War against the Xiongnu

War against the Xiongnu

War against the Xiongnu

The death of Empress Dou also marked a significant shift in foreign policy. In order to address the Xiongnu threat and renewal of the heqin agreement, Emperor Wu called a court conference into session in 135 BCE where two factions of leading ministers debated the merits and faults of the current policy; Emperor Wu followed the majority consensus of his ministers that peace should be maintained. A year later, while the Xiongnu were busy raiding the northern border and waiting for Han's response, Wu had another court conference assembled. The faction supporting war against the Xiongnu was able to sway the majority opinion by making a compromise for those worried about stretching financial resources on an indefinite campaign: in a limited engagement along the border near Mayi, Han forces would lure Junchen Chanyu over with gifts and promises of defections in order to quickly eliminate him and cause political chaos for the Xiongnu. When the Mayi trap failed in 133 BCE (Junchen Chanyu realized he was about to fall into a trap and fled back north), the era of heqin-style appeasement was broken and the Han court resolved to engage in full-scale war.

Leading campaigns involving tens of thousands of troops, in 127 BCE the Han general Wei Qing (d. 106 BCE) recaptured the Ordos Desert region from the Xiongnu and in 121 BCE Huo Qubing (d. 117 BCE) expelled them from the Qilian Mountains, gaining the surrender of many Xiongnu aristocrats. At the Battle of Mobei in 119 BCE, generals Wei and Huo led the campaign to the Khangai Mountains where they forced the chanyu to flee north of the Gobi Desert. The maintenance of 300,000 horses by government slaves in thirty-six different pasture lands was not enough to satisfy the cavalry and baggage trains needed for these campaigns, so the government offered exemption from military and corve labor for up to three male members of each household who presented a privately-bred horse to the government.

After Xiongnu's King Hunye surrendered to Huo Qubing in 121 BCE, the Han acquired a territory stretching from the Hexi Corridor to Lop Nur, thus cutting the Xiongnu off from their Qiang allies. New commanderies were established in the Ordos as well as four in the Hexi CorridorJiuquan, Zhangyi, Dunhuang, and Wuweiwhich were populated with Han settlers after a major Qiang-Xiongnu allied force was repelled from the region in 111 BCE. By 119 BCE, Han forces established their first garrison outposts in the Juyan Lake Basin of Inner Mongolia, with larger settlements built there after 110 BCE. Roughly 40% of the settlers at Juyan came from the Guandong region of modern Henan, western Shandong, southern Shanxi, southern Hebei, northwestern Jiangsu, and northwestern Anhui. After Hunye's surrender, the Han court moved 725,000 people from the Guandong region to populate the Xinqinzhong region south of the bend of the Yellow River. In all, Emperor Wu's forces conquered roughly 4.4 million km2 (1.7 million mi2) of new land, by far the largest territorial expansion in Chinese history. Self-sustaining agricultural garrisons were established in these frontier outposts to support military campaigns as well as secure trade routes leading into Central Asia, the eastern terminus of the Silk Road. The Han-era Great Wall was extended as far west as Dunhuang and sections of it still stand today in Gansu, including thirty Han beacon towers and two fortified castles.

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