The details of the Fei River battle as relayed by the Standard Histories have been much debated. Suffice it to say that a combination of minor engagements seems to have culminated in a massive communications failure. The Qin forces misread their general’s cunning plan to lure the enemy across the river and took his failure to attack as evidence of a prior reverse of undisclosed magnitude. They therefore not only held their fire, as ordered, but withdrew. Retreat then turned to rout. The Qin thought they had lost a battle that had not as yet been fought; and their imperfectly integrated associates and allies, putting self-preservation first, simply dispersed. The mighty force had not so much been defeated as dissolved.
The idea of ‘dissolution’ may be appropriate because, however unconvincing the details of the ‘battle’, water seems to have played a major part in it. Indeed, the Fei River affair may be taken to illustrate the widening gulf between military deployment as understood in the north and in the south. In the south nearly all warfare involved ships. Troops, mostly infantry, were moved by river, lake, canal or coast, and campaigns were planned around these lines of advance. Roads were few. The terrain was hostile to baggage trains, the malarial climate was lethal to men on the march, and both were bad for horses. Scarcer here than water buffalo, horses found the grazing unnutritious and the going treacherous. Breeding them, too, was problematic; offspring born anywhere south of the Yellow River were reckoned second rate, and most cavalry mounts had to be imported from the steppe. Thus the southern armies, while they could give a good account of themselves among the bamboo brakes and rushy waterways of their native land, were at a major disadvantage when they ventured on to the windswept plains.
It was the other way round in the north. There mounted warfare and draught transport were everything. From Shaanxi, Gansu and the steppes came the swiftest and sturdiest horses in Asia. Peoples like the Xiongnu and Xianbei rode from infancy. They herded and hunted from horseback, and with bow and blade they fought from horseback. Bloodstock remained the mainstay of their economy. The northern plains, no less than the adjoining steppes, were an equestrian arena.
But while the saddle was proverbially ‘the nomad’s throne’, as of the early fourth century the rider seems to have sat it more firmly. Saddles themselves became more substantially padded, were tailored to horse and rider, and were fitted with leg guards; the c. 300 introduction of the stirrup – one of those obscure inventions credited with changing the world – afforded the rider a much steadier platform from which to loose an arrow or launch a lance; and both riders and horses came to be encased in increasingly heavy body armour. Although the crossbow, with various refinements, remained the weapon of first choice, it was less effective against steel-plated knights on leather-padded steeds. A charge by this tank-like cavalry carried all before it and may partly account for the fortification in this period not only of royal residences but of rural homesteads and villages. Yet in the south such equestrian developments availed the invader not at all. Horses on boats were hard to manage; and in paddy fields and swamps the overladen panzers sank to a soggy standstill. One reason why the north–south division of the country lasted so long could simply be that neither party possessed the military means to overrun the other.
Evidence for the use of the stirrup and horse armour comes from contemporary paintings and figurines of helmet-hooded Xianbei on stiffly skirted chargers. It was fearsome offensives by just such troops of a Xianbei confederation from beyond the northern frontier which ended the ‘Sixteen Kingdoms’ free-for-all. The Tabgach (in Chinese ‘Tuoba’), the confederation’s main tribal component, first fell out with allies in the plains of the north-east. Following a row over a consignment of horses, the Xianbei swooped down to settle matters, and as ‘the Northern Wei’ (386–534), the Tabgach leadership then steadily eliminated Xiongnu, Qiang and other dynastic rivals. By 439, from their capital at Pingcheng (Datong in northern Shanxi), they had reunited all China above the Huai River.
The sway of this Tabgach/Tuoba ‘Northern Wei’ dynasty, the first and much the most important of the so-called ‘Five (northern) Dynasties’, would last nearly a century. Its four short-lived successors (making up the ‘Five Dynasties’ sequence) would then swiftly succumb to the Sui; and it was the Sui’s two emperors who, not before time, would ring down the curtain on the testing ‘Period of Disunion’ and usher in the great era of Tang. Another golden age was imminent; and lustre being long in the buffing, its harbingers may be sought among the Northern Wei.
