Emperor Wu of Han

Wudi came to the Han throne at sixteen, in the first month of the last year of his father Jing’s reign.^[1] He died in 87 BC.^[2] He is the emperor who ended the settlement that had governed the frontier since Baideng. In 133 BC he tried to take the chanyu in an ambush at Mayi. The war that followed lasted, with long pauses, to the end of his reign.^[3] His generals took the Ordos and the Gansu corridor from the Xiongnu. They drove the chanyu’s court north of the desert. His envoys went west to cut the Xiongnu off from their allies.^[3] The Han Shu counts thirty-two years in which armies marched.^[4] The Hou Han Shu’s closing judgement on the Xiongnu says that the enemy was somewhat broken. It adds that the exhaustion of the Han was about equal.^[5]

The inheritance

Wudi confirmed the heqin at his accession. He treated the Xiongnu generously, opened the frontier markets and supplied them well. From the chanyu down, the Xiongnu were friendly to the Han. They came and went below the wall.^[6] On one modern count, the price the Han paid for the treaty was at its highest in these years. By the same count, the two courts had signed no fewer than ten heqin agreements between 198 and 135 BC.^[7]

The settlement was not the whole of his policy even then. In the Jianyuan years, the Shiji says, he questioned Xiongnu who had come over to the Han. He heard that the Xiongnu had made a cup of the Yuezhi king’s skull. He also heard that the Yuezhi hated them and had no one to join them. The Han were then set on destroying the Hu, as it calls the northern peoples. He began to look for an envoy to the Yuezhi.^[8]

The ambush at Mayi

In 133 BC, the second year of Yuanguang, Wudi put a question to his ministers.^[1] He had dressed daughters to match the chanyu, he said, and bribed him lavishly with gold, goods and embroidered silk. The chanyu received his commands with growing contempt and raided without end. The frontier suffered, and Wudi pitied it. He now wished to raise troops and attack the chanyu.^[1] The Grand Herald Wang Hui spoke for the attack.^[1]

Three hundred thousand men were put into the valley of Mayi under the censor-in-chief Han Anguo, to lure the chanyu in. Junchen came in with a hundred thousand horse and saw that something was wrong. He went out again before a blow was struck.^[3] Wang Hui had proposed the plan and then did not move. According to the Shiji, he was beheaded. According to the Han Shu annals, he died in prison.^[3] From that point the Xiongnu broke off the heqin and attacked the passes. They still wanted the markets and Han goods. The Han kept the markets open in order to hold them by this means.^[6] Wu may have planned the ambush to free himself from the yearly payments, which had grown with every demand since the first treaty.^[9] The ambush is told in its own article.

The offensive, 129 to 119 BC

In 129 BC, four Han generals went out against the Xiongnu with ten thousand horse each.^[3] The Shiji says that they struck at the frontier markets. The Han Shu annals open the year with a Xiongnu raid on Shanggu.^[3] Wei Qing reached Longcheng, where the Xiongnu hold their great assembly of the fifth month. He took seven hundred heads and prisoners. Gongsun He found nothing. Gongsun Ao lost seven thousand men. Li Guang was taken alive and escaped.^[6]

In 127 BC, Wei Qing went out from Yunzhong and took the country south of the river from the Loufan and Baiyang kings. He drove off cattle and sheep by the million.^[6] The Han built Shuofang and repaired the old Qin works. It gave up the Zaoyang country of Shanggu commandery to the Hu. It also recruited a hundred thousand people to settle the new commanderies.^[3] The edict that the Han Shu preserves for this year gives the court’s reasons. The Xiongnu, it says, went against the order of Heaven and threw human ties into confusion. They made plunder their business, deceived the peoples about them and had harmed the frontier again and again. The army was therefore sent out to punish them.^[10] That is the court’s account of itself. The Right Worthy King resented the loss of the river country and the building of Shuofang. He raided the new commandery again and again.^[6]

Yizhixie was chanyu by then. The Right Worthy King was sitting drunk in his camp, sure that no Han army could reach him. Wei Qing’s six columns came on him at night. He escaped. The Han took 15,000 of his people and more than ten minor kings.^[6] In the next year, the Han lost two armies, more than three thousand horse. One general escaped alone. The other, Zhao Xin, was a former Xiongnu petty king who had gone over to the Han. He now went back. The chanyu gave him his elder sister to wife and made him his adviser. Zhao Xin advised the chanyu to cross the desert northward, to lure the Han army into exhaustion and take it at the extremity, and to keep away from the frontier. The chanyu followed this advice.^[6]

