Li Shimin

Li Shimin the second emperor of the Tang dynasty, who reigned from 626 to 649 under the title Emperor Taizong and is widely regarded as one of the greatest rulers in Chinese history. A gifted general and shrewd statesman, he consolidated the Tang empire, reformed its administration and law, and presided over an age of political stability and cultural brilliance remembered as a model of good government.

Birth and Rise of the Tang

Li Shimin was born in 598 into the aristocratic Li family of the northwest, which traced its descent to the rulers of the Western Wei and had intermarried with the Turkic nobility. His father Li Yuan was a high official and general of the Sui dynasty. When the Sui empire collapsed in the great rebellions of the 610s, the family seized the moment and proclaimed a new dynasty, the Tang, in 618.

The young Li Shimin was the most talented commander of the family. He led armies against the rival warlords who had carved up the empire, defeating the forces of the eastern plain and the northwest, and by the early 620s he had restored much of the old Sui territory to Tang rule. His military genius and his gift for winning the loyalty of his officers made him the decisive figure in the founding of the dynasty.

He gathered around himself a group of able advisers and soldiers and built a personal following that grew into a powerful political faction. The court at Chang'an became the scene of a bitter rivalry between Li Shimin, his elder brother Li Jiancheng, the crown prince, and a younger brother, Li Yuanji, each contending for the succession.

The Xuanwu Gate Incident

The rivalry came to a head in 626. Fearing that his brothers would move against him first, Li Shimin acted with ruthless decisiveness. At the Xuanwu Gate of the imperial palace in Chang'an he ambushed and killed both Li Jiancheng and Li Yuanji, and then forced his father to name him crown prince. Within weeks the old emperor abdicated and Li Shimin took the throne as Emperor Taizong.

The event has always troubled his reputation. For later Confucian moralists the killing of kinsmen was a stain upon an otherwise exemplary reign, and Taizong himself was said to have been anxious about how history would judge him. He is reported to have taken a close interest in the records of his own reign and to have sought to shape the way his deeds were recorded.

Yet the succession crisis also demonstrated the qualities that made him a great ruler, the judgment of a moment, the capacity for decisive action and the willingness to accept the consequences. After taking power he turned at once to the tasks of government, and he showed a remarkable willingness to listen to criticism and to appoint men who were not his personal followers.

Government and Reforms

As emperor, Taizong built on the institutional foundations laid by the Sui. He strengthened the system of the Three Departments and Six Ministries, clarified the responsibilities of the central administration, and developed the examination system as a means of recruiting officials of talent rather than mere birth. The examinations, though still limited in scale, opened the way for a degree of social mobility that would shape Chinese society for a thousand years.

He revised the legal code, reducing the severity of punishments and establishing a body of law that was consulted throughout East Asia. He reformed the land and tax systems, seeking to secure the livelihoods of the peasantry and the revenues of the state. He was careful in his appointments, and his ministers, among them Wei Zheng, Fang Xuanling and Du Ruhui, were celebrated for their integrity and their readiness to remonstrate.

Taizong also concerned himself with the conduct of the ruler. He encouraged frank criticism, and his exchange with Wei Zheng became a byword for the ideal relationship between a sovereign who listens and a minister unafraid to speak. The phrase of Wei Zheng, that the ruler is the boat and the people the water that may bear it up or overturn it, was remembered as a central teaching of his court.

Foreign Affairs and the Steppe

In foreign policy Taizong transformed the Chinese position on the northern frontier. In 630 his armies defeated the Eastern Turks and captured their khan, ending a danger that had threatened the northern plains for decades. He was thereafter honoured by the nomad peoples with the title Heavenly Khan, and many Turkic groups submitted to Tang overlordship.

He extended Chinese influence westward, campaigning against the Tuyuhun and the states of the Tarim Basin, and opening the caravan routes that would become known as the Silk Road. Missions and trade flowed between Chang'an and the cities of Central Asia, and the Tang capital became the most cosmopolitan city in the world, with merchants, monks and envoys from Persia, India and the Byzantine world.

His later years were shadowed by an unsuccessful campaign against Goguryeo in Korea, and by the anxiety of his decline. He sought the elixirs of immortality and, according to tradition, died in 649 after taking a medicine given by a foreign physician. He was succeeded by his son Li Zhi, the Emperor Gaozong, and his favourite consort Wu Zetian would later rule in her own right.

Legacy and Reputation

Taizong is remembered as the model of the wise and vigorous emperor. The record of his reign, the Zhenguan Government, became a standard against which later rulers and officials measured their own conduct, and the era of Zhenguan is still cited as a golden age of good government and sound administration. Chinese historians have long regarded him as the greatest of the Tang emperors.

The Tang empire he helped to found lasted for nearly three centuries and became an age of extraordinary cultural achievement in poetry, painting, sculpture and religion. Chang'an grew into a vast and ordered capital whose plan influenced the cities of Japan and Korea, and the Tang legal and administrative systems were studied and copied across East Asia.

Taizong's reputation is nonetheless complex. He was a usurper who killed his brothers and pressured his father from the throne, and his interest in the historical record has been used by critics to argue that his virtue was in part an act of self-presentation. Yet the strength of the state he built, the quality of the men he gathered and the peace and prosperity of his reign remain the enduring measure of his achievement.

See also

• Tang dynasty
• Emperor Gaozong of Tang
• Xuanwu Gate Incident
• Wei Zheng