Li Chun

Biography

Family Background and Early Life

Li Chun was born in 778, the thirteenth year of the Dali era. He was the eldest son of Emperor Shunzong of Tang, Li Song, and Lady Wang, later Empress Zhuangxian. When Li Chun was born, his father was still crown prince, and Li Chun grew up in the Eastern Palace at Chang'an. He was intelligent from childhood and was much favored by his grandfather, Emperor Dezong of Tang. In 788, the fourth year of Zhenyuan, Li Chun was created Prince of Guangling Commandery. Historical accounts state that even as a youth he showed a decisive and resolute temperament and was deeply concerned by the arrogance of the military governorships and the deterioration of court government.

In 805, the twenty-first year of Zhenyuan, Emperor Dezong died and Crown Prince Li Song succeeded as Emperor Shunzong. After taking the throne, Shunzong employed Wang Shuwen and others to carry out reforms known as the Yongzhen Reform, but they met strong opposition from eunuchs and military governors. Shunzong reigned for only a few months before illness led him to abdicate in favor of Crown Prince Li Chun. In the eighth month of the same year, Li Chun ascended the throne as Emperor Xianzong and adopted the era name Yuanhe.

Accession and Campaigns against the Military Governorships

When Emperor Xianzong took the throne, the Tang dynasty had long suffered from the separatism of military governorships after the An Lushan Rebellion. Central authority had weakened, regional military governors commanded their own armies, controlled tax revenues, and in some cases passed offices hereditarily. Xianzong was determined to bring about a restoration, making the reduction of military-governor power and the revival of central authority his primary goals. He worked diligently at government, accepted remonstrance, employed capable chief ministers such as Du Huangshang, Pei Du, and Li Jiang, rectified administration, reformed fiscal affairs, and strengthened central military power.

In 806, the first year of Yuanhe, Liu Pi, military governor of Xichuan, rebelled. Xianzong decisively dispatched troops and quickly suppressed the revolt, winning an early success. He subsequently defeated rebellions led by Li Qi in Zhenhai, Wu Yuanji in Huaixi, Li Shidao in Ziqing, and others. Military governorships in Hebei, Henan, Shandong, and elsewhere successively submitted to the central government, producing what became known as the Yuanhe Restoration.

Later Years and Death

In the later part of his reign, Xianzong gradually became more extravagant and arrogant. He trusted practitioners of immortality, pursued longevity, consumed alchemical elixirs, and became irritable and quick to punish attendants. In 820, the fifteenth year of Yuanhe, Xianzong died suddenly in Zhonghe Hall at Daming Palace at only forty-three years of age. Historical works commonly record that he was killed by the eunuch Chen Hongzhi, though there are also accounts linking his death to his late reliance on eunuchs and neglect of government. After Xianzong's death, Crown Prince Li Heng succeeded as Emperor Muzong of Tang. Xianzong received the temple name Xianzong, the posthumous name Emperor Zhaowenzhangwu Dasheng Zhishen Xiao, and was buried at Jingling Mausoleum in present-day Pucheng, Shaanxi.

Emperor Xianzong, originally named Li Chun, was born on the fourteenth day of the second month of 778 in the eastern palace, the Daming Palace, at Chang'an. The reigning emperor was his great-grandfather Daizong, his grandfather Dezong was heir apparent, and his father Shunzong was still a commandery prince, his mother, the Empress Zhuangxian, being a concubine. When Dezong's campaign against the provinces failed and the Jingyuan mutiny broke out in Chang'an, the six-year-old Li Chun fled with him; afterward Dezong took him on his knee and asked whose child he was, and he answered, "I am the third Son of Heaven of the Tang," startling and impressing the emperor with his cleverness. Grown, he loved the Essentials of Government of the Zhenguan Era and took Taizong and the young Xuanzong as his models, resolving to curb the provinces and restore Tang prestige. He was made Prince of Guangling in 788 and in 793 took the Lady Guo as consort; his eldest son Li Ning was born that year.

