From ancient times to the present, there have been many emperors, and each emperor has a place for people to comment on, or merit or tyranny or miscellaneous things.
Among these emperors, only a few emperors have made amazing achievements in the world, and we often call these emperors "the emperor of the ages". Qin Shi Huang counted one of them, and Tang Taizong also counted one.
In this issue, we will borrow Chairman Mao's perspective to evaluate the praised Tang Taizong.
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As early as 1926, Chairman Mao mentioned Li Shimin in Guangzhou, saying, "Tang Taizong and Li Mi were both heroes of the grass at that time. There are two sayings in the saying that Li Shimin's "Prince of Taiyuan, brown Qiu came." ”
Emperor Taizong of Tang often advised his father not to stick to Taiyuan and to turn his family into a country. Li Yuan listened, so he raised an army in Taiyuan and occupied Shaanxi. Here, Chairman Mao began to praise Tang Taizong.
When Chairman Mao commented on the ancient emperors, most of them did not have a high evaluation, but they still gave a fairly high evaluation to Tang Taizong.
"Tang Zong Song Zu, slightly inferior.". Tang Zong here refers to Li Shimin. Chairman Mao felt that Tang Taizong's civil rule was slightly worse, but martial arts belonged to the first among ancient emperors.
In fact, Chairman Mao praised Tang Taizong's strategy for governing the country and summed it up.
In the Old Book of Tang, it is said that Emperor Taizong of Tang ruled the country in four ways, worked diligently in the government, "will retreat and think into the province, concentrate on the worries", "every time he looks at the dynasty, he listens to no volume", "after the strike of the dynasty, he introduces famous courtiers and discusses right and wrong", "The world of fate and learning, gives him leisure, talks about the classics, miscellaneous literary chants, intermittent xuanyan, forgets the tiredness of the night, and does not sleep at midnight." ”
After Reading it, Chairman Mao wrote a comment at the back: "Li Shimin has four working methods. These four methods of work can be summed up as follows: "Self-reflection, from the flow of advice, to debate with the subjects, and to learn from history." ”
In the middle and middle period before zhenguan, Tang Taizong has been firmly using this working method.
As we all know, Tang Taizong has a famous saying when evaluating Wei Zheng, "People with copper as a mirror, they can wear a crown, take the ancient as a mirror, can see xingdi, take people as a mirror, and can know gains and losses; Wei Zheng is not, and he can die in a mirror!" This famous saying speaks of Tang Taizong's working method, which not only created the prosperity of Zhenguan, but also became the creed of most people who later engaged in work.
As for the "rule of Zhenguan" pioneered by Tang Taizong, Chairman Mao also often mentioned that in 1956 Chairman Mao said at a meeting: "Our country will not kill people at all, and it is approved by the central authorities to kill people again."
This matter has not yet been discussed within the framework of our Central Committee, but has been discussed in the scope of the enlarged meeting of the Politburo. In the heyday of the Tang Dynasty, only a dozen executions were imposed a year, all of which were central judgments. ”
What Chairman Mao is talking about here is what is recorded in the New Book of Tang: "Four years of chastity is the age, and twenty-nine people under the heavens have been sentenced to death." It can be seen that Chairman Mao identified with some of these aspects of the zhenguan prosperity.
As for Tang Taizong's military ability, Chairman Mao once said when talking about the issue of combat: "In fighting a war, we must first defend and not attack, let the enemy attack, and do not allow soldiers to talk about attacking, and talk about killing people." When the enemy repeatedly attacked and the soldiers were extremely angry, they ordered a counterattack and won the first attack, so that one could train the troops and the other could train the people. ”
Later, when Tang Taizong attacked Xue Rengao in Jincheng and Dou Jiande, who had a strong military force, he adopted this tactic of waiting for work, not firing the first shot, and then attacking.
When Chairman Mao read Feng Menglong's Complete Works of Wisdom Advisors, he also talked about Tang Taizong's art of war, and he read that "Tang Taizong tried to say, 'I have been running the four sides since I was young, and I know some strategies for how to use soldiers.'"
Whenever we observe the formation of the enemy army, we can know the strength and weakness of the enemy, so we often use the weakness of our army to resist the strength of the enemy, and use the strength of our army to attack the weakness of the enemy.
