What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
Liu Bang, who was born a civilian, was patient, compromised, and helpless. Until the last moment of his life, he was still trying to find ways to stabilize the great cause.
In 206 BC, the internal political situation in Xianyang Palace was turbulent, and Qin II and Zhao Gao successively landed on the ground.
Outside Xianyang City, anti-Qin forces were launching a final attack. Just as the disaster was about to come, the last King of Qin, wearing a white burial robe, Zi Bao, chose to give up and opened the city gate.
He dedicated the soldier Fu Yuxi, a symbol of the emperor's authority, to the commander of this army, Liu Bang, the Duke of Pei.
At this point, Xianyang City was peacefully liberated.
However, a month later, Xianyang City suffered a catastrophe. The most magnificent city in the East and the world was burned.
Destroying the Qin Empire was Xiang Yu's obsession. In his view, the centralized system established by yingzheng is incomprehensible. Xiang Yu wants to re-establish the feudal order and pull the world back to the normal track. He ordered his army to set fire to it, turning the capital City of Xianyang into scorched earth.
Subsequently, the unified empire was re-divided into 18 princely states, and Xiang Yu became the king of Western Chu, who ranked above the 18 princes. However, as the guardian of the feudal system, the overlord Xiang Yu only enjoyed a few months of honor and peace, and Liu Bang launched a fierce game with Xiang Yu. The 4-year-long Chu-Han war began.
In 202 BC, Xiang Yu was defeated and killed himself in Wujiang.
With the support of princes and generals, Liu Bang became the ruler of Huaxia and was able to establish a new state power.
At that time, the Han Dynasty had not yet built a capital city, and like the Caotai team, Liu Bang hastily completed the enthronement ceremony. The victor, Liu Bang, did not want to become the co-lord of the world above the princes, but claimed to be the successor of the Qin Empire. He followed the example of Yingzheng and used the title of emperor to establish the Han Dynasty.
Liu Bang renamed the Xinle Palace outside the Xianyang Palace to Changle Palace. And because it was located in Chang'an Township in Xianyang, he named the capital city - Chang'an.
Liu Bang knew that the victory in front of him was supported by famous heroes and nobles of the Six Kingdoms. These people still have a attachment to the old system in their hearts, and still long to have a fiefdom. If they were stripped of their fiefdoms, how much loyalty would they have left?
Liu Bang made concessions, and in the Han territory that should have been unified, he still enfeoffed the seven major princely states, which was Liu Bang's first compromise.
In the five years that the counties were parallel, there were only 24 counties under the direct jurisdiction of the central government. Two-thirds of the territory of the Han Empire belonged to the princely states. Liu Bang was unable to exercise centralized power. In the territory of the princely states, the Han Empire is even more nominal.
Since the Chu-Han war, the Xiongnu in the north have not stopped going south, they encroached on land and plundered the population, and year after year, they intensified and became a major problem for the Han Dynasty.
Under the leadership of Mouton, the Huns had the strongest military strength in the East at that time. The self-proclaimed king of Mu Dun, who destroyed his father, was no less ambitious than genghis Khan in the future.
In the winter of 200 BC, Emperor Liu Bang recruited an army of 320,000, and he decided to remove the threat of the Xiongnu in one fell swoop.
In this military operation, the commander-in-chief of the Han army was Liu Bang, not any founding hero with outstanding military achievements. This is because Liu Bang's expedition against the Xiongnu had a more important purpose, to prove his strength as the Son of Heaven of the Great Han and establish his authority in front of the princes who violated the Yin and Yang.
However, the ambitious Liu Bang fell for the Xiongnu's lure. During the 7-day-long siege, he was blockaded by the Huns and completely cut off contact with the main force on the Baishan Mountain in Pingcheng. In the end, Liu Bang could only give up the dignity of the emperor and adopt the schemes of the chancellor to pay bribes to Mao Dun shan before he was able to get away with it.
This made the face of Han Gaozu's ancestor Liu Bang disappear. The strategy of solving the Xiongnu in World War I and deterring the princes of different surnames was precisely the strategy of the princes of the opposite sex, and it also vanished.
He had to compromise with reality again and accepted the advice of the pro-Huns.
Harmony means marrying a princess born into a royal family to the head of another country or tribe, concluding a marriage relationship, and giving each other a large amount of money and goods to seek peace between the two countries. Although this practice humiliated the Han Empire, Liu Bang had no choice in the face of the aggressive Xiongnu. He selected a number of women from the clan, crowned princesses, and kissed Shan Yu.
The princess who became a victim of politics, left her hometown, endured humiliation and burdens, and took on a heavy responsibility that was difficult for a weak woman to bear, and no one returned to her hometown. However, it was these weak women who used their youth to gain a temporary respite for the rise of the Han Dynasty.
After the siege of Bai Deng, what made Liu Bang anxious was not only the internal worries of the princes and the external troubles of the Xiongnu, but also the people who experienced hardships after the war.
The heavy rocking chairs and taxes of the Qin Dynasty once made the people miserable. The tragedy of the Qin Empire reminds Liu Bang all the time not to repeat the mistakes of the past.
Lu Jia told Liu Bang that the era of armed force has passed, and only by implementing the rule of inaction can the country be revitalized. Therefore, "recuperation, reward for agricultural production, reduce field taxes and labor, and promote frugality" became the basic national policy implemented in the early Han Dynasty.
Next, make laws and govern the country according to the law.
In 206 BC, when Liu Bang's army occupied Xianyang for the first time, Xiao He did not celebrate the victory with others, but quietly completed a transfer with his men. He successively went to the residences of Qin Cheng Xiang and Yu Shi Dafu and gathered together all the Qing Dynasty laws and classics that could be found.
Xiao He, who was born as a civil servant, knew that these seemingly bland laws were the most priceless inheritance of the newly deceased Qin State. Officials need the power of the law to maintain social order. On the basis of the six chapters of the Qin Law, Xiao He formed the basic law of the Two Han Dynasties, the Nine Chapters of the Law.
As Liu Bang grew older, he felt the urgency of time.
If the princes of the opposite sex do not take action again, the establishment of the ideal centralized empire of his life will probably be far away.
In the last years of his life, Liu Bang, with the full support of Lü Hou and Xiao He, launched a purge of princes with different surnames. In a period of 5 years, Liu Bang eliminated those heterosexual princes (Han Xin, Yingbu, Peng Yue, etc.) who had fought alongside him and jointly conquered Jiangshan.
In 195 BC, Liu Bang summoned the imperial heroes and elders and held a special ceremony in Chang'an City. At that time, people believed that the white horse had a divine nature, and that with the white horse as a sacrifice, a supreme covenant could be established.
Liu Bang beheaded the white horse and fought with his courtiers for an alliance. It is agreed that "not the King of the Liu Clan, the world will strike together". This is an extraordinary moment in history, known as the White Horse Alliance.
At this point, except for the remote State of Changsha, the territory of the Han Empire was ruled by members of the Liu royal family.