by Brian Fagan
With their deadly bows and efficient riding attire, the nomads had become a frightening menace to conservative states where bureaucracy and precedent reigned. Their effectiveness depended in considerable part on their clothing in the saddle. The nomads wore several upper layers of tuniclike garments fastened with a belt, and a pair of trousers, a garment that was invented on the steppes, probably soon after people started riding horses. Tucked into boots, the durable and flexible trousers made it possible for a rider to swivel and move around on horseback, and allowed him effective control of the beast with his knees. Archery from horseback when attacking at speed became highly effective, especially when shooting to the side and rear, a devastating advantage when combined with high mobility.
A few desperate leaders responded boldly. The ruler Wu-ling (who reigned 325–299 BCE) of Zhao was among the leaders harassed by nomad raids. He ordered his court and military to wear what was termed “barbarian uniform.” He himself donned nomad pants, boots, and fur garments, this in the face of obstinate resistance from his conservative officials.4 Almost immediately, the fighting capability of the Zhao army improved dramatically. Wu-ling expanded his territory while securing his frontiers. A similar move toward mounted warfare must have taken hold across broad areas of China at about this time—strategically it could have been no other way, so powerful was the impact of the horse.
At the time, China was a patchwork of feudal states, constantly at war with one another as well as espousing competing political philosophies. The Qin state in the Wei Valley of the northwest enjoyed a geography of mountains and rivers well suited to defense. Its rulers turned from feudalism to legalism, a doctrine that advocated control and discipline under a strict rule of law. A dynamic ruler, Qin Shihuangdi (260–210 BCE), used his strategic base, and unbridled severity, to embark on a series of military campaigns using chariots, cavalry, and metal weapons. He forged China’s warring states into a single imperial state.5 Just like King Darius of Persia three centuries earlier, Qin Shihuangdi then embarked on an ambitious program of road construction that allowed him to move people and cargo as well as armies rapidly from place to place. Donkeys, horses, and mules became important vehicles of government and commerce. Horse-drawn carriages carried important officials. Horses served as “moving seats,” ridden gently while traveling. More efficient communication meant that the emperor could exercise efficient control over his domains. He used horses and guards to move people to underpopulated territory, where iron plows opened up new agricultural land. In the north, one of his generals, Meng Tian, used half a million convicts to build a wall that expanded previous defenses against nomad incursions—the first Great Wall.
Shihuangdi may have been a remarkable leader, but he was a cruel and despotic ruler with a paranoid fear of death. He gathered more than seven hundred thousand prisoners and slaves to construct a vast necropolis near the modern city of X’ian. Here, a serried regiment of more than seven thousand life-size terra-cotta soldiers guard his enormous burial mound, which is said to contain a map of China with its rivers delineated in mercury and a model of the cosmos. (It remains unexcavated.) The terra-cotta soldiery stand in strict order, bearing their weapons. Five hundred cavalry and chariot horses and more than a hundred thirty chariots accompany them, all modeled in brightly painted clay. The cavalry horses are squat Mongolian beasts, wearing bridles identical to those developed by the Scythians near the Black Sea during the sixth century BCE. Two of them haul a magnificent bronze carriage, virtually a house on wheels fitted with an eaved canopy, testimony to the luxurious travel that China’s nobility enjoyed. Shihuangdi’s cavalrymen wear the trousers and short boots favored by nomad riders in the north. It is no coincidence that Shihuangdi, like the innovative Zhou ruler Wen, was probably of steppe ancestry.
Figure 12.1 Chariots and horsemen in Emperor Qin Shihuangdi’s terracotta regiment. Totophoits/Fotolia.
