Old Summer Palace
In 1860, during the Second Opium War, Anglo-French expeditionary forces defeated a Qing army at Baliqiao east of Beijing. They captured the city and sacked the Summer Palace and Old Summer Palace. Lord Elgin, the commander of the expedition, ordered the burning of the Old Summer Palace in retaliation of Qing mistreatment of Western prisoners. He spared the Forbidden City, saving it as a venue for the treaty-signing ceremony. Under the Convention of Peking that ended the war, the Qing government was forced to allow Western powers to establish permanent diplomatic presence in the city. The foreign embassies were based southeast of the Forbidden City in the Beijing Legation Quarter.