滋 Zī

Zi, Prince of Tong, was first made Prince of Kui in the sixth year of Huichang, enfeoffed at the same time as Yi, Prince of Qing. At first the emperor ordered that the Prince of Yun live in the Sixteen Mansions and the other five princes in the inner court of the Daming Palace, with Zheng Zhang, Grand Master of Remonstrance, and Li Ye, Director of the Bureau of War, as their readers-in-waiting, who came to the Qianfu Gate once every five days to teach the classics to the princes. When the Prince of Yun was enthroned as Yizong, this stopped. Zi's princedom was moved. In the third year of Qianning under Zhaozong he held command of the palace guard armies. At that time Wang Xingyu had been put to death, and Li Maozhen, resentful, came to court with troops; an edict ordered Zi and the other princes to divide among them the command of the Ansheng, Fengchen, Baoning and Anhua armies to guard the capital. When the Son of Heaven was about to go to Taiyuan, Han Jian met him on the road and kept him at Hua Prefecture. Jian feared that the princes had troops, and sent someone with an urgent report of a plot, saying that the princes meant to kill Jian and force the emperor to go to Hezhong. The emperor was alarmed and called Jian to discuss it, but Jian said he was ill and would not come in. The emperor ordered Zi, together with the Princes of Mu, Ji, Shao, Peng, Han, Yi and Chen, to call on Jian and clear themselves. Jian kept them in his camp and memorialised, "The court and the outer officials are separate bodies; I may not meet them privately." He also said, "The Eight Princes of the Jin seized power and in the end ruined the empire. I ask that the princes be sent back to the Sixteen Mansions and that all the troops under their command be disbanded." The emperor refused. Jian surrounded the emperor's lodging with troops and asked that the senior general Li Yun be put to death. The emperor was afraid and beheaded Yun to appease him. Jian drove out all the guard troops, and from then on the Son of Heaven was isolated and weak. Edit

Earlier, the emperor had sent Jiepi, Prince of Yan by Succession, and Yun, Prince of Dan by Succession, to see Li Keyong, and when the two princes came back Jian hated them. Also, the Prince of Tan by Succession had once commanded an army against Maozhen. So Jian submitted an impeachment: "In recent years war has wrapped the lands about the capital, and the princes were the steps by which that disaster came, so that Your Majesty's carriage has had to stray to a lowly frontier post and can find no peace. I have already asked that their troops be taken from them. Now the three Princes of Yan, Tan and Dan are still plotting in secret to endanger the state; I ask that they be put to death." The emperor said, "Would they go so far?" Three days later Jian and Liu Jishu, with a forged edict, attacked the Sixteen Mansions with troops. The princes fled with their hair loose over the walls, and some climbed onto the ridge of the roof and cried out, "Emperor, save us!" Jian then took eleven princes and their households to Shidi Valley and killed them, and only afterwards reported that they had plotted rebellion. The whole empire thought them wronged. Of the nine Princes of Ji, Shao, Peng, Han, Yi, Chen, Yan, Tan and Dan, it is said, the histories have lost the lines of descent. Edit