After three moves of Mu Mausoleum, where was it finally located, and what was the structure of the mausoleum?

However, during his reign, our country also ushered in the beginning of a dark period. In 1842, China lost the Opium War and was forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing, which was humiliating and humiliating the country. This emperor is famous The Daoguang Emperor, Aixinjueluo Minning.

Emperor Daoguang was a very frugal emperor during his lifetime. According to historical records, he once wore patched trousers to court during his lifetime, and most of his clothes were washed three times before changing. of.

He was such a diligent and thrifty emperor, and his tomb was also very ingenious. So what exactly is the originality of his tomb? How was the emperor who was frugal during his lifetime built his tomb after his death? The most important thing is how did he die?

Daoguang was very frugal during his lifetime. His clothes were always washed and washed and worn again and again. Often when the clothes were torn, they were patched and continued to be worn. It can be said that he was a good emperor who was diligent and thrifty in managing his family. And the mausoleum he built for himself after his death is indeed quite special. His mausoleum is called Qingmuling Mausoleum and was built in Longquan Valley in the boundary of Qingxi Mausoleum.

Although the mausoleum was built in the Xiling Tomb, the location was not originally chosen here. Instead, he went through twists and turns and changed the location of the mausoleum three times before choosing Longquanyu.

The first site selection for the mausoleum: In the first year of Jiaqing, when Emperor Daoguang was still a prince, he married Niu Kulu, who was one year older than his father. She became the future emperor's first wife.

But Niukulu didn't live long, and died of illness in the thirteenth year of Jiaqing. He was only twenty-eight years old when he died. At that time, Daoguang, that is, Minning, was only twenty-seven years old.

His longing for Niu Kulu was beyond words, and his father saw it, so he asked him to build a temple for Lieutenant Niu Kulu in Wangzuo Village, the capital at that time, near Beijing. The mausoleum is used to commemorate Minning's first wife. On November 17, the 16th year of Jiaqing, Mrs. Niukulu was buried in Wangzuo Village with the status and etiquette of the prince's wife.

Ten years passed in the blink of an eye. After Minning inherited the throne, in order to express his longing and love for Niu Kulu, he posthumously named him Queen Xiaomu. He also plans to build his own mausoleum in Wangzuo Village, but if he does this, he will face the problem of destroying the ancestral system.

Because during the Qianlong period, the Zhaomu system of burying father and son separately was established, with the father buried in Dongling and the son buried in Xiling. This was considered a rule that could not be violated in the Qing Dynasty at that time. The location of Wangzuocun is neither in the Xiling nor in the Dongling. If the mausoleum is built here, it will violate the will of Emperor Qianlong.

After learning the news, the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty made memorials one after another to dissuade Emperor Daoguang from choosing another auspicious place. Because if buried in Wangzuo Village, it will not only destroy the ancestral system.

Moreover, the imperial tomb will definitely be built very large, which will also affect the people of Wangzuo Village and the interests of Wangzuo Villagers, which is very undesirable.

Emperor Daoguang listened to the suggestions of the ministers in the DPRK and believed that building the mausoleum here was a bit unconsidered, so he ordered the ministers to find a new piece of land within the Dongling boundary for ten thousand years according to the ancestral Zhaomu system. Jidi. The plan to build a mausoleum in Wangzuo Village was abandoned.

The second site selection for the mausoleum: After Emperor Daoguang issued the decree to build a mausoleum in the Dongling Tomb, the site selection and construction plan for the mausoleum began in the first year of Daoguang. Regarding the construction and site selection of the mausoleum, Emperor Daoguang once told the ministers responsible for this matter that the location of the mausoleum must have very good feng shui, and it does not matter if the mausoleum is smaller.

So in the end, the address of the mausoleum was chosen as Raodou Valley in the Dongling boundary. After the address was determined, Raodou Valley was renamed Baohua Valley. After all matters were determined, the construction of the mausoleum officially began.

