Chapter 17 The Truth of Xuanwumen Incident

The Xuanwu Gate incident was the most significant turning point in Li Shimin's life. It pushed Li Shimin to the peak of power in the Tang Empire, and at the same time pushed him to a historical commanding height that would last forever.However, it is undeniable that this tragic incident of fratricide undoubtedly placed him with a heavy moral burden. To some extent, such a sense of guilt has been turned into the power of self-salvation by Li Shimin, and it has become one of the potential driving forces for the creation of Shengshi Zhenguan. Stretched to a place where he should not have touched.

In thousands of years of Chinese history, this place has always been "the wind can enter, the rain can enter, and the king cannot enter", but this time, Tang Taizong Li Shimin had to enter. Li Shimin really wanted to see what the tragic incident of fratricide, including what he did back then, looked like in the historian's pen. For this reason, more than ten years after the Xuanwumen Incident, Li Shimin finally couldn't restrain the strong impulse in his heart, and sent a test to Chu Suiliang, who was in charge of compiling the daily life notes at that time. In the thirteenth year of Zhenguan, Chu Suiliang was an admonishing doctor who also knew daily life notes.Emperor Taizong asked: "Qing is more familiar with daily life, what kind of books are you? Is it possible for the emperor to see it? I want to see this reporter, but I will watch my gains and losses to warn myself."

Suiliang said: "Today's daily life, the ancient history of the left and right, to record the words and deeds of the king, good and evil, the book, the common people are not illegal, and the emperor does not observe history by himself." Taizong said: "If I am not good, you must remember it?" Sui Liang said: "I heard that it is better to guard the officials than guard the way. The minister's duties should be written down. Why don't you write it down?" Liu Jijin, the attendant of the Huangmen, said: "Everyone has a fault, like the eclipse of the sun and the moon, everyone can see it. If you order Suiliang not to remember it, everyone in the world will remember it." (Volume 7)

The reason why Li Shimin intends to read the notes on daily life is to "observe the gains and losses, and be on the alert." The motivation is anything but simple.Taking a step back, even if the emperor's starting point is really to "prevent himself", Chu Suiliang is not willing to give up the principle of a historian easily.So he unceremoniously rejected the emperor's request, saying: "I have never heard of any emperor watching history in person." Li Shimin hit a wall, but he still asked unwillingly: "I have something bad, do you also remember it?" This sentence is actually very blatant. Seeing the wind to make the rudder, Chu Suiliang obediently handed over the daily notes, but Chu Suiliang still said stubbornly: "This is the duty of the minister, why don't you remember it?" Liu Ji, the servant of the Huangmen, was even more impolite, saying: " If the ruler of Ren makes a mistake, even if Suiliang doesn’t remember it, all the people in the world will remember it!”

The weight of this sentence was so heavy that Li Shimin couldn't say anything else for a while. Although this attempt failed, Li Shimin did not give up.Just one year later, he once again proposed to the minister to observe "contemporary national history".This time, he no longer looked for Chu Suiliang, but directly approached Fang Xuanling, the prime minister at the time, the left servant of Shangshu. In the fourteenth year of Zhenguan, Emperor Taizong said to Fang Xuanling: "Every time I look at the history books of previous dynasties, I show the good and avoid the evil, which is enough to guide the future. I don't know the history of the country from ancient times to the present. Why didn't the emperor see it in person?"

Confrontation: "Since good and evil in the history of the country must be written, it is not illegal for the common people to rule. You should only fear that there will be disobedience, so you can't see it." Emperor Taizong said: "My meaning is different from that of the ancients. Those who want to read the history of the country for themselves today may think that there are good things, so there is no need to discuss them; if there are bad things, they also want to take them as a warning, so that they can modify their ears. You can write them in." Xuanling and others then deleted the history of the country as a chronological style, and wrote 20 volumes each of Gaozu's and Taizong's Records, and listed them on the table.

When Taizong saw the incident on June 4th, he spoke a lot of trivial words, but he said that Xuanling said: "In the past, Zhou Gong punished Guan, Cai and Zhou's family was safe, Ji Youzhen and Shuya and Lu Guoning. What I did, the meaning is the same, cover Therefore, it is safe for the country and beneficial to all people. Why bother to hide when the historian writes the pen? It is advisable to change the floating words and write the matter directly." (Volume 7) Li Shimin still used the same rhetoric this time, but after hearing that Fang Xuanling still gave him the very unpleasant answer, he no longer used the tone of probing and discussing, but directly gave Fang Xuanling an order : "You can write it in." In this case, if Fang Xuanling insisted on not giving it, it would be tantamount to resisting the order.Forced to do nothing, Fang Xuanling had no choice but to submit.As expected, what Li Shimin wanted to watch was "June 4th Incident".

