The year 46 A.D. was a year of many disasters for the Eastern Han Dynasty. This year, the sky and the earth have dealt a heavy blow.
In May, the sun was suddenly swallowed up by dark shadows, and the sky was plunged into darkness. This is not the fall of night, but a rare solar eclipse.
In ancient times, solar eclipses were often seen as a bad omen and a sign that something big was about to happen. This solar eclipse undoubtedly caused great panic and uneasiness in both the Eastern Han court and the people.
However, the disaster did not end there. Only four months later, in September, the earth suddenly shook violently, and a rare large ** erupted in the Nanyang area.
The Book of the Later Han Dynasty and the Five Elements Chronicles describes in detail the scene of this **: "The earth was cracked, the people were crushed, the dead children were collected, the forests were broken, the cities were broken, the roads were blocked, the beasts fled, and all things were lost." ”
And the Book of the Later Han Dynasty and the Chronicles of Emperor Guangwu also recorded the huge damage caused to the Nanyang area by this **: "Nanyang ** cracked, dozens of miles wide, or the ground subsided several zhang, or landslides. ”
This ** is not only wide-ranging, but also extremely destructive, bringing great disasters to the people in the Nanyang area.
During this period, the Xiongnu experienced a series of changes. Xiongnu Shan Yuyu died, and his son Zuoxian Wang Wuda Yu succeeded him, but the reign of the new Shan Yu did not last long, and he died soon after. Subsequently, Shan Yu's position passed to the younger brother of the Marquis of Wuda, Zuoxian Wang Punu.
At this time, the situation in the Xiongnu was not optimistic. Years of drought and locust plagues have left thousands of miles of land barren, people and animals starving, and epidemics raging, resulting in the death and consumption of a large number of people. Faced with such a predicament, Shan Yu was deeply anxious, and he feared that the Han Dynasty would take this opportunity to launch an attack on him.
In order to ease tensions with the Han Dynasty, Shan Yu decided to send an envoy to Yuyang to ask for peace. Emperor Guangwu of the Eastern Han Dynasty responded to this by sending Zhonglang to negotiate with the Xiongnu envoys.
Just when the Xiongnu were in internal and external troubles, the Wuhuan tribe seized this opportunity. Taking advantage of the weakness of the Xiongnu, they launched a fierce attack. As a result of this war, the Xiongnu were forced to migrate thousands of miles north, abandoning their former territory of Munan (Yizuo Monan, an area south of the Great Desert of the Mongolian Plateau). With the evacuation of the Xiongnu, the Munan area became empty and uninhabited.
The Eastern Han court was keenly aware of this change in the situation. They seized the opportunity to issue an edict to abolish the pavilions and officials in the border counties in order to reduce military expenditures and administrative burdens. At the same time, in order to consolidate its control over the border areas, the Eastern Han court also used money and silk to recruit the Wuhuan tribe in an attempt to bring them into its sphere of influence.
In the Western Regions, when Shache Wang Xian learned that the Eastern Han Dynasty would not send Du Hu to the Western Regions, he seized the opportunity to launch an attack on Shanshan and successfully defeated it, even killing the King of Qiuci.
Faced with such a situation, Shanshan Wang An sent a letter to the Eastern Han Dynasty, expressing his willingness to send the prince to the Eastern Han Dynasty as a chamberlain again, and eagerly begging the Eastern Han Dynasty to send the capital protector to protect them. In the book, he confessed that without the support of the Protector, they would have to submit to the Xiongnu.
However, Liu Xiu said in his reply that at present, neither the emissaries nor the troops of the Eastern Han Dynasty could go to the Western Regions. He suggested that if the countries of the Western Regions felt unable to defend themselves, they were free to choose to ally with any powerful nation.
Therefore, after weighing the trade-offs, Shanshan and Cheshi and other countries decided to choose to become vassals of the Xiongnu again.