Flight of the Swan: A Central Asian AAR

[Cora Giantkiller]

The Silk, the Swan, and the Gansu Corridor​

Some eight thousand years ago, the Rma peoples first came to the plains of the Gansu Corridor and built a small and fragile civilization there on a succession of oases. The corridor is a narrow strip of land, surrounded by the heights of the Tibetan plateau, the chill of the Gobi Desert, and the endless grasslands of the steppes. The Rma--known to the world as the Qiangic people--lived in a series of fortified villages, known as zhai, composed of several dozen extended families.

The Gansu is hardly promising land, compared to the great cradles of civilization cultivated by the Ganges or the Nile. However, as trade slowly developed between the growing empires in the West and the East, the Gansu became vitally important. When wheat cultivation came to China, when millet cultivation left, they traveled through the Gansu. By the Common Era, luxury goods were traveling through its narrow passages as well: spices and most famously silks, hence the name Silk Road.

This trading wealth was a treacherous gift. The zhai became wealthy trading outposts, and outsiders looked covetously upon them. in the third century BCE, the Indo-European Yuezhi people invaded the Gansu to seize their wealth. The Yuezhi would in turn be displaced by a tribal confederacy, the Xiongnu, who would eventually be displaced by early Han Dynasty emperors in the second century BCE. In the 280s CE, the Mongolian khagan Murong Tuyuhun led an invasion of the corridor, forming the wealthy and powerful Tuyuhun empire that stood for some four hundred years. At its height, the Tuyuhun’s rule would extend for a thousand kilometers in any direction, unifying large parts of Central Asia for the first time.

The Tuyuhun would see their end in turn, however, crushed between two ascending powers of the seventh century: the Tibetan Empire to the south and the Tang Dynasty to the east. Repeated invasions and internal subversion brought the Tuyuhun to their knees, falling under the suzerainty of the Tang emperors before finally being crushed by the Tibetans in 770 CE. The treacherous gifts of the Gansu had brought down another empire in its turn.

By the 850s, however, the Tibetan empire was itself crumbling. Rival factions of Bön and Buddhist nobles fought for control of the great empire, and as the center collapsed elites on the periphery began to shake themselves loose. In the Gansu, an official’s son named Zhang Yichao mobilized the Han Chinese elite to seize power in the name of the Tang Dynasty. Yichao’s movement, the Guiyi (“Return to Righteousness”) Army, spoke to an influential educated class that had been alienated from the Tibetian regime. His own father, Zhang Qianyi, had been euphemistically known as a “free man”--i.e., an intellectual who would not serve the emperor.

Zhang Yichao would defeat the Tibetans in 856, and an official Han chronicle recorded the battle thusly:

The bandits [the Tibetan coalition] had not expected that the Chinese troops would arrive so suddenly and were totally unprepared. Our armies proceeded to line up in a “black-cloud formation,” swiftly striking from all four sides. The barbarian bandits were panic-stricken. Like stars they splintered, north and south. The Chinese armies having gained the advantage, they pursued them, pressing close at their backs. Within fifteen miles, they caught up with them. This is the place where their slain corpses were strewn everywhere across the plain. [1]

From 856 on, Zhang would reign in the Gansu as Jiedushi, or military governor, in nominal subordination to the Tang emperor Guanzong. The emperor Guanzong would perish in 859, however, and his successors would prove to be weak and ineffectual.

Guiyi was in any case very far from Chang’an, both physically and culturally. The Gansu Corridor had an astonishing linguistic and religious diversity, from the Rma dialects to Turkic, Mongolian, Chinese, Tibeto-Burman, and Persian. In the rural steppes, Mongolian and Tangut peoples practiced a kind of shamanism known as “Root West” (Melie); their shamans were known as Black Heads for their distinctive headwear, and their chief god was depicted as a heavenly white swan. Many Han officials followed the Tao Te Ching or the principles of Confucius and his followers, but their cities held organized communities of Nangchos Buddhists, Nestorian Christians, Uyghur Manicheans, followers of Bön and Islam and Hinduism and even a community of Karaite Jews from the Khazar steppes far to the west. The Guiyi Circuit was bustling, wealthy and cosmopolitan, but its divisions threatened to pull it asunder.

