One day in 1990, in Mongolia's central Gobi province, two herders had bad luck, the morning was still clear, and by the afternoon it was already raining heavily, so they had to drive their cattle and sheep to the rocks in the southern foothills of Hangai Mountain to take shelter. After the rain, they looked up at the sky from under the rocks and suddenly found that the stone walls several meters above the ground actually revealed special handwriting under the sunlight.
The incident quickly exploded in the Mongolian archaeological community, and experts from home and abroad flocked to figure out what was inscribed on the stone walls. However, after twenty-six years, no one can crack the mystery of the stone carvings of Hangai Mountain.
In 2016, things finally took a turn for the better. After in-depth research, Professor Qimu de Daoerji of Inner Mongolia University and Gao Jianguo, lecturer of Yan'an University, boldly deduced that the inscription on the stone wall is most likely the "Fengyanran Mountain Inscription".
In order to confirm this inference, in July 2017, a joint archaeological team from China and Mongolia went to the site of the stone carving to find out. On the stone wall, the archaeologists picked up the Book of the Later Han Dynasty, mounted the scaffolding, and compared it word by word. After a day of careful checking and identification, the stone carvings totaled twenty lines and about 260 words, and the archaeological team successfully recognized 220 words! On July 31, the joint archaeological team happily announced to the world: the authentic stone carving of "Feng Yanran Mountain Inscription" has been found!
The discovery of the "Feng Yanran Mountain Inscription" brings our thoughts back to the era of Han-Hungarian strife nearly two thousand years ago.
In July of the second year of Zhang He (88), the Southern Xiongnu wrote to the Han court, requesting that the Northern Xiongnu take advantage of the natural disasters and internal chaos of the Northern Xiongnu to send troops to fight, so that the Han parents had no northern thoughts. In that year, Emperor Zhang of Han died of illness, and Emperor Han he, who was less than ten years old, took the throne, and Empress Dou bowed to the government. Although Empress Dowager Dou was a female stream, her ambition to conquer the Xiongnu was even greater than that of the previous three emperors, and Nan Danyu's proposal was exactly what she wanted, but many ministers in the court did not agree to send troops to the Xiongnu, such as Shangshu Songyi, who believed: "Since the founding of the Han Dynasty, many conquests of the Xiongnu have resulted in more gains than losses, and now there are Xianbei to help, just sit back and enjoy their success, do not have to send a soldier and a pawn." Let's support the Northern Xiongnu again, let the Xiongnu remain divided, the grasslands will be endlessly fighting, and the Central Plains will be peaceful. ”
The hesitant Empress Dowager Dou summoned Geng Bing, a veteran of the Three Dynasties, to solicit opinions. Geng Bing strongly approved of the Northern Expedition, pointing out: "In the past, during the period of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, so much power was not able to deal with the Xiongnu, and now with the help of Wuhuan and Xianbei, the Northern Xiongnu are in chaos, this is the opportunity given to us by heaven to fight, we can take the opportunity to destroy Yiyi, dispatch the people and horses of the Xianbei and Southern Xiongnu, plus the Han army, and solve the Xiongnu problem once and for all." ”
After careful consideration, Empress Dowager Dou made a compromise decision: first send troops to the north according to Geng Bingzhi's proposal to destroy the potential for the Northern Xiongnu war; then, according to Song Yi's proposal, support the Northern Xiongnu puppet Shan Yu and maintain the trend of separating the southern and northern Xiongnu.
The decision was made, and the next step was to select the general, and this major military operation had to select a person who was both trustworthy and capable to serve as the commander.. Just when Empress Dowager Dou was distressed about the selection of generals, the Lord "sent himself to the door".
As mentioned earlier, Emperor Zhang of Han died in this year (Zhang He's second year), and many foreign princes went to Luoyang for funerals, and Liu Bosheng's great-grandson Liu Chang, the Marquis of Duxiang, was one of them. Liu Chang was a gentleman with a clear eyebrow, which made the young widow Empress Dou have an ambiguous feeling for him and planned to keep him in the palace. When Empress Dowager Dou's brother Dou Xian learned of this, he was afraid that Liu Chang, who was favored by his sister, would lose his power, so he sent assassins to assassinate Liu Chang. Killing the lover of the empress dowager, this can stab the honeycomb. Empress Dowager Dou was furious and disregarded her brother and sister's feelings and directly arrested her brother Dou Xian and sent him to prison. If there were no accidents, Dou Xian would not be able to come out for a while and a half.
