Stories of the Qing Dynasty, 274
He Yan was one of the most famous powerful ministers in the Qing Dynasty, and the story of He Yan's greed for power during the Qianlong period can be described as a household name. However, what many people don't know is that Hezhen is also a model of the cold door grassroots counterattack. The Hezhen family did not have any prominent background, and his parents died very early, and the Qing History Manuscript records that Hezhen was "poor and poor", and was very poor when he was young, and had nothing to rely on.
However, it was such an ordinary young man, who was appreciated by the Qianlong Emperor in his 20s, and since then he has changed the fate of his life, and his official career has skyrocketed. In less than ten years, He Yan was promoted from a small third-class bodyguard to a former imperial minister by Qianlong, entered the military plane, and held a number of positions of real power.
In the forty-fifth year of Qianlong (1780), Qianlong personally gave the son of Hezhen the name "Fengsheng Yinde", and referred to him as the steed of the ten princesses, and made Hezhen a relative of the imperial family, which can be described as a favored crown and a power tilted to the opposition. At this time, Hezhen was only in his early 30s.
In terms of age, Qianlong was actually 40 years older than Hezhen, enough to be his grandfather's age. Why Qianlong originally knew about Hezhen is still a mystery. There is a saying in the "Great View of the Wild History of the Qing Dynasty" that Qianlong liked one of Yongzheng's concubines when he was young, and later Qianlong saw that Hezhen had the same birthmark as this concubine, and thought that Hezhen was her reincarnation. This kind of Qi Dongye language can only be used as a talking point after tea and dinner, and its authenticity is not worth mentioning.
Another popular saying is that when He Yan was serving as Qianlong's imperial bodyguard, once Qianlong read the escape of the key criminals and casually quoted an ancient text: "The tiger is out of the wood, and the turtle jade is destroyed in the tree, whose fault is it?" At that time, the guards around him were dazed and did not know his intentions, and He yan replied with Zhu Xi's note that "the pawn keeper must not resign his responsibility", Qianlong further investigated He Yan and found that this young man was very talented, so he began to vigorously promote He Yan.
Regardless of the original truth, Qianlong's heavy use of Hezhen gradually evolved into dependence on him. In his later years, Qianlong's hearing was low, his speech was not clear, and the decisions of the imperial court on large and small affairs were basically conveyed by Hezhen, so that he became the de facto ruler of the Qing Dynasty for a long time, and even threatened the position of Emperor Jiaqing. The fact that He Yan was so favored by Qianlong was also the most important condition for him to be able to cover the sky with one hand and be corrupt and corrupt.
However, the excessive expansion of power, as well as the long-standing condescending position, numbed Hezhen's mind, forgetting that all his power came from Qianlong. As a result, the higher his position, the faster his misfortune became, And Qianlong died less than half a month ago, and He Yan was reduced from a heavy minister at the level of prime minister to a prisoner of the ranks, and was given to die in prison, becoming the shortest time in the history of the Qing Dynasty to be executed from arrest to everywhere.
Why was the Jiaqing Emperor so anxious to kill Hezhen? Probably the first reaction of many friends is to think of corruption. There is a folk slang saying called "He Yan falls, Jiaqing is full", is Jiaqing because he wants to fight corruption, so he takes the big tiger of He Yan to open a knife, and by the way, copy his family property to enrich the national treasury?
Indeed, in the twenty years of the Heyan Dynasty, he amassed huge amounts of wealth through extortion and bribery. There are Qingren's notes that the family assets of Hezhen alone are worth the financial income of the Qing Dynasty for ten years. Of course, the above statement is somewhat exaggerated, but judging from the list of Hefu raids listed in the Qing Dynasty archives, the property of He yanmo was absolutely unprecedented in the Qing Dynasty. The house where Hezhen lived alone was worthy of the specifications of the two prince's palaces, and many rare treasures collected by Hezhen were also copied out, even more valuable than those used by the royal family.
But was corruption the reason why Washu was killed? The answer is no.
In fact, since the Kangxi Dynasty, because the Kangxi Emperor was relatively lenient with his subordinates economically, the imperial court formed an unwritten rule, that is, when officials reached a certain level, no matter how much corruption there was, it was not a major crime. In the nearly 300-year history of the Qing Dynasty, the only exception for senior officials to be executed for economic problems was the later Xianfeng period of university scholar Bai Bao.
