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:
“A rat crept softly through the vegetation
Dragging its slimy belly on the bank
While I was fishing in the dull canal
On a winter evening round behind the gashouse
Musing upon the king my brother’s wreck
And on the king my father’s death before him.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“So long as the law considers all these human beings, with beating hearts and living affections, only as so many things belonging to the master—so long as the failure, or misfortune, or imprudence, or death of the kindest owner, may cause them any day to exchange a life of kind protection and indulgence for one of hopeless misery and toil—so long it is impossible to make anything beautiful or desirable in the best-regulated administration of slavery.”
—Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811–1896)
“Yea, worse than death: death parts both woe and joy:
From joy I part, still living in annoy.”
—Sir Philip Sidney (1554–1586)