胤禩 Yìnsì

Not long afterwards the emperor ordered the high officials to put forward from among the imperial sons someone who could be Heir Apparent, and Aling'a and others privately hinted to the officials to put forward Yunsi. The emperor said: "Yunsi has no experience of affairs, and moreover he has incurred guilt, and his mother too is of humble birth; someone else should be put forward." The emperor released Yunreng, and also restored Yunsi as beile. In the first month of the forty-eighth year the emperor summoned the high officials and asked who had first proposed putting Yunsi forward as Heir Apparent; the officials did not dare to say plainly. The emperor, because the Grand Secretary Maqi had been the first to say that the multitude wished to put Yunsi forward, reproved Maqi, and did not question further. Soon afterwards Yunreng was again made Heir Apparent. In the eleventh month of the fifty-first year Yunreng was again deposed. Edit

In the eleventh month of the sixty-first year the emperor's illness became grave, and he summoned Yunsi and the imperial sons Yunzhi, Yunyou, Yuntang, Yun'e, Yuntao and Yunxiang to receive together his last command. When Shizong came to the throne he ordered Yunsi to take general charge of affairs, advanced his title to Prince Lian of the First Rank, and appointed him Minister of the Court of Colonial Affairs. In the first year of Yongzheng he was ordered to handle the business of the Ministry of Works. When the Crown Prince Yunreng had been deposed, Yunsi had schemed to succeed him, and Shizong deeply resented it. Yunsi also knew that Shizong's resentment was deep, and was habitually discontented. When the order enfeoffing him as a prince came down, his consort, of the Wuya clan, said to those who came to congratulate her: "What is there to congratulate? I fear only that he will not escape losing his head!" When the words were heard, Shizong's resentment grew all the greater. It happened that the Deputy Lieutenant-General Qi'ersa memorialised in separate articles: "By Manchu custom, when there is a death, relatives and friends bring gruel as condolence. Later the custom gradually slackened, great and lavish feasts were laid, and affairs were conducted with excessive extravagance." The emperor adopted his proposal and renewed the prohibition, and on that occasion decreed a rebuke: "When Yunsi was in mourning for his mother the imperial concubine, he angled for a reputation for filial piety, and even after a hundred days still went about supported by others, crawling on the ground; whereas Yun'e, Yuntang and Yunti, on the pretext of presenting food, held great banquets, which the Late Emperor rebuked repeatedly." In the second year the emperor decreed: "Yunsi's conduct has always been sly and crafty; the Late Emperor knew it very well, and the edicts he sent down cannot all be counted. Since I came to the throne I have given him a generous enfeoffment as a prince and entrusted him with general charge of affairs. Yet he has been unable to offer his sincerity to assist me, and harbours private designs which have not ceased to this day. In everything he wants to provoke my anger so as to punish him for it, and to fix on me the name of an unworthy ruler. Among my younger brothers Yunsi has considerable talent for managing affairs, and I cherish him greatly; he is not to be compared with Yuntang, Yun'e and the others. For that reason I have instructed him again and again and told him to mend his ways, not only to complete my duty of brotherly affection, but also to fulfil the principle of the repeated instruction given before? I bear the ancestral temple and the altars of the state upon my person, and cannot but [...] the loving heart of the Late Emperor. If I truly wished to punish his crime, how could it lie in guarding against him? Yunsi, in the Late Emperor's time, acted wilfully and recklessly, and not merely in a single morning or evening. Can I fail to think of the great design which my ancestors founded, so that it may be left to my descendants as a lasting peace?" Edit

In the second month of the third year the three years of mourning came to an end. Because Yunsi, in charge of general affairs, had acted with private motives and harboured deceit, with guilt and without merit, no recommendation for reward was given him. Soon afterwards, because the Ministry of Works had made the ancestral tablets for the Altar of Prayer for Grain carelessly, and the weapons of the troops stationed in Aertai were coarse and defective, edicts repeatedly reproached Yunsi. Yunsi proposed reducing the armoured soldiers of the Imperial Household Department; the emperor ordered him to reply again, and he then asked that one company be increased by more than ninety sets of armour. The emperor, because Yunsi's views differed before and after, decreed: "Sinister and unfathomable, none is more so than this!" He therefore ordered that one company retain fifty sets of armour and not be reduced at once, and that vacancies, when they arose, not be filled. The armoured soldiers attached to the Imperial Household Department gathered at Yunsi's residence and made an uproar; the next day they gathered again at the house of the Deputy Lieutenant-General Li Yanxi, and moreover let themselves plunder. The emperor ordered their arrest and punishment, and the men themselves declared that Yunsi had sent them to make an uproar at Li Yanxi's house; Yunsi offered no defence. The emperor ordered Yunsi to try and determine the ringleaders, who were to be beheaded at once. Yunsi submitted five men's names; the emperor examined them and found that one of them had given himself up voluntarily, and another firmly insisted that he was ill and had not gone, and he rebuked Yunsi for the judgment not being truthful. The Imperial Clan Court proposed stripping Yunsi of his rank, but the emperor ordered leniency. Yunsi had ninety-six guardsmen beaten to death with staves and ordered the eunuch Yan Lun to conceal the matter, giving him lavish rewards. The Imperial Clan Court again proposed stripping Yunsi of his rank, and the emperor again showed leniency. Edit