After six years of mausoleum construction, the construction was finally completed. Emperor Daoguang was very happy, so he rewarded the ministers responsible for the matter. And on September 22nd of the first year of Daoguang, Queen Xiaomu's coffin was moved and buried in a new mausoleum.

But a long time after Empress Xiaomu’s coffin was placed in the underground palace, God played a big joke on everyone. In the eighth year of Daoguang's reign, the ministers who guarded the Dongling Tomb were arranged to report to Emperor Daoguang that there was a very serious water seepage in the mausoleum in Baohuayu. The deepest part of the underground palace was half a meter high, and even the tomb of Queen Xiaomu was submerged by two inches.

Daoguang was very angry when he learned about this incident, and immediately punished the ministers responsible for building the tomb at that time. Although he did not execute them, he also exempted them from official positions, imposed fines and exile.

Then he ordered people to quickly choose a new place and abolish the mausoleum in Baohuayu.

Therefore, the Baohuayu Mausoleum, which had been used for many years, was abandoned, and Queen Xiaomu, who was buried in the underground palace, "reappeared" for the second time.

Final determination of the mausoleum: After the mausoleum in Baohuayu was abandoned, the ministers in the court also suggested that Emperor Daoguang find a good place to build the mausoleum in the boundaries of the Eastern Tomb of the Qing Dynasty, because it is an ancestral system and cannot be destroyed .

However, Emperor Daoguang had the idea of ​​​​breaking the jar and breaking it. He did not want to build a mausoleum in the Dongling Tomb. He also dispatched countless Feng Shui masters to search for the land of Jianling Ji. During this period, Emperor Daoguang also received many memorials from the ministers of the DPRK and China.

The content is nothing more than trying to make Emperor Daoguang think twice before taking action and try his best to find an auspicious place in Dongling. However, Emperor Daoguang had already made up his mind and insisted not to build a mausoleum in the Dongling Tomb. Finally, he chose the location of the mausoleum in Longquan Valley in the Xiling Tomb as his burial place many years later.

After the final address of the mausoleum was determined, the construction project of the mausoleum in Longquanyu began vigorously on the eighth day of November in the eleventh year of Daoguang. The construction project was not completed until the 15th year of Daoguang's reign, and it took a full four years to build.

During this period, the direct and indirect expenditure of silver reached more than 2.4 million taels, and the name of the mausoleum was finally determined to be "Muling". After the construction of the mausoleum was completed, Queen Xiaomu was moved and buried inside. Queen Xiaomu's coffin was moved three times, which was extremely rare in previous history.

In the 29th year of Daoguang, that is, on January 23, 1850, Emperor Daoguang's mother passed away at the age of 74. According to detailed records in the historical record "Records of Emperor Xuanzong of the Qing Dynasty", after the death of the Empress Dowager, Emperor Daoguang was very sad and cried so much that he did not speak or eat for several days in a row, and did not even drink a sip of water for several days in a row.

This made the civil and military officials of the entire dynasty very worried, because Emperor Daoguang was already old at the time, and his body was likely to have an accident due to such excessive grief. So the ministers in the court knelt down to Emperor Daoguang and begged him not to be overly sad about the death of the Empress Dowager, but to focus on the overall situation and take good care of their own bodies.

At that time, Emperor Daoguang was over fifty years old. He was busy with the Empress Dowager’s funeral affairs every day. During the day, he took care of the Empress Dowager’s funeral affairs, and at night, he stayed in front of the Empress Dowager’s mourning hall to perform filial piety. . It was a severe winter in the north at that time, and the weather was very cold. When Emperor Daoguang was keeping vigil, he only spread a straw mat on the ground and slept on it.

He was 68 years old at the time.

His body could not bear the cold at all, so the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty once again begged him to return to the palace, but Emperor Daoguang did not listen. After many days of hard work and not eating well, he finally fell ill.

