Jiaqing

In February 1796, in the sixtieth year of his reign, at the age of 85, Emperor Hongli abdicated and transferred power to his fifteenth son Yongyang. The new emperor inherited from the father and his almighty favorite Heshen along with the throne. Not wanting to upset the elderly Hongli , Yunyan was forced to endure his favorite. Heshen for another three years - until the death of the ex-emperor in 1799 - retained control of all affairs of the state.

The change of power coincided with the beginning of the peasant war organized by the underground Buddhist sect, “The Teaching of the White Lotus” (“ Bailanjiao ”). In February 1796, under the auspices of the sect, there was an uprising in two northern districts of Hubei Province , which then spread to its western and central regions. This was the beginning of the eight-year Peasant War. The uprising in Hubei quickly expanded, it spread to the provinces of Sichuan and Shaanxi . Feeling their strength, the leaders of the peasant war at the first stage sought to take over the cities. Having captured more than ten cities and fortified them, they switched to defensive tactics. Fights for cities against superior enemy forces led to the depletion of rebel forces, to great losses and setbacks. Then the rebels abandoned the seizure of cities, and defensive tactics switched to a "mobile war" in rural areas.

The crisis was growing in the government camp. Under the rule of the Heshen clique, the decomposition of the state apparatus, the degradation of the " eight-banner troops ", and the decline in their combat effectiveness intensified. Due to the embezzlement of bureaucrats and corruption of the commanding staff, the soldiers were not paid for months and did not give rations for many days. The soldiers robbed the population and mend arbitrariness. Warlords and officers thought only of their own benefit. At the head of the military operations were Hashan nominees. They were distinguished by lack of initiative, slowness, mediocrity, fear of rebels, greed and cruelty towards civilians.

In 1799, after the death of Hunley , Yunyan hastened to deal with the hated temporary worker Heshen. He was arrested, convicted and executed, and his innumerable wealth confiscated. The emperor took their lion's share. The most malicious and mediocre henchmen of the Heshen lost their posts, now new, capable warlords have come to lead the troops fighting against the White Lotus rebels. The skilled commander and strategist Mongol Eledenbao was appointed supreme commander in 1799, and Nayancheng was the commander of the troops in Gansu (both of them participated in the suppression of the Miao tribes uprising in southwestern China). . All this significantly strengthened the Qing camp. However, the last detachments of sectarians were destroyed only in the autumn of 1804.

The peasant war of 1796-1804 required tremendous efforts from the government. The suppression of the rebels cost the treasury 200 million lan silver . Millions of people were drawn into this war. At the end of hostilities in the Northwest, numerous irregular forces accumulated, which, in addition to weapons, also gained combat experience. These were the “rural militia” ( Xianyun ) and temporarily assembled shock units of volunteers ( Yongbin ), in whose ranks there were many village poor and declassed elements. Accustomed to the “easy life”, robberies, violence and carrying weapons during the struggle with the rebels, many of them did not want to return to work. When the government declared demobilization in 1805 after ending the “sectarian bandits,” the irregular units in Shaanxi and Sichuan revolted. They were joined by recruits of the “Green Banner Troops,” protesting against poor supply. In order to bring down social tension, the authorities began distributing plots of arable land and virgin lands from the state fund to the poor. Only in the fall of 1805 did the situation in these provinces stabilize. Despite the military victory, the Qing regime did not emerge from the bloody epic of 1796-1804, but weakened.

At the beginning of the XIX century, the territory and coastal waters of China became the battlefield of England with France and its allies. Gradually capturing the colonies of its opponents, London set out with the hands of the East India Company to take Macau from Portugal, which fell under the auspices of Napoleon in 1801. When the British squadron approached Macau in the spring of 1802, local Portuguese authorities turned to Beijing for help. Here they met a peculiar understanding, for the Manchu emperors considered the Portuguese of Macau their "tributaries." Fearing that in the event of hostilities, the Qing government would stop trading with the company in Guangzhou, in May 1802, the British withdrew their squadron from Chinese waters. In exchange for the peaceful assistance of Emperor Yongyang, the Macau authorities pledged in writing to prevent third-country forces from entering the colony.

England made a second attempt to capture Macau in September 1808. Despite a decisive ban by the authorities, an English landing was landed on the territory of the governorate of Lyangyang (which included the territories of the provinces of Guangdong and Guangxi ). This time, China’s reaction was more energetic. In October, Qing authorities stopped maritime trade in Guangzhou, and then ordered all Chinese - servants, translators, and compradors of the English trading post - to leave its borders. A trade boycott forced Rear Admiral W. Drury in December to return the soldiers to ships and go to sea, after which the authorities of Langguang allowed the resumption of trade with the "English barbarians".