In the first month of the fourth year the emperor took his seat in the Western Warm Chamber and summoned the princes and high officials to expose Yunsi's crimes. In outline he said: "At that time Yunsi cherished hopes beyond his station and wished to angle for a name for loyalty and filial piety, yet in everything wounded the heart of Shengzu. When the Second Prince was deposed, Shengzu ordered me and Yunsi to handle affairs in the capital; every memorial received the imperial rescript, and these were kept in store by Yunsi. When I later questioned Yunsi, he said: 'At that time the Late Emperor was angry, and I feared something unforeseen, so I burned the writings and the imperial rescripts were put among them.' This is what Yunsi himself said to me. When Shengzu ascended to heaven, I considered that Yunsi had long possessed ability, hoped that he would repent of his faults and exert himself for the state, ordered him to take general charge of affairs, advanced his title to prince, and trusted him from the bottom of my heart. In the three years since, the impeachments and proposals for punishment by the Imperial Clan Court and the high officials have piled up by the tens and hundreds; I have tolerated them in a hundred ways, but Yunsi is crafty and sinister, wild and rebellious, harbouring evil designs, and grows worse day by day. I ordered the Imperial Clan Court to question him as to how he came to burn the imperial rescripts of the Late Emperor; Yunsi changed his words and said: 'Being ill and in a daze, I burned them by mistake.' When I questioned him to his face, he openly swore an oath, cursing even his whole family. Yunsi has cut himself off from Heaven, from the ancestors, and from me; he absolutely cannot remain among the imperial clan as a blot on our dynasty! Respectfully recounting the edicts of the Late Emperor, and following the precedent of earlier reigns of striking a man from the registers and expelling him from the clan, I strip Yunsi of his Yellow Girdle, as a warning to the fierce and wicked and as a lesson for descendants for ten thousand generations." He also ordered his consort to be driven back to her own family. Edit

In the second month Yunsi was made a Commoner Prince, no officers of the companies that had belonged to him were left to him, and at court audiences he was to be treated by the precedent for commoner dukes, marquises and earls, and called Prince Yunsi. The princes and high officials asked that Yunsi be put to death, but the emperor did not agree. Soon he ordered his princely rank taken away and handed him to the Imperial Clan Court to be confined within high walls. The Imperial Clan Court asked that his name be changed and he be entered into a company; Yunsi's name was changed to Aqina, and his son Hongwang was changed to Pusabao. In the sixth month the princes and high officials again listed forty items of Yunsi's crimes, and asked that he, together with Yuntang and Yunti, be given the statutory punishment together; the emperor exposed their crimes inside and outside the court. In the ninth month Yunsi suffered from retching and hiccups, and was ordered to be given care to restore his health; before long he died in his place of confinement. The princes and high officials still asked that his corpse be mutilated, but this was not granted. Edit

In the first month of the forty-third year of Qianlong, Gaozong decreed: "Shengzu's eighth son Yunsi and ninth son Yuntang formed cliques and acted recklessly, and their crimes were all of their own making. The Late Emperor merely ordered their names struck from the registers and changed, to show them shame and disgrace. Judging by the minds of the two men, coveting and spying out the throne was truly unavoidable for them, and when the Late Emperor succeeded to the great treasure [of the throne]. In his later years the Late Emperor repeatedly spoke of this to me, with a sorrowful look and no pleasure, and seemed to have much regret?; resentment and slander were also understandable in the circumstances, but there was as yet no open act of rebellion, and it seemed as if he were waiting. I have now been on the throne for forty-three years. This matter is weighty; if I do not speak of it, none of my descendants in later generations will dare to. Let Yunsi and Yuntang have their original names restored and be entered in the Jade Register, and their descendants together with them [...]. This truly respectfully bears in mind the benevolent heart of the Late Emperor and carries on what he did not finish, and I imagine his spirit in heaven will also be pleased and comforted." Edit