In fact, purely in terms of the degree of ferocity, the Xiongnu were not much worse than the later Mongols and Jurchens!

Although there are no Xiongnu among our 56 ethnic minorities now, in ancient times, especially in the Han Dynasty, the Xiongnu still had a strong sense of existence, and once as the largest nomadic people in the north, their power was undoubtedly strong.

Although the Han Dynasty appeared in the generation after generation of fierce generals and strong soldiers, giving the Xiongnu a hard blow and giving the Han Dynasty a chance to breathe, the Xiongnu at this time still existed and did not disappear, and basically in the later historical dynasties, there are also their imprints.

After all, emaciated camels are bigger than horses.

The Huns, who also pay attention to iron-blooded bows, are also a huge tribal system that adopts the whole people as soldiers, and when its power is at its peak, it is really a terrible opponent.

As early as the beginning of the Han Dynasty, the most outstanding military commander among the steppe peoples except Genghis Khan, the founder of the strategy of the cavalry corps, and the famous Mao Dunshan Yu among the Huns, had already led the Xiongnu army under his command to conquer the brave Donghu people to the east.

He successively occupied the upper reaches of the Liaohe River in the Great Xing'an Mountains through wars, and then led the Xiongnu iron cavalry to the west to break through the powerful Yueshi nation, and subjugated the 36 countries of the Western Regions such as Loulan and Qiuci, and pocketed all the fertile land in the Qilian Mountains and Tianshan Mountains.

Then he went south to capture the Hetao land, annexed the branches of the Northern Di, Lou Fu and Baiyang tribes, and connected with the northwest border counties of the Han Dynasty; Then he also subdued many nomadic tribes of all sizes such as Hun Yu, Qu Chai, Ding Ling, Qi Kun, and Xin Li, and expanded the land as far as Lake Baikal in Russia, and unified the entire Mongolian Plateau and part of the Siberian ice sheet under his own army.

Subsequently, the greedy war machine, the Xiongnu army, turned the horse's head and pointed the arrow at the Central Plains, and they attacked frantically, and once invaded Yan and Dai, and occupied all the areas north of the Great Wall.

At this point, the Xiongnu's sphere of influence has exceeded that of the Han Dynasty several times, with a territory of 14,000 miles from east to west, 7,000 miles from north to south, and the steppe desert in eastern Asia are all owned by it.

At its peak, the total number of Hun cavalry in the entire tribe was as high as more than 400,000, and in stark contrast, the Han Dynasty at that time, even if the total number of troops was only more than 300,000, the cavalry was even more pitiful.

In fact, if it is really a competition, even the Xiongnu tribe at the time of Li Mumengtian and the Xiongnu Empire under the rule of Mao Dunshan in the early Han Dynasty are probably not an order of magnitude at all.

So in the face of such a powerful Xiongnu, how did Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty let it collapse, and even in history, finally completely withdrew from the stage of Asian history?

First of all, raising horses.

In the early years of the Han Dynasty, there was a shortage of Han horses, and Liu Bang's imperial driver couldn't find a few horses with the same coat color, and Prime Minister Xiao He could only take an ox cart, because a horse was as expensive as 100 gold at that time, and this price could buy 3,000 acres of fertile land at that time!

Therefore, Emperor Wenjing began to raise horses frantically, and the government set up 36 official horse gardens in the border counties, which were directly managed by the imperial servants, and there were more than 30,000 horse breeders under his command.

At the same time, all counties and private countries are encouraged to raise horses, and it is stipulated that if there is a horse, three people can be exempted from military service.

In this way, China's horse breeding industry has developed rapidly, and by the late Han Dynasty, there were more than 400,000 horses in the government alone, and the lowest price of horses in the market was reduced to only 4,000 yuan.

In the era of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, every street and alley in the north and south of the Han Dynasty was a horse, and there were countless herds of livestock in the fields, but all the people with a good family background rode the stallion, and you were embarrassed to greet people when you rode a mare out, if you were brazen enough to ride to the banquet, be careful not to be swept out of the house by the master's house!

Therefore, in the late period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, after Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty went through the Mobei War, he could casually organize 180,000 cavalry to go to the border to show off his might, and gave the Xiongnu Uwei Shan Yu a very domineering war letter, giving him two choices:

First: Today, the Son of Heaven will be on the sidelines.

Second: No, that is, the south is subject to Han, why flee to the desert.

At the same time as his own crazy horse raising and exploding troops, the Han Dynasty adopted a crazy economic war and plundering war against the Xiongnu.

Yes, you read that right, it's not just nomads who can prey on farming peoples. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty made a great initiative to carry out a plundering war against the nomads.

For example, in the Battle of Henan, the Weiqing army captured more than one million cattle, sheep and horses, and the total number of livestock in the border counties of the Han Dynasty is only so.

In the past, every time they invaded Hanbian County, the looted livestock was only tens of thousands, and now they lost more than one million in one breath, which is equivalent to the results accumulated in the previous 70 years and lost all the profits with interest.

Although the losses of the Xiongnu in this battle were not large, the economy suffered a serious blow; More importantly, the Xiongnu lost the fertile Hetao grassland and plugged it into the south of the Yangtze River.

Another example is the battle of Monan, the Weiqing army won tens of millions of livestock from the Xiongnu Youxian Wang, which was ten times that of Henan's victory.

Then there was the Battle of Hexi, Huo Qubing seized the Hexi Corridor, so that the Xiongnu lost the Hexi grassland and Qilian pasture on which they depended.

Since then, the Huns have sung this famous tragic song day and night, which is like a mourning examination: "The loss of my Qilian Mountain makes my six animals rest." I have lost my mountains, and my women have no color. ”

Then, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty migrated to the north of Tunbei to consolidate the results of the war, sent more than 100,000 people to build Shuofang City and Wuyuan City, and sent Huo Qubing and Li Xijian to build four counties of Hexi and Jincheng County, and from all over the empire, moved hundreds of millions of people here, farming and grazing, raising soldiers with the people, and further compressing the living space of the Xiongnu.

At this point, under the successive wars, although the Xiongnu only lost one-seventh of the army, they had lost nearly one-third of the livestock and grassland, and could no longer be consumed with the Han Dynasty.

As a result, a tragic migration began, and hundreds of thousands of Xiongnu soldiers and civilians left their homes collectively, carrying their tents and belongings with chariots and horses, crossing one Gobi Desert after another, to the bitter cold land of the distant desert north, and since then they have been in a state of collapse.

There has never been a shortage of masters in the grassland, and when the illustrious Xiongnu were lonely, the powerful Xianbei tribe became stronger.

Now, this group of vicious wolves, driven crazy by the bitter cold, decided to make another desperate bet, taking advantage of the Han Dynasty, a country that almost conquered them, and was extremely weak in war, to launch their attack and invasion.

Then by digesting the "fat" materials that were torn off from the behemoth of the Han Dynasty, they strengthened their Xiongnu strength, and spent this year, and then transferred their troops back to the grassland, and recaptured their lord's territory from those Xianbei bandits!

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