Empire of Horses

by John Man

  It’s remarkable that a warrior people should so suddenly adopt elements of their conquerors’ culture, but two modern examples back him up. At the end of the Second World War, both West Germany and Japan embraced western democratic norms with astonishing speed. The United States, the overwhelming western Great Power, was a modern equivalent of old China, backing its political agenda with massive infusions of aid (though driven by the need to confront the Soviet Union, not the sort of Cold War rivalry that existed in Asia in the first century AD). Five years after the war’s end, both West Germany and Japan were internationalist, demilitarized, stable, democratic and on their way to remarkable economic growth. At the outbreak of war in 1939, who would have dared predict such changes? When the Xiongnu were at their height, who could have foreseen their collapse into subservience and dependency?

  One piece of evidence, or rather an absence, supports Törbat’s hypothesis. Despite the Xiongnu’s history of warfare, these are not the graves of men eager to proclaim themselves as warriors. As Ursula Brosseder says in her paper on terrace tombs,14 ‘As far as we can tell, weaponry does not play a significant role among the grave-goods, since bows and arrows or swords are mostly missing.’15 Of course, these may have been taken by looters. But wooden bows and arrows decay, and looters would have had their own, and even decayed bows would have left traces of their shapes. Chances are they were never there, suggesting that the later chanyus had decided to set aside symbols of their violent past.

  Not that they abandoned all their own ways. They kept their own ceramics factories, while importing Chinese lacquerware. Their tombs have a shell of rocks that shielded and defined them, unlike the Chinese earthen funeral mounds. As Bryan Miller puts it, ‘The presence of Chinese goods reflects not a comprehensive adoption of Chinese traditions, but rather a utilization of the exotic within local traditions.’

  It seems that the Xiongnu élite were driven to overcome feelings of inadequacy and inferiority by collecting wealth and displaying it in ‘ostentatious graves’, in the words of the German pre-historian Georg Kossack (1923–2004), widely considered the ‘father’ of today’s top German archaeologists. He relates this to other elites who adopted aspects of foreign cultures (like Roman aristocrats who adopted Greek art). His theory, quoted by Ursula Brosseder, suggests that the Xiongnu’s new subservience seemed ‘to stimulate the inner need to demonstrate that one is a member of an Elite by borrowing foreign material goods and customs’. Hence the Xiongnu obsession with Chinese carriages, lacquered bowls, horse accessories and clothing.

  For the chanyus and their élitist retinues, the system worked. Sure, they were subservient, but they were rich. Gifts continued to flow. As the graves themselves reveal, the chanyu’s authority remained intact – for a while.

  1 This is an ancient taboo, for reasons that no one can explain. Almost 1,300 years later, when Marco Polo attended Kublai Khan’s banquets in Da Du (Beijing), guards stood by to beat anyone who stepped on the threshold. Tourists in Mongolia are still advised to take care.

  2 Astragali, to give them their technical name.

  3 Including Diimajav Erdenebaatar and Tsagaan Törbat, both of whom reappear shortly.

  4 P. Murail et al., ‘The Man, the Woman and the Hyoid Bone’ in Antiquity (see Bibliography).

  5 Ursula Brosseder, 2007, quoted in Miller, Power Politics. The Chinese knew about Bactria (Da Xia) from the traveller Zhang Qian, so the Xiongnu would surely have known of it as well. There is a detailed chemical analysis of Gol Mod gold in Desroches et al., Mongolie: Le Premier Empire des Steppes (see Bibliography).

  6 Cologne Museum and Corning Museum, New York.

  7 My own calculation in The Terracotta Army (Bantam, London, revised edition 2018).

  8 Eregzen (ed.), Treasures.

  9 Tsagaan Törbat, ‘A Study on Bronze Mirrors in Xiongnu Graves’, in Brosseder and Miller (eds), Xiongnu Archaeology.

  10 Yeruul-Erdene Chimiddorj and Ikue Otani, ‘The Chinese Inscription …’, in The Silk Road (see Bibliography). The inscription reveals the size of this operation and the complexity of the bureaucracy controlling it. For production, there was a production inspector, an assistant clerk, a workshop overseer, a head secretary and an executive officer. For overall inspection, a deputy director of the right, and a director, in this case a provisional director.

