In the past, there was an old saying called "dragons give birth to dragons, phoenixes give birth to phoenixes, rats are born to punch holes", which means that family origin will have a subtle impact on people, and will assimilate people's character and talents. According to this logic, after a loyal subject, he will always be a loyal subject, and the descendants of a traitor will always be a traitor, which is obviously contrary to objective facts. There are many precedents in history that confirm the fallacy of this statement.
Tang Taizong Li Shimin, known for his good at recognizing and employing people, can even be said to be one of the most skilled emperors in history. During Li Shimin's reign, there were military talents such as Li Jing, Li Ji, Qin Shubao, and Wei Chi Jingde, and wen had fang Xuanling, Du Ruyi, Wei Zheng, and other able people, which made the early years of the Tang Dynasty show a rare good situation of political communication and people. However, no one is perfect, and when tigers also take a nap, Li Shimin is not a god after all, and there will be mistakes.
There was a traitorous courtier who was able to escape Li Shimin's insight into everything and mixed with the court during the Zhenguan period for more than ten years. This person was Xu Jingzong, a traitorous minister in the early years of the Tang Dynasty. Xu Jingzong was originally a minor official of the Sui Dynasty, and after the fall of the Sui Dynasty, he was exiled to the rivers and lakes, and even served in the Wagang Army for a while. After the defeat of the Wagang army, Xu Jingzong changed the court and defected to Li Shimin's command. Although Xu Jingzong's character was despicable, in his early years he was full of poetry and books, quite talented, had a brilliant pen, and wrote articles that were full of flowers, and gradually attracted the attention of Li Shimin.
However, in the context of the early Tang Dynasty's upright people flooding the court, people like Xu Jingzong were destined to have no day to emerge, and the highest only achieved the Rebbe Shangshu, and were soon deposed for bribery. It was not until Emperor Gaozong of Tang succeeded to the throne that Xu Jingzong ushered in the peak of his life. The turning point in Xu Jingzong's life occurred at a critical moment when Wu Zetian was vying for empress. At that time, although Wu Zetian was able to control Li Zhi between the hands of the shares, he was strongly opposed by the elderly ministers such as Changsun Wuji and Chu Suiliang, and he was unable to do anything for a while.
The cunning and treacherous Xu Jingzong immediately realized that this was a heavenly opportunity to rise to the top and get rich. He saw that Wu Zetian would not live under the people for a long time, so he changed the court again, turned to Wu Zetian, and became one of her dog legs. In order to straighten out Wu Zetian, Xu Jingzong spared no effort and ran up and down. He first visited Changsun Wujie many times, soft and hard bubbles to persuade Changsun Wuji to change his mind, and then contacted courtiers to cultivate forces for Wu Zetian, and even risked great risks to kill Changsun Wuji and other elderly and important ministers, the Old Book of Tang records that he "subtly fabricated," and eventually let Changsun Wuji and others "die outside the ridge", eliminating Wu Zetian's biggest opponent and making the first contribution to Wu Zetian's sealing, and being able to ascend to the top of the clouds and be officially crowned prime minister.
Xu Jingzong turned his back on the way of loyalty and righteousness, and single-handedly supported Wu Zetian as empress, which eventually led to the usurpation of the Tang Dynasty by Wu Zetian, and was regarded by posterity as the first traitor of the Tang Dynasty. Not only that, Xu Jingzong has done many evil deeds for people, and his deeds are full of bad deeds. He once presided over the compilation and revision of the history of the Tang Dynasty, violated the principle of writing straight books, and in accordance with the closeness and distance of his relationship, arbitrarily tampered with and distorted the facts, "deleted and corrected things with his own love and hatred", and compiled the history of the Tang Dynasty with completely different faces. He was greedy for money and profits, and he had enriched himself in the midst of his own favoritism, and he had already made a lot of money, but he was still greedy, and even got a lot of dowry, and married his daughter to a barbaric land thousands of miles away.
However, although Xu Jingzong was scolded by his descendants for thousands of years, he had a descendant, but he was able to pass on for hundreds of lifetimes. This person was his great-grandson Xu Yuan. The New Book of Tang records that "Xu Yuan, the great-grandson of Emperor Jingzong of the Right Xiang", although he was a traitor, did not have the vices of his great-grandfather Xu Jingzong, and the history books called him "a generous elder, a Ming official". Xu Yuan was in charge of Suiyang Taishou (睢陽太守), just in time for the Anshi Rebellion, and Suiyang was besieged by heavy troops from Anshi's rebels.
Xu Yuan, in the difficult situation of running out of food and aid, was always as loyal as an iron stone and loyal to the imperial court, and together with the defender Zhang Tour, he fought a bloody battle under the siege of the rebels, trapped in the isolated city for ten months, and finally sacrificed his life for the country. The Battle of Suiyang seriously delayed the rebels' offensive plans, won an extremely valuable respite for the Tang Dynasty, and kept the wealth of Jianghuai from being invaded by the rebels, so he and Zhang Tour were known as the "double loyalties" of the Tang Dynasty, and their heroic deeds flowed for hundreds of generations, and there are still Shuangzhong Ancestral Halls or Shuangzhong Temples in Chaoyang, Jieyang and other places, and the incense is endless, and it is admired by people for thousands of years.