The Qing Dynasty was the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history and lasted for 296 years. The time of its demise has always been a hot topic of discussion, but there is one angle that is often overlooked, that is, it is almost the same as the existence of the Qing Dynasty - the literal prison. The Qing Dynasty's own practice of the literal prison was one of the reasons for its demise!
When learning Su Shi's poetry in middle school, the teacher talked about his poetic thoughts, and in order for everyone to better understand, he often supplemented his life experience to help everyone better understand his poetry! Among them, a big turning point in Su Shi's life is the Wutai poetry case. This was the literal prison of the Northern Song Dynasty, but at that time, Su Shi was gently sent down because he was interceded by everyone, but he was imprisoned for more than a hundred days, and he was demoted to Huangzhou, and the people who were affected by Zhu Lian could almost be said to be none, and he himself was only trapped in his career, and there was no major obstacle to his life! But the Qing Dynasty's literal prison is much more terrifying!
Although almost every dynasty had a literal prison, such as the famous death of Ji Kang, it was related to the literal prison, because he wrote the "Letter of Renunciation with Shan Juyuan", and sima Zhao hated and was sentenced to the punishment of waist beheading! There are also script prisons in each dynasty in later generations, but the total number of text prisons of all dynasties in Chinese history is not as high as that of one dynasty in the Qing Dynasty! According to the records: The Shunzhi Emperor practiced the literal prison seven times, Kangxi more than twenty times, the Yongzheng Emperor more than twenty times, and the Qianlong Emperor more than one hundred and thirty times!
Hu Qiguang's "History of Chinese Literary Disasters" said: "The long duration of the Qing Dynasty literary prison, the density of the literary network, the number of cases, the wide range of blows, the viciousness of fabricating crimes, and the ruthlessness of the means are all beyond the previous generation." It can be seen how bad the influence of the Qing Dynasty character prison is! Lu Xun: "For the sake of literal prison, so that scholars do not dare to govern history, especially do not dare to speak about modern affairs." "
According to the above-mentioned simple statistics, the Shunzhi Emperor practiced literal prison seven times in one dynasty, Kangxi more than twenty times, Yongzheng Emperor more than twenty times, and Qianlong Emperor more than one hundred and thirty times! Taking the Yongzheng Dynasty's literal prison as an example, many of the people affected by the literal prison at that time were still high-ranking officials:
Such as the eighth son of the emperor, the ninth son of the emperor, Nian Qianyao, Long Keduo, the governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, Yue Zhongqi, and so on, and even had imperial relatives and members of the imperial court. Among them, Nian Qianyao and Long Keduo were even the ministers who helped the Yongzheng Emperor ascend the throne, and for a time they once had power in the opposition! It can be seen that many people have been affected, even high-ranking officials!
Moreover, the number of people affected was very large, not only limited to the Han, but also the Manchus. For example, Shi Chen, the rebbe attendant of zhenghongqi, because he wrote "frost invaded the sideburns and sighed poorly", "autumn colors recruit people to be lazy on the dynasty", "should take care of Chang'er's family", such poems made the Qianlong Emperor dissatisfied! Thinking that he was satirizing his old age and dissatisfied with the imperial court because he said that he did not want to go to the court, but also because he described "Chang'an" as his home in the poem, Qianlong thought that he had forgotten his Manchu identity, compared himself to a Han chinese who did not have a very bad conscience, and demoted him to Heilongjiang.
There was also Echang, the governor of Guangxi, who did not write poetry specifically, he only called the Mongols "Hu'er" in his letters with friends, and the Qing court always implemented the pro-Manchu and Mongolian family policy, because mongolia guarded the frontier for the Qing Dynasty, and it was difficult for people to rebel! As soon as Qianlong knew that Echang had actually called his good friend, his own relative-like friend, "Hu'er", such a very sarcastic title, he directly ordered Echang to cut himself off!
He Xilai's preface to Zhou Zongqi's "Record of Character Prison" said: "The Qing Dynasty text prison was mainly concentrated in the early period, with four generations of kings of Shunzhi, Kangxi, Yongzheng and Qianlong, which lasted for more than 130 years. No matter how long the time is, how many cases there are, or how large the scale, the breadth of the plants, the renovation of the tricks, and the cruelty of the means, in China's feudal era, there is no precedent. "It can be seen that the influence of the Qing Dynasty's literal prison is so bad!
Su Shi and Ji Kang mentioned above were all parties to the Literal Prison, but although Su Shi was degraded and Ji Kang was beheaded, there were no people who died by their involvement! And the number of people implicated and dead in the Qing Dynasty's literal prison is very large! For example, the famous Ming Shi case not only opened the coffin of the dead and whipped the corpse, but almost all the people involved were executed. For example, Zhuang Tinglong was killed in a coffin, his brother Zhuang Tinglong was cursed, and Li Lingzhe, a former attendant of the Ministry of Rites who had done the preface to the Ming History Case, and his four sons were executed. The six fathers and sons mentioned in the prologue, Zhu Youming, were executed. All school books, engraved books, sold books, and implicated in books are killed. More than seventy people were wronged in the "History of Ming" case, and most of the wives of the deceased were distributed to the frontier, and the breadth of the plants was heinous.
The commonly implicated texts in the text prison are "poems", "articles", "anthologies" and "history books", which are the main forms of writing that are easily implicated in the text prison. However, the Qing Dynasty's text prison affected a wider range of text forms than this: test questions, diaries, manuscripts, list texts, table texts, family rules, genealogies, county records, inscriptions, epitaphs, plaques, submissions, posters, dictionaries, wooden stamps, etc. At that time, the surviving form of the text or any carrier that appeared in the word could be beaten into a text prison! It can be seen that the intensity of the blow is great!
Because the Qing Dynasty's literary prisons spread widely, were widely affected, and the number of times was also the highest of the feudal dynasties, it led to the opposite form of the literati at that time and the literati of the Ming Dynasty who dared to fight against the monarchy and became more and more courageous! People dare not speak out for fear of making mistakes, although the Qing Dynasty scholars and doctors were not punished much, but this further shows the suppression of people in the literal prison, and the impunity is because no one dares to raise objections. The backbone of Chinese intellectuals was directly broken by the rulers of the Qing Dynasty, and it was completely out of the spirit of the Ming Dynasty!
Not only that, the cultural dictatorship of the Qing Dynasty also imprisoned social innovation, resulting in China's weakness and poverty. As a result of the revision of the Siku Quanshu, almost all books in the world that deal with ideological, historical, political, and national issues were banned and destroyed. Not only that, but a large number of books on pure science, technology, and economics were also destroyed, so the weakness of the Qing Dynasty was related to the control of the culture of terror they practiced!
The cultural horror atmosphere at that time led the Qing people to immerse themselves in the proofreading of ancient books! Therefore, the development of hermeneutics in the Qing Dynasty is quite good for the development of the feudal dynasty! It has laid a great foundation for the development of "primary schools" in later generations! The essence of the literal hell is still the cultural means of thought control practiced by the feudal rulers in order to maintain their rule! But the Qing Dynasty's literal prison is too cruel and shocking!