On December 14, 2021, the State Administration of Cultural Heritage officially announced that the tomb of Bailuyuan Jiangcun in Xi'an City, Shaanxi Province, is the tomb of Emperor Wen of Han, among the twelve emperors of the Western Han Dynasty, Liu Heng, the Emperor of Han Wen, is actually not attracting attention, and people know more about Liu Bang, the ancestor of Han Gao who established the Han Dynasty, and Liu Che, the Emperor of Han Dynasty, who opened up the territory. The impression of Emperor Wen of Han is basically the "Wen" of the rule of Wenjing, and there was also a rebellion of the Seven Kings during the Han Jingdi period, and there seemed to be no major incident during the time of Emperor Wen of Han, which also made the emperor easy to be ignored.
If you don't count the former and later Emperor Shao, Emperor Wen of Han is the third emperor of the Western Han Dynasty, the fourth son of Liu Bang, his biological mother is Bo Ji, Emperor Wen of Han is not a concubine, not a long, and the throne is supposed to be his turn. However, The Han Hui Emperor Liu Ying died early, and did not leave a concubine with the empress, two of the six sons were the former Shao Emperor, and the former Shao Emperor's biological mother was killed by Lü Yan, threatening: "If I am not strong, I will change when I am strong." Soon after, Lü Yan deposed the former Young Emperor, killed him, and created the Former Young Emperor. During the reign of Emperor Hou Shao, Lü Yan died, the forces of Lü's foreign relatives were crushed, and after the courtiers, Emperor Shaodi was not a child of Emperor Hui of Han, and killed Emperor Hou Shao and his brothers, and since then Emperor Hui of Han has been extinct.
The rebellion of Zhu Lü was put down, but the country could not be left without a monarch for a day, and after assessing the power of the kings and foreign relatives, chen ping and the eunuch Zhou Bo, who were loyal to Liu Bang, met liu Heng, who was generous and benevolent and had a good reputation, so he sent emissaries to take Liu Heng to Chang'an to inherit the throne. Some people think that Emperor Wen of Han was lucky, the throne fell from the sky and fell on his head, Emperor Wen of Han succeeded to the throne in 180 BC, when the Han Dynasty was established for only 22 years, leaving Emperor Han Wendi is not a good country, he only needs to enjoy it, but the problems of the Han Dynasty at that time were continuous, which can be said to be a mess.
Emperor Wen of Han
First, the founding heroes are all over the government and the public
Although Emperor Wen of Han was the fourth son of Liu Bang and had a legal basis for inheriting the throne, the ministers who supported him as emperor were also indispensable, not to mention that many of them were also the founding heroes of the Great Han. At the beginning of Emperor Wen of Han's succession, he rewarded the heroes who supported him as emperor one by one, and awarded officials and knighthoods, and at the same time, rewarded and divided the titles of the heroes who followed his father Liu Bang to open the country, so as to consolidate his throne. Later, Emperor Wen of Han used means to make Zhou Bo, who had established him, resign from the post of Right Chancellor, and then let Zhou Bo serve as an example, and ordered Him to return to his feudal state and weaken their influence in the capital. In this way, while pulling together and suppressing, the courtiers had a reverence for the new emperor.
Second, the power of the princes and kings is great
Due to the vigorous promotion of inaction and recuperation in the early Han Dynasty, it played a catalytic role in the vicious development of the power of the princes. The princes sat on the throne and began to form a trend of "tail big can not fall", and the ascension of Emperor Wen of Han caused sharp contradictions within the Liu clan on the issue of imperial succession. In the third year before Emperor Wen, Liu Xingju, the king of Jibei, was dissatisfied with his eldest brother, Liu Xiang, the eldest grandson of Liu Bang, who did not inherit the throne, and launched a rebellion, and Liu Xingju was finally captured and committed suicide. In the sixth year of Emperor Wen's reign, Liu Chang, the king of Huainan, attempted to rebel, but before he could act, he was discovered, and Liu Chang was ordered to enter The Capital, deposed the throne, and died of hunger strike on the way to distribution.
Although both rebellions were quelled, the confrontation between the princes and the central imperial court did not end, and Emperor Wen of Han only tried his best not to let large-scale conflicts break out between the two sides, until the later Jia Yi's "Public Security Policy", the Jing Emperor's period to quell the Rebellion of the Seven Kings, and then the Tuien Order of Emperor Wu, the hidden dangers of the princes were solved.