In 121 BC, Huo Qubing went west out of Longxi, past Mount Yanzhi. He took the golden image the Xiutu king used in sacrificing to Heaven.^[6] In the summer he went out again, past Juyan, to the Qilian mountains.^[6] The chanyu was angry with the Hunye and Xiutu kings, who had lost tens of thousands of men in the west. He meant to summon and kill them. They planned to surrender. Hunye killed Xiutu and came over to the Han with more than forty thousand people, called one hundred thousand. Wudi, fearing a feigned surrender, sent Huo Qubing across the river to meet them.^[11] The Han settled them in five dependent states. It made their land the commanderies of Wuwei and Jiuquan.^[1] The annals date Zhangye and Dunhuang, cut from the same land, to 111 BC.^[1] Other sources set the four commanderies in other years.^[12] A song ascribed to the Xiongnu mourns the loss of the Qilian and Yanzhi mountains. With the first lost, their herds no longer bred, and with the second, their women had no rouge.^[13]^[14]

In 119 BC, Wudi sent Wei Qing and Huo Qubing north across the desert. Each had fifty thousand cavalry, with several hundred thousand foot behind them.^[10] Yizhixie waited for Wei Qing north of the desert, where Zhao Xin had advised him to wait. A sandstorm rose in the evening and the Han wings closed. The chanyu broke out to the north-west with a few hundred riders. The Han army pursued by night and did not find him. It reached Zhao Xin’s city. For a day it ate the grain the Xiongnu had stored there. It burned the rest.^[15] The Right Guli King, believing the chanyu dead, proclaimed himself chanyu. He gave up the title when the real one returned.^[6] Huo Qubing, meanwhile, fought the Left Worthy King and took more than seventy thousand heads. He sacrificed at Mount Langjuxu.^[3] This is the battle of Mobei.

The Shiji records the result in one clause. From then on the Xiongnu withdrew far, and south of the desert there was no royal court.^[6] The cost to the Han was heavy. The two armies took 140,000 horses across the frontier. Fewer than 30,000 came back. As a result, the Han had too few horses to go out again.^[15] Wei Qing lived another fourteen years. He did not take the field against the Xiongnu again. The Han Shu gives the reasons. The Han had few horses. It was at war with the two Yue in the south, in Chaoxian in the east, and with the Qiang and the tribes of the south-west.^[10] The wars as a whole are told in their own article.

Envoys, hostages and the chanyu’s answer

On Zhao Xin’s advice, the Xiongnu asked for heqin. Wudi put the question to his court. Some said to renew it. Others said to make the Xiongnu subjects. The chancellor’s chief clerk Ren Chang proposed that they be made outer vassals, bowing at the frontier. The chanyu heard the plan and was furious. He kept Ren Chang. Xiongnu envoys had already gone over to the Han. In return, the chanyu held Han envoys, man for man.^[6]

After the conquest of Southern Yue, Wudi toured the northern frontier. He went out through the wall, climbed the Chanyu Terrace and reached Shuofang. He reviewed one hundred and eighty thousand horse and sent word to the chanyu Wuwei. The head of the king of Southern Yue, the message ran, now hung at the northern gate of the Han palace. If the chanyu could fight, the Son of Heaven would wait at the frontier with his army. If not, he should come at once and submit. He should not hide in the cold country north of the desert, without water or grass.^[16] According to the Shiji, the chanyu flew into a rage. He had the officer who received the envoy beheaded. He sent the envoy away to the shore of the North Sea. The Han Shu annals say that the Xiongnu were struck with fear.^[3] The Shiji adds that the chanyu never raided the frontier in these years. He rested his men and horses and practised archery and hunting. He sent envoys with sweet words, asking for heqin again.^[6]

