"In the year of guanfu Wu's reign, the talents took over, and they did not feel sad about the family suo, and strangled the danger of the dynasty, and they could not repay the favor of the former emperor and the son of Wei Wujun. Russia is innocently trapped, and the neck is cursed, and the heavens and the earth are caged, and the place will be safe. Woe to you! This phrase comes from the hand of a historian in the Old Book of Tang who recorded history. Probably the content is that during the period when Wu Zetian was on the throne, he did many unrighteous things, causing the powerful literati warriors and talented heroes of the imperial court to fall under the violent rule of Emperor Wu, and the lives of the people were miserable.
In 1995, the epitaph in an ancient tomb excavated in Shaanxi also witnessed Wu Zetian's "non-jun" deeds. Yan Zhuang is the owner of this tomb, he may not be famous in the existing history textbooks and historical records, the eldest son of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, who was also the prince of the Tang Dynasty, named Li Hong, held an important position in the prince's Eastern Palace, which was the greatest achievement of Yan Zhuang's life. This crown prince Li Hong is the master of this Eastern Palace, that is, the object of his official service,
Referring to Emperor Gaozong of Tang's eldest son, The Crown Prince Li Hong, he was filial and benevolent, had both moral integrity and ability, and had a discerning eye. He has repeatedly asked for the people's orders, asked for grace for the two sisters who have been convicted, and provided his own unique insights for the national system, and he is not ashamed of the name of the prince. According to historical records, in 675 AD, that is, in the second year of the first century, the crown prince and Tang Gaozong went to Luoyang together, and as a result, the prince died suddenly in the Qiyun Hall of the Hebi Palace, only twenty-three years old, in his prime.
Emperor Gaozong of Tang was so grief-stricken that he posthumously presented Li Hong as emperor of filial piety and buried him in Gongling with the number of ceremonies for the Son of Heaven. However, is the truth of the facts really as recorded in the ancient books and texts, and Li Hong died in the palace because of overwork? "The accumulation of crunching russia invaded, entangled in the ant bed and ruined; the floating light was exhausted, and it passed away with the crane version." The phrase is impressively inscribed in the most prominent position in the tomb.
In xu shen's "Commentaries on the Interpretation of Texts" of the Eastern Han Dynasty, it can be verified that the crown prince's hospital bed is called an ant bed; and the coffin where the prince is buried after death is called the crane version. However, the heartfelt words at the end of one's own life should have been the construction of words that rarely mentioned the affairs of others and despised the meaning of one's own life. However, the meaning expressed in this sentence is that as a guest of the prince's door, because he misses the prince too much, as the prince drives the crane to the west, he is also depressed.
Although this sentence is understandable from the perspective of the ancient feudal ideas of "jun is a subject" and "loyal to the jun and the king", the fact is that if it is not an accidental death instead of an unjust death, will the impact of sijun's illness be so great? According to the Tang Huijiao, Yan Zhuang and Crown Prince Li Hong died one after another after a gap of less than a year, and the death of the prince, according to the old Book of Tang, was a normal death of overwork and illness, so why did Yan Zhuang, a member of the prince's disciple rather than a close relative, grieve to death?
Regarding the death of Prince Li Hong, many historians in the historical controversy have made bold speculations that the death of Prince Li Hong did not end of overwork and illness, but an unnatural death framed in the chaos of the political struggle of the imperial court, so yan Zhuang, who served the prince as a relatively close disciple of the prince, was depressed all the time, and finally died of helplessness and guilt for the death of prince Li Hong.
And we can boldly speculate that coveting the throne and wanting to eliminate dissidents while at the same time allowing the prince to let down his guard and approach his birth mother Wu Zetian at will, is the real murderer of him. This part is also recorded in numerous historical books on the history of the Tang Dynasty, such as the New Book of Tang, the Zizhi Tongjian, and the Tang Huijiao, that Li Hong was given to death by his mother Wu Zetian with a cup of wine (wine made from the wings of a poisonous bird).
"The saying of killing the duck" also added a corroboration because of the excavation of the epitaph of The Prince's Gate Guest Yan Zhuang. The contradiction between The Crown Prince Li Hong and Wu Zetian was not a cold day. In the later period of Emperor Gaozong's reign, the dragon's body was becoming emaciated, and he wanted to give the throne to the crown prince Li Hong in advance, while he himself began to retire. However, the politically proud Wu Zetian could not tolerate this idea, and Li Hong, the son of heaven, became an obstacle on his way to power, thus standing against Wu Zetian, and Wu Zetian would also find ways to eradicate dissidents and troubles in his heart.
In Xianyang City, there is a joint burial mausoleum of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Wu Zetian named Qianling standing on top of Liangshan. There is a stone stele next to the mausoleum representing Wu Zetian, on which not a single word is engraved, called the wordless stele. One of the more popular sayings is that she did a lot of evil things before becoming Emperor Wu.
Poisoning her son Li Hong with wine and snatching the throne from his hands, during her reign she was brutal and violent, and the people were miserable, and she knew that her deep sins could not be understood in the afterlife, so she did not record her life deeds, nor did she want to be over-interpreted by future generations. It can be seen from this that in the struggle for political power in the court, you and I are all losers, and the winners have never been able to hold the fruits of victory all the time, and in the end they only have the sigh of "but the king is in the world, and he has won the name of his life and death".
Resources:
Old Book of Tang
"Tang Hui Wants"
《Explanation of Words and Words》