The princely states of the early Han Dynasty
Third, the Xiongnu are looking at the tiger
In the third year of Emperor Wen's reign, the Xiongnu King Youxian reneged on his covenant of peace, led tens of thousands of troops to invade Henan, and attacked Shangjun, killing the Han people and threatening Chang'an. In the fourteenth year of Emperor Wen's reign, Lao Shangdan Personally led a large army of 140,000 people to invade, the nearest point only 200 miles from Chang'an, directly threatening the ruling center of the Western Han Dynasty. Emperor Wen of Han gathered 100,000 cavalry to defend Chang'an, and then sent horse-drawn carriages from Shangjun, Beidi, and Longxi to meet the Xiongnu, and after a month of bitter fighting, Lao Shangdan Yufang withdrew from Saiwai, and then sent emissaries to reconcile with the Xiongnu.
In general, the Han Dynasty during the Han Dynasty resolutely resisted the Xiongnu on the one hand, and stabilized relations on the other, although there was no momentum of total victory and suppression, but it was also the Han-Hungarian War that became a balance of power, laying the foundation for Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty to attack the Xiongnu in the north.
4. South Vietnamese court
During the reign of Emperor Gaozu of Han, Zhao Tuo accepted the title of "King of Nanyue" and from then on "claimed to be subject to the Covenant of Han" and became a vassal state under the Western Han Dynasty, the State of Nanyue. During the reign of Lü Hou, the policy of economic blockade of South Vietnam was imposed, and Zhao Tuo met with soldiers and fought against the Han Dynasty.
After Emperor Wen of Han succeeded to the throne, he adopted a policy of appeasement, removed the officers who attacked South Vietnam, and worshiped Zhao Tuo's brother as an official, and under the sincere inspiration of Emperor Wen, Zhao Tuo apologized for his sins and became a subject, and South Vietnam returned to the Han Dynasty, stabilizing the southern frontier of the Han Dynasty, and also promoting the economic development of the Lingnan region and the integration of various ethnic groups in the south.
Map of the situation in the early Han Dynasty
Fifth, the people's livelihood is poor
After experiencing the heavy enslavement of the Qin Dynasty and the war of the Chu and Han dynasties for hegemony, the social and people's livelihood in the early Han Dynasty was withered, and the ten rooms and nine empty spaces were empty, in order to restore social production, the emperors of the early Han Dynasty basically adopted the national policy of lightly dispensing with thin endowments and recuperating. During the period of Emperor Wen of Han, in order to attract farmers to return to the agricultural force, Emperor Wen of Han used the method of reducing the tax rate of field rent to stimulate the enthusiasm of farmers for production, and it was also during this period that the thirty taxes became customized by the Han Dynasty.
Emperor Wen of Han also stipulated that the servitude of adult men should be reduced to every three years. Such relief is unique in the history of China's feudal society. In the sixth year after Emperor Wen, he opened up all the mountains, forests, and rivers that originally belonged to the state, allowed private mining of minerals, and used and developed fishery and salt resources, thus promoting the development of peasants' sideline production and salt and iron production that had a great relationship with the national economy and people's livelihood. As a result of the relaxation of the ban, "the rich merchants and the rich merchants flow all over the world, and the things that are traded are incomprehensible."
During the 23-year reign of Emperor Wen of Han, there were no additions to the imperial clothes; repeated edicts prohibiting the county from contributing rare treasures; clothes made of rough black silk were usually worn; and Emperor Wendi of Han also asked for simplicity in his pre-repaired mausoleum.
Emperor Wen of Han's greatest virtue was restraint, restraint in suppressing the rights of courtiers, restraint on princes, restraint in the war between the Xiongnu and South Vietnam, restraint in his own material enjoyment, and even restraint in the construction of his own mausoleums. The location of Emperor Wendi of Han's tomb has not been confirmed until now, because Emperor Wendi of Han advocated "thin burial", clearly stating that "because of its mountain, it does not bear a grave". Therefore, the Baling Tombs are very hidden, unlike other Western Han Emperors' Tombs, which have clear sealing soil.
The reign of Wenjing, pioneered by Emperor Wen of Han, was the first prosperous era after Chinese civilization entered the imperial era. The rule of Wenjing was not only a great era of rapid economic and cultural development in Chinese history, but also a period of recuperation that laid a solid material foundation for the later conquest of the Xiongnu by Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.