The History of China - #39 - E. Han 6: Warlords, White Wolf, Winter Winds

Episode Date: September 21, 2014

In the Southeast, the young but ambitious Sun Ce has splintered off to form his own power bloc, but intrigue will leave his legacy in jeopardy. To the Southwest, the thrice defeated Liu Bei has fled to the refuge of Jing Province under his cousin's protection, to lick his wounds. And to the far North, Cao Cao wages a daring - and dangerous - campaign to stomp out the last vestiges of resistance to his absolute rule. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 37, Warlords, White Wolf, and Winter Winds. Last time, we set the first part of the first act of the opening salvo that marked our official foray into the Three Kingdoms era, the titanic clash between the forces of Yuan Shao and his once-ally but now-bitter enemy Cao Cao in 200 CE. At the Duxue Fort at Guangdu, just south of the Yellow River, Cao Cao waged defensive attritional warfare to perfection, resulting in the collapse and utter defeat of Yuan's attacking army. With Yuan Shao's fall from power in the north, nothing would be left to stop Cao Cao from claiming its entirety for himself. What would ultimately become the state of Cao Wei.

Today, the reverberations of Cao Cao's northern consolidation will echo across China, and the other regional powers will be forced to react. Some will fight, some will flee, some will pledge fealty, and some will be destroyed utterly. But as before, our primary focus here, again in the interest of maintaining your interest, is going to be on the other two prime movers and shakers of the era, those who would ultimately form the basis of the other two of the three kingdoms of the 3rd century. We'll start with the coastal southeast of China, since that had actually begun to coalesce even before the Battle of Guandu.

As mentioned last episode, back in 197, when Cao Cao and Yuan Shao were still frenemies, Yuan's half-brother, Yuan Shu, got the bright idea to declare himself emperor of his so-called Zhong Dynasty. As we discussed last time, that did not work out particularly well for him, and he ended up dying in 199. But for our purposes today, the important thing to take away from all this is that one of his trusted lieutenants and the governor of much of his southern territories defected in disgust at his boss's treasonous self-promotion. That defector was Sun Ce, who at only 22 years old found himself the lord of much of southeastern China.

Almost a decade prior, Sun Ce's father, Sun Jiao, had been killed in battle against Liu Biao, the governor of the Jing province and the warlord of China's westernmost regions. Jing, positioned as it was covering modern Hubei and Hunan, is both literally and figuratively the central hub of this particular bicycle wheel. That is, everything is going to be spinning around and around the Jing province. It cannot be said that Sun Jian's death wasn't spectacular. While he rode a horse into combat, a trap was sprung by Liu Biao's general to crush him with a mass of rolling logs.

And that was that. As his eldest child and heir, Sun Si inherited his father's prefecture and, of course, blood debt. So, having successfully defected from Yuan Shu, nominally allied with Cao Cao, and defended his territory from Yuan's half-hearted attempt to retake it, Sun Ce turned westward to hunt down his father's killer, the general Huang Zu. He was actually en route to Huang's location when news of Yuan Shu's death reached him in 199. Sun seized on the unexpected opportunity, turned his army around, and captured Huangcheng City, which was poorly defended following the so-called Zhong Emperor's death by sadness.

This display of power rallied many of Yuan Shu's disheartened soldiers to Sun Ce's cause, more than 30,000 by accounts, and secured the majority of Yuan's former territories. Reinforced and re-emboldened, Sun Ce turned once again westward to hunt down his father's murderer, and his army at last tracked the general down and crushed him, in spite of Huang Zu having been sent reinforcements by his lord, Liu Biao. As a result, by the year 200 and the Battle of Guangdu to his north, Sun Tzu was poised to claim the entire south of China as his own. But there was still one powerful foe with which Sun had to contend for that title,

the former governor of Wu Prefecture, Xu Gong. Xu both resented and feared Sun Tzu and wrote to the Emperor Xian, advising him to summon the warlord to the capital and, I don't know, do something about this character, because he was dangerously powerful. Xu Gong even went so far as to compare Sun Si with Xiang Yu, who I'm sure you'll remember as one of the instigators of the Chu-Han contention, and more importantly, the destroyer of the ancient Qin dynasty. The meaning was clear. Zhugong was trying to scare Emperor Xian into thinking Sun Tzu had designs on destroying the Han.

Now regardless of how true or false that accusation may have been, it was just crazy enough to work, if it had ever reached the throne room. Instead, the message was intercepted by an agent loyal to Sun Tzu, and in response to this deviousness, Xu Gong was attacked and killed. This surely seemed like a good idea at the time, but later that year Sun Tzu would feel the blowback of his revenge. As the Battle of Guandu raged on between Cao Cao and Yuan Shao, Sun Ce planned to use the chaos inside Yan province to his own advantage.

