Chapter 443: Seeing Xuanwu Gate Again
For Lu Su, the two-faced, cunning, and fickle Sun Hou that Pang Tong mentioned was unfamiliar.
But compared with what Sun Hou had done in the past three years and what Pang Tong said, at that time, Lu Su had died of an epidemic, and thinking about the resolute surrender of the Jiangdong big family before the Battle of Chibi, the overall situation can be regarded as a traceable one.
But the Li Xian in front of him had no aura of an emperor at all. Lu Su blushed when he thought about the meaning of the four words "the harem entertained people with beauty and indulged in lewdness".
Saying that he was stupid was already making up for the emperor of the Tang Dynasty, otherwise the temperament and means exposed in it were too incompatible with the position of the emperor.
Lu Su was puzzled and deeply shocked by the magnificent style of the prosperous Tang Dynasty that Pang Tong mentioned.
"This Li Xian is definitely not stupid." Liu Bei pinched his eyebrows and sighed. He felt from the bottom of his heart that the Tang Dynasty was really capable of tossing. What he saw in less than an hour was far more than he could have imagined in the past few decades.
As for Li Xian's mentality, he could guess a little:
"If the king regards his subjects as enemies, then the subjects will regard the king as dirt."
"If the dragon remains unchanged, then Li Xian will inherit the throne of Empress Wu legitimately, and will not be guilty of the son attacking the mother."
"When the king and his subjects are alienated, it is inevitable that they will be suspected of greed for merit. If they are suspicious and not used, the scoundrels will take advantage of the opportunity to enter, which will lead to such disasters."
In short, the motive is understandable, but the measures he took are unacceptable.
It's just...
"What does this behavior have to do with green?"
As a Han Dynasty person who likes green, Liu Bei is really puzzled.
There are quite a lot of green embellishments in the crown and robes of the Han emperor.
The crown is painted black on the outside, and red and green on the inside.
The big belt of the crown has green and green brocade around it, and there is also green in the six colors of the big ribbon, and only three colors of the small ribbon, except for black and white, it is green. It can be said that green is a very important color in the emperor's clothing.
If it were the common people, there would be even more…
“That’s right, my second brother likes green hats, so what’s wrong with green?”
Zhang Fei was clamoring, but for some reason, Liu Bei suddenly felt a bad premonition when he heard his third brother say that.
…
Wei Zheng was heartbroken:
“The dignified Emperor of Tang actually followed the actions of the thief to buy people’s hearts, damaged his dignity, disrupted the etiquette and gave people a handle! It’s really unwise.”
The thief was naturally the Tian family who replaced Qi. It took a hundred years to finally steal the country.
The murderer of Qi Jian Gong was called Tian Chengzi. One of his means of winning people’s hearts was to select hundreds of women over seven feet tall as concubines, and then not to stop guests and servants from entering and leaving the harem.
This kind of behavior was still criticized in the Spring and Autumn Period, let alone now.
Wei Zheng could only say that he was really open-minded. He didn’t expect that this old strategy would still be used by someone after so many years, and it was still the emperor of the same country.
The others were speechless. Although they had thought about the possibility of a storm, they did not expect that the storm would be so explosive right from the start.
What was even more terrifying was that based on the experience gained from watching the light screen of later generations, these were just appetizers at this time.
Everyone felt heavy-hearted, and only Fang Xuanling could smile bitterly when he saw the evaluation of Yao Chong by his juniors.
At this point, it seemed that the evaluation of Empress Wu in the Zizhi Tongjian mentioned by later generations was not wrong. At least, the behavior of "those who are incompetent will be dismissed soon or punished" was much better than that of Li Xianshi.
The politics of cruel officials can only be said to be the decline of the government, which is much better than the corruption of the government caused by the actions of Wu Sansi and others.
However, Fang Xuanling also vaguely realized that the chaos of Li Xianshi might be particularly strong.
【After Li Xian became emperor again, because the real eldest son Li Chongrun was sentenced to death by Awu, and the eldest son Li Chongfu was also involved in this succession incident, he was jointly demoted by Li Xian and Empress Wei, and was not recalled until his death.
However, in the feudal era, the establishment of the royal heir has always been one of the guarantees for the stability of the regime. Li Xian did not have much choice in this regard. In the end, in 706, he officially issued an edict to establish Li Chongjun as the crown prince.
Li Chongjun was neither the eldest son nor the eldest son. This wave was a standard win, but the master of the East Palace was not happy because no one liked him, and even his sister was trying to seize his position.
