The Forbidden City, located in the center of the Jingshi, is covered with golden snow and golden.

Cixi's confidant, Rong Lu, the Minister of Military Aircraft, the Secretary of the Military Department and the Chief Commander of the Five Armies of the Military Guard, had the courage to ask the Empress Dowager an important question when he faced Lafayette alone: Everyone outside is clamoring to abolish Jinshang, is there really such a thing?

Only Rong Lu dared to bring up this kind of thing.

Since ancient times, not to mention the abolition of the current emperor, the establishment of the heir is an extremely sensitive issue, and I don't know how many ministers have lost their heads because of taboos, and the dismissal of officials is considered light. At the beginning, Yue Fei, a famous Zhongxing general in the Southern Song Dynasty, lost the trust of the emperor because of interfering with Gaozong's succession, and finally lost his life in Fengbo Pavilion on trumped-up charges.

The so-called Yue Fei was killed for obstructing Gaozong's peace negotiations, but it was just a pretense.

Cixi was not angry at Rong Lu's arrogance, and for now, if Cixi's trust in the courtiers was lined up, Rong Lu would undoubtedly be in the top three, and probably the first. There have always been rumors that Cixi had an intersection with Rong Lu when she was young, and it was rumored that if the beautiful Manchurian girl Lan'er had not been drafted into the Ouchi, she might have been Rong Lu's main wife. But rumors are rumors after all, and now, Cixi holds the supreme authority of the Qing Empire, and Rong Lu is a powerful minister.

"Oh, then tell me, can you do this?" Cixi is kind and pleasant. And the eunuchs and palace maids standing in the distance lowered their heads one by one, not daring to glance at the Queen Mother and Rong Lu at all.

"Who dares to stop what the Queen Mother wants to do?" Rong Lu considered the words, "But the crime is unclear today, and foreign ministers are afraid that they want to interfere, so it is better to be cautious." ”

Cixi sighed, "The news has been flying all over the sky for a long time. It is said that before Li Hongzhang left Beijing, the British minister made it clear that they only recognized him. ”

The "he" in Cixi's mouth is naturally the Guangxu Emperor who was imprisoned in Yingtai.

"It doesn't matter." Rong Lu muttered, "The emperor is over thirty years old and has no children, so it is better to choose the close branch clan to be the eldest brother, raise him in the palace, and find an opportunity to go further." ”

is worthy of being the queen mother's confidant, this sentence was immediately approved by the queen mother, "Your idea is right." ”

Rong Lu knew that since the autumn of Wuxu, Cixi hated Guangxu so much, and the last little warmth was completely eliminated, and he had long looked forward to deposing Guangxu and setting up a new monarch.

As soon as she said it, Cixi immediately convened a meeting of representatives of the imperial family and important civil and military ministers, and the content was to abolish the emperor and establish the prince. Emperor Guangxu was also summoned, but Cixi did not let him enter the palace, but asked him to wait outside the palace.

Cixi said to the clan and important ministers that when Guangxu was established as the emperor, the government and the opposition had said that he was from an improper background, and I withstood the pressure and raised him in the palace since I was a child. Things have developed to the point of colluding with the traitors in the south (referring to Kang Youwei and Liang Qichao, both Cantonese) and plotting against me, and he can no longer be the emperor.

Everyone is naturally the only one. No one will stand up and touch the mold.

Cixi's plan is to set the prince first now, and then replace him when the Chinese New Year comes. However, Cixi did not say this timetable. Cixi took out the candidate for the prince, and he was Pu Jun, the son of Zaiyi, the king of Duanjun. Seeing that everyone had no opinion, Cixi asked Rong Lu to draft a decree.

Rong Lu had already drawn up his will and immediately held it in front of Cixi. Cixi looked at it and said, let the emperor in.

Guangxu came in, Cixi told the emperor kneeling in front of him what he had just meant, and Guangxu kowtowed, "This long-cherished wish is also." ”

Perhaps this is his true words, after more than a year, Guangxu, the saddest man in the late Qing Dynasty, has completely surrendered to Cixi.

"Since you are willing, this is an edict that has been drafted, you can write it and publish it to the world."

After reading Rong Lu's "Lichu Shu", Guangxu's thin body kept trembling, and under Cixi's cold gaze, he began to write according to the book, because his hands trembled so badly that he stopped several times in the middle, and finally, he completed this important manuscript that was destined to be the most important manuscript he left to history, and then, he fainted to the ground.

Cixi asked Guangxu to pick him up and send him away, and whispered: Emperor, you have to take care.

This is a sad passage to read. Translated into the vernacular, it roughly means: I have been in the unification since I was a child, thanks to the Queen Mother's curtain training and government, she taught me more, and I was deeply gracious. should have bled up his spirits and lived up to the weight entrusted by Emperor Muzong. But I'm so ashamed that I haven't even given birth to a son. Now that my illness is worsening and I can't manage the government, I have repeatedly asked the Queen Mother to agree to come out and hang the curtain to govern, which is really a blessing for the country. In order to prevent the royal family from cutting off the incense, it was decided that Pu Jun, the son of King Zaiyi of Duanjun, would be the prince and the heir of Emperor Xianfeng, in order to replace me as the emperor.

No one knew what Guangxu, who was superficially respectful to Cixi, really thought in his heart, and this sad emperor, who was weak and couldn't even leave a single heir, did not have any words about Cixi, his aunt. But what can be guessed is that Guangxu could not be without hatred, so the act of obsessing with Western clocks in Yingtai can be regarded as a concern and obsession with time. Indeed, time is the ultimate killer of all politicians, and Guangxu has enough time to survive Cixi.

