Li Heng

Biography

Imperial Prince and the Succession

Li Heng's mother, Lady Guo, came from a prominent family. She was a granddaughter of Guo Ziyi and the daughter of imperial son-in-law Guo Ai and Princess Shengping. After Emperor Xianzong took the throne, Lady Guo long lacked the formal title of empress, but she held a very high position within the palace and among the emperor's maternal relatives. Following the death of Crown Prince Li Ning, differing views arose over the succession, and Li Heng ultimately prevailed. His selection reflected not only his age and order among the imperial sons, but also the support of the Guo family, palace eunuchs, and officials.

Accession and Political Style

Emperor Xianzong died suddenly in 820. Historical sources offer different clues about the cause, including assassination by eunuchs and illness caused by alchemical elixirs. After Li Heng rapidly succeeded to the throne, he did not fundamentally alter the situation in which eunuchs controlled the Shence Army and palace information. In contrast with the prolonged warfare of Xianzong's later reign, Muzong and his chief ministers hoped to reduce military expenditure and restore routine administration, but this policy shift did not adequately address the social conditions of the military governorships.

Li Heng was fond of outings and banquets, music, polo, and palace construction. Many ministers urged him to hunt less and devote himself more closely to government. He often accepted their advice verbally but made few lasting changes. It would be insufficient to attribute every political failure solely to his lifestyle, yet the emperor's inability to provide sustained direction did make changes of chief ministers, eunuch influence, and local crises harder to coordinate.

Renewed Rebellion of the Hebei Military Governorships

By the end of the Yuanhe era, the court had temporarily forced the Hebei military governorships to submit. Muzong's government believed the conflict had been settled and ordered the circuits to reduce a certain proportion of their troops. The discharged soldiers had no stable livelihood, and discontent within the military communities quickly grew. The Lulong army raised Zhu Kerong to power, while the Chengde army supported Wang Tingcou and killed Tian Hongzheng, whom the court had appointed. Tang forces campaigned by several routes without unified command, and both supply and leadership were problematic. In the end, the court could only grant the rebel leaders formal titles as military governors. The restoration of de facto separatism in Hebei showed that the military achievements of the Yuanhe era had not been converted into durable institutional control.

The Changqing-Era Treaty and the Frontier

During Muzong's reign, Tang and Tibet made peace, holding negotiations in Chang'an and erecting stelae in Lhasa and elsewhere. The text confirmed the frontier and peaceful intercourse; later generations referred to this as the treaty concluded in the Changqing era. The agreement did not permanently end frontier conflict, but it reflected a shared desire by Tang and Tibet to reduce the costs of prolonged warfare and brought a period of relative stability to their borderlands.

Illness and Death

In 822, Li Heng was frightened and fell, or otherwise became ill, during a palace polo game and remained in poor health for a long period. The choice of crown prince and the operation of the court consequently drew greater attention. Li Heng later consumed elixirs supplied by practitioners, and his health continued to deteriorate. He died early in 824 at only thirty years of age. His son Li Zhan succeeded him as Emperor Jingzong of Tang, while the problems of palace recreation and eunuch politics remained unresolved.

Li Heng, the emperor Muzong of the Tang, was originally named Li You and was the third son of Emperor Xianzong. Born in the seventh month of 795 in a side hall of the Daming palace, he was first made prince of Jian'an and in 806 prince of Sui, and in 810 was given command of the Zhangyi army and other posts. His mother was the consort Guo, whom Xianzong had married in 793 when he was prince of Guangling; she was a granddaughter of the "honored father" Guo Ziyi, who had restored the Tang house, and her family was immensely powerful at court — the fundamental reason why Li You could succeed to the throne.

