Looting and Burning of the Old Summer Palace
In October 1860 Anglo-French forces reached Beijing, looted the Qing imperial garden palace of Yuanmingyuan and, on Lord Elgin’s order, burned it. The Xianfeng Emperor had already fled to Rehe.
Felice Beato · Public domain · Source
In 1859 British and French envoys coming to ratify the Treaty of Tianjin were fired upon at the Dagu forts and withdrew. The next year some 18,000 Anglo-French troops returned, took the Dagu forts in August and advanced via Tianjin on Beijing. After they defeated the Qing cavalry at Baliqiao in September, the Xianfeng Emperor left matters to his brother Prince Gong and fled to the mountain resort at Rehe (Chengde).
From 6 October French troops, followed by the British, looted the Yuanmingyuan northwest of Beijing of treasures accumulated over 150 years. When nearly twenty of the British and French captured while negotiating came back dead, the British plenipotentiary Lord Elgin ordered the palace burned to punish the emperor. For two days from 18 October fire consumed the gardens.
The stone ruins of its European-style palaces that remain today have become a symbol in China of the "century of humiliation".