There are many folk legends about the Guangxu Emperor after he was imprisoned, and most of them are sympathy for this sad man. There is a story of Emperor Guangxu escaping from the cage in the teahouse and wine shop, and the governor of Zhang Zhidong, who was far away in Wuchang, dealt with a strange case, and the messenger caught a man, claiming to be Kang Youwei's younger brother, and said that he was the Guangxu Emperor who escaped from the palace. The errand was frightened, and the decisive Zhang Zhidong ordered the beheading of this nonsense man, and he didn't care about going through the judicial process, and afterwards gave the court an excerpt to report the matter, which was praised by the queen mother.

During this period of time, the subject of public attention in the Beijing officialdom was the issue of the throne. No one knew that a group of bandits who had slipped through the net in the remote mountainous areas of southern Shandong had repeatedly defeated elite officers and soldiers who had been trained by Western instructors, and the news was deliberately suppressed. With the pride of the people at the feet of the Son of Heaven, even if they heard about it, they wouldn't care much. The public opinion of the capital division is concerned about the emperor, the general, and the talented and beautiful people, and a group of mischievous bandits can't get into their eyes.

In this way, the Spring Festival of the Gengzi year is coming, and it is said that the first day of the new year is the day when the old emperor abdicates and the new emperor ascends the throne. A few years ago, the new emperor's hidden residence, Duanjun Palace, was already dressed up, and there was an endless stream of high-ranking officials and giants who came to the door to say goodbye. Among them, officials account for the vast majority. Because in the Empire, officials are the most precarious group of people in this world, and their fate depends entirely on the likes and dislikes of the supreme ruler. The long period of authoritarian rule has made the vast majority of them develop a two-faced personality: extreme arrogance in front of the people and groveling in front of their superiors. They are the most afraid of the emperor and the most dependent on the emperor, not to mention the change of the throne, even the emperor's cough will also bring them an instant change in life.

There was no reason why they wouldn't go to the Duanjun Palace.

Duanjun Wang Zaiyi is the second son of Yizong, the fifth son of Emperor Daoguang. He is Xianfeng's cousin, Yu Cixi is his nephew, and he is the cousin of the current emperor Guangxu Emperor. In the twentieth year of Xianfeng, he was named the king of Duanjun. Before 1898, the county king had little left for history to write, and suddenly, his son Pu Jun became the heir, which immediately made the Duanjun king the center of the whirlpool of officialdom.

There were many people who came to congratulate them, and everyone brought heavy gifts, all trying to leave the deepest impression in the hearts of the future "Emperor Taishang". Pu Jun is still a fourteen or fifteen-year-old boy, and people care more about the king of Bajieduan himself.

Soon, King Duan, who was overjoyed by the endless flow of heavy gifts into the ceremonial room, began to be depressed, and there was no foreign minister to come to congratulate? What does this illustrate? Even Duanwang, who usually only pays attention to the sound of dogs and horses, realizes that the situation is troublesome.

From the beginning of the First Opium War, the foreigners, who were once known as the Yi people from overseas or the bitter cold land of the Far North, spoke all kinds of strange languages, dressed in strange clothes, and looked like strange people went deeper and deeper into the highest echelons of imperial power, participated in the political decision-making of the empire, controlled the more and more important departments of the empire, such as customs, and were now controlled by an Englishman named Hurd.

If the foreigners do not agree to abolish Guangxu and establish a new monarch, things will be very troublesome. The old queen mother, who is full of words in the empire, can't be the master of foreigners.

Of course, the news reached Cixi's ears as quickly as possible, and the concubine of the king of Duanjun, who was called Fujin, was Cixi's niece. This news ignited in Cixi's heart with hatred for foreigners. Prior to this, some actions of the foreigners had elevated Cixi from uneasiness to hatred: the foreigners forced Cixi to agree to let their chosen foreign doctor diagnose Guangxu's illness, and the French doctor named Doddford actually announced that Guangxu was not sick at all! Before Li Hongzhang left Beijing after accepting the appointment of the governor of Liangguang, the British minister Dou Nale pointed out threateningly that they only recognized the power of the Guangxu Emperor! Shortly thereafter, Prime Minister Yamen (the equivalent of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in later generations) sent a joint note from the ministers of various countries: If the Guangxu Emperor died in a largely unill manner, it would have very unfavorable consequences for China among the Western countries.

The note is a very formal, serious diplomatic document, not a rumor. This shows that Western countries have intervened in China's imperial succession!

If the time were pushed forward by a hundred years, the Qing Empire would definitely be furious. Next, if the foreigners do not make a formal apology, war will be inevitable. One hundred years ago, the emperors and ministers of the Qing Empire firmly believed that China was the center of the world, and that barbarians lived in the land where Chinese civilization shone brightly. When the British envoys met with Emperor Qianlong for the first time, the Qing Dynasty refused to budge on matters of etiquette. But now it doesn't work, several foreign wars in the past hundred years have completely knocked out the pride of the Celestial Empire. The Old Summer Palace was burned down, Hong Kong, Kowloon, and later Taiwan's Ryukyu were ceded away, and Korea, which had submitted to China for hundreds of years, broke away from the control of the Qing Dynasty and became a territory under the de facto control of Japan.

This diplomatic note gave Cixi a blow to the head!

That's not enough! Cixi has received information that Kang Youwei, who is in exile overseas, has sent an urgent telegram to the whole world, calling on overseas Chinese everywhere to rise up against Cixi, and if power is not returned to the emperor, there will be a popular uprising in the country!

This news hit Cixi more than the intervention of the Great Powers. From Cixi's heart, she was more concerned with internal stability than with external interference.

The calamity began on this day, and Cixi decided to use her internal strength to fight the crisis.

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