It is well known that Emperor Taizong of Tang was an improper emperor: Li Shimin took the throne in the extreme form of killing his brother and forcing his father during the Xuanwumen Revolution. The ancient Chinese people have always emphasized that the name is right and the words are smooth - the so-called "if the name is not correct, the words are not smooth, and if the words are not smooth, things will not be accomplished." Emperors like Li Shimin, who came to power through irregular means, first had to solve the problem of political legitimacy. Even if Li Shimin makes excuses, he must make his ascension look more reasonable. In order to shape his own political legitimacy, Li Shimin's first thought was to vigorously publicize and highlight his own political achievements.
Li Shimin deliberately weakened Li Yuan and Li Jiancheng's role in the founding of the Tang Dynasty by tampering with the history books to further highlight his own merits. In the history books that Li Shimin instructed to tamper with, the Jinyang Qibing became planned by himself, while his father Li Yuan was more like a marionette arbitrarily manipulated in his hands. In doing so, Li Shimin wanted to emphasize to the people of the world that he was better than his father Li Yuan and his brother Li Jiancheng. Although Li Yuan, the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, was the founding prince of the Tang Dynasty, in the Tang Dynasty history books that Li Shimin had tampered with, Li Shimin was more like the founding prince of the Tang Dynasty.
Some history books in later generations have also been falsely transmitted because of the influence of Tang Dynasty historical materials. Sima Guang said in the Zizhi Tongjian: "Emperor Gaozu has the merits of Emperor Taizong in the world", that is to say, Tang Gaozu Li Yuan's ability to win the world is the credit of Tang Taizong Li Shimin. The causes and consequences of Li Yuan's Jinyang uprising are recorded in the history books as follows: Li Shimin saw that the Sui Dynasty was about to run out, so he discussed the matter of raising an army with Pei Huan, a close confidant of Li Yuan's side, but at that time, Li Yuan was satisfied with the status quo and did not want to raise an army. Later, Pei Huan chose several beautiful women from Jinyang Palace to spend the night with Li Yuan after he was drunk.
Afterwards, Pei Huan said to Li Yuan, "Once the matter of arranging for the palace maid to serve is exposed, it will kill the head, and I am doing this to persuade you to make up your mind to start an army." Li Shimin took the opportunity to say to Li Yuan: "Today's emperor has no way, and the people of the world are miserable. Father, don't be bound by small sections, starting a military is the only way to turn the crisis into safety, otherwise our whole family will be killed. Li Yuan was shocked and said that he would send Li Shimin to report to the officials. Li Yuan pondered for a moment and then said, "Won't I bear to tell Ru?" Don't export! The next day, Li Yuan and Li Shimin had a long talk.
It was after this long conversation that Li Yuan said: "My words are also very reasonable. Today, the destruction of the family and the death of the body are also from Ru, and the transformation of the family into a country is also from Ru." This story is interpreted in the New Book of Tang as Li Yuan's intention to raise an army, but only reluctantly and passively raised an army under the planning of Li Shimin. According to this theory, Li Shimin single-handedly planned the Jinyang uprising, and Li Yuan was like a marionette in Li Shimin's hand. Nowadays, more and more people have begun to question this statement: throughout the whole process of Jinyang's uprising in the "Notes on The Entrepreneurship and Living of the Tang Dynasty", the strategies used in the whole process were designed by Li Yuan.
Does Li Yuan really lack a clear understanding of the current situation? Did he really not have the ambition to plot the world? I'm afraid this is not the case, but he is more cautious than Li Shimin. At that time, Li Shimin was only twenty years old, and he had neither an official position nor a social status. In contrast, Li Yuan was fifty-two years old at the time, and as the Duke of Tang, he had a heavy army. In any way, it is unlikely that Li Shimin would have bypassed his father Li Yuan and directly planned all the matters of the Jinyang uprising. Li Shimin actually played the role of a person in charge of specific affairs in the historical event of the Jinyang uprising.
Although Li Shimin's role in the process of the founding of the Tang Dynasty has been artificially exaggerated, if these exaggerated elements are discarded, it cannot be denied that Li Shimin was indeed a great achievement in the process of the founding of the Tang Dynasty. Although Li Shimin was not the supreme decision-maker and organizer of the Jinyang uprising, he solved many practical problems as a faithful executor of Li Yuan's will when he was in Jinyang. At that time, Li Shimin was ordered by Li Yuan to recruit troops and horses in various places, and as a result, thousands of people were recruited within ten days. Although Li Shimin was not the protagonist of the Jinyang Uprising, he did play an indispensable role in it.
