Kingdom of Norther Wei 北魏朝 1: The Dark Age

Stylized art of the Nine Colored Deer by Snow Fish: the art 

imitates the style of Northern Zhou tomb mural art. 

Red cloaked riders covered from head to their knees on fearsome nags, iron horse lords who united the north, ferocious in war like their steppe ancestors, and deeply Chinese in rule. If you would have lived in the Chinese realm during the 5th and 6th centuries in what would be known as the chaotic Northern and Southern dynasties, this is what many would have said of the barbarian founded, but Chinese minded kingdom of Northern Wei: A kingdom that was the undisputed master of the north for more than 100 years. We will briefly examine their origins, as well as the political climate of northern China in this article.

The Xianbei (Proto-Mongol) rulers of the Northern Wei had a very distinct culture

and art-style that greatly influenced northern China's aesthetics for the next few

centuries. Scenes of great hunts with stylized fauna and tri-colored mountain was

frequently seen in the tombs of Northern Wei's aristocrats. The most

famous iconography was the 九色鹿 Nine Colored Deer, which

came from a Buddhist parable. 

"WEI"

They had came as conquerors. The first thing to note about the Northern Wei is that the kingdom's Chinese- sounding name of "Wei" was not what these conquerors originally called themselves. But they did embrace this mantle of identity so as to more closely identify with their Han subjects. Before the Northern Wei they were the Dai, and simply the Touba clan of the fierce Xianbei people. They were foreigners who had taken initiate upon themselves to assimilate to the culture of their hosts.

THE XIANBEI OF THE VAST STEPPES

Buyao 步摇 ("step shaker" lit. step sway ) headdress worn by Xianbei women. Like the 

ancient Scythians, noble Xianbei women wore ornate gold or gilt bronze jewels in the 

shape of trees or antlers that formed trees on their head. The gilded leaves 

are crafted separately and would shake whenever the women moved~ 

hence the name of step shaker. Both the reindeer sound and

deer are seen as auspicious by steppe cultures. 

The rulers of the Northern Wei originated from one of the many powerful tribes in today's Mongolia. In the aftermath of the great Han dynasty's collapse, China was plunged into a prolonged period of strife and anarchy. The highly destructive Three Kingdoms period saw vast armies and vast number of soldiers clashing against each other in a realm wide struggle. After nearly 60 years of total war, China was finally united under the Jin dynasty (265–420) of the Sima clan. However, it would be a very short lived peace. 

Soon the realm fell into bitter wars again during a great decade long civil war between the many imperial princes called the War of the Eight Princes. It was during these struggles that some of the outlying princes desperately requested aide from the fierce Xianbei (Proto-Mongol) people of the northern steppes to intervene on their behalf. It was a decision that would change northern China forever. And it was here that the forefathers of the Northern Wei entered into China proper along with tens, hundreds of other hordes. 

A Xianbei (Proto- Mongol) Warrior in a riding cloak. Many Xianbei 

warriors were depicted with their elaborate cloaks

A row of Xianbei cavalrymen wearing their scarlet riding cloaks over heavy armor. 

These elaborate cloaks would not only have extended sleeves but also pockets. 

Unlike in the past, what came this time was not a trickle of eager mercenaries ready for booty under the service of the Jin princes but a whole flood of invaders spilled into northern China like an avalanche. Many of them had coordinated this breach in conspiracy and within months, whole tribes had broke into China like the massed Germanic migration into Europe, they would drive out the Jin completely from their heartlands in the Yellow River until they were banished to the south- never to return. The north now belonged to the barbarians.  

FROM HORSE LORDS TO OVERLORDS

Stylized art of the Nine Colored Deer by Snow Fish: the art imitates 

the style of Northern Zhou tomb mural art. 

However, there would be no peace between the various new horse lord masters of northern China. They were all different ethnically, culturally, and linguistically from one another, and immediately, they began fighting and bickering with each other. For northern China, the 150 years that immediately followed from the fall of Jin until the beginning of the Northern and Southern Dynasties was called the Sixteen Kingdoms. A period of extreme chaos and warfare where many ruthless steppe dominated (and occasionally several native Han) polities emerged, fought, and was destroyed in rapid succession. In their protracted fighting, the former great cities and agrarian fields of northern China dating from as far back as the Zhou dynasty was reduced to ruins. 

Settlements shrank by staggering sizes and in the aftermath of the farmfield's destruction whole communities disappeared, millions fled to rejoin the Jin remnants in the south, others were forcibly impressed by the steppe lords and sent off and resettled into the frigid steppes- becoming nomads and lost their Han ways. Whole swath of the agrarian lands in the north was turned to pastures. Former cities became small military fortresses, and the complex economy of the previous Han and Jin era virtually died across the north and was turned into a primitive barter system. Old China, that of the children of the Yellow Emperor, of the brilliant cities and figures was all but a memory as the powerless locals looked at the ruins and constant strife all around them. 

THE DARK AGE WARLORDS

Iron Horse: A cataphract from the late Sixteen Kingdoms period in northern China, cavalry would dominate the warfare of northern China for the next several centuries. Horsemen of the powerful Northern Wei would be elaborately wreathed in riding cloaks and their horses would sport a tall plume called Jisheng (lit.parasite) on the horse's flank.

