How admirable are the military accomplishments of the cruel and earth Huns?

Xiongnu, the first nomadic empire in the history of China, is the Xiongnu blood of many northern nationalities in later generations. Xiongnu, a nomadic people in the ancient Mongolian Plateau, rose at the foot of Yinshan Mountain in Inner Mongolia today, wearing a left robe (the costume of northern minorities, by which it was reduced to barbarians). The Analects of Confucius Xianwen: "Guan Zhong loves Qi Huangong, claims to be the king and conquers the world, and the people have been given it since today, taking care of its affairs slightly and taking me as the rest." In other words, if Guan Zhong didn't help Qi Huangong "respect the king to conquer the world", Chinese civilization would fall into a wilderness. At the peak of the Xiongnu Empire, the population reached 5 million (less than that of the Han Dynasty). In fact, the real Xiongnu in the Xiongnu Empire is only 1.2 million, and there are herdsman slaves from other tribes. The different nationalities seen in historical records, such as Guirong, Yiqu, Yanjing, Wuyu, Loufan and Dali, are collectively called Xiongnu.

Documents such as Hanshu and Shiji record: "Decided to destroy the Yi Yue family and kill it. Loulan, Wusun, Hu Jie and the surrounding 26 countries are Huns. The person who leads the bow is a family. Zhou Bei will decide. " To put it simply, the Huns generally refer to all the nomadic peoples in the north of the Han Dynasty, and all the people riding horses and shooting arrows are from the Xiongnu Empire. Historical Records Biography of Xiongnu: "Xia Hou Miao, the ancestor of Xiongnu, is also called Chunwei." ? In other words, the Huns were adherents of the Xia Dynasty. But the Huns have their own language-Hun language, their own religion-Shamanism, but they have the same belief as the Central Plains civilization-Dragon. Xiongnu has been closely related to Chinese civilization since its birth.

Xiongnu history

Xiongnu flourished in the late Qin Dynasty and early Western Han Dynasty. At its peak, it directly controlled the vast territory from Yinshan Mountain in the south, Lake Baikal in the north, Liaohe River in the east and Pamirs in the west. In the mid-Western Han Dynasty, Liu Che, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, led a great army to the Western Ocean many times and wiped out the once powerful Xiongnu. By the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was completely climactic and its living space was in jeopardy, so it was difficult to keep the name of Xiongnu.

The earliest and most primitive record about the Huns exists in the Historical Records of Huns (some biographies in historical records also involve some records of Huns), which began in 209 BC when modu chanyu sounded the cymbals and killed his father, Tou Man chanyu, and gained the Xiongnu regime, and began in 97 BC when Li Guangli, the general of the Second Division, was defeated and surrendered to the Huns. Biography of Xiongnu mainly talks about the relationship between Han and Xiongnu and Xiongnu tribes. During the Western Han Dynasty, when the Huns were most prosperous, their costumes, ethics, morality, culture, diet, technology and other aspects of civilization were far behind the Han people. As far as civilization is concerned, he is a barbarian, and it is not bad to say that barbarians are "beasts" in ancient books and documents (adoption marriage system, widows marry uncles, uncles, sons, nephews, etc.). Isn't this behavior an animal of Chinese civilization? ) call it.

But militarily, the Huns are really strong. There are many reasons why the Han people defeated the Huns, such as the guarantee of various systems, the support of enough money and food, the participation of male leaders and generals, sophisticated weapons and equipment, and advanced production technology. It is not that the Huns can't do this, but that the Western Han Dynasty has been ahead of the world in many aspects, which has formed an all-round crushing and obliterated the remaining military superiority of the Huns. The relationship between the Western Han Dynasty and Xiongnu experienced the process of war, submission, goodwill, war and mutual vassal.

Xiongnu-barbarian economy

Xiongnu is a traditional nomadic tribe alliance. Nomadic living on grassland grass and livestock is a highly mobile economic model. Home and place are different all year round. The Huns, too, moved according to the changes of pasture resources in different regions, while avoiding unfavorable factors such as natural and man-made disasters such as war. Huns are nomadic people, but grazing alone is unstable and sometimes they can't support themselves, so they will engage in animal husbandry, fishing and hunting, and business and handicrafts will participate a little, but they will not account for a large proportion in their social economy. Xiongnu is a typical nomadic people, who took the initiative to learn China culture after being beaten up by Wei Qing, Huo Qubing and others.

Huns keep herds of cattle, sheep, horses, donkeys, camels and other livestock, chasing water plants and constantly migrating with the climate. "Historical Records Biography of Xiongnu" records: Xiongnu moved with grass and grazing. Most of its livestock are horses, cows and sheep, and its exotic animals are camels, donkeys, mules, beards (the name of a good horse in ancient times) and beards (a wild horse with blue fur mainly produced in the north, which has always been a famous horse). Generally speaking, the Han army won the war with the Huns without loss, but also got a large number of livestock (their livestock were driven together with the army as rations). "History of Han Xiongnu Biography": "Wei Qing went west to Longxi and attacked the Hu family. Since the sheep king was in Henan, he got thousands of Hu and more than one million sheep." "Chang Hui, a captain of the school, and Wu went to the Youguling Pavilion and got more than 39,000 soldiers, including more than 700,000 horses, cattle, sheep, donkeys, mules and camels." No matter how many people directly participated in the war, they could get one or two heads on average, which is why most civil servants in Manchu supported the war with Xiongnu.

Huns are good at grazing, and treat livestock as their "friends". By the way, there is a joke that a Mongolian likes sheep very much, so he keeps a large group. One day, a guest came from far away. He wanted to kill sheep. The guest asked, don't you like raising sheep and treat them as friends? Why eat them? The man paused and said that we only eat bad relations. Excavation in the Xiongnu cemetery in Inner Mongolia revealed that horses, cows and sheep were the main sacrificial animals of Xiongnu, and men and women sacrificed livestock differently. Men are horses, women are cattle and sheep, symbolizing the temperament of need. In the Xiongnu economy, sheep occupy the largest position and quantity because of their fast reproduction and large milk production. But in some circumstances, raising sheep is not a good idea, such as wet areas, where sheep are prone to illness. Cows are different. It can provide milk, beef, cowhide and other resources, and the living environment is not so picky (it needs more water resources), and it can also provide great traction during migration. What about the horse? Because of the large amount of grass, the output of various resources is not as good as that of cattle and sheep, so it is not economical to raise horses, but it has unparalleled speed and super maneuverability, which can provide great convenience for defending the enemy and fleeing disasters.