Junchen Chanyu

Junchen ruled for some thirty-five years. The two halves of his reign are as unlike each other as any two halves of a steppe reign in the record. For the first twenty-eight years, the heqin settlement held and the frontier markets were open. The Shiji says that the Xiongnu, from the chanyu down, were friendly with the Han and came and went below the wall.^[1] For the last thirty years, there was war without a treaty. This war broke the Xiongnu hold on the Ordos and the Gansu corridor.

The early raids and the treaty

He came to the throne about 161 BC. The emperor Wen renewed the treaty at once. Zhonghang Yue, who had served his father, served him too.^[1] In the fourth year of his reign, the Xiongnu broke the agreement. They came into Shang commandery and Yunzhong with thirty thousand horse apiece. They killed and carried off a great many, then went away. The Han put three armies on the frontier and three more west of Chang’an. The beacons carried the alarm from the border to the Sweet Springs and the capital. Within a few months, the Han troops reached the frontier. By then the Xiongnu had already gone far beyond it, and the Han stood down their armies.^[1]

A year later Wen died. Under the emperor Jing, the king of Zhao sent secretly to the Xiongnu and proposed a joint entry during the revolt of the Seven Kingdoms. The Han broke Zhao first. The Xiongnu did not move.^[1] From then to the end of Jing’s reign, the treaty held and the markets were open. The gifts and the princesses went as before. There were small raids on the frontier but no great invasion.^[1]

One episode from these years shows how the Xiongnu regarded their opponents on the frontier. Zhi Du was the Han governor of Yanmen, and the Xiongnu did not come near Yanmen as long as he lived. After he died, they made a figure of him and ordered their horsemen to shoot at it. None of them could hit the middle of the figure. The Han Shu reports that they were afraid of him even then.^[2]

Mayi

The new emperor confirmed the treaty and treated the Xiongnu generously. He opened the markets and supplied them well. The Shiji records the result in one sentence: from the chanyu down, they were all friendly to the Han and came and went below the wall.^[1] It was the Han who ended it. A man of Mayi named Nie Wengyi traded in contraband across the line. He offered to sell the town of Mayi to the chanyu. Junchen believed him and wanted the goods of Mayi. He came into the Wuzhou pass with a hundred thousand horse. Three hundred thousand Han troops lay in ambush around the town.^[1]^[3]

Junchen learned of the ambush before he reached the town. A hundred li short of Mayi, he saw livestock spread over the country with nobody herding it. He thought it strange and attacked a watchtower. In the tower was a frontier officer of Yanmen who knew where the Han army lay. The chanyu took him and meant to kill him. The officer told him instead. Junchen said that he had suspected it. He pulled his army out. As he rode away, he said that taking the officer was the work of Heaven and that Heaven had made the officer speak. He gave the man the title Heavenly King.^[1]^[4] The Han general Wang Hui had proposed the ambush and had not moved when it failed. The Han executed him for it.^[1]^[5] From that point, the Shiji says, the Xiongnu broke off the heqin. They attacked the passes on the roads and raided the Han frontier past counting. The Xiongnu still wanted the markets and Han goods. The Han kept the markets open in order to hold them by that means.^[1]

The Han offensives

Five years after Mayi, the Han sent four generals with ten thousand horse each against the Xiongnu at the frontier markets. Wei Qing went out from Shanggu and reached Longcheng. He took seven hundred heads and prisoners. Gongsun He went out from Yunzhong and took nothing. Gongsun Ao went out from Dai and lost seven thousand men. Li Guang was taken alive and escaped.^[1] The campaigns that followed under Wei Qing and Huo Qubing carried the war into the steppe itself. They are treated in their own place. Junchen did not live to see their end. He died about 126 BC. His brother Yizhixie took the throne against his son.^[1]