In all of Wu Zetian's political career, the posthumous title is definitely the most important step, which is the first step for her to go from the harem to the front, and with the identity of an empress, she can give herself the opportunity to legally participate in politics.
However, the process after Wu Zetian's establishment was full of hardships, especially the opposition led by Changsun Wuji, who formed a very large force in the court and has been obstructing Wu Zetian's sealing.
However, with the several confrontations between Wu Zetian and Changsun Wuji, some foreign officials were finally dismantled, because they were not monolithic, and the current Lihou incident against Wu Zetian was mainly divided into three factions.
The opposition, led by Changsun Wuji, is mainly the original aristocratic clique, which attaches great importance to Mendi and does not want people from bad births to be empresses, essentially to safeguard the vested interests of the Guanlong clique and the Shandong Haoqiang clique.
The support faction, which was small in number, was mainly divided by Wu Zetian through interests and internal contradictions among officials, led by Xu Jingzong and Li Yifu, who tied themselves to Wu Zetian's chariot and shouted for Wu Zetian to stand up.
These are very obvious factions, and there are also very large silent forces, most of them belong to the middle and lower levels of officials and local officials, first of all, they have little influence on the Korean situation, and they do not want to participate in the high-level political game.
Basically, when an official reaches a certain level, you must take sides, but there is a person who is very special, he belongs to the centrist faction of the Zai Xiang clique, is the representative of the centrist faction, the Zai Xiang clique is the core of opposing Wu Zetian, and now there is a centrist in the Zai Xiang clique, which is really a good opportunity to win over.
This person is the famous Xu Maogong in the novel, of course, he also has a more formal name Xu Shixun, of course, in the fierce era after Wu Zetian's sealing, his name is still called Li Ji.
Why a person has so many names, a simple look at his name, is simply an ancient man, the highest level can endure is also the most complex history of name change.
The ancients all had names and characters, Xu Shixun character Maogong, which is why in the later novels, call him Xu Maogong, everything is normal here.
In the last year of the Sui Dynasty, he went to WagangZhai and later followed Li Shimin in the southern conquest of the northern war, and his military achievements were prominent and loyal, so he was given the surname Li, so Xu Shixun had a new name, Li Shixun.
The emperor gave the country a surname, which is the biggest praise for Li Shixun, but soon he changed his name, after Li Shimin became emperor, this name violated the emperor's taboo, in ancient times the emperor's name was used, ordinary fans are absolutely not able to use, although Li Shimin said many times that it does not matter, but Li Shixun still changed the name to Li Ji.
Do you think it's over?
If the matter ends here, then we should call him Li Ji now, but many things are difficult, and there will be changes after death, which is really speechless.
Many years after Li Ji's death, his grandson rebelled, and as a result, Wu Zetian pulled Li Ji out of the corpse and stripped him of his qualifications with the surname Li, so strictly speaking, we can only call him Xu Shixun.
This is an ancient man, probably encountered the most complex form, a person even the name of the change, do you think that he is also fickle?
In fact, on the contrary, since Xu Shixun submitted to the Tang Dynasty, he thought that his original identity was the leader of Wagangzhai and the target was the Tang, so in Xu Shixun's heart, he was always loyal to the Tang, not to someone who was an emperor.
When the Xuanwumen Revolution occurred, Li Shimin approached Xu Shixun to ask him to participate, and he made it clear that he would not go, which was the excellent quality of a general and did not participate in political struggles.
And Li Shimin not only did not exclude him, but also respected him even more, because only such a person could finally finally become a country in the end, and Li Shimin was very important to Xu Shixun in his later years and was ready to entrust Li Zhi to him.
Once Xu Shiji was seriously ill, saying that he wanted to use the dragon's whiskers as a medicinal introduction, Li Shimin personally cut off his beard to make a medicinal introduction, which moved Xu Shiji badly, and he had a balance in his heart from beginning to end, that is, to always be loyal to the Tang Dynasty.
Li Shimin entrusted himself to the eldest son Wuji, and the military general was Xu Shijie, who at this moment was the Optimus Pillar of the Tang Dynasty and the representative of the Tang military, and what was Xu Shijie's attitude towards this matter after Wu Zetian was sealed.
In fact, there is still some relationship between Xu Shijie and Wu Zetian, when Wu Zetian's father died, it was Xu Shiji who was the governor of Hezhou, escorting their mother and daughter and coffin back to Hezhou, no one expected that after 20 years of meeting again, Xu Shiji appeared at the moment when wu Zetian's fate was decided.
Ancient Chinese politics has its own set of ways of playing, Xu Shijie is nominally a centrist, but it is his words that determine the success or failure of this matter, that is, in the face of the silent, unwilling to participate in this matter Xu Shijie, Li Zhi repeatedly pressed his attitude.
In the end, Xu Shijie left the next sentence, which is His Majesty's family affair, a sentence that completely awakened Li Zhi, and also gave Li Zhi the confidence, indicating that Xu Shiji was not opposed, and on some issues of whether to do it or not, sometimes not opposing it was another way of expressing support.
After receiving the approval of the Tang military, this family affair gave Li Zhi confidence, and finally after disparaging Chu Suiliang, the loyal partner of the eldest son, Wu Zetian finally got her wish and sat on the empress, and this time it had been 18 years since she first entered the palace.
Wu Zetian, who has been on the throne for several 18 years in her life, and in the face of the pilgrimage of hundreds of officials, her inner excitement is beyond words, but it is impossible to say that she has the ambition to become emperor at this time.
As a woman, how Wu Zetian seized the power of the Tang Dynasty step by step, the main reason is still in Li Zhi, the next article we will talk about the bud of Wu Zetian's ambition, to see a towering tree, what it was like at the beginning.