Death
On December 12, Emperor Xianzong ascended the palace gate to receive Wu Yuanji as a captive. He had Wu delivered to the imperial ancestral temples, as if to be offered as a sacrifice, and then had him beheaded under a lone willow.
During Wu's campaign against the imperial government, Li Shidao had sent his officer Liu Yanping (劉晏平) to Zhangyi as a messenger to observe Wu's status. After Liu returned to Pinglu, he gave this report to Li Shidao as far as his observation of Wu was concerned:
Wu Yuanji tossed several tens of thousands of soldiers to the wilderness. He is under great danger, yet he daily gamble and game with his concubines and servants within his large mansion. He was comfortable and did not worry at all. Based on my observations, he will be destroyed, and such destruction will not be long from now.Read more about this topic: Wu Yuanji
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“I would not that death should take me asleep. I would not have him meerly seise me, and onely declare me to be dead, but win me, and overcome me. When I must shipwrack, I would do it in a sea, where mine impotencie might have some excuse; not in a sullen weedy lake, where I could not have so much as exercise for my swimming.”
—John Donne (c. 1572–1631)
“And so, standing before the aforesaid officiator, the two swore that at every other time of their lives till death took them, they would assuredly believe, feel, and desire precisely as they had believed, felt, and desired during the few preceding weeks. What was as remarkable as the undertaking itself was the fact that nobody seemed at all surprised at what they swore.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)
“In the attempt to defeat death man has been inevitably obliged to defeat life, for the two are inextricably related. Life moves on to death, and to deny one is to deny the other.”
—Henry Miller (1891–1980)