Early in 805 Shunzong took the throne and employed Wang Shuwen, Wei Zhiyi, Liu Zongyuan and Liu Yuxi, whose group sought reforms to check the eunuchs. But the emperor had already been paralyzed by a stroke, and the eunuchs Wenzhen and Liu Guangqi, opposed to reform, joined the provincial governors Wei Gao of Jiannan, Pei Jun of Jingnan and Yan Shou of Hedong in forcing him to name Li Chun heir, changing his name to Li Chun, to have him supervise the government in the seventh month and to abdicate in the eighth in favor of his son — the "abdication of Yongzhen" — after which the members of Wang Shuwen's group, the two Wangs and eight simas, were all demoted. In the first month of 806 the retired emperor died, officially of illness, though unofficial accounts hinted at murder by the eunuchs, as the Tang romance Xin Gongping Ascends to Heaven is thought to suggest.

Xianzong resolved "to bring the provinces to order by law" and attacked Liu Pi, deputy governor of Xichuan, in his second year, winning; that same year Yang Huilin of the Xiazhou army refused to give up his troops and was defeated and killed, and in 807 the emperor campaigned against Li Qi, governor of Zhenhai. In 812 Tian Xing, governor of Weibo, submitted to the court, while a campaign against Wang Chengzong of Chengde, who resisted, failed. From 815 to 817 Li Su, governor of Tangdeng, took Caizhou by a night march through snow and put down the rebellion of Wu Yuanji in Huaixi, Han Yu, then secretary of the army, taking part and composing the victory inscription. In 818 the emperor sent five columns against Li Shidao of Ziqing; with Wu Yuanji destroyed, every province at least nominally submitted to the Tang — "and from this time all observed the court's restraints" — a brief reunification known as the Yuanhe restoration.

Alongside this, his devotion to Buddhism left a controversy. In the first month of 819 he sent envoys to Fengxiang to bring the Buddha's relic bone into the palace, and when the vice minister of justice Han Yu memorialized against it in language the emperor found disrespectful, he nearly had him executed and finally banished him as prefect of Chaozhou. Thereafter he came to trust alchemists and take their elixirs and grew ever more violent in temper; he died suddenly in the Daming Palace on the twenty-seventh day of the first month of 820 at forty-three, with the temple name Xianzong, first styled "Holy, Divine, Illustrious and Martial Filial Emperor" and later "Glorious in Letters, Martial in Arms, Great Sage, Most Divine, Filial Emperor," and was buried at Jingling. As to his death the official histories mostly record the elixirs, while others held that the eunuch Chen Hongzhi and his fellows murdered him; the two accounts stand side by side without resolution.

The Yuanhe restoration rested on financial and personnel measures as much as on arms. Xianzong made Li Jiang, Wu Yuanheng and Pei Du chancellors and relied on such commanders as Li Su, Li Guangyan and Wu Chongyin in separate theaters; campaigns against Huaixi and Ziqing lasted years, and the supply of grain and men required long-term financial support, so that the court attended closely to the two-tax revenue and the salt monopoly, the northward transport of Jianghuai wealth becoming the material basis of the campaigns. Pei Du's going to the front in person during the Huaixi campaign is reckoned a chief reason the reign could claim success.

Xianzong's death changed the situation. His successor Muzong adopted a conciliatory policy toward the Hebei provinces, and Chengde, Weibo and Lulong returned to autonomy one after another, so that the gains of the Yuanhe restoration were not maintained; under Jingzong and Wenzong the conflicts among court, eunuchs and provinces deepened, ending in the Ganlu incident under Wenzong. Historians of the middle and late Tang often treat Yuanhe as a turning point: Xianzong's resolve to curb the provinces restored the court's authority, and after his death the central government never again had the will or the occasion, so that eunuchs making emperors and provinces governing themselves became the norm.

Xianzong's reign was also a time when the men who shaped Tang letters and thought were gathered at court. Han Yu promoted the ancient prose movement and was banished for his memorial against the Buddha's relic; Bai Juyi and Yuan Zhen were writing new yuefu and satirical verse; Liu Zongyuan and Liu Yuxi, on the losing side of the Yongzhen reforms, were posted away as adjutants and prefects in distant provinces. Politics and letters answered each other: the brief revival brought by curbing the provinces rekindled the hope of "making the ruler a Yao or Shun," and that hope turned to disappointment after Xianzong's death and the renewed autonomy of Hebei, deepening the note of "protest against injustice" in mid-Tang writing.

Abroad, Xianzong's reign saw alternation of war and peace with the Tibetans and repeated marriage embassies with the Uighurs; in the western regions Tang influence was much reduced, though contact with Central Asia continued through the Hexi and Longyou corridors. These conditions at home and abroad are the setting in which the Yuanhe restoration could appear and could not last.

