beijing

Days later Prince Gong signed the Convention of Beijing. China ratified the Treaty of Tianjin, opened Tianjin itself to trade, ceded the southern part of the Kowloon peninsula to Britain, and agreed to pay Britain and France indemnities of eight million taels each. A separate agreement with Russia confirmed the Treaty of Aigun and ceded the lands east of the Ussuri River.