bestfiction Chapter 217: Western Han Dynasty
Chapter 217: Western Han Dynasty
[Understand the history of the Western Han Dynasty in one go]
He was the most powerful dynasty in Chinese history. Any foreign invaders would be punished no matter how far away they were. He was also the first golden age in Chinese history.
From 202 BC when Liu Bang proclaimed himself emperor to 8 AD when Wang Mang accepted the abdication of Emperor Ru Ziying and established the Xin Dynasty, the Western Han Dynasty lasted for 210 years and had 15 emperors. So how did such a powerful dynasty fall?
In this video, let us watch the Western Han Dynasty in one go.
In 207 BC, Liu Bang, who was already over 5 years old, finally completed his transformation from the head of Sishui Pavilion to the King of Hanzhong. At this time, he was still five years away from establishing the Western Han Dynasty.
At that time, Liu Bang probably did not have the idea of unifying the world, because the opponent standing in front of him was too powerful - Xiang Yu, the Overlord of Western Chu. When Liu Bang thought of this name, he felt a chill down his spine.
This man was strong enough to lift a tripod and fight against a hundred people. But before entering the pass, it was agreed that whoever entered Xianyang first would be the King of Hanzhong. But after destroying Qin, Xiang Yu actually assigned Liu Bang to the barren land of Shu.
Liu Bang had no choice but to listen to Zhang Liang's advice. He first burned all the plank roads leading to Guanzhong, and then wait for an opportunity to act.
The King of Chu had just returned home in glory when various princes who were dissatisfied with the results of the enfeoffment started to make trouble. Xiang Yu immediately began to put out the troubles everywhere.
As soon as Liu Bang saw the opportunity, he quickly joined forces with his friends to seize the opportunity to take down Pengcheng, Xiang Yu's lair. Following the principle of waiting for the end of the war to enjoy, Liu Bang and his friends began to celebrate their victory, completely forgetting that their opponent was the overlord who dared to burn his boats and cut off his retreat.
Sure enough, Xiang Yu led 3 cavalrymen and defeated Liu Bang's 56 troops in just one day. Liu Bang returned to the situation before liberation overnight and retreated to Xingyang and refused to come out.
Xiang Yu had no choice but to surround Xingyang and launch a fierce attack, but he forgot that Liu Bang was not alone, and he had Xiao He, Zhang Liang, Chen Ping and Han Xin behind him.
When Xiang Yu was unable to capture Xingyang, Han Xin was outflanking from the north, and went around behind him to cut off Xiang Yu's food supply. In the end, Xiang Yu was surrounded by Han Xin at Gaixia, and his 10-man army was annihilated. The King of Western Chu committed suicide at Wujiang River, and the four-year Chu-Han contention came to an end.
In 202 BC, Liu Bang ascended the throne and established his capital in Chang'an, marking the beginning of the Western Han Dynasty. It was not easy to be the founding emperor, and the same was true for Liu Bang.
The first thing he faced was to depose one by one the kings of different surnames who were enfeoffed when he conquered the world, starting with Han Wangxin, then Huainan Wang Yingbu, Liang Wang Pengyue, and then the founding hero Han Xin, Marquis of Huaiyin, and finally even Lu Wan, with whom he grew up naked.
In order to protect the kingdom he had worked so hard to build, Liu Bang made the White Horse Pact with his generals before his death: "If anyone other than a member of the Liu family becomes king, the whole world will attack him together."
But no one could have imagined that after his death, the Liu family would lose power in another way. Liu Bang's wife, Lü Zhi, was a master of palace fighting when Liu Bang was in power.
After Liu Bang's death, she immediately carried out a thorough cleansing of the previous emperor's harem, with a cruelty unprecedented in history and unparalleled in history. Not only did she turn Liu Bang's favorite concubine into a human pig, she also asked her son, Emperor Hui of Han, to admire her together.
