Ruins of the Old Summer Palace
When the Anglo-French invaded the city of Beijing in 1860, they were attracted by the grandeur of the Old Summer Palace, but looted it in order to attack the Qing government. But what they did not expect was that their actions not only destroyed the world-class art hall, but also changed the original deliberative system of the Qing Dynasty.
First, the second political center
In fact, there was a precedent for opening up a second political center outside the imperial city before the Qing Dynasty, whether it was the imperial garden that appeared in the Han Dynasty or the capital established in the Liaojin yuan period, which provided another place to discuss politics. Even when the Qing Dynasty was first established, Dorgon envisioned building a new city to the east of Beijing to be used as a place for the emperor to escape the summer and discuss politics. But he died soon after, so the idea of building a new city did not materialize.
Dolgun in film and television dramas
The one who really opened up the second political center was Kangxi. After the completion of Changchun Garden in 1687, the Kangxi Emperor often lived in Changchun Garden, and proposed that when he was in Changchun Garden, the administrative affairs in the Forbidden City should also be moved to Changchun Garden to deal with, and since then, the mode of deliberating in the Garden has even taken shape. After Kangxi's death, the Yongzheng Emperor did not choose to continue to live and work in Changchun Garden, but chose the Yuanmingyuan, his garden, as the new place of deliberation.
Changchun Garden
However, at this time, the Qing government had formed a unique mode of government affairs in the history of nearly a hundred years, and in addition to the permanent residence of the Punishment Department every day, the five ministers took turns to play things. After Kangxi pro-government, he fixed the Qianqingmen government, and every morning at 6:00 (spring and summer) or 7:00 (autumn and winter), the ministers had to wait at the Qianqingmen for the emperor to come to discuss the government.
Dry clear the door
The time for the discussion of the government was so early that many elderly ministers were distressed, and they were still so tired in the Forbidden City that they went to work in the Yuanmingyuan, which was 20 miles away from the Forbidden City, and the labor on the road was enough for the ministers. Officials traveled back and forth, and it was difficult to balance the relationship between handling the internal affairs of their respective yamen and going to the Yuanmingyuan, so the Yongzheng Emperor specially ordered that the time to go to the Yuanmingyuan could be postponed, and there was no mandatory requirement. However, this made many ministers rarely go to the Yuanmingyuan to play, which made the Yongzheng Emperor very unhappy. Yongzheng's original intention was to say that even if he lived in the Yuanmingyuan, the ministers of various departments should do things like the emperor did in the Forbidden City, and that asking you to be loose did not mean that you could not come. In short, Yongzheng's permanent residence in the Yuanmingyuan greatly impacted the original imperial court operation mode.
Yongzheng in the Biography of Zhen Huan
Second, the formation of the system of shift playing
In order to solve the troubles of the ministers running back and forth, the Yongzheng Emperor deliberately set up a system of rotating things to adapt to the problem of ministers playing things in the new situation.
What is the shift system? To put it simply, it is to break the original rule that the six ministries of the day are all played, and the new system of one flag per day and one reincarnation per day is implemented, and the eight flags are rotated every day, and the six ministries are also one per day to discuss politics, one day for the Court of Administration and the Inspectorate, and one day for the Ministry of Internal Affairs, for a total of 8 days. In this case, each department only goes to the Yuanmingyuan once in 8 days, and if there is an accident, it can enter the garden with the department that went to the Yuanmingyuan on the same day.
If the emperor convenes a royal gate to listen to the government, all the ministers and flag chiefs will go. Even if there are no important matters on the day of the recital, they should go to the Yuanmingyuan to wait for the emperor to inquire about political affairs, and when it is not their turn, they must seriously handle things in their respective gates.
After the establishment of the system of rotating performances, to a large extent, the dilemma of officials running back and forth between various ministries was solved, which not only enabled the emperor to know what was happening in various departments, but also allowed those officials who did not go to the Yuanmingyuan to work at ease in the yamen, get what they wanted, and exert maximum efficiency. In the event of unexpected situations such as storms and blizzard days, officials can also avoid going to the Yuanmingyuan and postpone the agenda for one day, so the whole system has considerable flexibility.
