About Chapter 18 story briefly: After the death of Emperor Liu Cong of Han Zhao, his son Liu Cang succeeded to the throne, but he was extravagant and ignored the government, and finally the power of the court fell into the hands of the powerful minister Jin Zhun, Jin Zhun killed the emperor and tried to stand on his own, but was defeated by the Han Zhao generals Liu Yao and Shi Le, but the two were disgusted by Jin Zhun's surrender, Liu Yao of the Han Zhao clan inherited the throne, moved the capital to Chang'an and changed the country name to Zhao, Shi Le then called himself the king of Zhao and stood on his own, known as Later Zhao in history, and the two countries began to attack each other.

This story illustrates the instability within the Han empire and the inevitability of infighting among the royal family as the ruling class. Jin Zhun, as a family within the Han and Zhao Empire, was dissatisfied with the power of the royal family, and he was even more reluctant to commit to the nomadic emperor, and it was a matter of course for him to launch a coup d'état. But. The power of the royal family was too great, and in the end its coup was unsuccessful, but it also sounded the death knell of the Han and Zhao Empire.

As we said before, Shile actually already had the resources to build the country, and this time he took advantage of Jin Zhun's coup d'état to send troops, just to reap political benefits. Taking advantage of Jin Zhun's surrender, it was just an excuse to turn his face with Liu Yao.

This story also talks about the absurdity of Liu Cang's steamed mother, the steamed mother is to take the father's little wife into the have, in fact, this is the norm in the nomads, but because our Han ancestors in the ceremonial patriarchal advanced, so this is incestuous things, because the nomadic living environment is bad, after the death of the older male, the sons born to them will be distributed to the family property, each migrate, live separately, but its widow is difficult to adapt to the living environment on the grassland, so the nomads have the custom of marrying their mothers and widows, It is also called receiving stepmarriage. Wang Zhaojun, who is familiar with the four beauties of energy efficiency, married to the Xiongnu, that is, he was married to two generations of Huhan Yeshan Yu's father and son. Steamed mother is the custom of the nomadic people, and when the nomads enter the Central Plains to build the country and call the emperor, this backward custom should be changed, Liu Cang's behavior can not be simply said to be the customs of the nomads, because the Xiongnu have moved south for more than 100 years, and its degree of sinicization is much higher than that of the Xianbei people, Liu Cang's actions can only show that it is an authentic faint king, in fact, this kind of thing has appeared many times in the Han emperors from the Northern and Southern Dynasties to the Tang Dynasty, I think this should be some influence of nomadic culture on our settled culture, In the context of ethnic integration, the good customs and habits of the nomads were accepted by the Han ancestors, and similarly, the relatively backward customs and habits also affected some Han ancestors. In the Song Dynasty, this kind of behavior basically disappeared, mainly because of the rise of Cheng Zhu Lixue in the Song Dynasty, which thoroughly established the ethical and moral standards for people, which have been influenced to this day.

In history, the more fatal steaming mother incident was that Tang Gaozong Li Zhi established Wu Zetian as the queen, let's talk about those things in the Wu Zetian period.

Wu Zetian can be said to be a well-known historical figure in our Chinese. She was born in a family of eunuchs, selected talented women to enter the harem of the Tang Dynasty, and was named the talented person of Li Shimin, Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, that is, a relatively low-level role among the many concubines, because Wu Zetian and Li Shimin are both decisive and resolute characters. If two people are too close in personality, it is difficult to have a smooth communication, on the contrary, the personalities of two people complement each other but can have heart-to-heart confiding, so Wu Zetian was not particularly favored during the Li Shimin period.

Because the crown prince Li Zhi often enters the harem and has a cowardly personality, he has a close relationship with Wu Zetian and has feelings for each other, and Li Shimin is close to his old age at this time. became suspicious, and at that time, there was a prophecy that the heroine was in the court, so after Li Shimin died, according to his will, the concubines in the palace were dismissed, and many concubines were placed in the Ganye Temple in Chang'an. After Tang Gaozong Li Zhi succeeded to the throne, he remembered that Wu Zetian, who made him fascinated back then, took Wu Zetian back to the palace and re-named a concubine, which was actually opposed by many ministers, especially when Wu Zetian was favored and made the queen, and more ministers directly pointed out the immoral behavior of Li Zhi's steaming mother. But because Wu Zetian had cultivated his own power in the court, with the support of his fox and dog party, he was finally made the queen.

In fact, you can clearly see from this history that as an official of the landlord class of the Shu nationality, in order to maintain the ethics and morality of the feudal dynasty, he really spared no effort. This also shows that after the Hanmen Shu people entered the ruling class, they did their best to maintain the feudal dynasty.

After Wu Zetian became the queen, because Tang Gaozong Li Zhi had an eye disease, which led to blindness and could not handle the government normally, Wu Zetian began to help Li Zhizheng, because she was very politically minded and talented, so the Tang Dynasty was still strong in the hands of Wu Zetian, and people in later generations were always chattering about Wu Zetian's killing of many clan ministers, favoring the face head and other things in the palace struggle, which seemed to convey that Wu Zetian was a female devil with a blue face and fangs. What I want to say about these is that the killing of the clan ministers is Wu Zetian's purge of the ruling class. For the governance of the underlying society of the Tang Dynasty, Wu Zetian spared no effort. As a female ruler, it is impossible to use these standards to measure the ability of female rulers to govern. Wu Zetian is like this, and Jia Nanfeng is the same, this is an unfair evaluation of them by history.

