(Forbidden City)
In 1796, the Qianlong Emperor, who had been in power for sixty years, suddenly felt a deep tiredness.
The overwhelming folds were sent one after another, and the important matters across the country were one after another.
If being an emperor is to work day and night, then it is clear that the Qianlong Emperor is not a workaholic.
When he was young, he was a spirited middle-aged man, shrewd and strong, which brought the Qing Dynasty to the peak of national strength.
And now he has gradually aged and become a middle-aged and elderly man with a fat brain.
The character of this middle-aged and elderly man changed from diligence to laziness, and his personal hobby changed from governing the country to pleasure, in a word: the emperor has changed.
The Qianlong Emperor was a wise man, and of course he could also detect changes in himself.
Since you are no longer attached to the throne that has been sore ass, it is better to give up the throne directly.
The Emperor intended to give the throne to his fifteenth son, Aisin Kyora.
But for The Man who "sits at home and the throne comes from heaven," this is definitely not good news.
(Portrait of Young Jiaqing)
Because he knew that the Qianlong Emperor, that is, his own father, did not like himself at all.
In the early years, the emperor made his eldest son Yonglian the crown prince, but he did not expect that Comrade Yonglian was not in good health and died within two days.
The emperor also made his seventh son, Yong Chun, the crown prince, and the result was just as tragic, and Yong Chun died early, only two years old.
Both sons were born to the Qianlong Emperor's empress Dowager Fucha, and the two sons died violently one after the other, and when the mother's one was in a hurry, she also followed.
The emperor first lost his beloved son, and then lost his beloved wife, which was hated and angry.
He hated himself as the Son of Heaven, loved by all the people, and respected by the Nine-Five, but he could not even protect the lives of his wife and children.
This reality is both sad and ironic: the emperor can decide who can die, but he cannot decide who can live.
He was even more angry at why the eldest sons he had painstakingly cultivated had died one after another, but the sons who had come out of the house were living one by one, with large waists and round arms.
The emperor was very angry, and he transferred the death of the two princes to other sons, especially Shuzi, including of course the fifteenth son of the emperor, Yuanyan.
The reality that Yu Yan has to face is equally harsh.
If you want to be the emperor, then even if you are painstakingly plotting the throne, it can often only be a bamboo basket to hit the water.
But if you are originally passive and avoid the world, you just want to be an idle prince, but the emperor is pulling hard and pulling to make you the emperor, you are also dead or alive.
As the fifteenth son of the emperor, Comrade Ying Yan usually had difficulty even meeting the emperor' side, he had always been an ordinary prince who did not show the mountains and dew, was not excluded by people, but was never valued.
In the Qing Dynasty, the fate of most ordinary princes was the background board of the protagonist.
Ying Yan did not expect that this time he had become the protagonist.
On the first day of the first lunar month in 1796, the city of Beijing was full of joy, with flower lanterns shining high, the sound of firecrackers rising and falling, and the noise of speech.
Under such a lively scene, Yu Yan ascended the throne.
The name 颙琰 sounds very strange and awkward, so we may as well call him "Jiaqing" by his era name.
After all, it was the ascension to the throne, and it was always impossible to cry and mourn, and the Jiaqing Emperor planned to clean up his mood and think about the good.
The Great Qing Dynasty is vast and the fertile land is more than ten million miles, the emperor is the honor of ten thousand multipliers, and the welfare treatment of the emperor is definitely better than that of the prince.
Moreover, if you become an emperor and sit in the Forbidden City, then the whole world is your own decision, the heavens and the earth are big, and you are the biggest, isn't it beautiful?
(Portrait of Young Jiaqing)
But soon, Jiaqing realized a problem.
Although his father Qianlong gave up the throne, he did not give up power.
Don't talk about power, even the localities, Qianlong didn't bother to move.
Since the Qing Dynasty entered the Central Plains, the emperor was required to live in the Qianqing Palace of the Forbidden City according to the rules.
Since the Qianlong Emperor had taken the throne of Jiaqing and had become the Emperor Taishang, he should quickly pack up the rolls and move to the other halls.
But our Comrade Qianlong, one does not move the nest, the second does not move, directly and often lives in the Qianqing Palace and does not leave.
Qianlong moved or did not move, it did not matter to Jiaqing, because where to work is also a desk and a chair, but Qianlong also pointed fingers at his own work, occupying and not letting go, this matter is not authentic.
Emperor Qianlong's best friend in his life was called Hezhen.
Originally a minor official in the palace, brother Yan was promoted by the Qianlong Emperor in his early years and became a member of the imperial court.
