Li Ling

Li Ling was a cavalry commandant of the Han and the grandson of the general Li Guang. In 99 BC, during the wars between the Han and the Xiongnu, he led five thousand foot soldiers out of Juyan and more than a thousand li to the north. There he met the chanyu of the Xiongnu with his main force. Li Ling fought a retreat of many days. When his arrows were spent and the way was blocked, he surrendered. Some four hundred of his men reached the frontier.^[1]^[2] Wudi had his family put to death. Li Ling stayed among the Xiongnu for more than twenty years, married to a daughter of the chanyu.^[3] After 840 the Kirghiz named him as their ancestor.^[4]

Family and early career

Li Ling was born after his father’s death. His father Li Danghu was the eldest son of Li Guang. He died young.^[5] Ling’s courtesy name was Shaoqing.^[3] As a young man he served as a palace attendant. He was a good rider and archer, kind to others and modest towards his inferiors. He won a great name.^[3] Wudi thought he had the manner of Li Guang and gave him eight hundred horse. With them Ling rode more than two thousand li into Xiongnu country. He passed Juyan and looked over the ground. He found no enemy and came back.^[3]

He was made cavalry commandant. He was set to train five thousand bold men in archery at Jiuquan and Zhangye as a guard against the Xiongnu.^[3] Some years later he was to follow the army of Li Guangli against Dayuan with the troops of five colonels. At the frontier he learned that Li Guangli was already returning. He went out of Dunhuang with five hundred light horse as far as the Salt river to meet him.^[3]

The campaign of 99 BC

In the second year of Tianhan, 99 BC, Li Guangli went out of Jiuquan with thirty thousand horse against the Right Worthy King at the Tian mountains. Wudi called Ling to look after his baggage. Ling came to the audience hall, knocked his head on the floor and asked for a force of his own. He said that the men he commanded on the frontier were swordsmen and brave men from Jing and Chu, who could grip a tiger and hit what they aimed at. He wanted to go to the south of the Langan mountains and split the chanyu’s troops, so that the chanyu could not turn them all on Li Guangli.^[3] Wudi asked whether Ling disliked serving under another. The emperor said that he had sent out many troops and had no cavalry to give him. Ling answered that he needed none. He wished to strike many with few, and to cross the chanyu’s court with five thousand foot soldiers. The emperor approved. He ordered the commandant of strong crossbows, Lu Bode, to meet him half way.^[3]

Lu Bode did not want to follow behind Ling. He petitioned that the Xiongnu horses were fat in autumn and that Ling should wait until spring. Wudi was angry. He suspected that Ling regretted his offer and had put Bode up to it. He ordered Bode to go west and gave Ling his orders. Ling was to set out in the ninth month and march to the Longle river south of Mount Junji. There he was to look about. If he saw nothing, he was to return by the old road of Zhao Ponu.^[3] Ling went north from Juyan with his five thousand foot soldiers for thirty days. At Mount Junji he made camp. He drew the mountains and rivers he had passed and sent a rider to the emperor with the map. Wudi was pleased.^[3]^[6]

At Junji the chanyu came against him with about thirty thousand horse. Ling’s camp lay between two mountains and was ringed with carts. He drew his men out in front of it, with spearmen and shields in the first rank and archers and crossbowmen behind. He told them to charge at the drum and halt at the gong. When the Xiongnu saw how few the Han were, they rode straight at the camp. A thousand crossbows loosed together, and the enemy fell. The Xiongnu fled up the hill. The Han followed, and several thousand were killed.^[3] The chanyu was alarmed. He called up the troops of his left and right lands, more than eighty thousand horse.^[3]^[7]

