Death
By early 705, Wu Zetian was seriously ill, and the chancellor Zhang Jianzhi, believing that the Zhangs' power threatened Li Xian's succession, entered into a coup plot with the other officials Cui Xuanwei, Jing Hui, Huan Yanfan, and Yuan Shuji. They rose on February 20 and went to see Li Xian and, after receiving his assent, took their forces into the palace and killed Zhang Yizhi and Zhang Changzong at Yingxian Courtyard (迎仙院); their brothers Zhang Changqi, Zhang Tongxiu, and Zhang Changyi were also killed, and the five men's heads were hung at Tianjin Bridge (天津橋), one of the entries to Luoyang. The officials then forced Wu Zetian to yield the throne to Li Xian (as Emperor Zhongzong), ending Zhou Dynasty and restoring Tang Dynasty.
In 750, during the reign of Wu Zetian's grandson Emperor Xuanzong, Zhang Changqi's daughter submitted a petition defending her father and uncles. With assistance by the chancellor Yang Guozhong, her petition was accepted by Emperor Xuanzong, and he posthumously restored the Zhang brothers' titles.
Read more about this topic: Zhang Changzong
Famous quotes containing the word death:
“If I had my life over again I should form the habit of nightly composing myself to thoughts of death. I would practise, as it were, the remembrance of death. There is no other practice which so intensifies life. Death, when it approaches, ought not to take one by surprise. It should be part of the full expectancy of life. Without an ever- present sense of death life is insipid. You might as well live on the whites of eggs.”
—Muriel Spark (b. 1918)
“All societies on the verge of death are masculine. A society can survive with only one man; no society will survive a shortage of women.”
—Germaine Greer (b. 1939)
“You stars that reigned at my nativity,
Whose influence hath allotted death and hell.”
—Christopher Marlowe (1564–1593)