Pei Du

Also known as Zi Zhongli · Hedong Xiannan · Jinguo Gong · Shi Wenzhong

Pei Du, courtesy name Zhongli, came from Wenxi in Hedong and passed the metropolitan examination in 789. In 815, on the morning that assassins killed Wu Yuanheng, the chief minister who had pressed for war on the rebel governors, Pei was cut about the head in the Tonghua ward and barely escaped. Emperor Xianzong made him a chief minister at once, and he held to the campaign against Huaixi. In 817 he went to the front as pacification commissioner, and that winter Li Su took Caizhou in a night march through snow and captured Wu Yuanji; Pei was made Duke of Jin. He served three more emperors, moving in and out of the chief ministry, and in old age built the Luye Hall near Luoyang, where he drank and exchanged poems with Bai Juyi and Liu Yuxi. He died in 839, was named Grand Tutor with the posthumous name Wenzhong, and early in the Dazhong era Emperor Xuanzong placed his tablet in Xianzong's temple.