The Allies, while they are in Beijing,…

The Allies, while they are in Beijing, loot the palaces, yamens, and government buildings, inflicting incalculable loss of cultural relics, books on literature and history (including the famous Yongle Dadian) and damage to cultural heritage (including the Forbidden City, the Summer Palace, Xishan and the Old Summer Palace).

More than three thousand gold-plated bronze Buddhas, fourteen hundred artistic products and forty-three hundred bronzes in Songzhu Temple are looted.

The gold plating on the copper tanks in front of the Forbidden City palaces is scraped off by the Alliance, leaving scratch marks that can be seen even today.

Yongle Dadian, compiled by twenty-one hundred scholars during the Ming Yongle period (1403–1408), with a total of 22,870 volumes, had been partially destroyed in the Second Opium War in 1860, and had later been collected in the Imperial Palace on Nanchizi Street.

It is found and destroyed completely by the Alliance in 1900.

Part of Yongle Dadian is used for the construction of fortifications.

The Siku Quanshu, compiled by 360 scholars during the Qing Qianlong period, collected 3,461 ancient books, totaling 79,309 volumes.

The whole book consisted of seven sets.

One set had been destroyed in 1860 during the Arrow War.

Another ten thousand-plus volumes are destroyed in 1900 by the Eight-Nation Alliance.

The Alliance also loots the collections of the Hanlin Academy, which houses a collection of precious books, orphans, books of the Song dynasty, literature and history materials, and precious paintings.

Some of these looted books remain today in the custody of museums in London and Paris.