The emperor went mad and sent a strong army to suppress. At last, Liu Ju was defeated and committed suicide. At his late age, he also seeked the way of how to make himselve live forever. But he failed. It was also his mistake that his son was killed. All these things had a great effect on his health. Finally he passed away naturally.
He killed his son by mistake. During the end of his reign, Emperor Wudi was scared because he always believed that some other people used witchcraft against him. Then he ordered to find these people. More than ten thousands of people were killed.
He claimed that Liu Ju had many puppets in his palace. Liu Ju was afraid that his father would punish him. Therefore, he followed his counsellor's suggestion to kill Jiang Chong. However, he failed. Then Emperor Wudi sent an army to defeat Liu Ju. At the end, Liu Ju committed suicide.
Several months later, the truth was revealt. Emperor Wudi killed Jiang Chong and his families. Demon in a Taoist Temple Dr. He preached a religious message centered on the god of the kitchen and associated dietary regimens. These, he said, could yield immortality. Claiming that he himself was an old man, despite his apparent youth, he charmed many members of the elite and was brought before the emperor for an audience.
If you 1fashion eating vessels of this gold, you will prolong your life. Then you can visit the immortals who live on the island of Penglai in the middle of the sea. If you visit them and perform the fengshan sacrifices, you will never die. The emperor did as Li said and dispatched fangshi practitioners to search out the immortals in Penglai. Li Shaojun soon died, but the emperor believed that he was only transformed, and continued to have faith in his teachings, though none of the men he sent off to sea managed to get to Penglai.
The success of Li Shaojun led many fangshi to the Han court in search of imperial patronage, and the emperor became an easy mark.
The emperor, who was separated from them only by a curtain, was deeply moved. He made Shaoweng an honorary general and a very rich man. After a time, however, Shaoweng went too far. When these were explored, the writing was found. The emperor, however, recognized the handwriting. Later he installed another shamaness in the new religious precincts that Shaoweng had convinced him to build. These two women were known as the Spiritual Princesses.
He sent to the latter of the two Spiritual Princesses asking for her diagnosis. She sent to him a message that he should not be concerned about his sickness, but that when he felt up to it, he should visit her. The emperor did, in fact, improve shortly, and when he followed her request and went to see her, he was soon completely cured.
Important deities frequently spoke to the emperor through her, and would even host him at meals, though they required the Spiritual Princess to do the actual serving. Occasionally, the Spiritual Princess summoned down these deities in their own form so that they could converse with the emperor directly, separated only by a curtain. Sima Qian concludes his account of this episode as follows. But they delighted the emperor deep in his heart.
The whole affair was kept secret, and people knew nothing about it. Luan had studied with the same teacher as had Shaoweng, but, because the emperor now regretted having killed Shaoweng without first learning all his arts, he greeted the arrival of Luan Da with enthusiasm. Apart from being able to turn cinnabar to gold and commune with the immortals who he said had specifically declined to give him their secrets until he was in the service of the emperor , he also claimed the power to repair a break in the Yellow River dikes that was at the time plaguing the regions of the northern plain.
Wu-di assured Luan Da that he had been misinformed about his predecessor. Within a few months, Luan Da was wearing simultaneously the emblems of six different offices of high general. Wu-di issued a proclamation that spoke of the great flood-tamer Yu, and announced that Luan Da had been created a marquis and would soon be solving all problems of water conservancy concerning the Yellow River.
At midnight ceremonies ritually designed to indicate that Luan Da was the equal rather than the subject of the emperor, he was invested with the most honored symbols of imperial trust.
He was presented with a palace at the capital, a thousand servants, ten thousand catties of gold, and a daughter of the emperor to boot. After a period of time, however, Wu-di noticed that he had not got word from Luan Da, so he sent some officers of the court off to learn what had become of him. They reported that Luan was living near Mt.
Tai, where he was often seen offering sacrifices to the spirits. He had not, however, been sighted in the company of any spiritual beings, and had, moreover, made no plans to set sail. Tai Dr. Once these had been mounted successfully, the emperor repeated the effort several times during his reign Sima Qian was among the members of his entourage on at least one occasion. In preparation for his initial enactment of them, he planned a period of several months to ensure that all arrangements had been made according to the proper li.
These men, led by the imperial erudites, were assembled before the emperor at court. Instead of instructing him on the actions he should take, the Confucians began to bicker among themselves.
One of them strongly objected to the personnel whom the emperor had assigned to supervise the sacrificial process. Another man began to lobby among the scholars to form an alternative group of supervisors, which he would head. The only moment of unanimity seemed to occur when the emperor ordered that the golden vessels that he had commissioned for the rite be brought out and shown to the scholars. The grand procession that marched slowly across China towards Mt.
Tai that summer stopped frequently to conduct great prefatory sacrifices. When the sacred mountain was finally reached, Wu-di ascended to the top with only a single assistant. At the summit, Wu-di communed with Heaven using ceremonies of his own invention. These were kept entirely secret and were never divulged. One of these consorts was the mother of the heir apparent, and her family looked forward to great favor under the successor of the old and ailing Wu-di.
Members of her family held a number of high posts at court and were closely associated with the expansionist policies that Wu-di had pursued. In 91, the enormous cost of these policies had become evident, and the wisdom of pursuing them was an issue under debate at the highest levels.
Given this political climate and the frailty of the emperor, the family of the second consort determined that this would be the best time to attempt to unseat the heir and establish their own candidate in his stead.
Voodoo dolls and secret spells were planted in the compounds of high ranking families by their political enemies, who then stage-managed searches and counter-searches to unearth the planted evidence.
Tens of thousands of people were killed in the fighting, and every possible adult male heir to the throne was slaughtered. He elected to designate three ministers as a triumvirate empowered to rule as joint regents after his death. Two days before he died, Wu-di designated a young boy who was one of his few remaining sons — and who was the grandson of one of the regents — to succeed him.
It was only the loyal leadership of the chief regent over the next decade that preserved the dynasty. The dynasty was named after the Han river valley, from whence Gao Zu ruled the empire. Unlike the preceding Qin government, which persecuted Confucianism, Gao Zu organized his administration around its principles. The Han Empire was divided into a series of areas governed by bureaucratic officials, whose appointments were largely based upon merit. This system was so successful that the empire throve and expanded its boundaries, extending from Vietnam in the south to Korea in the north, and far into Central Asia in the West.
The biggest threat to the Han Empire was the confederacy of nomadic peoples known as the Xiongnu see the section on the Xiongnu for more details. A military commander named Zhang Qian was sent by the Han emperor Wudi on two diplomatic mission, the first around BCE and the second around BCE, in order to locate potential allies against the Xiongnu.
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