First of all, Li Xian trusted Wu Sansi very much.
More than one person knew that Wu Sansi borrowed Li Xian's harem to run business outside. Someone risked his life to write a memorial and handed it to Li Xian, hoping that the emperor could rectify the court.
As a result, when Li Xian went out of the palace to play at Wu Sansi's house, he showed Wu Sansi this memorial as a joke, and the matter naturally ended.
In addition, Wu Sansi's political enemies were the Five Dragon Kings, which was consistent with Li Xian. Under such great political demands, the harem was not a big deal.
Also because of the joint efforts of Wu Sansi, Empress Wei, and Li Xian, the Five Dragon Kings took only more than a year from the coup to their death, which was very efficient.
And with these three parties in power, Princess Anle rose rapidly.
The reason is also very simple. First of all, Princess Anle was the most beloved youngest daughter of Li Xian and Empress Wei.
Secondly, Princess Anle married Wu Sansi's son Wu Chongxun and was Wu Sansi's daughter-in-law.
How much did Li Xian love this daughter? Princess Anle once drafted an edict, but covered the previous content and asked Li Xian to sign it. Li Xian signed and stamped it without even reading it.
Relying on this favor, after the fall of the Five Dragon Kings, Princess Anle once asked to be the Crown Princess. Li Xian did not agree to this, but he did not refuse it openly.
Li Xian may not be able to speak directly because of his love for his daughter, but such a vague attitude is equivalent to telling others that it is not impossible to establish a woman as the crown prince.
So after ten years, the Wu family became excited again because they felt that the throne was waving to them again.
This time, the Wu family once again worked together. Wu Sansi would do one thing every time he entered the palace, which was to say bad things about the crown prince Li Chongjun; Wu Chongxun also taught his wife how to "bully" Li Chongjun at home.
Princess Anle did a good job. She directly called Li Chongjun a slave in the palace. Li Chongjun was indignant, but Princess Anle took it for granted: You are a concubine, what else can you be if not a slave?
After being bullied for about a year, Li Chongjun decisively did something awesome: he rushed to the Wu family and chopped Wu Sansi with a knife, and then led the imperial army to follow the example of his great grandfather Li Shimin and take the throne himself.
Logically speaking, Li Chongjun could not mobilize the imperial guards, but the interesting thing was that when Wu Sansi and others politically overthrew the Five Kings of Shenlong, they also punished all the imperial guards who participated in the coup, but they did not transfer them out of Chang'an or completely demoted them.
The four imperial guard leaders were thinking about getting the credit of following the dragon, but they did not expect that they did not get the credit, and they all became thieves together, so when Li Chongjun came to them, the two sides hit it off, and they acted very decisively.
Li Chongjun, together with the generals of the Left Yulin, Li Duozuo and Li Si Chong, the generals of the Right Yulin, Li Chengkuang, Dugu Yizhi, and Shazha Zhongyi, led more than a thousand imperial guards to forge an imperial edict in the name of punishing thieves and directly attacked the Wu family, hacking Wu Sansi, Wu Chongxun and dozens of others to death.
After killing Wu Sansi to vent his anger, Li Chongjun took the opportunity to order an advance into the palace, intending to learn from the successful experience and ask his father to confer the title of the emperor.
But if Erfeng saw this plan with her own eyes, she would probably shake her head.
The reason is very simple, because the ancient imperial palace faces south and sits north. If you attack from south to north, you need to conquer the imperial city first, then attack the palace city, and you need to conquer seven or eight palace gates in the middle to get close to the emperor's bedroom.
And what if you want to sneak into the palace from north to south? As long as you conquer the Xuanwu Gate, you can directly approach the emperor's bedroom.
Li Chongjun had only a thousand people from beginning to end. After killing Wu Sansi, the entire southern palace had received the news and began to impose martial law. When he found that he couldn't fight in the south and wanted to attack the Xuanwu Gate in the north, Li Xian had already called people to block the Xuanwu Gate, and then stood on the gate tower and began to let the imperial guards surrender.
When he couldn't get in, Li Chongjun could only flee in a hurry. In the end, he was exhausted in Huxian County and his confidants chopped off his head and sent it to the officials for praise.
This coup was ultimately because the young people rebelled for the first time and lacked a detailed and meticulous plan like His Majesty Erfeng.
Moreover, the understanding of the role of Xuanwu Gate was not deep enough, which ultimately led to failure. 】