In the 42nd year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor made his fourth tour of the south. On the way to the south, he heard that Mei Wending, a gongsheng student in Anhui Province, was quite accomplished in mathematics, so he asked the minister to collect Mei Wending's writings and personally study them. After studying, Mei Wending was given a high evaluation. Two years later, the Kangxi Emperor made his fifth tour of the south, and at this time he still did not forget Mei Wending, so he summoned Mei Wending and talked with him for a long time to reward him.
If we define the last ten years of the Kangxi Emperor's life as his later years, then the Kangxi Emperor on the Fifth Southern Tour has entered his old age. But his cultural enthusiasm in his later years has not diminished in the slightest compared with his early years. Taking mathematics as an example, after meeting Mei Wending, in order to let Mei Wending succeed him, he summoned Mei Wending's grandson Mei Wancheng to the capital and trained him for further study. The author believes that this move seems to be ordinary, but in fact it is of great significance - Mei Zhencheng took advantage of this opportunity to read a large number of books in the royal Mengyangzhai and achieved outstanding results, and later, he proposed to re-study some ancient books on algebra. Needham's "History of Science and Technology in China Volume III" mentions that Chinese algebra was brilliant in the Song Dynasty and The Yuan Dynasty, but it declined in the Ming Dynasty; and in the Qing Dynasty, long after European algebra was introduced, Mei Yicheng and others recognized chinese algebra that was hidden under unaccustomed languages and re-carried out relevant research.
In the 51st year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor appointed Mei Yancheng as the editor-in-chief and asked him to edit an important mathematical classic, "The Essence of Mathematics". In his later years, the Kangxi Emperor single-handedly grasped this work, and a few years later, the editing of the book was completed. This is a work that reflects the highest level of Chinese mathematics at that time. What I want to say is that the cultural engineering of the imperial court was originally part of politics, and the mathematical achievements of the Qing Dynasty were better than those of the Ming Dynasty, and who can say that it has nothing to do with the Kangxi Emperor in his later years? As Liang Qichao said: "Under the autocratic regime, the quality of the monarch has a great influence on the whole country, so he (the Kangxi Emperor) of course became a person with a relationship in academic history." ”
The kangxi emperor's achievements in his later years were not only reflected in cultural engineering, but in his later years he was also fascinated by agriculture. In fact, as early as the age of 19, he presided over the Tian Ceremony. The so-called tianli is that the emperor personally cultivates the land in front of officials and ministers, so as to encourage the whole society to attach importance to agriculture. Later, he built Fortress Garden in Beijing, and often cultivated the land in Fortress Garden by hand, planting various crops by hand. King Louis XVI of France loved to make locks and repair locks, and Ming Xizong loved to do carpentry. Many people may think that farming was to the Kangxi Emperor, just as lock making and repairing locks was to Louis XVI, and carpentry was to Ming Xizong. However, after seeing one of the things that the Kangxi Emperor did in his later years, the author believes that this is definitely not the case.
This year, when the Kangxi Emperor inspected the Fortress Garden, he found that one rice stalk was significantly higher than the other rice stalks, and the other rice seeds were not yet ripe, but this one was already ripe. Therefore, the Kangxi Emperor collected it and tried to plant it. A few years later, new rice seeds were cultivated, and he gave them the name "Imperial Rice". In the 53rd year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor, who had entered the late years, gave Suzhou Weaving Li Xu and Jiang Ning Weaving Cao Fu a stone of imperial rice seeds, so that they could try to plant double-season continuous crops in the south. Although at that time, Li Xu and Cao Fu failed to try to breed, but the following year, the Kangxi Emperor sent special personnel to guide and continue to try seeds, and achieved success. The government then began to promote the technology in the South. Previously, rice continuous cropping in southern China was only double-cropping of glutinous and japonica, but the Kangxi Emperor broke the tradition of continuous cropping of glutinous japonica and realized double-cropping of japonica rice of the same species. Soon, this double-season continuous cropping system was popularized among farmers in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Anhui, Jiangxi and other provinces and regions, which increased grain production in the south.
It was not enough to do so, and in his later years the Kangxi Emperor also drastically reduced the taxes of peasants. In the 49th year of Kangxi, the Kangxi Emperor ordered that all taxes in nine provinces be exempted for one year; in the 50th year of Kangxi, he ordered that all taxes in six provinces be exempted for one year; and in Kangxi 51, all taxes in four provinces were exempted for one year. As a result, in three years, the taxes of the eighteen provinces in Guannei and Fengtian provinces outside China were reduced. The total amount of tax exempted within three years was close to the fiscal revenue of the Qing Dynasty at that time. In the year 56 of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor ordered that the peasants' levies be reduced by two silver. Among the Chinese dynasties, the Qing Dynasty was originally a dynasty with relatively light taxes, and one of the means by which the Qing authorities attracted the hearts and minds of the people was to alleviate the increasingly heavy taxes since the middle of the Ming Dynasty. The book "The Society of the Remnants of the Early Qing Dynasty" points out that the Kangxi period was the period when the Qing Dynasty had the most tax reductions and reductions, and by the 49th year of kangxi, the tax reductions and exemptions during the Kangxi period had "exceeded 10,000 million in total". And we can see that the policy of "tax reduction and reduction" was still implemented in an orderly manner in the later years of the Kangxi Emperor. In the 51st year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor implemented the famous policy of "breeding people and never adding them", which was the first time in Chinese history that the "poll tax" was abolished. Until the 19th century, some people praised this policy as a sweep away the "two thousand years of harsh government".