Unexpectedly, the Empress Dowager of Emperor Hui of Han became depressed at the time, saying that this was not something a human could do. From now on, you can do whatever you want, I can't be the emperor anymore. She died of depression a few years later.
After that, Lu Zhi established two little emperors as puppets, conferred titles on many kings with the surname Lu, and squeezed the Liu clan out of the center of power, thus setting a precedent for the monopoly of power by foreign relatives in China.
In 180 BC, Empress Lü died. Prime Minister Chen Ping, Grand Commandant Zhou Bo and other old ministers of the previous dynasty followed Liu Bang's White Horse Alliance and exterminated all members of the Lü clan. Emperor Wen of Han, the most powerful fortune-teller of the Western Han Dynasty, ascended the throne.
Emperor Wen of Han was able to ascend to the throne entirely due to the fact that his mother was not favored, which is why he survived the purge launched by Empress Lü. It can be said that he was the emperor with the weakest influence from his foreign relatives.
After he took the throne, he continued to follow the Huang-Lao philosophy of his ancestors, reducing taxes and levies, and resting the people. He exempted the country from taxes for 13 years, greatly enriching the people's money and rice bags.
The same was true of Emperor Jing of Han who came after Emperor Wen of Han. By the end of Emperor Jing's reign, the country was extremely wealthy, and the money in the treasury kept piling up. Even the ropes used to string the money together had rotted due to years of disuse, and there were too many loose coins to count. This created the first prosperous period since Chinese civilization entered the imperial era - the Reign of Wen and Jing.
Such a prosperous era is naturally inseparable from the two emperors' hard work and dedication, but there is another person who also made an indispensable contribution. This person is the Empress Dowager Dou, the empress of Emperor Wen of Han and the mother of Emperor Jing of Han.
Empress Dowager Dou was originally a maid of Empress Lü. Since she often stayed by her side, she was influenced by her philosophy of governing by doing nothing, so she was a great admirer of Huang-Lao doctrine.
Emperor Jing of Han and other scholars of the Dou family were required to study the Huang-Lao book since childhood. Once, an ignorant Confucian scholar said something slandering Laozi, and was thrown into the pigpen by Empress Dowager Dou to fight with pigs.
Moreover, Emperor Jing of Han was a famous filial son in history. He was the protagonist of the famous 24 filial piety stories about "Tasting Medicine Personally", so he naturally listened to his mother's words.
Because of Empress Dowager Dou, Confucianism and scholars were not reused during the reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing. This situation continued until the early years of Emperor Wu of Han's reign and did not change. It was not until the death of Empress Dowager Dou that Emperor Wu of Han gradually formed the Han system of "Confucianism on the outside and Legalism on the inside, a mixture of hegemony and kingly way".
At the same time, thanks to the wealth accumulated during the reign of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing, the powerful Han army began to conquer and expand the territory during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han. As we all know, the most powerful foreign relatives group in the entire Han Dynasty and even in Chinese history came from this period.
Ever since Emperor Wu of Han brought Wei Zifu, a singer from his sister Princess Pingyang's family, into the palace, the entire Wei family began to prosper.
Without exception, all of Wei Zifu's brothers, sisters, nephews and nieces were promoted. Five people in the family were successively granted the title of marquis. His younger brother Wei Qing even married his former employer, Princess Pingyang.
But as the most powerful family of in-laws, Wei Zifu's relatives never play tricks.
First, his younger brother Wei Qing led the Han army to defeat the Huns for the first time in Longcheng, breaking the myth of the Huns' invincibility. After that, he was unstoppable, won seven battles in a row, successfully recovered the Hetao area, and became the supreme military commander of the Han Dynasty.
His nephew Huo Qubing was even more powerful than his uncle, as if he was born to destroy the Huns. He won the first battle at the age of 17. After that, he not only recovered the Hexi Corridor, but also achieved the unprecedented feat of Fenglangjuxu in the Battle of Mobei, becoming the pinnacle of Chinese military generals.