The Yuanhe restoration came closer than any period since the An Lushan rebellion to restoring the Tang court's authority, and its rise and failure are often cited in later discussions of the dynasty's fortunes.

Youth, Investiture and Accession

Li Chun, whose original name was Li Chun, was a great-grandson of Emperor Daizong of Tang and the eldest son of Emperor Shunzong, born at Chang'an on the fourteenth day of the second month of the thirteenth year of Dali, 17 March 778. When he was six or seven, Emperor Dezong took him on his knee and asked whose child he was and how he came to be in his arms, and Li Chun answered that he was the third Son of Heaven. Dezong was astonished and delighted; for as the emperor's eldest grandson, numbering grandfather, father and son, the answer was both unheard of and exactly right, and Li Shi could not but feel a new fondness for the grandson on his knee. In the sixth month of the fourth year of Zhenyuan, 788, at eleven, Li Chun was enfeoffed as Prince of Guangling; and in the ninth year of Zhenyuan, 793, while still Prince of Guangling, he took as wife the lady Guo, of a great family, a marriage of pure politics, the lady being by generation his father's cousin. In the eleventh year of Zhenyuan, 795, two years after the marriage, the lady Guo bore a son, Li Heng, afterwards Emperor Muzong. On the sixth day of the fourth month of the twenty-first year of Zhenyuan, 805, Li Chun was made heir apparent; on the twenty-eighth day of the seventh month he was given charge of military and state business, acting as regent; on the fourth day of the eighth month the succession passed to him from Shunzong; and on the ninth day of the eighth month he formally ascended the throne in the Xuanzheng hall, changing the era name to Yuanhe in the following year.

Early Zeal and the Reduction of the Provinces

At the outset of his reign Li Chun issued an edict stopping the tribute of rare birds and beasts, took care to set a good tone in government, encouraged his ministers to remonstrate frankly, and himself received counsel with an open mind; and he took the founding of the enterprise by Taizong and the good government of Xuanzong as models to follow, reading the veritable records of the earlier reigns and being stirred by the diligence of sovereign and minister. In the first year of Yongzhen, 805, Liu Pi, military commissioner of Xichuan, held his troops and demanded also the three Sichuan commands, which Li Chun would not allow, and Liu Pi thereupon sent troops to besiege the commissioner of Dongchuan at Zizhou. Li Chun at once ordered Gao Chongwen, commissioner of the left Shence field army, and others to attack him, and in the same year Gao Chongwen took Chengdu, took Liu Pi and sent him to Chang'an, where he was executed with his clan and party. In the summer of the second year of Yuanhe, 807, after Yang Huilin of Xiazhou and Liu Pi of Shu had been put down, the military commissioners were greatly afraid and most of them asked leave to come to court. Li Qi, commissioner of Zhenhai, trusting in his imperial descent, first memorialised that he was ill and asked to postpone his coming; and when the chancellor Wu Yuanheng urged the reduction of the provinces and held that he should not be indulged, Li Chun agreed that authority must be exercised, and on the fifth day of the tenth month issued an edict summoning Li Qi to be left vice director of the department of state affairs. Li Qi refused, and Li Chun stripped him of office and of his place in the imperial register and ordered the troops of the several circuits to attack him together. As the government forces closed in, the command of Zhenhai divided, the commander Zhang Ziliang and others turned to the government and led their troops into the seat at Jingkou, taking Li Qi alive and sending him to Chang'an, where he was cut in two at the waist in the marketplace; and the court gave Li Qi's confiscated property to the people of Zhexi in place of their tax for the year.

The Recovery of Weibo and the Campaign in Huaixi

In the eighth month of the seventh year of Yuanhe, 812, Tian Ji'an, commissioner of Weibo, died, and the army set up his son Tian Huaijian as deputy commissioner in charge of military affairs; but Tian Huaijian was only eleven and could not command, and military and civil matters were all decided by the household servant Jiang Shize and others. Li Chun deliberated on Weibo with his chancellors, and Li Jifu asked to send troops against Tian Huaijian, but Li Jiang held that Tian Huaijian was a child in swaddling clothes who could not possibly hold the situation, that no military action was needed, and that the court should sharpen its weapons and wait for Weibo to come over of itself; and that when disorder broke out within the Weibo army, the court should not begrudge ranks and salaries to the victor, so that the other circuits, seeing it, would come over of themselves and the enemy be subdued without battle. Li Chun heard him and changed to agree. Soon after, mutiny indeed broke out in the Weibo army and the soldiers set up Tian Xing in place of Tian Huaijian, and Tian Xing of himself brought the six prefectures of Weibo over to the Tang court. In the tenth month Li Chun appointed Tian Xing commissioner of Weibo; and in the eleventh month he sent Pei Du, then a drafter of edicts, with a million and a half strings of cash to reward the soldiers of Weibo and remitted the taxes and labour service of the people of the six prefectures for a year, whereupon it was said that the soldiers of Weibo received the gifts with joy like thunder.

