Emperor Xuan did not dare to openly confront him, so he issued an edict to find a sword he had used. The ministers understood his true intentions and suggested that Xu be made queen. As usual, Xu Guanghan should be made a marquis, but Huo Guang delayed for more than a year on the pretext that he was a man who had been castrated and was not suitable to be the leader of a marquis state. When you give birth again after a while. Huo Guang's wife ordered a female doctor to poison her to death, but Huo Guang's daughter still became the queen. After Emperor Xuan ascended the throne, Huo Guang expressed his intention to hand over the power of power. Of course Emperor Xuan did not dare to accept it. After some humility, he still ordered that everything should be reported to Huo Guang in advance and then reported. Every time Huo Guang met with Emperor Xuan, he was trembling with fear and extremely humble. Emperor Xuan will naturally not forget the fate of King Changyi. Whether he is "virtuous" or not is actually decided by Huo Guang. The only thing Huo Guang cannot deny is his identity as the great-grandson of Emperor Wu, and Huo Guang's power was also granted by Emperor Wu on his deathbed. Therefore, the higher the flag of Emperor Wu is raised, the safer his position will be. In fact, in Emperor Wu's later years, the dissatisfaction of his subjects was already quite serious. Emperor Wu had to issue an edict to ease the conflict. At the Salt and Iron Conference held in the sixth year of Emperor Zhao's reign (81 BC), more than sixty virtuous and literary figures elected from all over the country discussed the sufferings of the people and had a heated debate with Sang Hongyang, the imperial censor. The virtuous and literary scholars severely criticized the military belt's salt and iron official camps, taxation and corvee, the use of troops by the Xiongnu, and the expansion of territory and other policies. Not to mention that the many words they used to criticize Qin Shihuang were actually referring to Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty. Even their direct accusations against Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty were very sharp. Being so convinced of virtue and literature certainly had the tacit approval or support of the ruling general Huo Guang. This was not because Huo Guang intended to betray Emperor Wu, but because the country was in urgent need of recuperation and had to change Emperor Wu's policies. Emperor Xuan, who came from the common people and was close to the lower class, would not have been ignorant of the evil consequences left by Emperor Wu, so he praised Emperor Wu again, gave him the honorary title, and celebrated the temple, which was just a step backwards as a last resort. Although Xia Housheng fiercely criticized Emperor Wu, he did not deny his achievements in "repelling the barbarians and expanding the territory." However, the crimes he listed about Emperor Wu were also ironclad facts, so much so that the Manchu Dynasty followed the imperial edict. The ministers were unable to defend Emperor Wu. Among the facts he listed, "killing many people, depleting the people's wealth, and living in luxury and prosperity" can be said to be a general question. Besides, which emperor does not kill people and is not extravagant? "Locusts are everywhere, and the red ground is thousands of miles away." , or people eating each other" can be explained as being caused by "successive natural disasters"; but the hardest thing to shirk responsibility is "half of things are old". If half of the people in a society are dead, how can the rulers be wise and great? No one has seriously verified whether what Xia Housheng said is true for more than two thousand years, and some people in the contemporary generation disagree. I did some research when writing "Population Geography of the Western Han Dynasty" and found that although the population loss during Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was far from half, it was already extremely serious. During the fifty-four years of Emperor Wu's reign, the population could maintain normal growth (approximately 7% of a thousand per year) for only seven years, which was lower than the normal growth for 21 years, and the population decreased or had no growth for 26 years. . Moreover, the main cause of large-scale population deaths is not natural disasters, but man-made disasters. Of course, some of the series of wars launched by Emperor Wu were necessary and unavoidable, such as countering the invasion of the Huns, and then taking the initiative to eliminate the effective forces of the Huns; but some of them were unnecessary, completely avoidable, and even just to satisfy personal desires. , for example, the use of troops against Dawan in Central Asia was for the purpose of plundering famous local horses and taking the opportunity to let Li Guangli, the brother of his beloved concubine Madam Li, make meritorious services and become a marquis. But no matter what type of war, it will cause a large loss of population, not to mention that it is too large and too frequent. The impact of war is not only direct casualties of the population, but also a large reduction in manpower and animal power used in agricultural production. Most of the battlefields at that time were in distant frontiers, even as far away as the Fergana Basin in Central Asia. The required food and materials had to be transported from the area east of the Taihang Mountains. Sometimes most of the transport personnel or livestock teams were injured and consumed. Only a few tenths of the food reaches the destination. Tens of thousands of livestock were often requisitioned in wars, but all were lost. For example, in the fourth year of Yuanshou (119 BC), Wei Qing and Huo Qubing conquered the Xiongnu.
There were 140,000 horse teams that accompanied the expedition, but less than 30,000 returned; another example is that in the third year of Taichu (102 BC), when Li Guangli sent troops to the Western Regions, he sent hundreds of thousands of men, 100,000 cattle, and 30,000 horses. , tens of thousands of other large animals, and only more than 10,000 people and more than a thousand horses could return to Yumen Pass the following year.