Battle of Zhoupan (582)

In 582 Ishbara Khan invaded the Sui with the united strength of the Göktürks. At Zhoupan he met a Sui force of two thousand men under the field commander Daxi Zhangru.^[1] The Sui men fought for three days and lost nearly all their number.^[1] Then the Göktürks broke off the fight and withdrew.^[1] The battle belongs to the Göktürk–Sui wars.

The invasion of 582

The Sui Shu says that the first Sui emperor treated the Göktürks with little courtesy, and that they resented it bitterly.^[2] Ishbara’s wife, the Zhou princess Qianjin, urged him day and night to avenge her house on the Sui.^[2] In the fifth month of 582, Gao Baoning, a former Qi governor, led the Göktürks against Pingzhou.^[1] The Göktürks called out the bowmen of all five khans, four hundred thousand men. They came inside the Long Wall.^[1] The Sui Shu gives the same number.^[2] One report has Ishbara call in Tardush, Apa and his brother Bagha. In that report the united Göktürks take a broad strip of northern China for the first time.^[3]

The Sui emperor posted his commanders along the frontier. Feng Yu stood at Lake Yifu, Chili Changcha at Lintao, Li Chong at Youzhou and Daxi Zhangru at Zhoupan.^[2] A modern translation places Zhoupan on the northern edge of the Qingyang district in Gansu.^[4]

The battle

The Zizhi tongjian enters the battle in the twelfth month of 582.^[1] Daxi Zhangru met Ishbara at Zhoupan with two thousand men. Ishbara had more than a hundred thousand.^[1] Daxi’s biography, in a modern translation, names two more khans with Ishbara. One is his younger brother the Yehu Khan, whom the translation identifies with the later Bagha Khan. The other is a Panna Khan.^[5]

The Sui soldiers were afraid.^[1] Daxi showed no fear and fought as he moved.^[1] The Göktürk charges scattered his men. They formed again and held on all four sides.^[1] They fought for three days, fourteen times by day and by night, until all their weapons were gone.^[1] Then they fought with their fists, until the bones of their hands showed. They killed and wounded the enemy by the tens of thousands.^[1]

The Göktürks lost heart and withdrew.^[1] Daxi had five wounds, two of them through his body. Eight or nine in ten of his soldiers were dead or wounded.^[1] His biography adds that the Göktürks had meant to strike Qinzhou and Longzhou.^[6] The next day they burned their dead on the field, wailed for them and went away.^[6] The emperor gave Daxi the rank of shang zhuguo and passed his remaining merit to one of his sons.^[1] A modern translation renders the rank as “upper pillar of the state”.^[6]

Two outcomes

The Sui Shu itself tells the battle twice. Its chapter on the Göktürks lists Daxi among the commanders who were all defeated.^[2] The annals of the Sui Shu, in a modern translation, say that the Göktürks invaded Zhoupan and that Daxi attacked them and was beaten.^[7] His biography and the Zizhi tongjian tell the stand after which the invaders withdrew.^[8] In the biography, the emperor’s edict on Daxi claims that his men were one in a hundred of the enemy and destroyed more than half of them.^[6]

Aftermath

The Göktürks then loosed their troops by the two roads of Muxia and Shimen.^[9] In Wuwei, Tianshui, Anding, Jincheng, Shangjun, Honghua and Yan’an they carried off all the livestock.^[9] Ishbara wanted to go further south, but Tardush refused and led his troops away.^[1] The Sui officer Zhangsun Sheng then persuaded Ishbara’s son Yami, whom the Chinese call Rangan, to bring his father a false report. The report said that the Tiele had risen and meant to fall on his camp.^[1] Ishbara took fright and led his army out beyond the frontier.^[1] One report has a real rising of the Tiele draw Tardush back to the west, just as the Göktürks meant to advance on Chang’an.^[3]

The Sui emperor named the place again in his edict for the war of 583.^[9] Ishbara, he wrote, had lately made for Zhoupan. Soon afterwards the Bogu and the Shuheluo inside his own tribes had risen.^[2] The edict opened the Sui counter-offensive.^[1] In the Sui record the same fight stands twice, once as a defeat and once as the stand that turned the invaders back.