Remember that the war between Cao and Yuan was all about who got to control the emperor, and thus claim his legitimacy. Would it be Cao Cao or Yuan Shao? But imagine the looks on those two brutes' faces when Sun Tzu rode his army into Shu City when no one was looking and captured, um, rescued the emperor for himself. It was a foolproof plan. Except, just before his plan to abscond with the emperor was set to roll out, Sun Tzu decided now was the perfect time for a quick solo hunting trip. Fatefully, in the woods, three former servants of the late Xu Gong

ambushed him. The trio planned to make Sun pay for his murder of Xu and put an arrow in his face before they were slain by Sun's bodyguards. Sun wasn't killed immediately, but the wound would prove fatal. Either that night or shortly thereafter, he accidentally reopened the facial wound, purportedly after seeing his damaged face in a mirror, he accidentally reopened the facial wound, purportedly after seeing his damaged face in a mirror, which was more than the famously handsome and vainglorious Sun Tzu could handle. In doing so, he tore open a blood vessel within and bled to death. Within the romance of the Three Kingdoms, Sun Tzu's death is rather more supernatural.

As with the historical account, he gets shot in the face and manages to survive, but upon looking in a mirror, he was horrified to see the ghostly face of a Taoist priest he had ordered executed for sorcery. In a panic, Sun slammed the mirror, rupturing his wound and again bleeding to death. Although Sun Tzu did have a son of his own, and another would be born after his death, he chose instead to bequeath his titles, powers, and territories to one of his four younger brothers, Sun Quan. It will be Quan who will continue coalescing southern China into the eventual state of Sun Wu, also called Eastern Wu. We'll be spending a lot of time getting to

know Sun Quan and Eastern Wu better, but for now, let's leave him be and move west, because as we speak, Liu Bei is headed that direction as fast and as far as his horse will take him. Liu Bei, as you'll remember from last week's episode, had developed almost a comical knack for military failure, and yet somehow managed to avoid meeting his end time and again. And the aftermath of Guangdu was little different. Liu had bungled both of his commands immediately before and during the engagement, first among the cavalry raid aimed at disrupting Cao Cao's retreat,

and secondly as a force sent to assault Yan's capital, Shu City. But his near-supernatural streak of luck was an infinite, certainly not against the wrath of Cao Cao, who had come to take Liu Bei's rebellion against him rather personally. Once it became clear that Yuan Shao's power was broken, Cao Cao pivoted his army and made his way over to pay a little well-deserved special attention to his wayward former vassal. And Liu Bei knew it was time to get the heck out of Dodge. He fled southwest, to the one place he thought, hoped, and prayed could be a refuge from Cao Cao's retribution. Wouldn't you know it, Jing province.

A place as of yet still far removed from the war-torn east, and conveniently under the command of his distant cousin Liu Biao. Liu Biao, for his part, received his fleeing family member as an honored guest, welcoming him personally to Jing and going so far as to give Liu Bei a command of Xinyi City, as well as a small military force. Once situated, Liu Bei began to consolidate his position, notably sending a call out for talented scholars who could serve him. And he was truly in luck, since, removed as it was from the ongoing chaos to the east,

Jing province had become a haven for literati fleeing the war's destruction. He was recommended one Zhu Ge Liang, and after three petitions for an audience, which ought to tell you something right there, was at last granted a meeting with the academic. Put a star next to Zhu Ge Liang's name if you're writing any of this down, to tell you something right there, was at last granted a meeting with the academic. Put a star next to Zhuge Liang's name if you're writing any of this down, because he literally is the Three Kingdoms' Sun Tzu, and will become the greatest and most accomplished strategist of the era, and is still known as Wuolong, the Sleeping Dragon. To this day, even his admittedly uncommon surname is associated with strategy and intelligence in Chinese culture.

