China Stories - A Brief History of China

The system of confidential memorials they created became one of the most valuable pillars on their long rule over china. The yung jung emperor's son and successor, the tien long emperor, would rely on confidential memorials to plan expansionist crusades as well as intervened directly in particularly troubling outbreaks of insurrection or investigations of state subversion. But by the nineteenth century, and especially during the unofficial reign of the empress dowager at sicy, when emperors became something of an afterthought, confidential memorials became just another form of imperial communication.