Cixi first entered the court as a concubine to the Xianfeng Emperor and gave birth to his only surviving son, who would become the Tongzhi Emperor.

With the Qing army devastated, Emperor Xianfeng fled the capital, leaving his brother, Prince Gong, to be in charge of negotiations.

After the Xianfeng emperor and his entourage fled Beijing, the June 1858 Treaty of Tianjin was finally ratified by the emperor's brother, Yixin, the Prince Gong, in the Convention of Peking on 18 October 1860, bringing The Second Opium War to an end.

The palace was then occupied only by a few eunuchs, the Xianfeng Emperor having fled.

The Xianfeng Emperor and his entourage, including Cixi, fled Beijing for the safety of Rehe in Manchuria.

While negotiations with the European powers were being held, Emperor Xianfeng and his Imperial entourage fled to the northern palace in Jehol in the name of annual Imperial hunt.

On 22 August 1861, in the wake of the Second Opium War, the Xianfeng Emperor died at the Rehe Traveling Palace (), northeast of Beijing, where the imperial court had fled.

The Emperor Xianfeng had fled with all of his court to Chengde.

The Xianfeng Emperor himself fled from Beijing and moved his imperial court to the Chengde Summer Palace in Hebei.

In 1860 during the Second Opium War, as the British and French armies closed in on Beijing, Zaiyuan fled together with the Xianfeng Emperor to Rehe Province.

On 22 August 1861 the Xianfeng Emperor died at Rehe Palace in the city of Rehe ( now Chengde, Hebei ).

The Xianfeng Emperor died in the summer of 1861 in the Chengde Summer Palace and was succeeded by the young Tongzhi Emperor.

After three weeks time the negotiations for their release were successful, but they had only been liberated ten minutes when orders were received from the Xianfeng Emperor, then a fugitive in Chengde, for their immediate execution.

Emperor Jiaqing and Xianfeng both died while staying at Chengde in 1820 and 1861 respectively.

On hearing the news of the destruction of the Old Summer Palace, the Xianfeng Emperor ( who was already showing signs of dementia ) fell into a depression, turned heavily to alcohol and drugs, and became seriously ill.

The Xianfeng Emperor then dispatched ministers for peace talks, but relations broke down completely when a British diplomatic envoy, Harry Parkes, was arrested during negotiations on 18 September.

Empress Dowager Ci ' an ( Wade-Giles: Empress Dowager Tzu-an ;, Manchu: Hiyoošungga Jekdun Iletu Hūwanghu ; 20 August 1837 – 8 April 1881 ), popularly known in China as the East Empress Dowager (), and officially known posthumously as Empress Xiao Zhen Xian ( Wade-Giles: Empress Hsiao Chen Hsien ; ), was the second Empress Consort of the Xianfeng Emperor ( b. 1831 – d. 1861 ) of the Manchu Qing Dynasty in China, and then Empress Dowager after 1861.

* August 22 – Xianfeng Emperor, Qing Dynasty the 9th emperor ( b. 1831 )

* July 17 – Xianfeng Emperor of China ( d. 1861 )

In June 1858, shortly after the Qing Court agreed to the disadvantageous treaties, more hawkish ministers prevailed upon the Xianfeng Emperor to resist encroachment by the West.

On 2 June 1858, the Xianfeng Emperor ordered the Mongolian general Sengge Rinchen to guard the Taku ( Dagu ) Forts near Tianjin.

Following the death of Wenqing, one of the Xianfeng emperor's closest aides, Sushun was increasingly consulted by the emperor on many important policy matters.

Following the death of the Xianfeng Emperor in 1861, Sushun, his elder brother Duanhua, and Zaiyuan, along with five other prominent people in the Qing Court, were appointed Regents to oversee administrative affairs during the young Tongzhi Emperor's minority.

Selected by the Xianfeng Emperor as an imperial concubine in her adolescence, she gave birth to his son, who became the Tongzhi Emperor upon Xianfeng's death.

In 1851, Cixi participated in the selection process for concubines for the new Xianfeng Emperor alongside sixty other Manchu girls.

In 1855, the Lady Yehenara ( as Cixi's name was recorded upon entering the Forbidden City ) became pregnant, and on 27 April 1856, she gave birth to Zaichun, the Xianfeng Emperor's only son.

Zaitian was named heir and successor to his uncle, the Xianfeng Emperor, rather than his cousin and predecessor, the Tongzhi Emperor, so as to maintain the father-son succession law.

The only surviving son of the Xianfeng Emperor and Empress Dowager Cixi, Tongzhi attempted political reform in the period of the Tongzhi Restoration.

Tongzhi became emperor at the age of five upon the death of his father, the Xianfeng Emperor.

The Xianfeng Emperor ( Wade-Giles: Hsien-feng Emperor ;, pinyin: Xiánfēngdì ; 17 July 183122 August 1861 ), born Aisin-Gioro I Ju, was the ninth Emperor of the Qing Dynasty, and the seventh Qing emperor to rule over China, from 1850 to 1861.

