Murder of Shishu Huxi

Shishu Huxi was one of the hu at the court of Shibi Khan, and the khan trusted him.^[1] The Sui official Pei Ju lured him to Mayi with the promise of a market. He had Shishu Huxi killed in an ambush below the town.^[1] The Sui then told Shibi that they had killed a traitor for him.^[1] Shibi knew what had happened. From then on he did not come to court.^[1] In 615 the khan besieged the emperor at Yanmen.^[1]

Pei Ju’s plans against Shibi

The plot is told in the biography of Pei Ju in the Sui Shu.^[1] Pei Ju had followed the emperor’s army to the Huaiyuan garrison. He was then put in charge of the military affairs of the northern peoples.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian has the emperor at Huaiyuan in the seventh month of 614.^[2]

Pei Ju saw that Shibi’s people were growing stronger, and he proposed to divide them.^[1] A woman of the imperial clan was to be married to Shibi’s younger brother, the Chiji Shad, who was to be made southern khan.^[1] Chiji did not dare to accept. Shibi heard of the offer and began to resent the Sui.^[1]

Pei Ju tried a second way.^[1] He told the emperor that the Göktürks were simple by nature and easy to set against one another.^[1] The trouble, he said, was the many hu among them. All of them were cunning, and they taught the Göktürks.^[1] Of these he named Shishu Huxi as the most scheming and the one Shibi favoured. He asked leave to lure him out and kill him.^[1] The emperor agreed.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian calls Shishu Huxi a minister of the Göktürks, a man of many plans whom Shibi favoured and trusted.^[2]

The ambush

Pei Ju sent a man to tell Shishu Huxi that the Son of Heaven had brought out precious goods to Mayi. The emperor wished to trade with the frontier peoples there, and whoever came first would get the best things.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian calls it a pretended mutual market.^[2] Shishu Huxi was greedy and believed it.^[1] He set out with his whole tribe without telling Shibi. He drove all his herds before him at speed, hoping to be the first to trade.^[1] Pei Ju had soldiers waiting below Mayi.^[1] They lured Shishu Huxi in and cut off his head.^[1]

The letter to Shibi

An edict went to Shibi.^[1] It said that Shishu Huxi had suddenly come with his tribe. He had said that he had rebelled against the khan and had asked to be taken in.^[1] “Since the Göktürks are our subjects, when one of them rebels we must kill him together. We have now beheaded him, and so we send to tell you.”^[1] The Zizhi tongjian gives the letter in shorter words. Shishu Huxi had betrayed the khan and come to surrender, and the Sui had beheaded him on the khan’s behalf.^[2]

Shibi knew the truth, and from then on he stopped coming to court.^[3] The biography goes straight on to 615. In that year Shibi surrounded the emperor at Yanmen with several hundred thousand horsemen.^[1] The Zizhi tongjian tells the murder under 615 as one of the causes of the siege, beside the offer to Chiji.^[2] The Sui Shu’s chapter on the Göktürks records that the tribute ceased after the siege.^[4]

The histories give no year for the murder. In the biography it falls between the emperor’s stay at Huaiyuan in 614 and the siege of 615.^[3]