After the death of the Yongzheng Emperor in 1735, he left two secret instructions, but one of them was no secret.
1. The edict of the "Secret Reserve".
After Yongzheng succeeded to the throne, he felt the fact that during the Kangxi Dynasty the princes were fiercely competing for the position of crown prince, so he decided to establish a "secret reserve system", and a year after the Yongzheng Emperor took the throne, he secretly drafted the edict of the crown prince and stored it behind the "Zhengda Guangming" plaque in the Qianqing Palace. At that time, the crown prince of Li Chu was Hongli (the future Qianlong Emperor), but in the process of Yongzheng's administration, the ministers had already seen that Hongli was the future crown prince, which was no secret. (The plaque of the Zhengda Guangming Hall on the head of the Qing Emperor is the place where the edict of the Crown Prince is stored)
The purpose of the Yongzheng Emperor's "secret reserve system" was to avoid the outbreak of secret wars between the emperors for the crown prince. However, contrary to his wishes, the third son of the Yongzheng Emperor, Hongshi, was not reconciled and still secretly accumulated strength to try to ascend to the throne. In 1727, Hongshi was actually succeeded by the Yongzheng Emperor to his political enemy Yun Yu (Lao Ba) as a stepson, and then stripped of his clan and blasted out of the Forbidden City. After Qianlong succeeded to the throne, he also adopted the "secret reserve system", and Li Yonglian was made the crown prince, but he died at the age of 9, and the secret reserve system was hit, and later, Qianlong adopted repeated observation and investigation to select the crown prince. In Qianlong's later years, a battle for crown prince also broke out between Qianlong's eleventh son, Yong Yao, and his fifteenth son, Yong Yan.
There is no doubt that the secret reserve system has failed, but has retained its form.
Second, the second secret message.
The second secret edict was Yongzheng's political legacy for his son Qianlong, mainly to assist the chancellor. The secret edict has also been drawn up a long time ago, and it has such content:
In June of the eighth year of Yongzheng, Zhang Tingyu embraced the emperor's edict, loyally served his duties, and obeyed the edict every year, and was able to understand the intentions in detail, and instructed his subjects to be approachable, and his achievements were great. Ertai Zhi was loyal, talented and economically superior, Anping was easy to inspect, appeased the interior, and was a famous courtier. These two people can keep them unswerving. Ten thousand years later, the second minister was entitled to enjoy the Taimiao Temple.
This was a secret edict drawn up as early as June 1730, and the main political figures in it were alive, so it was not changed before the death of the Yongzheng Emperor (1735). According to the arrangements made before Yongzheng's death, Prince Zhuang Yunlu, Prince Guo Yunli, University Scholar Ortai, and University Scholar Zhang Tingyu were ministers of Gu Ming, but they all refused to be Gu Ming ministers and served as prime minister affairs ministers.
In this secret edict, the Yongzheng Emperor specifically recommended the Han chancellor Zhang Tingyu, who was above the Manchu minister Ortai, which had special political implications. During the Kangxi Yongzheng period, the status of Han officials was relatively low, while the status of Manchu nobles was very high, and the han officials of the same level were lower than those of Manchu and Mongolian officials, and such an arrangement was to let Qianlong use both Manchu and Han ministers in the future, check and balance each other, and could not let one head become bigger, which was very unfavorable to the future of the emperor and the country.
Moreover, Zhang Tingyu and Ertai were reused by Yongzheng and Qianlong at the same time, the two of them worked together for more than ten years, sometimes the two people did not communicate a word a day, once Ortai made a mistake, Zhang Tingyu must speak sarcastically, the relationship between the two people is very poor, which shows that Yongzheng Qianlong is strong in using people.
After Qianlong succeeded to the throne, he appointed Zhang Tingyu to teach the crown prince and reuse Zhang Tingyu. Every time the Qianlong Emperor traveled, Zhang Tingyu and the Prime Minister Wang jointly presided over the affairs of Kyoto, and allowed them to stay overnight in the Forbidden City. However, the elderly Zhang Tingyu was particularly stubborn and excited, which made the Qianlong Emperor unhappy and the evening scene was bumpy, but in the end, the Qianlong Emperor still followed Yongzheng's will and let Zhang Tingyu deserve to enjoy the Taimiao Temple.
Will these two secret edicts allow Qianlong to sit on the throne for 63 years?
The first of these two secret decrees was the Qing Dynasty's reserve system, and after that, the Qing Dynasty Crown Prince's edict on the throne was placed behind the "Zhengda Guangming" plaque in the Qianqing Palace, which became a fixed rule.
The second is the system of the former emperor's patronage of the chancellor, which was generally followed by later Qing emperors. The governing concept conveyed by the second secret decree of Yongzheng is to use both Manchu and Han to ensure the great cause of the Qing Dynasty, and this concept runs through the Qing Dynasty, and the Qing Dynasty has been able to enjoy the country for so long.
The Kangxi Emperor basically stabilized the territory of the Qing Dynasty, the Yongzheng Emperor governed the internal affairs of the country, the treasury surplus was large, and Qianlong's grandfather and father laid a good foundation for him to govern, which enabled the Qianlong Emperor to sit firmly in the country, in addition, the Qianlong Emperor's ability to govern was still quite good.
The Kangxi Emperor left a treasury surplus of about 8 million taels for Yongzheng, and Yongzheng left a surplus of about 60 million taels of silver treasury for Qianlong in 13 years, which was the emperor of the Qing Dynasty who left the most money for his son. Although Qianlong squandered the state treasury in the later period, he left Hezhen for the Jiaqing Emperor, as the saying goes:
He Yan fell, Jiaqing was full!