After the Jinyang rebellion, Li Shimin took the lead in occupying the Xihe region, thus opening up the situation for the development of Li's regime. Li Yuan was attacked by the Sui general Song Laosheng while attacking Guanzhong. At that time, Li Yuan even wanted to return to Taiyuan at one point, and it was Li Shimin who cried outside his father's account to save the crisis. After Li Yuan officially founded the Tang Dynasty in Chang'an, li Shimin was worshipped as Shang Shuling and the Grand General of the Marquis of Right Wu and the King of Qin because of his outstanding merits. There are too many unambitious and talentless princes in Chinese history who have been crowned kings simply because of their origins.
In contrast, Li Shimin's titles and honors were all won by himself. Li Shimin, who was crowned queen, did not settle for pleasure, but turned around and threw himself into the war to unify the whole country. From June to November of the first year of Wu De's reign, Li Shimin served as grand marshal on the Western Expedition: after many ups and downs, he pacified the Xue Rengao regime that had divided longyou. After Li Shimin triumphantly returned to Beijing, the official paid homage to The Xingtai and Shang Shuling of The Eastern Shaanxi Province. At this point, the soldiers and horses of the entire Kanto region were under the control of Li Shimin. From the second year of Wu De to the third year of Wu De, Li Shimin led an army to pacify Song Jingang and Liu Wuzhou.
At this point, the threat of the Li Tang regime in the northwest had been completely eliminated, and it was possible to concentrate on confrontation with various separatist regimes in the east. In July of the fourth year of Wu De (621), Li Shimin was ordered to lead a large army to attack Wang Shichong of Luoyang. In the Battle of Tiger Prison Pass, which decided the ownership of the world, Li Shimin used 1,000 Xuanjia elite soldiers to kill more than 6,000 captives Wang Shichong. In this situation, Wang Shichong had to ask Dou Jiande, the king of Xia, who had divided Hebei, for help, and Li Shimin used 3,500 Xuanjia elite soldiers to reinforce The Tiger Prison Pass for the forward to break Dou Jiande's more than 100,000 people.
Wang Shichong in Luoyang Saw that dou Jiande's army of more than 100,000 people had been wiped out, so he had to lead the Wenwu hundred officials to surrender to Li Shimin. In the Battle of Tiger Prison, Li Shimin led the Xuanjia army to destroy wang shichong and Dou Jiande in one fell swoop. Before the Battle of Tiger Prison, the stars of the late Sui Dynasty chased deer and did not know who killed the deer, and the trend of Li Tang Dynasty unifying the world after the Battle of Tiger Prison was obvious. From The first year of Wu De (618) when Li Yuan ascended the throne, he launched six major battles aimed at unifying the world (of which Li Shimin commanded four times).
It can be said that Li Shimin played a pivotal role in the unification war of the Tang Dynasty. Li Shimin made great achievements in the process of fighting the world, and Li Shimin also created excellent wenzhi martial arts in the process of ruling the world. Just twelve days after Li Shimin's ascension to the throne, the 100,000-strong army of the Eastern Turks, led by Jieli Khan himself, attacked all the way to Chang'an, the capital of the Tang Dynasty, to drink water from Mawei. At this time, Li Shimin chose to bear the burden of humiliation: he took out all the savings of the national treasury to bribe Jieli Khan, and at the same time he personally went to the Turkic camp to seek peace, but even at this time he still insisted on never abandoning Chang'an City.
Although Li Shimin had come to seek peace, jieli was shocked when he single-handedly walked into the Turkic camp to negotiate with Jieli face to face, and soon after the Turks took the initiative to withdraw. However, this incident was firmly remembered by Li Shimin and his subjects as a national shame. Only three years had passed since the Li-Tang Dynasty had united the tribes opposed to the Jieli Khan to launch a comprehensive strategic revenge against it: the Tang army went deep into the Turkic hinterland to capture the Jieli Khan and destroy the Eastern Turks. Since then, a large number of Turkic people have begun to automatically attach themselves, and the Turkic blood has gradually merged into the blood of the big family of the Chinese nation.
During the Tang Dynasty, there were more than a hundred Turkic military attaches with more than five pins, accounting for almost half of the military attaches with more than five pins. In 630 AD, the tribes of the northeast and the western region demanded that the tang dynasty belong to the interior: the leaders of all ethnic groups gathered in Chang'an to jointly honor Tang Taizong as the Heavenly Khan. It was also in this year that the Uighur state, which was isolated overseas, sent the first batch of envoys to the Tang Empire. Ten years later, the Tang army conquered Gaochangguo in the Turpan Basin. This time, the Tang Dynasty did not set up Gaochang's hometown as the capital of The Prefecture of Qiang, but completely imitated the inland of the Central Plains and set up a county directly under the jurisdiction of the central government.
