In January of the twenty-seventh year of Kangxi Reign (1688), the Empress Dowager Borzigit of Xiaozhuang completed her long and legendary life of 75 years. Before dying, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang touched Kangxi, who had been serving her, and said: "I love your emperor father and you, and I can't bear to go away." However, Kangxi did not directly bury the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, but dismantled a temple where she lived during her lifetime and transported it to the Shunzhi Emperor's mausoleum outside the Fengshui wall to rebuild, called the "Temporary Anfeng Palace", and sent the coffin of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang there for placement. This arrangement lasted for 37 years, and it was not until the third year of Yongzheng (1725) that the coffin of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang was officially buried in the underground palace, called "Zhaoxi Mausoleum". The Zhaoxi Mausoleum is hundreds of kilometers away from the Zhaoling Tomb in Shengjing (now Shenyang), where the husband of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, Huang Taiji, was buried. Regarding the burial of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, there has always been a scandal. Legend has it that after Xiaozhuang Tai** Guan, she married the brother of Huang Taiji and the regent Dorgon, so she did not dare to be buried with her husband after her death, so she could only stay in the Qing Dongling on the grounds that she could not bear to stay away from her children and grandchildren. This scandal has been passed down with the passage of time and has a history of more than 300 years. Whenever people talk about the legendary queen mother, this scandal will inevitably be mentioned.
Today, it seems that the marriage between Xiaozhuang and Huang Taiji itself has an incredible color.
Huang Taiji married 15 concubines in his life, and Xiaozhuang was one of the huge wives and concubines. She married 34-year-old Huang Taiji at the age of 13, and Huang Taiji at this time already had three wives, one of whom was an aunt who was 15 years older than Xiaozhuang, that is, Xiaoduan, who later became the queen of Huang Taiji's main palace. In other words, Hyo-joong is actually married to his uncle.
Not only that, Xiaozhuang has an older sister, Hai Lanzhu (i.e., Concubine Chen), who later married Huang Taiji.
The Secret History of Xiaozhuang in "Huang Taiji and Concubine Hai Lanzhu".
The three aunts and nephews married the same husband, and this kind of marriage relationship must have been considered unethical in the Han society at that time. However, the Mongols, Manchurians and other ethnic groups did not consider this a marriage taboo at that time, as long as the man and woman were from different clans, a marriage could be established, and the generation was not within their ethical category.
The reason why Xiaozhuang's aunt and nephew all married Huang Taiji is more fundamentally due to the need for a marriage alliance between the tribes.
After unifying the Jurchen tribes in his later years, Nurhachi began to form Mongol tribes and jointly attack the Ming Dynasty. The Horqin Mongol tribe, a tribe from Xiaozhuang, was the first to establish a military alliance with Nurhachi because it was closest to the Jianzhou Jurchens. And marriage has become an important link to strengthen the military alliance.
According to statistics, before the Qing Dynasty entered the customs, Horqin Mongols and Manchurian royal families had as many as 33 marriages - 21 women married into the Manchurian royal family, and 12 women married back to the Manchurian royal family.
In the first year of Chongde (1636), Huang Taiji proclaimed himself emperor in Shengjing and changed the name of the country to "Daqing". The harem system was immediately established, and among the 15 concubines, only 5 had independent palaces, which was called the "five-palace system". The three aunts and nephews from Horqin Mongolia are all members of the Five Palaces, among them, Xiaoduan is the empress of the main palace, which shows how strong the relationship between this Mongolian tribe and the Manchurian royal family is.
Huang Taiji and Empress Zhezhe of Xiaoduan in the Secret History of Xiaozhuang.
However, Xiaozhuang's ranking in the five palaces is the lowest, but her sister Concubine Chen is favored by Huang Taiji. In the second year of Chongde (1637), Concubine Chen gave birth to a prince (the eighth son of Huang Taiji) for Huang Taiji, and was immediately designated as the "imperial heir". More than a year later, the prince unfortunately died, and a few days later, the son of Xiaozhuang, Fulin (the ninth son of Huang Taiji), was born. This seems to be the ninth son of the emperor who came to "rush to joy", but he didn't get too much favor from Huang Taiji.
In the eighth year of Chongde (1643), Huang Taiji died suddenly on the eve of the Qing army's entry into the customs, and no heir was appointed before his death. This made the heir to the throne of the Great Qing Dynasty the focus of contention within the Eight Banners.