In administering an empire – or half of one – the Northern Wei faced the same problems as their predecessors from the tribal world: basically it was a question of how to retain the loyalty and cohesion of forces that were substantially non-Chinese, while inducing subjects who were now overwhemingly Chinese to reactivate the administration, resettle the land and so restore the flow of foodstuffs, manpower and revenue. Positive discrimination helped to reassure the Xianbei population. Known as guoren(‘people of the [Tabgach] states’, or ‘compatriots’), they were treated as a ruling class with their own ranking system. They retained their native customs and language, enjoyed numerous privileges and tax exemptions, and had a monopoly of military appointments. Large numbers settled in the vicinity of the capital; others patrolled the northern frontier up to the Gobi desert, where a network of forts was built.
Ideally the guoren would be supplied and supported by the empire’s Han Chinese subjects. Labour of a servile nature was readily available; large numbers of enslaved captives and convicts were brought to the capital and used for public works, military supply and the cultivation of state lands. But it was not so easy to attract unenslaved, and so taxpaying, agriculturalists back to work on long-deserted holdings. The overall decline in population during the ‘Period of Disunion’ has been put as high as 30 per cent. Especially marked in the north, where emigration continued to take a heavy toll, depopulation induced victorious regimes ‘to place greater value on the control of persons than the control of territory’ and to treat cultivators as the spoils of war.31 Large numbers were indeed resettled, usually within reach of the capital; but many decamped at the slightest provocation, and as the pace of conquest slowed, so did the supply of new settlers. To increase the agricultural yield, the Northern Wei would have to devise inducements and incentives for the cultivator, including a permanent and equitable system of land tenure.
Vouchsafed a longer dominion than any of their post-Han predecessors, the Northern Wei had ample time to acclimatise politically and to experiment. As under previous regimes, Buddhism served as a source of legitimisation and as a bridge over the ethnic divide between non-Chinese and Chinese. But it was also harnessed more directly to the interests of the state. A branch of the bureaucracy took over the regulation of Buddhist affairs; and the difficulty of Buddhist clergy owing obedience to their monastic superiors rather than to the imperial authorities was overcome by elevating the emperor above the clergy as a titular Bodhisattva. A similar move in the south saw Wudi (r. 502–49) of the Liang dynasty, the last but one of the Six (southern) Dynasties, assume hybrid titles such as Huangdi Busa and Busa Tianzi (‘Imperial Bodhisattva’, ‘Buddhist Son of Heaven’).
Potential disloyalty, if not subversion, was only one of many criticisms voiced of Buddhism at the time, all being indicative of its now pervasive presence. With manpower in short supply the monasteries were especially vulnerable on the grounds that they provided a safe haven for idlers and tax-dodgers. Not only monks but all those who laboured on the vast monastic estates were exempt from taxation, conscription and corvée. So were the estates themselves, their produce and income going to support and enrich the clerical community and enhance its standing. State projects and revenues suffered as a result. The colossal Buddha figures and caves still extant at Yugang (near Pingcheng) and Lungmen (near Luoyang), for instance, were hewn from the rock by tens of thousands of labourers who might otherwise have been employed on works of public utility.
Such criticisms, and there were many others, had already surfaced in the south in 340 and 403. In the north they found favour with the Northern Wei emperor known as Tai-wudi (r. 424–52), who completed the dynasty’s conquests. Falling under the influence of a Daoist Celestial Master, the emperor was ceremonially installed as ‘the Perfect Lord of Great Peace [taiping]’ and presided over a veritable Daoist revolution in the inner circles of power. Buddhist monks and other leaders of popular cults were purged in 444 and, not for the last time, Buddhism itself was proscribed in 446. Although support for the move was forthcoming from the alienated Han gentry, all this was too much for the Xianbei military, who found their monopoly of high office threatened, and much too much for the emperor when he discovered that a Daoist-influenced rewriting of the dynasty’s history disparaged his nomadic ancestry. The proscription was accordingly relaxed around 450, repealed after Tai-wudi’s 452 assassination, and completely reversed when from 465 the formidable Dowager Empress Feng gradually took over the reins of power.
