severe winter

The vast northern land is already a silver-white world, with thick snow covering the earth, and the whistling north wind dancing wildly with a whistle. Occasionally, a few jackdaws rattled through the sky, adding to the bleak world.

The rivers of Beijing are also lazy, whimpering in the gaps in the ice.

As usual, the Empress Dowager Cixi, who was less than forty years old, woke up at five o'clock, more than an hour before dawn. Every day, it's her hardest moment. In the past, she usually closed her eyes, lying on the bed covered by heavy curtains, in the soft and soft quilt and quilt embroidered with dragons and phoenixes, reverie the scene of her love with Emperor Xianfeng. But as time passed, her mind gradually became filled with the struggle for power. In recent years, the more the state of the Manchu Qing Dynasty has improved, the more the Empress Dowager Cixi's mind has been towards authority. Because there is no external threat, this internal strife rushes to the mainstream of the struggle, especially as Emperor Tongzhi gets older and older, and his relationship with her biological mother is becoming more and more estranged......

Is it that the Empress Dowager Cixi was too harsh and harsh on Emperor Tongzhi or what? Anyway, when Xianfeng didn't die, Tongzhi had a better relationship with his mother-in-law, the Empress Dowager Ci'an. However, no matter who says this, the Empress Dowager Cixi's greed for power is also a hurdle that cannot be bypassed.

Throughout the Manchu dynasties, which emperor did not marry until he was seventeen years old? Kangxi, who ascended the throne at the same young age, got married at the age of fourteen, and Shunzhi, who succeeded to the throne like Emperor Tongzhi, also got married at the age of fourteen. However, Tongzhi was forcibly delayed by the power-hungry Empress Dowager Cixi on the grounds that "the classics have not been completed", and only on September 15, 1872 (October 16, 1872) of the 11th year of Tongzhi, did she hold a wedding ceremony for her seventeen-year-old son Zaichun.

The reason for this is that, according to Manchu custom, the emperor's wedding means the advent of pro-government. Of course, the Empress Dowager Cixi was going to stop it.

And on the big issue of Emperor Tongzhi's marriage, the Empress Dowager Cixi couldn't urinate in the same pot as Emperor Tongzhi. Tongzhi himself likes to serve Chongqi's daughter Alut, who is the granddaughter of Saishan, and wants to make her queen; The Empress Dowager Cixi advocated that Fucha, the daughter of the squire Fengxiu, be the empress. The two sides of the matter were also very unhappy. So much so that Emperor Tongzhi sent his wife aside in order to do his best, knowing that the national strength of the Manchu Qing Dynasty had not yet been restored, and now the treasury did not have enough money to rebuild the Old Summer Palace.

It takes at least 10 million taels of silver to rebuild the Old Summer Palace, and the wood alone is seven inches to more than four feet in diameter, and there are thousands of Nanbai Chen Huang pine trees that are five to four feet long. This kind of timber needs to be collected from Sichuan, and it has been cut down almost since the early years of Daoguang, so it is impossible to buy it, and it is extremely difficult to transport.

But Emperor Tongzhi didn't pay attention to this at all, he was an emperor who could take out five hundred taels of silver for the Internal Affairs Office to buy melon seeds, and money was not a matter at all in his eyes. This is also the appearance of Liu Xian, who let the Ganxi Rebellion* be pacified early, and recovered Xinjiang, making the current Tongzhi Zhongxing more prosperous than in history.

Although the Qing Dynasty was planning to establish a navy and was also fighting a bloody war in Yunnan, the treasury had some savings. As a result, Emperor Tongzhi did not rely on the 'exploitation' of the Manchu civil and military ministers and the princes and nobles of Beijing to make up the first money to start the construction like he himself in history. As long as the fifteenth day of the first month of this year, the reconstruction project of the Old Summer Palace will start in Zhengda Guangming Palace, Tiandi Yichun (the former residence of Cixi) and other places.

Therefore, for the Empress Dowager Cixi, the rebuilding of the Old Summer Palace, which had been finalized at the end of the twelfth year of Tongzhi, could not make her half happy at all. If possible, she would rather not build the Old Summer Palace, just to be able to retain her authority.

The window paper was already white, and it was dawn. Cixi got up immediately, she is a very good maintenance person, and she does not lie in bed. If it weren't too cold outside, it would normally be after the second day of February [until winter], and she would take a walk every morning, called walking circles.

The place where Cixi and Ci'an met the courtiers was in the Dongnuan Pavilion, but this did not mean that she herself lived in the Dongnuan Pavilion. The place where she lived was Chuxiu Palace, and it was here that Cixi left Emperor Tongzhi.

Chuxiu Palace is a five-room structure, divided into three bright and two dark. The three bright rooms were where Cixi lived. The room in the middle is equipped with a sitting room, which is used for worship. The west room is connected to the bedroom, which is equivalent to the outer room of the bedroom. There is a mountain kang in the south window of the east room, which is very bright, and Cixi often sits at the east end of the kang. Drinking tea, smoking, having breakfast, talking, meeting the emperor and empress, concubines, etc., are mostly here. After freshening up and eating a small bowl of lily white fungus, Cixi went to the east room. Li Lianying accompanied, Cui Yugui followed, and the four maids lined up in two rows to wait.

She is waiting here for the arrival of her brother-in-law and brother-in-law, Prince Yixun. Of course, there is also the last member of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, the general of the 'Zhen' family, Dolonga, please meet.

The Eight Banners plan to organize and train a new army, which is inseparable from the military master of Duolonga. Moreover, before the formation and training of the New Army of the Eight Banners, many princes and ministers of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and even Cixi herself, also believed that it was necessary to make up for the many armies in Ganshan first.

If it is said that there were many armies three years ago, when the number was equal, it was definitely a strong army that could compete with Xianghuai and Chu. So now, although the combat effectiveness of the multiple armies has not faded much, the anti-thieves who have emerged in Ganxi and Shaanxi in the past three years have been arrested and cut one by one by the multiple armies, and they are still deterring the northwest. But no one anymore compares the multi-army with the four armies of Hunan, Huai, Chu and Qin. Because many armies have lagged far behind Xianghuai, Chu and Qin in terms of weapons!

The many armies that still hold breech guns, or even front-loading smoothbore guns, are like an era behind the four armies of Xianghuai, Chu and Qin with breech guns.

The multi-armed forces are the direct forces of Beijing. In the eyes of the princes and ministers of the Eight Banners, it is a more trustworthy armed force than the four armies of Hunan, Huai, Chu and Qin, and an important chess piece for Beijing to balance the world. You can't just watch the decline of multiple armies. Therefore, with the wind of the Eight Banners training the new army, a wind of 'supplementing' the multi-army also blew. Cixi didn't know if the origin of this wind had anything to do with Dorona, but she was a supporter of this argument anyway.

It was after the government was sealed a year ago that the palace received a secret fold from Feng Zicai, the governor of Yunnan. The two armies of Hunan and Huai excluded dissidents, cut off people's food and salaries, forced several soldiers and horses to mutiny, and even fought against each other. This twist was like a knife into Cixi's heart.

With the death of Zeng Guofan, the Hunan army declined. However, the rise of the Huai army was unstoppable, especially the intertwined collusion between the various departments of the Hunan army and the Huai army, which was beyond Beijing's control. Seeing that the strength of the Huai army was running all the way up, it only exceeded 100,000 horses! Although the Qing Dynasty needed Han military groups such as the Huai Army to consolidate its rule, it was also very vigilant about the rise of the Han army! R1152