Subsequently, in the Battle of Julu, this army was completely annihilated by Xiang Yu, and as a result, the northern defense line was quickly broken through by the Huns. This was the root of the Xiongnu cavalry's centuries-long threat to the Western Han Dynasty, and this threat provided an important military justification for Liu Bang to build the imperial tomb.
At the same time, Liu Bang also played a clever political move. To the north of Jangneung, there is a roughly rectangular area called Jangneung-eup. This Lingyi, also known as Lingxian, is a special county-level administrative district. For a long time, people have had a lot of speculation about why Liu Bang built this Changling Yi, one of which is that Liu Bang asked people to guard the cemetery for him in order not to let himself be deserted after his death. However, is that just the reason?
Jangneung-eup is 2,200 meters long from north to south and 1,245 meters wide from east to west, covering an area of several square kilometers. Although today's Changling Station is only a ruin, if you look closely, you can still find the shadow of the city wall on the ground. This Jangneung-eup is a small city with a single column.
If Liu Bang built this Lingyi just to let people come to accompany him to live, then repairing these city walls would be redundant, not only consuming a lot of manpower and material resources, but also making the people more laborious and costly. Therefore, experts believe that the real purpose of building Changlingyi was to resist the southward advance of the Xiongnu.
In the early years of the Western Han Dynasty, the national strength of the Han Dynasty was relatively weak and could not resist the attack of the Xiongnu. And to take the initiative to attack the Xiongnu like Qin Shi Huang did, there is no chance of winning. For this point, Liu Bang, who personally experienced the Battle of Baideng, has a deep understanding. Therefore, he decided to build a mausoleum, which could serve as the northwest outpost of Chang'an City and defend his own cemetery. In this way, it will not only strengthen the safety of the Kyoshi, but also ensure the tranquility of the cemetery.
However, building Jangneung-eup was not an easy task. First of all, someone needs to live and manage. As a result, Liu Bang ordered all the nobles and Haoqiang in Guanzhong to move to Changlingyi to live. These people wield enormous political influence, and the slightest carelessness could trigger a national crisis. Therefore, Liu Bang adopted a strategy to divide them into batches and localities, and forced them to change their surnames in batches. In this way, the powerful nobles who had gathered together could be dismantled and broken into pieces, so that they could no longer make trouble.
As a result of this strategy, a large number of laborers were transferred to the Kyoshi region, and the population of the Kanto region, where human resources were almost exhausted, increased dramatically, and the economy developed rapidly. Therefore, the construction of Changling is a very clever strategic layout of Liu Bang, it is through careful planning from the economic, political and military aspects, Liu Bang built a set of strategic guidelines based on Changling, and the grand project of Changling finally did not pose a threat to the rule of the Han Dynasty.
So, why is Liu Bang's mausoleum called Changling?It is said that because Liu Bang attached great importance to feng shui when choosing the site, he felt that this place was very auspicious, allowing him to continue to enjoy the glory and power of his life underground. Therefore, he ordered the mausoleum to be built on this land and named it "Changling".
There is no definitive answer to this question, but historians speculate that Empress Lü wanted to prove his power in this way. In the regulation of the imperial tombs of the Western Han Dynasty at that time, the scale of the later tombs should be much smaller than the imperial tombs to reflect the supremacy of imperial power. However, Empress Lü expanded the size of her tomb to a similar size as the imperial tomb, which was clearly an act of arrogance and disrespect.
The mainstream view is that Empress Lu wanted to prove her power in this way. After Liu Bang's death, Empress Lü actually became the de facto ruler of the Western Han Dynasty, and her lust for power continued to expand, so her tomb continued to expand. But why did she do it, and what did she want to prove?These questions are no longer known.
In any case, as the first imperial tomb of the Western Han Dynasty, Changling not only reflects the wisdom and strategic vision of a generation of emperors, but also witnesses the changes of history and the vicissitudes of time. This mausoleum is not only a witness to the history of the Western Han Dynasty, but also one of the important cultural heritages in Chinese history.