  11 Hélène Martin, ‘The Animal in the Xiongnu Funeral Universe’, in Brosseder and Miller (eds), Xiongnu Archaeology.

  12 Human remains were also found in four graves, in such a bad state that they revealed little except their sex (male), age (20–25) and size (average). One was bow-legged, from years of riding.

  13 Miller, Power Politics.

  14 Ursula Brosseder, ‘Xiongnu Terrace Tombs and their Interpretation as Elite Burials’, in Jan Bemmann et al. (eds), Current Archaeological Research in Mongolia (see Bibliography).

  15 Mostly. There are some remains of weapons, e.g. in Khudgiin Tolgoi. See Hyeung-Won Yun, ‘The Xiongnu Tombs in Khudgiin Tolgoi’, in Bemman et al. (eds), Current Archaeological Research.

  12

  A CRISIS, A REVIVAL AND THE END OF THE XIONGNU

  YES, A PROFITABLE PEACE. BUT THEN CAME A BRIEF RETURN to the old days of profitable war, leading to a very unprofitable end. War returned thanks to the disastrous rule of Wang Mang, the man who usurped the Han throne and set up the very short Xin dynasty, which divided two long periods of Han rule.

  Wang Mang’s dynasty was disastrous from the start. His idea of restoring universal confidence was to bring in a currency reform – six different materials (gold, silver, tortoiseshell, seashell, and two types of other metal) in twenty-eight different denominations. The people were so bewildered they refused to use the new system, which was promptly rescinded, leading to a boom in counterfeiting and illicit trading, which in turn led to arbitrary arrests and banishments.

  Another of his more foolish acts was to tell the Wuhuan of Manchuria, who had been paying tribute to the Xiongnu for 200 years, that they did not need to pay any longer, presumably in an attempt to gain their support. The chanyu was furious. He invaded Wuhuan, seized 1,000 women and children as hostages, and demanded payment in full – ‘Bring your horses, cattle, leather, fur and clothes in exchange for your women and children’ – took delivery, and then held on to the hostages.

  In a strange incident told by Sima Guang, Wang Mang then tried to impose his will on the Xiongnu by deception. A delegation of twelve generals, ‘dressed in their most elaborate and luxuriant trappings’, each in a carriage, each with his own military escort, had been told to tour the kingdom to display scrolls and other ‘exhibits’ to back Wang Mang’s claim to authority. In AD 10, they arrived at the Xiongnu court laden with gifts, and bearing a new imperial seal, an incised stone beautifully wrapped in silk. The old seal was a formal acknowledgement that the Han emperor and the chanyu (Wuzhuliu in Chinese, Ujiuli in Mongolian) were equals, naming him as ‘Emperor of the Xiongnu’. The new seal was inscribed with the words ‘Xin – Xiongnu chanyu seal’, naming the new dynasty, with no statement of equality. The envoys obviously hoped to hand it over and leave, without any fuss. Not so easy, as it turned out. There was to be an exchange of seals, and an official banquet. First came the banquet, with the increasingly anxious envoys eager to complete official business and get to bed. A Xiongnu officer warned the chanyu that he had better examine the new seal, but he brushed aside the idea. ‘It really doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘How could they change the wording of a seal?’ So he made the exchange, handing over the old seal, receiving the nicely wrapped new one and setting it aside for the next day. The banquet resumed. Many hours into the night and many toasts later, the nervous (and probably groggy) generals retired to their tent. One of them pointed out that when the chanyu finally saw the new seal, he would be furious and demand the old one back. Better make that impossible. How? By smashing it at once. So they did, giving the task to a junior officer. And next day, sure enough, the chanyu unwrapped the new seal, had i
t translated by his interpreter, objected bitterly that ‘you have reduced the chanyu to a commoner!’ and demanded the old seal back. The five envoys showed the bits of the broken seal, and had the nerve to claim total ignorance of how it happened. Nothing to do with us, they said, ‘it had destroyed itself spontaneously’. What was the chanyu to do? To accuse them would at least cause a diplomatic incident, at worst a pitched battle with the envoys’ military escort. In any event, no more gifts. All he could do was swallow his anger, and accept the new seal. Back in Chang’an, Wang Mang was well pleased. He ennobled the generals, the commanders of their military escort, and the junior officer who smashed the seal.

