Wu Zetian is perhaps the most influential and well-known woman in Chinese history. She married two emperors, also a father and son, Tang Taizong and Tang Gaozong; gave birth to two emperors, and also a pair of brothers, Tang Zhongzong and Tang Ruizong; and she was also the only female emperor in Chinese history.
How did Wu Zetian become a powerful empress in a world ruled by men for thousands of years? Her story stands in the long river of history, just like a tall wordless monument standing in Qianling, which has always aroused the interest and thinking of future generations.
Speaking of wordless monuments, people's interpretations of wordless monuments are also different, the first is that Wu Zetian feels that his credit is too great to be summarized in words. The second is just the opposite, Wu Zetian feels that his sins are so deep that he dares not write it. The third is that Wu Zetian felt that Qianqiu had done a great job and had been commented on by his descendants, so he simply left a blank.
People's perspective and way of looking at history will change with the changes of the times, and this is exactly what is true of Wu Zetian's evaluation and opinion, and we will discuss the merits and demerits of Wu Zetian during his reign today.
The economic situation during the Wu Zetian period was that economic development and the flight of private households coexisted. When Wu Zetian called himself "Queen of Heaven", he suggested in the Twelve Matters of Suggestions that "persuade Nongsang and Bo to enlist". In order to implement the edict, the imperial court stipulated that the evaluation of local officials should take the development of agricultural production as an important criterion, and if the prefecture and county officials were located in the area where "the fields were opened up and the family had surplus grain", they would be rewarded; conversely, those who "were harsh in government and moved away from the household registration" would be punished.
However, what is particularly paradoxical is that the Wu Zetian period was also precisely the period when the Juntian system began to collapse and the problem of fleeing households was very serious. The real meaning of the equalization system is that the state distributes the wasteland to the people, and at the same time, through the household registration system, the people are firmly controlled on the land, they are not allowed to move, they are allowed to pay taxes, and they are provided with military and labor service for the state. This system was implemented from the Northern Wei Dynasty to the Wu Zetian period, which was obviously not suitable for economic development, so many ordinary people began to leave their household registration and leave their hometowns to go to other places to cultivate land or go to cities to make a living. Although we can say that the collapse of the equalized land system and the emergence of fugitive households fundamentally promoted the development of productive forces, at that time, after all, it caused a decrease in government revenue and an increase in social instability.
During the Wu Zetian period, he promoted talents and developed the imperial examination. Wu Zetian perfected the examination system, encouraged self-recommendation or recommendation of talents, and at the same time was able to discern good judgments and have the wisdom of knowing people, so that he could promote talents from a wide range of talents to think that they were for their own use, as the "Zizhi Tongjian" commented: "Although the empress dowager indiscriminately uses the Lu position to win the hearts and minds of the people in the world, those who are incompetent are also deposed or punished." The handle of punishment and reward was used to control the world, and the government was out of its own, and it was clear and good to judge, so the heroes and sages at that time also competed for it. ”
However, after Wu Zetian's rule was stable, he began to use cool officials. In order to consolidate his rule, Wu Zetian used harsh means. In order to gain the power of state rule, she poisoned her own son, who had been made crown prince. In the second year of his reign as emperor, Wu Zetian killed another cool official, Zhou Xing, with Lai Junchen, one of the two great cool officials; by the second year of The Long Live Tongtian, he killed Lai Junchen and ended the politics of cool officials.
In terms of culture, Wu Zetian promoted the prosperity of literary style, but also consumed the spirit of Shangwu to a certain extent. Wu Zetian once summoned literary attendants Zhou Maosi, Fan Lubing, and others to compile books such as "Essentials", "Zi hai" and "Records of Music Books", and also restructured music institutions, changed the inner teaching workshop into Yunshao Mansion, learned ya music, and promoted the development of court music.
However, the admiration for literature to a certain extent meant the weakening of the national martial spirit, and during the reign of Wu Zetian, the shortage of Han generals was already very prominent, and this situation continued to develop, and by the time of Tang Xuanzong, the generals who led the army to fight were mainly Hu people. To a certain extent, this contributed to the outbreak of the Anshi Rebellion, and the development of culture was also a double-edged sword.
During the Wu Zetian period, social restructuring and bloody killings coexisted. As mentioned earlier, at the beginning of The reign of Emperor Gaozong of Tang, the imperial court was still in the hands of the Guanlong aristocratic clique, who were powerful and did not even pay attention to the emperor. After Wu Zetian was made empress, he expelled the eldest grandson Wujie, Chu Suiliang, and others who opposed her becoming empress from the imperial court. For Wu Zetian, this was a matter of killing chickens and monkeys, but these Guanlong cliques and their dependents had become a conservative force with vested interests at that time. Driving them out of the political arena marked the end of the Guanlong clique's rule for more than a century since the Northern Zhou Dynasty, and also created a favorable condition for social progress and economic development
。 After that, in order to facilitate the control of the imperial court, Wu Zetian purged the stubborn and difficult elder ministers again and again, and promoted the new sharp backwards with shallow foundations again and again. In this way, after half a century of Wu Zetian's rule, profound changes took place in Chinese society, the power of the emperor was increased unprecedentedly, the power of the aristocratic bureaucracy was greatly weakened, and the bureaucracy of commoner origin was greatly developed. In particular, bureaucrats who are born in the imperial examination already account for a large proportion of the bureaucracy. It can be said that Wu Zetian's efforts have greatly strengthened the mobility of Chinese society, and the dream of "Going to Tian Shelang and Ascending to the Heavenly Son's Hall" is precisely because of Wu Zetian. It must be noted, however, that this social mobility is based on brutal and bloody killings, paved with the blood of countless people. Therefore, when we talk about the social restructuring and social mobility caused by Wu Zetian, we are still contradictory.
In this way, every achievement of Wu Zetian is accompanied by contradictions, to borrow a phrase from Mr. Linda, that is, every ray of sunshine is sprinkled, casting a shadow.
The graphics and text come from the Internet
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