The most formidable internal challenger to Zhang Yichao and his successors came from the Tuyuhun. In the rural lands between oases, Tuyuhun Mongols lived as horsebound nomadics like their ancestors before them. The Tuoba clan in particular became notorious as savage warriors and fierce worshippers of the Swan. In the late 860s, High Chieftain Lang Tuoba led his horse archers out of the plains to claim the wealthy Silk Road city of Shunzhou. He declared the city his new capital, and used its trading wealth to claim other trading outposts on the northeast of the Guiyi Circuit, eventually claiming enough warriors to rival the Jiedushi himself.

The cosmopolitan Han Chinese of Shunzhou regarded their new ‘bandit’ chieftain with deep suspicion. They wrote that he had the manners of a bandit and the ignorance of a peasant, and they made mock of the superstitions of the Melie Black Heads. If Lang was a bandit, however, he was a charming one with a shrewd understanding of human nature; slowly Confucian officials began to mix with the new priestly caste. Tanggut religion, classical Chinese culture, and Mongolian language slowly began to interact, with important long term consequences.

In the 880s, it seemed as if Lang Tuoba might defeat the Tang governor and claim the Gansu for himself. Zhang Yichao had left his nephew Huaishen to succeed him, but Huaishen died suddenly in 877. His successor was a two year old daughter, Bei Liu; few believed that she would hold the throne for long. Remarkably, however, Lang was struck with a great infirmity that prevented him from standing for extended periods or riding a horse. He could not show this kind of weakness and hope to claim the throne, and so the stricken Lang remained in Shunzhou until he died quietly in his bed in 891.

While Bei Liu grew in age and wisdom, the Tuoba squabbled among themselves. Lang had divided his lands among four of his sons, and for the next decade those sons would fight amongst themselves to claim their father’s legacy. Long Tuoba would finally secure his father’s birthright only to die from an assassin’s blade in 899. No one knew if he was killed by supporters of Bei Liu or by one of his defeated brothers.

With Long’s death, the cycle of violence began again: Liang Tuoba warred against his younger brother and his uncles to once again unite the family lands. Liang was, however, a different sort of man than his father and grandfather. He had few memories of life on the steppes, and had spent most of his formative years in the polyglot streets of Shunzhou. He was not only a strong warrior but a witty and urbane man who could quote from the Chinese masters or the teachings of Buddha. His reign saw the rise of a new and more sophisticated Melie religion, informed by the many influences of the Silk Road, in what was known as the ‘Tuhuyun Reformation.’

The Tang dynasty fell in the early tenth century. In response, Bei Liu had herself crowned as the Empress Baiyi, of the Golden Mountain Kingdom of the Western Han. It was a defiant gesture, but without the resources of the Tang empire the new Empress would be more vulnerable than ever to challenges from within and without. In Shunzhou, supporters of the Tuoba began to imagine a far different kind of empire: a revived Tuyuhun empire, ruled by the Tuoba in the name of the Swan.

The Empress had managed relations with Liang Tuoba very adroitly; the shamanistic son of Mongol warriors and the daughter of Confucian officials turned out to have much in common. This relationship allowed her to maintain internal stability while combatting repeated invasions from Uyghur nomads and Tibetan princelings. In 924, however, the courtly Duke of Shunzhou died. His grandson, Shilian Tuoba, was young, charismatic, and ambitious--and he meant to be king.

The Guiyi Circuit, 924​

[1] Quoted from the Zhang Yichao Transformation Text.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Khan Shilian I of the Tuoba Khanate
Born: 901
Reigned: 924 - 964

What does Heaven ever say? Yet there are four seasons going round and there are the hundred things coming into being. What does Heaven say?
- The Analects, 17:19

The boy Shilian was raised with visions of the great Tuyuhun Empire that was and would be again. These visions were largely fantasy, based on a throne that had not stood for over a century, but to the Melie elite they were enticing fantasies, and seemingly necessary ones. Cordial relations between Duke Liang Tuoba and the Empress Baoyi kept the lid on any violence, but tensions remained between the Daoist courtiers in Baoyi’s court and the shamanistic worshippers in Shunzhou.

