My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 492: Universal Celebration?

In the Battle of Gaoque, the Han army won!

But the expected universal celebration did not come immediately.

For many people - more than 99% of the people, the first thought that came to their minds when they heard that the Battle of Gaoque was won was: Where is Gaoque?
Is this my Han family’s territory?
Why haven’t I heard of it?

The Huns are here to attack Gaoque of our Han Empire?

Why?

When people learned that the Battle of Gaoque was not a war of resistance against invasion in which the Han Dynasty passively responded, but a foreign war initiated proactively, they were even more confused.

——Why?
——Why should we, the Han people, attack the Xiongnu’s Gaoque?
——You have nothing to do, so you have to go looking for a war?

After a series of questions arose, we finally returned to the original starting point.

Gaoque, where is it?

At this time, a large number of knowledge kings emerged in the streets and alleys of Chang'an, and even in the villages of counties and prefectures all over the country.

Most of these wise men are of ordinary status - either farmers or retired disabled soldiers.

After their vivid description, the public finally understood vaguely: Oh~
Gao Que is the first emperor of Qin...

Uh, no—it’s a pass built by King Zheng of Qin in the northern part of the Hetao area, on the other side of the river.

The existence of Gaoque was originally to help the Qin court guard the northern gate of Hetao and maintain strategic deterrence and threat to the Munan area.

However, after the Hetao was controlled by the Xiongnu and Hetao and Munan were connected, Gaoque became a pass controlled by the Xiongnu and located between Munan and Hetao.

Whether going north from Hetao to Munan, or going south from Munan to Hetao, you need to cross the river first and then Gaoque, or cross Gaoque first and then cross the river.

During the years when Hetao and Munan were under the control of the Xiongnu, Gaoque was just a pass in the heart of the Xiongnu's territory.

But last year, after the Han Dynasty seized the Hetao area, Gaoque on the other side of the river became a frontier pass for the Xiongnu to constantly threaten the Hetao area and guard the southern gate of the Munan area.

After understanding this, the importance of Gaoque - the threat and harm posed by the Huns' control of Gaoque to the Han Dynasty, and the necessity and benefits of the Han Dynasty seizing Gaoque - were all clearly laid out before the people of the world.

Especially Gaoque, like Hangu Pass, is based on the mountains, built at the mouth of the mountain stream, and also uses a large river as a moat!
At this moment, the scene immediately appeared in front of the eyes of tens of millions of Han people.

——It means that this winter, the Han army set out from Chang'an, arrived in the north, passed through Chaona and stepped into the Hetao, and then went north to Bowang City;
Then they set out from Bowang City, crossed the river, and then in just half a day, they captured Gaoque, which was no easier to attack than Hangu Pass? !

Bullshit!
No one knows how difficult it is to defeat Gaoque.

Don’t you guys know how difficult it is to conquer Hangu Pass?
Nothing to say!
The Han army is mighty!

It was not until this time that everyone understood where Gaoque was and what its strategic value was, how difficult it was for the Han Dynasty to capture Gaoque and how much benefits they could get after capturing it. The long-overdue celebration finally came.

The streets and alleys of Chang'an are filled with the sound of gongs and drums!
Although it was not the beginning of the year, every household found some fresh bamboo poles and threw them into the fire.

The crackling sound of firecrackers, accompanied by the faint burning fragrance of burning and exploding bamboo, has become the most special scenery on the streets of Chang'an.

The farmers didn't care about the harsh winter in the twelfth lunar month and should have stayed at home to winter - but they took to the streets with their families!
Some were holding children, and some were supporting their elders.

But there was the same joy written on everyone's face.

——God has pity on me~
Since the founding of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty had "wins and losses" in the wars against the Huns, but there has never been a truly comprehensive victory.

The Battle of Pingcheng was said to be a defeat followed by victory;
But in reality, it was the Huns who took the initiative to invade the Daibei region of the Han Dynasty - before the battle even started, they had already instigated the Han Dynasty's border king: Han Wangxin!

Without losing a single soldier, the Huns were able to pass through Mayi and the gap in the middle section of the Zhao Great Wall guarded by Mayi, and officially set foot into the heartland of the Dai State.

Before the battle could even begin, the king of the time, Liu Xi, the second brother of Emperor Taizu Gao, abandoned his country and fled with his wife and children!
Not to mention that he was a horse that left the crowd far behind - even before the Huns had even seen the capital of Dai: the city of Jinyang, King Dai Liu Xi's carriage had already arrived at Luoyang, the eastern capital in the heart of the Han Dynasty!
At this point, the Huns had almost taken control of half of the Dai Kingdom without losing a single soldier and without having experienced any battle - not even a small-scale friction or test.