Xiongnu’s Horses
The horse played a decisive role in the unification of China, but it developed into a serious source of weakness for later emperors. Four years of civil war followed Shihuangdi’s passing, which ended in the establishment of Han rule under Emperor Gaozu in 202 BCE.6 Then fighting broke out in earnest. Gaozu’s successors faced menacing aggression from the steppes, notably from the Xiongnu nomads, said to be capable of deploying three hundred thousand horse archers for battle. Their leader was Modu, a decisive, charismatic khan who rose from relative obscurity to unify the tribes of the East Asian steppe into a formidable confederacy. Sent by his father as a hostage to a neighboring group, the Yuezhi, Modu escaped on horseback and received ten thousand mounted archers as a reward. He trained them with such discipline that he is said to have ordered them to shoot his favorite horse and wife. Those who failed to fire were executed immediately. He succeeded in eliminating all his rivals, defeated the Yuezhi, and drove them west. His son completed the task and fashioned a gilded drinking vessel from the skull of the defeated ruler.
The Xiongnu were now such a powerful force along the frontier that numerous Chinese officials with political ambitions defected to the nomads. So did merchants, for Xiongnu horses were vastly superior to any bred in China. A Chinese official, Zhao Zu, remarked, “In climbing up and down mountains and crossing ravines and mountain torrents, the horses of China cannot compare with those of the Xiongnu.”7
Gaozu opened negotiations with the nomads. Modu was eager for greater stability, for he was well aware that the nomadic economy, with its heavy emphasis on grazing, was potentially vulnerable to animal diseases, drought, extreme cold, and other climatic fluctuations, also chronic raiding and theft. The Chinese agreed to make fixed annual payments of foodstuffs, including grain, silk, and wine, to what was recognized as an equal state, recognition reinforced by the marriage of a Chinese princess to the khan. The Great Wall became the official boundary between the two states. Modu benefitted enormously from the agreement, using wine and exotic goods to cement relationships with other rulers and trading silk far to the west. But it was never an easy relationship. The Xiongnu alternated raids with peaceful coexistence, being well aware that the Chinese moved slowly, and that they were short of horses of high quality.
Heavenly Horses
Fighting on horseback had obvious advantages, but the Chinese lacked reliable supplies of the larger horses that made for effective, disciplined cavalry. Such mounts were difficult to obtain, for they came from distant parts of Central Asia. They may have originated in a large area of western Asia north of Iran. We know of these beasts from the spectacular horse burials from Pazyryk in the Altai, described earlier. These were strong, nimble animals of golden-brown color, which contrasted dramatically with the squat equines widespread across the steppe. Their larger size and strength came from better feeding, selective breeding, and systematic castration to maintain high-quality breeding stock.
While the Chinese improved somewhat on squat Mongolian horses by careful breeding, to the point that those of specific color and characteristics were much prized, beasts suitable for the battlefield appear to have been rare, so much so that the government banned the export of horses of more than thirteen hands high from imperial domains. This edict was probably an attempt to address a chronic shortage of war horses, a constant in Chinese history. Fierce struggles erupted over control of horse supplies in the north and flared up over many centuries.
The Han emperor Wudi (who reigned 140–87 BCE) placed such importance on good cavalry horses that he organized a series of expensive campaigns to expand the boundaries of China far to the west.8 His deep thrusts into Central Asia resulted in numerous equine and human casualties. Wudi’s armies fought savage engagements with a confederation of Xiongnu nomads that extended across a huge area from Mongolia to eastern Kyrgyzstan. Even when not at war, the Chinese were desperate for good cavalry horses. They bought them, sometimes with silk, fought for them, seized them in raids, and bred their own warhorses from imported stock.
Wudi’s desire for good horses le
d to the opening of part of the Silk Road that was to link China and the West. In the second year of his reign, he sent a delegation of about a hundred people under Zhang Qian to contact the Yuezhi, now living far to the west, outside Xiongnu clutches. Zhang Qian had an adventurous journey. The Xiongnu held him for twenty years. He escaped, traveled far west, and observed superb horseflesh. When he reached the Ferghana Valley, in what is now Uzbekistan, he found magnificent horses that appeared to sweat blood. (We now know this resulted from a parasitic condition.) Ferghana horses were powerful, short-legged beasts, superior to mounts from Wusan and other locations to the east. The emperor was so impressed that he named them “Heavenly Horses.” The Han authorities started importing so many Ferghana beasts that local rulers closed their borders for horse trading.