The Empress hoped to peacefully cajole her vassal to give up Melie practices, and sent a number of pointed offers to tutor Shilian in proper (Han) rulership. Some in her circle intended to forbid the Melie practices through brute force. In Shunzhou, the reformation had raised the stakes from the other direction: the newest generation of Melie followers, particularly those of Han descent, began to use traditional Confucian principles to defend their new spiritual outlook. Some took this to a radical conclusion: for a society to be correctly ordered, the ruler must adhere to Melie principles.

One such adherent was Shu Wen Gong, son of a Confucian official, Black Head priest and tutor to the young Shilian. [1] Shu is traditionally regarded as the author of the first Melie writings, and while this is dubious there seems no doubt that Shu left a large impression on his pupil. As a man he was unfailingly kind and honest, but on the subject of the Guiyi throne, Shilian was a zealot. When he became duke, Master Shu was named his court shaman and tasked with rallying support for the throne.

In 930, Master Shu promulgated the dynastic connection between the Tuoba family and the traditional ruling house of the Tuyuhun Empire, and the court at Shunzhou began to refer to Shilian as Khan in official documents. The outside world was not impressed. Melie practice was as yet a minority practice in the Corridor and the Tibetan Plateau, with few adherents outside the Tuoba lands. More imposing still, the Empress Baoyi was venerable and well-connected with rulers within and within the Gansu, allowing her to call an army several times the size of Shilian’s.

The solution to this problem came from one Mayor Fengyi, a middle-aged Tuhuyun woman who served the dukes of Tuoba through her mastery of the darker currents of Silk Road commerce. After the chancellor, Count Wugeti, had once again failed to recruit allies to the Melie cause, Fengyi approached her liege privately. She observed that things would be easier if Baoyi were to die, as the prince was known to be a lesser sort of man. Duke Shilian listened with horror, but said nothing for a long moment. He is said to have nodded curtly and strode out of the room. While he retired to his private quarters to drink away his guilt, the empress’s death was already assured.

On October 24, 932, the empress once known as Bei Liu was killed in her bedchamber. Her son Bei Wo was crowned as the Emperor Taizu, and as soon as he assumed the throne a Tuoba delegation demanded the throne. Taizu proclaimed a Solomonic compromise--the kingdom would be divided in two, with Shilian reigning as Khan in his lands while Taizu remained as emperor in his own. The court was astonished, almost as much as Shilian himself. Nobody had expected this result.

Which is not to say that Shilian accepted the compromise. As he reasoned it, he had damned himself in order to claim the throne--not half a throne or even three quarters. Sensing weakness, Khan Shilian ordered his armies to invade Taizu’s own holdings. The Tuyuhun now outnumbered their Han rivals by three to one, and many in Shunzhou believed that the kingdom would be won by the New Year. Instead it would take some three decades of near-constant warfare to claim all of the Guiyi lands under his command.

By the summer of 936, the Tuyuhun were in control of the Guazhou, the chief holdings of the Guiyi emperors. Shilian retained the old capital for his own, and attempted to make peace with the lesser Han nobles. The Emperor Taizu fled to a holding in the mountains, and showed remarkable tenacity as he proclaimed resistance to the ‘barbarian invaders.’ In this tense political scenario, Shilian could not hope to press his Han vassals too hard; soon several of them had extracted promises of religious protection, ensuring that a Daoist minority would remain in the western lands for generations to come.

Khan Shilian did have a stroke of luck: in the war for Guazhou, his men had captured a youth named Bei Hongwu, grandson to the late empress. The young man proved all too willing to renounce the teachings of his ancestors in exchange for a change at becoming a powerful landholder, and by the early 940s, Shilian was championing Hongwu’s claims to lands in the southern Guiyi Circuit. After two more brutal campaigns, Duke Hongwu II was a powerful Melie noble, sitting on the Khan’s council and treated with high honors. The Emperor Taizu was dead, but a hardened group of supporters followed his daughter from an ‘empire’ that amounted to a few hardened fortresses in the Qilian mountains.