Not long after, Dou Xian did not know where to learn the news that the imperial court was going to attack the Northern Xiongnu, and took the initiative to go to jail and requested to attack the Northern Xiongnu to atone for the death penalty. Empress Dowager Dou, who was troubled by the selection of generals, was very happy to see that her brother had this realization, and directly appointed Dou Xian as a general on the chariot and served as the commander of the army. In order to do a good job in this northern expedition, Empress Dou also made Geng Bing, a veteran general of the Three Dynasties, the general of the Expedition to the West, to lay a hand for her brother.
After more than half a year of preparation, in June of the first year of the Yongyuan Dynasty (89), the Han army divided into three routes and attacked the Zhuo Evil Mountain, where the Northern Xiongnu Shan Yuting was stationed. Dou Xian and Geng Bing led 8,000 cavalry, together with 10,000 cavalry led by The Southern Xiongnu Zuogu Li Wang Shizi, out of Jilusai, Shuofang County (present-day HalongGenai Gorge, Dengkou County, Inner Mongolia). This road army was the most elite, and Empress Dou assigned the cavalry of the Five Colonels of the Northern Army of the Su wei Jing Division and the cavalry of the Liyang Camp and the Yongying Battalion, which were directly subordinate to the imperial court, to Dou Geng, and it was self-evident that she hoped that her brother would make meritorious contributions. The Southern Xiongnu Shan Yu Tu He led the Southern Xiongnu with 10,000 cavalry out of the Manyi Valley of Wuyuan County (present-day Ulan-Bragg Valley, Alxa Left Banner, Inner Mongolia). The Duliao general Deng Hong led 8,000 cavalry along the border Yicong (volunteer soldiers) and Qianghu cavalry, together with 10,000 cavalry of the Southern Xiongnu Zuoxian King Anguo, out of Wuyuan County, Liyangsai (present-day Kundu Lungou, Baotou City, Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region).
Not long after the departure, the Han army received information that Beidan Yu was not stationed at Zhuoxian Mountain, but moved to the east of Jiluo Mountain (present-day Arguyin Henan, Southern Hang'ai Province, Mongolia). Dou Xian changed the route of the march accordingly, with the 10,000 cavalry of the Southern Xiongnu led by the lieutenants Yan Pan, Sima Gengkuo, and Geng Tan as the forward, and he and Geng Bing led 8,000 elite Han troops to advance towards Jiluo Mountain.
At this time, Beidan Yu was still proud of his early transfer from Zhuo Evil Mountain, thinking that the Han army could not imagine that the Northern Xiongnu, who had always fled westward, would move east. However, Beidan Yu still miscalculated.
Led by the Southern Xiongnu, the Han army traveled more than a thousand miles and suddenly appeared at the BeidanYu garrison. Eager to unify the steppes, the Southern Xiongnu saw their brothers of the same ethnic group, and their combat effectiveness broke out several grades, and the Northern Xiongnu soldiers could not even organize a decent formation, and they were soon at a disadvantage. Not long after, Dou Geng and his two men with eight thousand elite cavalry went into battle again, and the Northern Xiongnu collapsed, and Shan Yu ran away with a small number of men and horses. Taking advantage of the victory, the Han army pursued them, crossed the Zhuo Evil Mountain, and killed the private canal Biyan Sea (present-day Bayanhongor Province, Mongolia, Lake Benzagan). On the way to pursue the remnants of the Northern Xiongnu, Dou Xian and Geng Bing climbed the Yanran Mountain, sighed with emotion, and hit the defending army Ban Gu to carve a stone inscription to praise the great achievements of this expedition.
Because of the need to march and fight, this time the carved stone Jigong is very hurried, many of the stone materials are not good, coupled with nearly two thousand years of wind and rain, the stone surface is seriously weathered, the handwriting is scattered (huàn), it is difficult to identify, so for a long time no one knows where the Yanran Le stone is located. It was not until 2017 that it was determined that the rock carvings on the mountain cliffs in Mongolia's Central Gobi Province were the remains of the Yanranle Stone.
This battle was the largest victory against the Xiongnu since the founding of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and the Han army killed 13,000 people under the famous kings of the Northern Xiongnu and captured more than one million horses, cattle and alpacas. What was even more fatal was that Wen Qiansu, Ri Bao, Wen Wu, Fuqu Wang Liu Yan and other eighty-one troops saw that Shan Shan had suffered a fiasco and asked Dou Xian to surrender, and Dou Gendarmes received more than 200,000 people from the Northern Xiongnu tribe without bloodshed. After this shocking news reached Jingshi, Empress Dou not only pardoned Dou Xian for his sins, but also sent envoys to Wuyuan County to make him a great general.
Editor: Tan Bingbing
This article is excerpted from "The History of Chinese War You Must Love to Read: The Eastern Han Dynasty"