So Zhuge Liang, kind of a big deal. And he was all on board with helping Liu Bei break his embarrassing losing streak, even drawing up the Longzhong Plan ahead of the pair's first meeting, which was his generalized outline of Liu Bei first taking over Jing province and then the neighboring Ying province as a prelude to a two-pronged final strike at the de facto imperial capital and Cao Cao's base of operations, Shu City. Yet, for all this scheming, Liu Bei spent the next several years doing little more than sitting around. It got to the point that he bemoaned to his cousin, quote, end quote. But in 208, Liu Biao died of illness,

leaving Jing province to his eldest son, Liu Qi. However, Liu Biao's wife fervently wished for their second son, Liu Cong, to inherit her late husband's lands instead, and ended up altering his will to achieve that goal. We're going to circle back around to the outcomes of this forgery, but for now, suffice it to say, it's going to throw away any hope of peaceful cohabitation with the other emergent regional powers out the window. After all, nature abhors a power vacuum. So for all this tumult to the south between 200 and 208, it's fair to ask just where the heck was Tao Tao in all this? I know that's what I asked, since I figured he'd be about the first guy

to capitalize on the relative instability of Wu, not to mention wanting to pursue Liu Bei to the ends of the earth. So something clearly had fixed his attention even more than those two objectives. And that something was the mopping up of Yuan Shao's allies, namely the tribes Yuan had made agreements with who existed outside the

borders of the Han Empire, the Wu Huan. I call it a mopping up as though it was just some little task, but it is in its own right an epic struggle culminating in the suitably awesome sounding Battle of White Wolf Mountain in 207. Yuan Shao had made pains to maintain good relations with the Wu Huan tribes that existed to the northwest of Han, today the regions north of China and Korea, most likely consisting of Heilongjiang, Primorsky, Khabarovsk, etc. This alliance had been brought about by them having a mutual enemy during the 190s, Gongsun Zan, whom Yuan had managed to destroy just prior to the Battle of Guandu. And it had been sealed in one of the most formalized, binding ways available, that of

marriage. Yuan had married both of his own daughters, as well as those of his subordinates, to the chieftains of Wuhan, as well as their overarching leader, Tadun Chanyu. Following Cao Cao's destruction of Yuan Shao's two bickering sons in 202, he sought to ensure his uncontested supremacy of the north, meaning that this Ta Dun character had to be stamped out. This was easier said than done, however, since Ta Dun had managed to amass something like 300,000 soldiers, both ethnically Wuhuan as well as a large number of Chinese who had fled north with Yuan Shang following his defeat.

Though it's unlikely, or at least uncertain, that Ta Deng Chanyu wished to emulate the hegemony of the Xiongnu Chanyus of old and unify the Asian steppe under his rule, the mere fear of such, along with the obvious fact that they were harboring and aiding Cao Cao's enemies, proved a more than sufficient cost as belly for Cao. As such, he began planning a full-scale invasion of the Wuhuan lands beyond China's borders. His efforts were met, however, with a surprising amount of resistance from his advisors. Even as Cao Cao ordered the construction of two canals in 206 and 207 to better supply such a northern expedition, his general attempted to dissuade the warlord from such a dangerous attack. Yuan Shang, after all, was an enemy in flight.

The barbarians with whom he had sought refuge held no deep affinity for him, and so would probably not go out of their way to try to suppress any efforts Yuan might muster. And what's more, if Cao Cao committed the bulk of his forces to such a northern campaign, he would be leaving his southern flank completely exposed to an attack from the likes of Liu Biao and Liu Bei. And should they manage to invade Shu City and capture the emperor while Cao was away, there would be no mulligan, no second chance. It would be an effective game over for Cao Cao.

But Cao Cao's chief strategist, Guo Jia, argued otherwise. As he saw it, the Wuhan barbarians had been lulled into a false sense of security due to their distance from the center of Chinese power. As such, if Cao Cao were to strike quickly, they'd be unable to correct for that strategic error, and overrun. Moreover, Guo stated, Cao Cao could not afford to not remove the Wuhan as a threat, especially given that the Yuan brothers were hiding out amongst them. Cao could not turn his attention to the south without risking them riding down and seizing his newly won northern provinces. Finally, Guo Jia said that the so-called threat posed by Liu Biao was nothing more than a paper tiger. Liu Bei would indeed want to invade in Cao Cao's absence, but his ruler and cousin was far more cautious, to the point of inaction.

The governor of Jing province would huff and puff, but wouldn't dare risk his army to an invasion of Yan province so far away. Cao Cao had already shown how effective he was at destroying critical enemy supply lines after all. Moreover, though Liu Bei and Biao were kinsmen and allies, neither trusted the other. Liu Biao especially was deeply fearful of Liu Bei acquiring too much power for his own ends,

a major chink in the seemingly implacable armor of Jing province. After considering both sides, Tao Tao agreed with Guo Jia's assessment that Jing province would be unlikely to do anything other than sit on its hands, regardless of Liu Bei's pushes to do the contrary. Sufficiently confident of his own realm's security then, Tao Tao launched his attack against the Wuhuan tribes in the summer of 207. The Wuhan people's base of power was at Liuqun, which is in modern Liaoning province bordering North Korea. As such, the obvious line of attack would be to march as armies across the relatively flat plains of the Bohai Sea coastline. However,