On December 21, Emperor Daoguang decided to send the Empress Dowager’s body to the Old Summer Palace for storage. On the day when the body was transported away, Emperor Daoguang dragged his tired and injured body out to see off the Empress Dowager, and then rode a fast horse to the Old Summer Palace. He arrived at the Old Summer Palace in advance and knelt at the door to greet the Empress Dowager. His remains entered the Old Summer Palace.

In the next few days, Emperor Daoguang slept on the ground in the Old Summer Palace as before to observe mourning for the Empress Dowager.

After Emperor Daoguang's series of mourning behaviors, he ushered in the last year of his life. At that time, he had been in power for thirty years and had reached the age of 69. On the fifth day of the first lunar month, under the collective plea of ​​the ministers of the DPRK and China, Emperor Daoguang gave up the plan to personally transport the Empress Dowager's body.

But at that time, Daoguang was in very poor health and his condition was so serious that it was even difficult to stand up on his own. On the eleventh day of the first lunar month, Emperor Daoguang died of illness on the fourteenth day of the first lunar month after handling the last affairs of his lifetime. Because he had a minor illness before, after a few days of suffering, his condition worsened and turned into lung disease.

At that time, Emperor Daoguang was already old, so his body's resistance in all aspects was not as good as before, so his death was basically expected.

In the six hours before Emperor Daoguang's death, he had become unable to speak, but he was still conscious and announced the next emperor. The emperor's edict had been written and preserved five years ago, and all that had to be done now was to open the box in which the edict was stored.

In the Shende Hall, the civil and military officials of the Manchu Dynasty and the emperor's relatives were all guarding the hall, preparing to welcome the new generation of emperors. After the box was opened, there were two secret edicts inside. The then Minister of the Interior read out the contents of the edict. The contents of the edict were very simple, only mentioning the emperor's succession and the candidates for other princes and princes.

The content of the posthumous edict is probably that the sixth son of the emperor, Yixin, was named a prince, and the fourth son of the emperor, Yiqin, was established as the crown prince. Yi Xin was appointed as the next emperor. He knelt down and cried bitterly. At that time, all the civil and military officials in the palace also knelt down to worship the new king.

The mausoleum built by Emperor Daoguang for himself can be called a grand event of wooden carving, and the most eye-catching thing in this grand event is the perfectly carved and lifelike nanmu dragon.

No oil paint is applied to the three nanmu halls in Muling, but the entire surface of the nanmu is smeared with melted wax. Moreover, one of the three main halls of Muling was decorated with 1,318 wooden carved dragons, and the Longen Hall was decorated with a total of 1,096 dragons.

The ceiling of Longen Hall is filled with wooden carved dragons. Due to the use of a relatively special hollow carving method, the overall posture of the dragon seems to be overlooking all living beings.

Most of the buildings in Muling are practical and do not have much decoration, because before his death, he had requested that his tomb must have good Feng Shui and the size of the tomb could be reduced.

Therefore, the main buildings of the mausoleum are the Shinto stele, the Shinto bridge, the Longen Hall, the Yudai River, the five stone offerings, and the stele tower that is indispensable for every mausoleum. Compared with other Qing Dynasty emperors' tombs, they lack Minglou and Fangcheng.

The Shinto Bridge is located to the north of the Shinto Monument. The Shinto Bridge in Mulingzhong was not built as a stone bridge with three holes and three roads as usual, but an arch bridge along the way. There is another one on the left and right sides of the arch bridge. Pingqiao.

In the north of the bridge, there are two court rooms with a front verandah and a width of three rooms.

There is a prison room on the north side of the two court rooms. Next is the main building in the mausoleum, Long'en Hall.

The Long'en Hall is built on a stone Xumizuo. The platform is covered with gold bricks. It is five rooms wide, and the roof is a single-eaves style hilltop paved with yellow glazed tiles. Three gates were opened in the middle, but the furnaces originally placed inside the gates have disappeared. The east and west auxiliary halls distributed to the left and right of Longen Hall are relatively small.