‘Few rulers in history have made more thoroughgoing attempts to change their subjects’ lives than did the dowager and her step-grandson Xiao-wendi,’ writes one authority.32 Not only was Buddhism reinstated, the dowager herself being a lavish patron, but in a series of decrees spread over thirty years the whole trajectory of the regime was reversed. The Xianbei were now to abandon their distinctive language, dress and customs, and through intermarriage and education to become sinicised. The Northern Wei, from representing a steppe hegemony over the northern plains, would pursue a northern plains dominion over the whole of China. And instead of autocratic military rule, a bureaucratic civilian government like that of the Early Han was to be encouraged, agriculture favoured and the ethnic divide between rulers and ruled bridged by the blending of Han and non-Han.
In the short term this experiment failed, just like Tai-wudi’s Daoist experiment. But it had profound consequences. Indeed, ‘the effects of the series of decrees from 472 until . . . 499 on China for the next three centuries were to be immeasurably great’.33 For instance, the incentives now offered to all taxpaying agriculturalists included a fixed entitlement to both farmland and mulberry groves (for silkworms), with additional acreage depending on the number of women, slaves and livestock attached to each household. An ‘equal-field system’, it was intended, like the old ‘well-field system’, as an equitable division of land by the state which would form a basis for registration and taxation. But the holdings were considerably bigger than of old, and part of each, notably that required for mulberry trees or other cloth-yielding crops such as hemp, was hereditary. In other words, there was enough here to make the cultivator think twice before vacating whenever famine or disturbance threatened. Something similar had been attempted by the Cao Wei and Western Jin dynasties; but it was this Northern Wei version that would be adopted by the Sui and Tang. It would last until the mid-eighth century, at which point ‘Chinese attempts at state regulation of land finally came to an end and were not effectively renewed . . . until the communism of the twentieth century’.34
In theory no state-allocated land (other than that for mulberry trees) could be disposed of or inherited. Yet almost immediately both these practices became commonplace. As larger landholdings were consolidated, the ‘equal-field system’ became decidedly unequal and in fact helped to sustain a new class of landed proprietors. Even Xianbei warriors seem to have been attracted by the system, and wherever the reforms were effective and the tenure could be made hereditary, powerful landowning clans of now mixed descent took root. From this milieu of military men turned landowners, and of non-Han turned Chinese, would come most of the leading figures of the sixth and seventh centuries. An ethnic and social accommodation – Chinese historians might prefer ‘assimilation’ – was under way. Like Buddhism, it would be instrumental in underpinning the eventual reintegration of the empire.
Central to the new policies devised by the Dowager Empress Feng and continued by Xiao-wendi was the 493 removal of the imperial capital. From Pingcheng, a place on the verge of the Mongolian steppe that had proved difficult to supply with grain, let alone luxuries, it was to be transferred to the still-devastated Luoyang, a site well served by road and water transport, at the centre of the great northern plain, and steeped in imperial associations. After much discussion and in the face of considerable disquiet, the move had to be made as if by accident. While leading south an army to assail the Qi, fourth of the Six (southern) Dynasties of Jiankang (Nanjing), the emperor engineered a halt near the site of the old Han, Wei and Jin capital. Incessant rain had already dampened martial spirits, and it now led to pleas to abandon the whole campaign. The emperor, feigning reluctance, agreed on condition that the army stay put and begin reconstructing the city.
So it did; and after nine years of rebuilding and a massive population transfer, a great city once again graced the northern bank of the Luo River. The new Luoyang covered an area of over 18 square kilometres (7 square miles) and accommodated more than half a million people and 1,300 monasteries. It witnessed scenes of magnificence barely rivalled by its predecessors, it hosted further developments in Buddhist scholarship, it minted the first new coinage for a couple of centuries – and it lasted for all of a generation. Not wilfully destroyed this time, merely evacuated, by 535 Luoyang was again a ghost town.
The move from Pingcheng had always been resented, most notably by the Xianbei garrisons on the northern frontier. The policy of sinicisation and the favour being shown to Han bureaucrats proved the final straws. The northern Xianbei troops rebelled and the Northern Wei empire split. Other tribal groupings hastened to join in the fray; in 534 the last Northern Wei emperor was deposed; and in the same year Luoyang’s population was removed to a new capital. From the flurry of ferocious infighting between the short-lived dynastic successors of the Northern Wei would emerge the dynamic instigator of China’s second attempt at an enduring integration.