Wei Qing

Wei Qing led the Han armies that took the Ordos from the Xiongnu. His armies caught the Right Worthy King drunk in his camp. They sent the chanyu across the Gobi. The Shiji and the Han Shu count seven sorties against the Xiongnu under his command. They count more than 50,000 heads and captives taken.^[1] He began as a rider in the household of a marquis and ended as Grand General. His half-sister became empress. The Shiji dates the rise of the house of Wei from his first marquisate.^[2]

Origins

Wei Qing came from Pingyang. His father, Zheng Ji, was a clerk who served the household of the marquis of Pingyang. There he had a liaison with Dame Wei, who bore Wei Qing. The Shiji calls her a concubine of the marquis. The Han Shu, by contrast, calls her a servant of the princess’s household.^[1] He took the surname Wei after his half-sister Wei Zifu. She came from the house of Princess Pingyang and found favour with the emperor.^[2]

As a boy he was sent to his father’s house and put to herd sheep. His father’s other sons treated him as a slave. They did not count him a brother.^[2] At the Ganquan palace a convict in an iron collar looked at his face and said that he would be a marquis. Wei Qing laughed. A man born a bondservant, he answered, would be content to be spared the whip and the curses. A marquisate was no concern of his.^[2]

In 139 BC, the second year of the Jianyuan period, Zifu entered the palace and was favoured.^[2] The empress, a daughter of the Great Princess of Tangyi, had no son and was jealous. The Great Princess heard that Zifu was with child. She had Wei Qing seized and meant to kill him. His friend Gongsun Ao, a gentleman of the cavalry, took strong men and snatched him away.^[2] The emperor Wudi heard of it. He made Wei Qing supervisor at the Jianzhang palace and an attendant. Within days, the gifts to him and his mother’s children came to a thousand pieces of gold. Zifu became a consort, and Wei Qing became a Grand Palace Grandee.^[2]

The first sorties, 129 to 127 BC

In the autumn of 129 BC the Han sent four generals with 10,000 horse each against the Xiongnu at the frontier markets.^[3] Wei Qing, as General of Chariots and Cavalry, went out from Shanggu and reached Longcheng. The Shiji names Longcheng as the place where the Xiongnu held their great assembly in the fifth month. There they sacrificed to their ancestors, to Heaven and Earth and to the spirits.^[3] Wei Qing took several hundred heads and captives. The Shiji’s chapter on the Xiongnu counts seven hundred.^[4]

The other three generals did worse. Gongsun Ao lost 7,000 horsemen. The Xiongnu took Li Guang alive, but he escaped. Gongsun He found nobody. Ao and Guang were due to be beheaded. They bought their way down to commoners.^[2] Wei Qing alone was rewarded, with the rank of marquis within the passes.^[5]

In 128 BC the Xiongnu killed the governor of Liaoxi. They carried off more than 2,000 people.^[3] Wei Qing answered with 30,000 horse out of Yanmen. He took several thousand heads and captives.^[6] In the same year Zifu bore the emperor a son. She was made empress.^[2]

In 127 BC he went out from Yunzhong, west to Gaoque, and on to Longxi.^[7] The Shiji counts the kings of Loufan and Baiyang among the Hu. It says that Wei Qing drove them off.^[7] The land south of the river became the Shuofang commandery. The Han mended the old frontier works of the Qin. Wei Qing was made Marquis of Changping with 3,800 households.^[7] The emperor’s edict counted 2,300 heads at Gaoque and more than 3,000 more taken lying in wait. It said that the army drove home more than a million horses, cattle and sheep.^[1] The edict also compared the war with the war of the Odes against the Xianyun. It quoted the line about walling Shuofang.^[2] In the same year the Han gave up the Zaoyang land of Shanggu to the Hu.^[3] From then on the Ordos stayed in Han hands.^[8]

The Right Worthy King took the loss badly. He resented the Han seizure of the land south of the river and the building of Shuofang. He raided the frontier again and again. He entered the land south of the river to harry Shuofang.^[3]

The Right Worthy King, 124 BC

In the spring of 124 BC Wei Qing went out of Shuofang and Gaoque with six generals under him and more than 100,000 men in all.^[3] The Right Worthy King had decided that the Han could not come so far. He sat drinking until he was drunk. The Han, 600 or 700 li beyond the passes, reached his camp in the night and surrounded it.^[3] He fled in the dark with one favourite concubine and a few hundred strong riders. He broke through the ring and went north.^[2] Guo Cheng, a colonel of light cavalry, followed for several hundred li and did not catch him. The Han took more than ten of the king’s lesser kings, 15,000 men and women, and animals by the million.^[2]

At the frontier an envoy met the army with the seal of a Grand General. He gave it to Wei Qing in the field. All the generals were put under his orders.^[2] The emperor then made Wei Qing’s three young sons marquises. Wei Qing refused. His sons were still in swaddling clothes, he said, and the credit belonged to the colonels who had fought. The emperor answered that he had not forgotten the colonels. In the same edict, he ennobled Gongsun Ao, Gongsun He, Li Cai and others.^[2] That autumn the Xiongnu entered Dai and killed a commandant, Zhu Ying.^[2]

