In the second year of Yongzheng, Nian Gengyao went to Beijing, and was especially favored by Yong Zhengdi. He rose through the ranks and became a very important minister. However, it's too cold up there. In less than a year, Yongzheng used 92 major crimes and a white silk to make Nian Gengyao, who has made great achievements, invincible. There are different opinions about the reasons.
One of the reasons:
Nian Gengyao thinks highly of himself and doesn't take the son of heaven and courtiers seriously. At a celebration dinner, Yongzheng repeatedly asked the generals to take off their armor out of love, but no one dared to move. Only after Nian Gengyao said, did they dare to disarm. Nian Gengyao trained the country's generals into family soldiers.
The second reason is:
Nian Gengyao used the imperial guards sent by the imperial court as slaves, but for the favor of Yongzheng, he didn't do the ceremony of kneeling three times and knocking nine times. Even when he knew that Yongzheng was going to preface Liu's memorial, he dared to preface it on the grounds that he didn't want to disturb the holy driving, and even asked Yongzheng to make it public. So overbearing, can Yongzheng let him go?
The third reason: When Yongzheng vigorously rectified the bureaucracy, Nian Gengyao intervened everywhere and blocked many things. Its greedy, cronyism, cronyism, hard to see. Even though he was demoted, he was still lucky and took away thousands of Qin Bing. At this time of Yongzheng, it is imperative to severely punish corrupt officials and those who violate the law and discipline. Nian Gengyao, the favourite of Yongzheng, is in a high position. For him, it is fitting to show his determination to carry out thorough reform.
So, it was Nian Gengyao who ran into the storm without knowing the convergence, which just gave Yong Zhengdi a chance to make an example. Some people think that Nian Gengyao participated in Yongzheng's usurpation of the throne, and his death was a tragedy of "birds flying at the phoenix" staged by a generation of emperors to consolidate the throne. It is said that Emperor Kangxi originally appointed Yin Gui, the fourteenth son of the emperor, to succeed to the throne, but Yong Zhengdi tampered with the imperial edict to seize the throne, and with the help of Nian Gengyao, then the governor of Sichuan, restrained Yin Gui, the fourteenth son of the emperor who was a soldier in Sichuan, so that he could not compete for the position.
Yongzheng not only ascended the throne, but also had great talent and ability to manage the world. If Nian Gengyao is left behind, if he knows the hero of his plot to usurp the throne, it will be a great constraint. In addition, once Nian Gengyao is in power, he will not know how to converge, nor will he know it. He will lose his official position and die sooner or later.
What's more, people think that Nian Gengyao died because his own plan to be emperor was revealed. Chen Jie thinks that Tang Yao's delusion of being emperor is the most unbearable in "A Probe into the Cause of Nian Gengyao's Death", so he was born to die. ? Yong Xian Lu also mentioned that Nian Gengyao, Jing and Zou Lu talked about being emperors together.
The book Anecdotes of Qing Dynasty records that after Nian Gengyao fell out of favor, his audience advised him to rebel. After a long silence, he looked at the sky at night and sighed in awe: it's really disharmony. I will be a minister at the beginning of the reform. From this point of view, Nian Gengyao really wants to be the emperor, and he will become a minister just because things are not harmonious.
Nian Gengyao is a generation of heroes, but he was born to die. From the peak of power to the trough of life, the reasons are confusing, but in summary, it only caused a substantial threat to the imperial power, which was feared by the royal family and ended in evil.