In fact, during the Wu Zetian period, the Tang Dynasty prospered step by step, reaching a height that the feudal dynasty in the previous life could not reach.

Moreover, you can see from Wu Zetian's killing of the Tang Dynasty clan that the aristocratic landlord class at this time had no power and could only be slaughtered as a lamb to be slaughtered by the ruler. Wu Zetian was not soft on his political opponents, but he also attached great importance to the role of the Shu landlord class in the feudal dynasty, and used a large number of officials from humble backgrounds and relatively talented, such as Di Renjie, Zhang Cambodia and so on. The national strength of the Tang Dynasty was in the hands of Wu Zetian, and it still maintained a thriving state.

After Tang Gaozong Li Zhi died of illness, Li Xian, the crown prince born to him and Wu Zetian, succeeded to the throne, which was Tang Zhongzong, and Wu Zetian still listened to the government above the court, and Tang Zhongzong's personality was as cowardly as his father. Wu Zetian completely monopolized power. Soon, he abolished his own son, and set up his youngest son Li Dan as the emperor, that is, Tang Ruizong, and later abolished Li Dan, personally ascended the throne and became the emperor, and established the Wuzhou regime.

The Wu Zhou regime created by Wu Zetian is rarely mentioned. Not only did the Wu Zhou regime exist for too short, but the most important thing was that Wu Zetian was the woman of the Li family. Everything about her was actually from the Li Tang Dynasty, including the Wu Zhou regime he created, and when he was terminally ill, the ministers naturally supported the restoration of Tang Zhongzong Li Xian and ended the Wu Zhou regime. Wu Zetian was dying, looking back on his legendary life, leaving a will, burying himself in the Qianling Tomb, and erecting a wordless tombstone, from this point of view, she had to give in to the feudal etiquette, admit that she was the woman of the Li family, and let future generations comment on it.

Personally, I think that Wu Zetian, as a politician, is far better at governing the country than many male rulers. But as the ruler of the feudal dynasty, she is a woman after all, and she should not be viewed simply from the perspective of equality between men and women today. I think the best thing for Wu Zetian to do is to be in power instead of being the emperor, and to raise and cultivate her children and grandchildren with peace of mind, so that her reputation may be much better than now. But everyone's thoughts can't be swayed, Wu Zetian was able to make this step of becoming the emperor, in fact, he also wanted to hand over the power of the dynasty to his own family in the future, but later found that many problems could not be solved, because she didn't realize that when she entered the harem of the Tang royal family, she also became a member of the Li family, how could her nephew be closer than her son? Therefore, the Wuzhou regime is also a variant or pathology of the Tang Dynasty. Wu Zetian died, the root of the disease was removed, and the Tang Dynasty returned to normal.

In fact, when Jia Nanfeng was in power in the Western Jin Dynasty, Jia Nanfeng, as the one who held the power in the court, also put a large amount of court power in the hands of his own family. But unfortunately, the great work she carried out was not completed after all. I guess if Jia Nanfeng has always held the power of the court, her final fate should be the same as Wu Zetian. But history cannot be assumed, and the two lived in completely different times, and there is no comparison. But in the era when the two heroines were in the dynasty, you can see that the Shu landlord class saw far more deeply and farther than the Shi landlord class.

We have discussed before that the people who have been emperors twice in the Great Unification Dynasty did not mention the two brothers Li Xian and Li Dan, because these two brothers completely inherited the cowardly personality of their father Li Zhi, and they were basically the emperors without achievements, and it was too easy to be forgotten. Especially Li Xian is an extremely cowardly and relatively mediocre person. Not at all as strong as his mother. When his mother Wu Zetian died, Tang Zhongzong Li Xian was reinstated, but the power of the court was in the hands of Empress Wei, but Empress Wei wanted to learn from her mother-in-law Wu Zetian and become a female emperor. His daughter, Princess Anle, also tried her best to be the crown princess. But Li Xian's wife and daughter are completely inferior to Wu Zetian's ability and decisiveness. They and the palace ladies Princess Taiping, Shangguan Wan'er and others controlled the government and colluded. Bullying the guards as relatives of the emperor, when they thought that Li Xian, who had been in the nest all his life, was no longer useful. Empress Wei actually poisoned her husband. casually found a child to pretend to be the prince to succeed to the throne, and he was in charge of the dynasty and monopolized power. When Empress Wei dreamed of being a female emperor. Li Longji, the son of Li Dan, who has been deposed as the prime minister, united with the soldiers of the Praetorian Guard to launch a coup d'état and kill all these ambitious women. supported his father Li Dan to reinstate, but his son Li Longji's prestige was too high, Li Dan had experienced several palace coups, and had already been disheartened by the throne, and it didn't take long for him to give up the throne to Li Longji, Li Longji was half a life of heroic name, half of his life was absurd Tang Xuanzong, which created the Kaiyuan Dynasty to the peak of the Tang Dynasty, but the Tianbao crisis in his later years also brought the Tang Dynasty into the abyss of feudal town separation.