Yucheng Khan

Yucheng was the first Rouran khan to count the years of his own reign. The Wei Shu notes this as an impertinence: he “called it the first year of Yongkang”, as if he were an emperor.^[1] Every khan of the house after him did the same. The era names are the nearest thing to a Rouran voice that the sources preserve.

War with Xianwen (470)

He succeeded his father Tuhezhen in 464 with the title Shouluobuzhen Khan, “gracious”. He proclaimed his era and led his people against the frontier. There the roving columns of the northern garrisons broke them.^[1] A letter of the emperor Taiwu in the Song Shu has his father already dead in 450. One reckoning dates his reign from that year.^[2] In 470 he raided again. The emperor Xianwen marched north in person, on three roads, with a vanguard and a rearguard.^[1] The generals gathered on the banks of the Nü river. The emperor addressed the army himself: “in war the unexpected counts more than numbers”. He picked five thousand crack troops to offer battle and set many ambushes to confuse the enemy.^[1] The Rouran broke, and the Wei troops pursued them for thirty li. They cut off fifty thousand heads, and more than ten thousand Rouran surrendered. The horses and arms taken were beyond counting.^[1] The whole expedition covered six thousand li, out and back, in nineteen days.^[1] The emperor renamed the Nü river the Wuchuan. He composed a hymn on the northern campaign and carved it in stone.^[1]

Marriage suit (475–478)

In 475 Yucheng asked for a marriage.^[1] The ministers pointed to his repeated raids. They asked that his envoys be turned away and an army sent.^[1] Xianwen refused them. He held that the Rouran were like birds and beasts, greedy and without duty. The emperor, however, must deal with others in good faith and could not cut them off.^[1] Yucheng knew his past faults and was asking for peace and a marriage tie. His sincerity should not be slighted.^[1] The written answer was a lecture on the rites.^[1] It said that for a man to go down to a woman was the way of the hexagrams. The beginning of a marriage was to be honoured with proper ceremony. One who did not respect the beginning would find it hard to reach a good end.^[1] The chapter adds that Yucheng always harboured deceit. For the rest of Xianwen’s reign he asked no more.^[1] In the fourth month of 477, his envoys Mohequfen Biba and others brought fine horses and sable coats. They asked to see the treasures of the court, of which they had heard.^[1] The emperor Xiaowen had the palace stores set out in the markets of the capital for them to walk through: gold, jade, embroidery, the imperial stables’ patterned horses, and rare birds and beasts.^[1] Biba said to his companions that in a whole life he had never seen the wealth of a great state.^[1] In the second month of 478, Biba came again with tribute and asked again for the marriage. Xiaowen wished to draw the Rouran in and agreed. Yucheng’s yearly tribute never stopped, but his engagements were never fixed. In the end the marriage lapsed.^[1]

The southern courts

The southern histories show another side of the reign. In 478 the Song regent Xiao Daocheng sent an envoy to the Rouran to fix a date for a joint attack on the Wei.^[3] In the eighth month of 479, the Rouran ruler led three hundred thousand horsemen to within seven hundred li of Pingcheng. The Wei kept to their walls.^[3] The Nan Qi Shu does not name the ruler. By the dates of the Wei Shu, he was Yucheng. In his letters to the new Qi emperor, he addressed the emperor as an equal. He called himself “I”.^[3]

Death

He died in 485. His son Tulun succeeded him.^[1] The reign shows the khaganate as the Wei of the late fifth century wished to see it: a client that sent horses and furs and asked for princesses. The sources do not say what the twenty years looked like from the Orkhon.