The main structure of Long'en Hall is slightly different from the structures built by previous emperors. The Long'en Hall in Muling changed the previous precedent of five rooms wide and was reduced to three rooms, with double eaves. The Xieshan-style roof was changed to a single-eave Xieshan roof. There are cloisters around the main hall, and the railings and carved dragon heads around the platform and main hall have also been removed. Two copper furnaces are placed on the platform.

There are two Shitong and two Jialiang towers placed at the east and west corners of the platform. All the wooden structures that can be seen in the Long'en Hall and the two side halls are all golden nanmu. Therefore, the construction of the Long'en Hall and the two side halls cost the most silver and took the longest time to build.

There are no painted paintings on the golden nanmu, but on the ceilings, panels and other important buildings, there are no golden lotus water drafts according to tradition, but some relief methods. There are some vivid swimming dragons. There are a total of 1,318 wooden carved dragons decorated in the three main halls, and the Long En Hall alone has 1,096.

Emperor Daoguang believed that the reason why the previous mausoleum in Baohuayu had water seepage was because of the decorated dragons. During the construction of Muling this time, he specifically ordered the wooden carved tombs to be replaced. The dragon is placed on the roof so that water will not seep into the underground palace.

There is a river behind Long'en Hall, called Yudai River, and there are three flat bridges made of white marble across the Yudai River. Among these three stone bridges, Only the middle bridge has more railings than the other two bridges.

To the north of the Yudai River, a three-bay, four-column, three-story stone archway made of white marble replaced the three gates in the traditional construction. The two sides of the stone archway are connected to the wall. The two doors on both sides of the archway are carved with dragon and phoenix patterns. The dragon is in the middle, and the phoenix wraps the dragon on the left and right sides.

There is a platform built behind the five stone offerings in Muling, with a width of 45.4 meters. There is also a platform built on it, 1.92 meters high, and three steps are built in front of the platform. , each one is level 12.

There are no square city towers and treasure cities built on the platform like other imperial tombs. There is a royal road on the top of the platform, and at the end of the royal road is a nearly square platform. In the center of the Xumizuo on the platform is a round dome. Below the dome is the underground palace of the Qing Muling Mausoleum, which is also the burial place of Emperor Daoguang.

Anyone who has visited Muling may know that there is no sacred monument to praise the achievements of the emperors in Muling like the previous emperors. This is because China was defeated in the Opium War. Emperor Daoguang felt that he was ashamed of the people and ancestors of the Qing Dynasty, so he did not build a stele of holy virtues and sacred merits and a representative stone statue in the mausoleum.

To the north of the Five-hole Bridge is the Dragon and Phoenix Gate in the mausoleum. The Dragon and Phoenix Gate in Muling is the same as that in Xiaoling and Tailing, but it is smaller in scale. There are two dismounting signs built on the north side of the mausoleum. Their function is to remind people who come to worship on horseback to dismount their horses and enter the cemetery when they arrive here to express respect for Emperor Daoguang.

On the stone tablet near the Shinto, Xuanzong's posthumous title is engraved. On the back of the stone tablet, in accordance with Daoguang's requirements, Xuanzong's life and deeds are engraved. Its function is actually similar to the "Stele of Divine Merits and Saint Virtue".

There is a lot of history as to why the tomb of Emperor Daoguang was named Muling. According to precedent, the name of the tomb after the death of the emperor must be determined after the death of the tomb owner, but anyone who knows history knows that the name of Emperor Daoguang's tomb was indeed decided by himself. So what's going on?

It is said that after Emperor Daoguang decided to locate the mausoleum in Longquan Valley, in order to avoid the tomb leaking like Baohua Valley, he chose a relatively high place.

And when he was alive, he often visited the tomb. When the construction project of the mausoleum in Longquanyu was coming to an end, Emperor Daoguang once again came to inspect the Qingmu Mausoleum. He had visited Tailing and Changling before this. When he came to his future burial place, he was very happy because he felt that his tomb was very solid and solid.

