Khan Rou of the Tuoba Khanate
Born: 956
Reigned: 985 - 1032
Khan Rou Tuoba was a difficult man to love. The officials admired his learning, perhaps, but beneath his cultivated, soft-spoken exterior the khan was duplicitous and cruel. The court said that he practiced calligraphy with the blood of his enemies, and if this was an exaggeration it wasn’t much of one. This polite sadist would nonetheless leave a larger mark on his kingdom than any of his predecessors, building the foundation of a mighty empire out of a minor merchant kingdom. Even today, you can go to his capital–for Yutian is his capital, first and foremost–and see his hand everywhere.
Shunzhou had grown substantially since the Tuobas had risen to prominence over the Gansu pass. It was a cosmopolitan city packed with merchants, scholars, and travelers from west and east, known for its thriving markets and rich melange of peoples. And yet the city was not, in a physical sense, much larger than it had been before. It had begun as a fortified zhai in the mountains, forcing more and more people to crowd on top of each other. Fire was an obvious danger, when one blaze could kill so many; and the traders brought their disease with them as often as not.
Beyond that, Shunzhou was on the far east of the Tuoba khanate, leaving it vulnerable to invasion. The lands of the Tang were held by feuding warlords with rival claims to the imperial throne, and yet the possibility of Chinese invasion worried Khan Rou more than anything else. Imagine a Han general invading from the east while the local Han notables rose up in the west: he might find himself trapped between two tigers, with nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
Rou put his mind to this problem early in his reign, during the war for Cherchen on the western roads. Uyghur prisoners spoke of a thriving city to the west, called Yutian (or Khotan by some). It was a city of silk and jade, of carpets and fine pottery. Once it had been home to a proud kingdom, but the arrogant Yutianese had ignored the wisdom of Mani and thus been brought to ruin. (Such, at least, was the testament of the devout Uyghurs.) Now the great city was diminished, the holdfast of a minor noble in the Tibetan kingdom of Maryül. Ghosts were seen wandering the empty palaces, while the market stalls were home only to packs of feral dogs.
The khan had perhaps a romantic streak, because the thought of claiming this once great city as his own capital consumed him. He imagined a mighty empire spanning Tibet and Persia alike, with the great city of Yutian as its center. Building such an empire would be the job of many lifetimes; it would take most of his own simply to claim Yutian as his prize. But his mind, once fixed upon an object, would not be loosed. This great city would be his.
First, however, the kingdom would need to be secured. The enemies of Shilian II did not think much of his soft-spoken son, and meant to test his meddle in battle.In the summer of 988, the high chieftess of Qumarlêb led 3200 men to claim Rou’s throne. The chieftess spoke the Tibetan tongue and worshipped as a Bon, and she meant to claim the kingdom–which she called Tangyud–for her people and her gods. Qumarlêb outnumbered Rou’s own forces, if only by a little, but still the war would not have seemed so daunting if the khan could fight it alone.
This, unfortunately, would not be possible. Another Tibetan duchess, Kunchen of Malho, was quietly laying the groundwork for a conquest of Rebgong. She could raise an army of at least thirty-five hundred, and perhaps more besides. Rebgong was just a single county, and yet to the Melie it was sacred. Great shamans in the past had gone there to call upon the gods and obtained the power to work powerful magicks on the enemies of their people. Such a land could not be abandoned lightly.
Kunchen would not declare until the following April. However, as the Tuoba mustered their forces for war in the south, the Han Daoists rose up in rebellion again. Han Chungli, a disgraced former official and general rabble-rouser, led an army of more than a thousand peasants and artisans to throw off the shackles of the barbarian Tuyuhun and their bandit kings. The khanate was under threat from within and without.
The khan was not by nature a lenient man, but under the present circumstances he found that savagery was a luxury he could not afford. He ordered his army on a daring early-winter invasion of Qumarlêb, arriving mere days before the mountains became impassable; and there he besieged the capital. The primitive holding had a simple wooden wall for defense, and it would fall just in time for the spring thaw. Rou might have pressed further, had the situation been different, but instead he settled for a simple truce so that he might wheel again and face Han Chungli.