as remains a typical summer occurrence along the coast of China, let me tell you, with summer comes monsoons and typhoons. The resultant floods in the seventh lunar month flooded these low-lying areas and drenched the roads, rendering them impassable with mud and standing water. What's more, the sheer obviousness of such a route of attack ensured that the Wuhan had fortified every major river crossing against incursion. With both the Wuhan and nature itself opposing Cao Cao's coastal advance, he was forced to find yet another route to domination over his enemies to the north. He would turn to Tian Chou, a local of the region who had extensive knowledge and often

hostile run-ins with the Wu Huan. It would be Tian who would show Cao Cao the long-abandoned and forgotten roads which led to the frontier territories of the long-gone Western Han. By using their hitherto unknown passage, Cao Cao could not only advance into the region controlled by the Wu Huan tribes, but also bypass the majority of their defenses. In the words of Tian Xiao himself,

by utilizing these undefended roadways, quote, Ta Dun's head could be taken without a single battle, end quote. As Sun Tzu taught us in The Art of War, deception is a key element in any attack, and Cao Cao ordered his men to erect signs along the coastal roads before they turned back to take the frontier paths. The signs read, in the middle of summer, the road is impassable. We are waiting for autumn or winter to resume our advance. As strange as that might seem to us, it would appear that the Wuhan scouts not only found the erected signs saying effectively the ball game has been canceled due to rain, but took them at

their face value. They relaxed their defenses, feeling safe behind their impassable coastal roads, and totally unaware that their enemy had found another inland route straight to their heart. That state of blissful ignorance would not last forever. Hey, even relaxed defenses would have a hard time missing tens of thousands of enemy soldiers advancing for long. And Cao Cao took to heart his commander Guo Jia's advice, bing gui shen su, meaning the key to warfare is speed. At Guo Jia's insistence, Cao's army abandoned much of their equipment and forced marched their light infantry.

This stealth march to take the Wuhuan by surprise has been widely considered as one of the most remarkable of Cao Cao's already impressive military career. The force ascended the steep hills of northern China and exited the Chinese frontiers through Lulang Pass in the upper reaches of the Luan River Valley. They then continued their trek for more than 250 kilometers of rough, mountainous terrain before turning eastward and re-entering the mountain ranges that served as the Han Empire's northern borders. It had been a tough time for all, but Cao Cao was now exactly where he wanted to be, flanking Taodan Chanyu's defenses, poised to cut a straight swath through the Wu Huan's territory all the way to the sea,

and with the Chanyu still none the wiser. As Cao Cao's army began its devastating autumn advance into the Wuhuan heartland, Cao Dun finally realized what had happened, and hurriedly withdrew his armies from their prepared positions in the south and east to confront the Chinese army now advancing somehow from the north. The two forces would clash along the foothills of Bailangshan, or White Wolf Mountain. This would prove to be an encounter battle for both sides, with neither Cao Cao nor Taodun expecting to so abruptly meet their enemy. Cao Cao was initially taken aback by the sheer number of Wuhuan defenders arrayed against his force, estimates put it as high as 100,000, as well as the fact that his

own supply train still lagged so far behind his main advance. However, he quickly saw that the Wuhuan army, massive as it was, was out of formation and completely unprepared to counter a quick advance. The key to warfare, after all, is speed. After committing his light infantry to the attack, Cao Cao observed with satisfaction that though outnumbered, the element of surprise seemed to more than make up for that, and his light infantry were able to cut down the bulk of Tairan's cavalry with ease. In a remarkably short span, the Chanyu himself was captured, and the remainder of his army killed, captured, or fled. Reportedly, more than 200,000 Wuhan and ethnically Chinese settlers surrendered to the victorious Cao Cao.

In the span of a single afternoon, Cao Cao had managed to break the back of Wuhan resistance to his domination, though he hadn't yet cut off all the heads of this particular serpent. Though he had captured and executed Ta Deng Chanyu, several of the other Wuhan Chanyus, as well as the sons Wuhan Chanyus, as well as the sons of Yuan Shao who had fled to the Wuhan to escape Cao Cao's wrath, had escaped him yet again. They had collectively fled east to Liaodong Peninsula,

which was controlled by the warlord Gongsun Kang. Far-flung as Liaodong was from the seat of imperial authority, Gongsun was relatively independent from central control and had enjoyed a large degree of autonomy within his own lands. Cao Cao's lieutenants urged their general to attack Liaodong at once and put a final nail in the Yuan brothers and their Wuhan allies' coffin. But Cao Cao had other ideas and halted his force well outside the warlord Gongsun's borders. There, he waited. When his lieutenants again urged him to attack, he responded, quote, I shall arrange affairs such that Gongsun Kang delivers the heads of Yansheng and Yanshi to me personally. Our soldiers needn't lift a finger, end quote. If Cao Cao's forces pressed the attack, he would later elaborate, it would have unified

