When was the most powerful era in Chinese history? How powerful? To answer this question, the director here uses the Han and Tang dynasties as examples.
Han Dynasty cattle are strong
How strong was the Han Dynasty? The famous Western Han Dynasty general Chen Tang's sentence "Although he who commits a crime against a strong Han is far away, he will be punished" shocks the ancient and modern times, and this phrase comes from the "Biography of Fu Chang Zhenggan Chen Duan", the original text is as follows:
When the subject hears of the great righteousness of the world, when he is mixed with one, there were Tang and Yu in the past, and now there are strong men. The Xiongnu called Han evil Shan Yu already called the Northern Domain, but Zhi Zhi Shan rebelled, did not ambush qigu, the west of Bactria and thought that the strong Han could not be subjected. Zhi Zhidan was cruel and vicious to the people, great evil was forced on the heavens, the subjects extended their lives, the generals of the Tang Dynasty, the heavenly curses, the gods of His Majesty Lai, the yin and yang, the weather was shrewd, the enemy was defeated, and the head of the Zhi branch and the king below were beheaded. It is advisable to hang the head of the barbarian mansion on the street to show that those who commit crimes against the strong will be punished from afar.
The background of the time when Chen Tang said this was that the Xiongnu were divided into two parts, the southern Xiongnu surrendered to the Han Dynasty under the command of Hu Han evil, while the Northern Xiongnu continued to be enemies of the Han Dynasty under the leadership of Zhi Zhidan Yu, who not only made enemies of the Han Dynasty, but also defeated the states of Dawan and Wusun at one time, taking advantage of the Han Dynasty's inattention to control almost the entire western region.
Because the Western Regions were the only way to pass through the Silk Road of the Han Dynasty, and had an unparalleled strategic position for the Han Dynasty, so in the third year of Jianzhao (36 BC), Chen Tang, the deputy governor of the Western Regions of the Han Dynasty, took advantage of the gap between the illness of The Zhengdu Wei Gan Yanshou to falsely preach the Holy Will, and gathered 40,000 Han and Hu miscellaneous soldiers from all over the Western Regions to take the Pamir Plateau and chigu to Zhi Zhidan yu to launch a decapitation operation, defeating the Northern Xiongnu in one fell swoop, and Zhi Zhidan was also killed in the resistance of the Emperor Cangquan.
In fact, the combat effectiveness of the Xiongnu people has always been very fierce, but the Northern Xiongnu's Zhi Zhidan, who was relying on Emperor Tiangao, did not expect chen Tang's Han army to fall from the sky like a thunderous momentum, and the unsuspecting Xiongnu cavalry was crushed and crushed and collapsed into an army, so Chen Tang issued a fierce shout and shouted out the bold words of "those who commit crimes against the strong Han will be punished from afar.".
And in addition to Chen Tang's iron-boned oath. A sentence on the Han Xuanding Hu Stele"
All the rivers illuminated by the sun and the moon are Han soil
"It is even more so that the blood of many Han family boys is boiling."
The Dinghu Monument incident began in the first year of the Han Xuan Emperor's pro-government, when the small state cheshi and Shache in the western region saw the Yellow Emperor of the Han Dynasty first ascending dabao, they did not take the Han Dynasty seriously, so the Cheshi and Shache successively launched a rebellion, and the famous general Zheng Ji at that time, after sensing the frivolous attitude of the Cheshi, personally led 1500 Han soldiers and 10,000 ethnic minority miscellaneous armed forces to attack the Cheshi and wipe out the Cheshi in one fell swoop.
The demise of the Shache kingdom is even more comical. At that time, Emperor Xuan of Han sent an envoy Feng Fengshi to Dawan to send an envoy to Dawan to sound the alarm bell, but he did not expect That Feng Fengshi was walking on the peninsula and heard that Hu Tuzheng of shache had killed the pro-Han king WanNian and the Han envoy Xi Chongguo, and feng Fengshi did not say a word and immediately copied the guys to requisition 15,000 hu soldiers in the western region to kill Shache, and cut off the head of Hu Tuzheng with a thunderous momentum to pass on Chang'an.
It was also because of Feng Fengshi's overly violent move that the King of Dawan, after learning that Feng Fengshi had come, paid great respect to Feng Fengshi and offered Dawan's national treasure, Sweat and Blood BMW.
The Xiongnu Rizhao King heard that the strength of the Han Dynasty army actually commanded tens of thousands of horses to surrender to the Han Dynasty, which was unique even in the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, and in the same year, Emperor Xuan of Han erected a Dinghu Monument on the border of the Western Regions, and the inscription read: "All the rivers illuminated by the sun and the moon are Han soil".