During the Napoleonic Wars, the Russian Empire sought to intensify economic and diplomatic ties with China. At the beginning of 1806, the embassy of Count Yu. A. Golovkin arrived in Urga for further travel to Beijing. The Qing assistants to the governor in Urga and the Manchu court with their demands on the ambassador to perform the humiliating ritual of koutou (three-fold kneeling with the bow of the earth) disrupted negotiations and forced Golovkin to return to Russia. Equally unsuccessful was the attempt of the marine expedition of I.F. Kruzenshtern and Yu.F. Lisyansky at the end of 1805 to establish Russian trade in Guangzhou .

London also sought to establish regular diplomatic relations with Beijing and "open" the Chinese market to British commerce, drawn into the war with the United States by this time (1812-1814) . The echo of this war was in 1814 the capture of a US commercial ship by a British frigate at the mouth of the Xijiang River. The representative of the East India Company ignored the demand of the authorities of Langguang to remove the frigate from Chinese waters. In response to this, trade with the British in Guangzhou was terminated from April to December, that is, until the warship left the shores of the Middle Empire.

The events of 1802, 1808, and 1814 created the perception of the Qing government about the failure-free operation of the trade ban as a universal means of "pacifying the overseas barbarians." Accordingly, the illusions about the omnipotence of the Qing Empire and Bogdokhan were strengthened, whose one command could lead the “overseas devils” to obedience and awe.

Meanwhile, the British government did not lose hope for a peaceful "opening" of the Chinese market. The new embassy, ​​set sail for China, was led by diplomat Lord Amherst . His main task was the establishment of a permanent English mission in Beijing. Arriving in Tianjin in the fall of 1816, Amherst was greeted as a messenger from the usual "barbarian state" - the "tributary" of Bogdokhan. In the capital, and then in the suburban imperial residence of Yuanmingyuan, the ambassador was asked to perform the traditional humiliating ceremony of koutou . Amherst’s attempt, on any pretext, to avoid kneeling three times, provoked Yunyan’s anger. The emperor ordered the embassy to be expelled from China and invited the British government to no longer send their ambassadors.

After the defeat of the Peasant War of 1796-1804, the inner peace in the empire did not come. In the provinces of Hunan and Guizhou in 1801, the Miao uprising broke out, finally suppressed only in 1806. In 1802-1803, the poor of the Huizhou region of Guangdong Province , united by the secret "Society of Heaven and Earth" ("Triad"), took up arms. In 1805, one of the branches of the "White Lotus" revolted in Shaanxi province, in 1807 another sect followed the example of the rebels.

Robbery of the South China and East China Seas began to provide increasing resistance to Qing power. The pirate war lasted ten years (1800-1810), the pirate ships were destroyed only by the joint actions of the squadron of the governor Langguang and the flotilla of Nguyen who ruled northern Vietnam.

In 1813, the uprising of the sect of "Heavenly Mind" 天理教 (also called the rebellion of the Eight Trigrams ), another of the branches of the "White Lotus", began. Some of the rebels, taking advantage of the support of the eunuchs, even managed to break into the imperial palace in the capital, but the rebellion was repelled thanks to the active participation of Prince Mianning (future emperor Daoguan ). By the end of 1814, this rebellion was crushed.

China did not need goods from the outside world, and European merchants had to pay for Chinese goods with silver. However, from the end of the 18th century, the British East India Company began smuggling opium into China from India (even though drug trafficking was a crime even under English law). From 1800 to 1819, more than 4 thousand opium crates were imported each year, each weighing 60 kg. As a result of the smuggling of opium, silver now no longer flows into China, but flows overseas. The massive outflow of silver abroad created a growing shortage of lantern castings and, consequently, an increase in their price in copper coins, that is, "common folk money." First of all, this affected southern China, then the turn came to the central provinces, and since 1810, northern China.

Clear signs of a breakdown in the monetary system and the growth of opiate smoking forced Emperor Yongyang in 1796 to ban, not only the internal trade in this drug, but also its import into the empire. Since the official ban did not give the expected results, in 1800 a new decree of the same content was followed, but equally ineffective.

It was not possible to combat opium trafficking through official diplomacy. Formally, the East India Company did not import opium into any of the countries and did not export it from India, but on the other hand, it widely sold Bengal opium to private merchants. Not wanting an open clash with Beijing, she again “banned” in 1816, her employees and Indian merchants, who received permission from the company to trade in Guangzhou , from conducting opio-trading. Reassuring the Qing authorities with this formal action, the company increased poppy crops in Bengal and, accordingly, the sale of the drug to private merchants in India.

In 1817, the Qing government, by issuing another law banning the import of opium into the Middle Empire, required the East India Company to inspect cargo on its ships, and their owners to provide a written obligation not to engage in opium smuggling. The company ignored these requirements and introduced a warship at the mouth of the Sijiang River to intimidate the Guangdong authorities.

• Nepomnin O. E. History of China: The Qing Age. XVII - the beginning of the XX century . - M .: Oriental literature , 2005. - ISBN 5-02-018400-4