Gongsun and the Yan brothers against him. But without an external enemy to bind them together, Cao Cao calculated that their internal divisions would quickly boil over. And he wouldn't need to wait more than a few days to be proven absolutely right. The Yan brothers had apparently been planning to kill Gongsun Kang and take his territories for themselves before they'd even set foot in his borders. But once summoned to the warlord's presence, they found themselves outmaneuvered as Gongsun struck first, ordering the pair and their Wuhan allies executed and sending their heads to the waiting Cao Cao,

just as predicted. Ironically, it would be the post-victory phase of Cao Cao's northern campaign that would prove one of the most difficult and costly. Winter was setting in, and his army could not hope to wait through it on the meager supplies that remained. Extreme cold, hunger, and drought would plague Cao Cao's army as it withdrew south, quite possibly becoming the single greatest and deadliest foe his men would face in the northern reaches. It was such an ordeal that once he was back in his capital, Shu City, Cao Cao, the victorious warlord of the north, rewarded and complimented those of his counselors who had advised him not to undertake the campaign against Wu Han.

He acknowledged that it had been a rather foolish and extremely dangerous plan that not only was greatly taxing on his armies, but had left his home territory exposed to attack, and make no mistake, Liu Bei had been pushing his cousin Liu Biao constantly to launch just such an invasion of Yan. But as expected, Liu Biao wrung his hands together and did nothing. Nevertheless, Cao Cao fully copped to the fact that the majority of this campaign's success had been attributable to good fortune, not good planning. As the winter snows of 207 blew into 208, those Wu Huan Chanyus, who had not been so foolish as to side with the Yuan brothers,

made their way to Shu City and formally submitted to the warlord Cao Cao, and bringing with them their horsemen, who would be integrated into Cao Cao's forces and become known as the greatest cavalry force in the empire. Last episode, I mentioned that Cao Cao had made himself chancellor back when we were in the year 202, and that was mistaken. It was only now, in 208, following the Battle of White Wolf Mountain, that he felt secure enough in his position to accept the appointment of Imperial Chancellor from Emperor Xian, giving him in title what he already functionally possessed, which was absolute control over the actions of the Imperial government.

As for the Wuhuan tribes, White Wolf Mountain would mark the end of their existence as an independent political and cultural entity. The scattered remnants of the Wuhuan would take refuge in Manchuria and Goguryeo, and eventually be assimilated into those stronger cultures. As for the rest of China, now that Tao Tao has secured his position in the north, he has grand and terrible plans for any who would stand against him in the south. Next time, as the winter winds of 208 sweep down from Manchuria, so too will Cao Cao, to wipe out the likes of Sun Quan and Liu Bei.

These two warlords, though long feuding themselves, will be forced into an alliance of survival if they are to have any hope of stopping the total reunification of China at the hands of Chancellor Cao Cao. These three forces will meet along the shores of the Yangtze River, and there, along the Red Cliffs of Chiba, they will clash for the first time, with the fate of China itself hanging in the balance. Thank you for listening. Hey guys, hope you all enjoyed the show this week. Thank you. shorter than what I'm sure we've all become accustomed to, and that's simply because the Battle of White Wolf Mountain seemed like a natural breakpoint. Events are coming hard and fast. Next episode's events will be almost entirely contained within the same year we left off as,

208. And so I'd rather have inconsistency in length but consistency in narrative flow rather than the other way around. I both don't want any one episode to drag on too long — I'm no Dan Carlin, after all — and at the same time, I wouldn't want to stop in the middle of something like the Battle of Red Cliffs simply because I'd reached the maximum runtime, so I hope you can understand my decision-making process. If you'd like to tell me how much you love the shorter runtime, or hate the shorter runtime, or don't care about the shorter runtime, or have any questions, comments, or insights I might have missed about the early Three Kingdoms period, please post a message on our WordPress site, that's thehistoryofchina.wordpress.com,

or our Facebook page at The History of China. I try to respond to any and all inquiries ASAP, and who knows, if I got enough good questions, I might be able to answer them on the air. For any of you who might wish to go one step further than a review, the History of China's WordPress site also has links to our donation pages, either through PayPal or Patreon. So if you think we're worth a dollar or more, please click and donate. Our server costs are entirely paid for by listeners like you. Thanks very much, and see you again next week.