Emperor Gaozong of the Qing Dynasty
In December of the seventh year of Shunzhi (1650), Dolgun, the most influential regent of the Qing Dynasty, was injured in a hunting horse and died a month later near Luanping County, Hebei, at the age of thirty-nine.
A few months after the Shunzhi Emperor issued an edict to his highest posthumous mourning, Dorgon's fate took a sharp turn, and after officially announcing the fourteen counts of Dorgon, canceling all canons, digging up the grave and exhuming the corpse, the key figure who completed the foundation of the unification of the Qing Dynasty, Dorgon was completely and completely repudiated. The 13-year-old Shunzhi Emperor was strong and his liquidation methods were harsh. The Italian missionary at that time vividly recorded this incident: "The Shunzhi Emperor Fulin ordered the destruction of Dorgon's ornate mausoleum, dug up his body, beat him with a stick, whipped it with a whip, and finally cut off his head, and the violent corpse was displayed to the public, and his magnificent mausoleum with a magnificent chest was reduced to dust." ”
The Shunzhi Emperor's reckoning with Dorgon stemmed more from personal emotional hatred of him. Growing up, this small child witnessed all kinds of how Dorgon was flaunting his might in front of him. In the seventh year of Shunzhi, Dorgon used his power to posthumously crown his birth mother as empress dowager, as if the emperor were posthumously crowning his own mother, and many years later, Shunzhi recalled this past with resentment to the kings and ministers: "At that time, the regent of King Morgen, Shuo only gave his hand to do some sacrifices, and all the major affairs of the country could not be participated in, and no one reported to Shuo. ”
Shunzhi Emperor
Not only that, Dorgon used his power to kill Hauge to death and forcibly occupy his wife, and shunzhi's biological mother Xiaozhuang was not innocent, which planted a huge seed of hatred in the heart of Hauge's brother Shunzhi. After gradually seizing power, the liquidation after Dorgon's death was both a major event and a natural matter of human nature.
One hundred and twenty-eight years later, forty-three years after Qianlong, (1778) Qianlong personally participated in the review of the archives of major cases that had always been controversial in the Qing Dynasty. Not only did he redefine and evaluate the Ming Dynasty's defection to the Qing Dynasty, and after compiling the "Biography of the Second Minister", he also embarked on a comprehensive "reversal of the case". These cases involved several of the highest-ranking princes in the entire Qing Dynasty. In particular, the ordinary Dolgun is the most important case. At that time, Qianlong gave two main reasons for rehabilitating Dolgun: First, he believed that Dorgon did not rebel: "If King Furui has different aspirations, then Fang Bing has power, so why can't he do anything?" Then he further said: "When the regent was young, Wei Fu was not without specialty, and the kings and ministers were afraid and jealous", that is, the rebellion certainly did not exist, but there was certainly specialty, and the inflated emotions of the flying and wandering made the kings and ministers feel insecure, but these did not treat the great merits of Dorgon in this way.
Regent Dolgun
The second reason is that Dorgon's contribution to the Qing Dynasty is too great, and the evaluation of his "determination of the foundation of the country, the cause of unification, and the greatest merit" is to believe that Dorgon has the first merit and made the greatest contribution to the founding of the country.
The third reason was that Qianlong sympathized with Dorgon's plight, explaining the reason in a long edict: "Goodwill and goodness, the king's government should be first; In a very sympathetic tone, he said, "Behind the king's back, he has long held the injustice of the spring soil, and his heart is very compassionate." In the end, Qianlong set the tone for the Dorgon case with his super high emotional intelligence. It was that the grievances in the Dorgon case at that time had nothing to do with Shunzhi, but were caused by a group of villains: "At that time, my ancestor (Shunzhi), who was still in his old age, had not tried to be pro-government", and swore that "if Dorgon really dared to challenge the authority of the ancestors at that time and punish him, he would not dare to overturn the case for him." Finally, it is clearly pointed out that "the achievements of the king, which are contained in the Records of Reality, have made great achievements without any traces of rebellion." ”
After that, the Qianlong Emperor issued an edict officially overturning the case for Dorgon, ordering that the tomb be repaired for him and his title restored, "pursuing Yue Zhong, and supplementing it with jade". And it was shared with the Taimiao Temple, and at this point, the most legendary case of the Qing Dynasty was finally completely overturned more than a hundred years later.
Filial piety
However, it is worth noting that Qianlong was worried about avoiding further criticism in the future, and said in the upper edict: "For the sake of the credit of future generations, the previous edicts on this matter shall not be recorded in the history of the country." Therefore, all the archival records about Dorgon were destroyed, which directly caused the confusion of later generations to study the Dorgon case.
Not only that, after continuing to turn over the cases of the Yongzheng era, especially the eighth son, the ninth son, and the case of Kangxi, it was necessary for Qianlong to make the necessary public opinion interpretation of the creed of "no change for three years": "In my later years, I repeatedly talked to me about these cases in the past, and every time I mentioned them, I was very sorry, that is, I deliberately left these things to me. ”
In fact, these are the most fundamental reasons for the superficial reasons is that in the middle and late period of Qianlong's reign, political stability was comprehensive, the economy was further prosperous, and Qianlong, who was bent on pursuing the "ten perfect and prosperous worlds," had to make a comprehensive re-evaluation of all controversial matters, and was a major measure to further stabilize the unity of the internal clans, adjust historical contradictions, and comprehensively gain a good name.