  Trickery like this was no way to ensure friendly relations. When the chanyu heard of what had happened he was beside himself with rage. The Han emperors had been good to Huhanye, he said, but this one ‘is an imposter and has no right to be on the throne’.

  Word spread. Minor tribes in the Western Regions defected to the Xiongnu, who regained control of their traditional lands. In response, Wang Mang broke off diplomatic relations with the Xiongnu and ‘decided to flaunt the opulent wealth of his coffers and to demonstrate the awe-inspiring might of the Xin kingdom’ by arbitrarily changing the chanyu’s title to a Chinese term meaning ‘Surrendered Slaves’, and by trying to make this true by preparing for a massive, five-pronged invasion with an army of 300,000 that included ‘every convict, prisoner, youth and warrior in the kingdom’. The aim was nothing less than the total destruction of the Xiongnu, forcing them out over their northern border and then dividing their territory into fifteen mini-states – all this to be funded by an economy still reeling from the effects of his currency reform.

  A year later (11 AD), the troops still had not been fully gathered or deployed. In the border camps, as one general wrote in a memo to the emperor listing a catalogue of problems, ‘the morale of the soldiers has deteriorated and their weapons have become blunt’. Moreover they had turned the border regions – made rich with pastures and cattle by decades of peace – into a wilderness while waiting for supplies that never came. ‘The land is sandy and salty, there is no water and no grassland for miles … the autumn and winter months are bitterly cold and in the spring and summer months there are colossal sandstorms.’ The horses and oxen were dying, the men so weakened by carrying cooking utensils, logs and charcoal that they were prey to pestilence and unable to fight, even if they could advance. Discipline broke down. Troops were becoming ‘uncontrollably rowdy … and insufferably malicious’. Newly appointed officers ‘exacted bribes from the populace’. An attempt to co-opt other border tribes to fight the Xiongnu turned vassals into enemies and drove them to defect to the Xiongnu. Since an attack by the gathering force would have almost certainly been catastrophic, no invasion was ordered and the demoralized troops stayed in their camps.

  So: a precarious peace held between the empires, guaranteed in part because Huhanye’s grandson, Deng, was held in Chang’an, with an honorary title of ‘Little Chanyu’. But at a lower level, violence ruled. Xiongnu raids continued. A general told Wang Mang that the ‘Little Chanyu’ had instigated them. In a fury, Wang Mang summoned all the representatives of his vassal states, ‘and in front of the dignitaries, he had [Deng] decapitated’. Somehow, this was kept secret.

  In AD 13, the chanyu died, succeeded by his younger brother, Ulei-Jodi, father of the boy-hostage Deng in Chang’an. Wang Mang used this as a chance to seek better relations by sending another gift-laden delegation to the Xiongnu, but again with a hidden agenda. The envoys were instructed to say that Deng was still alive, and then demand the release of twenty-seven Chinese officers who had defected to the Xiongnu. So it happened. The returning officers – caught, fettered and delivered – were treated as traitors, and roasted alive on some kind of ‘torture device’. With peace of a sort declared, Wang Mang was finally able to disband most of the long-suffering border force that had been in camp for the last two years, awaiting orders for the never-to-be invasion. Wang Mang’s deception backfired, of course, when the new chanyu discovered that his son had in fact been executed.

  But still gifts trumped the death of his son. Ulei-Jodi offered to keep the peace, in exchange for the remains of his son. A delegation – headed by the daughter of Zhaojun – went to the border to receive not only Deng’s remains but also those of several other Xiongnu nobles executed in unrecorded circumstances.

  In China, the dynasty plunged on towards its chaotic end. Wang Mang was obsessed with the idea that ancient rites would save the day, if only they could be understood correctly. Ministers ignored their duties to struggle with impenetrable texts. The emperor, trusting nobody, insisted that all decisions came from him or his compliant corps of eunuchs. The court was plagued by executions, plots and suicides. Civil servants went unpaid, and relied on bribes. Prices rose, and so did taxes. Ordinary people took to crime. ‘Itinerant bands of marauders plundered, pillaged and robbed.’ Commoners prostrated themselves outside the palace, begging for relief from injustice. Revolts multiplied. But to bring the emperor bad news was to court execution; the way to promotion was to say that all was well.