Third, the biggest challenge of the Yuanmingyuan deliberations
For Yongzheng, the biggest challenge for the Yuanmingyuan deliberations was not how the officials came to play the role, but the constant doubts about the Yuanmingyuan deliberations from all sides. In the fourth year of Yongzheng, there were rumors in the streets and alleys of Beijing that the emperor drank and had fun in the Yuanmingyuan all day, and the ministers who went to the Yuanmingyuan to play things together with the emperor boarded a dragon boat to travel the Yuanmingyuan. The anecdotal rumors made the always diligent Yongzheng very angry, and he suspected that his brother had deliberately spread the news to attack him.
Yongzheng stills
It is true that Yongzheng once hosted a banquet in the Yuanmingyuan to entertain the courtiers, but it was too unfair to him to say that Yongzheng sang at night and drank and played, and what was even more fatal was that this kind of gossip pointed directly to the core, that is, whether Yongzheng was legitimate in the Yuanmingyuan in the leisure place, which was also the thing that Yongzheng was most worried about. For this reason, Yongzheng stressed many times that he was diligent and earnest in handling political affairs in the Yuanmingyuan as in the palace, but the Yuanmingyuan was in the blossoming season, and it was also common for people to play in the garden with the ministers for a while after handling political affairs, and there was nothing wrong with it.
Doubts about the emperor's deliberative place reached the Qianlong Dynasty. In the third year after Qianlong succeeded to the throne, that is, in 1738, he went to the Yuanmingyuan for the first time, and told the officials around him that in the future, just like his father Yongzheng did during the reign, he also chose to work back and forth between the Yuanmingyuan and the Forbidden City. All kinds of doubts are still circulating in the anecdotes, but Qianlong's 60-year ruling career has suppressed the doubts, and by the late qianlong administration, the Yuanmingyuan has become the second Forbidden City.
Qianlong in the Yuanmingyuan
By the time of Daoguang and Xianfeng, when Western countries invaded China, it might bring many inconveniences for monarchs to go to the Yuanmingyuan, and the Xianfeng Emperor had not lived in the Yuanmingyuan for three years. In 1855, when the Xianfeng Emperor wanted to go to the Yuanmingyuan, he was fiercely opposed by the ministers, and Wang Maoyin, the attendant of the household department at the time, proposed the "six no's" and forced Chen to go to the Yuanmingyuan for many drawbacks. In the face of the opposition of the ministers, Xianfeng did not listen, and still went to the Yuanmingyuan in 1855, and until the Yuanmingyuan was burned down by the British and French forces in 1860, Xianfeng lived in the Yuanmingyuan for most of the time. When the Yuanmingyuan was burned down, the system of rotating affairs lost the soil of existence, and the imperial garden administration system came to an end.
Salty
Wen Shijun said
The imperial garden administration system, which had been in place since the Kangxi Dynasty, ended until the Xianfeng Dynasty's Yuanmingyuan was burned down. In these 200 years, successive emperors have traveled back and forth between the Forbidden City, Changchun Garden and later the Yuanmingyuan, and the system of rotating work has also been born. The emergence of the Imperial Garden Administration System consumed a lot of resources, and also made the officials tired from running between the two places, and the handling of the affairs within their respective gates was gradually tired and lax, so the matter of the Imperial Garden Administration was questioned since its inception, until the Yuanmingyuan was burned down by two British and French robbers, and the doubts subsided.
bibliography
Yang Jianli, "An Outline of the Decline of Changchun Garden in the Qing Dynasty", Journal of the Palace Museum, No. 2, 2015.
Liu Zhonghua, "The Round MingYuan Rotation in the Qing Dynasty and the Legitimacy dilemma of the Imperial Garden Administration", Qing History Research, No. 4, 2017.
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