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 had solicited the help of his brothers in effecting it. He rewarded his brothers by distributing among them a due share of the enormous wealth confiscated from Ho-shên, at the same time retaining a share for his own purse.

The empire which Yung-yen inherited from his father was in a lamentable state. At least three provinces were being devastated by rebellion of the oppressed masses, and the government was corrupt to its core. The Bannermen, weakened by luxury, were no longer the brave soldiers their ancestors had been, and the national treasury was being heavily drained to meet their wants and those of corrupt officials. The population (now about three hundred million) had nearly doubled in the preceding Ch'ien-lung period (1736–96) so that the masses suffered a shortage of food, especially in time of flood or war. In 1795-96 the rebellion of the Miao tribesmen in Kweichow and Hunan caused the movement of large bodies of troops under the command of, and other wasteful and corrupt generals. The troops lacked discipline and often looted and burnt on their way to the battlefields. The farmers of Hupeh and Szechwan, inspired by members of the secret religious society known as Pai-lien-chiao (see under ), rose in revolt. The officials who were sent to investigate extorted from the farmers still more and so drove them to desperation. Ho-shên had been in no hurry to end these disorders so long as he and his clique profited by them. Reports of defeat were suppressed, and victories were exaggerated, with the result that the rebellion spread westward to yet larger areas. After Ho-shên's removal it took Yung-yen four years (1799–1803) to effect a temporary peace, and then the problem of resettlement and disbandment of local militia evoked yet more disturbances. The war was costly; from 1796 to 1801 it drained the treasury of one hundred million taels. Pirates were active on the South China coast, and it required ten years (1800–10) to suppress them (see under ). In 1813 the revolt of still another society was nipped in the bud (see under ). As if these internal difficulties were not enough, the Yellow River overflowed its banks at least seventeen times during the Chia-ch'ing reign-period. The officials in charge of river conservancy, having purchased their posts at high cost, actually depended on these inundations, and on the ensuing costly repairs, to reimburse and enrich themselves. Thus wars and floods laid waste an appreciable part of the country, greatly reduced the national income, exhausted what surplus funds there were in the treasury, and minimized the authority of the government.

Yung-yen, having been trained only to be patient and obedient, was unable to correct these evils. Had he been as energetic as his grandfather,, he might have found the necessary remedies. Twice he had the opportunity to do so—once after the removal of Ho-shên, and again during the rebellion of 1813 (see under )—but on both occasions he compromised, expending his energies on the routine tasks of government, following too implicitly the out-moded ways of his father.

Instead of courageously eliminating the corrupt practices of his officials, he vainly supposed he could restore the national income by rigid personal economies. He reduced expenses in the central government and in his own household, and declined costly gifts from high officials. On his fiftieth birthday, in 1809, he would not tolerate an expensive ceremony, and refrained from ordering the customary tax exemptions. Only on his sixtieth birthday (1819) did he exempt the country from paying taxes in arrears—taxes which in any case could not have been collected in full. He reduced allotments to his relatives and members of the Imperial Household who were so numerous that they had become a menace to law and order in the capital. In 1813 he built a town near Mukden where he settled some seventy families of his most indigent dependants, but they had so long been habituated to the luxuries of the capital that it is not surprising they openly resented being made to till the soil. The courtiers, too, were dissatisfied, for they had been accustomed to enormous expenditures, part of which they could divert to their own uses. Particularly dissatisfied were the corrupt Bannermen and eunuchs, some of whom joined the T'ien-li chiao rebels (see under ) in 1813 in storming the Palaces. No wonder that there occurred in 1803 an attempt on the Emperor's life by a lunatic who had previously been in his employ. The belief of some that the Emperor was by nature a miser cannot account for these grievances; he simply embarked on a policy of economy as being, for him, the only way of correcting deep-seated maladies in the government.

His policy was at least partially successful, for in the last few years of his reign expenditures did not exceed income. But he became unpopular; and in his efforts to offset his unpopu- 966