Zhao Xin, 123 BC

In 123 BC Wei Qing went out of Dingxiang with six generals: Gongsun Ao, Gongsun He, Zhao Xin, Su Jian, Li Guang and Li Ju.^[2] They came back with several thousand heads. A month later, he went out of Dingxiang again. He took more than 10,000. By the Shiji’s count, the two sorties together took more than 19,000 heads and captives.^[4]

The Han paid for it with a column of 3,000 horse. Su Jian and Zhao Xin had joined their forces. Alone, they met the troops of the chanyu. They fought for a day and more until the Han were almost gone. Zhao Xin had been a Hu and had gone over to the Han, who made him Marquis of Xi. Pressed now, he listened to the Xiongnu who coaxed him. With some 800 riders, he rode to the chanyu and surrendered.^[2] Su Jian lost the whole column and came back alone.^[2]

The chanyu made Zhao Xin the king next in rank to himself and gave him his own elder sister as wife. Zhao Xin advised him to withdraw farther north, beyond the desert. The Han armies would be worn out crossing it. The Xiongnu could then take them at the end of their strength. The chanyu followed the plan.^[3]

At Wei Qing’s headquarters the officers argued over Su Jian. The councillor Zhou Ba said that he should be beheaded, to show the general’s authority. Hong, the officer of justice, and An, the chief clerk, said that he should not. Their argument was that Su Jian had met the chanyu’s tens of thousands with a few thousand men and had fought for a day and more. He had come back of his own will. Wei Qing said that his office allowed him to behead a general. He did not dare to kill one on his own authority beyond the frontier. He would report to the emperor and let the emperor decide. That would show that a minister did not seize power. The officers agreed. The emperor spared Su Jian. Su Jian bought himself off as a commoner.^[1]

On this campaign, the colonel Zhang Qian guided the army. He had been in Daxia and had lived long among the Xiongnu. He knew where the water and the grass were, so that the army did not go hungry or thirsty. He was made Marquis of Bowang.^[9] It was also the year in which his nephew Huo Qubing, aged eighteen, first made his name.^[2]

Mobei, 119 BC

In the spring of 119 BC the emperor and his generals planned to cross the desert and meet the chanyu where Zhao Xin had told him to wait.^[7] Wei Qing and Huo Qubing took 50,000 horse each. The best fighters were assigned to Huo.^[2] Wei Qing went out of Dingxiang. A thousand li and more beyond the barrier, he found the chanyu’s troops drawn up and waiting. He had his chariots form a ring camp. He sent 5,000 horse against the chanyu’s troops. A gale rose at dusk, and neither side could see the other. The chanyu left under cover of the gale with a few hundred riders. Wei Qing’s army pursued him through the night without finding him.^[2] Turkic Atlas tells the campaign in full under Mobei.

His own army killed or took 19,000 heads and captives on this march.^[2] The front general Li Guang and the right general Zhao Shiqi had gone by the eastern road. They lost their way and came late. When Wei Qing met them again south of the desert, he wished to report. He sent his chief clerk to take Li Guang’s statement in writing. Li Guang killed himself. Zhao Shiqi bought himself off as a commoner.^[2]

Wei Qing received no new fief for this campaign. None of his officers and men was made a marquis.^[2]

After Mobei

Of the 140,000 horses counted at the barrier when the two armies went out, fewer than 30,000 came back. The post of Grand Marshal was created, and Wei Qing and Huo Qubing both received it. A new rule made Huo Qubing’s salary equal to his uncle’s.^[2] From then on, the Shiji says, Wei Qing declined and Huo Qubing grew in honour. Most of Wei Qing’s old clients went to serve Huo and received office. Only Ren An refused.^[2]

The Shiji describes Wei Qing as kind, yielding and gentle in manner. It says that the empire spoke no praise of him.^[2] Su Jian once told him that scholars and officials said nothing in his favour. Su Jian asked him to follow the old generals who had recruited worthy men. Wei Qing answered that the emperor loathed the lords Weiqi and Wu’an for the guests they kept. Recruiting men was the ruler’s prerogative, he said. A minister kept the law and did his duty.^[1]

Death and the house of Wei

When the marquis of Pingyang, Cao Shou, fell ill and withdrew to his fief, Princess Pingyang asked which of the marquises was worthy. Those around her named the Grand General. She remarked with a laugh that he had come out of her own house and had once ridden in her train. They answered that he now stood without equal. The princess then had the matter put to the empress. The empress put it to the emperor, and the emperor ordered Wei Qing to marry her.^[5]

Wei Qing died in 106 BC, the fifth year of the Yuanfeng period. He was given the posthumous name Lie.^[10] His tomb was raised in the shape of Mount Lu.^[10] His son Kang succeeded him as marquis of Changping. He lost the fief six years later through a crime.^[2]

In the fourteen years between the encirclement of the chanyu and Wei Qing’s death, the Han did not strike the Xiongnu again in the wars between the two. The Shiji gives the reasons. The Han had few horses left. Its armies were busy against the two Yue in the south, in Chaoxian in the east, and against the Qiang and the peoples of the southwest.^[2] The house of Wei fell in the end. From its rise, with Wei Qing as the first marquis, five marquisates lasted twenty-four years before all were taken away.^[2] When Crown Prince Li fell in the Zhenghe period, the Wei family was destroyed.^[5]