The Xiongnu had a rule that a Han envoy could not enter the chanyu’s tent unless he had given up his tally and blackened his face. Wang Wu, a man of Beidi who knew the customs, did both and was admitted. The chanyu liked him. Yang Xin, an upright man of low rank, would not take off his tally. The chanyu received him outside the tent. Yang Xin told him that if he wanted heqin, he should send his heir as a hostage. The chanyu answered that this was not the old pact. By the old pact, the Han always sent a princess and gave floss, silk and food in set amounts. The Xiongnu, for their part, did not trouble the border. Now the Han wanted to reverse the old way and take his heir. Nothing would come of it.^[6]^[17]

Later a Xiongnu noble who had come to the Han court fell ill. He died despite the medicine given him. The Han sent Lu Chongguo to bring the body home, with the seals of a two-thousand-shi official and a burial worth thousands in gold. The chanyu concluded that the Han had killed his envoy. He held Lu Chongguo for three years.^[6]

The west

The Shiji’s chapter on Dayuan gives the purpose of the western policy in a phrase. Zhang Qian came back after thirteen years among the Xiongnu and the western states. He later told Wudi that the Wusun, once subjects of the Xiongnu, could be drawn east into the land the Hunye king had left empty. He said that this would cut off the right arm of the Xiongnu.^[8] The Han also set up the Jiuquan commandery. Its purpose was to cut the road by which the Hu and the Qiang communicated.^[6]

Once Han envoys had passed through their country, the Wusun became afraid of the Xiongnu. They sent horses and asked for a Han princess to make the two peoples brothers. They paid a bride-price of a thousand horses. The Jiangdu princess went to the Wusun king, who made her his right wife. The Xiongnu sent a daughter, whom he made his left wife.^[8] On the modern count, this took place in 105 BC.^[2] If the Wusun, like the Xiongnu, held the left to be the place of honour, the Xiongnu princess had the better of the exchange.^[2]

The Han also pressed on the Xiongnu’s hold on the Tarim oases. The Xiongnu governed the oases through an office, the Commandant in Charge of Slaves. It taxed and conscripted the oases from a seat among Yanqi, Weixu and Yuli.^[18] In 108 BC, the Han general Zhao Ponu defeated Loulan and then Jushi. The Xiongnu struck Loulan in turn. As a result, its king sent one son to the Han and another to the Xiongnu.^[19]

Dayuan, the country of Ferghana, was where the western policy turned into a war. Wudi wanted its horses, which the Shiji says sweated blood. The king would not give up the finest. His frontier town killed the Han envoys and took their goods. Wudi gave command to Li Guangli, whose sister was his favourite.^[8]^[20] The first expedition of 104 BC turned back at Dunhuang with a tenth or two of its men. Wudi sent word to close the Jade Gate against it.^[21] That summer, the Han lost the army of Zhao Ponu, more than twenty thousand men, to the Xiongnu. His ministers advised him to give up Dayuan and turn all his strength against the Hu. The Shiji gives the reasoning that kept him from it. If a small country could not be taken, Daxia and the other states would think little of the Han, and the horses would stop coming. The Wusun and Luntai would make life hard for the envoys. The Han would be a laughing stock among foreign states.^[8]

The second army went out of Dunhuang with sixty thousand men, a hundred thousand oxen, thirty thousand horses and donkeys, mules and camels by the ten thousand. Behind it, 180,000 garrison troops stood at Juyan and Xiutu. The Dayuan nobles killed their king. They sent Li Guangli his head and gave up their horses. The Han took dozens of the best and more than three thousand others. It set up a new king and went home.^[8] The whole campaign took four years. Little more than ten thousand men and a thousand horses came back through the Jade Gate.^[8] The edict that rewards Li Guangli says that the Xiongnu had plotted to cut off the envoys to the Great Yuezhi, although they had moved north of the desert. It adds that they had ambushed and killed Han officers.^[22]

The last campaigns

After Dayuan, the Han Shu says, Wudi’s mind turned to the Xiongnu. In 101 BC he issued an edict. It opened with the worry of Pingcheng that his ancestor Gaozu had left him. It also opened with the story of Duke Xiang of Qi, who avenged a wrong nine generations old.^[23] The new chanyu, Qiedihou, had sent back every Han envoy who had refused to submit. He called himself a child and the Han emperor a man of the generation of his elders. He asked how he would dare to match him. Wudi sent Su Wu with rich gifts. The chanyu grew more arrogant than before.^[23]

