Yizhixie Chanyu

Yizhixie took the Xiongnu throne from his brother’s son. He held it for thirteen years. During those years the Han armies crossed the Gobi. In his reign the Hunye king took forty thousand people over to the Han. The Han broke the Xiongnu in the Hexi corridor. The Xiongnu court had to leave the country south of the desert.^[1] At Mobei he escaped the Han ring at dusk with a few hundred riders. The Right Guli King thought him dead and made himself chanyu in his place.^[2]

Accession

Junchen died in the winter after the Han took the Ordos and built Shuofang. The Shiji dates this to the second year of Yuanshuo, 127 BC.^[1] Junchen’s brother, the Left Guli King Yizhixie, set himself up as chanyu. He attacked and beat Junchen’s heir Yudan.^[3] Yudan fled and gave himself up to the Han. The Han made him a marquis. He died a few months later.^[3]

The Shiji ranks the Left and Right Worthy Kings and the Left and Right Guli Kings as the four greatest of the chanyu’s twenty-four commanders.^[1] It says that the heir was regularly made Left Tuqi King, the Left Worthy King. It does not say which title Yudan held.^[1]

The Shiji’s chapter on Dayuan tells the same change from the viewpoint of Zhang Qian, the Han envoy held among the Xiongnu. A chanyu died, and the Left Guli King attacked his heir and set himself up. The country fell into disorder. In the confusion Zhang Qian escaped with his Xiongnu wife and his companion.^[4] The chapter does not name the chanyu, but the dates make him Junchen.

By one count, only four of the ten successions from Laoshang to Xulüquanqu broke the line from father to son. The first of the four is Yizhixie’s. He took the throne by force from his nephew, the heir.^[5] Every earlier contest for the throne had been fought inside the royal house. This contest was also fought inside the royal house.^[6]

The first raids

In the summer after his accession, several tens of thousands of Xiongnu horse entered Dai commandery. They killed the grand administrator Gong You. They carried off more than a thousand people.^[3] That autumn they came into Yanmen. They killed or took another thousand.^[3] The next year, thirty thousand horse entered each of Dai, Dingxiang and Shang commanderies. The Shiji counts several thousand killed or taken.^[3]

The Right Worthy King resented the loss of the country south of the Yellow River and the building of Shuofang on it. He raided the frontier again and again. He went into the Henan land and harassed Shuofang. The Shiji says that he killed and carried off a great many officials and people.^[1]

Gaoque and the Right Worthy King, 124 BC

In the spring of 124 BC, Wei Qing took six generals and more than a hundred thousand men out of Shuofang and Gaoque against the Xiongnu.^[7] The Right Worthy King thought that the Han army could not reach him. He was drinking and had become drunk. The Han marched six or seven hundred li beyond the frontier. They surrounded him by night. He escaped. His best horsemen followed him out.^[1] The Shiji says that the Han took fifteen thousand men and women of his people, and more than ten petty kings.^[1] The annals of the Han Shu count fifteen thousand heads.^[8]

Zhao Xin

In the spring of 123 BC, Wei Qing went out again from Dingxiang with six generals and more than a hundred thousand horse.^[1] In the two sorties the Han took or killed nineteen thousand. It lost two generals and more than three thousand horse.^[1] The general Su Jian came back alone. Zhao Xin, the front general, did not.^[1]

Zhao Xin was a Hu petty king who had surrendered to the Han and been made Marquis of Xi. His army and Su Jian’s, three thousand horse together, met the chanyu’s own troops alone. They fought them for more than a day and were almost destroyed. Zhao Xin took the eight hundred riders left to him. He went over to the chanyu.^[2] The chanyu made him the king next to himself. He gave him his elder sister as a wife. He planned against the Han with him.^[1]

Zhao Xin’s advice was to go farther north across the desert and to draw the Han troops out until they were worn down. The chanyu was to take them when they had reached the limit of their strength. He was not to come near the frontier. The chanyu followed this advice.^[1]

That year Huo Qubing, eighteen years old, rode out beyond the main army with eight hundred light horse. The decree quoted in the Shiji says that he killed the Jiruo Marquis Chan, a man of the chanyu’s grandfather’s generation. It also says that he took alive the chanyu’s uncle Luogubi.^[9]

The Hexi corridor, 121 BC

In the spring of 121 BC, Huo Qubing went out of Longxi with ten thousand horse. He passed more than a thousand li beyond Mount Yanzhi.^[2] The Shiji chapter on the Xiongnu gives more than eighteen thousand killed or taken. By contrast, the decree in the chapter on Wei Qing and Huo Qubing gives more than eight thousand.^[2] He took the golden man that the king of Xiutu used in his sacrifice to Heaven.^[2] This sortie and the one that followed it make up the Hexi campaign.