Master Han and his rabble had overwhelmed the local magistrates and dared a march on the Guiyi capital of Ganzhou. It was there, on March 9, 989, that he met the khan’s men in battle. Despite the fanatical zeal of his followers, they were poorly trained and on foot, and one charge of the Tuyuhun horse archers led to a rout. Han himself slipped away with a number of supporters to join another group of rebels in the west, and some of the khan’s generals urged an advance.
But even then the army of Malho was marching north, and thus Rou again took a lenient tack. Han Chungli and the other rebel leaders would be sent into exile, he commanded, but the rank-and-file would be able to return to their farms in peace if they swore an oath of loyalty to their khan. After the loss at Ganzhou, most of the rebels took the deal, and the latest Han rebellion ended quietly.
Malho would prove far more formidable than the other two foes, however. By the time Rou’s men could arrive, Kunchen had already invested the mountainous lands of Rebgong and their defensive lines were formidable. Even so, the Tuyuhun braved an attack in early spring, 990, when 3300 of the khan’s men faced off against a smaller force of Tibetan warriors. The two sides fought for hours, in a bloody stalemate, until an enterprising band of Tibetans caught the the Melie commander Shou Tuoba out of position and took him behind their lines as a prisoner. Shou’s capture was devastating to the Tuyuhun morale, and the stalemate rapidly turned to retreat.
News of the defeat at Rebgong shocked the Tuoba court, where conventional wisdom held that a Tuyuhun warrior was more than an even match for any warrior in the world and thus they could not be defeated when they enjoyed numerical superiority. Rou called up whatever reserves he could and sent a fresh army under his marshal to renew the offensive against Malho. This army would suffer a second defeat at Shanzhou, losing five men to every one of Kunchen’s. The small duchy of Malho had somehow managed to best their neighbors to the north, and Rou had no chance but to sign a humiliating surrender. The sacred mountains of Rebgong were, for the moment, lost.
After the loss of Rebgong, the dream of Yutian seemed further away than ever. If Khan Rou could not hold his own inherited lands, how could he hope to expand? So it was that the khan proposed a marriage alliance with the Gyalpo of Maryül: his eldest son, Yitan, for the Bodpa princess Pabu. If Rou could not claim this great capital, his grandsons might someday inherit it.
In the meantime, he needed to wash away the stain of defeat by finding a great victory somewhere–anywhere. It was then that the gods handed him a provident gift. In the winter of 992/3, Mahila Kunchen had lost her husband of many years, leaving her diplomatically isolated and dramatically weakened in the field. By now she could perhaps field a thousand men of her own, far short of what she had enjoyed only a few months before.
The mahila had grandly promised to spare Tuoba from further conquests for a time of five years, a condescending gesture that stuck in the khan’s throat. And yet–as Rou’s officials were quick to note–she had not asked him to do the same. He could attack her without sacrificing his honor. And so in the fall of 993 the Tuyuhun army rode forth to avenge the losses at Rebgong and Shanzhou. At their head was the great general Shou Tuoba, who had some grudges of his own to satisfy.
Kunchen had desired only Rebgong, but now Rou declared a holy war for all of Malho, to give the pagans who had tarnished the sacred mountains a taste of Mewn’s justice. Suitably, at least in the khan’s eyes, the Tuyuhun met their Tibetan enemies in battle at Rebgong once again, and this time Kunchen’s forces suffered a devastating defeat–losing one man in every two. The remaining stragglers were ridden down and slaughtered to a man. By October, Kunchen had only her bodyguards to protect her.
The mahila held out defiant for a time in the fortified capital of Rebgong, but she lacked the men to defend such a fortress and by the end of the year her capital fell. Kunchen was taken before Khan Rou in chains, and after a long moment of silence the khan softly gave his order: tie her hand and foot to the four strongest stallions in the army, and send them running in four directions. He is said to have watched the resulting spectacle with quiet satisfaction.