In the end, he was succeeded by the son of Xiaozhuang, who was only 6 years old. Some historians believe that Xiaozhuang's mother and son became the ultimate winners, indicating that Xiaozhuang showed his skills in this battle for the throne. Some people make a fuss about her scandal, speculating that she developed a relationship with Dorgon, the brother of Huang Taiji, who is also in his early 30s and a strong contender for the throne, and used emotional offensive to make Dolgon withdraw from the throne competition and support the young Fulin to succeed to the throne.
The Empress Dowager of Xiaozhuang and the young Shunzhi in the "Secret History of Xiaozhuang".
But what is the truth of history?
Due to being in the harem and the rejection of the Manchurian royal family to the harem before entering the customs, there are almost zero historical materials about Xiaozhuang in this period.
Judging from the Eight Banners system at that time, each banner would elect the owner of the flag as the heir to the throne for its own interests, and the forces of all parties could not be balanced, so that 6 days after the death of Huang Taiji, the owner of the Eight Banners could not hold a meeting and could not decide the heir. In the end, a compromise solution can only be adopted to ease the tense internal strife.
According to the analysis of the late Qing historian Shang Hongkui, after the death of Huang Taiji, his fourteenth brother, Prince Rui Dolgon and his eldest son, Prince Su Haoge, were in their prime, and they were supported by their respective banners, so the two could not compete for the throne.
Haoge has the support of the two yellow flags and the blue flag of Huang Taiji's self-general, and Dolgon has the support of two white flags, and the blue flag owner Zilharang has the weakest power, so the attitude of Prince Li, who has two red flags, is particularly important.
Dai Shan is the brother of Huang Taiji, and in his early years, he was qualified to compete with Huang Taiji for the throne and pushed and conceded, which made his prestige extremely high. The son of the present good said to him, "The people have decided to establish the king of Dorgon," and the good man was noncommittal. Under these circumstances, Dolgon realized that he could no longer have the support of the majority of banner lords and ministers, so he retreated to the throne and chose the younger Fu Lin as the son of Huang Taiji. This proposal can be described as killing three birds with one stone: one is to elect the son of Huang Taiji, who represents the interests of the two yellow flags and the positive blue flag, and they will not oppose it;The second is to use the youngest son of Huang Taiji to force his eldest son Haoge to withdraw from the struggle for the throne;The third is that the young lord needs a regent to succeed to the throne, and Dorgon can further seek the position of regent.
Sure enough, as soon as this compromise plan was proposed, it was widely supported. Fu Lin was fortunate to be chosen to become the first emperor of the Qing Dynasty.
But Huang Taiji had a total of 11 sons in his life, why was Fulin chosen?Is this really the result of the affection between Hyo-Zhuang, the Mother of Blessings, and Dorgon, as they say?
Dolgon and Da Yu'er (Xiaozhuang) in the Secret History of Xiaozhuang
A detailed study of Huang Taiji's 11 sons, excluding the eldest son Haoge and the second, third, and eighth sons who died at that time, as well as the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, and tenth sons born to the concubines, there are only two sons of the "five palaces" concubines who are really qualified to become heirs - the ninth son of Xiaozhuang, Fulin, and the eleventh son born to the concubine of Lintoe Palace.
However, the identity of the concubine of the Lintoe Palace is more embarrassing, she was originally the concubine of the political enemy of Manchuria - the Chahar Mongol Lin Dan Khan, after Lin Dan Khan was defeated by Huang Taiji, she was included in the harem by Huang Taiji as a trophy. Based on such an identity, it is difficult for her son to gain the approval of the flag owners.
So in the end, only Fulin is the only suitable person.
It can be seen that Fulin's inheritance of the unification is the result of the mutual checks and balances of the forces of the Eight Banners, and Xiaozhuang has not and cannot help.
This series of evidence almost confirmed the matter of Xiaozhuang's marriage. Even Shang Hongkui, a famous historian of the Qing Dynasty, believes that "Xiaozhuang once married Dolgon, although there is no confirmation of this matter, but there are traces to be found." He further pointed out that if this is the case, it just shows that the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang can adapt to the situation for the sake of her son's throne stability, which is a manifestation of Zhengzhi's skill. However, famous historians such as Meng Sen and Zheng Tianting firmly believe that the scandal of Xiaozhuang's marriage is purely false. They pointed out that Zhang Huang's anti-Qing words and poems mocking the Qing Dynasty based on rumors could not be used as historical evidence. Shunzhi respects Dolgon as the "imperial father", which is similar to the honorific title of "Shangfu" in ancient times, and it is not evidence that Shunzhi recognized his father.
