After Death
After Emperor Gaozong's death around the new year 684, Li Zhe initially took the throne (as Emperor Zhongzong), but in spring 684, after he showed signs of disobeying Empress Wu (who had become empress dowager and regent by that point), she deposed him and replaced him with his brother Li Dan (as Emperor Ruizong). Empress Dowager Wu held power firmly and encouraged reports of treason. In 688, a servant of Hao Chujun's grandson Hao Xiangxian (郝象賢) falsely accused Hao Xiangxian of plotting treason. Empress Dowager Wu put one of her favorite secret police officers Zhou Xing (周興) in charge of the investigation. Zhou found Hao Xiangxian guilty and sentenced him and his clan to death. On the way to the execution field, Hao Xiangxian cursed Empress Dowager Wu and accused her of all kinds of adulterous and otherwise inappropriate behavior, and at one point jumped out of the cart and took firewood to combat the soldiers escorting him. The soldiers killed him. Empress Dowager Wu ordered that Hao Xiangxian's body be cut into pieces, and that Hao Chujun's and Hao Xiangxian's father's tombs be dug open, the caskets be destroyed, and the bones be burned. From this point on, until Empress Dowager Wu's death, every time that a prisoner was to be executed, the executioners would stuff his or her mouth with a wooden sphere.
Read more about this topic: Hao Chujun
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I’ve been cursed for delving into the mysteries of life. Perhaps death is sacred, and I’ve profaned it. Oh, what a wonderful vision it was. I dreamed of being the first to give to the world the secret that God is so jealous of, the formula for life. Think of the power, to create a man. And I did, I did it, I created a man. And who knows, in time I could have trained him to do my will. I could have bred a race, I might even have found the secret of eternal life.”
—William Hurlbut (1883–?)
“There are confessable agonies, sufferings of which one can positively be proud. Of bereavement, of parting, of the sense of sin and the fear of death the poets have eloquently spoken. They command the world’s sympathy. But there are also discreditable anguishes, no less excruciating than the others, but of which the sufferer dare not, cannot speak. The anguish of thwarted desire, for example.”
—Aldous Huxley (1894–1963)