In order to thank the emperor, He Yan began to help the emperor make money, how to earn? Half by doing business, half by corruption.
A large amount of real money and silver flowed into Hezhen's pocket, except for some of it left for himself to fill his own pockets, most of it still went to the hands of the Qianlong Emperor.
You may ask, what does an emperor want so much money for?
It may not be useful to other emperors, but for the Qianlong Emperor, it is a must.
This emperor once traveled six times to Jiangnan and traveled to the land of Suzhou and Hangzhou with thousands of people.
Just as the so-called "poor family and rich road", although the emperor is not poor, he also needs funds to travel.
Where does the funding come from?
Of course it came from Washu's pocket.
The emperor spent money like flowing water, and Washu could only become more corrupt to provide for the emperor's daily expenses.
Of course, it is also understandable to put something in your pocket.
Working for the emperor also required a salary.
So from a certain point of view, Comrade Hezhen was the "money bag" of the Qianlong Emperor.
This was the careful thinking of Qianlong and Hezhen, and it was also a small secret known to the Manchu ministers.
Now that the Qianlong Emperor has retired, in his old age, spending money is no longer so generous, but his old partner and Yan still can't stop.
And adult shops all over the country, business has long been done overseas, corruption is worse than ever, often thousands of two thousands of bribes.
The emperor doesn't spend any money, who are you corrupting for? Isn't it for your own sake?
When the Jiaqing Emperor was still the crown prince, he had a lot of opinions about the corruption of Comrade Hezhen, and after he ascended the throne, he immediately wanted to bring Hezhen to justice.
The emperor's handling of corrupt officials was originally a very pleasant thing, but this behavior was stopped by the Qianlong Emperor.
Jiaqing was puzzled, of course, he had to ask his father for an answer, but when he asked the question, Qianlong just smiled and did not speak.
He just looked at Jiaqing quietly.
The old Dragon Bell Emperor Taishang looked at the new emperor who was full of vigor and vigor in front of him, as if he had seen himself many years ago.
In 1799, Qianlong died, and the dragon rode on the guests.
(Portrait of the Qianlong Emperor)
His father died, and Jiaqing was finally able to take charge of the government.
The first thing he had to do, of course, was to bring justice to justice.
Comrade He yan, of course, is also very cooperative, there is no struggle, no resistance, everything is going very smoothly.
This old fritter who has been in the official arena for half a lifetime has already seen through everything.
The emperor praises you, you are a very popular subject, killing people and setting fires to the same gold belt.
If the emperor steps on you, even if you are loyal to you for eternity, you will have to end up in a different place.
Is Qianlong good to Hezhen?
No, Qianlong was the one who hated Hezhen the most.
The reason why he repeatedly protected Hezhen was nothing more than gritting his teeth and forbearance.
Qianlong knew that the extravagance and lavishness of the second half of his life had already made the treasury of the Qing Dynasty a fine, so in his lifetime, he had to use hezhen's ability to make money and accumulate a large amount of wealth.
Although the money fell into Hezhen's pocket for a while, in the final analysis, Hezhen only kept it on his behalf.
As long as he dies, Jiaqing will inevitably liquidate Hezhen, copy Hezhen's home, copy his hundreds of millions of real gold and silver, and the treasury of the Great Qing will be filled again?
(Wako image)
The above is what Jiaqing wanted to understand after he had copied Hezhen's home.
But for him, how his father painstakingly arranged it was no longer important, and now it was his time.
In this era, the emperor did a lot of things.
In the face of corrupt officials, raiding homes and yan are just appetizers, and the thunderous anti-corruption after the emperor is really caught off guard.
We know that the emperor with the greatest anti-corruption efforts in Chinese history was Zhu Yuanzhang, the Ming Emperor.
Because Taizu was born as a peasant and was deeply victimized by corrupt officials at the end of the Yuan Dynasty, he understood the people and hated corrupt officials, so the anti-corruption efforts were surprisingly large.
Jiaqing, on the other hand, had obviously read the Ming Shi Taizu Benji, greatly praised Zhu Yuanzhang's vigorous anti-corruption behavior, and himself drew a tiger according to the cat and carried out an action to catch greed and bribery.
But the strange thing is that the more the emperor is anti-graft, the more corrupt officials there are, and the emperor will catch ten today, and tomorrow he can come up with a hundred.
The anti-corruption work was not carried out, and the emperor began to deal with the problem of public order in the Qing Dynasty.
Speaking of this, we must blame Qianlong.
In the later period of this emperor's reign, he was very strict in controlling the minds of the common people and loved to engage in literal prison.
