Wudi 's martial arts, let's first talk about his war against Xiongnu . In the early years of the Han Dynasty, the Huns were very powerful and went south to invade the Han area from time to time. The strength of the Huns was not overnight. Shortly after Liu Bang's death, the Huns Maodun Shanyu wrote a letter to Empress Lu , saying, "Your Majesty, you are widowed, and I am alone. We are so lonely, we are not very happy, and we have no way to entertain ourselves. We are willing to change everything with nothing." That is to say, you don't have a husband and I don't have a wife, we just need to be together. Empress Lu was about forty-five years old at the time. She wrote a reply letter, but she didn't dare to say it, saying, "I am old, old, weak, degenerate, and missteps. Shanyu You heard it wrong. My appearance is not enough to be self-deprecating."
Look, Empress Lu didn't dare to fight back against the frivolous words of the Huns, which shows that the situation was very serious at that time. Emperor Wu of Han sent Wei Qing and Huo Qubing to attack the Huns many times, mainly three major wars. In order to cooperate with the attack on the Huns, Zhang Qian also sent to open the Western Regions to try to contact friendly countries and attack the Huns. Although the military purpose was not achieved, the official Silk Road was opened since then.
Develop Southwest Yi , conquering South Vietnam , setting up four counties in the northeast, and setting up Western Regions in the Protectorate. These are the results of Emperor Wu of Han's active policy of foreign development. From , the northeastern region of to the Korean Peninsula, to , southwest region of , including , Yelang Kingdom , there are all Han Dynasty troops. This is external.
For internal culture. He established the governors of the thirteen states, and used to promote the enthronement order to reduce the fiefs of the princes; established the inner court, and the emperor could handle major matters in the inner court, and formed a guidance for the prime minister's decision. In addition, the financial field implements official business of salt and iron, such as the equal delivery method, which is logistics method, ; the level method, that is, price regulation; salt and iron buying is the national monopoly system. All these practices, especially strengthening the central government's right to mint coins, reclaiming the private mining of salt and iron ore, etc., are significantly shrinking the extremely open economic and financial policies since the beginning of the Han Dynasty. Today, the so-called people retreated and the country advanced.
There are two purposes for this. First, improve the central government’s fiscal and tax revenue. Second, crack down on the powerful and curb land annexation and social differentiation. Through reform, the right to mint coins will be taken to the central government in the fiscal dynasty and the right to logistics will be taken to the central government. Price regulation is to curb merchants' huge profits, and at the same time, it can also increase central government fiscal revenue by stabilizing prices. Zhang Tang proposes to collect property tax, so that everyone can report their property in person. Those with more property pay more, and those with less property pay less. This is called counting . But some people’s property declaration is false, what should I do? There is a man named Yang Ke who proposed the Law on Reporting (reporting reward system). If you report that you conceal the property and do not declare it, you will be rewarded with half of the property. In this way, everyone in the world will sue the princes, making it difficult for them to protect themselves and merchants will have nothing to escape.
Business people are not unpatriotic, but they are very disgusted with this system of competing for profit with the people. There is a Luoyang businessman named Bushi , who is very patriotic. He became rich by animal husbandry. During the reign of Emperor Wu, the Huns repeatedly invaded the border. He wrote to the court that he was willing to donate half of his family's wealth as military expenditure to support the court in the fight against the Huns. The officials of the court didn't believe it and asked him, "Do you have any grudges to avenge?" He said, "I have no grudges." He asked him, "Do you want to be an official?" He said, "I don't want to be an official." He asked, "I don't want to be an official and have no enemies. What's the point of donating so much money?" He said, "Just think about the country." People don't believe him. Later, a natural disaster of occurred , and he donated another 200,000 yuan to help the victims.
Emperor Wu saw Bu Shi's name on the list and said, wasn't this the person who wanted to expel half of his family's wealth to defeat the Huns? When he found it, he gave him an official position and he didn't want to be an official position. However, Emperor Wu of Han still gave him an official position in order to establish a patriotic role model in the village, and even became a censor.
But when Sang Hongyang was in the official salt and iron camp, Bu Shi made severe criticism and firmly opposed it. He criticized this for not complying with economic laws. The country should rely on rent and tax to survive. How can it make a profit by itself? At that time, it was dry for a long time and there was no rain. Bu Shi said angrily that it would rain when cooking Hongyang. After Emperor Wu of Han's death, Huo Guang, who was in charge of the government, held a discussion meeting to discuss whether salt and iron should be in the official camp. Sang Hongyang faced the blame from Confucian scholars, saying that it was necessary to maintain fiscal expenditures. There was no way. Under the premise of a certain total output value, if there was more money here, there would be less money there. This meeting was already after Emperor Wu of Han’s death.
The result of the later meeting was that the Sang Hongyang debate failed, which to a certain extent corrected the system in the later years of Emperor Wu of Han.