In the summer he went out again with the Marquis of Heqi and several tens of thousands of horse. They set out from Longxi and Beidi and went two thousand li, past Juyan and against Mount Qilian. They took more than thirty thousand, and more than seventy lesser kings.^[1] At the same time the Left Worthy King surrounded the general Li Guang and his four thousand men. He almost destroyed them, until Zhang Qian’s army came up and Li Guang got away.^[1]

In the autumn the chanyu was angry with the Hunye king and the Xiutu king. They held the west and had lost tens of thousands of men to the Han. The chanyu wished to summon them and kill them. The two kings were afraid and made a plan to go over to the Han. The Hunye king killed the Xiutu king. He took his people with him and surrendered. They were more than forty thousand. Their number was given out as a hundred thousand.^[2] The Han settled them in five dependent states. It made their land into the commanderies of Wuwei and Jiuquan.^[8] After this the Han had fewer raiders in Longxi, Beidi and the Hexi corridor. It moved poor families from east of the pass into the land the Xiongnu had lost. It halved the garrisons west of Beidi.^[1] The next year the Xiongnu rode into Youbeiping and Dingxiang with several tens of thousands of horse each. They killed and took more than a thousand people and went away.^[1]

Mobei, 119 BC

In the spring of 119 BC, the Han court reasoned that the Marquis of Xi had made a plan for the chanyu. The plan was to stay north of the desert in the belief that Han troops could not get there.^[1] The Han fed its horses on grain and sent out a hundred thousand horse. The public and private horses that went out with them numbered a hundred and forty thousand. Provisions and heavy gear were not counted in this figure.^[2] Wei Qing and Huo Qubing divided the army between them.^[1]

The chanyu heard of it. He sent his baggage far away to the north. He waited with his best troops north of the desert.^[1] He met Wei Qing’s army and fought it for a day. At dusk a great wind rose, and the wings of the Han army closed round him. The chanyu judged that he could not fight as the Han soldiers fought. He broke out to the north-west with a few hundred strong riders.^[2] The Shiji chapter on Wei Qing and Huo Qubing says that he rode out on six mules.^[10] The Han followed at night and did not find him. Wei Qing’s army killed or took nineteen thousand. It came to Zhao Xin’s city under Mount Tianyan. It took the stores of Xiongnu grain. It stayed a day and burned what was left.^[2]

For more than ten days the chanyu was out of touch with his people. The Right Guli King thought him dead and set himself up as chanyu. The chanyu then got his people back. The Right Guli King gave up the title and went back to his rank.^[2]

Huo Qubing had gone out of Dai more than two thousand li. He fought the Left Worthy King. The Shiji says that his army took more than seventy thousand heads. It says that the Left Worthy King and his generals fled. Huo Qubing made the feng sacrifice on Mount Langjuxu and the shan at Guyan. He looked out over the Hanhai and turned back.^[1] Together the two marches make up the Mobei campaign. It was the turning point of the wars between the Han and the Xiongnu.

After Mobei

South of the desert there was no longer a royal court of the Xiongnu. The Han crossed the Yellow River. From Shuofang west to Lingju it cut canals and set up fields under officials. Fifty or sixty thousand officials and soldiers were put there. The Han pressed forward by degrees until its land touched the Xiongnu country in the north.^[1]

The war had cost the Han a great deal. The two armies had killed or taken eighty or ninety thousand. The Han, however, had lost several tens of thousands of officers and men and more than a hundred thousand horses. The Xiongnu were hard hit and had gone far away. The Han, for its part, had few horses left and could not go after them again.^[1]

On Zhao Xin’s counsel, the chanyu sent envoys to the Han with courteous words and asked for heqin. Wudi sent the question down to his court. Some spoke for heqin. Others spoke for making the Xiongnu subjects outright. Ren Chang, the chief clerk of the chancellor, said that the Xiongnu were newly broken and hard pressed. He said that they could be made outer vassals, who would come to court at the frontier.^[3] The Han sent Ren Chang to the chanyu. The chanyu heard his proposal and was very angry. He kept Ren Chang. Before this the Han too had held Xiongnu envoys. Each time the chanyu had kept Han envoys to match.^[3]

The Han was gathering horses and men again when Huo Qubing died. For a long time the Han did not strike north.^[1] Yizhixie reigned thirteen years and died. His son Wuwei was installed in his place.^[1]

Toward the end of this reign the Xiongnu may have begun to look for a renewed heqin. The Han court’s decision to impose its tributary system ended the talks before they began.^[11] The Xiongnu left no account of these years themselves. The Shiji and the Han Shu are Han histories. Their counts of heads taken are the Han court’s counts.

Name

伊稚斜ChineseShiji
伊穉斜ChineseShiji

The Shiji and the Han Shu write the name 伊稚斜. The Suoyin commentary of Sima Zhen writes 伊穉斜 and gives the pronunciations of the characters. It adds that 穉斜 is probably a Hu word. It also adds that this form comes near the actual one.^[1] No Xiongnu form of the name is recorded. Nothing in the sources fixes its language.

References

^ 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 Shiji, juan 110
^ a b c d e f g h i j Shiji, juan 110; Shiji, juan 111
^ a b c d e f g Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 94
^ Shiji, juan 123
^ Sinor 1990, p. 137
^ Miller 2014, p. 21
^ Shiji, juan 110; Han Shu, juan 6
^ a b Han Shu, juan 6
^ Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55
^ Shiji, juan 111
^ Sinor 1990, p. 139

Sources

Shiji, juan 110, 111, 123
Han Shu, juan 6, 55, 94 (after Shiji)

Literature

Denis Sinor (ed.), The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (1990)
Bryan K. Miller, Xiongnu “Kings” and the Political Order of the Steppe Empire (2014)