When the queen celebrates her birthday, she only has a bowl of noodles for each person. Which emperor is so stingy?

There is a saying in ancient times: There is nothing in the world but the land of kings. Emperors who were wealthy from all over the world strived for luxury in all aspects of life to show their royal style. Although some emperors were considerate of the sufferings of the people and were unwilling to be extravagant and wasteful, Emperor Daoguang's frugality was simply outrageous.

As the eighth emperor of the Qing Dynasty, when Daoguang succeeded to the throne, the Qing Dynasty had begun to decline, but it was not to the point where the blame could not be opened. However, during his reign, Emperor Daoguang regarded "frugality" as the truth of life and emphasized frugality in governing the country.

In order to set an example, Emperor Daoguang never bought new clothes. Even when the old clothes were torn, he was reluctant to keep them. Instead, he continued to wear them after they were patched. Not only that, all the beauties in the harem also had to wear old clothes. .

If Emperor Daoguang sees any minister wearing new clothes, he will be very unhappy. On the contrary, if someone wears clothes full of patches, Emperor Daoguang will admire this person very much.

As the saying goes, "What is good at the top will be worse at the bottom." In order to please Emperor Daoguang, the ministers tried every means to make their clothes old, so that there was an incredible phenomenon in Beijing at that time: old clothes. The selling price of clothes is much higher than new clothes. And going to court every day was like a gathering of beggars.

Unlike his grandfather Qianlong, in order to save money, Emperor Daoguang never traveled around like an emperor. Instead, he stayed in the palace and carefully calculated various expenses, and personally drew up a minimum expense standard to allow The Ministry of Internal Affairs acts according to standards.

One year, the Queen celebrated her birthday, and Emperor Daoguang didn't know what the fault was. He actually wanted to invite all the ministers to a banquet to celebrate the Queen's birthday together. After hearing the news, the ministers were all very happy, and they all looked forward to taking advantage of the queen and having a good meal.

At the banquet, each minister had a bowl of longevity noodles in front of him, with some cabbage and a little minced meat on top. The hungry ministers swept away the noodles in the bowl. Light, everyone is eagerly waiting for the next dish.

What people didn’t expect was that after Emperor Daoguang finished eating his noodles slowly, he happily told the ministers: The banquet is now over, and the ladies can go back to their homes. The ministers were surprised at the emperor's stinginess, but they had to look deeply moved and thank the emperor for the "delicious food".

I believe that Emperor Daoguang’s heart was bleeding when he invited his ministers to a banquet to eat cabbage and longevity noodles. Because his usual dinner with the Queen was just a few sesame cakes and a pot of hot tea.

And after dinner, Emperor Daoguang would turn off the lights and go to bed, so as to save money on lamp oil. Therefore, Daoguang in the portraits looks skinny. I think this is because he was frugal. To.

Although Emperor Daoguang practiced frugality, the officials were not influenced by it and were still greedy. The Qing Dynasty was still in decline and did not reach its peak again because of his thrift.

When Emperor Daoguang first succeeded to the throne, tens of thousands of troops finally put down the Zhanggar rebellion in Xinjiang after several years of hard fighting. Emperor Daoguang was extremely happy and held a banquet in honor of the meritorious soldiers, but there were only a few plates of side dishes on the table, which was inevitably disappointing.

As for matters such as river control and coastal defense, if any minister dared to propose funding, Emperor Daoguang would immediately become embarrassed.

In 1840, the Opium War broke out and the Qing army was defeated. Emperor Daoguang had no choice but to surrender and signed the Treaty of Nanjing. Emperor Daoguang, who had been stingy all his life, never imagined that it would lead to such a consequence. As the king of a country, Emperor Daoguang did not want to find ways to increase profits. Instead, he cared about trivial matters such as lamp oil. He even reduced military expenditures for the sake of frugality and was unwilling to regulate the Yellow River and build defense. If he expected to rely on these methods to achieve a prosperous age through frugality, That's really a fantasy.