Ling fought and fell back to the south for several days. The wounded were carried in carts. Those with two wounds drove, and those with one fought on. Ling noticed that his men’s spirit was failing and asked whether there were women in the army. Wives of convicts from east of the passes, who had been exiled to the frontier, had followed the army and hidden in the carts. He found them and cut them down.^[3] The next day the Han killed more than three thousand. They moved south-east along the old Longcheng road and reached a marsh of reeds. There the Xiongnu set fire to the reeds from upwind, and Ling lit a counter-fire. Below a mountain the chanyu stood on the slope and sent his son against Ling. The Han fought on foot among the trees and killed several thousand more. Ling’s repeating crossbows were turned on the chanyu, who ran down the hill.^[3]

A captive said that the chanyu had been afraid: these were Han picked troops who would not be broken, and they drew him each day nearer the frontier, which suggested an ambush. The chiefs answered that the chanyu, with tens of thousands of horse, had not been able to destroy a few thousand Han. If he failed, he could not again command the officers of the frontier. The Han would think less of the Xiongnu.^[3] Then Guan Gan, an officer of Ling’s who had been shamed by a colonel, deserted to the Xiongnu. He told them that Ling had no relief behind him and that the arrows were nearly gone. Only Ling’s own guard and the company of the marquis of Chengan, eight hundred each, formed the vanguard, under yellow and white flags. Elite horse could break them, he said. The chanyu was delighted. His riders attacked. They shouted to Ling and the marquis, Han Yannian, to surrender.^[3]

The Han were in a valley, and the Xiongnu were on the slopes. Arrows fell like rain. In a single day the Han shot off five hundred thousand arrows. Then they abandoned the carts. About three thousand men were left. They cut the spokes from the wheels to use as weapons, and the officers held short blades. The chanyu blocked the way behind and rolled stones down on them. After dusk Ling went out alone in plain clothes. He told his followers to stay behind: a brave man needed only to get the chanyu himself. After a long time he came back and sighed that the army was beaten and he must die. His officers said that he could still find a way home, as the marquis of Zhuoye had done when he escaped the Xiongnu. They said that the emperor had treated that man as a guest. Ling said that if he did not die, he was no brave man.^[3]

He had the banners cut up and the treasure buried. With a few dozen arrows, he said, they could break out, but without weapons they would sit and be bound at dawn. He proposed that they scatter like birds and beasts. Perhaps some would get through to tell the emperor. Each man took two sheng of dried rice and some ice. They agreed to meet at the fort at Zhelu. At midnight Ling ordered the drum to be beaten. It did not sound. He and Han Yannian mounted, with a dozen men following. Several thousand Xiongnu riders pursued them. Han Yannian died fighting. Ling said that he could not face the emperor. He surrendered. Of the army that scattered, four hundred reached the frontier. The place of defeat lay a hundred li from the wall.^[3]^[8]

The Shiji, in the chapter on Li Guang, gives the battle in a few lines. The chanyu surrounded the five thousand with eighty thousand. They fought through eight days of unbroken battle. A hundred li short of the frontier the road was cut, food ran out and no relief came. The enemy pressed him to surrender. He said that he had no face to report to the emperor, and he surrendered.^[9] The Shiji and the Han Shu both put the Xiongnu losses at more than ten thousand killed or wounded.^[10] The annals of Wudi enter the defeat in the fifth month of the second year of Tianhan.^[11]

The Han court

The frontier posts reported the defeat. Wudi had wanted Ling to fight to the death. He sent for Ling’s mother and wife and had a physiognomist look at them. The man saw no sign of death. When the news came that Ling had surrendered, the emperor was furious. He questioned Chen Bule, the rider who had carried the map. Bule killed himself. The ministers all condemned Ling.^[3]

Wudi asked the grand historian Sima Qian for his opinion, and Sima Qian spoke in Ling’s favour. Ling, he said, was a dutiful son and a man of his word. He had always thrown himself into the service of the state and had the bearing of one of the finest men of the realm. When one man had a misfortune, the ministers who kept their bodies whole and their wives and children safe now made a story of his faults, and that was a pity. Ling had led less than five thousand foot soldiers deep into the land of the war horses and pressed down tens of thousands. The enemy had no time to carry off their dead and wounded and sent out every man who could draw a bow. Ling had fought a thousand li, until the arrows were spent and the road was shut. His men had faced the blades with bare fists and had given everything for him. Not even the generals of old surpassed that. He had been beaten, but what he had broken was enough to be told to the world. That he had not died, Sima Qian said, meant that he wished to find a chance to repay the Han.^[3]

