Wuti Khan

Wuti inherited a defeated people. He did what steppe rulers do after a defeat: he made peace, married a princess and used the years of peace to recover. Then he broke the peace and was hunted for it.^[1]

Peace with the Wei (431–434)

He succeeded his father Datan after the disaster of 429. His title was Chilian Khan, “divine”.^[1] In 431 he sent an embassy with tribute. The Wei Shu explains why.^[1] Scouts on the northern frontier had captured some twenty of Wuti’s southern outriders. Emperor Taiwu had clothed them and sent them home. The Rouran, high and low, were moved to gratitude.^[1] Taiwu received the envoys generously.^[1] In the second month of 434 he gave Wuti the princess of Xihai in marriage. He also sent to take Wuti’s sister as a consort. He later raised her to the rank of Left Zhaoyi.^[1] Wuti sent his brother Tulugui to court with several hundred attendants and two thousand horses. The emperor was greatly pleased and rewarded them richly.^[1] It was the first marriage alliance between the two houses. It lasted two years.^[1]

In the same years the Rouran blocked the road to the west. In 435 the first Wei embassy to the Western Regions, under Wang Ensheng, had barely crossed the desert when the Rouran seized it. They brought the envoys before Wuti.^[2] Wang Ensheng refused to bow. Wuti released the envoys when Taiwu reproached him.^[2]

War (436–444)

In 436 Wuti broke the peace and raided the frontier.^[1] Modern accounts say that Rouran raiding in 436 touched off the war. The Wei tried to build a coalition of the Gaoche, the Wusun, the Yueban and other northern and western neighbours against the Rouran. In this they followed the patterns of earlier Chinese dynasties.^[3] In 438 Taiwu went to Wuyuan. He marched north on three roads with thirty generals.^[1] At Mount Junji the middle road divided again. The emperor’s own column went north towards the Tianshan, climbed Baifu in the west and carved a record of the march in the rock. It saw no Rouran.^[1] That year the northern steppe was in drought, without water or grass. Many of the army’s horses died.^[1]

In 439 Taiwu marched west against Juqu Mujian of the Northern Liang. This was the campaign that sent the Ashina into the Altai. Taiwu left two princes with twenty thousand men south of the desert against the Rouran.^[1] Wuti did raid. The prince in charge of the capital had made no preparation. The Rouran reached Mount Qijie, and the capital panicked and crowded into the inner city.^[1] The minister Zhangsun Daosheng held them at Mount Tutui.^[1] Wuti had left his brother Qieliegui to watch the northern garrisons. The princes broke Qieliegui north of the Yinshan and captured him, together with Wuti’s uncle Tawuwuluhu and five hundred commanders. They beheaded more than ten thousand.^[1] Qieliegui sighed that Juqu had brought him to this.^[1] Wuti fled.

In 443 Taiwu went into the steppe on four roads. He met the Rouran in the Luhun valley, drove Wuti to the Egen river and broke him there. In 444 the emperor went out again to surprise him. Wuti fled far, and the emperor turned back.^[1] The Song Shu, written in the south, presents the campaign of 443 as a Wei defeat. Taiwu came back beaten, and six or seven in ten of his men had died.^[4] The chapter on the Western Regions adds that Wuti sent word to the western states after the failed Wei campaign. He told them that the Wei had grown weak, that he alone was strong, and that they should no longer honour Wei envoys. The passage is a later addition to the chapter, but a record of the Northern Wei period.^[5]

Death

The Wei Shu records his death without giving a year. It also records the accession of his son Tuhezhen, who is called newly established in 449.^[1] The text gives Wuti no reign. The years between 444 and 449 are the likeliest, but they are not attested.^[3] One reckoning ends the reign in 444.^[6] A letter of Taiwu to the Song, written in 450, counts Wuti among the dead. It says that his son died in the second month of that year.^[4] The recovery of the Rouran and, by about 434, their attacks on the Kidara Huns in Bactria belong to his reign. Some scholars take these attacks as a herald of the rise of the Hephthalites. The Wei Shu chapter on the Rouran says nothing of them.^[3]