This made the Xiongnu Chanyu at that time, Luandi Maodun, a little suspicious. He was afraid that this was a strategy of the Han army to lure the enemy deep into the territory, so he dared not continue to move south!

This delay finally gave Emperor Taizu Gao enough time to lead the army in person and fight.

Then, there was the Battle of Pingcheng, where Maodun pretended to be defeated and retreated, luring the vanguard troops of Emperor Taizu Gaohuangdi Liu Bang into a trap, resulting in the founding emperor of the Han Dynasty being besieged by the Hu barbarians on Mount Baideng.

In just seven days of siege on Mount Baideng, the elite southern and northern armies around Emperor Gao suffered heavy casualties and were severely damaged.

Some starved to death, some froze to death - those who did not freeze to death were mostly frostbitten, either missing fingers or toes.

There aren't many people who actually died in battle and were buried in their horse's hide!

Then, the Han Dynasty entered the counterattack stage - Fan Kuai and Zhou Bo led the main chariot and cavalry units to catch up with the vanguard of Emperor Gao who was greedy for merit and advanced recklessly and accidentally fell into a trap, and surrounded Maodun's army outside Mount Baideng.

Being surrounded, Maodun knew that the situation would not end well, so he took Emperor Gao, who was at the core of the encirclement, as a "hostage" to cover his troops and jump out of the sandwich.

Afterwards, Emperor Gao led the army to steadily push the Huns back to the grassland step by step, and made Mayi, which was handed over by Han Wangxin, become the frontier of the Han-Hun border again.

Then they tried their best and planted a nail named "Yunzhong County", which means outpost, in Yunzhong City, about a hundred miles north of the border wall.

At this point, the Han-Xiongnu Pingcheng Battle came to an end.

After the war, Emperor Taizu Gaozu realized that it would be difficult to determine the outcome between the Han and the Huns for decades, and that the Han Dynasty was just established and had a lot of work to do, so it could not afford a tug-of-war. So he set a precedent of peacemaking with the Huns and made it the main strategy for the Han Dynasty to deal with the Huns and the threat to the northern border wall.

it is good.

So let me ask you: In the Battle of Pingcheng between Han and Xiongnu, what did each side gain and what did each side lose?
The answer is: no.

Neither the Han nor the Xiongnu gained anything, and apart from military casualties, there was almost no loss.

The Xiongnu first captured Mayi without any effort, then crossed the Great Wall of Zhao and set foot in the capital of Dai.

Then on Baideng Mountain, they besieged the vanguard of Emperor Gaozu Liu Bang for seven days and then went back.

Mayi was originally the capital of Han Wangxin! It was not a new land that the Han family had never owned before and was taken from the Xiongnu. It was the Han land that Emperor Taizu Gaohuangdi Liu Bang entrusted to Han Wangxin!

Before and after the Battle of Pingcheng, the actual control line of the border between the two sides did not change at all - Mayi was still the gateway to the gap in the middle section of the Zhao Great Wall, and Wuzhousai further north was used as the forward outpost.

In this war, the Han Dynasty suffered heavy casualties and suffered heavy losses, but gained almost nothing, let alone expanded its territory. Do you say that it was a defeat before a victory?
Ok.

If you say victory, then it is victory.

But if you want me to be convinced and admit from the bottom of my heart that the war ended with the Han Dynasty as the final winner, then I'm afraid you are thinking too much.

——If they were really the victors, why did the Han family seek a marriage alliance after the war?

To put it nicely, marriage for peace is just asking for peace, isn't it?
How could the victor possibly need to sue for peace?
Therefore, in the past, there were always two sets of accounts in the Han family about the Battle of Pingcheng between the Han and the Xiongnu.

The official statement is that they won first and then lost tactically. Strategically, because the Han Dynasty was weak at the time and was still at a disadvantage, they married the princess to maintain peace on the border.

But in the minds of people all over the world, the Battle of Pingcheng was at most a war of resistance against aggression initiated by the Huns, which once achieved considerable results but was ultimately fought back by the Han people.

——The Huns launched an invasion and at one point penetrated deep into the heartland of the Han Dynasty. To some extent, they achieved the strategic goal of "invasion"!

But in the end, the Han people stubbornly drove the invaders out of the country and back to the grasslands, thus defending the integrity of the country.

That's it.

The success in resisting aggression was recognized by the whole world.

But if you say that the war was won, no one in the world will agree.

As for what happened later, there is no need to mention it.

Whenever the Huns invaded, they would revel in the border walls, burning, killing, looting, and kidnapping people.

The Han Dynasty, however, had no way to deal with it and could only repeatedly offer marriages to the Xiongnu - sending women and supplies, betting that the Xiongnu would not be so shameless, and that the dowry supplies and humble attitude sent by the Han Dynasty could buy a few years of peace for the border and a few years of stable development for the Han Dynasty.

