Tang Yizong Li Yi was the eldest son of Xuanzong Li Chen, and Tang Yizong Li Yi (pronounced xuān) was the fifth son of Li Yi. said that Li Yi and Li Yi, the father and son, were "lucky" because they got rid of the female emperor Wu Zetian (because her dynasty was "Zhou" instead of "Tang"), counting the Tang Shaodi Li Chongmao, as the eighteenth and nineteenth emperors of the Tang Dynasty, unlike most of the emperors of the Li Tang Dynasty, they all died of illness in the Chang'an Palace; What's even more "lucky" is that they are all kings of prostitution, Mr. Lu Simian has a special section in his "History of the Five Dynasties of the Sui and Tang Dynasties", entitled "Yixi Debauchery", but they are all lucky not to become the kings of the dead country, isn't this another kind of "luck"?
Let's talk about Li Yi first. Although his father Li Chen has many sons, because he has not been crowned queen, he has no sons-in-law, let alone a crown prince, and his eldest son Li Yi was only named King Yun. In this case, it has become a question of which son will inherit Lao Tzu's great cause. It's just that such a question has often become a taboo for the parties, and ordinary people can't touch it, if anyone touches it, such a rhetorical question will pop up in the subconscious of the current emperor: Do you kid want my long live lord to return to heaven as soon as possible? Xuanzong Li Chen also has such a mentality, when he was poisoned and irritable due to taking the "elixir", he wanted to amnesty the world, but there was no reason for amnesty. At this time, Prime Minister Cui Shenyou took the opportunity to say: "The crown prince is the foundation of the world, and if the emperor canonizes the crown prince, he can give amnesty to the world." "I don't know that although Li Chen has been deeply poisoned, he doesn't know that his life has entered the countdown, and he is most taboo for others to mention the question of successor, so although he didn't answer at the time, he soon found an excuse to demote Cui Shenyou out of the capital.
Li Zhao (28 December 833 - 15 August 873)
There is another reason why Li Chen has not established a revolutionary successor for a long time: according to the rules, since there is no son-in-law, the eldest son should be chosen; However, he disliked the eldest son of the emperor the most. The rest of the sons lived in the palace, but Li Yi lived in the sixteenth house. As mentioned earlier, Li Yi's mother Chao died of illness in the middle age, and the paradox is that according to the "New Tang Dynasty Book: The Descendants of the Concubines", after Li Luo became the emperor, "the emperor is not long", that is, people outside suspect that Li Yi is not the eldest son of Xuanzong Li Chen. What to do? The new emperor came up with a piece of evidence, that is, when his mother Chao died, his father Li Chen not only posthumously presented her as "Zhaorong", but also asked Xiao Zhi, a scholar from Hanlin, to write an epitaph for her, which recorded in detail that she gave birth to the brother and sister King Yun and Princess Wanshou. At this time, Xiao Zhi showed the epitaph to the ministers of civil and military affairs, which is said to have cleared people's doubts. In this regard, Mr. Lu Simian, a contemporary historian, questioned: The birth of the prince is a major event, which is well-known, so why doubt the order between the eldest and the youngest? Regardless of the inscription, according to the common practice, although the children born to the concubine will be recorded, they may not be detailed to the year of birth. In "The Biography of the Queen", although there is a record of Chao giving birth to King Yun and Princess Wanshou, there is no record of their birth year, during which it is likely to vaguely convey such a message to people: What people suspected at that time was not Li Luo's ranking among the brothers, but whether he was born to Li Chen! In other words, Li Luo is probably not Li Chen's son, and Li Chen's eldest son may be the Li Han who was named King Yong during his lifetime and was called "Prince Jinghuai" after his death. When the Book of the Old Tang Dynasty describes how many sons an emperor had, it generally includes the son who inherited the throne; Only when describing Xuanzong Li Chen, it is said that it is "the eleventh son of Xuanzong", but it is the eleven sons other than "Emperor Yizong", plus "Emperor Yizong", it is twelve. Moreover, the "Old Tang Book" generally indicates that a certain prince is the son of the old emperor, and the son of Xuanzong is indicated in some and not in part. For example, Li Jing, the king of Ya, is indicated as "the second son of Xuanzong", but before the king of Ya, there is Li Han, the prince of Jinghuai. Perhaps, these are all vague hints to people that Li Luo is not Li Chen's son, let alone the eldest son, Li Chen's eldest son is Li Han? After going so far, I just want to show that even though Li Luo is indeed Li Chen's son and the eldest son, before he ascended the throne as the emperor, he did not enjoy the treatment of the prince and the eldest son of the emperor, and even his birth was already widely questioned at that time. After becoming the emperor, although the authority of the emperor and his supporters suppressed the dissatisfaction brought about by doubts, it left a birth mystery for future generations. Mr. Lu Simian even believes that Li Yi is a child of the Li Tang clan whose blood relationship has been quite estranged due to "unjustifiable":
"Gai Yi Zongshi is not the son of Xuanzong? Xuanzong's eldest son, is it really Jinghuai? Wuzong succeeded his brother to his brother, and Xuanzong succeeded his uncle to his son, which is not the right heir, and is the body of the ancestor. The Yizong Gai clan has been sparse, there is no reason to stand, the eunuch has embraced it, but the name is the eldest son of Xuanzong, so that Xiao Zhi forged the inscription, with it as the body of Xuanzong, and changed the history of the country, or went to Jinghuai and replaced it with King Yun, or added a King of Yun and forgot that the number of them did not match. The texts of the old and new "Ji" also have their own origins. ("History of the Five Dynasties of the Sui and Tang Dynasties", Chapter 10, Section 1, "Yi Xi Desolutdness")