The emperor had sent out the great army of Li Guangli and had given Ling only the part of an auxiliary. Guangli’s success had been small. Wudi took Sima Qian’s words for slander meant to damage Li Guangli. He sentenced Sima Qian to castration.^[3] After a long time Wudi regretted that Ling had been left without relief. He said that the order to the commandant of strong crossbows should have been given only after Ling had left the frontier. By giving it beforehand, he had let the old general invent excuses. He sent envoys to console and reward the survivors.^[3]

When Ling had been a year or so among the Xiongnu, Wudi sent Gongsun Ao with an army to bring him back. Ao got nothing. He reported that a prisoner said that Li Ling was teaching the chanyu to make war against the Han. The emperor then put Ling’s family to death. They were his mother, his brother, his wife and his children. The gentlemen of Longxi were ashamed of the Li name.^[3]

Among the Xiongnu

Later a Han envoy came to the Xiongnu. Ling said to him that he had marched across the Xiongnu land with five thousand foot soldiers and had been beaten only for want of relief. He asked what he had owed the Han that his family was put to death. The envoy replied that the Han had heard that Li Shaoqing taught the Xiongnu to make war. Ling said that it was Li Xu and not he. Li Xu had been a Han commandant outside the frontier at the city of Xihou, until the Xiongnu attacked him and he surrendered. The chanyu treated him as a guest and seated him above Ling. Ling grieved that his family had been killed because of Li Xu. He sent a man to stab him to death. The chanyu’s great consort, the Yanzhi, wanted to kill Ling. The chanyu hid him in the north. He came back only when she died.^[3]

The chanyu admired Ling. He gave him his daughter and made him Right Xiao King. Wei Lü became king of the Dingling. Both were honoured and given affairs to manage. Ling lived outside the court. When there was a great matter, he was called in to give counsel.^[3] In the same years the Xiongnu held the Han envoy Su Wu by the North Sea. Ling and Wu had been palace attendants together. The chanyu sent Ling to persuade Wu to change sides. Wu refused.^[3] The Xin Tang Shu calls the title Right Worthy King.^[12] The Han Shu writes 校, Xiao. It does not say whether the word names a people or a rank.^[3] Some scholars take Xiao as a group the Xiongnu had conquered. They hold that the chanyu set Ling and Wei Lü over such groups, one over the Dingling and one over the Xiao, in order to hold them through outsiders.^[13]

In 90 BC three Han armies went out against the Xiongnu. The chanyu sent a great general with Li Ling and more than thirty thousand horse after the army of the censor. They caught it at Mount Junji, the mountain where Ling had fought nine years before. They fought nine days. The Han broke the attacks and killed many. At the Punu river the Xiongnu gave up and went away.^[14]

The invitation

In the reign of the emperor Zhao, the generals Huo Guang and Shangguan Jie ruled the court. They had long been friends of Ling. They sent three men to the Xiongnu to call him back, among them his old friend Ren Lizheng of Longxi. The chanyu gave a banquet for the envoys. Ling and Wei Lü sat among the attendants.^[3] Lizheng could not speak to him in private. He looked at Ling, touched the ring of his own sword and gripped his own foot. This was a secret sign that Ling could come home to the Han. Later Ling and Wei Lü brought wine and beef to the envoys and drank with them. Both wore the dress of the Hu, the Han name for the peoples of the steppe, with their hair in a knot. Lizheng said aloud that the Han had pardoned all and that the central country was at peace. He said that the emperor was young and that Huo Guang and Shangguan Jie ruled. Ling said nothing. He looked at Lizheng and stroked his hair. “I have already put on Hu dress,” he said.^[3]