Xianzong long hesitated over the succession. Before his accession he already had an eldest son Li Ning and a second son Li Yun, whose mothers, a palace woman of the Ji family and a woman whose name is not recorded, were of no consequence beside the Guo connection. The matter dragged on until the third month of 809, when the emperor's mind turned gradually to the eldest son: Li Ning was then seventeen, fond of books and correct in his conduct, and pleased his father, so that on his ministers' prompting Xianzong declared him heir. The investiture was troublesome: meant for the spring, it was postponed again and again by heavy rain and did not take place until the tenth month, and how much pressure came from the Guo family in the interval is not known. In the twelfth month of 811, after two years as heir, Li Ning died of illness at nineteen. Xianzong mourned him bitterly, closed the court for thirteen days, devised special mourning rites and gave him the posthumous title of the Huizhao heir. The succession was again open: almost everyone inside and outside the court proposed the third son Li You, born of the consort Guo, and only a few argued for the second son by order of birth. Xianzong was inclined to the second son, but Li Yun's mother was of low station and could not command support, while the Guo party was far too strong, and the cry for the third son prevailed. The emperor had no choice but to have Cui Qun draft, on Li Yun's behalf, a memorial declining; in the seventh month of 812 he decreed Li You heir, changing his name to Li Heng, and the investiture was held in the tenth month.

Xianzong was not, however, satisfied with this heir, and the eunuch Tutu Chengcui, reading the emperor's mind, never gave up working for Li Yun. In the tenth month of 813 the officials who had supported the heir memorialized again, asking that the consort Guo be made empress; Xianzong refused on various pretexts — since Wu Zetian, few empresses had been made while alive, and the Guo connection was in any case too strong. The consort Guo thereafter gathered partisans both at court and outside, including powerful eunuchs, contending in secret with Tutu Chengcui. At the end of 814, with Xianzong's health failing from the elixirs he took, Tutu Chengcui pressed harder to replace the heir. Li Heng was badly alarmed and asked counsel of his uncle Guo Zhao, who told him to attend only to filial piety and duty and think of nothing else — the heir's party, plainly, had made its preparations and was waiting. On the twenty-seventh day of the first month of 820 Xianzong died suddenly in the palace; contemporaries said he had been murdered by the eunuch Chen Hongzhi, while others held that he died of the golden elixir, and the eunuchs Liang Shouqian and Wang Shoucheng at once set up the heir, who took the throne as Muzong, while Tutu Chengcui and the second son Li Yun were killed in the coup. Muzong made his mother the consort Guo empress dowager and changed the place names that offended his personal name.

The era names of Muzong's reign were first Yongxin and then Changqing; his chancellors in turn included Xiao Mian, Duan Wenchang, Cui Zhi, Du Yuanying and Li Fengji, most of them intent on keeping their places and pleasing their master. He did issue orders releasing palace women and reducing the court musicians, but such measures went side by side with his building on a great scale and his favor to the alchemists, and cannot be called clean government.

Major Activities

The Adverse Effects of Troop Reductions

Reducing military expenditure had practical justification, but without arrangements for demobilized soldiers, effective local control, or unified command, troop reductions directly became a trigger for military unrest. The renewed rebellions in Hebei under Muzong showed that the military governorship problem could not be solved by a single military victory; it was closely tied to soldiers' livelihoods, fiscal support, and local power structures.

The Changqing-Era Tang–Tibetan Treaty

The Tang–Tibetan treaty was the most enduringly remembered diplomatic event of Muzong's reign. The surviving treaty stele is important evidence for the study of Tang–Tibetan relations. The agreement represented an effort by both sides to recognize the existing frontier and restore envoys and trade.

Policy Imbalance after the Restoration

Muzong inherited a situation in which Xianzong's wars had left the treasury strained, eunuchs controlled military forces, and the military governorships remained unstable. Muzong lacked sustained governing capacity, while his chief ministers' policies overcorrected earlier practices, quickly weakening the gains of the Yuanhe Restoration. The reigns of Jingzong and Wenzong continued to face similar problems.