The literati complained about the poetry against each other, and if they did not do well, they committed the emperor's taboo, and the next day they had to be arrested by the emperor and beaten the board.
Ordinary people, in ordinary times, must also be careful in their words and deeds, and ensure that no sentence is heard by the people of the government, and the light sentence is sentenced to exile.
After the emperor was so whole, the people's lives were uneasy, and the days were uneasy, and the people began to rebel one after another.
The Qianlong Emperor was busy traveling, the people rebelled, anyway, it was a few small rural people, and the emperor didn't care at all.
By the time the Jiaqing Emperor ascended the throne, the small people in the countryside had developed into a vast army of uprisings, and the mess left by the old emperor would eventually be cleaned up by new people.
The emperor personally supervised the war, worked overtime, where there was a rebellion, where he went, stayed up late and worked overtime 996, the purpose was to hope that he could pay back the Qing Dynasty to the four seas and the world.
But the strange thing is that the more conscientiously the emperor works to quell the rebellion, the more rebellion there is.
One by one, the Chuanchu Sect, the Bandit Plague in the Southeast, the White Lotus Sect, and the Tianli Sect caught the emperor off guard.
In the eighteenth year of Jiaqing, hundreds of Tianli Sect members sneaked into the Forbidden City and almost gave the Qing royal family a pot.
(White Lotus Rebellion)
From this, we can find a law, that is, the more the emperor wants to do something well, the more he can't do anything.
The more you pursue something, the more you don't get anything.
According to the author, this actually has a lot to do with the character of the Jiaqing Emperor.
On the surface, the emperor was not idle for a day, busy work from morning to night, various decrees and policies kept coming out of the study room, and the emperor looked very diligent and very accomplished.
But in fact, Jiaqing himself is not a talented player, all his plans and ideas, systems and rules, are all borrowed from the old ancestors' shoucheng method, none of which is his own thought.
He did not follow his own path, but the path that others had taken.
The emperor's busyness is actually a kind of blind busyness, he is too busy to be meaningful, there is no purpose, he just hopes that this busyness can bring him a sense of security, and at the same time tell the world that the people of the world are not idle.
Of course, the emperor was very painful, not only painful, but also very confused, anxious, sad.
But the emperor can only go on, because the path of the emperor is so lonely.
When people evaluate Jiaqing, they generally say that the emperor is more mediocre, but as an author, I have a completely different view.
I think that although the Jiaqing Emperor was mediocre, he was not ordinary.
Mediocrity is talking about a person's ability, and ordinary is talking about a person's character.
The Jiaqing Emperor's ability may not be satisfactory, but his personality is rare in ancient and modern times, and can even be said to be second to none.
Of course, this is also obvious, after all, his temple name is "Renzong".
China has a long history, more than 5,000 years, a total of more than 400 emperors have been born, but there are only four temples called Renzong.
And these four are all great sages and good people.
Putting aside those complicated and heavy historical events, let's take a look at a detail of the Jiaqing Emperor's reign.
The emperor ruled for twenty-five years, including twenty-four years, and exempted the local money and grain tax every year, every year, and the wind and rain were not wrong.
According to statistics, the whole country owed the emperor more than four million stones of grain.
This historical record is only recorded in an inconspicuous little corner of the "Draft History of the Qing Dynasty", but I must take it out today to praise the Jiaqing Emperor.
(Jiaqing Emperor in his later years)
This is an emperor with a heart for the people.
He respected Kong and filial piety, despised military service, paid taxes thinly, treated ministers with courtesy and courtesy, and treated corrupt officials with vigor and fierceness, and he hoped that he could make the world a better place through his own efforts.
Even if the final result is only the criticism of people after sentence.
But I think Jiaqing never regrets everything he has done.
A man who has been poor all his life, has done his best, has no complaints, no regrets, he has fulfilled the mission of the emperor, and he has no shame.
Results are important, but are they really that important?
History has quietly left its answer.
The year 1820 was an unusual one.
There was a mutiny in Spain, the traditional feudal forces were attacked, and the constitutional monarchy was officially implemented in Spain.
Antarctica was discovered and Maine was incorporated into the United States.
Scientist Ottes discovered the magnetic effect of electric currents.
It was also in this year that the diligent but inactive Emperor ai Xinjueluo Yuanyan died.
The emperor went on a rampage, leaving people with an uncertain future.
This future has the turbulent changes in the Qing Dynasty and the impact of Western civilization again and again.
Some say this is a turning point, some say this is a new world, others say it's a feudal dynasty, the last sigh.