The Tuoba Khanate was going from strength to strength, but the trouble in the Khan’s soul had not quieted. Bei Hongwu was a cruel man, to his children and his people, and it sickened Shilian to treat him with an honor that he did not truly deserve. The minor nobility of Guazhou was a pit of vipers, spreading false belief and plotting behind his back. Worse, the corruption seemed to have entered the khan’s own family. Prince Zhen, heir to the throne, was caught in an amorous relationship with his own mother that had lasted for years. Disgusted, Shilian disinherited his son and divorced his wife.

In the fall of 950, tragedy struck the Tuoba family. Princess Zhaocheng, the one family member who got along with everybody, died in childbirth. Shilian was guilt-ridden and grief-stricken, convinced that Heaven was punishing him for the murder of the empress by taking his beloved daughter. Shilian could not cleanse the stain on his soul, however, so the khan drank. And drank. And drank.

The dynasty founded by Liu Bei lasted only fifty years, and in its final years the girl empress could command perhaps three hundred last holdouts in a single fastness in Yumen. In the summer of 962, warriors from the Tuoba khanate finally stormed this last holdout and claimed it for their own. The girl Bei Qingyu, once empress of the Western Han, went into exile and soon became the child bride of a Uyghur chieftain in the Qocho kingdom.

At long last, Khan Shilian Tuoba had accomplished the great ambition of his childhood, and yet the whole business left him empty. He had imagined a righteous kingdom ordered by proper conduct between ruler and ruled, between father and son, and so forth. He had instead built a kingdom that was still divided by religious difference, plagued by intrigue in which the least worthy succeeded at the expense of their betters. The problems created here would plague his successors for generations.

Shilian’s last night were spent, appropriately, in a drunken haze. He had traveled to the Leh for a local festival. While stumbling back to his bed for the night, the first khan of the Tuoba was cornered by a small group of ruffians and brutally stabbed to death. His offense had been a minor ruling to the disadvantage of a young Tuyuhun noblewoman, Fengyi Erzhu. One does wonder, however, if the khan spent his final moments reflecting that he had been properly punished at last.

[1] “Wen Gong” is a posthumous name, meaning “venerable man of culture.” Master Shu’s given name is unknown.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

Khan Shilian II of the Tuoba Khanate

Born: 925
Reigned: 965 - 985

As a boy Prince Shilian was modest and retiring. He rarely boasted, rarely yelled, and was quick to forgive offenses against his person. His father, the first Khan Shilian, came to appreciate the prince’s reliability in the troubled years after Prince Zhen’s incestuous affair and the death of the beloved Zhaocheng. For all that, there was something unsettling about the child. He was polite and well mannered but neither kind nor particularly concerned for the wellbeing of others.

The boy prince was plagued in those days by a recurring vision of the fierce god Mahakala [1], adorned with skulls and sitting on his throne made of corpses. The boy’s ears would ache to hear the loud shrieks of vultures and jackals, and yet the most powerful sound was the quiet voice of the God of Destruction. In a whisper the god told his child supplicant of the destruction of men, women and children, their deaths coming implacably with the march of time. It is not for this chronicle to determine whether these visions were borne from divinity or madness, but later generations would find them prescient regardless.

Adding to Shilian’s agitation, the Tuoba Khanate was riddled with tensions. His father may have won the kingdom for the Melie faith but there was no guarantee that the family could hold it. The potential opposition was vast: from ambitious uncles in the north, Buddhist and Daoist agitators to the west, the treacherous Duke Hongwu in the south and the ever-present possibility of invasion from the east. When news struck Shunzhou of the assassination of Khan Shilian I, Silk Road merchants began to stream from the city gates for the (relative) safety of Five Dynasties-era China to wait for the dust to settle.

Despite these ominous rumblings, Shilian’s first reaction was aggression. He launched a series of conquests aimed at securing the Koko Nur [2] region on his southern border. The population of Koko Nur was primarily Mongolian-speakers in this period, and presumably the khan expected that he could use the loyalty of his new provinces as a counterbalance to the old. During the summer of 966, Shilian seized the western lands of Mahila Lhathrimo of Fuqi; the following year, he went to war against Mahila Tsamchö in Tu’ulain. By 968 the entire duchy was his.

