Huaihuang

Rouran epoch Göktürk epoch Uyghur epoch Kirghiz epoch

Rouran First Göktürk Tang rule Second Göktürk Uyghur Kirghiz Huns Western Göktürk Türgesh Karluk Khazar

Rouran 400–554
First Göktürk 552–630
Tang rule 630–682
Second Göktürk 682–744
Uyghur 744–840
Kirghiz 840–924
Huns 370–469
Western Göktürk 552–659
Türgesh 699–766
Karluk 766–800
Khazar 650–969

Huaihuang was a garrison of the Northern Wei on the northern frontier, and the place the Zhou Shu names for the end of the Rouran.^[1] In the first month of the Chinese year 552 Bumin sent his army against the Rouran. It broke them utterly north of Huaihuang, and Anagui killed himself.^[1] The month ran from 11 February to 10 March. The Bei Shi repeats the sentence and is not a second witness.^[2] The battle has its own article.

Six Garrisons

The Six Garrisons were the heavily fortified towns north of the Yellow River that the Wei kept as marches against the Rouran. They were Woye, Huaishuo, Wuming, Rouxuan, Wuchuan and Huaihuang. They stood along the Hetao plain, which begins at the Ordos in the west and runs along the river to the Lüliang mountains.^[3] The Wei Shu names Woye, Huaishuo and Wuchuan among them in 521, when their soldiers were sent to escort and build for Anagui at the springs north of Huaishuo.^[4] Woye was the garrison where Poliuhan Baling rose in 524. The others rose with him.^[4] In 525 Anagui came from Wuchuan westward to Woye with a hundred thousand men. He put the revolt down for the Wei, winning battle after battle.^[4] The revolt of 523 and the war of 524 to 534 were the end of the Wei.^[5] Huaihuang, at the eastern end of the line, was thus twice the ground on which the Rouran met the Wei frontier. The first time they came as its rescuers. Twenty-seven years later they came as fugitives.

Battle of 552

The last Rouran army fought north of a Chinese garrison. This tells where the Rouran centre of gravity lay in 552, close to China and far from the Altai. After the first engagement in Dzungaria the Göktürks had turned east. A second and larger Rouran army met them here and was destroyed. The battle fell north of Huaihuang, near the Yellow River toward China. The defeat was devastating. The news of the Göktürk triumph, from the Altai to Huaihuang, reached every court.^[3] Within weeks Bumin was in Ötüken as khan. The Rouran khaganate had passed to the Göktürks.^[1]

Later

The garrison line itself did not survive the Wei. The frontier the Göktürks faced from 552 was that of the Western Wei, the Qi and the Zhou, whose walls and passes the Hegemony Wars describe. Modern scholarship places Huaihuang in the north of Hebei near Zhangbei, on the edge of the Mongolian plateau. The identification is the literature’s, not the sources’.