The most criticized aspect of the Kangxi Emperor's later years was that the excessive looseness of the bureaucracy led to the beginning of corruption. This is true. However, the anti-corruption in the late Kangxi period was not without highlights. The author gives an example.
In the late Kangxi Dynasty, Zhang Boxing was appointed Inspector of Jiangsu, and his superior was the Governor of Liangjiang, Gari. Kari was originally a courtier. In the 50 years of the Kangxi Imperial Examination, Ka Li also relied on the sale of the name of "lifting people" and obtained 500,000 taels of stolen silver. The matter was reported to the Kangxi Emperor by Zhang Boxing. The Kangxi Emperor then appointed a number of ministers to try. In the face of the trial, Kali denied what he had done and accused Zhang Bo of committing 7 "crimes." Although the Manchu-Han ethnic relations in the late Kangxi Period had eased up a lot compared with the early years of the Qing Dynasty, there was still a tendency above the imperial court to "be heavy on Han and light on Han", with Ka Li being a Manchu official and Zhang Boxing being a Han official, and the ministers were even more partial to Ka Li. In this regard, the Kangxi Emperor learned the ins and outs of the matter through the investigation and secret performance of his own cronies, Li Xu, the Weaver of Suzhou, and after that, the Kangxi Emperor directly said to the ministers who tried the case: "The Ka Li has experienced the work of the people, and his integrity cannot be trusted, and if there is no Zhang Boxing, the Jiangnan region will be exploited by him in half." Not only that, but the Kangxi Emperor also told the ministers about The framing of Chen Pengnian by Ka Li, trying to make the ministers understand that Ka Li had sinister intentions--Chen Pengnian was the prefect of Suzhou and was at odds with Ka Li.
In order to overthrow Chen Pengnian, Ka Li copied Chen Pengnian's poem "Tiger Hill" and reported it to the Kangxi Emperor, insisting that Chen Pengnian's poems contained the words "disobedience" and wanted to create a "literal prison" by the emperor's hand. The Kangxi Emperor was more sober-minded than the later Qianlong Emperor, and he never caught the wind and shadows on the poetry of the scholar, and he soon acquitted Chen Pengnian and became disgusted with Ka Li. After the persuasion of the Kangxi Emperor, the ministers who tried the case still insisted on removing Ga li and Zhang Boxing from their posts together. The Kangxi Emperor was even more aware of the need to handle the case fairly, otherwise it would not only be detrimental to the integrity of the officialdom and the fairness of the examinations, but also to the relations between the Manchu and Han nationalities. In the end, the decision was made: "Zhang Boxing will remain in his original post, and Ka Li will be dismissed from his post according to the discussion." ”
Of course, the kangxi emperor's achievements in his later years did not stop at the above. In addition, in the 44th year of the Kangxi Dynasty, the Kangxi Emperor also ordered the compilation and revision of the Quan Tang Poems. In the 56th year of kangxi, the Kangxi Emperor also accepted the advice of the chancellor and implemented the land policy of "Ding losing with the land", which greatly reduced the economic burden of the landless and landless peasants; everyone praised the Yongzheng Emperor's policy of "spreading ding into mu", in fact, "spreading ding into mu" was the inheritance and development of "Ding losing with the land" in the last year of Kangxi. In his later years, the Kangxi Emperor also invaded Anzang and expelled the Dzungar army that had invaded Tibet, after which the Kangxi Emperor began to garrison troops in Tibet, and since then Tibet has had the army of the central government stationed for a long time. Since the incorporation of Tibet into the territory of China by the Yuan Dynasty, the Central Dynasty has been implementing a policy of bondage against Tibet for hundreds of years, and by the end of the Kangxi Dynasty of the Qing Dynasty, the "policy of bondage" became "substantive rule", so that the Kangxi Emperor made an important contribution to the laying of the territory of southwest China. In the second year of successful enlistment in Anzang, the Kangxi Emperor unfortunately fell ill and died.
The Kangxi Emperor persisted in his struggle until his old age, to the last year of his life, and finally achieved consummation. What does this mean: Any cause that benefits the country and the people must be achieved by relying on the spirit of not forgetting the original intention and never being unswerving.