When it comes to the first female emperor in Chinese history, many people may think of Wu Zetian, but in fact, the first person in China to call the emperor as a woman is not Wu Zetian, but a woman named Chen Shuozhen. Chen Shuozhen was proclaimed emperor in the fourth year of Yonghui (653), thirty-seven years before Wu Zetian.
Compared with Wu Zetian, Chen Shuo's life was really much more bumpy. Chen Shuozhen's parents died since childhood, and she and her sister had a hard life. It was not until his sister was adopted by his neighbors that Chen Shuozhen entered the family of an official eunuch to work, so that he could have a full meal. When she became an adult, Chen Shuozhen married someone, but soon her husband left her, and she was lonely again.
However, the ups and downs of fate still did not intend to let Chen Shuozhen go, because of one thing, she almost lost her life. Once, a flood occurred in Qingxi County, Chen Shuozhen's hometown, but the local government not only did not provide relief, but instead increased taxes, resulting in a large number of people going bankrupt, displaced, selling children and women, and the people were not happy.
Chen Shuozhen saw that many of the villagers who had helped him were about to starve to death, so he ventured to open the owner's granary to help the people. Many people were saved because of this, but when the officials learned of this, they beat Chen Shuozhen badly and imprisoned her. Seeing that Chen Shuozhen's life was in danger, the people who were rescued by her rushed into the official's house and rescued her. After escaping the danger, Chen Shuozhen lived in seclusion in the mountains and forests as a Daogu.
After experiencing the hardships of life and death, Chen Shuozhen understood that only by rebelling against the dark and corrupt government was the only way out, so she decided to revolt. Chen Shuozhen used religion to develop believers and expand his power. During this period, the government arrested Chen Shuozhen and imprisoned her, but fortunately the believers pooled their money to redeem her.
This accident let Chen Shuozhen know that the government had noticed him, and the uprising could not be delayed. Therefore, in the fourth year of Yonghui (653 AD), Chen Shuozhen and his brother-in-law Zhang Shuyin raised an army to rebel. Chen Shuozhen claimed to be emperor of Wenjia and had tens of thousands of troops. In ancient China, there were very few women who served as the leaders of the rebel army, and the only woman who served as the leader of the rebel army, also known as the emperor, was Chen Shuozhen.
After Chen Shuozhen's uprising, the nearby people responded one after another, and the rebel army was huge for a time, and even many cities were down. However, most of Chen Shuozhen's army was ordinary people who had not undergone military training, their combat effectiveness was low, and they lacked siege equipment, so they attacked Shezhou for a long time. The imperial court took this opportunity to mobilize a large army to suppress Chen Shuozhen's rebel army. Due to the disparity in strength, Chen Shuozhen's rebellion was suppressed by the imperial court, and the Wenjia Emperor Chen Shuozhen was captured by the Tang army.
After Chen Shuozhen was captured, the other party stripped her naked and tied her to a pole, publicly humiliated her, and forced her to surrender. Chen Shuozhen broke out and scolded, glaring angrily at Tang Jun, who was tortured, and she did not say a word. In the end, the imperial court ordered That Chen Shuozhen beheaded.
Chen Shuozhen's uprising was not huge in scale, and lasted only a month before and after, but her courage as a woman to set off a vigorous uprising and openly fight with the feudal government was admirable. So, although Chen Shuozhen was not strictly an orthodox emperor, the modern historian Zhai Bozan called her "China's first female emperor."