In fact, from some historical details, we can infer that the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang did not marry. In history, the Cining Palace where the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang lived was not repaired until the tenth year of Shunzhi (1653), after which she moved in to live, and at this time Dolgon had been dead for three years, so it can be seen that the scene of Zhang Huangyan's poetry and the wedding of Cining Palace is purely fictional. There is a possibility that Dolgon forcibly married Hauge's widow in the first month of the seventh year of Shunzhi, and this marriage spread to the east of Zhejiang, where Zhang Huangyan was located, and it had already evolved into a scandal about Dolgon's marriage to the queen mother. Zhang Huangyan did not verify it, and according to rumors, he wrote a poem about the marriage of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang to mock the Qing Dynasty. This is perhaps the closest explanation to the truth.
In the winter of the seventh year of Shunzhi, the 39-year-old Dolgon died suddenly while hunting in the north.
In the Secret History of Xiaozhuang, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang learned of Dorgon's death.
After Dolgon's death, the image of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang as a strong woman who has endured for many years really began to show.
This year, Shunzhi was only 13 years old and still a teenager, so we have reason to believe that although the liquidation of Dolgon was carried out in the name of the emperor, it was actually from the hands of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang.
According to the arrangement of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, after Dolgon's coffin was transported back to Beijing, Shunzhi first issued an edict to hold a state funeral for him, and then ordered the jade seal to be collected from his palace, and announced his pro-government more than ten days later. Just two months later, Prince Zheng Zilharang denounced Dolgon's suspicion of usurpation, and a historical reckoning case against Dolgon began. Eventually, Dorgon was stripped of his title and had his grave exhumed. In this process, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang acted vigorously and resolutely by overthrowing Dolgon, helping the young Shunzhi re-establish his authority and consolidate the imperial power.
Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang was married from Horqin Mongolia to the Manchurian royal family as part of the marriage alliance, and now she continues to run this marriage network. In the Shunzhi Dynasty, she assigned no less than 20 Manchurian and Mongolian marriages. Shunzhi has two queens, both from the nieces and grandnieces of Xiaozhuang's mother's family.
In addition, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang also attracted some powerful ministers in the form of marriages. For example, she married one of her nieces and granddaughters to Jidu, the son of Prince Zheng Jierharang, which made Jidu and Shunzhi become brothers-in-law, and made the Jierharang family more dedicated to assisting the young Shunzhi who had just become pro-government. For several Han kings who held heavy troops at that time, Wu Sangui, Shang Kexi, Geng Jingzhong, etc., the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang also controlled them by means of marriage. This marriage network has played an irreplaceable role in major events in the future.
However, the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang also began to swallow the bitter fruit of the Zhengzhi marriage.
As time passed, Shunzhi, who grew up, had irreconcilable conflicts with his mother. The flashpoint was that Shunzhi was not satisfied with the queen assigned by the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, and they had no feelings for each other. What he liked was his brother's widow, Concubine Dong E. Because of this emotional incident, Shunzhi did not visit the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang for a long time.
In recent years, some scholars have pointed out that the contradiction between the mother and son of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang and Shunzhi, and the son's marriage is just a symptom, and the deeper reason lies in the political differences between the two. When Shunzhi grew up, he loved Confucian culture and implemented Sinicization reforms in the imperial court, which aroused the vigilance of the old school led by the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang, and the relationship between mother and child became ossified.
Historian Liu Lu pointed out that the reason why the burial method of the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang was different was mainly due to the Manchurian funeral reform during the Kangxi period. The tradition of Manchuria is cremation, and three generations of emperors from Nurhachi to Huang Taiji to Shunzhi were all cremated. However, by the Kangxi period, the Confucian concept of burial began to profoundly influence the ruling class. In the thirteenth year of Kangxi (1674), he made the empress who died of illness the first burial person.
At that time, the concept of burial had gradually prevailed, and if cremation was still used, it would be difficult for even Kangxi himself to accept it;But if it is buried, it is not possible to let the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang and Huang Taiji be buried together (coffin for burial, ash altar for cremation). Kangxi had no choice but to take the practice of repairing the temporary temple and leaving it to the successor to solve this problem.
It can be seen that the Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang was buried alone in the Zhaoxi Mausoleum, which has nothing to do with Dolgon. She assisted two generations of young emperors in her life, and helped the Qing Dynasty survive the crisis twice, but she was never controlled by the desire for power, and she always came and went freely, and could advance and retreat. From beginning to end, she didn't even want the name of a curtain empress dowager, she was just the mother and grandmother of two emperors. As for the scandals attached to her, whether they are true or false, they have long turned into the smoke of history.