It is not an exaggeration to say that the abundant military virtue during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han was entirely dependent on the Wei family.
In addition to expanding territory, Emperor Wu of Han also sent Zhang Qian on a diplomatic mission to the Western Regions, opening up connections between the Central Plains and the Western Regions and even the countries of Central Asia, establishing the Silk Road, and drawing the first world map of the Han Dynasty.
During the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, the territory of the Han Dynasty doubled, and China has since become a well-deserved great power in the world.
Before his death, Emperor Wu of Han entrusted his youngest son, Emperor Zhao of Han, to Huo Qubing's younger brother Huo Guang. Under the leadership of this powerful official, who ranked first among the "Eleven Meritorious Officials", the Western Han Dynasty continued to prosper for more than 20 years.
Huo Guang was a minister who was strict with himself and others. He was favored during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han because he never made mistakes. Since Emperor Zhao of Han died at the age of 21 without leaving any offspring, Huo Guang welcomed Emperor Wu of Han's grandson, King Changyi Liu He, to the throne.
But he didn't expect that Liu He was not a decent person at all. On his way from his fiefdom to the capital, he began to rape women and plunder the people.
After entering the capital, Huo Guang became even more licentious and immoral. Huo Guang, who never tolerated any injustice, brought disaster upon himself and brought disaster upon the country and the people. He was so angry that he immediately deposed Liu He, who had just been emperor for 27 days. He listed 1127 crimes against Liu He in one breath, an average of 41 crimes a day.
Huo Guang, as a minister, deposed and enthroned emperors, which made the newly succeeded Emperor Xuan of Han feel uneasy all day long. As a professional manager with integrity, Huo Guang never had the idea of usurping the throne.
He worked diligently to make the people live a good life, foreign nations came to submit to him one after another, and the barbarians submitted to him, ushering in another prosperous era in the Western Han Dynasty - the Emperor Xiaoxuan's Restoration.
But after Huo Guang's death, Emperor Xuan of Han immediately executed the entire Huo family and supported the power of his own foreign relatives, which set a bad precedent for the foreign relatives' monopoly of power in the late Western Han Dynasty.
After Emperor Xuan of Han died, Emperor Yuan of Han succeeded to the throne. After the efforts of several emperors of the previous dynasties, only two of the Xiongnu remained, Huhanye Chanyu of the Southern Xiongnu and Zhizhi Chanyu of the Northern Xiongnu.
In 45 BC, Zhizhi Chanyu broke his promise and killed the envoys sent by the Han Dynasty. Fearing an attack from the Han Dynasty, he fled to Kyrgyzstan to develop his power.
Gan Yanshou, the Protector General of the Western Regions, and his general Chen Tang led their troops on a long journey across the Pamir Plateau and warned foreigners in the capital where they lived:
“Whoever openly offends the mighty Han will be punished, though he is far away.” As for the remaining Southern Xiongnu, Emperor Yuan of Han adopted the approach of marriage and married Wang Zhaojun to Huhanye Chanyu. After that, there was no war between Han and Xiongnu for more than 50 years.
Empress Wang Zhengjun of Emperor Yuan of Han lived a long life, reaching her 80s and reigning for more than 60 years. Under her influence, the power of the imperial relatives in the Western Han Dynasty finally reached its peak. Once the Wang clan members came to power, five of them served as Grand Marshals, and their minions were spread throughout the court.
The most promising one among them was his nephew Wang Mang. Although Wang Mang held a high position, he was never domineering. Instead, he was humble and polite, simple and kind, and often used his salary to help the poor. Therefore, he was praised by both inside and outside the court, and his reputation far exceeded that of Liu's relatives.
After serving under Emperor Ai and Emperor Ping of Han, Liu was finally elected as the Regent Emperor with the support of the people and the court officials. Coupled with the frequent natural disasters in the late Western Han Dynasty, almost everyone believed that the Liu family's reign was doomed.
