Li Heng

Also known as Tang Muzong · Li You

Li Heng, first named Li You, was the third son of Emperor Xianzong, born in 795 and made crown prince in 812. When Xianzong died suddenly in 820, the eunuchs Liang Shoujian and Wang Shoucheng put him on the throne, and the next year he proclaimed the Changqing era. In 821 Zhu Kerong at Youzhou and Wang Tingcou at Chengde rebelled one after another, and the three Hebei provinces that had submitted under his father slipped back into independence; a troop-reduction policy pressed by the chief minister Xiao Mian sent many discharged soldiers to the rebels. That same year Tang and Tibet swore a treaty at Chang'an, confirmed at Lhasa in 822, and the bilingual stele recording it still stands before the Jokhang temple. Late in 822 a fright during a polo match with palace eunuchs left him partly paralysed; he turned to elixirs and died in February 824 at thirty by Chinese reckoning, receiving the temple name Muzong.