Ironically, perhaps to both the natives and the foreigners, the next crop of leaders who would try to resurrect a functioning Chinese state would be the "barbarians" themselves. It should be mentioned that as soon as the many tribes breached into northern China many of the chieftains had been impressed with what a functional Chinese province accounted, both in terms of the raw population it sustained and the wealth and goods it could produce. For a people who had to rely on trade and raid to get goods like lacquered containers and well forged weapons the ability to have them made and replenished annually is a game changing luxury they had never enjoyed beyond the Great Wall. Thus many did fight to preserve the remnants of China as it was. However because none of them could enforce such a policy across the spectrum of the north and guarantee such among their peers, as war and strife wracked through the north infrastructure severely decayed on a geometrical level.

Middle: Mural from the Mogao Caves in Dunghuang dating from the late North and Southern dynasties period and early Sui- Tang period. Two fortress cities are depicted with sienna colored walls and white plaster painted towers. The walls are surmounted by many military banners and warring horsemen charges into each other's ranks near the lower left of the composition.

DEATH, REVIVAL, AND DEATH

As settlements were portioned to competing chieftains, so dies the old trade between them, as walls were battered down without a nearby quarry to repair them, they are left in ruins, as fields are turned to pastures, thousands died and the rest would abandon the barren lands. And like the Goth, the Franks, and the Danes who took over the remnants of the Western Roman Empire, nearly a full century of struggle later, the descendants of the many steppe tribesmen (and the natives) would have looked at the architecture and the inventions of the previous dynasties and be utterly spellbound that such innovations were possible in ages past. However, many chieftains did try their best to preserve the past in the dark ages.

As previously mentioned, as soon as the tribes entered into northern China, many had tried to adopt the advanced Chinese features they perceived and graft them upon their own political apperatus. They even made attempts to Sinosize and thus adopt the robust bureaucracy and taxation systems of the Han and Jin courts. These courts would work for a while and developments resume, the broken apparatuses of the former dynasties repaired. 

However as soon as one of these warlords was killed, or his tribe is defeated upon the loss of strong leadership, all the accumulated developments that has been accrued would quickly be undone under the hands of nomadic rulers who are uninterested in such recoveries. Upon the death and collapse of each such polities, it was back to square one. Contraptions and institutions that have meaning and power left as retainers upon the funeral pyres of the defeated regimes. It was in such a cyclical backdrop of destruction and neglect that the founders of the Northern Wei arose.

Reconstructed mural of a Northern Wei military procession, displayed at the Datong Museum in Shanxi China. The procession depicted Northern Wei's military strength at its height. Note the red riding cloaks worn by the honored guards arround the imperial carriage.

MASS MIGRATION OF THE XIANBEI

Before coming into the lands of the Jin dynasty, the Xianbei had been a serious power on the open steppes. They had displaced the Xiongnu (the Huns) at the end of the 1st Century AD and became the dominate power on the grasslands. Of particular note is the fact that the Xianbei had a more stratified society and more entrenched distinctions between the classes, they had a formalized nobility where they were organised in smaller tribes led by chieftains, who in turn obeyed to higher chieftains that commanded larger social structures. And though they were powerful, in time, they became a divided people. There were many tribes of Xianbei that collectively composed of the Xianbei state or the Xianbei Confederacy, and by the third century the Xianbei Confederacy as a whole began to splinter.

Art of the warlord Cao Cao by Panic Lau: Cao Cao was an ambitious cavalry commander who

lived in the chaotic final days of the Han dynasty. He would emerge as the paramount leader

in northern China and take over its defenses. During his rule, he dealt several defeats against the steppe people that bordered his northern frontiers and received their submission. 

Many Xianbei tribes would attempt to conquer lands to the south east near the Liaodong Peninsula to be close to the lucrative markets near the Han northern boarder. During much of the Three kingdoms the Xianbei were a thorn to the Han dynasy- and later Cao Wei's northern frontiers. During the warlord Cao Cao's life the Xianbei largely ignored his domains of Wei, and then became allies to his son Cao Pi, however, with the goading of the Shu Chancellor Zhuge Liang, the Xianbei forged an alliance with Shu and attacked Wei together. By 235, divisions began to deepen among the tribes and some began to branch off completely to find their own ways eastward. One of such group would be the ancestors of the future Northern Wei, lead by a royal clan called the Touba 拓跋- (Chinese rendering of  Taɣ​bač.)

THE TOUBA LORDS OF DAI

The Touba founding fathers of the Northern Wei traced their lineage to a kingdom called Dai (310-376) that was settled in the grasslands of today's Hebei Province, right outside the Great Walls on the open steppes. The ancestral home of the Tuoba Xianbei was the Greater Khingan range of Inner Mongolia. In 258, the clan migrated south to the Yin Mountains and spread into the Ordos Loop region near Jin's northern frontiers.  It was during this time- just as the many Xianbei began to set apart from their own brothers, the previously defeated Xiongnu began to revive as a dangerous power again on the open steppes. The Touba would became an ally of the Jin and and rendered aide to the Jin dynasty during its desperate hours.