After reading the original version of the Xuanwumen Incident, Li Shimin was very dissatisfied and ordered Fang Xuanling to revise it, and put forward the above "guiding opinions" for the revision work.This passage is very famous and has been widely quoted in many works by historians of later generations, and it is also generally regarded as conclusive evidence that Li Shimin tampered with history books. In the Xuanwumen incident, what Li Shimin really wanted to cover up was probably not the truth about the deaths of his brothers and nephews, but an act that he had difficulty morally repackaging and morally persuading himself.In other words, this kind of behavior is something that he dare not "reveal" anyway, and would rather move forward with a heavy burden on his back than make it public to the world.

So, what did Li Shimin hide from us about the bloody coup on June 4, 2009? In the early morning of June 4th in the ninth year of Wude, after Li Shimin killed the prince and King Qi in front of the Xuanwu Gate, and when the guards guarding the gate and the guards of King Qi of the Eastern Palace were in full swing, what happened in the Taiji Palace?Is it really as recorded in the history books that Gaozu and his courtiers were leisurely "boating in the sea pool", immersed in a poetic and picturesque atmosphere, ignorant of the tragic fight taking place in front of the palace gate, until Yuchi Jingde was covered in blood, "擐Armor holding a spear" came to the "Suwei", Gaozu and a group of close officials just woke up like a dream?

As we know, this morning is the time for Li Yuan to call the three brothers into the palace to confront each other. For this reason, a group of prime ministers and officials have already taken their positions. Under such circumstances, how could Li Yuan have the leisure to go boating in Haichi? ?Secondly, even if Li Yuan and his ministers found out that the three brothers were all late, they couldn't wait for them for a long time, and they ran out to go boating out of boredom, but at the north main gate of the palace, several troops were fighting wildly and screaming. Hiss, but how could Gaozu Li Yuan and those big bosses of the empire be unaware of this?