As far as he was concerned in the case of He yan, he was a high-ranking official of the rank of Zaifu, and the second was the family of the Qianlong Emperor, and according to the laws of the Qing Dynasty, whether it was a relative or a nobleman, He Yan was not wrongly condemned. Therefore, of the twenty counts listed by Jiaqing, only the last eight were about economic crimes. Moreover, after the death of Hezhen, Jiaqing also specially ordered that the officials who had paid bribes to Hezhen in the past would no longer be prosecuted, which on the one hand was Jiaqing's leniency and unwillingness to raise a big prison, on the other hand, it also showed that Jiaqing did not think that Hezhen's corruption was a very serious crime.
Since the crime of embezzlement does not lead to death, what is Jiaqing's reason for killing Hezhen? Let's look at the first few of the twenty great sins. The first is that before Qianlong officially ceded the throne to Jiaqing, He Yan leaked secrets to Jiaqing in advance. The next few points are that He Yan bullied Qianlong for not remembering things in his old age, and there were all kinds of disrespectful acts toward the Emperor Taishang, and even took He Yan's private admission of the palace maid as a concubine as a crime.
Generally speaking, although the previous crimes are very serious, especially disrespectful to Qianlong, which are crimes of great rebellion and unforgivableness, these are mainly Jiaqing's crimes of aggravation and punishment, and this kind of hat of wanting to add to the crime is appropriate to put on anyone's head. Later, Jiaqing also mentioned that Hezhen seized power and supported his henchmen, but these were not the direct reasons why Jiaqing wanted to put Hezhen to death.
We look through the history of Jiaqing's feud with Hezhen, who once talked about the Tang Dynasty's killing of Li Fuguo, saying: "Emperor Daizong is the crown prince, and he is not slandered by the auxiliary state. and the throne, and condemn him for his sins. It can be seen that Jiaqing was already plotting to kill Hezhen before he came to power, and the most direct reason for killing Hezhen was actually the "revenge" of tit-for-tat. Because before Qianlong's death, He Yan once had the act of putting Jiaqing to death.
Although Qianlong was almost obedient to Hezhen's words in his later years, he was very cautious and had his own opinions on the matter of establishing the crown prince, and Jiaqing happened to be not the person he liked. Therefore, after Qianlong established Jiaqing as his heir, He Yan had been trying to influence Qianlong to change candidates, and the strategy he adopted was to send his attendant Wu Shenglan to help Jiaqing copy poems, trying to catch any clues that were unfavorable to Jiaqing.
Wu Shenglan was originally He yan's teacher, but after He Yan's discovery, Wu Shenglan actually worshiped He Yan as a teacher in turn, so inflammatory, his character can be seen. Jiaqing knew he had the intention of sending Wu Shenglan to his side, so he paid great attention to writing poems and essays on weekdays, so as not to let Hezhen catch any evidence that could alienate him from Qianlong's father and son.
However, Jiaqing was one hundred and one hundred secrets, once Jiaqing's teacher Zhu Jue was promoted, Jiaqing specially wrote poems to congratulate him, the poem was not finished, Wu Shenglan sent a message to Hezhen. He Yan brought the poems written by Jiaqing to Qianlong and threatened Qianlong with alarmism, saying that Emperor Si was going to bribe his master, and he was afraid that he would secretly support his own forces and overthrow the idea of the Emperor Taishang.
Qianlong was old and exhausted at that time, and he no longer had the judgment of his youth, and he was shocked to hear Hezhen's words, and he was really worried about whether Jiaqing wanted to seize power, so he asked another minister, Dong Yan, for his opinion. Fortunately, Dong Yan was an upright old minister, did not attach himself to He Yan, and replied realistically that Jiaqing was not at fault for writing poems to congratulate his master on his promotion, and there was no need to make a fuss about it. Qianlong was silent for half a day, and finally listened to Dong Chen's opinion, did not punish Jiaqing for this incident, but still withdrew Zhu Jue's decision to be promoted, which shows that Hezhen's words at that time really shook Qianlong's trust in Jiaqing.
If at that time, Dong Yan also tended to be inflamed and attached to Hezhen, or Qianlong did not insist so much on his original choice of Li Chu, Hezhen was likely to succeed in this regard. If Jiaqing's position as crown prince is abolished, it is tantamount to being placed to death, and there is no place to live.
Through this incident, Jiaqing learned the viciousness of Hezhen, even if Hezhen's ability is strong, it will certainly not be someone he can be close to and trust in the future. Instead of raising tigers for trouble, it was better to preemptively attack, so from that day on, Jiaqing had already made up his mind to kill Hezhen.
References: "Records of the Qianlong Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty", "Records of the Jiaqing Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty", "Drafts of the History of the Qing Dynasty, One Hundred and Sixteen Biographies", "Notes on the Yong'an", "The Great View of the Wild History of the Qing Dynasty", etc