In March 90 BC, Emperor Wu of Han launched the last attack on the Xiongnu in his life, Li Guangli was ordered to lead an army of 70,000 troops from Wuyuan County to Junji Mountain, Shang Qiu Cheng led an army of 30,000 troops from Xihe County to Zhuo evil Mountain, and Ma Tong led an army of 40,000 troops from Jiuquan County to Tianshan. The purpose of this mighty war was to encircle and destroy the Xiongnu from three different directions.
Ma Tong failed to encounter the Xiongnu, Shangqiu Chenghui army was attacked and retreated from the Xiongnu, Li Guangli was successful in the early stage, but when he suddenly attacked the area of Hangai Mountain, he was surrounded by Xiongnu iron horses, and finally the whole army was destroyed, which meant that Emperor Wudi of Han's last battle with the Xiongnu ended in failure, and 3 years later Emperor Wudi of Han died, but why was it difficult for the victorious Xiongnu to survive?
Image: Stills of the Huns struggling to survive
I. The Inside Story of the Sino-Hungarian War
1. The reason for the defeat of the last battle
The last 14 years of the reign of Emperor Wu of Han can be seen as the late period of Emperor Wu, in this 14 years, the Han Dynasty launched 3 wars of considerable scale against the Xiongnu, the end was all defeated, and even many times the army that attacked was tragically destroyed, only from the limited historical data we can know that there were more than 100,000 soldiers killed in the grassland.
In the Han Dynasty's several battles against the Xiongnu, the losses were not insignificant, and the results achieved were very limited, among which there were reasons for the weakness of the Han Dynasty's own national strength and the reasons for the generals, but this was not the most fundamental, the key lies in the distance and adaptability of the battle.
Photo: Stills of the Han Dynasty waging war
In the later period of the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu ethnic group was gradually retreating from the north to the northwest, which meant that the army of the Han Dynasty had to march in the same direction to be able to fight the Xiongnu, so the combat distance of the Han army was longer and longer, and the distance from the rear of the mainland was getting farther and farther.
In addition, in the continuous attacks of the Han Dynasty and the Xiongnu for decades, although many Xiongnu tribes surrendered to the Han Dynasty, and some people in the Han Dynasty chose to defect to the Xiongnu, these people not only had civilians, but also many capable people, who brought advanced knowledge and technology from the Central Plains to the Xiongnu.
We were thinking about how to deal with the Xiongnu, and the Huns were also adapting to the Han army, so in the process of the last Li Guangli army, they encountered the advanced geotechnical tactics of the Huns, who sneaked into the Han army camp by digging tunnels and then suddenly launched an offensive, which was a fairly advanced tactic, but with the frequent occurrence of wars between the two sides, the Huns were almost unable to hold on.
Photo: Stills of the Central Plains people surrendering to the Xiongnu
2. The real situation of the Huns
From the famous "Battle of Longcheng" until the death of Emperor Wu of Han, in the past 40 years, the Han Dynasty has hardly interrupted the attack on the Xiongnu, and the offensive can be described as continuous, when the Han Dynasty is victorious, it must continue to attack, and when it encounters defeat, it also has to attack at any cost.
At the beginning, Emperor Wu of Han would also consider the time and season of the attack, and in the later period of his reign, he simply did not care about this, and he was ready to go out at any time regardless of spring and winter throughout the year.
The impact of this practice on the Xiongnu tribes was very great, seriously affecting and even disrupting their social production order, in order to avoid the continuous attack of the Han Dynasty army, their entire tribe must always be prepared for the overall migration, which is a practice at the level of grand strategy.
Especially in the last period of the reign of Emperor Wu of Han, he paid a huge price several times to make the army invade the hinterland of the Xiongnu tribe, for the Huns, first fighting at the door of the house, and then directly into the back garden.
Although Li Guangli lost the last battle, from the map, he fought from 40 degrees north latitude to 50 degrees north latitude. Spanning almost the entire vast Mongolian plateau, the Huns eventually won the war, but had to order the entire tribe to migrate in the summer, at a great cost.
Image: Stills of the Hun cavalry
Second, the complete destruction of the Xiongnu
1. The decay of the Huns
Every initiative of the Han Dynasty army, whether it was victory or defeat, would interrupt the entire animal husbandry industry chain of the Xiongnu tribe, and according to the population and productivity level of the Xiongnu at that time, an ordinary herder needed to control the number of sheep above 150 to survive.
However, the arrival of the Han army required the herdsmen to be recruited to fight as soldiers, which made the normal animal husbandry production unmanaged, the production efficiency was low, and more fatally, although the Huns finally won the victory, they could not get any benefit from the battle.
Although there were hundreds of thousands or even millions of homeless refugees within the Han Dynasty at that time, as a ruler, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty's determination to take the initiative against the Xiongnu has never changed, he is not exhaustive, but the purpose is very simple, that is, to put the battlefield of the two armies on the land of the Xiongnu themselves, so that they can bear the serious consequences of the war.
Therefore, in the actual war, even if the Xiongnu wiped out the Han army completely, they could not bring any benefits at all, and even had to bear the economic losses caused by the war, and by the time Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty died, the Xiongnu tribes were already very tired, because the long-term bad migration led to the inability to produce livestock normally, and in this way, a strong nomadic people from Shan Yu himself to the general herdsmen had extremely serious war weariness.
Photo: Stills of the Han Dynasty army taking the initiative to attack
2. Destroy old enemies
In the first two years of the Han Xuan Emperor's reign, the Han Dynasty was preparing to launch a war of annihilation against the Xiongnu, when the Han Dynasty mobilized a total of 160,000 cavalry, and the soldiers began to attack in five ways, while 50,000 Wusun cavalry followed the battle, and the Xiongnu could not resist in the face of such an attack, so they began to flee.
After that, the Xiongnu wanted to take revenge on Wusun, but when they went out on the expedition, they encountered a cold wave that had not been encountered in a hundred years, resulting in only one-tenth of the population and livestock surviving, and from this time on, the Tribes of Ding Zero, Wusun, and Wuhuan began to encroach on the Xiongnu tribes from the three directions of west, south and east. The Xiongnu, who had been exhausted from years of conquest, suffered natural disasters, and famine caused the loss of 30% of the population, and the Xiongnu were finally unable to sustain themselves and began to fall apart.
Image: Stills of the beginning of divisions within the Huns
The person who finally sentenced the Xiongnu tribe to the "death penalty" was called Dou Xian, in fact, this had reached the eastern Han and Emperor period, and in the first year of the Han and Emperor Yongyuan, that is, in 89 AD, Dou Xian led the Han army, the Qiang army and the southern Xiongnu to attack the recalcitrant Northern Xiongnu and successfully defeated its main force. In 151 AD, the remnants of the Northern Xiongnu entrenched around Barikun Lake entered the Western world, and the Xiongnu have since disappeared into the long river of Chinese history.
It can be seen that during the reign of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, he paid a huge price to deal with the Xiongnu, but from a long-term perspective of history, this practice was indeed very effective and beyond reproach, ensuring the security of the northern territory and the orderly development of the Central Plains.
The entire graphic was produced by the team of the Big Cafe Say History Studio!