Emperatriz Zhang (Suzong)
Li Fuguo se enteró. Él y Cheng Yuanzhen interceptaron al príncipe en la puerta, le dijeron lo que lo esperaba, y llevaron a los guardias en su lugar. La Emperatriz Zhang huyó a
张皇后
“Between Him and the Door”
Nine months pregnant on the flight north from An Lushan, she slept on the outside so that anyone coming through the door would reach her first. Six years later she was dragged out of the same man’s deathbed by the palace guard.
Her Story
In the summer of 756 the imperial family fled Chang’an ahead of An Lushan’s cavalry. Yang Guifei was killed by the escort at the Mawei post station. Xuanzong went on south to Sichuan; his son Li Heng turned north instead, with a few hundred men, to try to hold the empire together from the frontier.
His wife went with him, and she was heavily pregnant.
They slept where they could. The Zizhi Tongjian records that in the poor houses along the road she insisted on lying on the outside, between her husband and the door. He objected. She said that if bandits came in the night she would meet them first, and that would buy him the time to get out.
If there is an alarm in the night, I will meet it first. That will give Your Highness time.
Lady Zhang, on the flight north to Lingwu, 756 CE — Zizhi Tongjian, ch. 218
She gave birth three days after they reached Lingwu. On the third day after that she was up sewing clothes for the soldiers, and when he told her to rest she said this was not the time for it.
That is the first half of her life, and if it had stopped there she would be one of the most admired women in this collection.
Li Heng declared himself emperor at Lingwu — without asking his father, who was still alive and still emperor in Sichuan. It worked. Within two years, with Uyghur cavalry hired at the price of letting them plunder Luoyang when it was retaken, the capital was back.
She was made empress in 758, and the court she entered was a different environment from a road in the north.
She allied with the eunuch Li Fuguo, who had helped engineer the Lingwu accession and who by then controlled the palace guard, the memorials reaching the throne, and the emperor’s door. Together they removed the men who stood in the way. Then, inevitably, they turned on each other.
Her own son had died young. The heir was Li Yu, another woman’s son, who had led the armies that retook the capitals and was extremely popular with them. Her position after Suzong’s death depended entirely on his goodwill, and she did not believe in it.
In the spring of 762 Suzong was dying. She summoned the crown prince to the palace, intending to have him seized and replaced with his younger brother.
Li Fuguo found out. He and Cheng Yuanzhen intercepted the prince at the gate, told him what was waiting, and took the guards in instead. Empress Zhang fled to the dying emperor’s bedchamber. They dragged her out of the room in front of him.
Suzong died that night. The histories say the shock of it killed him.
She was executed immediately, along with the prince she had meant to enthrone. Li Yu succeeded as Emperor Daizong, and the eunuch who had put him there was assassinated within the year on his orders.
The woman who lay between her husband and the door on the road north, and the woman dragged out of his deathbed six years later, are the same person. Nothing in the record explains the distance between them, and the histories do not try.
A note on the sources
Both halves of this page come from the same chapters, written under the emperor she tried to depose. The road anecdotes survived anyway, which is mildly remarkable — a hostile historian kept the story of her lying between her husband and the door because it had already been told too often to leave out.
- Liu Xu et al., Jiu Tang Shu (Old Book of Tang), ch. 52 — 945 CE
- Ouyang Xiu et al., Xin Tang Shu (New Book of Tang), ch. 77 — 1060
- Sima Guang, Zizhi Tongjian, ch. 218–222 — 1084
- Charles Peterson, “Court and Province in Mid- and Late T’ang”, in The Cambridge History of China, Vol. 3 — 1979
The Emperor
Emperor Suzong of Tang 唐肃宗
Li Heng 李亨 · 711 – 762 · reigned 756 – 762
He became emperor by declaring himself one. In 756, with the capital lost and his father heading for Sichuan, he went north to Lingwu with a few hundred men and had himself proclaimed — an act that was, strictly, usurpation, and that his father accepted from four hundred miles away because there was no alternative.
He retook Chang’an and Luoyang within two years, but the terms are the point: he borrowed Uyghur cavalry and paid for them by agreeing that they could sack Luoyang once it was recovered. They did. It is the moment the Tang stops being able to defend itself with its own resources.
He also let the eunuch Li Fuguo accumulate control of the guard and the paperwork, which is how a eunuch came to be arresting an empress in the emperor’s bedroom while the emperor watched. He died the same night, aged fifty-one.
See also: Emperor Suzong.
Connections
- Her predecessor Empress Wang (Xuanzong) — deposed in 724, after which the Tang had no empress for thirty-three years.
- Her successors Empress Liu and Empress Dou — the consorts of the crown prince she tried to depose.
- The pattern Empress Yan Ji of the Han — who also moved against a crown prince as an emperor lay dying, and was also destroyed by palace eunuchs within weeks.
- What she lived through Emperor Xuanzong — her father-in-law, and the reign that ended at the Mawei post station.
About this Portrait
| Artist | Xiang Li 李湘 |
| Medium | Chinese watercolor on silk, hand-painted on hand-cut silk |
| Dimensions | approx. 36 × 72 inches (91 × 183 cm) |
| Painted | 2015 |
| Subject | Empress Zhang, consort of Emperor Suzong |
| Collection | The Chinese Empresses Collection |
| Availability | Original held by the artist · Prints available |
