This is the main article on the Xianfeng Emperor as a person, a ruler, and a mind. The collapse of his finances—the flood of debased “big coins,” hyperinflation, and the lijin transit tax—is covered in the companion article, “[The Xianfeng Emperor’s Financial Collapse: Big-Coin Hyperinflation and the Origins of Qing ‘Warlordization’].”
Late Qing Series | The Emperors
Reigned 1850–1861 (about 11 years; the “Xianfeng” era began in 1851) / Born 1831, died 1861 (aged 30)
His final scheme ironically opened the door to 47 years of rule by Empress Dowager Cixi.
I believe the Xianfeng Emperor knew, better than anyone, that he was not cut out to be emperor. Yet his rivalry with his younger brother, Prince Gong, never faded. That contradiction would undo the “final scheme” that sealed the dynasty’s fate.
The Daoguang Emperor chose his heir for “benevolence and filial piety.” So the throne went to the elder son, Yizhu, rather than to the brilliant Yixin, later Prince Gong. Yizhu became the Xianfeng Emperor at 18 and died at 30. What did he think, and how did he act, during those roughly eleven years of crisis at home and abroad?
I. The Succession: The Prince Who Won by Filial Piety
The gap between the brothers
In the contest for the succession, the younger brother Yixin stood out. He was said to excel at both letters and arms, to be a fine horseman and archer, and to have a sharp grasp of state affairs. The Daoguang Emperor reportedly thought highly of him and wavered until the end.
Yizhu, by contrast, is said to have injured his leg in a fall from a horse as a boy. In mounted archery, an essential skill for a Manchu prince, he could not match his brother. No one knew the gap between them better than Yizhu himself.
The hunt at Nanyuan: the day an anecdote decided a dynasty
One spring, the Daoguang Emperor took the princes hunting in the Nanyuan park south of Beijing. The other princes returned with game. Yizhu came back without having loosed a single arrow, and is said to have explained:
Yizhu: “It is spring, when birds and beasts are raising their young. I could not bear to take life and disturb the harmony of Heaven.”
According to the biography of Du Shoutian in the Draft History of Qing, the emperor was delighted and called these “the words of a true sovereign.”
A second story is also widely told. When the ailing emperor questioned his sons on state affairs, Yixin answered eloquently. Yizhu only prostrated himself and wept, showing his concern for his father.
Both performances are said to have been coached by Yizhu’s tutor, Du Shoutian. These anecdotes mix official history with unofficial lore. What is certain is that the Daoguang Emperor valued Yizhu’s “benevolence and filial piety” and named him heir.
| Yizhu (chosen) | Yixin (passed over) | |
|---|---|---|
| Physique | Said to have injured his leg in a fall; weak at mounted archery | Skilled horseman and archer |
| Talent | Seen as no match for his brother | Praised as accomplished in letters and arms |
| The Nanyuan hunt | Shot nothing: “It is the season for raising young” | Said to have returned with game |
| At his father’s sickbed | Said to have prostrated himself and wept | Said to have spoken eloquently on state affairs |
| The emperor’s decision | Named heir for “benevolence and filial piety” | Made Prince Gong in the same edict |
The Daoguang Emperor’s succession edict named Yizhu heir. The same document also made Yixin a prince of the first rank, which was highly unusual. Some read the title Gong (恭, “respectful”) as a warning to show deference to his elder brother.
So Yizhu became the Xianfeng Emperor. Yet I suspect he felt that his father had chosen him for his conduct, not his ability. ✦ That is my own reading.
II. Early Reign: Xianfeng the Reformer
The ideal in a reign name
The reign name Xianfeng (咸豊) expresses the wish that “all under Heaven be abundant.” It imagined a realm where everyone shared in prosperity. Reality would deliver the opposite: one ordeal after another.
An ambitious reformer
In his early years, the Xianfeng Emperor was remarkably hard-working. Soon after taking the throne, he dismissed Muzhang’a, the powerful minister of his father’s reign, and cleared the air at court. He later promoted capable men such as Sushun. To fight the Taiping Rebellion, he came to rely on Han Chinese officials such as Zeng Guofan, Hu Linyi, and Zuo Zongtang. This marked a major shift away from a Manchu-centered order.
In 1853 he appointed his brother Yixin to the Grand Council. It was unusual for a prince of the blood to sit there. In 1855, however, Yixin angered the emperor in a dispute over the title of his birth mother and was removed from the Council. The brothers’ rivalry surfaced here too.
In the Wuwu examination scandal of 1858, the emperor had Grand Secretary Baijun executed for involvement in exam fraud. Such a harsh punishment was unprecedented, and Sushun is said to have pressed hard for it.
He is said to have worked late into the night. For urgent military matters, he reportedly had eunuchs read memorials to him at his bedside and gave his rulings in his nightclothes. In these years, the Xianfeng Emperor clearly had a strong will to restore the dynasty.