  In 18 AD, Ulei-Jodi died, being succeeded by his younger brother Hudurshi. Wang Mang remained as treacherous as ever. When the new chanyu offered to come to Chang’an to pay homage and sent a delegation to the border to discuss terms, the two leaders – another of Zhaojun’s daughters and her husband Xubu Dang – were ambushed, kidnapped and taken to Chang’an as prisoners, the idea being that assassins would be sent to kill the chanyu and replace him with the kidnapped Xubu Dang. When the chanyu heard the news, ‘he was greatly infuriated by the sordid and appalling behaviour of Wang Mang’, and stepped up the raids.

  In response, Wang Mang turned to ever more desperate measures. He offered rewards for anyone who could suggest new ways to invade and conquer the Xiongnu. Ideas flowed in, each more crazy than the last. Anti-hunger medication was one; another was a flying machine that would act as a spy-in-the-sky over Xiongnu territory. Sima Guang says the device was shown to Wang Mang. If even partially true, and discounting the Greek legend of Daedalus and Icarus, this could have been the first attempt at manned flight. This is an adaptation of Ban Gu’s version of the incident, as translated in Joseph Needham’s Science and Civilisation in China (Vol. 4, 2):

  One man said that he could fly a thousand li in a day, and spy out the movements of the Xiongnu. Wang Mang tested him without delay. He took the pinions of a great bird for his two wings. His head and whole body were covered over with feathers, and all was interconnected by means of rings and knots. He flew a distance of several hundred paces, and then fell to the ground. Wang Mang saw that the methods could not be used, but wishing to gain prestige from these inventors he ordered that they should be given military appointments and presented with chariots and horses.

  Could there be any truth in this? Not a chance. There is no way he could have left the ground. No bird-man or wing-flapping machine has ever flown, and no flying bird, reptile or mammal of more than 72 kilos1 has ever existed (that we know of yet). With wings of the right size, shape, weight and structure, could the inventor have glided, leaping from a tower or cliff, or being towed by galloping horses? No, because no one would understand the principles of powered or gliding flight for another 1,800 years.2 If the Birdman of Chang’an was real, he would have been good for a laugh, but not for a flight.

  Wang Mang was not put off by failure:

  On one occasion the emperor visited the Tower of the Golden Phoenix to receive Buddhist ordination. He caused many prisoners condemned to death to be brought forward, had them harnessed with great bamboo mats as wings, and ordered them to fly down to the ground from the top of the tower. This was called a ‘liberation of living creatures’. All the prisoners died, but the emperor contemplated the spectacle with enjoyment and much laughter.

  Then, in AD 22–23, Wang Mang, to show that he was still in control, dyed his grey hair and beard black, selected 120 new concubines f
or his harem, freed all the criminals in his kingdom, and offered the rebels a last chance to surrender, or face total destruction at the hands of his million-strong army, reinforced with ‘large numbers of tigers, leopards, rhinoceroses, elephants and other wild beasts’. He was living a fantasy. In the countryside, rebel groups, determined to reinstate the Han dynasty, united to form an army. In the summer of 23, a great siege (Kunyang, in central China)3 ended with the total defeat of the government forces. Everywhere, ordinary people joined in the revolt. On the first day of September, rebels broke into Chang’an. ‘Rebels, looters and insurgents, moving like a tidal wave’ set fire to the palace doors, yelling for Wang Mang, who hid in a back room, delirious with panic, trying to decide with his astrologer what seat would be the most auspicious. Early next day, with his last loyal troops and family members being slaughtered by the mob, he fled to an island in the middle of a lake, where, finally, he was found, stabbed and beheaded. His head was set on a spike and displayed in the provisional capital of the restored Han dynasty, until ‘angry mobs viciously wrenched away the head, kicking it hither and thither’. So ended the shortest dynasty in Chinese history, leading to two years of chaos until the Eastern (or Later) Han (25–220) brought stability once more.

  All of which left the Xiongnu in excellent spirits. Their renewed self-confidence lasted through the overthrow of Wang Mang, the chaos that attended the return of the old dynasty as the Eastern Han, and the violence that followed. Once, two top Han officials demanded some woodland near Zhangye on the Xiongnu side of the border. ‘What is this?’ the outraged chanyu replied. This land had been passed from father to son for five generations! They used these woods ‘for making domed huts and carts … it is the land of our forefathers and we dare not discard it.’4 For a while, it looked as if the Xiongnu were about to restore Modun’s empire.