Dou Xian

Dou Xian was the general of the Later Han who commanded the army that went out against the Northern Xiongnu in AD 89. He met the Northern Chanyu at Mount Jiluo, and the chanyu’s host broke. Eighty-one tribes, more than 200,000 people, came over to the Han. The northern realm did not outlast AD 93.^[1] Dou Xian then climbed Mount Yanran and had a stone cut. The stone named the camp of Bagatur and the court of Laoshang among the things his army had trodden and burned.^[2]

Before the campaign

Dou Xian was a great-grandson of Dou Rong. His father was put to death when he was young. His sister became empress. As a result he came to the palace, first as a gentleman and then as a palace attendant.^[2] He took the garden of an imperial princess at a price below its worth. When the emperor Zhang drove past the garden, he learned whose it was. He told Dou Xian that the state would cast him off like a rotten rat.^[2] Under the emperor He, the empress dowager held the court. Dou Xian handled the secret business inside, while he proclaimed the decrees outside.^[2]

The Hou Han Shu describes him as a hasty man who repaid every small grudge.^[2] One such grudge ended in a killing. Dou Xian sent a retainer to stab Chang, Marquis of Duxiang, in the guards’ quarters. He laid the blame on Chang’s brother. When it came out, the empress dowager shut him up in the inner palace.^[2]

Fearing for his life, he asked to be allowed to attack the Xiongnu, to buy his way out of death. The Southern Chanyu had asked at the same time for troops to go north.^[2] The chapter on the Southern Xiongnu quotes the Southern Chanyu’s request. His father, the request says, had come over to the Han forty years earlier. His people had lived on Han gifts since then. The success or failure of his realm, the request says, turned on that year.^[3] Dou Xian was made General of Chariots and Cavalry. He received a gold seal and purple ribbon, and Geng Bing became his deputy. The Northern Army, the border cavalry of twelve commanderies and Qiang and Hu auxiliaries were put under him.^[2]

The court was not united. Yuan An, the Minister over the Masses, joined the Grand Commandant Song You, the Minister of Works Ren Wei and the nine ministers in a memorial. The memorial said that the Xiongnu had not troubled the frontier. To tire the army with a march far beyond the wall, to waste the funds of the state and to hunt for merit ten thousand li away, it said, was no plan for the altars of the realm.^[4] The memorials were laid aside. Song You then withdrew his name. The ministers fell away one by one. Yuan An and Ren Wei stood their ground. They argued the case ten times, to the point of taking off their caps in the audience hall. The empress dowager did not listen.^[4]

The march of 89

In AD 89, the first year of Yongyuan, the army went out from the frontier. Dou Xian and Geng Bing each took four thousand horse from Jilu fort. They were joined by ten thousand horse of Shizi, the Left Guli King of the Southern Xiongnu. The Southern Chanyu Tuntuhe came out by the Manyi valley with more than ten thousand. The Duliao general Deng Hong set out with eight thousand border auxiliaries, and the Left Worthy King Anguo with ten thousand. Both left by Guyang fort. All of them were to meet at Mount Zhuoye.^[2] Chapter 89 counts the same force differently. It gives eight thousand Han horse and thirty thousand of the Southern Chanyu.^[3]

At Zhuoye, Dou Xian sent the deputy colonel Yan Pan and the officers Geng Kui and Geng Tan against the Northern Chanyu. Shizi, the Right Huyan King Xuzi and more than ten thousand picked horse went with them. They fought at Mount Jiluo. The host of the Northern Chanyu broke, and the chanyu ran. The pursuit went through the tribes as far as the Sigu Bidi Sea. The chapter counts 13,000 beheaded, among them kings of renown. It counts more than a million head of horses, cattle, sheep and camels taken with the prisoners.^[2] Eighty-one tribes with their kings, more than 200,000 people in all, came over to the Han.^[2]

A modern account assesses the victory more cautiously. Most of what is known about the battle comes from the stone that Dou Xian had cut at the end of the first campaign. The stone records the success of a prince who had been sent out to earn a pardon for crimes committed at court.^[5] The same account counts only about eight thousand Han soldiers in the army, beside eight thousand Qiang and thirty thousand Southern Xiongnu.^[6] It separates the fort Jilu on the frontier from Mount Jiluo, and puts the mountain near the Gaoque pass north of the Ordos, a gate between two peaks on what had long been an ordinary Han frontier. This account places the battle near the border and holds the Xiongnu defeat smaller than the stone claims.^[7]^[8]

A modern account calls this the greatest military defeat the Northern Xiongnu suffered.^[9] The same account stresses that the Han forces were not Chinese alone. The Southern Xiongnu, the Qiang, the Wuhuan and the Xianbei rode with them.^[10] The inscription itself lists the Southern Chanyu, the eastern Wuhuan and the lords and chiefs of the Qiang and Di among the army.^[2] The force sent against the Northern Chanyu at Jiluo was made up of Southern Xiongnu horse under their own kings. The battle was therefore largely one between Xiongnu.^[2] The campaigns of AD 87 to 93 are told in their own article.