The enemy saw that I was weak, and launched an attack at a distance of only a few hundred paces, and I took advantage of the enemy's relaxation to suddenly kill from behind it, and the army in front of me turned around and attacked, and the enemy army did not fail. ”
Chairman Mao made a detailed commentary: "The so-called use of the weak as strong means that a small number of troops pretend to attack the enemy's various armies. The so-called "strong over weak" means concentrating absolute superiority forces, with five or six times the enemy's strength along the way, encircling them on all sides, and gathering and annihilating them.
Since the ancient energy army, there is no one who has left Li Shimin's right, followed by Zhu Yuanzhang'er. It can be seen from this that Chairman Mao, who uses soldiers like gods, is very sympathetic to Tang Taizong's military ability.
Although Chairman Mao recognized Tang Taizong's civil and military strategy, he also, like others, disagreed with some of Tang Taizong's actions.
Chairman Mao had a different view of Tang Taizong's appointment as crown prince in his later years.
When he read the New Book of Tang and the Biography of Li Ke, he lamented the talent of Li Ke, the King of Han, criticized Tang Taizong for not making Li Ke the crown prince, and made a comment: "Li Ke Yingwu, Li Zhi (Note: Tang Gaozong) decayed things, Zhizi MoRuo's father." However, when he listened to the unscrupulous words of the eldest grandson, he could be described as a wise man and ignorant for a while. ”
Li Ke and Li Zhi were two sons of Emperor Taizong of Tang. Li Ke was both literate and martial, and was deeply liked by Tang Taizong, who once praised Li Ke in front of all the ministers, "YingGuo class me", and consciously cultivated Li Ke, sealing Li Ke to a farther place as the king of the domain, so that he could be trained.
He said to the people around him, "Feng Li Ke went to a remote place to become the king of the clan, and when I die, his brother is not in danger of perishing." ”
It can be seen that Tang Taizong valued Li Ke. Li Zhi, on the other hand, is cowardly, lacks opinion, has no male master, and is difficult to take on heavy responsibilities.
Tang Taizong saw this clearly, so he planned to depose Li Zhi and establish Li Ke as crown prince and inherit the throne in the future.
However, because Li Zhi's uncle Changsun Wuji was vying for the throne for his nephew, he persuaded Tang Taizong in the name of his concubine, and could only abandon the plan to abolish the establishment and still make Li Zhi the crown prince. However, such a decision laid the foundation for Datang.
After Li Zhi ascended the throne, he ignored the objections of his ministers and made his father's talent Wu Zetian empress. Later, Li Zhi gradually ignored the government, making Wu Zetian monopolize his monopoly and call himself the "Second Saint" inside and outside the palace.
After the death of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and Li Zhi, Wu Zetian deposed emperors Zhongzong and Ruizong, proclaimed himself "Emperor of the Holy Spirit", and changed the name of the country to Tang to Zhou.
Chairman Mao's disapproval of Emperor Taizong of Tang's dissent came in part from Ma Zhou, Emperor Taizong's advisor.
Chairman Mao greatly praised Ma Zhou's letter to Tang Taizong, saying in this letter: "Your Majesty lived in the people when he was young, so he was familiar with the hardships of the people, and he also saw the successes and failures of the previous dynasty with his own eyes.
And the crown prince grew up in the deep palace since childhood, he didn't know anything about the outside world, and what to do after a hundred years of His Majesty's life was exactly what His Majesty should worry about.
The courtiers privately searched for the demise of dynasties since ancient times and concluded that no nation remained unscathed by the people who resented and gathered as thieves. Therefore, cultivate and indoctrinate, and do it in time when things can still be corrected. In the end, even if the monarch regrets it, it will not help. ”
Chairman Mao greatly agreed with the view that the prince could not do anything in this compromise, and he added many circles in the folds and wrote the criticism "The first strange text after Jia Sheng's "Public Security Policy.". The Song people's ten thousand words, such as those of Su Shi and the like, are empty on paper. ”
The Jia Sheng mentioned here is Jia Yi, a famous scholar in the early Western Han Dynasty. During the reign of Emperor Wen of Han, the power of the feudal princes of the Han Dynasty swelled dramatically, seriously threatening the power of the emperor.
