In the eighteenth year of the Sui Kai Emperor (598), Tang Taizong Li Shimin was born in the Wugong Annex, and in this year, another major event occurred, that is, the Sui Emperor Yang Jian sent 300,000 troops to attack Goguryeo in two ways, resulting in the Sui army's casualties reaching 89 out of 10, and the defeat was great. After Yang Guang succeeded to the throne, he attacked Goguryeo several times, arousing public indignation, and the military nobles also abandoned Yang Guang, so that at the end of the Sui Dynasty, Li Yuan's father and son took the opportunity to raise an army and seize the world.
In 617, Li Yuan and Li Shimin plotted an army in Jinyang, and since then, Li Shimin has begun his vigorous life, this year, Li Shimin was only 20 years old, perhaps he did not think that he would one day become the lord of the world, of course, he could not imagine that one day, he would cut off his family for power, personally killed two brothers of his mother 's compatriots (Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji), and forced his father to become emperor.
The road to seizing the world was full of white bones, and in order to ascend the throne as the emperor to own the world, it was also necessary to donate blood to sacrifice, even if this blood may be on the body of his own relatives. The change of Xuanwumen sent Li Shimin to the peak of power, and also brought him countless accusations and stains that could never be washed away. This year, Li Shimin was 29 years old, and his road to the emperor had just begun, but it was extremely difficult.
Only a few days after ascending the throne, Jieli Khan arrived at the Weishui Bridge with more than 100,000 troops and pointed directly at Chang'an, but Li Shimin could not go to war, and could only choose to endure humiliation and burden, sending a large amount of money to sign the so-called Weishui Alliance, and the winner was Jieli Khan.
The biggest difference between Li Shimin and Yang Guang was that he was a doer, pragmatic and capable, reforming internal affairs, selecting talents, appointing sages to govern the country, developing the economy, and then began to declare war on the outside world after the national strength reached a certain level, destroying the Eastern Turks, destroying Gaochang, destroying Xue Yantuo, attacking Tuguhun and so on, and of course conquest of Goguryeo.
Li Shimin's conquest of Goguryeo was a watershed in his rule, and his political years can be counted from here. In the spring of 645, Li Shimin personally conquered Goguryeo and achieved good results, but he did not fulfill Li Shimin's ambition to attack Goguryeo, and this battle lasted a long time, and the cruel battlefield life quickly dragged down Li Shimin's body.
In the winter of that year, Li Shimin fell ill on the way back to Dingzhou, before he reached Dingzhou. "The carbuncle was very severe, to the point where he could only sit on the foot, and after arriving in Dingzhou, the crown prince Li Zhi personally sucked carbuncle poison for Li Shimin." This illness was very severe, and after Liu Huan, the attendant at the time, saw Li Shimin, he once said to his colleagues: "The situation is so strong, the holy bow is worrisome!" It was this sentence that caused him to kill himself.
It was also from this time that Li Shimin was no longer as strong as before, and Li Zhi also began to supervise the country for a long time. On the surface, Li Shimin is no different from before, he will still patrol everywhere, or he will formulate foreign wars. In 646, when Li Shimin was inspecting Lingzhou, thousands of people from the Shule tribes went to Lingzhou to meet Li Shimin and ask Li Shimin to be their Heavenly Khan.
But the body has indeed inevitably collapsed, had to take a long time to maintain, and Li Shimin also began to take the elixir of immortality, which is another layer of destruction to his body, but also let his temper change a lot, more irritable, more arbitrary, more sentimental than before.
On the day of his birthday in 646, he said sadly to his eldest grandson that he could not accept joy at the knees of his parents, and he couldn't help but cry after saying it. In the face of the death of one old minister after another, Li Shimin was also very sad and could not help but cry.
In contrast, in the last few years, the killing of two people is more eye-catching, one of which is Zhang Liang, one of the heroes of Lingyange, who was executed by Li Shimin because he raised five hundred dummies, even if the minister believes that Zhang Liang "has no anti-form, and the crime is not appropriate to die", but Li Shimin still insisted on killing Zhang Liang; the other was Li Junxian, the person who died for Wu Zetian in the legend, that is, the proverb that appeared at the end of Zhenguan, "After the third generation of Tang, the heroine Wu Wang dynasty has the world". However, Li Junxian actually had a plot with others when he was in Huazhou at that time, and the defendant rebelled and was killed by Li Shimin.
Of course, another more eye-catching thing is the great construction of civil engineering, Li Shimin has a wind disease, himself is more afraid of heat, and later after his body was broken, he was even more afraid of heat, so he rebuilt the original dilapidated palace into two large summer palaces, namely Cuiwei Palace and Yuhua Palace, Xu Hui also wrote "Emperor Taizong's Military Strike", which won Li Shimin's favor, but Li Shimin only rewarded it, and did not really follow Xu Hui's advice.
However, in 648, Li Shimin may have had a premonition that his health would not be good, and wrote twelve articles of the Emperor Fan and handed them to Li Zhi to study, and in 649, he arranged three auxiliary ministers for Li Zhi, namely Changsun Wuji, Chu Suiliang, and Li Shiji. Then, in May of that year, Li Shimin fell ill and died in Cuiwei Palace.