Three campaigns followed. Each went badly. In 99 BC, Li Guangli took thirty thousand horse out of Jiuquan against the Right Worthy King at the Tianshan. He took more than ten thousand heads. He was then surrounded so closely that he barely got away. Six or seven men in ten were lost. In the same year, Li Ling went out from Juyan with five thousand foot and fought the chanyu. He killed or wounded more than ten thousand. He ran out of arms and food and surrendered. Four hundred of his men got home. The chanyu honoured him. He gave him his daughter.^[24] In 97 BC, Li Guangli led sixty thousand horse out of Shuofang. The Han Shu counts seventy thousand foot with him, the Shiji a hundred thousand.^[24] Three other armies went out beside him. The Xiongnu moved their families and baggage north of the Yuwu river. The chanyu waited south of it with a hundred thousand horse. The two armies fought for more than ten days. The Han withdrew.^[24]

In 90 BC, Li Guangli went out of Wuyuan with seventy thousand men. His family had been arrested at home in the witchcraft affair. He pushed deeper into the steppe to win merit before he returned. The chanyu Hulugu cut him off. The army broke. Li Guangli surrendered and was given the chanyu’s daughter in marriage. A year or so later, he was killed on the altar of a sacrifice. The Han defector Wei Lü had the shaman demand that sacrifice.^[23]

The Han Shu chapter on the Xiongnu says what followed. The Han had lost its commander in chief and tens of thousands of men. It sent out no more armies. Three years later, Wudi died.^[23] The chapter on the Western Regions adds that the Han officer Sang Hongyang proposed planting military colonists at Luntai in the west. Wudi, according to the chapter, answered with an edict in which he set out his regret for the past at length. No armies went out after it. The chancellor was made Marquis Who Enriches the People, to show that the realm was to rest.^[4]

The chanyu wrote to the Han in the year after Li Guangli’s surrender. South of him, he wrote, lay the great Han, and north of him the strong Hu. The Hu were the proud sons of Heaven and did not trouble themselves with small ceremonies. He wished to open the great gates with the Han and to take a Han wife. He wished to receive each year ten thousand shi of fermented drink, five thousand hu of millet and ten thousand bolts of mixed silk, with everything else as in the old pact. Then the frontier would not be plundered. The Han sent an envoy in return. The chanyu held him for three years.^[23]^[25] The letter may show that what the Xiongnu wanted was trade.^[25]

The Han Shu says of the Xiongnu that for twenty years and more, while Han armies went deep and chased far, their pregnant women miscarried and the people were worn out. From the chanyu down, they often thought of heqin.^[23] The closing judgement of the same work balances the two sides. In Wudi’s time the Han won victories, but the losses of men and horses were about equal. The Han opened the country south of the river and built Shuofang. They gave up the land north of Zaoyang for more than nine hundred li.^[23] The Xiongnu court was still north of the desert when Wudi died. It had asked for the old terms.^[23]

References

^ a b c d e f Han Shu, juan 6
^ a b c Sinor 1990, p. 131
^ a b c d e f g h i Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 6
^ a b Han Shu, juan 96
^ Hou Han Shu, juan 89
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p Shiji, juan 110
^ Sinor 1990, p. 125
^ a b c d e f g Shiji, juan 123
^ Jagchid 1989, p. 28
^ a b c Han Shu, juan 55
^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 55
^ Chavannes 1913, v–vi
^ Sinor 1990, p. 130
^ Laufer 1919, p. 326
^ a b Han Shu, juan 55; Shiji, juan 110
^ Han Shu, juan 6; Shiji, juan 110
^ Jagchid 1989, p. 117
^ Sinor 1990, p. 127–128
^ Sinor 1990, p. 132
^ Laufer 1919, p. 210
^ Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 6
^ Han Shu, juan 61
^ a b c d e f g h Han Shu, juan 94
^ a b c Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
^ a b Jagchid 1989, p. 30

Sources

Han Shu, juan 6, 55, 61, 94, 96 (after Shiji)
Shiji, juan 110, 123
Hou Han Shu, juan 89

Literature

Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
Édouard Chavannes, Les documents chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan oriental (1913)
Sechin Jagchid; Van Jay Symons, Peace, War, and Trade Along the Great Wall. Nomadic-Chinese Interaction through Two Millennia (1989)