Emperor Liu Yi (shì), born in the sixth year of Emperor Zhao's reign (75 BC), was the son of Liu Xiang and his wife Xu Pingjun. Liu Yi was a "good Confucian", and when he was a prince, he studied a wide range of Confucian classics, including "Spring and Autumn", "Poetry", "Shang Shu", "Li", "Analects" and so on. Emperor Yuan's scriptural skills are not only far superior to those of his father, but also second to none among all the emperors of the Western Han Dynasty. However, he was too restrained and indecisive, and the credit eunuchs Honggong and Shi Xian, during the reign, natural disasters continued, social crises deepened, and land annexation prevailed, so the zhongxing business of Emperor Zhao and Xuan "declined".
The "Rouren" of the Han Yuan Emperor can be seen by just one example. Liu Yi's 60-year-old master, Xiao Wangzhi, the "world-famous Confucian", was forced to commit suicide because of the rumors of the eunuch Shi Xianjin. At that time, Liu Yi was having lunch, and after hearing this bad news, he burst into tears and could not eat his meal. He immediately asked Shi Xian, and Shi Xian was so frightened that he took off his hat and prostrated his head. From then until his own death, Emperor Liu Yi of the Han Dynasty would send emissaries to Xiao Wangzhi's tomb every year to pay homage. However, for Shi Xian, who killed his master, Emperor Yuan of Han did not have any punishment, no punishment.
When Emperor Yuan of Han was crown prince, he saw that his father Emperor Xuan of Han used harsh methods and was put on the line under the name of punishment, and the ministers Yang Yun and Kuan Rao were convicted of just saying something cool, so he gently advised his father and emperor: "Your Majesty holds a great punishment, and it is advisable to use Confucianism", but his father, Emperor Xuan of Han, said that he was going to lose the family. It is because of his weakness!
Han Gao Zu Liu Bang
The history of the Western Han Dynasty is generally divided into two periods with the line between Xuan and Yuan. Emperor Xuan was the "lord of Zhongxing" and maintained the stable development of the Western Han Dynasty, but from the beginning of the Yuan Emperor, the Western Han Dynasty began to decline, the so-called "Yuan, Cheng, Mourning, Ping, one generation is not as good as a generation".
Why did Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty abandon the "hegemonic technique" of advocating severe punishment and harsh law, and instead use the Confucian technique of "ruling the country with softness" and emphasizing "indoctrination"? In addition to his own profound Confucian cultivation, what is more important is his profound social reasons.
After Emperor Yuan of Han ascended the throne, land annexation intensified day by day, and peasants went bankrupt one after another, some of them were thrown into farms and became tenants and slaves, some accepted the government's fake land and became fake farmers (state sharecroppers), and some became displaced people, and the taxes and services that these people originally undertook were transferred to the "households and the people", that is, self-cultivated farmers. Coupled with political corruption, the corruption of officials, and frequent natural disasters, struggles against the rule of the Western Han Dynasty continued to break out in various places.
Emperor Wu of han Liu Che
In this grim situation, the rulers had no choice but to abandon the "hegemonic technique" and purely teach morality in order to alleviate social contradictions. This change in strategy was proposed and implemented by emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty. Emperor Yuan of Han mainly took the following measures:
The first is to honor Confucianism: take measures to honor Confucius. Confucius's thirteenth grandson Kong Ba "wrote to ask for Confucius's sacrifice", and Emperor Yuan immediately issued an edict: "He ordered his master to praise The Marquis of Guannei to worship Confucius with eight hundred households." This was a major move to enshrine Confucius in the name of the emperor, and Kong Ba was given the title of Marquis of Guannei, given eight hundred households, praised Chengjun, and gave two hundred catties of gold and the first house in the palace. The social effect of respecting Confucian teachers will inevitably lead to people's hearts toward Confucianism, which naturally greatly improves the status of Confucianism.
The second was to select officials and employ people according to Confucian standards, and soon after Liu Yi took the throne, he greatly increased the number of disciples of Dr. Taixue, from two hundred at the time of Emperor Xuan to a thousand. For these doctoral disciples, they shall be awarded the corresponding official positions according to the three examinations of A, B and C every year, and those who pass the examinations can be awarded corresponding official positions. At that time, most people sought merit by reading books, but those who sought merit by military merit were slightly inferior, contrary to the convention of "the prime minister starts from the state department, and the fierce general is sent to the pawn".
The third is to take the economy as the foundation and govern the country. After Emperor Yuan ascended the throne, he abandoned the politics of Emperor Xuan's "overlord" way of mixing, issued various decrees and edicts, and quoted many scriptures.
Wang Zhaojun came out of the jam
Although a large number of talents were selected for the Han Dynasty, it was also determined that many people read the scriptures in order to become officials, so after entering the army, they often did not do their duty faithfully, but only wanted to maintain the Position of Lu and the corpse. Emperor Yuan of the Han Dynasty emphasized the use of scriptures to take soldiers, so that some "nerds" who only knew books and did not pay attention to officials were also elected to government agencies at all levels, and those who could govern could not be officials, and those who were officials could not be ruled, and soldiers and officials were completely different.
The Han Yuan Emperor also made some positive historical contributions. In order to end the war situation between the Western Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu for more than a hundred years, he used the palace people Wang Zhaojun and the pro-Xiongnu Hu Han evil Shan Yu. In the first year of the First Yuan Dynasty (48 BC), Emperor Yuan of Han set up a lieutenant in the Cheshi region (present-day southeast of Turpan, Xinjiang) to manage Tuntian and defense. In the third year of Jianzhao (36 BC), the Han Opened the Western Regions Road and promoted economic and cultural exchanges between the Central Plains and the Western Regions.