The results are obvious.

If marriage alliance had worked - if the strategic decision of the Han Dynasty to make marriage alliance with the Xiongnu and pretend to be friendly in order to appease the Xiongnu had really achieved remarkable results, then the Han people should not have such a stereotyped deep hatred for the Xiongnu today.

The only positive effect of the marriage policy for the Han Dynasty was that it did maintain superficial peace between the Han and the Xiongnu.

To a certain extent, the Huns' invasion of the northern border wall of the Han Dynasty was always controlled to small-scale looting rather than large-scale invasion.

Since the Battle of Pingcheng, when Emperor Gaozu formulated the core outline of the foreign strategy of "making peace with the Huns through marriage to temporarily appease them", there has been only one record of the Huns moving south on a large scale, with as many as hundreds of thousands of people, over a span of fifty years.

In the fourteenth year of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen's reign, Laoshang Chanyu personally led the army and almost sent the vanguard troops to the outskirts of Chang'an.

From the perspective of national strategy, the policy of marriage alliance did indeed win the Han people a relatively stable period of development - note, it was relatively stable, not absolutely stable.

It has also achieved considerable results in paralyzing the enemy and showing weakness to the enemy.

But emotionally, I am afraid that no Han Chinese - or even anyone who admits that they are "the people of the Xia Dynasty, the descendants of Yan and Huang" - would be willing to accept this statement.

Marrying a princess for a marriage alliance is a loss of sovereignty and humiliation of the country!

Since the Battle of Pingcheng, every time the Han family made peace with the Xiongnu, it seriously hurt the most simple and sincere emotions of the people all over the world!

Even now, the so-called "Reign of Emperors Wen and Jing", which has been praised to the sky by literati and scholars, cannot in the least cover up the endless humiliation that the Han people suffered when facing the Huns in the past few decades!
It was not until the establishment of Liu Rong that the Han Dynasty began to fight wars that could lead to victory.

The war between Han and Xiongnu was essentially an anti-aggression war, and the final result achieved by the Han was the result of "successful resistance to aggression", which naturally could not be considered a victory in the war.

When a thief is coveting you, if you are not beaten by the thief and your house is not visited by the thief, does that mean you have defeated the thief?
At most, the thief failed in stealing, and you succeeded in protecting your home.

However, the Hetao-Mayi Campaign can barely be considered a complete victory for the Han Dynasty over the Xiongnu.

——In the Mayi battlefield, if we only resisted the Huns and kept them out of the country, it still cannot be considered a victory.

But if the existence of the Mayi battlefield was to provide strategic opportunities for the Hetao battlefield, that would be another matter.

Especially in the end, the Han family actually took over Hetao!

Expanding territory!

This is the real victory!
But although they were happy and recognized the victory, the people of the Han Dynasty still felt a little nervous about the victory of the Hetao-Mayi Campaign.

Is this okay?

Taking advantage of the Huns' unpreparedness and making a feint to the east and attacking in the west, they actually took over Hetao.

But if a head-on fight really breaks out, won’t we be taken away in one wave?
It was not until the Battle of Gaoque - until the Han Dynasty officially won the Battle of Gaoque, that the people of the Han Dynasty finally grinned with joy from the bottom of their hearts, and raised their heads and straightened their backs with great pride.

My Han family has truly stood up!
We can defend not only that fortress,
If we don't go to Hetao, we can use strategy to 'steal' it!
Even Gaoque - even Gaoque, which is no less difficult to attack than Hangu Pass and is almost impossible to capture by manpower, our Han family can also bite off this hard bone through a head-on attack!
The most important thing is: no matter whether it was the Han-Xiongnu Pingcheng Battle during the reign of Emperor Gao, the anti-aggression war in the 14th year of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen, or the first Han-Xiongnu war that broke out after the accession of the current Tian Zirong to the throne: the Battle of Chaona, the Han family was actually the passive party.

In all cases, the Xiongnu took the initiative to invade, and in all cases, the Han people took the initiative to defend.

What is particularly crucial is that the battlefield of every war was on the territory of the Han Dynasty.

Even in the Hetao-Mayi Campaign, one battlefield was still located at the Han Dynasty's border wall, within the official national border.

However, the Battle of Gaoque was unprecedented. The Han took the initiative to attack, the Huns passively defended, and the war was an expansion war within the Huns' territory!

It was not until the Battle of Gaoque - until the Battle of Gaoque ended with the complete victory of the Han family, that the Han family could finally live up to the saying: attack and defense are alien~
Where can the invaders go?

I can go too!

(End of this chapter)