Yixin

Also known as Le Daotang · Prince Gong · Prince Gong Yixin · Liu Xiaoye · Guizi Liu

Yixin, sixth son of the Daoguang emperor and half-brother of the Xianfeng emperor, was born in January 1833. Under his father's will he was made Prince Gong in 1850, and he sat on the Grand Council from 1853 until his dismissal two years later. When British and French troops took Beijing in 1860 and the emperor fled to Rehe, Yixin stayed to negotiate and signed the Conventions of Peking with Britain, France and Russia. He then proposed the Zongli Yamen, the office for the affairs of foreign states, which he headed for most of the next quarter century, adding the Tongwen Guan language school in 1862. After Xianfeng's death he joined the empresses dowager Ci'an and Cixi in arresting Sushun and the other regents, and as Prince Counsellor led the Grand Council until that title was withdrawn in 1865. Removed from all posts in 1884, he was recalled when war with Japan began in 1894, died in 1898, and was named Zhong with a place in the Imperial Ancestral Temple.