Ai Xin Jue Luo Yixuan, also known as Emperor Xianfeng of the Qing Dynasty, was the ninth emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty. As we all know, his battle for the throne with his sixth brother Yi Bi was filled with all kinds of wild history rumors, which became a resource for people to talk about after dinner.
When he was planned by his teacher Du Shoutian, he worked hard to seize the throne, but he was not greeted by the supreme glory of the Ninth Five-Year Plan, but by the anxiety brought about by external humiliation and internal strife. Mao Haijian, a well-known contemporary expert in modern history, also lamented with sympathy that he was a "son of bitter destiny."
The Xianfeng Emperor Yixuan took over the emperor's throne from his father, the Daoguang Emperor, and at the same time, he also took over a series of "messes" left by his father, and these historical problems can even be traced back to the reign of his great-grandfather, the Qianlong Emperor.
Since the Qing Dynasty entered the customs in 1644, after the efforts of the Kangxi and Yongzheng dynasties, it finally ushered in the last prosperous era in the history of China's feudal dynasty in the Qianlong period - the kangqian dynasty. However, at the other end of the peak is the cliff, when the capitalist countries led by Britain in the West launched a vigorous industrial revolution in search of national prosperity and strength, the self-contained Manchu Qing began to go downhill, or even fall off a cliff.
The various social problems accumulated since then have continued to erupt, and finally in Xianfeng, they have erupted - the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom has risen and occupied half of the country, and when the Xianfeng Emperor died in 1861, the city of Nanjing was still in the hands of the Taiping Army. At the same time, the Anglo-French army invaded the city of Beijing in 1860 and burned the Yuanmingyuan, and the Xianfeng Emperor could only "hunt north" in a hurry, and finally died at the summer resort. Two very influential events in modern China have fallen on his head, and his experience cannot but be described as bumpy.
After he ascended to power in 1850, the first local official document he received was a report from Li Yuanfa, a displaced man from Hunan, who had sneaked into Guangxi. However, this is only the opening statement of a series of local unrest that followed, starting from the White Lotus Sect uprising in Jiaqing, and the turmoil and turmoil in various places has never stopped. By the time Xianfeng ascended the throne at the end of Daoguang, it had increased to more than a dozen cases of large and small sizes every year.
Eventually, the Jintian Rebellion, which caused Hong Xiuquan and others, once hit the foot of the capital. After fifty or sixty years of political corruption, most bureaucrats are like walking dead, vigorously plundering the people, and doing their best to prevaricate and perfunctory when things go wrong. The invasion of foreign enemies intensified social contradictions, and all kinds of accumulated evils spread like a plague. And the only one who can bear all this is the highest symbol of the empire, the Xianfeng Emperor.
Most of the impressions of the Xianfeng Emperor in the minds of modern people are faint and cowardly, stealing the throne of the virtuous Yi Bi. In addition, having his empress Dowager Nala, later Empress Dowager Cixi, participate in government affairs was the initiator of his later seizure of power and treason. However, Yi Xuan, who had just ascended to the throne, had great ambitions and took the example of the Kangxi Emperor of shengzu to create another prosperous era. He was diligent in government affairs, revitalized the chaogang, dismissed the faint and old Mu Zhang'a and Qi Ying, and boldly used a group of new people. I slept almost only three or four hours a day.
However, such diligent efforts have not been exchanged for local stability and the prosperity and strength of the country. On the contrary, the rebellion of Hong Yang and others in Guangxi not only did not suppress it, but ran from the Pearl River Basin to the Yangtze River. In 1842, Britain, which had gone away with the Treaty of Nanking, fought back together with France and set fire to the Old Summer Palace. The efforts of night and day did not have an ideal result, and Xianfeng, who was originally weak-willed, suffered such a major blow, and after being sad and depressed, he could only indulge in sound and find a sense of accomplishment that belonged to the emperor from other places.
If he was only the head of an ordinary family, it would lead to the fall of a family at most, but as the captain of the Great Qing, his depression caused the entire empire to fall into a bottomless abyss.
In the dispute over the crown prince in the last years of Daoguang, almost all people sighed for the Daoguang Emperor to give up the virtuous YiShu and choose the mediocre Yixuan. However, from another point of view, from the perspective of the Daoguang Emperor, his choice naturally had his considerations. The Daoguang Emperor himself was an extremely mediocre monarch, who adhered to the "Ancestral Family Law" for more than forty years of his reign and was extremely conservative, and in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, when the times were gradually changing, his conservatism was also the reason for the decline of the later Qing government.
The "capable" Yi Bi was extremely impressed by "reform and innovation" in the hearts of the ministers, and the Daoguang Emperor naturally knew it. Therefore, from his personal psychology, although Yi Xi's talent is not as good as Yi Bi, he is "honest and honest", and he can inherit the cause left by his ancestors and will not change.
However, Seion lost his horse, knew the misfortune, and Yi Xuan tried his best to obtain the right to inherit the throne, which was the beginning of his tragic life. If the world had remained the same at that time, then he would not have had so many controversies and would have been as safe and secure as his father as the "Second Daoguang Emperor". However, it was a world full of changes and turmoil, and without great talent, how could it hold the rudder of the Qing court in the midst of wind and rain?
Throughout his career as emperor, he had hardly succeeded in accomplishing a major event.
The taiping heavenly kingdom and the results of the Second Opium War have been discussed earlier, and the policies he introduced have all ended in failure. The "Lijin", the Xiang Army, and the Prime Minister's Office of State Affairs that appeared during the Xianfeng period were all policies or institutions that were conducive to the current situation, but Xianfeng was reluctant to these policies from the heart.
In terms of employing people, the most trusted of the local ministers was Ye Mingchen, the governor of Liangguang, who later died in India. However, it was precisely because of his self-sufficiency that a series of negotiations with the British failed during his stay in Guangzhou, which led to the joint war between Britain and France against China, which eventually led to Xianfeng fleeing rehe and returning to the capital in a coffin.
However, Zeng Guofan, whom he blindly suppressed, eventually suppressed the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom and continued his life for the Qing Dynasty for half a century. The last thing he did before his death was to set up eight Ministers of State headed by Su Shun, seven of whom were sent to accompany him by his wife and brother 73 days after his death...
Although history cannot be assumed, we should make a hypothesis. Yi Xi did not become an emperor at the beginning, just an ordinary prince and nobleman, would he live a happier life?
Although he is no longer the king of a country, does not have the status and supreme power of the Nine-Five, but has the "freedom" that is difficult for the emperor to have, it is not comfortable to play in the mountains and rivers. There are no three palaces and six courtyards, but at the same time, he is free from the shackles of the ancestral family law, and he is free to interact with the Han women he likes...
Thus he is no longer a god, but he no longer has to pretend to be a god. The Xianfeng Emperor Yixuan, ordinary people's lives may be more suitable for him.
Draft/Bare White