Qing history manuscripts and other historical materials record that Kangxi was the most diligent emperor in history, bar none. When I was eighteen years old, I was overworked from studying. As for the hemoptysis, I still refused to rest. In history, another emperor, also from the Qing Dynasty, was so tired that he vomited blood, but it was caused by indulgence. This emperor was Xianfeng. History books say: "The sound and appearance are both good, which is unexpected." In the end, he died of vomiting blood due to excessive debauchery. Looking at the rise and fall of the past dynasties, success has always been due to diligence and extravagance. In this article, Baichuan will compare and describe the behavior of these two emperors.
Kangxi, named Aixinjueluo Ye Xuan, was born on May 4, 1654, Manchu, male, born in Beijing, and the fourth emperor of the Qing Dynasty. He is known in history as "one emperor through the ages." The author summarizes Kangxi's "Best of Six Histories": First, he was the emperor who reigned the longest, ruling the Qing Dynasty for 61 years; second, he was the emperor who knew the most languages. Kangxi not only understood Chinese, Manchu, Mongolian, and Tibetan, but also understood English, Russian, French, German and other foreign languages, including Greek. The third is the emperor with the best martial arts, who can shoot arrows from left to right on horseback and can kill up to 200 rabbits a day; the fourth is the most diligent emperor. When I was 18 years old, I was overworked from studying. As for the hemoptysis, I still refused to rest. Five is the emperor with the lightest taxes. During his reign, he has always resolutely implemented the policy of "never increasing taxes" and even reduced taxes as appropriate during times of famine; he was the emperor with the most concubines in the Sixth Palace. During the reign of Kangxi, there were more than 55 concubines with official titles, leaving many beautiful legends of talented men and beautiful women in history.
Kangxi’s appearance is still very imperial. He has a round face, full air, long crescent eyebrows, graceful appearance, almond-shaped leopard eyes, elegant demeanor, straight nose bridge, wide mouth, decent and elegant manners, protruding earlobes, great wealth, mustache, solemn wisdom. Although he is no more than 1.6 meters tall, his front and back look majestic. In recent years, experts from the China Criminal Police Academy have used modern high-tech computer technology to restore the appearance of Emperor Kangxi, which is the image described above. Authoritative sources confirmed: "Ninety-nine percent of him is close to Kangxi's fifty years old!"
Kangxi was the third son of Emperor Shunzhi Fulin of the Qing Dynasty. Kangxi's mother, Tong Jia, was the daughter of Tong Tulai, the commander-in-chief of the Han army. When Kangxi was eight years old, his father died. Two years later, his mother left him.
Kangxi was brought up by his grandmother, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang. As the emperor, the Kangxi family fell into decline. His wife, Strengthening the Company, blessed him with 55 children, including 35 sons and 20 daughters. People often say that having more children means more blessings, but being born into an imperial family is full of dangers and ups and downs.
In order to compete for the position of successor of Emperor Kangxi, father and son turned against each other, brothers became enemies, and the Kangxi family was in danger. In 1674, Emperor Kangxi made Yin Tan, the one-year-old second son of the emperor born to the empress, the crown prince, but he was deposed decades later due to his own quality problems and the formation of partisanship in North Korea. After the prince was deposed, the princes coveted the throne, and the conflicts became more acute. So he deposed the crown prince and established a new crown prince. However, Kangxi still could not tolerate him forming a party and deposed the crown prince three years later. In 1722, at the end of his life, Kangxi passed the throne to his fourth son, Yin_.
Kangxi was the longest reigning emperor in the history of the Qing Dynasty. In Beijing, he won the wars against San Francisco and Tsarist Russia, and eliminated the Han regime in Taiwan Province, which demonstrated Kangxi's outstanding military command skills. On the other hand, Kangxi defeated his political enemy Obai when he was a teenager, and used the "literary prison" to attack Han dissidents when he was old. Kangxi established the "Duolun Alliance" to replace the war and contact various Mongolian ministries; it guaranteed the Qing government's territorial control over Heilongjiang with a treaty. During the Kangxi period, Taiwan Province was also recovered, creating a prosperous era of Kangxi and Qianlong. He was a wise monarch and a great statesman.
Let’s take a look at Emperor Xianfeng again. Emperor Xianfeng was
number one, greedy for beauty. In the summer resort, he still didn't care about the wind and rain outside the window, he just wanted to enjoy himself. The book records that Yi Yin ignored his defeat and took his concubines to the military parade garden to express his amusement and self-narcosis. According to unofficial records, the Shanxi widow Cao was a beautiful woman with small feet who liked to decorate her shoes with pearls. When Emperor Xianfeng entered the palace, he loved it the most. In the face of a national crisis, he was still immersed in beauty and made no progress.
Second, be greedy for silk and bamboo. He moved a troupe to Chengde and sang "Flower Sing" in the morning and "Oratorio" in the afternoon. They performed indoors in the cold weather and performed on "Ruyi Island" in the summer. Be happy every day. When Xianfeng fled to Rehe to avoid disaster, he did not forget to ask the palace troupe to sing for him. Once, during a performance, he publicly admonished the actors that they had mispronounced a word. The actor said that the old score was marked this way, and he replied: "The old score is wrong!"
Third, greedy drinking. Salty, greedy, drunk, crazy. Unofficial history wrote: "Wenzong was addicted to alcohol, and would get angry every time he got drunk. Every time he was angry, one or two attendants or maids would suffer, and even the people you loved would be humiliated. Those who survived and regretted it when they woke up would They get favors and rewards to compensate for their pain, but they will fall back into their old ways after being drunk for a few minutes.”
Fourth, greed for opium. Not long after Xianfeng came to the throne, he violated the ancestral precepts and took opium, euphemistically calling it "longevity and wishful thinking ointment". Moreover, Xianfeng used opium to stimulate and anesthetize himself during the Rehe period.
Xianfeng treated himself like this, so naturally he was not far from death. According to relevant historical records, as early as Beijing, Emperor Xianfeng had been consumed by alcohol and sex, had a sallow face and thin muscles, and often coughed.
Later, the doctor prescribed a prescription, saying that deer blood is pure yang and can be drank for a long time to nourish yin and strengthen yang. So Emperor Xianfeng raised more than a hundred deer and drank their blood every day. Later, when they arrived in Rehe, Lu stayed in Beijing, but he didn't know how to take care of himself and indulged in sexual activities all day long.
In July of the eleventh year of Xianfeng, the old habit finally returned. This time without the nourishment of deer blood, Emperor Xianfeng was finally on the verge of death. On the 15th, Emperor Xianfeng became seriously ill. Before his death, he made Zaichun the crown prince and appointed eight of his confidants as ministers of life. Two days later, the 31-year-old Emperor Xianfeng died in Rehe Palace.
There is a thousand-character saying called "Persist in elegant sports", which literally translates to "persist in good elegant sentiments". Although they were both emperors of the Qing Dynasty, Xianfeng did not insist on elegant exercise, which made his ancestor Kangxi very embarrassed.