Although the Han Dynasty's expansion of the Western Regions marked the incorporation of the Western Regions into the Chinese territory, it was in the name of the Western Regions Capital Protectorate, and Li Shimin completed the first feat of the Central Plains Dynasty to set up counties in the Western Regions. By this time, the Tang Dynasty had successively achieved military victories against the Eastern Turks, Tubo, Tuguhun, Gaochang, Yanqi, Western Turks, Xueyantuo, and Guizi. Behind this great martial art, the Tang Dynasty did not have the same economic and people's livelihood as the Han Wu emperor wuhua Xiongnu: Li Shimin implemented the equalization system and the rent system economically. During Li Shimin's reign, the taxation and servitude were greatly reduced compared to the Sui Dynasty.
This general policy of giving light to thin endowments and recuperating has enabled the peasants to stabilize production. At the same time, Li Shimin also saved money by tightening government agencies. After experiencing the war and chaos at the end of the Sui Dynasty, the population of the whole country was greatly reduced, so a large number of uncultured unowned wasteland appeared. During His reign, Li Shimin encouraged the people to reclaim the land through tax reductions and exemptions. While vigorously developing the agricultural economy, Li Shimin also paid attention to the encouragement of the development of the commercial economy: the commercial economy achieved rapid and rapid development during the Zhenguan years.
At that time, more than half of the world's famous commercial cities were concentrated in China: in addition to the coastal Jiaozhou, Guangzhou, Mingzhou, and Fuzhou, there were also inland Hongzhou (Jiangxi Nanchang), Yangzhou, Yizhou (Chengdu) and northwest Shazhou (Dunhuang, Gansu), Liangzhou (Wuwei, Gansu). During this period, not only the tang dynasty's domestic commercial trade flourished, but at the same time, the two Silk Roads on land and at sea were also endlessly traveled by merchants. At that time, Chang'an was not only the capital of the Tang Empire, but also a world-famous international trade metropolis.
In order to save the expenses of the court and reduce the burden on the people, Li Shimin once released more than 3,000 palace women out of the palace to be freely married. At the end of one year, when Li Shimin inspected the prison, he ordered that the four hundred death row inmates in prison be released to go home for the New Year, and agreed to return the following autumn to receive punishment. As a result, all four hundred death row inmates returned in the autumn of the following year, without exception. The Old Book of Tang has the following records of the Zhenguan period: the world is a great barn, the scattered people return to their hometowns, the bucket rice is only three or four dollars, and only twenty-nine people are sentenced to death at the end of their lives. In the east, as for the sea, in the south and the Five Ridges, all the houses are not closed, and the travel is not food, and it is given to the road.
Of course, Li Shimin is not a god who does not eat fireworks in the world, in the final analysis, he is also a mortal with seven passions and six desires. The weaknesses and defects in human nature will also be reflected in him: Li Shimin also has some signs of arrogance and forgetfulness in his old age as he grows older and his complacency grows. The first ten years of Li Shimin's reign showed the image of striving for excellence and wisdom, but in the later period, Li Shimin gradually began to be content with pleasure. From the tenth year after Zhenguan, Li Shimin, who had cut down on food and clothing in order to reduce the burden on the people, began to build a large number of civil engineering and treasures.
Ten years after Zhenguan, Li Shimin ordered people to start building palatial palaces such as Cuiwei Palace and Yuhua Palace. Some ministers said that this kind of large-scale construction would increase the burden on the people, but Li Shimin instead believed that the people would be inert if they did not do things. From March to July of the eleventh year of Zhenguan (637 AD), Wei Zheng went to four consecutive songs to advise Li Shimin to start and end well. Li Shimin, who was suddenly alert after seeing the song, wrote the "Reply to the Edict of Wei Zheng hand" to indicate that he had changed from the advice. In the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, Wei Zheng also wrote in "Ten Gradually Becoming Unkenny and Finally Neglecting" that Li Shimin's behavior in ten aspects was not as cautious as before.
