Chapter 8 The crisis of the Han Dynasty

Compared with hidden dangers such as the kingdom issue, the threat of the Huns, which needs to be dealt with urgently, caused Liu Heng more headaches.Dai State was originally close to the Han-Hungarian border, and the Huns often haunted Yanmen County, which is adjacent to Dai County.In the days of Dai Guo, he often heard people talking about how the cavalry of the Huns were showing off their power on the border, and how terrifying the corpses of the soldiers of the Han Dynasty fell in a pool of blood. Compared with this, the kingdom problem is much more relaxed.Liehou and princes and kings are either heroes and veterans who have shared joys and sorrows with Liu Bang, or are relatives of the old Liu family.

Looking back at the history of Han-Hungarian relations during the period of Liu Bang and Huilu, the Han Empire had almost no dignity in front of the Hun cavalry, let alone the strength of a full-scale counterattack. This had to make the new emperor Liu Heng faintly worried.The reason why the Han Empire has not ignited beacons everywhere is due to the vast territory of the empire. After all, the Huns cannot become fat with one bite.But the Han Empire has already become an object that the Xiongnu Shanyu can ravage at will, there is no doubt about this. Fear and fear flooded Liu Heng's mind together. For more than 20 years, the picture scroll of the Han and Hungarian conquests was in front of him.

After Liu Bang established the Han Dynasty, Han Xin, a Korean aristocrat who made great contributions in the Pingchu War, was granted the title of King of Han, and he was asked to stick to the old land and set his capital at Yangdi (now Yuzhou, Henan).Later, Han Wangxin himself asked to move the capital to the north, and finally established the capital in Mayi (now Shuozhou, Shanxi).Han Wangxin made it clear that he wanted to show his loyalty to Liu Bang and express his desire to defend the border on behalf of the emperor. However, this guy really overestimated his own strength and Liu Bang's trust in him.

At this time, the Xiongnu was in a period of rising national power, and their strength was strong. They saw that the new Han Empire had just been established, and thought that the Qin Empire that had beaten them to flee in the past no longer existed, so they sent troops to inquire about the reality of the Han army. The army directly surrounded Mayi, and Han Wangxin stood firm in the city.However, at this critical moment, Liu Bang repeatedly sent envoys to supervise Han Wangxin.Liu Bang was suspicious by nature and lacked enough self-confidence, so he was particularly worried that Han Wangxin would surrender to the Huns, which made Han Wangxin panic.Liu Bang's approach backfired, and Han Wangxin, who had a nervous breakdown, finally surrendered to the Huns.Looking at Han Wangxin's back, I don't know if Liu Bang shed tears of regret in the end.

Afterwards, under the leadership of Maodun Shanyu, the Xiongnu army drove straight in, crossed Juzhu Mountain (now Yanmen Mountain), and fought all the way to Jinyang (now southwest of Taiyuan, Shanxi), the seat of Taiyuan County, and surrounded Jinyang. In order to alleviate the crisis, Liu Bang personally led an army of 320,000 to the expedition, but encountered a blizzard on the road. Many soldiers froze and broke their fingers in the ice and snow, resulting in low morale.Because Liu Bang failed to heed the advice of his minister Lou Jing and underestimated the enemy too much, he was surrounded by 400,000 elite soldiers of the Xiongnu in Pingcheng (now Datong, Shanxi).Liu Bang, who was in a dangerous situation and was trapped for seven days, finally followed the advice of Chen Ping, the lieutenant of the guard army, and persuaded Maodun Shanyu through Shanyu's Yan family, thus getting out of trouble.

What suggestion Chen Ping made to Liu Bang has become an eternal mystery.The only thing that is clear is that Liu Bang bribed the Yan family with a lot of money to build a bridge of communication with Maodun Shanyu, and in the negotiations, he promised a series of weak policies in exchange for compromises from the Huns.What the specific policies are, but it is not known.However, judging from the main means of maintaining the peaceful development of Han-Hungarian relations during the Liu Bang and Huilu periods, the peace treaty must include three points: First, the Han Dynasty wanted to marry the princess to Shan Yu as his wife;

Second, the Han Dynasty paid tribute to the Xiongnu on time every year, such as silk, rice, wine, and rice; Third, the emperor of the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu Shan Yumeng were Kundi. In fact, Liu Bang's escape was entirely a fluke: on the one hand, it was because Shanyu's Yan family gave Maodun a pillow breeze; on the other hand, the reinforcements from Han Wangxin contacted by Maodun did not arrive in time.It wasn't that Mao Dun didn't have enough troops, but because he was afraid that Liu Bang and Han Wangxin had other plots, so he finally withdrew his troops reluctantly.