Once when Emperor Daoguang visited the Longquanyu Mausoleum in person, he stood on the platform of the main hall with a pen in his hand, staring at the east and suddenly filled with emotion, so he wrote "Qi Muye" with a wave of the ink pen. "Muye" edict. He also called his two eighteen-year-old princes, Yiyi and Yiyi, and asked them to read these big characters respectfully.

Later, Hou asked someone to store the pen he had just written with in the Dongnuan Pavilion in Longen Hall. Two years later, Emperor Daoguang passed away. Xianfeng, also known as Yi Ning, who succeeded the throne, re-read the edict left by Emperor Daoguang two years ago.

When I saw the words "Qi Mu and Mu Ye" in the posthumous edict, I suddenly realized the scene in front of me. Only then did I realize that Emperor Daoguang wanted to hint that he would use the word "mu" to express his wishes in the future. Tomb naming.

On the ninth day of February in the thirtieth year of Daoguang, Emperor Xianfeng issued an edict to officially name the tomb of his father, Emperor Daoguang, "Muling". Regarding the naming of the tomb, I can only say that fortunately Emperor Xianfeng was talented and intelligent.

He did not forget the decree left by Daoguang, and understood Emperor Daoguang's intention in time. If the name had been taken and made public when the intention was realized, then Emperor Daoguang, who was under Jiuquan, could only shake his head and sigh.

Then why did Emperor Daoguang name his tomb with the word "Mu"? Many scholars believe that when Emperor Daoguang was in power, the political situation of the Qing Dynasty declined sharply.

Whether it is domestic uprisings or rebellions, or the eyes of Western countries. All brought a lot of pressure to Emperor Daoguang, and Daoguang also regretted that the management of the Qing Dynasty was in a mess.

When he thought that his ancestor Nurhachi was galloping on the battlefield, the Qing Dynasty created by the southern and northern wars and the peaceful and prosperous era created by his fathers would be destroyed in his own hands, Daoguang felt a feeling in his heart. Feeling guilty, thinking that I have no face to face my ancestors and father.

His father, Emperor Jiaqing, had been in power for twenty-five years and had delayed the decline of the Aixinjueluo family. However, in his own generation, the Qing Dynasty had become in danger. Thinking of this, he had to He admired and admired his ancestors, so he named his tomb with the word "mu" for admiration. On the one hand, he wanted to express his admiration for his ancestors, and on the other hand, he expressed a feeling of guilt.

The fall of the Qing Dynasty was inevitable, and the important reason did not lie with Emperor Daoguang. In the early days of the establishment of the Qing Dynasty, the overall strength of the Qing Dynasty was relatively strong. At that time, many foreign businessmen wanted to come to the Qing Dynasty to do business. However, the Qing Dynasty at that time believed that it was very powerful and believed that the resources of the land of China should belong to itself. adopted a policy of isolation from the country.

There was no commercial dealings and various technological exchanges with other countries, and this also planted the seeds for the decline of the Qing Dynasty.

Because of the closed-door policy, all aspects of technological development in the Qing Dynasty became very slow. At the same time, foreign countries were making every effort to develop social productivity, which not only made the people's lives better, but also greatly improved the strength of the army.

The second reason is the institutional problem. During the peak period of the development of the Qing Dynasty, a large amount of resources were accumulated and the national treasury was also very full. From the perspective of other countries, the Qing Dynasty was just a piece of fat meat, and everyone wanted to get a piece of it, so they sent many envoys to China to discuss cooperation, but they were all rejected.

But at that time, European countries had established a new capitalist system, which allowed them to hoard a large amount of wealth in a short period of time, and also gave them the basic strength to invade our country.

After the Qing Dynasty refused to cooperate, the artillery fire of the Western powers knocked on the "door" that the Qing Dynasty had locked for a long time, and the Qing Dynasty also moved towards its demise step by step.