Wei Zhengzhong pointed out in "Ten Gradually Becoming Unkempt and Finally Neglecting": When His Majesty first ascended the throne, he used to be frugal in order to reduce the burden on the people, but now he is seeking horses from thousands of miles away; His Majesty sought talents and thirsty when he first ascended the throne, and he was obedient to advice, but now he cannot listen to his own opinions; When He first ascended the throne, he had no time to take care of personal entertainment because he was worried about state affairs, but now he sometimes indulges in outings and hunting so that he does not return at night; His Majesty has always opposed such a laborious and financial move as the great construction of civil engineering. But now it is said that if the people have nothing to do for them, they will become arrogant and happy...
Why did Li Shimin make such changes ten years after Zhenguan? When Li Shimin first ascended the throne, the situation he faced was quite bad: on the one hand, the mess left by the country after experiencing the turmoil in the last years of the Sui Dynasty urgently needed to be cleaned up, and on the other hand, Li Shimin, who was not in a correct position, urgently needed to make achievements to prove himself to the people of the world. Therefore, at that time, Li Shimin was able to better curb his selfish thoughts from the consideration of the overall situation, but after ten years of Zhenguan, the country had been initially governed. By this time the Eastern Turks had surrendered and Li Shimin had been revered as the Heavenly Khan.
At this time, Li Shimin no longer had the same urgent pressure as when he first ascended the throne. Good and bad work is the innate nature of human beings. When a person strives for a lofty goal, it is possible to temporarily restrain the innate selfish distractions, but once the situation is relatively relaxed, it is not so easy to start and end well. In particular, a powerful emperor like Li Shimin could not restrain his desires in essence: although a group of loyal ministers such as Wei Zheng kept writing to advise him, in the end, whether he accepted their advice or not was li Shimin's own choice.
Under the imperial autocracy, the emperor's selfish desires did not have any substantial institutional constraints, and the only thing that could restrain the emperor was personal self-discipline. But it is too difficult for a person to be consistently self-disciplined throughout his life. After the country was initially governed, Li Shimin actually cultivated some feelings of pride and complacency. At the same time, the increase in age also made Li Shimin feel the threat of death day by day: Li Shimin defeated Liu Wuzhou, Wang Shichong, Dou Jiande, Li Jiancheng, turks and other powerful opponents in his lifetime, but in any case, he could not defeat the ultimate opponent of death in the end.
The most taboo thing about Li Shimin, who is not in a proper position, is that his children also kill each other. Li Shimin can conquer his opponents, but he can't control the hearts of others. The crown prince Li Chengqian and the Wei prince Li Tai began a series of open and secret struggles for the throne. Li Shimin felt unprecedented powerlessness in the face of the intensifying struggle for the throne and the imminent threat of death. Since you can't change anything, why not have fun in time? Li Shimin, who used to work hard to govern, began to gradually indulge in indulgence and pleasure.
As he grew older, Li Shimin also wanted to pursue immortality like Qin Shi Huang. In his later years, Emperor Taizong of Tang and Li Shimin were detained by Emperor Wuxuan of Tianzhu during his visit to Tianzhu, but he escaped with his wisdom and courage and single-handedly borrowed 7,000 troops from Tibet and Nepal, and finally Wang Xuance, as a envoy of the Tang Dynasty, used this borrowed mercenary to complete the legend of one-man destruction of a country. When Wang Xuance triumphantly returned to the dynasty, he brought back a Tianzhu monk who claimed to be able to practice immortality.
Li Shimin let the lady of the palace refine the elixir of immortality. Li Shimin sent people to collect the raw materials for refining the elixir of immortality to collect strange medicines and stones in various places. After more than a year of refining, the "Tianzhu Immortal Elixir" was finally successfully developed. Li Shimin, who was plagued by illness at the time, was busy taking it after hearing the news, but the "Tianzhu Immortal Elixir" further aggravated Tang Taizong's condition. On May 26, 649 (July 10, 649), li Shimin, 52, died at the Hanfeng Temple. It can be seen from Li Shimin's behaviors such as building a large number of civil engineering and refining Dan medicine in his later years that he is indeed no longer as wise as in his early years.
Of course, Li Shimin's fainting in his later years was only relative to the rule of Zhenguan that he created for the early emperor. Li Shimin did have some feelings of pride and complacency in his later years, but when Wei Zheng appeared on "Ten Gradually Unke lost his final estrangement", he still woke up in time. Li Shimin also made some mistakes during his twenty-three years as emperor, but on the whole he was still a Ming Emperor who knew his mistakes and could change them. The reason why The Qin Emperor, Han Wu, Tang Zong, and Song Zu were able to become the best of China's emperors in itself proves that they have made great achievements in history.