Yizhu's reign title, Xianfeng ( 咸丰 / 咸豐 ), which means " Universal Prosperity ", did not reflect the situation.

Xianfeng dispatched several prominent mandarins, like Zeng Guofan, and Imperial relatives, like the Mongol general Sengge Rinchen, to crush the rebellions, but they only obtained limited success.

Xianfeng, under the influence of the Concubine Yi ( 懿貴妃, later the Empress Dowager Cixi ), believed in Chinese superiority and would not agree to any colonial demands.

Rather than face this ordeal, Alexei fled to Vienna and placed himself under the protection of his brother-in-law, the emperor Charles VI, who sent him for safety first to the Tirolean fortress of Ehrenberg ( near Reutte ), and finally to the castle of Sant ' Elmo at Naples.

A popular legend, originating from 12th century chronicles, tells how when he first fled to the Somerset Levels, Alfred was given shelter by a peasant woman who, unaware of his identity, left him to watch some cakes she had left cooking on the fire.

The Calendar of Saints states that her first husband was poisoned by the holder of real power, his successor, Berengar of Ivrea, who attempted to cement his political power by forcing her to marry his son, Adalbert ; when she refused and fled, she was tracked down and imprisoned for four months at Como.

Her father's grandfather had fled France during the Revolution, going first to Saint-Domingue, then New Orleans, and finally to Cuba where he helped build that country's first railway.

After this event many Jews emigrated, in two waves ; some fled to the Muslim lands of the Ottoman Empire, but many also went to Christian Europe, first to northern Italy, then to the Netherlands, and later to England.

) Thus, when Odo returned, he was able to launch a near complete surprise attack on the besieging force, scattering it at the first attack, and slaughtering units caught resting or that fled without weapons or armour.

Vortimer attacked the Saxons four times: first enclosing the Saxons in Thanet, secondly fighting at the river Derwent, the third time at Epsford, where both Horsa and Vortigern's son Catigern died, and lastly " near the stone on the shore of the Gallic sea ," where the Saxons were defeated and fled to their ships.

After religious tensions provoked a violent uprising against Protestants in France, Calvin fled to Basel, Switzerland, where he published the first edition of his seminal work The Institutes of the Christian Religion in 1536.

Protesters seized the main government building, and Akayev hurriedly fled the country, first to neighboring Kazakhstan and then to Moscow.

This took place very gradually ; work started in about 1923, the first room was finished in 1933, and Schwitters subsequently extended the Merzbau to other areas of the house until he fled to Norway in early 1937.

Mellitus fled first to Canterbury, but Æthelberht's successor Eadbald was also a pagan, so Mellitus, accompanied by Justus, took refuge in Gaul.

The aprisio made its first appearance in Charlemagne's province of Septimania in the south of France, when Charlemagne had to settle the Visigothic refugees, who had fled with his retreating forces, after the failure of his Zaragoza expedition of 778.

The first challenge to the powerful new army came from the Contras, groups of Somoza's National Guard who had fled to Honduras organized and funded by CIA elements involved in cocaine trafficking in Central America.

Roughly one thousand Acadians lived on the island, many of whom had fled to the island from mainland Nova Scotia during the first wave of the British-ordered expulsion in 1755, reaching a population of 5, 000.

Oviedo fled the same day, first to Argentina, then to Brazil.

Many of Stephen's supporters, including Waleron de Beaumont and William of Ypres, fled from the field at this point but Stephen fought on, defending himself first with his sword and then, when that broke, with a borrowed battle axe.

After the American Revolution ( 1775 – 1783 ) many loyalists fled to Caribbean colonies, including ( in 1783 ) the first settlers on the Caicos Islands ; cotton became an important crop briefly.

But at the first lecture Adorno's attempt to open up the lecture and invite questions whenever they arose degenerated into a disruption from which he quickly fled: after a student wrote on the blackboard " If Adorno is left in peace, capitalism will never cease ," three women students approached the lectern, bared their breasts and scattered flower petals over his head.

Perhaps realising he had little hope of surviving this trial, Themistocles fled, first to Kerkyra, and thence to Admetus, king of Molossia.

Danzig capitulated in June 1734, and Stanisław fled, first to Königsberg, and eventually to France.

The first expeditions and colonization attempts were led by Alberto del Canto, naming the city Santa Lucia, but were unsuccessful because the population was attacked by the natives and fled.

Porter's father-in-law posted bail to keep Porter out of jail, but the day before Porter was due to stand trial on July 7, 1896, he fled, first to New Orleans and later to Honduras.

Acoli then exited the car and — after being ordered to halt by Trooper Robert Palentchar ( Car 817 ), the first on the scene — fled into the woods as Palentchar emptied his gun.

The king first took refuge in Gloucester ( where he arrived on 9 October ) and then fled to South Wales in order to make a defence in Despenser's lands.