If Li Yuan at this moment is still a normal person and an emperor who holds great power, will he continue to go boating leisurely, waiting for Yuchi Jingde to come to force the palace? Obviously not.At this time, a normal emperor can only do three things: first, leave Haichi immediately, enter the most hidden and easily defensible place in the Tai Chi Palace, order the guards to unsheath their sabers and string their arrows, Enter the state of first-level combat readiness; second, quickly issue an edict, and the ministers around him will go to Xuanwumen to announce the edict, ordering everyone to lay down their weapons and wait for the ruling; third, immediately mobilize all the forbidden troops in the imperial city who did not participate in the coup, and arrest the mutiny The leaders and main generals of all parties then investigated the truth of the incident and severely punished the coup d'état. Once the emperor takes the above measures, how likely is Li Shimin's coup to win?Even if Li Shimin will not be defeated immediately, he will inevitably go to war with the emperor.And we know that on the eve of the Xuanwumen Incident, Li Yuan still had a strong control over the imperial power, and there was no situation where the power was left behind. Therefore, the result of King Qin's daring to fight the emperor may be tantamount to suicide. It can be seen from this that if the official historical records we have seen are true, that is, Yuchi Jingde did not enter the palace to find Gaozu until the end of the battle ahead, then Li Shimin was making a big bet. What are you betting on? Betting that several armies were fighting in front of the Xuanwu Gate, and everyone in the entire Tai Chi Palace lost their normal vision, hearing and movement functions at that moment. is it possible? Of course not. Since it is impossible, how can Li Shimin ensure that all the guards, concubines, eunuchs, and maids in the Taiji Palace will not report to the emperor while the battle is going on in front of Xuanwu Gate? There is only one answer - control them. How to control it? It goes without saying—send troops into the palace and use force to control their personal freedom.This is the truly feasible and effective "fixation technique". At this point, a major truth that was deliberately concealed by Li Shimin and Zhenguan Shichen surfaced-the Xuanwu Gate Incident actually had two battlefields: one in front of the Xuanwu Gate and the other in the Taiji Palace. The former is well known to us and is the open first battlefield; while the latter is completely unfamiliar to us and is the covered second battlefield. So, how big is the scope of this battlefield?Is it the entire Tai Chi Palace?Who is the target most in need of control?Is it all the guards, concubines, eunuchs, court ladies? Li Shimin would never be so stupid as to put limited troops in the entire Tai Chi Palace to cast a net all over the sky, and even if you control ninety-nine, as long as one slips through the net and reports to the emperor, the whole operation will still be in vain.Therefore, the correct approach should be - directly send troops into the place where the emperor is, and directly control the emperor. It can be seen from this that if Li Shimin wants to ensure that the entire coup is foolproof, he must immediately enter the palace to control Gaozu after killing the prince and King Qi.As we analyzed earlier, as a sane and powerful emperor, if Gaozu Li Yuan was not controlled by Li Shimin in the first place, he would definitely take contingency measures and be able to suppress it. It may also fail in the end.From this, we can basically conclude that the scene of Gaozu "boating in the sea pool" recorded in the history books must have come from the fiction of Zhenguan Shichen, and the fact is likely to be that Li Shimin attacked and killed the prince and Queen Qi in front of the Xuanwu Gate, and immediately sent troops Entering the palace, Gaozu and a group of close officials were imprisoned, and the place of imprisonment may be Haichi. This is the truth about Li Shimin opening up the "second battlefield" in the Taiji Palace and "imprisoning his loving father in the harem". So what is Li Shimin's purpose in imprisoning his father? The answer is simple, of course, is to force the father to surrender power. If Li Yuan resolutely resists and vows not to hand over power to the death, what should Li Shimin do? The answer can only be one word - kill. So far, we have approached the core of the truth that Li Shimin is trying to hide from us. That is to say, in Li Shimin's plan, his action of entering the palace to control Gaozu will inevitably be divided into three steps: the first step is to "prison the father", that is, to eliminate the guards of the forbidden army who may resist, and completely control Gaozu and his close officials; The second step is to "force the father", that is, let a certain general come forward to force Gaozu to issue an edict and hand over the military and political power to King Qin; Li Shimin had no choice but to "kill his father". Such a "three-step process" is an unavoidable internal logic in any forced palace operation.Because for a powerful emperor like Gaozu Li Yuan, if he still refuses to succumb to Li Shimin's will, resolutely refuses to issue an edict in his name, and transfers the general and political power to Li Shimin, then Li Shimin's only choice is to kill him. over him. Some people may say that it is not a bad idea to use house arrest and then coerce to seize power.But in this way, Li Shimin will undoubtedly bear a great political risk-as long as Gao Zu is not dead, then even if the King of Qin wants to seize power, those civil servants and generals who are still loyal to the emperor may see through the conspiracy of King Qin, so they refuse to obey the imperial edict , Send troops to confront Li Shimin.At that time, not only will large-scale bloody conflicts break out in the capital, but the entire empire may also fall into civil war.Therefore, when Li Shimin led his troops into the palace, he must have been mentally prepared to "kill his father", because this is the only way with the least cost, the lowest cost, and the best way to avoid the above-mentioned political sequelae. Of course, everyone hoped that the matter would end in the second step, and everyone hoped that the final outcome would be Gao Zu's compromise, a political reconciliation with King Qin, and both parties living in peace.However, who can guarantee that things will not develop to the third step?Before knowing Gaozu's reaction, how can Li Shimin guarantee that he will not go to the third step? It can be seen that on June 4, the ninth year of Wude, one of the most terrible moral dilemmas and the most difficult life choices Li Shimin faced was not whether he should attack and kill his brothers in front of Xuanwu Gate, but if the situation forced him to Should we kill the killer, kill the father and the king? For a society where "loving and respecting the emperor and relatives" is the highest code of conduct, and for an ancient courtier who abides by the "way of loyalty and filial piety" as the standard of life, what behavior is more heinous and unacceptable than killing the father and the king? What about forgiveness?What could be more unbearable than the moral and public opinion pressure generated by such behavior? Although the later development of the facts allowed Li Shimin to avoid such a crime, but for Li Shimin himself, as long as such a crime is rehearsed in his heart once, it is likely to leave a shadow that can never be erased in his memory. Perhaps because of this, after many years, although Li Shimin could boldly reveal the truth about killing brothers, brothers, and nephews to the world, he dared not disclose that he opened up a "second battlefield" in Tai Chi Palace and " The truth about imprisoning a loving father in the harem". For Li Shimin and Zhenguan Shichen, it was indeed difficult to repackage the forced palace action morally, and it was also difficult to convince themselves morally, so they could only try their best to cover it up.However, considering the completeness of the incident, the situation about Gaozu cannot be left out in the compilation of history books, so Zhenguan Shichen finally had to rack his brains to fabricate the absurd scene of Gaozu and his close ministers "boating in the sea pool". The place of transformation throws out the rough plot of "Yuchi Jingde enters the palace as a guard, please surrender your order", trying to deceive people's eyes and ears, and vaguely and perfunctorily explaining the most important part of the inside story and truth of the whole Xuanwumen change.