page_title: Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers
section_title: Replacement by the Grand Council
hierarchical_section_title: Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers / Replacement by the Grand Council
caption_attribution_description: English: Portrait of the Yongzheng Emperor (r. 1722–1735) of the Qing Dynasty, reading a stitched-bound book. Painted with ink and color on a silk scroll 171.3 centimetres (67.4&#160;in) high by 156.5 centimetres (61.6&#160;in) wide. Kept at the Palace Museum in Beijing, China. 中文: 《雍正帝观书像》轴。清宮廷画家绘。绢本,设色。纵171.3厘米,横156.5厘米。故宮博物院藏。
context_page_description: The Deliberative Council of Princes and Ministers, also known as the Council of Princes and High Officials and Assembly of Princes and High Officials, or simply as the Deliberative Council, was an advisory body for the emperors of the early Qing dynasty. Derived from informal deliberative groups created by Nurhaci in the 1610s and early 1620s, the Council was formally established by his son and successor Hong Taiji in 1626 and expanded in 1637. Staffed mainly by Manchu dignitaries, this aristocratic institution served as the chief source of advice on military matters for Hong Taiji and the Shunzhi and Kangxi emperors. It was particularly powerful during the regencies of Dorgon and Oboi, who used it to enhance their personal influence.
  After serving as the most influential policymaking body of the dynasty for more than a century, the Deliberative Council was displaced and then made obsolete by the more ethnically mixed Grand Council, which the Yongzheng Emperor created in the late 1720s to circumvent the influence of the deliberative princes and ministers. The Deliberative Council was formally abolished in 1792.
context_section_description: The Yongzheng Emperor succeeded the Kangxi Emperor after a crisis that pitted many of the Kangxi Emperor's sons against one another. Many Manchu nobles who had sided with the Yongzheng Emperor's rivals during the succession struggle were still members of the Deliberative Council. To avoid alienating these grandees, the Yongzheng Emperor still made new appointments to the Council and consulted it on various military matters, but he also worked to undermine its power. To bypass the Council, he created smaller parallel bodies which he found more reliable and less entrenched. Slowly, he transferred deliberative powers to these more trusted ministers. Around 1730, these informal institutions crystallized into the Grand Council. Unlike the Deliberative Council, whose membership was almost exclusively Manchu, the Grand Council counted many Chinese among its ranks. This more ethnically mixed privy council served as the empire's main policymaking body for the rest of the Qing dynasty.
  After the stabilization of the Grand Council in the 1730s, the influence of the Deliberative Council quickly declined. During the Qianlong period (1736–1796), the titles of "deliberative minister" and "deliberative prince" became mainly honorific. Manchu Grand Secretaries held such titles until 1792, when the Council was formally abolished by the Qianlong Emperor. The title was revived in the second half of the nineteenth century for Prince Gong and others when Prince Gong was head of the Grand Council.
caption: To diminish the influence of Manchu nobles, the Yongzheng Emperor created the Grand Council, a new deliberative body that bypassed the Deliberative Council.
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