The Intimate Bond (24 page)

The Shang fought numerous wars on the northwestern steppes, which yielded not only prisoners, but rich hauls of horses and weaponry. In time, they found at least some allies among the frontier tribes, from whom they acquired horse trainers, wheelwrights, veterinarians, and other experts to maintain and drive what was a revolutionary technology to people who had been farmers for millennia. Just managing the horses demanded unfamiliar skills from people who dealt habitually with farm animals.

The Zhou, who overthrew the Shang in 1045
BCE
, were the first Chinese to use light chariots in combat on the battlefield.
³
They deployed three hundred chariots and archers with composite bows against their Shang foes at the Battle of Muye, despite being outnumbered, and trounced them. The ruler Wen, who founded the Zhou Dynasty, is said to have been a “barbarian,” a man from the steppes, which probably accounts for his mobile strategy. Massed regiments of chariots, many of them with four-horse teams, became popular throughout northern China within a few centuries. Competing rulers fought constantly from
the fifth to third centuries in a bewildering morass of violence, this apart from Mongol raids from the north. War brought technological innovation. Iron metallurgy arrived from the steppes by 800
BCE
. Chariots became ever more elaborate. Lustrous metals provided ornamentation that turned the conveyances into status symbols, often awarded by rulers as rewards for meritorious service on or off the battlefield.

Barbarian Horseman

The northern borderlands suffered under a classic regime of nomads encroaching on settled lands along a porous frontier where people traded horses and cattle for grain and other agricultural products. The climax of the trade came in the fall, when steppe animals were fat and the harvest was over. In some years, the Chinese failed to open their markets. Invariably, nomadic horsemen descended to raid grain stores. More organized warriors on horseback first appeared on the steppes north of the frontier by 484
BCE
. They advanced and retreated with bewildering rapidity, never striking at the same location, and almost invariably in larger numbers than the defenders. Defense was a nightmare for a much-slower-moving soldiery scattered along a long frontier. Accurate bowmanship and complete mobility proved so effective that three northern states built walls to deter the invaders as they penetrated ever deeper into China's heartlands.

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 led 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.