Shortages, Shortages
“Horses are the foundation of military might, the greatest resource of the state,” wrote Ma Yuan, a brilliant Han general and stockman from northern China of the first century CE.9 He knew full well that mounted nomads were the greatest military adversaries for China, especially when fractured steppe groups unified under powerful leaders. Small wonder the emperor went to war with Ferghana. In 104 BCE, an expedition of forty thousand men trekked there but was defeated. A year later, Wudi sent sixty thousand men westward. This time they prevailed and managed to acquire three thousand horses, but most of them of ordinary quality. Only a thousand arrived safely in China. The negotiated agreement specified that the Ferghana supply two Heavenly Horses annually to the emperor. The troops also brought back lucerne seed, which provided high-quality pasturage for raising cavalry horses. But despite Wu’s campaigns, the Chinese were always short of horseflesh, even after prolonged thrusts into the steppes.
The Tang Dynasty emperors (618–907 CE) began their rule with five thousand horses. Within a few decades they had increased the number to seven hundred thousand head by aggressive breeding.10 But they still needed foreign mounts, and obtained many of them from nomads to the north. This was always an expensive enterprise. In 773, Uighurs from the north sent an agent with ten thousand horses for sale. They cost more than the government’s entire annual income. Fine silk was the major currency, especially when trading with the Xiongnu. A simple principle of the law of supply and demand was in play. The Chinese had fine silk; the Xiongnu had plenty of horses and craved delicate fabrics. By the ninth century, the demand for fabric in exchange for horses was so intense that shortages developed, the quality dropped, and weavers had trouble meeting demand. The Uighurs and others complained, and with good reason. Much of the silk they received promptly traveled to the West, where the profits were enormous.
For all the breeding and bartering, horse shortages were a perennial challenge. There were times when there were plenty of cavalrymen but only one or two out of ten had a steed to ride in a military world where large numbers of horsemen were the currency of battle. Generations of Chinese officials worried over the issue of horse procurement without success. Eventually, tea became another commodity exchanged for horses, it being so much in demand by the nomads that it tended to supersede silk. The Song government (960–1279 CE) set up “Tea and Horse Offices” near the border, to control tea exports and maintain artificially high prices, so they could obtain more beasts. Inevitably, smuggling became endemic, discouraged unsuccessfully by death sentences for offenders. Successive dynasties created elaborate bureaucracies to breed and acquire horses. The Han emperors placed such importance on the horse trade that the official in charge of the program ranked eighth among the highest ministers of state. Despite careful attention to both breeding and grading of horses, the quality of cavalry mounts was a constant problem. Inevitably, the chronic shortage of horses led to catastrophe, triggered by the conquests of Genghis Khan.
The Flail of God
“I’m a flail of God,” proclaimed the Mongol ruler Genghis Khan from the pulpit of the central mosque at Bokhara in 1220. “If you had not committed great sins, God would not have sent a punishment like me upon you.”11 A flail he truly was, one that descended on great cities and settled lands like a whirlwind. The Mongols had elected Genghis Khan as their great khan in 1206 CE. Not only a brilliant strategist and conqueror, but also a superb administrator, he quickly broke up the ancient tribal structure and organized his ferocious armies into tightly controlled, standardized units in multiples of ten. The troops fought as small teams so that orders never had to be given to more than ten men. Over just twenty years, Genghis Khan’s armies swept westward and southward across the steppes with breathtaking rapidity and ruthless efficiency. Merely the threat of attack caused cities to fall before the Flail of God. Genghis Khan was forging a huge empire that extended over Eurasia, held together by efficient horse-based communication and threats of violence.