Huaixi, since the time of Wu Shaoyang, had remained half independent, and Li Chun had wished to take it since he put down Shu, while the chancellor Li Jifu also insisted on it. In the ninth month of the ninth year of Yuanhe, 814, Wu Shaoyang, commissioner of Zhangyi, that is of Huaixi, died, and his son Wu Yuanji did not receive the imperial envoy but sent out troops on every side, slaughtered Shunyang, burned Ye and plundered Lushan and Xiangcheng, so that the east of the passes was shaken; and Li Chun, following Zhang Hongjing's advice to be courteous first and use force after, sent Li Junhe, vice director of the ministry of works, to offer condolences, but Li Junhe could not enter and returned, and Li Chun resolved to attack Huaixi. As the war went long without success, in the fifth month of the tenth year of Yuanhe, 815, Li Chun sent Pei Du, assistant censor-in-chief, to the field headquarters to comfort the troops and observe the situation; and Pei Du, returning, set out the certainty of victory in Huaixi and recommended Li Guangyan as commander, and soon Li Guangyan defeated the Huaixi troops at Shiqu. In the meantime the chancellor Wu Yuanheng was murdered by assassins and the court was shaken. After four years the attack on Huaixi was still unsuccessful, and the expense of supply was past bearing, so that the generals and such ministers as Li Fengji wished to stop on the ground of the strain on the armies and the drain on the treasury; only Pei Du declared that Wu Yuanji could not be pardoned and asked leave to go himself to direct the fighting. Li Chun appointed him, with the offices of vice director of the chancellery, joint manager of government affairs and prefect of Caizhou, commissioner for consolation and suppression, and Pei Du hastened to the front and became the real commander, enforcing strict military law and uniform orders, and asking that the supervising eunuchs be removed so that the generals might be free to command. In the winter of the twelfth year of Yuanhe, 817, Li Su, commissioner of Tangdeng, led his troops through great wind and snow, marching day and night, and at the fourth watch of the fifteenth day fell suddenly upon the city of Caizhou with no one knowing of it, and took Wu Yuanji, who was sent to Chang'an and beheaded in the eleventh month, so that the thirty years and more of division in Huaixi came to an end.

The Pacification of Ziqing, the Settling of Hebei, and the End

Huaixi being pacified, Li Shidao, commissioner of Ziqing, first begged to submit and then rebelled again. In the seventh month of the thirteenth year of Yuanhe, 818, Li Chun sent the troops of Xuanwu, Weibo, Yicheng, Wuning and Henghai against him, and under the weight of the government armies the command of Ziqing divided, the commander Liu Wu killing Li Shidao, so that Ziqing and eleven other prefectures were pacified. Wang Chengzong of Chengde first offered land in atonement, and when he died the army set up his younger brother Wang Chengyuan as deputy, who dared not make the office hereditary but asked the court to name another commissioner and was made commissioner of Yicheng; Liu Zong of Lulong gave up all his land and troops, sent his officers to the capital and became a monk; Tian Hongzheng was moved to Chengde and Zhang Hongjing sent out to command Lulong. In his later years Li Chun came to believe in arts of longevity: in the thirteenth year of Yuanhe he issued an edict seeking magicians, and a favourite recommended Liu Mi as able to compound the elixir of long life, whom Li Chun made prefect of Taizhou; and the next year he began to take the elixir and his temper became violent and irascible, so that he often reproved or put to death the eunuchs about him. In the fourteenth year of Yuanhe, 819, he had the Buddha's bone brought from Fengxiang to Chang'an, raising a great fervour of almsgiving among princes, nobles and common people alike; and when the vice minister of justice Han Yu sent up a memorial of earnest remonstrance, Li Chun was enraged and would have had him put to death, but on the pleas of Pei Du and others that Han Yu was loyal and upright he was banished to be prefect of Chaozhou. At the end of the fourteenth year of Yuanhe, worn down by the golden elixir, Li Chun lay weak; and in the first month of the fifteenth year of Yuanhe, 820, he was murdered by the eunuch Chen Hongzhi and others at the age of forty-three. Chen Hongzhi and Wang Shoucheng gave it out that he had died of the elixir of long life, and with the eunuch generals Ma Jintan, Liang Shouqian, Liu Chengxie and Wei Yuansu conspired to set up Li Heng, that is Emperor Muzong. In the sixth month of the fifteenth year of Yuanhe Li Chun was buried at Jingling, and afterwards was given the posthumous title of the emperor who was brilliant in letters, martial in arms, great in holiness and perfection of filial piety.

