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:
“Night is a dead monotonous period under a roof; but in the open world it passes lightly, with its stars and dews and perfumes, and the hours are marked by changes in the face of Nature. What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps afield.”
—Robert Louis Stevenson (1850–1894)
“Beauty is a precious trace that eternity causes to appear to us and that it takes away from us. A manifestation of eternity, and a sign of death as well.”
—Eugène Ionesco (b. 1912)
“O mortal folk, you may behold and see
How I lie here, sometime a mighty knight;
The end of joy and all prosperity
Is death at last, thorough his course and might;”
—Stephen Hawes (1474–1528)