Before the massed migration that started the Sixteen Kindoms period the Jin Dynasty had developed an alliance with the Tuoba against the other enemies beyond the Great Wall, namely the resurgent Xiongnu. As the Jin state succumbed to the massive civil war called the War of the Eight Princes, the Touba clan was rewarded for their service acting as a soft shell beyond the hardshell of the Great Wall. In 315 the chieftain of the Tuoba named Yilu was granted the Chinese styled- imperial title of "Prince of Dai"~ from where the future kingdom would derive its name.

Here is where the story of the Touba lords of Dai synchronize with the great barbarian invasion of northern China and the expulsion of the Jin dynasty.  After the leaderless Jin princes mistakenly opened northern China to let the barbarian armies in, several tribes of the Xianbei would rush in to stake their claims in the northeastern portion of the Chinese realm. encompassing most of the grasslands beyond the Yellow River in the Hebei, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Liaoning area near Korea. In total, the Xianbei people would establish six kingdoms of their own of the total Six Kingdoms such as the Former Yan (281-370), Western Yan (384-394), Later Yan (384-407), Southern Yan (398-410), Western Qin (385-430) and Southern Liang (397-414). Each would be an aggressive and active player in the chaos of the endless wars across the north.

And although Dai was not counted by historians as one of these "Kingdoms," because it was not part of the Jin dynasty and thus not one of the 16 inheritors of what was northern Jin China. It still should be counted as one, and a significant power. Although territoriality, unlike their ambitious brethren the Touba contented themselves with their fief by living north of the Great Walls. Despite this passive posture, trouble would come looking for the Toubas of Dai.

YOKE OF FORMER QIN

Most of the Xianbei kingdoms were rapidly destroyed or forcefully subjugated in the 370s by the strong kingdom of Former Qin who came from western China, led by the Di people (a Tibeto-Burmese people.) The kingdom of Dai was no exception against the invaders and they too were defeated and subjugated to become vassals of Former Qin in 376. That same year, its royal Touba clan was forced to flee north into the wastelands of the northern steppes.

It also was in that fateful year, in 376 that the north was truly unified under one power for the first time since many disparate people had poured into northern China. Former Qin would have truly became the undisputed hegemons in the north if they had time to consolidate their holds over the various subjugated peoples. But their ambition to conquer southern China and crush the Jin dynasty proved their undoing. 

NORTH VS SOUTH:
THE BATTLE OF FEI RIVER

In their 383 massive invasion to conquer the south, 6 of every 10 able-bodied men in the north were conscripted: 870,000 were mobilized. At the crossing into the south, only 80,000 southerners stood against the overwhelming northern army. And it was here that Former Qin's ambitions, its fortunes died. In one of the most spectacular upsets in world history, despite being out numbered nearly 11 to 1, the elite southern army completely destroyed the northern army in the Battle of the Fei River.

A war of aesthetics, a side by side comparison of a contemporary northern warrior in armor beside a southern soldier. One could easily distinguish the northern warrior by his round and curvilinear design, by his round pauldrons and his curved helmet. 

700,000 of the 870,000 men army were slaughtered by the river's crossing~ sending the tattered remnants of the bleeding northern army backward, within months after the defeat,  a chain reaction of rebellion erupted across all pockets of the Former Qin empire, the Xianbeis would retake the north in the chaos, and within a decade both the royal dynasty and Former Qin as a whole would be utterly wiped out. The Di people too, would be absorbed and forcefully assimilated by their enemies and disappear entirely. Such is the cost of one fatal, unwise battle that precisely reflected the Darwinian nature of the times.

However, the destruction of Former Qin would also pave the way for the ascendancy of the heirs of Dai. They Touba leaders of the vanquished Dai would return. In 386, Tuoba Gui, a scion of the displaced Touba clan that had been driven into the steppes would return and revived his ancestor's kingdom, only this time he would renamed it "Wei." Former Qin's ruthless subjugation of the many northern tribes would precisely pave the way for the Touba clan to fill in the vacuum. Northern China would see another series of conquests. Only this time, it will last. Only this time, they would not only conquer northern China but become so Chinese that the future Chinese civilization would be indelibly imprinted by their great example. Civilization in the north was about to be rekindled under the horse lords.

Tune in the next chapter as we examine the ascendancy and then the supremacy of the Touba clan, see how they manage to unite the disparate Xianbei tribesmen into a strong core that conquered all of northern China. Also let us examine how their newly declared kingdom of Northern Wei became a beacon of a unique and distinctive form of Chinese culture as well, to not only continue the worthwhile legacy of the preceding Han and Jin dynasty, but take the Chinese civilization into greater height as well.

Tune in as we examine the important fixtures that defined this northern kingdom: the process of their adaptation of Chinese culture, their preservation of the distinctive steppe customs of their ancestors, the particular cruelty inflicted upon their royal women, and the strong willful women that was produced from such ruthless adversity. See the culmination of how a foreign people eventually became one of the most influential dynasties in Chinese history.

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