So in 8 AD, Wang Mang accepted the abdication of the last emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, Ruziying, through peaceful evolution, and changed the country's name to Xin, thus opening the precedent of abdication of the throne in China. The Western Han Dynasty thus perished.
[The decisive battle between the son of time travel and the son of the plane in Chinese history. History of Wang Mang and Liu Xiu. Small knowledge]
There is such a legendary war in Chinese history, in which Emperor Guangwu of Han, Liu Xiu, defeated Wang Mang's army of one million with only 2 troops. Due to the huge disparity in strength between the two sides, later generations gave this battle more mythical colors.
Some people say that Liu Xiu used magic to summon meteorites to kill Wang Mang's army. Some even say that Liu Xiu was also a time traveler, and what he summoned was not a meteorite, but a cruise missile.
In this video, let us watch the battle for the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty in one go - the ultimate showdown between the Son of the Plane and the Son of the Time Traveler.
In 8 AD, Wang Mang, a relative of the Western Han Dynasty, replaced the Han Dynasty and established the Xin Dynasty, ending the 210-year rule of the Western Han Dynasty. At the same time, the Han Dynasty was divided in two, and the legend of Emperor Gaozu beheading a snake and returning his life was born among the people.
The reform policies that Wang Mang implemented after he ascended the throne were so advanced in concept that they seem familiar to people today.
A remark by modern writer Hu Shi, "Wang Mang was the first socialist in China," has caused many people to doubt Wang Mang's identity. Many people even believe that Wang Mang was a post-21s generation who traveled back from the 80st century.
To understand Wang Mang's true identity, we must first look at what he did. First, Wang Mang announced that all land would be nationalized and free trading would not be allowed.
Secondly, he believed that human beings are the most precious in the nature of heaven and earth, and all people in the world should be free. Therefore, he banned the slave trade in order to gradually abolish slavery.
Although Wang Mang's reform slogan was to restore the old system, the well-field system he promoted at that time remained in the written stage until Wang Mang officially implemented it, and no one had ever actually implemented it.
In addition, Wang Mang was also very keen on inventing and creating. He not only created the most exquisite bronze currency to date, but also conducted crazy flight tests and personally designed a Chinese Valentine's Day miniskirt for the queen.
The bronze vernier caliper he created made people wonder whether he was a time traveler.
However, what happened next would make another time traveler surface. During the reign of Wang Mang, a book called Chifu appeared, which actually contained the prophecy that "Liu Xiu should be the emperor."
When the imperial teacher Liu Xin heard about this, he immediately changed his name to Liu Xiu and conspired with his son to rebel. As a result, they were discovered by Wang Mang and executed.
Before leaving, Liu Xin said with regret that he failed because his name was changed later, and only the original name Liu Xiu could be the true emperor. So Wang Mang began to hunt for people named Liu Xiu across the country, and arrested more than 20 Liu Xius in one go.
At the same time, a cowherd in Nanyang County also heard the prophecy. He jokingly said to the people around him: "How do you know that this person is not me?"
This cowherd boy was none other than Liu Xiu, a member of the royal family of the Han Dynasty. Liu Xiu's ancestor was Liu Fa, the Prince of Changsha, the son of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty.
Later, due to the Enfeoffment Order implemented during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, his father's generation could only be a small county magistrate. Unfortunately, Liu Xiu's father died early, so Liu Xiu had no choice but to go to live with his brothers and sisters under his uncle's tutelage in Nanyang, and from then on became a standard farmer.
Liu Xiu was honest and simple since childhood, and he especially loved to do farm work, so he was often teased by his brother Liu Yan. Liu Yan's personality was exactly the opposite of Liu Xiu. Like Liu Bang, the first emperor of the Han Dynasty, Liu Yan didn't like to work, but was very righteous and liked to make friends with all kinds of people.