The Vacant Throne of the Empress and the Question of the Heir

Li Chun had many women in his inner palace. Considering that the lady Guo came of a great family, he feared that if she became empress she would not allow him the favours of the inner palace, and so for long would not appoint an empress; and scholars have held that what he feared was not an empress meddling in government but rather the usurpation of the consort's kin. From Li Chun onward the emperors Muzong, Jingzong, Wenzong, Wuzong and Xuanzong followed him in turn and likewise named no empress, so that the empresses spoken of in the histories of that time were in fact mothers of emperors, ennobled after their sons came to the throne. Between him and the lady Guo there was respectful accord, like the manners of one household, and family life was harmonious. In the fourth year of Yuanhe, 809, Li Chun decided to set up an heir: his eldest son Li Ning was of lower birth than his second son Li You and but two years older, yet Li Chun set aside the noble for the elder and made Li Ning heir apparent; and when Li Ning died young, Li Chun agreed to make Li You, afterwards Emperor Muzong, heir, but still would not make the lady Guo empress. Thereafter, over the choice of the new heir, the court and beyond divided into two parties, one headed by the eunuch Tuoba Chengcui, whom Li Chun favoured, planning to set up the Prince of Li, while another group of ministers, leaning on the great house of Guo, urged the setting up of Li Heng, Prince of Sui, son of the lady Guo. Those who presented the address of the emperor of Yuanhe said that in the government of Yuanhe the bows and arrows were laid aside, that the plans were settled beforehand and all yielded before them, that the two rivers were cleared and the great stair made level, and that men said they had not thought to see again the good government of Zhenguan and Kaiyuan in their own day.

His Last Years and After

At the end of the fourteenth year of Yuanhe, 819, Li Chun lay weak from taking the golden elixir. In the first month of the fifteenth year of Yuanhe, 820, he was murdered in the palace by the eunuch Chen Hongzhi and others, and both the Old and New Books of Tang state fairly clearly that he met his death at the hands of Chen Hongzhi and his fellows. After his death Emperor Muzong did not punish Chen Hongzhi, the murderer of the emperor, but soon sent him out to be supervising commissioner at Huainan, a great southern post; and within days of his accession Muzong ordered the magician Liu Mi and the monk Datong beaten to death, banished the magicians of the palace and sent far away the officials connected with them, to show that his father had died of the elixir. Li Chun was buried in the sixth month of the fifteenth year of Yuanhe at Jingling in Shaanxi, which was declared a provincial monument of the first rank on 6 August 1956 and a national key monument of the fifth rank by the State Council on 25 June 2001.

Major Activities

Bringing the Military Governorships to Heel

Xianzong's most important political achievement was the suppression of military-governor resistance and the restoration of central authority. He adopted a strategy of dealing first with easier targets and then more difficult ones, successively suppressing rebellions in Xichuan, Zhenhai, Huaixi, Ziqing, and other circuits. The campaign against Huaixi in 817, the twelfth year of Yuanhe, was especially decisive. Xianzong rejected opposition and placed Pei Du in charge of the campaign. Li Su launched a surprise night attack on Caizhou through the snow and captured Wu Yuanji, bringing Huaixi under control in a single stroke and greatly intimidating other military governors. Chengde, Lulong, and other governorships then successively submitted, and the authority of the Tang central government temporarily revived.

Employment of Capable Officials

Xianzong was skilled at selecting officials. He successively employed capable chief ministers including Du Huangshang, Pei Du, Li Jiang, and Cui Qun, listened to remonstrance, and opened channels for advice. He supported Pei Du in the Huaixi campaign, trusted Li Jiang's outspoken criticism, and tolerated the direct remonstrance of officials such as Han Yu. Xianzong also reformed fiscal administration and implemented the Two-Tax system, easing burdens on the population and increasing central revenue.

