On the sixth day of the first month of the eighteenth year of Shunzhi, in good health, the young Shunzhi Emperor suddenly passed away at the age of 24. However, there is never a record of the Shunzhi Emperor being ill, and the Qing history also does not mention the cause of the Shunzhi Emperor's death, and the folk say that he once saw the Shunzhi Emperor on Mount Wutai, what is the truth?
First of all, the shunzhi emperor's will was very suspicious. The day before his death, he summoned a group of ministers to the Yangxin Hall to give an edict. In the edict, the Shunzhi Emperor listed his fourteen crimes, such as the inability to fulfill filial piety, the cold relationship with relatives and friends, and so on, which was very self-condemning. This tone is very inconsistent with the mood of a person who is about to die. The content of self-blame is mostly the empress dowager's dissatisfaction with the Shunzhi Emperor, so some people suspect that it is the empress dowager's last will.
What is the claim about the Shunzhi Emperor's renunciation? The Qing emperor was very fond of Buddhism, and the Shunzhi Emperor met a master at the age of 14, and the two met in the cave and had a good conversation. The Shunzhi Emperor also chose for himself the legal name of "Crazy People", the legal name "Foolish Daoist". In his conversations with the high monks, he repeatedly said that he had the idea of escaping into the empty door, and was involved in court battles from an early age, which made the Shunzhi Emperor very tired.
The death of Concubine Dong of the Shunzhi Emperor gave him a fatal psychological blow. The Shunzhi Emperor guarded her spirit every day, crying and making a lot of noise, looking for death and seeking life, and also made an exception to make Dong Efei an empress, and gave all the eunuchs and palace ladies of chengqian Palace to die as noble concubines for burial. Later, the Shunzhi Emperor had no intention of ruling the government and visited the senior monks 38 times in two months. In the "Northern Journey Collection" and "Continuation of the Moon Record" and other books, it is recorded:
In mid-October 1660, the Shunzhi Emperor, dressed in robes, gave up the throne, and a hundred officials advised and senior monks obstructed him, only to change his mind and abandon this plan. Although it is not recorded in the canonical history, the general accounts of the senior monks also have a certain degree of authenticity. The "Notes on Living" records that after Kangxi succeeded to the throne, the empress dowager took him to Wutai Mountain many times to worship the Buddha, in fact, to visit the Shunzhi Emperor.
Another theory is that the Shunzhi Emperor died of smallpox. Historians have investigated and found that the "Annals" written by Wang Xi, a scholar of the Libu Shilang Hanlin Academy during the Shunzhi period, have a detailed record of the days after the death of the Shunzhi Emperor. "If you are sick with pox, you can listen to the words of the people in detail and quickly write an edict." The annals record such a sentence of the Shunzhi Emperor. Historians believe that the reason why qing shi was vague about the cause of the shunzhi emperor's death was because smallpox was raging at that time, everyone panicked, and in order to calm the people's minds, it was kept secret.
Even if the edict was very suspicious, in the case of the Shunzhi Emperor's vague consciousness, it was forgivable that the empress dowager instructed the chancellor to write it. It is also recorded in the Records of the Ancestors of the Qing Dynasty that the coffin of the Shunzhi Emperor was only moved to the Jingshan Shou Emperor's Palace on the second day of the first month of February 1661. On April 17, Kangxi held a ceremony of sacrifice and enshrined the Shunzhi Emperor's throne in the Qianqing Palace. On the twenty-first day, the "Feng'an Baogong Ceremony" was held, and the treasure palace was the urn. It can be seen that the Shunzhi Emperor did die of smallpox.
However, both statements have their own loopholes and reasonableness, and there is no accurate conclusion so far, and more information is still needed to support it.