Perhaps for the above reasons, Li Yi was accompanied by blood before and after his accession to the throne. Because Li Chen loved his third son, King Kui Li Zi, before he died, he summoned the eunuchs Wang Guichang, Ma Gongru and Wang Jufang, and ordered them to support Li Zi to ascend to the pole. These three eunuchs and Wang Maoxuan, the lieutenant of the Right Shence Army, are all people who are deeply trusted and treated well by Li Chen, but Wang Zongshi, the lieutenant of the Left Shence Army, is not of the same mind as the three of them. After Li Chen died, Wang Guichang and others discussed it, and under the pretext of a holy decree, Wang Zongshi was transferred to the Huainan Military Region to serve as a supervisor. Wang Zongshi received a holy decree outside the Xuanhua Gate and was about to leave the palace from the Yintai Gate, and his deputy Qi (pronounced qí) Yuanshi reminded him: "The emperor has been ill for more than a month, you can only greet peace through the palace gate, and today you were suddenly transferred out, who knows if it is true or false?" Why don't you go in and meet the emperor and say goodbye? Wang Zongshi suddenly woke up, and when he wanted to enter the palace again, the guards had been increased at each gate, and they were heavily guarded. Qi Yuanshi covered and led Wang Zongshi and went straight to Li Chen's bedroom. Sure enough, the emperor has died, and the men and women in the palace are surrounding the body and weeping bitterly. Wang Zongshi sharply reprimanded Wang Guichang and others for falsely preaching the holy decree, and Wang Guichang and others were so frightened that they knelt on the ground, holding Wang Zongshi's feet, begging for mercy - obviously, Wang Zongshi, the lieutenant of the Zuo Shence Army who held military power, broke into the palace with a group of troops, otherwise, why would Wang Guichang and others be scared like this? Next, Wang Zongshi sent people to the Sixteen Mansions to welcome King Yun into the palace. On the ninth day of the eighth month of the thirteenth year of Dazhong (859 AD), Wang Zongshi, in the name of Xuanzong Li Chen, issued an edict to establish King Yun as the crown prince and let him temporarily take charge of military and political affairs. At that time, King Yun's name was Li Wen, and he changed his name to Li Luo after becoming the crown prince. On the same day, Wang Guichang, Ma Gongru and Wang Jufang were all executed. On August 13, Li Yi officially ascended the throne, this is Tang Yizong. Wang Guichang and others transferred Wang Zongshi to Huainan, which was indeed a false holy decree; However, supporting King Li Zi is exactly the emperor's entrustment. And Wang Zongshi, from appointing Li Yi as the crown prince to supporting him to ascend the throne, is not only a false holy decree, but also a greater false holy decree. The problem is that he controls the Divine Command Army and has the strength to falsely convey the Holy Decree. However, the king of Kui, Li Zi, was not killed at the same time, but died of illness in the fourth year of Xiantong (863 AD) during Li Luo's reign - if he did die of illness, he should be very lucky, although his "eldest brother" Li Yi was only 31 years old that year, and it is estimated that Li Zi, as the "third brother", is not yet 30 years old, right? As for whether Li Zi was under house arrest before his death, and whether he lost his personal freedom, it is difficult for future generations to figure out.
Li Yi was born in the seventh year of Taihe (833 AD) and was already 27 years old when he ascended the throne. This is another arrogant and lascivious emperor, and his interest in banquets, music, dancing and play is far higher than that of state affairs, with a small banquet every day, a large banquet every three days, and a large banquet more than a dozen times a month. He provided for a large number of musicians in the palace, and as soon as the interest came, he would reward these people greatly, and it was thousands of dollars at every turn; When going out to play, there are more than 100,000 servants inside and outside the palace, and the cost is even more amazing; He advocated Buddhism, built Buddhist temples, built Buddha statues, and gave countless money. A series of huge expenditures will inevitably become a heavy burden on the state finances, and in order to maintain the rule, it will inevitably expropriate and increase the exploitation of the common people. The imperial court's expropriation and tyranny will inevitably lead to national turmoil, so during Li Luo's reign, there were internal invasions of Nanzhao, and there were uprisings led by Qiu Fu in eastern Zhejiang, Pang Xun in Guilin, etc., although these uprisings were suppressed, the Tang Dynasty declined rapidly due to exhaustion of vitality, and a little achievement of Li Chen's "rule of Dazhong" has long been lost. In fact, the so-called "rule of Dazhong" is also quite fragile, far from being comparable with the "rule of Zhenguan" and "the prosperity of the Kaiyuan Dynasty", then the Qiu Fu uprising in eastern Zhejiang, which broke out at the beginning of Li Luo's accession to the throne, should be caused by the accumulation of contradictions in the middle of the year. And in this situation where the national strength is almost exhausted, what kind of "deeds" does Li Yi, as the emperor, have? Let's take a look at the comments made by Liu Yun (pronounced xù) and other Shi Chen in "The Book of the Old Tang Dynasty: Yizong Ji":
"However, (Yizong) also cut military taxes and decorated temples, spent people's money to cultivate Buddhism, and loved himself with flattery, saying that loyalty and straightforward advice were fallacies. (In this case, the civil and military ministers of the Manchu Dynasty) competed for the path of treachery, and few of them encouraged themselves with integrity and discipline. As a result, the favored filthy villain was unusually promoted, and the loyal assistant minister was innocently banished, which finally led to the war all over the wilderness, and the pest and drought continued year after year. (Ironically), the Buddha's bones have just entered the palace gate, and the sound of the emperor's funeral has shaken the field...... (The country has been ruined like this), even if a wise monarch like Emperor Wen of Han and Emperor Jing of Han ascends the throne, it will be difficult to revitalize it! From now on, the Tang Dynasty will no longer be able to prosper, and it is inevitable! ”
("The Height is Unbearable - The Emperor and His Concubines and Children" Series No. 599)