Genghis Khan’s ancestry lay among people whose lives revolved around horses and supreme horsemanship. He was certainly bloodthirsty and ruthless, but his legacy was far more than conquest. He embraced religious freedom, united complex patchworks of warring tribes, rewarded merit, encouraged education, and advanced the rights of women in Mongolian society.
There was no one epiphanic moment when Genghis Khan acquired his genius for warfare, his extraordinary ability to attract the loyalty of his followers. This was a man who learned from hard experience, who adapted effortlessly to ever-changing circumstances across an unforgiving landscape. Genghis Khan was an utterly pragmatic leader whose skills developed, ultimately, out of his mastery of the horse. He was the greatest conqueror in history, a warrior of remarkable ability, but he ultimately owed a great deal of his success to the horse and to the mounted warfare it enabled (see sidebar “Archers and Horses on the Move”).
Archers and Horses on the Move
The entire Mongol military system, developed in large part by Genghis Khan, depended on obedience, strict discipline, and the horse. Mongol armies combined their brilliant skill on horseback with firepower, shock tactics, and superior mobility. Their ways of waging war were sophisticated by the standards of the day, relying on not only aggression on the battlefield, but also what today we would call psychological warfare. Their ability to cover ground fast enabled them to gather intelligence over wide areas, which they combined with the masterly use of false rumors about impending attacks or raids. Genghis Khan and his generals relied on fear as a powerful strategic weapon. In this they were very successful. The mere word Mongol was enough to conjure up visions of charging horsemen and brutal killing. Cities surrendered and paid tribute rather than suffer a Mongol attack. A carefully cultivated reputation for terror combined with an aura of invincibility lay behind many of the Mongol conquests.
Figure 12.2 Modern-day Mongolian horsemen reenacting a calvary charge. © Rick Sammon.
A warrior stayed with the same unit permanently, but the leaders were given considerable latitude in the field. This highly flexible command structure allowed the Mongols to attack as a large group or, at a moment’s notice, divide into units as small as ten men, in order to encircle an enemy or hunt down fugitives. Each Mongol soldier maintained between three and five horses, which allowed him to change mounts and travel at high speed for long periods without exhausting his animals. When invading Hungary in 1241, the Mongols, led by grandsons of Genghis Khan, covered as much as 160 kilometers (100 miles) a day, an unheard-of mobility for a Western army. Both horses and warriors lived off the land, the latter often off mare’s milk, which added to the flexibility and effectiveness of units large and small.
Consummate horsemanship and close relationships between horse and rider came from lifetimes spent on horseback, and from constant practice. Every warrior wore a long, heavy coat under lamellar armor made up of dozens of small, hardened leather-and-iron plates sewn to a fur lining and attached at the waist with a leather belt. A sword, dagger, and sometimes an axe hung from the belt. Underneath was a heavy silk undergarment. Everyone wore trousers on horseback, and a steel or leather helmet. The primary weapon was a recurved bow made from
wood, horn, and sinew that was relatively small but extremely powerful. Each archer typically carried two or three bows, each with a range of more than 2,000 meters (6,600 feet). The archers could routinely hit a target at a range of 1,500 meters (4,920 feet). Combine powerful bows, expert archery, and the speed and mobility of horses ridden by men who could shoot multiple arrows at a gallop, and you had one of the most successful animal-human relationships in history.
The close ties between warrior and steed were an integral part of battlefield tactics. Mongol leaders never engaged in the wasteful mass frontal assaults commonplace in the European and Near Eastern worlds. Instead, they used diversionary attacks to encourage the enemy to stay in place, and then sought to outflank and encircle them. The archers would lay down withering barrages of arrows, rearming themselves from baggage camels that followed them into battle. If an attack was unsuccessful, the Mongols would withdraw, quietly study the enemy’s tactics, and then attack later. Sometimes they would rely on a feigned retreat, appearing to withdraw in confusion, and then wheeling around to the attack without notice. Once again, expert horsemanship and complete trust between human and beast were essential. Horses and archers forged empires, conquered established civilizations, and toppled emperors.