Reception of the Buddha Bone and Han Yu's Remonstrance

In 819, the fourteenth year of Yuanhe, Xianzong had a relic of the Buddha from Famen Temple brought into the palace for worship in hopes of obtaining longevity, causing a sensation at court and beyond. Han Yu, then Vice Minister of Justice, submitted the memorial Memorial on the Bone of the Buddha, strongly criticizing Buddhism. This angered Xianzong, and Han Yu was demoted to serve as prefect of Chaozhou. The episode reflected Xianzong's late interest in Buddhism and pursuit of longevity.

Relations with Eunuchs

When Xianzong ascended the throne, eunuch power was already extremely strong and eunuchs controlled the imperial guards and exercised political influence. Although Xianzong at one point tried to restrain them, in his later years he trusted eunuchs such as Tutu Chengcui, allowing their power to expand. Xianzong himself was ultimately killed by eunuchs, illustrating the severity of the eunuch problem.

The Chancellorship and the Cutting of Redundant Office

To correct the growing weakness of the central court and the swelling power of the military commissioners, and to raise the authority of the chancellors, Li Chun brought the key of military and state affairs wholly into the chancellors' hands, able to use loyal counsels and not misled by the opinions of the many, and employed in succession a group of chancellors who were young and capable, loyal and upright, and firm for the reduction of the provinces and against the eunuchs' meddling in military affairs, such as Du Huangshang, Li Jifu, Pei Ji, Wu Yuanheng, Pei Du, Li Jiang and Cui Qun. He first used Du Huangshang, by whom Gao Chongwen was sent against Liu Pi; in the middle years Wu Yuanheng, who planned the training of the troops and seconded the imperial decisions; and at the last Pei Du, who displayed the might of arms and brought the long-standing rebels of the two rivers to nothing. Li Jifu was arbitrary, and Li Chun, seeing it, made Li Jiang joint manager of government affairs to balance him, thinking himself to have found the way of managing his ministers. In the sixth year of Yuanhe, 811, Li Jifu memorialised that the court's offices were not well chosen, that good and bad men were mixed, and that empty and idle posts consumed vast taxes so that the people's livelihood grew daily harder and those who ate without labour daily more numerous; whereupon Li Chun ordered the supervising secretary Duan Pingzhong, the secretariat drafter Wei Guanzhi, the vice minister of war Xu Mengrong and the vice minister of revenue Li Jiang to examine and reduce the establishment together, and in the end eight hundred redundant officials and fourteen hundred clerks were cut.

Finance and the Military Farms on the Frontier

Li Chun appointed a group of able financiers. In the first year of Yuanhe, 806, Li Xun was made commissioner of revenue, salt and transport, and in one year in that office his levies reached the highest year ever achieved by Liu Yan, exceeding it the next year and adding a further million and eight hundred thousand strings the year after; and whereas by the old rule five hundred thousand bushels of rice were to be sent each year from Jiangnan and Huainan to Heying, a figure long not reached, it was reached only in the three years when Li Xun held the transport office. He also used Li Jiang to farm the frontier and support troops there to lighten the cost of government: in the seventh year of Yuanhe, 812, Li Jiang memorialised that the good land about Zhenwu and Tiande might yield ten thousand qing and asked that able officials be chosen to open military farms, so that expense might be saved and food be sufficient; Li Chun agreed, and Li Jiang had the revenue commissioner Lu Tan direct it, and in four years four thousand eight hundred qing were opened, yielding more than forty million bushels of grain and saving more than two hundred thousand strings of cash a year, on which the frontier defence came to rely. The chancellor Pei Ji ordered that the goods retained by the prefectures and sent to the commissioners should all be valued at the provincial estimate, and that the observers should first tax the prefecture they governed for their own support and levy the rest from the prefectures under them, whereby the people of Jiangnan and Huainan got some relief. Li Chun himself was most frugal in the expenses of his palace, and once explained to his ministers that the tens of prefectures of Henan and Hebei were beyond the reach of the state's teachings and laws, and that thousands of li of the region of the Yellow River and the Huang were still in the hands of aliens, so that day and night he thought of wiping out the shame of his ancestors, but that his resources were not rich enough and he was therefore obliged to gather and hoard; that otherwise the money would be of no use, so sparing was he in the palace.

