The Zhou–Qi war, 557–577

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

Northern China was divided for twenty years between two states that had come out of the same broken empire. Neither could finish the other alone. The Northern Zhou held Guanzhong and the north-west from Chang’an. The Northern Qi held the eastern plain from Ye. The frontier between them ran through Shanxi and along the Yellow River. Both courts sent gifts to the same khan. In 563, one of them got him to march.^[1]

This makes the war part of Göktürk history and not only Chinese. It is the first war in which a Göktürk army fought inside China beside a Chinese army, under an agreement made in advance, for a share of the profit.^[2] The khaganate took plunder and a marriage from it. It took no land and never asked for any.

The two states

The Western Wei ended in 557, when Yuwen Tai’s son took the throne from the last Wei emperor and founded the Zhou.^[1] In the east the Gao house had already made the same change. The Qi dated itself from 550. Each state was the successor of one half of the Northern Wei. Each had a Xianbei military caste over a Chinese population. Each claimed the whole.

For most of the war the Zhou were the smaller and poorer of the two. They held the alliance the Göktürks had kept since the embassy of 545.^[2] The Qi were richer and held the better land. They bid for the same alliance with heavier gifts.^[1] The khan took from both. The Zhou Shu says in six characters what that cost the eastern court: 傾府藏以給之, they emptied the treasury to supply him.^[1]

For fifteen years power at Chang’an lay not with the emperor but with Yuwen Hu, who set up and removed three of them. The third, Emperor Wu, outlived Yuwen Hu. In 572 he killed him and took the war into his own hands.

The bargain of 562 and 563

Emperor Wu wanted the Qi and could not have them without help. The help he wanted was cavalry.^[2] The offer he made Mukan had two parts. Göktürk and Zhou troops would go into Qi territory together, which had never happened before. Whatever the Göktürks took out of Qi territory they would keep.^[2] In return Mukan would give a daughter to the emperor.^[2]

Mukan agreed. He broke off with the Qi envoys, who had come with a richer offer. The marriage was settled, and Mukan himself asked for the campaign to the east.^[1] The khaganate thereby entered a Chinese war as a paid ally under a contract. The contract was paid in booty.

The campaigns of 563 and 564

The Zhou opened on two fronts. In the south Daxi Wu marched on the frontier city of Pingyang. In the north Yang Zhong crossed the Xing ridge with ten thousand men. Mukan met him with a hundred thousand horse.^[1] The joined army entered Qi territory by Guang’an and advanced on Jinyang. The Qi used this garrison city as their second capital and as their shield against the steppe.^[2]

The winter campaign against Jinyang has its own article. In short, the Qi emperor Wucheng rode north himself and the city held. The allies lay before it through the winter of 563 and 564. In the first month of 564 their assault failed.^[1] Mukan let his men plunder the country and went home.^[1] In the spring Wucheng forced the allied army back. In the south, Hulü Guang beat Daxi Wu.^[2]

Yang Zhong came back to Chang’an with a judgement on his allies, which the Zhou Shu preserves in full. He told the emperor that the Göktürks had bad armour, light rewards, many chiefs and no laws, and that they were not hard to handle. The envoys who talked up their strength, he said, should all be beheaded.^[1] The emperor did not listen.^[1]

Later in the same year Mukan sent tribute again and asked for a second eastern campaign. Yuwen Hu ordered Yang Zhong out by Woye towards Luoyang. Yuwen Hu’s fighting went badly. Mukan drew back.^[1] The Zhou made the offensive of the following year alone. The Göktürks did not join it, and the Qi generals beat it quickly.^[2]

Result of the intervention

Two years of joint war took no city and gained no ground. By the aim Emperor Wu had set, the war failed.^[2]

By the terms Mukan had agreed to, it did not fail. The Göktürks had been promised the plunder of Qi territory, and they took it. They had lost nothing worth recording. They were not obliged to appear a second time.^[2] The Qi court concluded that the raiding it now feared came from the north rather than the west. The treasury therefore opened wider.^[1]

The marriage went the other way. The lost war changed the climate at Chang’an. In the spring of 565 a Zhou delegation of a hundred and twenty came under Yuwen Chun to fetch the bride. Mukan refused her and held the delegation.^[2] He released her in 568, after a storm wrecked his golden tent. Empress Ashina reached Chang’an in the third month of that year, and the emperor received her in person.^[3] The alliance that was sealed by a marriage survived the failure of the war it was made for. It also survived three years of open bad faith.

The end of the Qi, 577

Twelve years later Emperor Wu took almost all of Qi territory without Göktürk help.^[4] The Qi annals record what their last emperor considered when Jinyang could not be held. He meant to run to the Göktürks, 卽欲奔突厥. His ministers told him to a man that it could not be done.^[4] A few days later he broke out of the city by night, still meaning to run north. He turned back to Ye instead.^[4]

He never reached the steppe. A Qi prince, Gao Shaoyi, did. Taspar set him up at Ötüken as emperor of a state that no longer had territory. Taspar kept him for years and handed him over in the end.^[1] A single strong China on the southern frontier was worth less to the khan than two weak ones. Once the Qi were gone, he supported the losing side to keep the war alive.

Assessment

The war decided who would rule northern China and, through that, who would face the steppe. The unification of 577 led to the Sui in 581. It also led to the wars in which a united China learned that the khaganate could be divided rather than bought. In two campaigns, the Göktürks had helped to build the state that would do this.

For the khaganate itself, the years 563 and 564 are the first evidence of a method that outlasted Mukan. The method was to fight where someone else pays, take the movable property, not hold ground, and keep both Chinese courts alive. The Hegemony Wars article covers the sequence as a whole.