Page:Eminent Chinese Of The Ch’ing Period - Hummel - 1943 - Vol. 1.pdf/301

Rh to protect his henchmen, but and Ch'ien Fêng, who with Ho-shên were sent to investigate the charges, so conclusively proved their guilt that Kuo-t'ai and Yü were promptly ordered to commit suicide while in prison. Although Ho-shên was known by the emperor to have been implicated and was known to have made great efforts to protect the criminals, he was not, so far as we know, even reprimanded. In fact, within a very few months he was further honored by being given the title of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent.

In 1784, after the successful conclusion of a campaign against Mohammedan rebels in Kansu (see under ) Ho-shên, as a high Peking official who was indirectly connected with the campaign, was rewarded by being made a president of the Board of Civil Office, an assistant Grand Secretary, and a First Class Baron. He remained in control of the important and lucrative Board of Revenue and the Board of Civil Office as long as Emperor Kao-tsung lived. In 1786 he was appointed a Grand Secretary and in 1788, at the close of the Taiwan rebellion (see under ), he was elevated to a third class earldom with the designation Chung-hsiang (忠襄伯). In 1798, just a few months before his fall, he attained a long-coveted dukedom. Besides the various positions already mentioned, he held many other offices concurrently—as many as twenty at one time being recorded.

Even under ordinary circumstances Ho-shên's power would have been cumulative because of his high position, but the normal tendency was greatly accelerated as a consequence of the increasing senility of the emperor. While it is true that the prestige of such honest men as A-kuei and Liu Yung was so great that Ho-shên was unable to cause their removal from office, still they were not influential enough to curb his activities. He placed all of his own followers in office, and corrupted the vast majority of others in the official hierarchy by threatening to have them cashiered unless they complied with his demands. In this connection it is significant that his senior, A-kuei, was frequently away from Peking on various missions, thus leaving Ho-shên free to draw up imperial decrees and other documents. The administration went from bad to worse during the last few years of the Ch'ien-lung period, but the state of affairs was even more scandalous in the first years of the Chia-ch'ing period during which Emperor Jên-tsung was allowed to have no part in the conduct of affairs of state, control and actual administration of the government remaining entirely in the hands of Emperor Kao-tsung, or rather in the hands of the man who dominated him—Ho-shên.

During the last few years of the life of Emperor Kao-tsung, a sordid military campaign was carried on in Central and Western China against the impoverished people who, crushed by the exactions of their local officials (who in turn were being squeezed to meet the demands of the insatiable Ho-shên) were finally driven in desperation to revolt. Taking advantage of this opportunity to benefit themselves, Ho-shên and several of his friends, among them, , and , prolonged the campaign over a number of years, spending vast sums of money on themselves while reporting that the funds had gone to meet military expenses, and from time to time ruthlessly slaughtering thousands of harmless country people in order to report great victories. High honors were lavishly bestowed upon the "victorious" commanders and the high metropolitan officials who "managed" the campaign from the capital, but the struggle dragged on, and it was not until after the death of Emperor Kao-tsung and the cashiering of the corrupt officials in the government and the army who had been responsible for the scandalous conduct of the campaign, that it was finally brought to a successful conclusion (see under ).

On February 7, 1799 Emperor Kao-tsung died, and the young emperor who had not been allowed to exercise his imperial power during the lifetime of his father immediately took steps to rectify the disgraceful situation which had developed during the two preceding decades. The three corrupt generals mentioned above had already died during the campaign; Ho-shên, however, was promptly arrested and although out of respect to the memory of his master he was permitted to take his own life, his huge accumulation of silver, gold, precious stones, and other forms of wealth, was confiscated. He left a volume of poems, entitled 嘉樂堂詩集 Chia-lo t'ang shih-chi in which the last poem was written while in prison. His son, Feng-shên-yin-tê, because of his marriage to the emperor's half-sister, was not executed, but all his own and his father's ranks and honors were taken from him except the Ch'ing-ch'ê tu-yü which had been inherited from his grandfather. In later years he was, however, given high offices and ranks, and died with the rank of a duke. He did not have a son and the hereditary rank of Ch'ing-ch'ê tu-yü passed to his uncle's branch of the 289