Jia Yi wrote an article called "Public Security Policy" to state his claim to cut the princes. The later Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty successfully weakened the power of the princes and stabilized the politics of the Han Dynasty based on the ideas and methods of this article.
As for the Song Dynasty's Ten Thousand Words Book, it was during the Shenzong period that Wang Anshi began to change the law with the support of the emperor. Su Shi opposed the practice of "fighting for profit with the people" in the new law, so he twice wrote a book of ten thousand words and played the emperor. When no reply was received, he took up the post of magistrate.
Later, in 648 AD, Ma Zhou fell ill and died, and Chairman Mao regretted it, and also made a comment here: "Excessive drinking will not last forever." ”
In some respects, Tang Taizong had the legacy of his father Tang Gaozu, and in the middle and late period of Zhenguan, he mostly manifested himself as self-indulgence and wrongful killing of ministers. First, Tang Gaozu wrongfully killed Master Sheng Yan; Chairman Mao was very indignant when he read the "Old Book of Tang and the Biography of Master Sheng Yan."
Sheng Yanshi was a follower of Li Yuan's rebellion, and made great contributions, and later set up an ambush to kill Li Mi, who fled. When he was serving as an ambassador to appease him, he was captured by Xu Yuanlang, who rebelled against Sui in Shandong, and was unyielding.
Xu Yuanlang was very kind to him and asked him to write a letter to persuade the soldiers defending the city to surrender, but he wrote a letter opposing surrender, and Xu Yuanlang respected his integrity and still treated him with great hospitality.
After xu Yuanlang's rebellion failed, Sheng Yanshi returned to Li Yuan's side, but Li Yuan believed that he was a prisoner and still did not die, and must have surrendered to others, so without understanding it, he ordered Sheng Yanshi to die.
Chairman Mao read this and wrote down the criticism: "Sheng Yan is a famous general, unjustly killed." The later Tang Taizong was no less than Tang Gaozu in this regard.
In the Old Book of Tang, The Biography of Li Junxian records that Tang Taizong heard that the ZuoWuwei general Li Junxian colluded with the demons and secretly wanted to rebel.
Without investigation, Li Junxian was directly convicted and beheaded, and the whole family confiscated it. He completely forgot what he had said before, "Li Junxian is so brave and fierce, and he is worried about it."
The later Kangxi Emperor also left a comment at this time, saying that "there is not enough evidence for superstitious things, such as Tang Taizong's murder of Li Junxian only on suspicion, and he lost the principle of governance and did not successfully deal with this matter, such examples only left a warning for superstitious people." ”
After reading this period of history, Chairman Mao wrote a criticism that "Li Junxian was unjustly killed."
However, despite some shortcomings, the flaws are not hidden, and Chairman Mao's evaluation of Tang Taizong is undoubtedly extremely high, and he can be compared with the Qin Emperor Han Wu, that is, he feels that the merits created by the three are more or less equal.
Finally, a sentence in the General History of China is quoted to generally evaluate Tang Taizong: "Li Shimin was an accomplished politician and military figure, who played a leading role in the struggle against the Sui and Tang dynasties, and played a positive role in the development of social history in the early Tang Dynasty.
Non-discrimination against ethnic minorities, in addition to the harassment of the Turks, is mainly the use of Huairou political means to deal with ethnic issues, the methods are appropriate, the policies are enlightened, and it is conducive to the unity of the nation and the unity of the country. ”
Resources
Sheng Xunchang, eds. Mao Zedong and Chinese History Books. Shanghai:Shanghai Dictionary Publishing House, 2013.12.
Di Yansheng. Historical References Mao Zedong Comments on Chinese Emperors. Beijing:Xinhua Publishing House, 2009.05.
HU Changming. Is Tang Taizong's appointment of Li Zhi as crown prince "ignorant for a while"[J].Democracy and Science,2010,(No.1).]
WU Yucheng. Ma Zhou: Mao Zedong's Highly Praised Tang Dynasty Ministers[J].Wenshi Tiandi, 2018, (No. 1).
Baidu Encyclopedia
Throughout Tang Taizong's life, Wenzhi Wuluo had a good name, but in his later years, he did not choose a successor, and fell into an evaluation of "smart and ignorant".