In 1979, in Prince Mountain, Anlu, Hubei Province, several farmers stumbled upon an ancient tomb while digging a well. Archaeologists were surprised to find that this is a Tang Dynasty royal family specification aristocratic tomb, and the tomb was deliberately seriously damaged in the early days, the coffin in the tomb was not checked, only the coffin bed remained, and the owner of the tomb was suspected of being disposed of, which was obviously not the work of tomb robbers. So, who is the owner of the tomb? How was the Tang dynasty royal family that should have been in Chang'an buried in Hubei? Why such cruel treatment after death? After careful cleaning by archaeologists, a bloody and cruel secret history of the Tang court buried underground for thousands of years has come to light.
Originally, Hubei Anlu belonged to Anzhou during the Tang Dynasty, which was the domain of Li Ke, the third son of Emperor Taizong of Tang, and the owner of this tomb was Li Ke's princess Yang. Li Ke was the son of Li Shimin and the Sui Emperor's princess Yang Shi, with a wise and decisive personality, good at riding and shooting, and both literary and martial arts, Li Shimin felt that this child was very similar to himself and loved him very much.
During the Zhenguan period, Li Shimin and li chengqian, the eldest son of empress Dowager Changsun, and Li Tai, the second son of Li Tai, were deposed in order to fight for the throne, and the third son Li Zhi was put on the throne of crown prince with the support of his uncles Changsun Wuji and Chu Suiliang. However, Li Shimin disliked Li Zhi's gentle and cowardly personality, and feared that he would not be able to defend Jiangshan, and once had the intention of replacing li Ke with Li Ke. When he tested the eldest grandson in this way, of course, he was resolutely opposed by him. The eldest son Wuji was both a confidant of Li Shimin and a relative of the emperor and a relative of the state, and he was very prestigious in the imperial court, and Li Shimin could not bear the political cost of deposing Prince Yi again, and the matter was finally abandoned. However, this "betrayal" of Li Shimin to his eldest grandson brothers and sisters of course deeply stimulated the eldest son Wujie, who could not vent his resentment against Emperor Taizong, but could only anger Li Ke, and since then he has deeply hated Li Ke in his heart. However, during emperor Taizong's reign, the eldest grandson was cautious and tolerant.
After Emperor Gaozong of Tang ascended to the throne, the eldest son Wuji became the governor of the imperial government entrusted by Emperor Taizong and controlled the power of the state. In the third year of Yonghui, those who were dissatisfied with the eldest son Wuji and other relatives of the emperor formed a small clique around Princess Gaoyang, the beloved daughter of Emperor Taizong, and they vented their dissatisfaction with the emperor and tried to establish Li Yuanjing, the king of Jing, the son of Gaozu Li Yuan, as emperor.
This kind of rebellion is of course pediatric level, and it was quickly denounced. When Changsun Wuji handled the case, in order to vent his resentment and eliminate his political enemies, he deliberately expanded the case and recruited a large number of imperial relatives and state relatives to create unjust imprisonment, including the innocent Wu king Li Ke and others. Li Ke was slandered and rebelled and died unjustly, and before he died, he cursed: "The eldest son is unscrupulous in stealing authority, harming goodness, and the clan has a spirit, and the clan will soon be destroyed!" Therefore, when Changsun Wuji was later forced to die by Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Wu Zetian, and the Changsun family was tragically overthrown, the history books did not give him sympathy, but thought that this was his retribution for framing Li Ke and others.
Princess Yang of Wu discovered in Anlu, Hubei Province, was Li Ke's first wife, of noble birth, and was from the Sui Dynasty imperial family of the Hongnong Yang clan. She accompanied Li Kezhi in the tenth year of Zhenguan to Anzhou, zhenguan died of illness in the eleventh year, because the Zhaoling Tomb was initially built at that time, and a mature burial system had not yet been formed, so Princess Wu was buried in her husband's territory.
When archaeologists cleaned up his tomb, they found that the tomb was messy, the epitaph was uneven and there was no writing, and it was suspected of being smoothed out, only the zhi was covered with nine seal characters "Tang Wu Guofei Yang Zhizhi", indicating the identity of the tomb owner. Ordinary tomb robbers obviously do not do so, so archaeologists speculate that because Li Ke was framed and offended by the eldest son Wujie during the reign of Emperor Gaozong Yonghui, he was not only killed himself, but his children and his mother and brother Li Yan, the king of Shu, were also convicted at the same time, and even his wife Princess Wu, who had died for many years and was buried in Anlu, was subjected to the treatment of digging up the grave and throwing away the body, which shows the fierceness of the political struggle in the Tang Dynasty court and the deep resentment of the eldest son Wujie against Emperor Taizong's abolition.
The tomb of Princess Wu is large in scale, and although it was destroyed in the early days, a number of extremely exquisite Tang Dynasty cultural relics such as gold noodles, golden bells and Persian silver coins have been excavated, including porcelain, pottery figurines, pottery animals, stone shoes, bronzes, beads and jade, epitaphs and other cultural relics with a total of more than 300 pieces. (For details, see the article "Tomb of Princess Yang of Tang Wu, Prince of Anlu Mountain")