Do members of the Qing royal family, such as princes and county kings, also call themselves slaves?

Although they are relatives, they should abide by the feudal principle of monarch and minister.

Attachment: Qing dynasty appellation system

Although the word "slave" has a contemptuous meaning, it has a special position in the legal system of the Qing Dynasty. The Qing dynasty stipulated that the emperor should be given a throne, and if he was a full minister, he would call himself a "slave"; If you are a Han minister, you should call yourself a "minister." If Chen Han calls himself a slave, he is "pretending". In the thirty-eighth year of Qianlong (1773), Tianbao in Manchu Dynasty and Hanlong * * wrote a memorial about the fraud case in the imperial examination hall. Because Tianbao's name comes first, they are called "slave Tianbao and Sagittarius Dragon" together. Emperor Qianlong saw the paper and was furious. He rebuked the horse as a "slave". Therefore, Emperor Qianlong made a stipulation: "All ministers of Manchu and Han at home and abroad can perform official duties, and they are all called' ministers'". The purpose of this regulation is to prevent Han Chen from calling himself a "domestic slave". So I'd rather let Manchu ministers accommodate Han ministers, the so-called "ministers".

Why did the Qing emperor make these provisions on the throne? Originally, Manchu rulers have always been strict with the Han people and should be consistent with themselves. They forced the Han people to shave their heads and change clothes, causing a river of blood, all in order to make them domesticate and submit to themselves, but they refused to let the Han people call themselves "slaves" like themselves. Why is this?

Sitting and watching the old man's "Qing unofficial history" recorded a cloud: "Every flag owner is poor and bored, making a living by being a servant, or being a ruler, or losing a car, or shouldering the burden. If you meet your slave on the road, you will drink his name and get off to take his place. Slaves will pay tribute to him again and again, untie his waist and bribe him to avoid it. Therefore, those rich flag slaves are very afraid to see their poor masters. " This is called "strict division of master and slave". The habit of "strictly dividing the master from the slave" is reflected in the laws and regulations, that is, the Manchu minister should call himself a "slave" in doing things. Man Chen calls himself a "slave", which not only shows that he is a servant of the emperor, but also shows that he is a domestic slave of the emperor. Han officials, on the other hand, do not have the traditional master-slave relationship of Manchu, but are only courtiers and cannot be called "slaves". It is for this reason that horses call themselves "slaves" when playing with things and are considered as pretenders.

The two appellations of "slave" and "minister", whoever respects them is inferior, is undoubtedly that "slave" is lower than "minister" in the eyes of modern people. However, this judgment is far from the actual situation in the Qing Dynasty. On the surface, the term "slave" seems to be less elegant and dignified than "minister", but in fact "slave" is much more expensive than "minister". "Slave" is actually a kind of "home call" between Manchu master and slave, and Han people who are not "home" are not qualified to call it that-just like Grandpa Zhao scolds Ah Q: You deserve it! Calling himself a "minister" is not because the emperor "gives him special preferential treatment", but to distinguish himself from a "slave" to show that his position is lower than that of Manchu Chen. As the saying goes, "beating is pain, scolding is love." The Qing emperor asked the Manchu minister to call himself a "slave", which was actually a "love" in scolding. On the contrary, it is precisely because of this lack of "love" that Han people are not allowed to call themselves "slaves".

In the process of implementing the memorial title system, there were some special cases: some ministers in China called themselves "ministers", but they were reprimanded by the emperor. In the thirty-fifth year of Qianlong (1770), the ministers of Manchu Dynasty, Xi Ning, Da Ling A and Han Chen Zhou Yuanli joined hands to make a 10% discount on "searching for locusts and eliminating evil". The ministers of the Qing Dynasty all called themselves "minions", and Zhou Yuanli also called himself "ministers", which made sense. However, Emperor Qianlong suspected that Zhu Yuanzhang's reasonable title of "minister" was "disdaining being called the same as Xining and deliberately innovating", and he refused to be a slave. In fact, how dare Zhou Yuanli think so? He wishes he could call himself a "slave"! I didn't expect to be suspected by Emperor Qianlong. In this case, Emperor Qianlong played the trick of "relying on skill and not trusting" as Han Feizi said. He made these rules himself, but he broke his word and blamed his deputy, which completely violated his promise. "Rely on technique instead of trust" is a treasure tactic of emperors in China, and Emperor Qianlong obviously used it skillfully.