Many people are not familiar with the story of the target Empress Wu Zetian. Let’s follow the editor of the History Encyclopedia to appreciate it together.
In the first year of the Hongdao reign (683 AD), the 56 year old Emperor Gaozong of Tang, Li Zhi, passed away. Before the ministers could hear the sound of the emperor’s funeral bell, another larger conspiracy quietly attacked. This land that the Li Tang royal family had worked hard to conquer was about to change hands, and a woman was replacing it.
As the empress of Emperor Gaozong of Tang and the biological mother of Emperor Zhongzong of Tang, Li Xian, how did Wu Zetian come from behind the scenes to the forefront and monopolize power in just 23 days? The ending proves that these four things she did were not inferior to Li Shimin at all.
01 Li Zhi’s death, Wu Zetian’s joys and sorrows are mixed
Before Li Zhi passed away, he left behind a posthumous edict with a very prominent sentence: “There are undecided military affairs, and we should take the lead of the future.” This sentence seems to have put Wu Zetian in power, but in reality, it was a check on her power. Why do we say this?
The meaning of this sentence is that there are military affairs that cannot be decided, and the opinions of the queen should be listened to. This indicates that only military affairs need to be decided by her, while ordinary administrative power is still in the hands of Emperor Zhongzong and the prime minister.
In this way, without completely allowing Wu Zetian to take power and allowing her to continue to participate in the affairs of the court, Li Zhi wanted to achieve a smooth transition and enable Emperor Zhongzong to grow rapidly with the help of the prime minister.
However, Wu Zetian sneered at this testament and quickly seized power in the following 23 days.
Wu Zetian did these four great things, which were heart stopping to watch
Three days after Li Zhi’s death, the prime minister of Wu Zetian’s party, Pei Yan, was the first to break the deadlock. He proposed that the Crown Prince had not yet officially ascended the throne and did not have the power to issue edicts. In case of emergency, it was up to the Empress Dowager to issue decrees. From the succession of the crown prince to the formal handling of state affairs, Wu Zetian did four things and completely controlled the power.
1. Comfort the Li Tang royal family
In order to silence the Li Tang royal family, Wu Zetian planned to use sugar coated bullets to knock them unconscious first.
So Wu Zetian ordered that all the princes with higher status in the Li Tang royal family be promoted to the rank of first-class officials, including the five sons of Tang Gaozu, who were respectively appointed as Taiwei, Situ, Sikong and other positions. Tang Taizong only had two sons left, Prince Yue Li Zhen and Prince Ji Li Shen, who were also promoted to the rank of first-class officials.
Wu Zetian’s smile concealed a sword, not only effectively appeasing important members of the Li Tang royal family, but also numbing their morale, making them seem to have become beneficiaries of the new regime, without realizing Wu Zetian’s true face.
2. Adjust the Prime Minister’s team
Liu Rengui was one of the few high-ranking officials in the court. Wu Zetian intended to bribe him, but was not at ease with him. Therefore, she openly promoted and secretly demoted him, while also granting him a vacant position, so that he could not interfere in political affairs.
Then, Wu Zetian promoted all of her own people to prime ministers and reformed the long-standing system of prime ministers, depriving the “three provinces” of their right to speak and concentrating power on one person, the Grand Secretary of the Central Secretariat, who was none other than Wu Zetian’s good teammate, Prime Minister Pei Ji. The two colluded and completely controlled the political power of the court.
3. Control the Forbidden Army
Without the support of the military, the position of any ruler will be unstable. Wu Zetian was bound to pay attention to the leadership of the Forbidden Army, so she promoted Cheng Wuting and Zhang Qianxu to respectively manage the left and right Feather Forest Army.
Both of them have received the favor of Empress Wu Zetian. When Pei Xingjian defeated the Turks, Empress Wu Zetian and Pei Ji forcibly attributed their achievements to them, so they must be grateful to the power of Empress Wu Zetian’s group.
4. Pacify the local area
The Tang Dynasty had a vast territory, with several important military and economic strongholds besides the capital Chang’an and the eastern capital Luoyang. If Wu Zetian only laid out in Chang’an, it would appear that her layout was too small.
Wu Zetian sent four trusted generals, Wang Guo, Linghu Zhitong, Yang Xuanjian, and Guo Qizong, to serve in Bingzhou, Yizhou, Jingzhou, and Yangzhou respectively.
Bingzhou was the birthplace of Li Tang Longxing and an important military base for defending against the Turks. Yizhou and Yangzhou have always been the guarantee of the Tang Dynasty’s treasury, while Jingzhou was the transportation hub of the Tang Dynasty and a battleground since ancient times. This shows the precision and speed of Wu Zetian’s approach.
Wu Zetian’s methods are no less effective than Li Shimin’s
In all these ways, Wu Zetian’s methods were never inferior to those of Li Shimin at that time. When Li Shimin launched the Xuanwu Gate coup, as the only remaining candidate to inherit the throne from Li Yuan, his hostile targets were much smaller. So within three years after ascending to the throne, Li Shimin gradually transitioned the prime minister’s team to his own people, without being as anxious as Wu Zetian.
And Li Shimin’s network in Luoyang and other places was far stronger than Wu Zetian’s. Moreover, no matter how much Li Shimin caused trouble, it was still the responsibility of the old Li family. Moreover, since Emperor Taishang Li Yuan was still alive, he did not object, and others had no objections. Moreover, Li Shimin’s later pacification work was also done very well.
In contrast, Wu Zetian, a woman with a foreign surname, was able to quickly transfer power through such means, which is truly admirable!
