Death
Around the new year 684, Emperor Gaozong died and was succeeded by Empress Wu's third son Li Xiǎn (as Emperor Zhongzong), but Empress Wu took on actual regent powers as empress dowager, and later in 684, when Emperor Zhongzong showed signs of disobeying her, she deposed him and replaced him with her fourth son Li Dan (as Emperor Ruizong), but held even firmer grip on power thereafter. In spring 684, she created Li Sujie the greater title of Prince of Ge and soon thereafter changed his title to Prince of Xu, making him the prefect of Jiang Prefecture (絳州, part of modern Yuncheng, Shanxi).
In 690, Empress Dowager Wu was poised to take the throne herself as "emperor," and was carrying out massacres of Tang imperial clan members and others whom she perceived to be threats, using a number of secret police officers to carry out tortures and executions. Her powerful nephew Wu Chengsi instructed one of the secret police officers, Zhou Xing (周興), to falsely accuse Li Sujie and Li Shangjin of treason. She ordered them to report to Luoyang, which she had made capital. Li Sujie was heading to Luoyang from his then-post Shu Prefecture (舒州, roughly modern Anqing, Anhui), when he heard family members mourning a person's death crying bitterly, and he made the comment, "Dying of illness is fortunate and difficult to get. Why do they cry?" As he was in Luoyang's vicinity, Empress Dowager Wu ordered that he be strangled. (Li Shangjin committed suicide.) Empress Dowager Wu also killed nine of Li Sujie's sons (Li Jing, Li Ying, Li Qi, Li Wan, Li Zan, Li Yang, Li Yuan, Li Chen and Li Tangchen, in Chinese 李璟、李瑛、李琪、李琬、李瓚、李瑒、李瑗、李琛、李唐臣), but four youngest sons were spared and imprisoned at Lei Prefecture (雷州, roughly modern Zhanjiang, Guangdong). After her death in 705, Emperor Zhongzong was restored to the throne, and Li Sujie was posthumously honored the Prince of Xu and reburied with honor near Emperor Gaozong's (and Empress Wu's) tomb. His son Li Guan (李瓘) was created the Prince of Xu to succeed him, and later, during the reign of Li Sujie's nephew Emperor Xuanzong, two other sons, Li Lin (李琳) and Li Qiu (李璆) were created princes as well.
Read more about this topic: Li Sujie
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“To suffer woes which Hope thinks infinite;
To forgive wrongs darker than Death or Night;
To defy Power, which seems Omnipotent;
To love, and bear; to hope, till Hope creates
From its own wreck the thing it contemplates;
Neither to change nor falter nor repent;
This, like thy glory, Titan! is to be
Good, great and joyous, beautiful and free;
This is alone Life, Joy, Empire and Victory.”
—Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822)
“No man may him hide
From Death hollow-eyed,”
—John Skelton (1460?–1529)