But the purse was already nearly empty. The silver vaults of the Board of Revenue are said to have held only about 8 million taels when he came to the throne. That was nowhere near enough to sustain a long war. The companion article, “[The Xianfeng Emperor’s Financial Collapse],” follows where that empty purse led.
III. Four Crises at Once
The Xianfeng reign coincided with one of the harshest periods in modern Chinese history. Four crises ate away at the empire simultaneously.
| Crisis | What happened |
|---|---|
| The Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864) | Took Nanjing in 1853 and renamed it the “Heavenly Capital”; fought the Qing for more than a decade |
| The Second Opium War (1856–1860) | Anglo-French forces entered Beijing and burned the Old Summer Palace (Yuanmingyuan); Qing prestige collapsed |
| Russian expansion | The Treaty of Aigun (1858) and the Convention of Peking (1860) cost the Qing vast lands north of the Amur and east of the Ussuri |
| Fiscal collapse | An empty treasury, kept afloat by debased coins, paper money, and the lijin tax (→ see the [finance article]) |
Facing so many crises at once, even a great ruler would have struggled. But in my view, the Xianfeng Emperor lacked the inner strength to overcome them.
IV. Collapse: Flight from Beijing and the Burning of the Old Summer Palace
The emperor leaves his capital
In September 1860, as Anglo-French forces closed in on Beijing, the Xianfeng Emperor fled to the Mountain Resort at Chengde (Rehe), under the pretext of an autumn hunt. He left the burden of peace negotiations to his brother, Prince Gong.
The Old Summer Palace was looted and burned the following month, in October. The emperor received the news at Chengde and is said to have been deeply shaken. Even after the Convention of Peking was signed, he never returned to the capital.
The prince who loosed no arrow at Nanyuan left his capital when the state itself was at stake. ✦ This is my own reading, but I wonder whether his physical frailty and his emotional frailty were part of a single thread running through the man.
One escape after another
At Chengde, the emperor drifted further and further from government. He immersed himself in theater and drank heavily, and some records say he also used opium. The diligent reformer was gone, replaced by a man seeking easy comfort.
V. Unable to Let Her Go: A Lonely Emperor’s Dependence
The emperor is said to have had several chances to push away the future Cixi, then Noble Consort Yi. He reportedly resented her conduct and considered punishing her. There is also a story that Sushun urged him to remove her, citing a precedent from Emperor Wu of Han, who had his heir’s mother put to death before the son took the throne. These stories come from unofficial histories. What is certain is that the emperor never acted.
✦ This too is my own reading: I don’t think it can be dismissed as mere indecision.
His tutor Du Shoutian, who had guided him through the succession contest, died in 1852, soon after the accession. His ministers revered him as emperor but could not speak to him as equals. Leaning on Yixin, the brother he had always felt inferior to, would have meant admitting defeat.
In that isolation, Noble Consort Yi was different. She was capable, frank, and able to handle state business alongside him. For an emperor frail in body and fragile in spirit, she had become someone he needed in order to function as emperor at all. He could not let her go, even knowing the danger. I believe that was less a failure of will than a fear of losing the only person he could rely on.
No matter how often his ministers advised him, he could not cut off the person he depended on. Sushun’s words went unheeded not because the emperor would not listen, but because of how his heart was built. That is what I believe.
VI. Reviewing the Memorials: The Moment Dependence Handed Over Power
As illness sapped his strength for government, the emperor is said to have often had Noble Consort Yi review the memorials submitted to the throne. She was literate in Chinese. She reportedly began by reading them aloud, then drafted his comments, and finally decided which documents reached him at all. This broke the dynasty’s ancestral rule that the inner palace must not meddle in politics. With the emperor’s deep trust, though, it went on quietly and out of public view.
Letting her review the memorials meant for him was more than a political misjudgment. It was proof of the loneliness of an emperor who could entrust such work only to the one person he relied on. He rejected Sushun’s advice, held back from punishing her, and let her handle the memorials. Without realizing it, the emperor gave her the very foothold she needed to enter politics.
✦ Satoe’s Take A husband struck down by illness hands the sorting of his papers to the one person he trusts. In itself, that is a natural, human kind of dependence. But in politics, whoever sees information first and decides where each document goes holds power itself. Without realizing it, the Xianfeng Emperor placed the dynasty’s nervous system in the hands of a single woman.
How Cixi turned this review of memorials into a base for seizing power is covered in detail in “[How Cixi Rose to Power: From a 25-Year-Old Consort to Ruler of the Qing].” That article covers her fingernail marks on documents, her distinction between “read” and “noted,” her selective reporting, and the system she built for handling state papers.
Death at 30
The Xianfeng Emperor died at the Chengde Mountain Resort on August 22, 1861, aged just 30. He left behind his only son, Zaichun (later the Tongzhi Emperor), aged 5. He also left a mountain of unsolved problems and the 25-year-old Noble Consort Yi, the future Empress Dowager Cixi.
