On the 14th day of the first month of the 30th year of Daoguang of the Qing Dynasty (February 25, 1850), the sixty-nine-year-old Emperor Xuanzong Cheng hurriedly summoned the ministers of the Manchu and Han kings, announced the edict, established the fourth son of the emperor as the crown prince, and named the sixth son of the emperor as the prince, and then died. Pen? Interesting? Pavilion wWw. ｂiquge。 info In just an hour, the fourth elder brother, who had just become the prince, succeeded to the throne as emperor, which can be described as very lucky.

However, the seventh emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, who was twenty years old and changed to Xianfeng the following year, was doomed again and again as soon as he ascended to the pole. First of all, there was the external invasion, Tsarist Russia had already annexed a large area of Manchuria, the birthplace of the empire, in northern Xinjiang, and soon Britain and France began to launch the Second Opium War in southern Xinjiang. The second was the civil war, the rebellion of the people who had been smoking everywhere in the south of the country quickly ignited into the fire of the Taiping Rebellion, and soon the capital Tianjing was built, and the support of the Twist Army was divided into the "world" with the Manchu Qing Dynasty. What is even more unfortunate is that the Anglo-French forces captured Beijing in the tenth year of Xianfeng (1860), forcing him to set a historical record for the fall of the imperial capital 216 years after the Manchu Qing Dynasty took over Beijing, and died of illness on July 17 of the following year (August 21, 1861) at the age of 31.

Emperor Xianfeng, who was known as Emperor Xian by the temple name Wenzong, was a son of the Manchurian royal family, but he was quite educated because of the competition for the crown prince. When he got his wish to ascend to the throne, he also wanted to make a difference at first. For example, in the early days of his accession, in the face of the ministers, they all said that they had listened to virtue, and quickly punished the ministers Mu Zhang'a and Qiying, who were favored by his father, and used Lin Zexu to show his intention to "reform". I don't know that God does not bless me, and there will be endless external troubles and internal strife. He and his cronies were very superstitious about the traditional arithmetic of the Middle Ages. The "Zhou Yi" Weishu of the Two Han Dynasty doesn't say that every new dynasty will suffer the bad luck of "one hundred six yang and nine"? That is to say, every 106 years after the founding of the country, every 106 years of the founding of the country, will suffer from a great drought or similar bad luck nine times, and according to the traditional interpretation of the "Ming Yi" hexagram in the "Zhou Yi" made for Jizi, it is also said that its hexagram (from Xia Kun Shang) represents "the inner civilization and the outer suppleness, in order to suffer great difficulties". Since Emperor Xianfeng actually reigned for eleven and a half years, but suffered many hardships, the author of the "Qing History Manuscript" in the early years of the Republic of China, the following description should be said to be quite close to the historical reality: "Wenzong suffered the luck of Yangjiu, bowed to the Mingyi meeting, the external strong alliance, the internal evil competition, and the dying of a century, so there was no day of peace." ”

However, the author of Wen Zongji in the "Qing History Manuscript" went on to "evaluate" the emperor, saying that he was in an unfortunate situation, "and he can be virtuous and talented, have a good view, give the people the first place to be annoying, govern the army cautiously, and fill the position, and go out of the temple." To make the false year Yuyu, there is a later ambush! ”

The last two words are very interesting, which means that if Emperor Xianfeng had not died at an old age, and if his personal autocracy could have continued, then the "later troubles", that is, the Empress Dowager Cixi's three times to listen to the government, would not have appeared, and the Qing Empire might have lasted for hundreds of years.

History has never rejected assumptions. The fact is that Emperor Xianfeng's "temple calculation" not only failed, but even he himself turned into a wandering outlaw. In addition to many concubines, he also has Cao widows and the like who are privately recruited from the people, but he only has one son from the same palace maid Nala. Therefore, it is impossible for him to inherit the tradition of Emperor Yongzheng's secret establishment of a reserve, as his father Emperor Daoguang did, and he has the choice of establishing a reserve. Of course, he also had another choice, that is, like the tradition of the ancestors of the Xianbei people in the northern country, he set up a son to kill his mother, and under the pretext of following the precedent of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty who set up a young son and killed his mother in his later years. Legend has it that when Emperor Xianfeng was dying in Rehe, he secretly gave the queen an edict that if he found that the son of the Nala clan was arrogant and lawless, she could be executed, which proved that Emperor Xianfeng was familiar with the traditions of the Han and Wei dynasties, but it also proved that the emperor was incompetent. Knowing that the Manchu Qing Dynasty had the tradition of the dictatorship of the Queen Mother of "the mother is more important than the son", but he did not dare to offend the only mother, and pinned the hope of preventing the fall of power after death to the childless and gentle queen, wouldn't it just open the way for the widow to usurp power?

Emperor Xianfeng reigned for eleven and a half years, which was the life and death of the Qing Empire. But looking at the individual, this emperor should be the king of the fallen country. However, the empire did not fall. The paradoxes of the fall of the capital and the survival of the dynasty, the existence of only half of the empire and the name of the empire, the death of the monarch in exile and the restoration of his son, and so on, how to give a historically accurate explanation, at least the existing history textbooks, although there are many arguments, are difficult to convince the reader.

Paradoxes belong to history, and of course logic cannot be substituted for history. What is the historical truth?