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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Sallent, post: 2755205, member: 76194&quot;][ATTACH=full]631966[/ATTACH]</p><p>Western Han Dynasty</p><p>Emperor Wu Di (141-87 BCE)</p><p>Ae. Wu Zhu (5 Zhus)</p><p>Hartill # 8.10</p><p><br /></p><p>This is my second Wu Zhu and my first from someone other than Wang Mang. Emperor Wu Di was a great man. He ruled for 54 years as Emperor, a record that would not be broken for 1,800 years. During his reign, he conquered the south of China and even conquered large parts of what today is Vietnam. He also conquered half of Korea and parts of the steppes.</p><p><br /></p><p>He was also a brilliant reformer, adopting Confucianism as the state ethic, and set up schools to train future administrators in Confucian classics, a reform that would have a great impact on Chinese Civilization for nearly two millennia.</p><p><br /></p><p>[ATTACH=full]631980[/ATTACH]</p><p><br /></p><p>Unfortunately, this great ruler had <b>a small downside to him</b>. He was bat **** crazy. And I mean the type of crazy that needs to be heavily medicated and in a padded room. But that&#039;s just a tiny detail. It&#039;s not like it became a major issue during his 54-year rule....except that it did.</p><p><br /></p><p>Ok, so he was known for summarily executing his officials from time to time.&nbsp; But it&#039;s not like his officials weren&#039;t corrupt, so one can understand. Surely he never executed anyone that was obviously innocent....except that he sort of did that too, even when presented with clear proof of an official&#039;s innocence, and he did it often!</p><p><br /></p><p>But hey, it&#039;s not like his craziness affected the general population. Well, maybe just a tiny bit. He did tax the peasants into oblivion, and when the poor couldn&#039;t bear to pay anything more because they had nothing to give, he did declare them traitors and sort of cut off a few heads....ok, a few hundred (of thousands). And then he proceeded to kill the officials whose job was to suppress peasant unrest if they dared to report that there was any peasant unrest at all, which meant the poor court officials had to cover up any revolts and unrest in order to keep their heads on their shoulders.</p><p><br /></p><p>At least he did make it a capital crime to falsify any coinage, so it&#039;s all good. <img src="styles/default/xenforo/clear.png" class="mceSmilieSprite mceSmilie1" alt=":)" unselectable="on" unselectable="on" /></p><p><br /></p><p>But you know, it&#039;s not like he went to sleep, had a dream, and then woke up in a state of paranoia and ordered the deaths of people based on what they had done in the Emperor&#039;s dreams. Well, he certainly didn&#039;t do that...except for that one time he executed a few thousand over a bad dream he had.</p><p><br /></p><p>But at least he was a family man. His craziness didn&#039;t affect his family life, if you disregard the small matters of the execution of his wife, and going paranoid over the belief his son was a witch and ordering his death (which forced the son to revolt and eventually be captured and executed).</p><p><br /></p><p>With all of that said, he is highly regarded in China as a strong and effective ruler. It seems the Chinese don&#039;t care too much about the mass killings, paranoia, and mental insanity as long as the ruler conquered a lot and left the empire bigger before dropping dead. So if the Chinese can disregard the insanity fueled mass murder, you can too, and enjoy the wonderful accomplishments of this amazing Western Han Emperor.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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