Emperor Jiaqing has always been a behind-the-sle-back character, after all, Emperor Qianlong, who was a complete man in civil and martial arts before him. After the Jiaqing Emperor, the Daoguang Emperor broke out in the Opium War, which opened China's unretraceable modern history. Therefore, some people have always said that the Qing Dynasty was in decline at the hands of Emperor Jiajing, but when we look back on history, we will find that in fact, Emperor Jiaqing has always been a diligent and dedicated emperor, so what made Jiaqing go into decline?
Success is also Qianlong, and defeat is also Qianlong
When the moon is full, the water is full, and it overflows.
The Qing Dynasty began to unify the country from the Shunzhi Emperor, from the Kangxi Emperor to work hard, the Yongzheng Emperor carried on the past and forged ahead into the future, and the Qianlong Emperor finally ushered in the magnificent heyday of the Qing Dynasty, and as the Qianlong Emperor of this era, he enjoyed the dividends of the times and became the so-called Wenzhi and martial arts.
But the contradiction is the unity of opposites, when the Qing Dynasty reached its peak during the Qianlong Emperor's reign, it also meant that he was about to begin to decline, the most notable is the prevalence of corruption during the Qianlong period. In the 46th year of Qianlong, local officials at all levels in Gansu jointly embezzled money for disaster relief in the name of disaster relief, and the "Gansu Relief Case" occurred that shook the whole country. Among them, Wang Tingzan, the political envoy of Gansu, took the initiative to donate 40,000 taels of incorruptible silver to pay the soldiers, but Qianlong found that there was a trick behind it, and ordered the scholar A Gui and Li Shiyao, the acting governor of Shaanxi and Gansu, to investigate. The investigation found that Gansu officials took advantage of the donation system to convert donated grain into silver, collecting as much as 15094750 taels in cash, and there were layers of cover-up between officials at the upper and lower levels.
Coincidentally, corruption in the Qianlong period was already so arrogant, and the situation became even worse here when it came to Emperor Jiaqing, whose control and deterrence were not as good as his old father.
The most famous case during the reign of Emperor Jiaqing was the case of Li Yuchang. Li Yuchang was a jinshi in the thirteenth year of Jiaqing, and was sent to Shanyang County by Tiebao, the governor of Liangjiang. In order to fill his pockets, Shanyang County ordered Wang Shenhan to ask Li Yuchang to open more household accounts and increase the number of disaster relief workers, so as to embezzle more disaster relief money. Li Yuchang, who was upright, refused to cooperate and insisted on truthfully investigating the relief, which angered Wang Shenhan. The frenzied Wang Shenhan was afraid that Li Yuchang would expose his corrupt deeds, so he bribed Li Yuchang's servants and killed Li Yuchang with poison.
Wang Shenhan also bribed the prefect Wang Hub, fabricated evidence, and falsely claimed that Li Yuchang had committed suicide. Fortunately, Li Yuchang's uncle found blood stains from the relics, and after opening the coffin and conducting an autopsy, it was found that Li Yuchang had died of poisoning. Li Yuchang's uncle immediately went to Beijing to file a complaint, and after a review by Shandong Fuzhen and a strict interrogation by the Criminal Department, the truth of the case was revealed.
The corruption of local officials has become so arrogant that they threaten higher investigators, and they are even more lawless when it comes to ordinary people. When the people were boiling back, the foundation of the Qing Dynasty's rule had rotted.
The inescapable laws of history
The Qing Dynasty was the last feudal dynasty in Chinese history, and it was also the dynasty in which feudal political civilization developed to its peak. It can be said that if there is no influence of external factors, the inheritance of the Qing Dynasty will be much longer, and Emperor Jiaqing will also become an emperor with a better reputation.
However, it is precisely as I just said that the development of feudal political civilization has reached its peak, the political machine has a high degree of control over people's minds, and all kinds of new things have no way to develop. The germ of capitalism, represented by wage labor, which had appeared since the Ming Dynasty, was once again pressed to the ground by the more repressive Qing rulers.
So soon after Emperor Jiaqing ascended the throne, the famous White Lotus Rebellion broke out in Sichuan. The White Lotus Rebellion, which lasted for several years, was finally suppressed, but the rule of the Qing Dynasty had begun to loosen, and the southwest region was already ready to move.
From a historical and systemic point of view, the impact of the White Lotus Rebellion was very far-reaching, it was not only a failed peasant uprising, but also played a leading role in the development of the later Southern Gangs and even the Southern Revolutionary Party, and in the dark it ignited the fuse for the overthrow of the Qing Dynasty.
The feudal political civilization was eventually eliminated and replaced by a higher-level civilization, and the small-scale peasant economy was inevitably transformed by the tide of history, so the rule of the Qing Dynasty was bound to collapse. It was only the ambitions of the later Western powers for China in the process of primitive accumulation of capital that accelerated the process of this historical evolution, and the poor Jiaqing Emperor also became a witness to the turning point in history.