Looking at the Han Dynasty, whether it was a civilian official or a military general, or even a diplomatic envoy without the strength of a chicken, as long as someone dared to arrogantly call out the Han Dynasty in the western region, he would recruit soldiers on the spot to slap it down, and the Xiongnu people would be blinded and tinnitus.
In particular, the envoys of the Han Dynasty were all the masters of "Wen Neng's pen to settle the world, and Wu Neng to ma Ding Qiankun" in terms of foreign stance, and even Fu Jiezi, who drew his sword and cut off the head of King Loulan without a word, was even more everywhere, and it can be said that the overall strong style of the Han Dynasty was not only manifested in the military generals of the Wen Dynasty, but also in the "weak" envoys.
Therefore, the strategy of co-opting the forces of the surrounding countries of the Han Dynasty, in addition to adopting political inducements, often exerted "physical annihilation and spiritual destruction" to the point of vivid terror. So much so that more than a thousand years later, Wang Fuzhi, a scholar at the end of the Ming Dynasty, sighed: "Guoheng was destroyed by weakness, while Han Independence died by force", causing many people who read history to sigh with a strangled sigh.
The Tang Dynasty won in heroism
Compared with the Han Dynasty, which fought chicken blood militarily, the rule of the Tang Dynasty can be said to be simply a picture of the war from the founding of the country to the fall of the country. According to historical statistics, the Tang Empire had more than a hundred large-scale wars with the outside world, and there were more than a dozen large-scale civil wars, so that the early Tang Dynasty poet Yang Jiong's sentence "It is better to be a centurion than a book student" called many "weak Song" pink men's clothing in later generations to be landless.
In addition to the iron-blooded pride of harvesting human heads and establishing military merits, the Tang Dynasty inherited the Han Empire's policy of "using yi to control yi", that is, every time it occupied a place, it requisitioned ethnic minority miscellaneous troops as "excellent cannon fodder" to charge into the battlefield, of course, the soldiers of the Tang Dynasty were also brave and fierce, supplemented by the flag waving and shouting of the younger brother's subordinates, with sophisticated equipment and exquisite command art, the Tang Dynasty seemed to be unstoppable on the road of opening up the territory and expanding the territory.
For the Northern Hu Turks, Tang Taizong Li Shimin had an accurate evaluation in the "Notes on The Entrepreneurship and Living of the Tang Dynasty":
"The Turks are the chiefs, but they ride and shoot, and when they see the benefits, they go away when they see difficulties, and the wind is galloping and rolling, and they are not constant. With bows and arrows as minions and armor as the regular service, the team is not lined up, and the battalion has no fixed place. Chasing water and grass as a living room, with sheep and horses as military food, winning and seeking wealth, defeat without shame. There is no night patrol and no charge for feeding. ”
Translated into today's vernacular, it means that the Turks are greedy for money, profitable, and quick in battle. In the face of such an opponent, Tang Taizong Li Shimin did not adopt the strategy of exchanging money for peace during the two Song Dynasties, but instead used Li Jing to send out The XiangDao, Li Shixun to directly attack the Turkic camp, and the Eastern Turk Jieli Khan was defeated and captured under the joint attack of the Tang army.
In fact, for Tang Taizong, he did not want to capture the King of the Eastern Turks, Jieli Khan, but Jieli Khan was greedy and untrustworthy and flogged Tuli Khan, and the Tuli Khan at that time had already formed an alliance with the Tang Dynasty, and Jieli Khan's move was undoubtedly a slap in the face of the Tang Empire.
Under these circumstances, Tang Taizong Li Shimin sent the general Zhou Fan to defeat Jieli Khan, but instead of being grateful, Jieli colluded with the Sui Dynasty widow Liang Shiyu to wreak havoc on the northern border, which completely annoyed Tang Taizong Li Shimin, so there was a later word that Li Jing and Li Shixun would join forces to attack the Eastern Turks.
The Tang Dynasty's position on foreign tribes is more clever than that of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty emphasizes "physical annihilation, spiritual destruction", and the Tang Empire not only has to do appropriate physical destruction, but also to completely conquer the opponent spiritually, I defeated you, you disobey, you can go back to the next year to fight again, until you have no temper, as long as you completely kneel, then I will still "all its tribes, go with its customs, and use the land of emptiness", and if you want to rebel one day, you have to weigh your own weight in advance.
And the Han and Tang dynasties are precisely because of the strategic courage of the bull and the fierce fighting style of the whole people fighting chicken blood, and the majesty of the two dynasties has become the pride of many Chinese sons and daughters for thousands of years.