The love and hatred between the nomadic peoples of the northern grasslands and the farming peoples of the Central Plains is one of the main lines running through the history of Chinese national civilization. When the Central Plains Dynasty was unified and strong, it hung up on the nomads in the north. When the dynasties in the Central Plains changed, when the internal porridge was beaten into a pot, the nomads would go south to grab things, everything, eat, men and women, adults and children, just the old people do not want. Grab it and go home and live your life. How long it takes to grab it depends on how long the Central Plains are in chaos.
The invasion of the northern nomads has always been a major problem for the Central Plains Dynasties, and it has not been possible to fundamentally solve it. It's not that you can't beat it, it's that you can't afford it. Fundamentally, it is a matter of money, the nomads are too poor, the grasslands are worth nothing but livestock, a bit of mineral deposits, and the development cost is too high. So basically every time you fight the nomads is to lose money, when the Central Plains Dynasty is strong, that is, money is still able to fight, and when it declines, it can only be defended, and rarely send troops to take the initiative to attack. The nomadic people are on the opposite side, they are too poor, the wealth of a tribal leader is not as large as the family property of a self-employed farmer, the cost of robbery is particularly low, and they can earn whatever they want. In addition to the continuous natural disasters on the grasslands, snow disasters, locust plagues, and plagues, people are forced to have no way to live, and robbing to the south is the best way out.
It was not until the Qing Dynasty that the problem of invasion by the nomadic peoples in the north was completely solved. At that time, the nomadic people in the north were mainly Mongols, and the ruling class of the Qing Dynasty first used wealth and status to win over the upper echelons of the Mongols, and the Iron Hat King mentioned in the TV series was the gang, and the good food and drink were raised as pigs. Then use religion to paralyze the middle and lower classes, and also stipulate that there must be male monks in the family, and there will be no offspring after renunciation, and the Mongolian population will decrease. Nor are the Mongols allowed to learn Han culture, to prevent them from becoming smarter, just to make them a little stupid. There is also the material embargo carried out by successive dynasties, and the salt, iron, tea and other necessary salts on the grassland are all in the embargo list. In this multi-pronged manner, by the time of the Republic of China, the Mongolian Iron Horse that swept the world in that year completely declined.
The Han chinese were originally a land-growing people, first planting land in the Yellow River Valley, and then expanding wherever they could cultivate. Zhou Tianzi divided the princes, many princes are with their people to expand the territory, grab the land that can be cultivated, the western Qin state has been opened up by several generations of monarchs to fight on the battlefield, the Yan state is the weakest of the seven warring states, everyone wants to bully and bully him, just like this Yan country, can also expand to the east thousands of miles. The indigenous people were either killed or fled, and in the end the Han chinese occupied almost all the land that could be cultivated. It turned out that those who hunted, fished, and raised livestock either ran to the mountains in the southwest or ran to the grasslands in the north and merged with the locals.
The way of life in the northern grasslands is mainly nomadic, chasing the water and grass migration. A single animal needs several acres of grassland to feed, so herders cannot live in large numbers like farmers, but can only divide into many tribes and gather in small areas. A large number of people can produce a new social division of labor, some people to solve the problem of eating, another part of the people to do something else, doctors, blacksmiths, carpenters and other occupations will appear. In the steppe, only a small number of large tribes occupying fertile grasslands produce doctors who treat people and livestock, and most herders have to fight hard when they are sick. On the other hand, some large-scale projects are not built by hand, on the agricultural side, flooding, you can organize manpower to build levees, dredge the river, but there are not even a few decent cities on the grassland, then the herders' ability to resist natural disasters is basically gone, all rely on the sky to eat.
In short, life on the grassland is particularly difficult, maybe an accidental small life is gone, so the skills of the herders are pointed at the survival-related above, horseback archery is to protect themselves and plunder resources, because the survival resources are limited, so the strong can occupy more, the young and strong in the tribe will take more, the old people are discarded useless people, once there is a natural disaster and lack of food, the old people will be abandoned. People's instinct in addition to survival is to reproduce, the grassland because of limited resources, the risk of survival is too large, marriage customs are also very unique, there is a man in the family who dies, his wife will be inherited by other men in the family, may be the son inheritance or may be brother inheritance, the family is sleeping in a room, the relationship is very chaotic, but as long as the child born is in this family, as for who it is, everyone does not care.
After the unification of the Qin dynasty, Pai Mengtian attacked the Hetao region to the north, built a city along the Yellow River there, and the migrated population used to open a new base for farming there, and the nomadic tribe that was driven away at that time was the Xiongnu, the leader of the Huns was called Shan Yu, and the reigning at that time was Touman Shan Yu, who took the Xiongnu tribe to migrate north. At that time, there were many tribes on the grassland, the most powerful of which was the East Lake people, the Yueshi people were also very strong, and the Huns were far from reaching their peak.
