How did historians record the history of emperors? Should they also record disgraceful things truthfully?

A "Twenty-four History" can make people have a general understanding of ancient China, and it is an introductory book to understand history. Of these twenty-four great history books, four were written privately and the other twenty were officially revised. In ancient times, all officials were easy to do, but historians were hard to do. For those disgraceful things of the emperor, do you choose to seek truth from facts or bow to imperial power and tamper with history? ! !

During the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period, the historian Ho Choi was ordered to compile the Letters of the Northern Wei Dynasty. After ten years of data collection, Ho Choi described the early history of Tuoba Department in detail, but it recorded many disgraceful early history of Tuoba Xianbei, which caused many ministers' dissatisfaction.

Ho Choi's "credentials" were strongly opposed by Xianbei nobles, who thought it was a blatant provocation of the Han people to Xianbei people. Even an insult to this minority regime. As a result, Ho Choi and his henchmen became the spokesmen of many Xianbei nobles.

One day in July 450 AD, Ho Choi, an elder of the Three Dynasties, and his family, as well as other northern aristocratic families who married Ho Choi, were beheaded because their credentials exposed the ugliness of the Tuoba tribal country in the Northern Wei Dynasty. Involving more than 300 people. This is the "national history" that once shook all directions during the Northern Wei Dynasty.

Before the Tang Dynasty, historians recorded important events with their own eyes and put them in ancestral halls. If the dynasty is shattered, the next dynasty will take out records and start compiling the history of the previous dynasty. This is really the great wisdom of the ancient people in China. Historians' records can be free from the control of those in power, which is theoretically invisible. Those in power may never know what historians have recorded themselves. Therefore, for the sake of their good reputation, those in power should try their best to do bad things. Such as: Zhao Dun of the State of Jin, in order to avoid the stigma of killing the king. On the eve of regicide, he left a foreign country and let his men kill people. But before he went abroad, his men were eager to kill the monarch. Historians did not hesitate to record that Zhao Dun killed the monarch. Zhao Dun went to the historian and said he didn't kill him. Historians told him that the people are your subordinates, the national leader is you, and the responsibility for the death of the monarch lies with you. Crying, Zhao Jiachi will die early. If Zhao is later destroyed, There are also many wonderful stories about historians of the Spring and Autumn Period. For example, in three generations, in order to record the minister regicide, he was killed for two generations, and the last child of several years old recorded the story of the minister regicide.

But the greatness of historians was obliterated by a Tang emperor. Ironically, this monarch is still very positive in the current TV series. This is Li Shimin. Li Shimin killed his brother, forced the emperor to abdicate, and took his brothers and sisters. He was afraid that historians would write these scandals about him, and forced them to open the ancestral hall, check the records, kill the upright historians, rewrite the history with the sycophants and put it in the ancestral hall. Since then, historians have lost their character and history books have been tampered with by those in power.

At this point, Li Shimin is an eternal sinner.