After this battle, the nascent Han Empire began a period when it lived with its tail between its legs and head bowed under the powerful influence of the Huns.The Siege of Baideng established the situation in the early Western Han Dynasty when the relationship between the Han and the Huns was dominated by the Xiongnu. As long as the Han Dynasty talked about the strategic control of the Xiongnu, they were always timid, and everyone in the court would turn pale when they talked about the Xiongnu. After Liu Bang fled back to Chang'an in a hurry, he asked Lou Jing, who advocated peace, to go to the Xiongnu and bring the princess of the Han Dynasty to make peace.According to Lou Jing's idea, he hoped that the son born to the princess of the Han family who was married to him would inherit the position of Shan Yu.He said to Liu Bang: "If your Majesty can marry his eldest daughter, Princess Lu Yuan, to Modun Shanyu, and give the Huns some more property, they will definitely give you money when they see that you are so generous, marrying your daughter and giving you a dowry." Now that the princess has established the Yan family, the son born to the princess and Shan Yu will definitely be the new Shan Yu. Why? Because the Huns are greedy for the money of the Han Dynasty.

"At that time, you will first follow their wishes and give them some things that we can't use but they like. First, coax them and let them pick up our rags, and then you send lobbyists to reason with them. Morton lives You were Shan Yu’s old father-in-law when the princess came to the throne with Shan Yu’s son, and you became Shan Yu’s grandfather after the princess came to the throne with Shan Yu’s son. How can there be any reason in this world for a little grandson to challenge his grandfather? In this way, we will be able to see each other without a drop of blood Let the Huns obediently submit to my big man!

"But Your Majesty, let me remind you, don't play tricks and find a daughter of the clan to pretend to be a princess to fool Shan Yu. This is the first time we have married with someone, and they must have done an investigation. If Shan Yu knows about the princess It is false, so if you send troops to attack us, then we will lose a lot." In the end, Liu Bang only partially obeyed Lou Jing's opinion. Although Liu Bang was willing to make peace with the Huns, because of the obstruction of Queen Lu, he did not send Princess Lu Yuan in the end, but chose someone else to replace her.