Within a few years, the opportunity for the Xiongnu came, and after Chen Sheng's Wuguang uprising, the Qin state was a little unable to control the situation, so it transferred the garrison in the Hetao area back to the interior to quell the rebellion, and the Hetao area became a no-man's land. The Xiongnu soon made a comeback and occupied a perfect shelter, the Qin army built all the infrastructure, hiding inside to survive the cold winter, and the external defense facilities could well resist the attack of the Eastern Hu and Yue people.
On the Xiongnu side, there was another genius-level leader, Mao Dun, who was the prince of The Head Man Shan Yu and was very capable. Tou ManDan later liked his younger son and wanted to make his younger son the crown prince, so he sent Mo Dun to the Yue clan as a hostage, and then attacked the Yue clan, the Yue clan wanted to kill Mo Dun, Mo Dun snatched the good horses of the Yue clan and ran back, and Tou Man Shan Yu felt that he was very brave and gave him ten thousand horse commanders. Mouton began to train his subordinates, and he made a kind of loud arrow, and wherever his arrow went, everyone would follow, and those who did not follow would be cut off. First shoot birds and birds and beasts, and those who don't shoot will be chopped. Then there is the shooting of one's own good horse, the slash that does not shoot, and then the shooting of one's beloved wife, the slash that does not shoot. Then there was the good horse of the shooter Man Shan Yu, and this time everyone followed suit. In the end, he shot down The Head ManDan Yu, and after the death of The Head Man Dan, Mo Dun killed his stepmother and the ministers who opposed him, and sat on Shan Yu himself.
When Mo Dun first succeeded to the throne, the Donghu people were the most powerful, and when they heard that Mo Dun killed his father and stood on his own, he came to take advantage of it. The Donghu people said, your father is dead, then give me his good horse, the courtiers are opposed, Mao Dun said, it is just a neighbor's horse, don't hurt the harmony, just send the horse over. After a while, the Donghu people came again to ask for Mo Dun's wife, and Mo Dun also gave. At this time, the Donghu people began to be arrogant, thinking that Mao Dun was very worried. There was a wasteland in the middle of the border between the Xiongnu and Donghu, which was uninhabited. The Donghu people said, in the future this land will be ours, and you Huns will not be able to come over again, and some of the courtiers say, "Give him the land without a master." Mao Dun was furious, land is the foundation of the country, how can it be given to others, whoever finishes beheading the minister. Mao Dun personally mounted his horse and led troops to attack Donghu, and the Donghu people did not take precautions because the first two times they wanted things too easily, and as a result, the Xiongnu won a battle and eliminated the king of Donghu. Then he drove away the Yue people to the west, annexed the Loulan, Baiyang and other tribes to the south, and recovered all the old Xiongnu lands captured by the Qin state Mengtian. At that time, Chu and Han were fighting for the world, there was no time to look north, the Xiongnu took advantage of the situation to become bigger, there were more than 300,000 people who controlled the strings, and when the Xiongnu fought, they killed or captured the enemy, and the spoils of war belonged to individuals. Whoever brings home the body of his dead companion, he will own all the family property of the deceased. Everyone can take the initiative to come forward for the sake of interests, and once they encounter a situation that cannot be fought, they will turn around and run, which is a very difficult tactic.
After the Han Dynasty pacified the Central Plains, it sent Wang Xin of Han to the Dai Kingdom to defend against the Xiongnu. When the Xiongnu came, Han Wangxin directly surrendered to the Xiongnu, and also made a leading party to attack Taiyuan until jinyang city. Han Gaozu Liu Bang personally led his troops to meet the attack. Liu Bang and the vanguard troops arrived at Pingcheng first, and the infantry in the rear had not yet arrived. Mouton's 400,000 elite cavalry was surrounded for seven days. Liu Bang sent emissaries to send generous gifts to the Fu clan of Mao Dun and ask her to intercede. Coupled with the general Wang Huang who had agreed to meet with Mao Dun, Zhao Li did not arrive, and Mao Dun became suspicious, so he lifted the corner of the siege, Liu Bang took the opportunity to rush out of the siege and the large army would be reconciled, and Mao Dun also led the troops away.
After that, the Han and Huns began to make peace, in fact, the Xiongnu were on the strong side, and the Han Dynasty, because it had just finished the civil war and was in urgent need of recuperation, had been sending women's belongings to the Xiongnu in exchange for peace, and the Xiongnu would casually send back some cattle and horses. After the peace, the Xiongnu did not keep their covenants much, and often came south to grab things. In addition to going south, the Xiongnu also went north, conquered the local tribes to the east, and pursued the Yueshi people to the west, conquering the local tribes along the way, and finally built a steppe empire with a territory of thousands of miles.