VII. The Final Scheme: Designing the Eight-Minister Regency, and Its Collapse
Never again the nightmare of the early Qing
Just before his death, the emperor appointed eight men, including Zaiyuan, Duanhua, and Sushun, as “Ministers Assisting in State Affairs” to support the child emperor. This article calls them “the Eight Ministers.” He likely had in mind an early Qing precedent. The regent Dorgon, uncle of the boy Shunzhi Emperor, had come to hold more power than the emperor himself. If the able Prince Gong took power alone, history might repeat itself. Shaped also by memories of the old succession rivalry, the emperor left Prince Gong out of the arrangement.
| The emperor’s design | What it meant |
|---|---|
| Excluding Prince Gong | Kept his able brother outside the regency so he could not seize power alone |
| Eight ministers sharing power | Meant to prevent any one person from dominating; in practice only three (Zaiyuan, Duanhua, Sushun) held real weight |
| Two seals | The “Yushang” seal went to the empress (later Empress Dowager Ci’an). The “Tongdaotang” seal went to the child emperor and was held by his birth mother, Noble Consort Yi. Edicts required both |
The irony of the design
| The flaw | The result |
|---|---|
| Underestimating the empresses’ role | The ministers saw the seals as a formality. Sushun is said to have strongly opposed women’s involvement in politics |
| Excluding Prince Gong backfired | It angered Prince Gong, who held great influence in Beijing, and pushed him into alliance with Cixi |
| The Xinyou Coup (November 1861) | All eight ministers fell. Sushun was beheaded; Zaiyuan and Duanhua were ordered to commit suicide; the other five were dismissed or exiled. Cixi’s effective rule began and lasted 47 years, until 1908 |
The Eight Ministers treated the empresses’ role with the seals as a mere formality. They badly misjudged Cixi’s ambition and ability. By shutting out Prince Gong, they provoked him and helped drive him into her camp.
Just over two months after the emperor’s death, the two empresses dowager and Prince Gong launched the Xinyou Coup and swept the Eight Ministers away. The Xianfeng Emperor had feared two things above all: power concentrated in one person, and the rise of Prince Gong. His final scheme ironically brought about both at once.
VIII. What Sushun’s Fall Meant: A Contested Question
Under the Xianfeng Emperor, Sushun was more than a powerful official. He is credited with backing the use of Han Chinese officials and supporting the decision to entrust men like Zeng Guofan with crushing the Taiping. He was also known for taking an axe to corruption, from exposing abuses at the Board of Revenue to the harsh verdicts in the 1858 examination scandal. At the same time, his forcefulness and arrogance are said to have made him many enemies.
Still, it is too simple to say that his fall “nipped reform in the bud.” Prince Gong, who took power after the coup, created the Zongli Yamen to handle foreign affairs. He also relied on Han officials such as Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang to pursue the modernizing policies later known as the Self-Strengthening Movement. Sushun’s policy of employing Han officials was, ironically, carried on by his political enemies.
Even so, many still ask whether the Qing might have taken a different path had Sushun survived. There is no answer to that question. But it is certain that one decisive, capable figure left the stage along with the emperor.
Conclusion: The Tragedy Born of Daoguang’s Choice
The Xianfeng Emperor was by no means incompetent. His early reforming zeal, his readiness to employ Han officials, and his careful preparations for the succession all show real political ability.
But the roots of the problem ran deep. Because the Daoguang Emperor chose his heir for filial piety, the throne went to Xianfeng rather than to the gifted Prince Gong, and Xianfeng knew it. A frail body, the sense that he had been chosen only for his conduct, and a rivalry with his brother he could not let go: these three cast a shadow over every decision he made.
That loneliness bred his dependence on Cixi. His trusted mentor was gone, his ministers only revered him, and the only one beside him was the brother he could not bear to acknowledge. Into that space came someone he could talk to as an equal, and without realizing it, he entrusted her with the heart of government. ✦ That is my reading.
The tides of the age were simply too great. Crushed by pressures from within and without, the Xianfeng Emperor left behind an ironic ending: a dynasty steered by one woman. His life shows, vividly I think, how high a price the Daoguang Emperor’s choice of heir exacted.
One more collapse was quietly unfolding at his side: the collapse of money itself. The companion article, “[The Xianfeng Emperor’s Financial Collapse: Big-Coin Hyperinflation and the Origins of Qing ‘Warlordization’],” traces how trust in currency and central control were lost together. Put the two collapses side by side, and the portrait of “the emperor who was not cut out for the throne” comes into even sharper relief.
◀ Previous: The Daoguang Emperor | ▶ Next: Empress Dowager Cixi | ▶ Related: Prince Gong (Yixin) and His House ◀ Series index: The Complete Guide to the Late Qing Series