Muzong was twenty-six at his accession, at an age when much might have been done, but he followed no such diligence as Taizong's or Xuanzong's; he gave himself up to pleasure without restraint. Even while mourning for Xianzong he made no secret of his taste for amusement, and after the burial at Jingling in the fifth month of 820 he grew more unbridled still, soon going out hunting with his favorites. In the sixth month, when the empress dowager Guo moved to the Xingqing palace in the southern park, he feasted there with his attendants, then visited the Shence guards and lavished gifts on their commanders, including gilded cups engraved with hunting scenes; thereafter he went to the right and left Shence armies every third day and visited the Chenhui and Jiuxian gates to watch wrestling and variety shows. He built on a great scale in the palace, putting up the Yong'an and Baoqing halls; once a rockery collapsed and killed seven workmen; when the Yong'an hall was finished he watched plays there with delight and held secret revels with the ladies of the palace. He also spent heavily restoring the An'guo, Ci'en, Qianfu, Kaiye and Zhangjing temples in the capital. His extravagance quickly consumed what Xianzong had accumulated, and though ministers remonstrated repeatedly they were mostly not heeded.

In government the reign was equally barren. Having taken the throne he killed, punished or banished Xianzong's trusted servants and favorites while rewarding richly those who had made him emperor, and gave the eunuch Wang Shoucheng the privy seal and Liang Shouqian and others command of the guards, so that eunuch power grew further. Worse was the reversal in Hebei: in 821 the military commissioner of Youzhou, Liu Zong, asked to resign and become a monk, and the court's replacement of him by Zhang Hongjing was mishandled, leading to mutiny among the troops and to Zhu Kerong's seizure of Youzhou; the same year the army supervisor of Chengde, Wang Tingcou, killed the commissioner Tian Hongzheng and took Zhenzhou, and Weibo likewise expelled Tian Bu — one after another the three garrisons of Hebei slipped from the court's control. Muzong ordered the other commands to attack, but with divided command and failing supplies the armies wore themselves out to no purpose, and he had at last to accept the facts, fixing the separatist order of Hebei for decades. Abroad, in the Changqing years the Tang came to terms with Tibet and in 823 erected the stele at Lhasa recording the alliance, giving the frontier a brief peace. At home the re-examination of the examinations in 821 set Li Deyu and Li Zongmin at enmity and opened the Niu-Li factional strife that lasted for decades, one of the chronic ills of the later Tang. In the first month of 824 Muzong died of the golden elixir at thirty, and his son Li Zhan took the throne as Emperor Jingzong. Reigning only four years, made emperor by eunuchs, his abuse of power, the defection of the garrisons and the opening of factional war all belonging together, Muzong is taken as the hinge at which the Yuanhe restoration of Xianzong's reign gave way to the long predicament of the later Tang.

Personal Relations

• Emperor Xianzong of Tang, Li Chun: father and principal ruler associated with the Yuanhe Restoration.
• Empress Yi'an, Lady Guo: mother, granddaughter of Guo Ziyi, influential in the succession and at court.
• Xiao Mian and Duan Wenchang: chief ministers early in Muzong's reign who participated in the troop-reduction policy.
• Zhu Kerong: military governor raised to power by the Lulong army.
• Wang Tingcou: Chengde commander who launched a mutiny and took control of Chengde.
• Tian Hongzheng: court-appointed military governor of Chengde, killed in the mutiny.
• Li Zhan: eldest son, who succeeded as Emperor Jingzong of Tang.

Historical Assessment

Traditional histories generally judged Emperor Muzong of Tang harshly, often treating him as responsible for the rapid decline of the Yuanhe Restoration and criticizing in particular his banquets, hunting, construction projects, and consumption of elixirs. Modern interpretations additionally emphasize that renewed rebellion in Hebei was linked to Tang fiscal conditions, the military-garrison system, and the structure of central command. Personal failures of rule and institutional difficulties reinforced one another, producing the conditions of the Changqing era.