Gao Huan

Gao Huan was the general who controlled the eastern half of the Northern Wei after 534. He founded the power of the house that became the Northern Qi. He never took the throne himself, and the Bei Qi Shu names him by the posthumous title Shenwu.^[1] For the steppe he was the man who won Anagui away from the Western Wei. In 546 he married the khan’s favourite daughter.^[2]

Rise

Gao Huan came up in the war of the northern garrisons. In the eighth month of 525 Du Luozhou, a man of the Rouxuan garrison, rose at Shanggu and took the era name True King. Gao Huan was among those who joined him.^[3] He had grown up at Huaishuo, one of the Six Garrisons, among the soldiers of the frontier.

In 534 the emperor Xiaowu broke with him and went west to Yuwen Tai.^[1] Gao Huan raised another emperor and moved the court from Luoyang to Ye. He judged Ye safer. Luoyang lay close to the west and to the Liang, and too far from Jinyang. Four hundred thousand households set out within three days of the edict.^[1] He kept his own seat at Jinyang and came to court at Ye several times a year.^[1]

Wars with the west

The rest of his life went into the war with the Western Wei, told in the Hegemony Wars. In the tenth month of 537 he crossed the Yellow River at Pujin with two hundred thousand men. Yuwen Tai routed him at Shayuan.^[1] His army threw away a hundred and eighty thousand weapons and suits of armour. Gao Huan rode off on a camel to wait for a boat.^[1] In 542 he besieged Wang Sizheng in Yubi and withdrew when heavy snow had killed many of his soldiers.^[1] In the third month of 543 he beat Yuwen Tai at Mangshan and took or killed some sixty thousand men.^[1] In 546 he laid siege to Yubi a second time and failed again.^[4]

The Rouran

In the north his policy was to win the Rouran khan away from the west. When the Rouran empress of the Western Wei died in 540, his envoy Zhang Huizuan told Anagui that Emperor Wen and Yuwen Tai had murdered both the emperor Xiaowu and the khan’s daughter.^[2] Anagui turned east. In the fifth month of 541 Gao Huan toured the northern frontier and sent envoys to make peace with the Rouran.^[1] In the sixth month he himself escorted the princess promised to Anagui’s son Anluochen, as far as north of Loufan. He did not trust the khan and held the matter important.^[2]

The marriages went on. In 542 his ninth son, Gao Zhan, was married to Anagui’s granddaughter, Princess Linhe.^[2] In 545 he had forts built at the passes of the provinces of You, An and Ding, which bordered on the Xi and the Rouran.^[1] In 546 Anagui offered him his favourite daughter. The emperor ordered Gao Huan to take her.^[2] From then on, the Bei Shi says, the eastern frontier was quiet to the end of the Wuding era.^[2]

Death

On the first day of 547 there was an eclipse of the sun.^[1] Gao Huan said: “Is the eclipse for me? Then I do not mind dying.” He died at Jinyang in the same month, at fifty-two by Chinese reckoning. His death was kept secret.^[1] His son Gao Cheng took over the government. In 550 the emperor of the east abdicated to another son, the emperor Wenxuan of Qi.^[5] The alliance with the Rouran outlived him. When the Göktürks destroyed Anagui in 552, his son Anluochen fled to the Qi.^[2]