岳樂 Yuèlè

In the fifteenth year Yuele's army took Pingxiang, and so pressed on Changsha. He memorialised: "The enemy's boats are massed below the walls of Changsha, and our army has no boats and can hardly meet them. The woods near Changsha are quite thick; I ask that seventy warships be allotted first, and that the Governor-General and Governor also be ordered to send officers to fell timber and build boats." This was done as he asked. In the eighth month an edict said: "I hear that the prince has recovered Pingxiang and gone straight on to Changsha, and I am very pleased. Let the prince care well for the people, so that their hardships are eased; even those who were forced to follow the rebels are all my children, and should be won over with special care." In the sixteenth year he sent troops who defeated the enemy at Liuyang, took more than a thousand heads, and took Pingjiang. In the seventeenth year he defeated the enemy at Qijiadong. Sangui's general Lin Xingzhu and others came from Xiangtan to surrender. In the ninth month, after Sangui had died, an edict urged Yuele to advance. Yuele asked to go to Yuezhou to direct the armies. The emperor ordered the Grand General Chani to plan the taking of Yuezhou, and Yuele to keep up the attack on Changsha. In the first month of the eighteenth year Yuezhou surrendered. The rebels at Changsha also abandoned the city and fled, and so he entered Changsha and sent troops to recover Xiangtan. Soon, together with Labu's army, he took Hengzhou and Baoqing, and left troops to hold them. Joining forces again with Labu to attack Wugang, he broke the enemy at Yanxi in Baoqing, took several hundred heads, and captured forty boats. When the army halted at the Ziyang River, the enemy made camp on the far bank; the army crossed straight over, sent troops round behind the enemy and attacked from both sides, and the enemy broke and fled. Sangui's generals Wu Guogui and Hu Guozhu held a pass with twenty thousand men; cannon fire killed Guogui, and the pass was taken. The Beizi Zhangtai pursued the enemy to Mugua Bridge, and so took Wugang and Fengmu Ridge. An edict recalled Yuele to the capital and had him hand over his commission and seal to Zhangtai. In the first month of the nineteenth year an edict was issued praising Yuele's merits. When Yuele reached the capital, the emperor performed the ceremony of welcome in the outskirts twenty li south of the Lugou Bridge. Edit

Early in Shunzhi there was a man in the household of Zhou Kui, an imperial in-law of the former Ming, who called himself the Ming Heir Apparent; old palace women and officials of the Heir Apparent's household were made to examine him, and found that he was not. When Sangui rebelled, there was also a man in the capital named Zhu Cimen who called himself the Third Heir Apparent, secretly proclaimed a new era named Guangde, gathered a following and set fires to raise a revolt; the plot failed, and Cimen escaped. When his followers were interrogated, they said that his real name was Yang Qilong. When Yuele was stationed with his army at Fengmu Ridge, he found Zhu Cican in a Buddhist monastery at Xinhua, who said he was the eldest son of the Zhuanglie Emperor: at the time of the disaster brought by the Chuang Wang [Li Zicheng] he had fled to Nanjing, where the Prince of Fu put him in prison; released as a commoner, he became a monk under the monk Xiumu, and wandered between Yongzhou and Baoqing. Because Sangui was treacherous and faithless, he had been about to raise troops to denounce him, but stopped when Sangui died. Now Yuele brought Cican to the capital, and an edict had Cimen's followers brought to see him; again they did not know each other, and so he was beheaded. Edit

In the twentieth year Yuele again took charge of the Imperial Clan Court. In the twenty-seventh year, with Yabu, Prince Jian of the First Rank, he went to the Sunite country to guard against Ga'erdan. In the second month of the twenty-eighth year he died and was given a posthumous name. In the twenty-ninth year the Beile Nuoni accused Yuele of having listened to slander when in charge of the Imperial Clan Court and wrongly convicting Nuoni of unfilial conduct; Yuele was reduced after his death to Prince of the Second Rank, and his posthumous name was revoked. Edit

Yuele had twenty sons, three of whom held ranks: Yunduan, Ma'erhun and Jingxi. Yunduan was made Prince Qin of the Second Rank, was reduced to Beizi over a matter, and was then stripped of his rank over another. Jingxi was made Prince Xi of the Second Rank. When Yuele was found guilty, Jingxi was reduced to Duke Who Guards the State; when he died, the rank was not passed on. Ma'erhun inherited Yuele's rank. Ma'erhun loved learning and wrote well, and Yunduan too was good at poetry and song lyrics. Ma'erhun also compiled the poems of the princes and nobles of the imperial clan as the Chen'e Collection, and many well-known scholars of the day kept company with him. In the forty-eighth year he died and was given the posthumous name Yi. His son Huaqi inherited. In the fifty-eighth year he died and was given the posthumous name Jie. In the twelfth month of the first year of Yongzheng an edict said: "In the past Yuele, Prince An of the Second Rank, flattered and attached himself to the regents and often offended my late father, who by his grace pardoned him to the end; yet his sons have shown no gratitude at all, scheming against one another and seeking advancement, vainly hoping for ranks. Ma'erhun and Huaqi died young one after the other, and the rank has long stood vacant. Yuele's sons Wu'erzhan and others and his grandsons Sehengtu and others show their resentment in their words and faces. Yunsi, Prince Lian of the First Rank, has moreover indulged in sowing discord and freely spread slander. The rank of Prince An of the Second Rank is not to be inherited." In the forty-third year of Qianlong, Gaozong, because Abatai and Yuele had repeatedly distinguished themselves, made Huaqi's grandson Qikun Duke Who Assists the State, to be inherited for all generations. Edit