The stone on Mount Yanran

Dou Xian and Geng Bing went on and climbed Mount Yanran, more than three thousand li beyond the frontier. There they cut a stone to record the might and virtue of the Han. Dou Xian ordered Ban Gu to compose the inscription.^[2]

The biography gives the text of the inscription. It opens with the season, autumn, the seventh month. It names the Han emperor’s maternal uncle, the General of Chariots and Cavalry. It counts thirty thousand swift cavalry and more than thirteen thousand wagons, drilled in the eight formations. It names the allies of the army: the Southern Chanyu, the eastern Wuhuan, and the lords and chiefs of the Qiang and Di. Then it follows the march: over Zhuoye, across Anhou, up Yanran. Beyond Yanran the army trod on the camps of Modun, as the inscription writes the name of Bagatur. The army also burned the Dragon Court of Laoshang. The next lines give the reasons: to vent the old anger of Gao and Wen, to honour the spirits of the ancestors, and to spread the Heaven-given voice of the great Han.^[2] The two chanyus it names had died more than two centuries before.^[11]

The Northern Chanyu’s answer

After the battle, Dou Xian sent the staff officers Wu Si and Liang Feng north with gold and silk for the Northern Chanyu. Soldiers followed them. The north was in disorder. More than ten thousand men came over to the envoys on the road. The envoys found the chanyu on the Western Sea. He bowed his head to the ground before the edict. Liang Feng urged him to follow the example of Huhanye. The chanyu was pleased and set out with him for the Sigu Sea. There he learned that the Han army had already gone back inside the frontier. He sent his brother, the Right Wenyudi King, to serve at the Han court, with tribute. Dou Xian reported that the chanyu had not come in person. Dou Xian sent the brother back.^[2]

The Southern Chanyu sent Dou Xian an ancient bronze tripod from north of the desert. The tripod held five dou. It bore the name of Zhong Shanfu and a wish that sons and grandsons keep it for ten thousand years. Dou Xian presented it to the throne.^[2] Liang Feng’s later fate is told in his son’s biography. He displeased Dou Xian and was sent in disgrace to Wuwei. There the governor put him to death. After the fall of the Dou, the emperor He learned that Dou Xian had falsely accused him.^[12]

The Northern Chanyu sent the Chexie Chu king to Juyan fort. The chanyu asked to come to court and requested a great envoy. Dou Xian sent Ban Gu with Liang Feng to meet him. Meanwhile the Southern Xiongnu broke the Northern Chanyu, who fled wounded. Ban Gu turned back at the Sigu Sea.^[2] Chapter 89 tells how this happened. In the spring of the second year, the Southern Xiongnu came in two columns, left and right, by separate roads. They met at night and surrounded the chanyu. He fought with a thousand picked men and was wounded. He fell from his horse, remounted and escaped with a few dozen riders. His jade seal was taken, and with it his consort and five others, men and women.^[3]

Dou Xian thought the north weak and wished to destroy it. In the summer of the third year of Yongyuan, AD 91, he sent Geng Kui, Ren Shang and Zhao Bo against the Northern Chanyu at Mount Jinwei. They defeated him heavily, and the chanyu fled. The chapter says that where he went was not known.^[1] One modern study has him reach the Ili valley in 91.^[9]

The chanyu’s younger brother Yuchujian, the Right Guli King, proclaimed himself chanyu at the Pulei Sea with a few thousand followers. He asked to be admitted at the frontier. Dou Xian wrote to the throne. The court recognised Yuchujian as Northern Chanyu. In AD 92, Geng Kui brought him the seal and cords. A Han officer was posted with him at Yiwu.^[3] The biography of Yuan An names the candidate that Dou Xian proposed: Atong, a Left Guli King who had surrendered. It records that Yuan An and Ren Wei opposed the proposal. They argued that the emperor Guangwu had set up the Southern Chanyu to secure the south and settle the north. The present Southern Chanyu had himself proposed the campaign that emptied the north. To put a newcomer on the northern court would break faith with him.^[4] The chapters do not say whether Atong and Yuchujian are two men or one man under two transcriptions.

The fall

Dou Xian was made Grand General. He was offered the fief of the Marquis of Wuyang with twenty thousand households, and he refused it. His brothers took high office. Two officials who crossed him took their own lives.^[2] In AD 92, the fourth year of Yongyuan, the emperor planned a coup with the eunuch Zheng Zhong. He waited until Dou Xian and his deputy Deng Die came back to the capital with their army. He then shut the city gates. He arrested Dou Xian’s confederates, and they were put to death. He took the seals from Dou Xian. Out of regard for the empress dowager, he did not wish to have Dou Xian executed by name. He sent Dou Xian to his fief with an official to watch him. There Dou Xian and his brothers Du and Jing were forced to take their own lives.^[2] Chapter 89 says only that Dou Xian was put to death at the moment when the plan to bring Yuchujian back to the northern court was under way. The next year, Yuchujian broke away and rode north. A Han officer followed him with a thousand horse. The officer lured him back and had him beheaded. Yuchujian’s people were destroyed.^[3]

The verdicts

Fan Ye ranks the deed above the earlier wars of the Han. He writes that Wei Qing and Huo Qubing spent the strength of the empire for years against the Xiongnu and never overcame them. Later ages nevertheless praise them as good generals. Dou Xian emptied the northern court in a single stroke, with an army of Qiang, Hu and border levies. Later ages do not praise him, because the end of his life ruined the record.^[2]

The closing judgement of the same history on the Southern Xiongnu faults him on one count. He prized the effect of three victories and neglected the long plan. By setting up a new Northern Chanyu on the old court, he served his own interest and cast away the public good.^[3]

What followed on the steppe was the work of the Xianbei. Hou Han Shu 90 says that the Xianbei moved into the vacated country after Dou Xian’s army broke the Xiongnu and the northern chanyu fled. The Xiongnu who stayed, more than a hundred thousand encampments, all called themselves Xianbei.^[13] The modern account agrees that the Xianbei took the territory the Northern Xiongnu left empty after 91.^[14]