Rites, Letters and Calligraphy

Li Chun gave weight to the observance and construction of ritual. In the early part of the eighth year of Yuanhe, 813, when there was great drought, he prayed for rain himself within the palace, and that night the rain fell in plenty; he agreed to grants according to the Tang rites; and in the eleventh year of Yuanhe, 816, a secretary of the palace library compiled the New Rites of Qutai in thirty fascicles, gathered from the ordinances and rulings on the five rites from after the twenty-first year of Kaiyuan to the thirteenth year of Yuanhe, and afterwards, taking the marriage, sacrificial, mourning and burial rites of princes, nobles and common people since Yuanhe, compiled the Continued Rites of Qutai in thirty fascicles. He valued learning and encouraged letters, bringing about the flourishing of the Yuanhe literary world; and he set himself to reform the imperial academy. The man in charge of the academy sent up a memorial asking to set its rules in order, using both the school regulations and examinations, unhesitatingly expelling those who broke the rules gravely and dismissing those whose marks fell short and who overstayed the term; Li Chun approved and at once had it carried out, so that the tone of study notably changed. In the twelfth month of the second year of Yuanhe, 807, the academy asked that the students of the two capitals' halls be fixed at six hundred and fifty in all, and Li Chun required the ministry of rites to fill the places up to that number, which became the legal establishment of the two capitals' academy in the later Tang; and in the eleventh month of the thirteenth year and the twelfth month of the fourteenth year, 818 and 819, the libationer Zheng Yuqing, because of long war, great military expense and financial difficulty, twice asked that a part of the salaries of the civil officials in the capital be set aside to repair and enlarge the academies of the two capitals, which neither increased the state's burden nor left the schools unrepaired, and Li Chun agreed, so that a precedent was set for officials to contribute to the restoration of learning. Li Chun himself was skilled in calligraphy, and in the seventh month of the fourth year of Yuanhe, 809, wrote with his own hand fourteen chapters on the deeds of rulers and ministers of former ages on a six-panel screen, which he afterwards showed to his chancellors.

Relations with Tibet

To concentrate his strength on the reduction of the military commissioners, Li Chun seized the moment to make peace with Tibet of his own initiative. In the first month of the first year of Yuanhe, 806, he ordered more than seventy Tibetan captives of Fujian circuit sent back to Tibetan territory and sent envoys to Tibet to restore good relations; and in the fifth month of the fourth year of Yuanhe, 809, he sent the vice minister of sacrifices Xu Fu on a mission to Tibet, so that the two sides were reconciled, and thereafter exchanged envoys repeatedly, relations remaining for the most part stable and friendly until the thirteenth year of Yuanhe, 818. He handled their disputes with care; but in matters touching the safety of Tang he held his ground, insisting that if the oath were renewed the frontier must be redrawn and the lands Tibet had in fact occupied be restored, and refusing to swear the oath before the three prefectures were regained. After the government armies pacified the rebels of Huaixi in the thirteenth year of Yuanhe, relations with Tibet turned sharply worse, and in the tenth and eleventh months of that year the two sides fought several great engagements, in which the Tang general Shi Fengjing and others drove the Tibetans off and broke them.

The Climate of Plain Speech and the Receiving of Counsel

Through Li Chun's own encouragement, the ministers who dared to speak and remonstrate plainly greatly increased in the Yuanhe years, forming a political climate such as had not been known since Zhenguan and Kaiyuan; and about him gathered a group of ministers who spoke their minds to the utmost and upheld clean government, such as the Hanlin academicians and the left reminder. He used the resources accumulated since the reign of Dezong and employed ministers who urged the curbing of the military commissioners. Against the eunuchs, when they stepped out of line he had them beaten to death at once, never failing to show his firmness and to lift the discipline of the court; yet he favoured Tuoba Chengcui and never came to see it. In the Yuanhe years, when the commissioner of the archery stores Liu Xiguang's corruption implicated Tuoba Chengcui, he sent him out to be supervising commissioner at Huainan, and afterwards asked Li Jiang what he thought of making Tuoba Chengcui an outer official, and when Li Jiang said the world would not have thought the emperor could suddenly do such a thing, Li Chun answered that the man was but a household slave, that he had long been used to ordering him about and had therefore spared him out of private favour, but that if he broke the law he would cast him off as lightly as a hair. In the matter of Han Yu's remonstrance against the welcoming of the Buddha's bone, though he was at first enraged and would have had him put to death, he was in the end moved by Pei Du and others who pleaded Han Yu's loyalty and uprightness to reduce the sentence to banishment, which shows that counsel was received.