Thinking about it carefully, Lou Jing's move was very wicked. He not only used a woman's reproductive function as a political bet, but also urged Liu Bang to throw waste products that were not used by the Han Dynasty to the Huns.As soon as Lou Jing's plan was put forward, some people clearly opposed it.Minister Shu Sunsheng believed that the Xiongnu would not easily let the Han Dynasty take advantage of it.If you are a Hun, you are stupid. Otherwise, people will ask for the land of the Han Dynasty under the pretext of getting married. In fact, this is indeed the case. The so-called idea of ​​letting the heirs of the Han family inherit the Shan Yu's position is just Lou Jing's personal wishful thinking.Therefore, despite the implementation of Lou Jing's peace policy, supplemented by the strategy of relocating people to the border, the weak position of the Western Han Dynasty has not changed in the slightest, and it has always been led by the nose by the Huns. He hurriedly responded to this side. The successive rebellions of Chen Xi and Yan Wang Lu Wan once caused tension between the Han and Hungarians.Although Liu Bang sent Fan Kuai to recover Dai County, Yanmen County, and Yunzhong County occupied by the Huns, the Han army never dared to cross the border to pursue them.Why, isn't it because the Han Dynasty has never had any confidence in front of the Huns? After Liu Bang's death, Empress Lu claimed control, and Mao Dun Shanyu wrote letters to harass Empress Lu with frivolous words. However, Fan Kuai's big words were refuted by Ji Bu for two reasons. One is the lesson of blood and tears in the siege of Baideng Mountain.Liu Bang brought 320,000 people into battle with the Xiongnu and was almost taken down by others. Fan Kuai was a butcher, and he fought with the courage of a man. What's more, the Huns Maodun Chanyu was also a generation of heroes. He wanted to rely on 100,000 soldiers to wipe out the Huns , which was completely a fantasy for the Han army at that time. The second is that the Qin Dynasty invested a lot of manpower and material resources for a long time to rectify the tranquility of the frontier fortresses, ignoring the governance of the interior, which eventually led to peasant uprisings and the collapse of the country.People in the early Han Dynasty especially liked to use the Qin Dynasty as an example. People in the Han Dynasty were determined not to do anything that the Qin Dynasty did badly. Empress Lv finally swallowed her anger and declined Maodun Shanyu's invitation on the grounds that she was old and decrepit. She also gave Maodun Shanyu two luxury cars and eight horses. Make peace with the Huns again.Since then, until Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty sent Wei Qing and Huo Qubing to conquer the Xiongnu and sealed the wolf as a Xu, the Han Empire never raised its head in front of the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu was an enemy who never slept soundly on the side of the couch of the Han Empire. In fact, the crisis of the empire does not only come from the outside, the exhaustion of internal affairs is like a huge tumor, which may kill the empire at any time. Liu Heng looked gravely at the crowds coming and going in the market in the distance. The entire glitzy society of the early Han Dynasty concealed social and economic depression, and various drawbacks within the system... The empire seemed to be entrenched, and the mistakes made were hard to recover.At the age of twenty-three, he seemed too fragile in the face of such a huge burden. He felt powerless, and it was too difficult to change the declining situation of the Han Dynasty. "Historical Records Ping Zhun Shu" said that "the rise of the Han Dynasty followed the disadvantages of the Qin Dynasty".The early years of the Han Dynasty have always inherited the withered political situation of the Qin Dynasty, which is mainly reflected in the two aspects of the country's economic depression and imperfect system construction. After Qin Shihuang unified the world, he implemented a series of economic reforms such as a unified currency. At the same time, by gathering and looting the wealth of the courts of the six countries, the wealth of the entire central government increased rapidly, and the private economy also developed.However, after the peasant uprising at the end of the Qin Dynasty and Xiang Yu's hegemony, a large amount of wealth was wasted in wars and regime changes, private production was forced to stop, and rice prices soared. Want thousands of dollars. At the beginning of the establishment of the Han Empire, the country's resources were scarce.The emperor's car couldn't even make up four horses of the same color, and the prime minister traveled in an ox cart.The people have nothing, and they struggle against famine every day. "There is a great hunger in Guanzhong, and the rice is worth tens of thousands of dollars." ("Historical Records · Huozhi Biography") Some traders took the opportunity to hoard supplies, causing prices to soar. A horse cost a hundred gold, and the whole society experienced an unprecedented economic crisis. The crisis itself is not terrible, but if the ruler cannot handle the crisis properly, the crisis may curb the long-term development of the empire. Liu Bang was born in the grassroots, and he didn't understand economics. He used the method of dealing with soldiers and politicians to deal with businessmen. High pressure and violence are the most commonly used and simplest solutions for autocratic rulers.Liu Bang forbade merchants to wear silk clothes, prevented them from serving as officials, and imposed extremely high taxes. All these measures intensified the economic contradictions in the early Han society, and the people's lives became more and more impoverished and the production pressure was huge. The exhaustion of the imperial political situation is not only reflected in the economic development, but also in the construction of the political system. When Liu Bang raised his army back then, he fought under the banner of "Fighting Innocents and Punishing Qin Tyranny", but he would eventually inherit the destiny of the Qin Dynasty.During Liu Bang's reign, the chaos of the entire country and all social classes far exceeded that of the early Qin Dynasty, so "Han inheriting the Qin system" was a historical necessity from the very beginning. In fact, starting from Liu Bang's "Three Chapters of Law" in Guanzhong after the destruction of Qin Dynasty, the succession of the Qin Dynasty system in the early Han Dynasty was basically a foregone conclusion. The content of the "Three Chapters of the Covenant" is "A contract with the elders, three chapters of the law; the murderer dies, and the wounder and the thief are punished" ("Historical Records · Gaozu Benji").This order does sound like an abandonment of the harsh laws of the Qin Dynasty, but in fact various crimes are very complicated, and it is impossible for these three rough decrees to solve all problems.Whoever kills a person is sentenced to death, so what if someone just defended too much?This "one size fits all" will inevitably cause some right and wrong. On the one hand, Liu Bang's "Three Chapters of the Agreement" is to stabilize the people's hearts and establish prestige; on the other hand, it actually acquiesces in Guanzhong to continue to implement the laws of the Qin Dynasty.Because the government needs decrees to judge cases after all, since there is no new decree, it can only follow the Qin Dynasty's method, and the case must not be heard. However, the high-pressure policy and strict laws not only failed to make the common people obey, but aroused the common people's resistance.In the early Han Dynasty, there were many lawless people and few law-abiding people, and the whole society was in chaos. Liu Bang not only inherited the legal system of the Qin Dynasty, but also engaged in autocratic centralization, thinking of ways to squeeze the common people, which increased the burden on the common people, and also made the government's own demand for interests greater. This "Han inherited the Qin system" The situation greatly exacerbated the contradiction between the common people and the central government, and the centralization of power led to the strengthening of authoritarianism. The empire under Liu Bang was in chaos, and the Han Dynasty was in crisis.Facts have proved that cruelty at the top and violence at the bottom are destined to cause the sorrow of an era.With a long sigh, Emperor Gaozu of the Han Dynasty passed away in Chang'an Changle Palace on the 25th day of the fourth lunar month in 195 BC, at the age of 61, accompanied by the physical pain caused by war injuries. Not long ago, Liu Bang returned to his hometown of Pei County after leading the army to quell the Yingbu rebellion, and sang a song "Great Wind Song": "The wind rises and the clouds fly, Vega and the sea return to their hometown, and the warriors Come guard the four directions!" The lofty ambitions of a generation of emperors turned into dust after his death. Liu Bang was buried in the Changling Underground Palace 22 days after his death. Like the vigor of the early Han regime to calm the world, he was gone forever.