Because it learned the lessons of the Ming Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty continued to make reforms in terms of imperial succession, and the hereditary system of the imperial throne of the Qing Dynasty went through four stages of development: the election system of the Khan 's throne (imperial throne) in the early Qing Dynasty, the prince system in the Kangxi period, the secret reserve system after Yongzheng, and the Yizhi reserve system in the Empress Dowager Cixi period. Among the four systems for selecting heirs, the most far-reaching, the longest to implement, and the most effective was the secret reserve system established by the Yongzheng Emperor.
The Qianlong Emperor, as the successor of the Yongzheng Emperor before his death, became the first practitioner of this system. Qianlong, who had been on the throne for sixty years, openly fulfilled the promise he had made when he ascended the throne, passing the throne to the emperor's fifteenth son, The Future Jiaqing Emperor, and abdicating himself to become the last Taishang Emperor in Chinese history. Judging from the various measures taken by the Jiaqing Emperor after he ascended the throne, in fact, he was just a mediocre monarch who was only a shoucheng monarch, and he did not have the boldness of the Yongzheng Emperor's bold and reform-style rule, nor did he have the Qianlong Emperor's means of ruling with martial arts and vertical and horizontal control, except for the quick and chaotic handling of Hezhen, the Jiaqing Emperor's twenty-five years of ruling career could not find a bright spot, so his personal ability and means of rule were generally defined as mediocre. So why did the Wise Emperor Qianlong choose the mediocre and follow the trend of the Jiaqing Emperor as the heir to the empire? The main reason for this is actually a sentence: no one to choose!
First of all, we will make a simple combing of the sons of the Qianlong Emperor. Compared with many emperors of the Qing Dynasty, the heirs of the Qianlong Emperor were still prosperous, and Qianlong's concubines gave birth to a total of seventeen princes, originally the scope of the Qianlong Emperor's heirs was still very large, but because the Qianlong Emperor was the longest-lived emperor in China's history, the extra long standby time made him even survive several of his sons, including his most favored emperor's second son Yong Lian, the fifth son of the emperor Yong Qi, and the seventh son of the emperor, Yong Chun. So that by the end of Qianlong's later years, qianlong's surviving princes were only four princes, namely the eighth son of the emperor, Yongxuan, the eleventh son of the emperor, Yongxuan, the fifteenth son of the emperor, and Yongxuan, the seventeenth son of the emperor.
Even if only the four remaining princes were not all qualified to inherit the throne, the eldest of the four, the eighth son of the emperor, Yongxuan, was older, but his behavior was frivolous, his work was not decent, and his popularity was not very good, and he was publicly reprimanded by the Qianlong Emperor; his half-brother Emperor Yongxuan, the eleventh son of the emperor, although he was better at literature and good at calligraphy, the Qianlong Emperor was very disgusted by his habit of not riding heavy and imitating the Han Confucians, and also severely reprimanded him. Therefore, Yongxuan and Yongxuan were basically excluded from the possibility of being made crown princes, so the only remaining ones were the fifteenth son of the emperor born to Concubine Ling and the seventeenth son of the emperor, Yongxuan, and Yongxuan was not liked by the Qianlong Emperor because of his absurd behavior, so the throne of the crown prince was only the fifteenth son of the emperor. Compared with the several heirs secretly selected by Qianlong before, the fifteenth son of the emperor, Ying Yan, is neither outstanding nor excellent, in fact, in the eyes of the Qianlong Emperor, his fifteenth son of the emperor is not his best son, but he is the most suitable heir, this so-called appropriateness, we use a Qianlong's own inner word is "obedience". And this so-called obedience of Ying Yan was vividly expressed in Qianlong's four-year career as Emperor Taishang. Even in the years after Qianlong's death, judging from the jiaqing emperor's administrative policy, he was indeed a very obedient monarch, but his obedience, which was regarded by the Qianlong Emperor as an act of filial piety, was actually a kind of conformism and stubbornness, and a kind of mediocrity that lacked the courage and determination to reform.