When Wei Lü got up to change his clothes, Lizheng said that Shaoqing had suffered much. He passed on the greeting of the two generals. Ling asked whether they were well. Lizheng asked him to come back to his old home and not to worry about wealth. Ling called him by his courtesy name. He said that to come back was easy, but that he feared to be disgraced a second time. Wei Lü returned and heard the end of it. He said that Li Shaoqing was a worthy man who did not belong to one country alone. He said that Fan Li had travelled all over the world and that You Yu had left the Rong to go to Qin. When the meeting broke up, Lizheng followed Ling and asked whether he had it in mind to come. Ling said that a man cannot suffer disgrace twice.^[3] He died of illness after more than twenty years among the Xiongnu.^[3] One modern account dates his death to 74 BC.^[15]

His son in the war of the five chanyus

In the war of the five chanyus, Li Ling’s son appears in the Han Shu. The Wuji commandant had declared himself Wuji Chanyu and then yielded the title. Ling’s son set him up again as chanyu. Huhanye seized him and cut off his head. Huhanye then took back the chanyu’s court.^[14] The Han Shu says nothing more of the son. Ling’s family in China was put to death, so the son was presumably born among the Xiongnu.

The Kirghiz claim

The Xin Tang Shu says in its notice on the Kirghiz that the Xiongnu made the surrendered Han general Li Ling Right Worthy King and Wei Lü king of the Dingling. It adds that Kirghiz with dark eyes are said to be Ling’s descendants.^[12]^[16] In 981 the Song envoy Wang Yande saw an inscription at Mount Mazong that was said to have been written by Li Ling.^[16] After 840 the Kirghiz named him as their ancestor. The Tang court wrote their khan into the register of its imperial clan. The claim and its sources are told in their own article.^[4] The chapter of the Han Shu on Ling names the Dingling and the Xiao. It does not mention the Jiankun or the Kirghiz.^[3]

Another line of descent

A second claim runs to the east. The Song Shu begins its chapter on the northern state by saying that the Suotou had the surname Tuoba and that their ancestors were descendants of the Han general Li Ling.^[17] It adds that after Ling surrendered to the Xiongnu there were hundreds of kinds, each with a name of its own, and that the Suotou were one of them.^[17] This surname is that of the Tuoba.^[17]

The Han Shu on the family

Ban Gu ends the chapter with a judgement. Of Li Guang he says that he was as plain as a countryman and could not put a phrase together. Yet on the day of his death all the world wept for him, because his sincerity had touched the officers. Ban Gu adds the proverb that the peach and the plum do not speak, and a path forms beneath them. Generals of three generations, he says, are what the Daoist school fears. From Guang to Ling the family lost its line, which he calls sad.^[3]

References

^ Han Shu, juan 54; Han Shu, juan 94; Shiji, juan 109
^ Ögel 2015, p. 91–92
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag Han Shu, juan 54
^ a b Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195; Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Han Shu, juan 54; Shiji, juan 109
^ Ögel 2015, p. 94
^ Ögel 2015, p. 94–95
^ Ögel 2015, p. 92, 95–97
^ Shiji, juan 109
^ Shiji, juan 109; Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
^ Han Shu, juan 6
^ a b Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217
^ Miller 2014, p. 17–18
^ a b Han Shu, juan 94
^ Ögel 2015, p. 98
^ a b İzgi 1989, p. 51
^ a b c Song Shu, juan 95

Sources

Han Shu, juan 6, 54, 94 (after Shiji)
Shiji, juan 109, 110
Xin Tangshu (New Book of Tang), juan 217 (after Jiu Tangshu)
Jiu Tangshu (Old Book of Tang), juan 195
Song Shu, juan 95

Literature

Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)
Bahaeddin Ögel, Büyük Hun İmparatorluğu Tarihi II (2015)
Özkan İzgi, Çin Elçisi Wang Yen-te'nin Uygur Seyahatnamesi (1989)