Personal Relations

• Father: Emperor Shunzong of Tang, Li Song
• Mother: Empress Zhuangxian, Lady Wang
• Sons: Emperor Muzong of Tang, Li Heng; Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, Li Chen; and others
• Wife: Empress Yi'an, Lady Guo, granddaughter of Guo Ziyi
• Pei Du: chief minister and major contributor to the pacification of Huaixi
• Li Jiang: chief minister known for forthright remonstrance
• Du Huangshang: chief minister and early advocate of campaigns against the military governorships
• Han Yu: civil official demoted after remonstrating against the Buddha relic
• Emperor Dezong of Tang, Li Shi: grandfather, who favored Xianzong in his youth
• Emperor Shunzong of Tang, Li Song: father, who abdicated in Xianzong's favor
• Emperor Muzong of Tang, Li Heng: crown prince and later successor
• Liu Pi: military governor of Xichuan, whose rebellion was suppressed
• Li Qi: military governor of Zhenhai, whose rebellion was suppressed
• Wu Yuanji: military governor of Huaixi, whose rebellion was suppressed
• Li Shidao: military governor of Ziqing, whose rebellion was suppressed
• Chen Hongzhi: eunuch recorded as having killed Xianzong

Historical Assessment

Tang / Contemporary Period

• Historian Liu Xu wrote in the Old Book of Tang that Xianzong was “resolute and discerning, capable of restoring discipline,” while also criticizing his late fascination with immortality and ingestion of mineral substances.
• After the pacification of Huaixi, Pei Du praised Xianzong as “heroic, martial, sage, and enlightened, deciding independently without confusion,” affirming his firmness in dealing with the military governorships.
• Li Jiang, in a discussion of remonstrance, criticized Xianzong as too eager for immediate achievements and too ready to employ force, arguing that his campaigns were overly aggressive and exhausted the population.

Song and Yuan Periods

• Northern Song historian Sima Guang, in the Zizhi Tongjian, judged that Xianzong was eager to pacify the military governorships but failed to learn from earlier precedents, eventually allowing disorder to return. He considered the reign a restoration but believed Xianzong did not fundamentally resolve the problems of military governors and eunuchs.
• Southern Song Neo-Confucian thinker Zhu Xi, in Classified Conversations of Master Zhu, considered Xianzong to have had the ambition for a restoration but not the ability required for one, criticizing his personnel choices and late moral decline.
• Yuan historian Hu Sansheng, commenting on the Zizhi Tongjian, emphasized that Xianzong's death was in fact caused by eunuchs and lamented that the decline of the Tang house began with Xianzong.

Ming and Qing Periods

• Ming thinker Wang Fuzhi, in Discussions on Reading the Comprehensive Mirror, described Xianzong as having a firm and discerning character and pursuing policies of pacification, but argued that he grew arrogant after success and was eventually killed by eunuch servants; he therefore viewed his record as mixed.
• Qing historian Zhao Yi, in Notes on the Twenty-Two Histories, compared Xianzong with Emperor Taizong of Tang, arguing that although Xianzong lacked Taizong's virtue, he possessed comparable talent, but in his later years became absorbed in occult arts and failed to preserve his achievements to the end.
• Qing scholar Wang Mingsheng, in Critical Discussions of the Seventeen Histories, criticized Xianzong for suppressing military governorships while allowing the eunuch problem to become even more severe, arguing that he failed to resolve the underlying issue.

Modern Period

• Historian Chen Yinke, in A Draft Discussion of Tang Political History, regarded Xianzong as the only truly active ruler of the middle and late Tang, while also noting that his campaigns against the military governorships relied on eunuchs and regional forces, leaving future problems.
• Historian Cen Zhongmian, in History of the Sui and Tang, judged that Xianzong achieved the substance of a restoration but lacked the broader capacity to sustain it; although he brought military governorships to heel, he did not rebuild centralized power.
• Modern scholar Huang Yongnian, in Twelve Lectures on Tang History, regarded the Yuanhe Restoration as the Tang dynasty's final period of brilliance, after which military-governor separatism revived and the dynasty moved toward decline.