Downfall
Throughout the spring and summer of 763, Tufan forces were progressively attacking and capturing Tang prefectures to the west of Chang'an. It was said that despite the generals' urgent requests for aid, Cheng Yuanzhen did not relay the requests to Emperor Daizong. By winter 763, Tufan forces were approaching Chang'an; only then did Emperor Daizong realize the seriousness of the Tufan threat and commission Guo Ziyi to resist Tufan. When Emperor Daizong issued an edict to the various circuits ordering emergency aid, however, the generals refused to respond, and Guo could not quickly gather troops large enough to resist Tufan forces. Emperor Daizong was forced to abandon Chang'an and flee to Shan Prefecture (陝州, in modern Sanmenxia, Henan).
The imperial officials who followed Emperor Daizong to Shan Prefecture blamed the disaster on Cheng—in both his failure to alert Emperor Daizong as to the seriousness of the Tufan threat and his alienation of the generals, causing a lack of aid to arrive. The imperial scholar Liu Kang (柳伉) submitted a harshly worded petition, asking that Cheng be executed. Emperor Daizong, however, remembering how Cheng had protected him in the past, declined to do so. He did, however, remove Cheng from his offices and order that he return home.
When Emperor Daizong returned to Chang'an around the new year 764, Cheng heard the news. Putting on women's clothing in disguise, he secretly entered Chang'an and plotted to return to power. He was arrested by the Jingzhao Municipality government, and the imperial censors subsequently submitted an indictment against him. In spring 764, Emperor Daizong exiled him to Zhen Prefecture (榛州, in modern Chongqing), but soon changed the location of exile to the more prosperous city of Jiangling. Cheng died there, in exile, shortly after arriving there.
Read more about this topic: Cheng Yuanzhen
Famous quotes containing the word downfall:
“Show me one thing here on earth which has begun well and not ended badly. The proudest palpitations are engulfed in a sewer, where they cease throbbing, as though having reached their natural term: this downfall constitutes the heart’s drama and the negative meaning of history.”
—E.M. Cioran (b. 1911)
“Children demand that their heroes should be fleckless, and easily believe them so: perhaps a first discovery to the contrary is less revolutionary shock to a passionate child than the threatened downfall of habitual beliefs which makes the world seem to totter for us in maturer life.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)