If the khan had hoped to secure the loyalty of his new subjects, he would soon be disabused. Although they shared some ethnic and linguistic ties to their new king, the people of Koko Nur had lived under Tibetan rule for far longer and most were practitioners of the Nangchos school of Buddhism. Soon they too would be plotting rebellion.

The first rebellion of Shilian’s reign came in 972. Dai Tuoba, youngest brother of Shilian I and powerful noble in his own right, made a bid for the throne; he was a respected general and supporters argued that he would be a steadier hand than the god-plagued Shilian II. Although he was a Tuyuhun and a Melie practitioner, Dai was able to claim some support from Daoist nobles in the west by promising to respect their religious practices.

Dai’s rebellion collapsed on February 7, 973, when his forces were soundly defeated at the battle of Drotsang. Adding to the khan’s relief, Duke Hongwu II perished that same month, splitting his mighty fiefdom among his sons. However, the instability was far from over. Later that year, the Cao family--a powerful Han dynasty that converted to Melie a generation before--began to support the Daoist noblewoman Khrimalod Litang’s claim for the throne. Countess Cao Hong quietly used her influence to gather an alliance of nobles that could easily outstrip the might of the throne.

Forewarned, Shilian II stole a march on the nobility by having Cao Hong arrested and thrown into prison. Her supporters launched their revolt regardless, but without the countess and her substantial forces they were poorly coordinated and undermanned. The khan won a series of brutal victories, including a near-slaughter at Tu’ulain; but the winning blow took place on July 7, 977, when Khrimalod was poisoned by a Tuyuhun assassin. The death of their figurehead left the rebels fatally scattered, and the revolt soon collapsed.

Following the murder of Khrimalod, Shilian II ordered a purge of the nobility, starting with the public execution of Countess Cao Hong and a dozen of her collaborators. The remaining years of his reign would be occupied in the never-ending hunt for traitors in the realm. The Daoist and Buddhist nobility would be the primary objects of his suspicion. Noble families suspected of treason would be obliged to provide hostages to live in Shunzhou as ‘honored members’ of the royal household.

Between the summary executions and the policy of hostage-taking, the khan was able to maintain the docility of his lords for a time. Instead, the fires of rebellion took hold among the Manichean Uyghurs in the khanate’s northern frontier. While the khan rode forth to put down the rebellion, the Buddhists in Koko Nur rose up in the south, proclaiming a Mongolian Buddhist kingdom of Gyalrong on the northern Tibetan plateau. The disgruntled nobility were too intimidated to directly support these revolts, but they did little to stop it and quietly hoped that the kingdom would be consumed by them.

As a result, Shilian II’s final years were spent trying desperately to keep his kingdom intact, and the chronicle of his reign becomes an extended series of executions and reprisals. Despite appearances, conditions were improving, as a younger generation of nobility came of age that did not remember the old Guiyi Circuit and Melie practice became more popular in the kingdom’s west and south. It was hardly a given that the Tuoba khanate would survive its second generation, and Shilian’s measures are a large reason why it did.

However, the constant bloodletting took a toll not just on the kingdom but also its monarch. Shilian’s visions only intensified in the final years of his reign, and he took to quelling them with wine--leading to a resurgence of the dynastic curse, alcoholism. In the early 980s, his health declined substantially, and in his final year the khan was unable to ride a horse or lift a bow.

As Shilian declined, courtiers considered with concern the matter of the inheritance. Crown Prince Rou, eldest grandson of the khan, was popular among the Confucian official class for his learning and his excellent calligraphy, but he held few of the martial values so admired by the Tuyuhun elite. Could this mild youth maintain the allegiance of the realm, or would the chaos of the realm be renewed for a new generation?

[1] Mahakala was known in those days as a god in the Hindu and Nangchos Buddhist traditions; in the late tenth century, he became increasingly recognized by Melie followers as well.
[2] Literally, “Blue Sea/Lake.” Known as Qinghai to the Han and Tsongonpo to the Tibetans.

 

[Cora Giantkiller]

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.