Why did Zhao Guangyi dare to kill his eldest brother Zhao Kuangyin?

Because Zhao Guangyi was ambitious, controlled the government and government, and had the intention of replacing him, and Zhao Kuangyin was defenseless, he dared to kill his eldest brother Zhao Kuangyin.

Because Zhao Guangyi is a pretentious person, he thinks that he should make a difference, and his eldest brother Zhao Kuangyin is not suitable to be an emperor, so this is the case.

One of the reasons is that they can't all be killed because they are all descendants of the Zhao family, and the second is that Zhao Kuangyin's two most competitive sons died young, and it is also rumored that these two sons were killed by Zhao Guangyi.

In 976 AD, in October of the ninth year of Kaibao in the Northern Song Dynasty, Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, died suddenly, and Zhao Kuangyin's eldest son Zhao Dezhao was 25 years old, and the second son Zhao Defang was 17 years old.

Obviously, this may not be a normal transfer of the throne, although later Song Taizong Zhao Guangyi and Zhao Pu conspired to jointly construct the "Golden Plaque Alliance", but it has never been able to put an end to the people's sympathy for Song Taizu's lineage, and even the scholars and doctors of the Song Dynasty recorded this suspicion in their own writings, so that it can be passed on to future generations.

In fact, whether it is the "Golden Plaque Alliance" or the "Candle Shadow Axe", at the moment when Zhao Guangyi sat on the throne, it was no longer important, and it was to cover up, but it was not absolutely necessary. Li Shimin launched a coup d'état so boldly to seize the throne, and later generations still say that he is a Ming monarch, so for Zhao Guangyi, the important thing is the future.

Profile: Zhao Kuangyin (March 21, 927 - November 14, 976), the name Yuen Long, was born in Luoyang Jiamaying. From the fifth dynasty to the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, he was a military strategist and politician, and the founding emperor of the Northern Song Dynasty. There is a poem "Song of the First Day" handed down.

Zhao Kuangyin took advantage of the young age of Emperor Zhou Gong's accession to the throne, and his foundation was still unstable, and he was proclaimed emperor in the "Chenqiao Mutiny", established the Song Dynasty, known as the "Northern Song Dynasty" in history, and completed the unification of most of the country. Set up a "sealed pile warehouse" to store money, silk, and cloth, in order to redeem the sixteen states of Yanyun occupied by the Khitan. In 976, Zhao Kuangyin died, nicknamed Emperor Yingwu Shengwen Shende, temple name Taizu, and was buried in Yongchang Mausoleum.

In 1008, he set up the extremely heroic and martial arts and the gods and virtues of the Holy Virtue to the Ming Emperor Daxiao.

The reason why Zhao Guangyi killed Zhao Kuangyin was to usurp the throne, because if Zhao Kuangyin died, his three sons would still be very young, and Zhao Kuangyin's younger brother Zhao Guangyi could only inherit the throne. Therefore, in order to achieve his own goals, and according to relevant historical records, the possibility of Zhao Guangyi's righteous destruction of his relatives is not ruled out.

After Zhao Kuangyin's death, his three sons died unnaturally one after another, which also confirmed people's speculation about this phenomenon, and there are also many doubts in it, such as how Zhao Kuangyin died violently, and what method Zhao Guangyi used to kill Zhao Kuangyin, these are just some speculations, and the specific mystery has not yet been known.

After Zhao Guangyi ascended the throne, he continued to carry out the cause of unification, encouraged the reclamation of famine, developed agricultural production, expanded the scale of the imperial examination, compiled large-scale books, set up examination institutes and judges' courts, strengthened the inspection and selection of the first-class people, further limited the power of the temperance, and tried to change the situation in which the military was in power and establish civil politics. These measures followed the trend of history and made an important contribution to the stability of the Song Dynasty.

Wars frequently broke out between the Song Taizong Dynasty and the Khitan regime of the Liao State in the north and the Dangxiang regime in the northwest Xia Prefecture. In order to better control and control the generals who went out, Song Taizong began to implement the policy of "generals from the middle", granting the generals to deal with strategies, offensive and defensive plans, or giving formation maps to command the front-line generals to fight. However, due to the restrictions of various subjective and objective reasons, the implementation of the policy of "general emperor" in the Song Taizong Dynasty was not satisfactory.

Zhao Guangyi's battle against the Liao Gaoliang River and the Yongxi Northern Expedition ended in failure. During the two Northern Expeditions, the demand for military food was large and the people were overwhelmed; Youzhou and its surroundings were hit by soldiers, and the supply of military rations was limited; The area for military grain requisition and transfer is relatively wide, and it is difficult to transfer it. The dilemma of military rations limited the military operations of the Song army, and to a considerable extent determined the failure of Zhao Guangyi's two Northern Expeditions.

The failure of several border defense lines and the outbreak of uprisings in the rear prevented the Northern Song Dynasty from further opening up its territory, and Taizong's administration had to turn to focus on internal and external affairs.

Zhao Kuangyin was not killed by Zhao Guangyi. Sima Guang, a few people in the Song Dynasty, recorded that when Zhao Kuangyin died, it was the Empress of Song who sent the eunuch Wang Jien to summon Zhao Defang, the king of Qin, into the palace, but Wang Jien summoned Zhao Guangyi to the yamen of Kaifeng Mansion to seize the throne. According to this, when Zhao Kuangyin died, Zhao Guangyi was not in the dormitory, and it was impossible to "kill his brother".

In the future, this theory was also adopted by Li Tao, a scholar of the Southern Song Dynasty, and compiled into the "Continuation of Capital and Governance Tongjian Long Edition".

Zhao Kuangyin's cause of death:It is said that on the night of October 19, the ninth year of Kaibao, "the haze was everywhere, the weather changed sharply, and the snow and hail fell suddenly", Zhao Kuangyin, who was already ill at the time, ordered Zhao Guangyi, the king of Jin, to enter the palace to drink and discuss, and he could not hear it.

During the banquet, some people could see Zhao Guangyi leaving the table from time to time under the candlelight, and he was avoidant. When drinking, about the next day's three watches, the heavy snow outside the hall piled up several inches high, only to hear Zhao Kuangyin lead the pillar axe to poke the ground, and said loudly to Zhao Guangyi: "Good for it", and then undressed and went to bed, snoring like thunder.

At the fourth watch, Zhao Kuangyin was found dead in the Long Live Palace, and then Zhao Guangyi succeeded to the throne.