The Qing Dynasty was the last feudal dynasty in China, and it is generally believed that it was born in 1636 AD, and some people advocate that the year from which it entered the customs in 1644 is used as the starting point of the Qing Dynasty. For this dynasty, we are probably most familiar with the Kangqian dynasty. The so-called Prosperous Era of Kangqian, that is, the development of the Qing Dynasty during the reigns of Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong reached a peak, the national strength was strong, and all the countries came to the dynasty.
The general view is that the peak of Kangqian's prosperity was completed at the hands of Qianlong, who reigned from 1736 AD to 1796 AD. So, the peak of Kangqian's prosperity is less than 50 years away from the Opium War of 1840! What made such a prosperous world degenerate into a backward and beaten old empire in less than half a century?
The Qing Dynasty's own discourse on the prosperity of Kangqian was first mentioned in 1713. At this time, it was already the old age of Kangxi, due to the chaos in the world at the end of the Ming Dynasty, the population was sharply reduced, and he called for "the prosperous world to breed people, never add endowments", that is, Kangxi believed that this time was already a prosperous world, so the population should be increased. Later, his grandson Qianlong said that "since the beginning of the year, the Western Regions have played a great role in the skin, and the country should be in full swing" and "the country is now prosperous, and the treasury is full." At the same time, Yu Minzhong, a Qianlong courtier, also said:
"Glory and glory, inheriting the grand rules of the ancestors; the ancients are overbearing to the present, and the annals of history are rare in the prosperous world."
So why did the Kangqian dynasty become the late Qing Dynasty China of 1840 so quickly? This has to start with Qianlong, the last emperor of the Kangqian dynasty. Now the general view is that Kangxi is very effective, Qianlong is very effective, and Yongzheng between them is an emperor who does not act or is not enough. In fact, on the contrary, Yongzheng is the key to supporting the prosperity of Kangqian, and even in the entire history of the Qing Dynasty, Yongzheng's ability is one of the best.
So why do future generations form Qianlong as the hero and Yongzheng as the hero? Because Qianlong is good at grooming himself, and Yongzheng can be said to have broken his heart for the "Great Qing", he has no time to spend time to make a façade for himself. After Yongzheng came to power, on the one hand, he focused on remedying the shortcomings of the Kangxi period--from another point of view, the prosperity of Kangxi was still problematic; on the other hand, he encouraged thriftiness and rectification of the bureaucracy.
Because the actual soldiers of the Qing Dynasty were not particularly large, and the skinny camels, the Ming Dynasty, still had a large number of troops, Li Dingguo even fought Shunzhi for a time and wanted to draw the river. Therefore, in order to achieve victory and other considerations, the Qing Dynasty must accept a large number of Ming generals and troops. On the one hand, this greatly increased the strength of the Qing Dynasty, and on the other hand, it also greatly increased the economic pressure of the Qing Dynasty.
What kind of role will the troops descend into? They are basically people who do not have firm discipline and integrity, and they are soldiers in order to eat food and get rich, and their combat effectiveness is strong and weak, but their destructive power is amazing. The Qing Dynasty accepted such a group of people at that time, and one of the biggest questions was - how to pay wages? Because the system of the Qing Dynasty was born out of the tribal system, its economy was completely insufficient for self-sufficiency, and when it was outside the Country, it could rely on robbing the Ming Dynasty, and now it is in the Central Plains, where to go to grab it?
Therefore, at that time, a tacit solution was to acquiesce in the corruption of officials and let the demotion of soldiers go to the people to make money. On the one hand, of course, this greatly reduced the financial pressure, but on the other hand, it also caused the greed of the officialdom to run rampant, and the imperial court could not collect taxes. Therefore, it seems that the prosperous Kangxi era, at the end of the Kangxi Dynasty, only left 8 million taels of silver for Yongzheng - this number is indeed not high, after all, the later "Maguan Treaty" was 200 million taels of silver, which was 25 times that of 8 million!
Faced with this situation, Yongzheng was eager to change the bureaucracy of the Qing Dynasty, especially to change the unbridled corruption of those people, and to supervise and punish them. As a result, Yongzheng became one of the most reputable emperors of the Qing Dynasty- because he offended these interest groups and cut off the financial road of others, although his degree of literal prison was completely inferior to that of Qianlong, he was scolded by the literati.
But these reforms of Yongzheng were relatively effective, the common people finally breathed a sigh of relief from the harsh oppression, and the finances of the Qing Dynasty had to be greatly improved, and when Qianlong took over Yongzheng's world, his father left him 60 million taels of silver in the treasury — more than 10 times that his grandfather left to his father.
This also led to the fact that after Qianlong came to power, one of the most important manifestations was that he was not bad at money. Therefore, Qianlong's six Jiangnan and ten martial arts can be said to be tossing and turning everywhere, and he completely lacks his father's spirit of personally wearing patched clothes and eating leftovers. This is actually not a big deal, because if he can maintain the implementation of the Yongzheng system, the national treasury can still have both in and out. Unfortunately, However, Qianlong was unable to maintain the Yongzheng system.
Qianlong adopted an indulgent mentality toward corruption, and although he occasionally gave orders to crack down on corruption below, most of them were only dealt with on a small scale. Moreover, the process of his six visits to Jiangnan gave local officials too many opportunities to take money. During the Qianlong period, there was also a figure who "shook the ancient and the present",—He Yan, who embezzled 800 million taels of silver, more than the Treaty of Xinugu. Therefore, during Qianlong's reign, although it was prosperous on the surface, in fact, the foundation had been broken.
Therefore, by the time Qianlong's son Jiaqing succeeded to the throne, the treasury was empty, and there were still a lot of problems left in society. For example, the White Lotus Sect revolted one after another, and there were all kinds of bits and pieces. And when the treasury of the Qing Dynasty was depleted, a country also went down the road of degeneration. So, when the Opium War broke out in 1840, the Qing army was easily defeated by the British, and the prosperity was shattered.