Chapter Ninety-Nine: Gains and Losses

“Wheels rumble and horses neigh, travelers all bear bows at their waists. Mothers and wives run to see them off, but dust clouds blot out the Xianyang Bridge... Have you not seen, at the head of Qinghai, ancient bones lie unclaimed? New ghosts grumble their grievances while old spirits weep; the sky darkens with rain, and all sounds wail mournfully.”

This famous poem, “The Army Wagon,” is the masterpiece of the Sage of Poetry, Du Fu. It depicts a battle in the eighth year of the Tianbao era. In this conflict, Geshu Han, who replaced Wang Zhongsi as the military governor of the Longyou region, rose to prominence. Whether his fame was honorable or infamous remains debated, but Du Fu certainly disapproved.

Looking at the battle’s outcome, nearly one hundred thousand troops were deployed to capture a small fortress town, Shibao. These forces included seventy thousand from Longyou and the Turkic Tongluo cavalry sent to assist. Leading the cavalry was Li Xianzhong, later titled King Fengxin and granted the imperial surname, then known as Abusi.

The battle’s savagery is revealed by the aftermath: tens of thousands of Tang soldiers perished. Estimates vary—some say fifty to sixty thousand, others claim eighty to ninety thousand. Even counting the lower figure, that was half the army. Imagine fifty thousand corpses—it could fill the moat before Shibao, then piled up to form a slope as tall as the fortress walls.

In other words, the Tang army stormed into the city, literally marching over the bodies of their fallen comrades. And what of the defenders within the fortress?

Fewer than a thousand.

Wang Zhongsi foresaw this two years earlier: the smaller the fortress, the more cost-effective its defense. To defeat those thousand defenders, the Tang sacrificed fifty men for each one captured. After the battle, every household in Longyou mourned. This is the very scene Du Fu’s poem mourns.

A general’s triumph costs not just bones, but tens of thousands of them.

Wang Zhongsi himself refused to fight such a costly battle and was willing to lose office or life rather than engage. Historical records praise him as a wise general. In stark contrast, Geshu Han became a cautionary tale. Judging by the battle’s result, calling it a Pyrrhic victory is generous—it was a slaughter that exchanged soldiers’ blood and flesh for official power. Later dynasties like Song and Ming would surely condemn such commanders through their relentless censors.

Yet Geshu Han was never impeached. On the contrary, he rose steadily, earning promotions and favor from the emperor, becoming the most trusted frontier general since An Lushan.

Does this not, from another angle, reveal Emperor Li Longji’s decline and confusion in his later years?

Before examining that, let us consider the situation along the northwest frontier of the Tang Empire around the eighth year of Tianbao. Actually, in the sixth year, a joint operation by Anxi and Helong regions had already put the Tibetan forces on the defensive. They lost the small fortress of Bolu and failed to curb Wang Zhongsi’s raids on the Qinghai side. Subsequently, due to distractions from the Hezhong region and the Arab forces, the Tang army’s focus shifted, leading to a protracted stalemate around Jishishan. Both sides harassed each other—today you raid my grasslands, tomorrow I strike your grain fields. Tang occasionally gained small advantages but never solved the root problem.

After the eighth year of Tianbao, capturing Shibao removed this thorn, leaving all Qinghai exposed to Tang’s iron hoof. The Tibetans had to build a series of forts but could never regain a stronghold like Shibao. The Tang forces grew ever more confident, capturing new territory as the Tibetans retreated. By the tenth year, Longyou gained three new military districts, all wrested from Tibetan hands.

This marked a complete strategic reversal: Tibet lost a secure forward base, while Tang gained a stable tactical foothold. After this battle, Geshu Han abandoned large-scale engagements with the Tibetans, instead gradually encroaching, pushing the front line from Helong into Qinghai, finally bringing peace to the local populace.

From then on, Longyou launched annual offensives. Far from becoming impoverished, the region lightened the imperial burden and even contributed surplus resources. Sima Guang’s “Comprehensive Mirror for Aid in Government” records: “In the twelfth year of Tianbao (753 AD), China was prosperous and strong. From the Anyuan Gate westward, Tang territory spanned twelve thousand li, with villages and towns close enough to see each other, mulberry and hemp fields shading the plains. The realm was renowned for its wealth and abundance, none richer than Longyou. Geshu Han frequently sent envoys riding white Bactrian camels, covering five hundred li a day.”

This outcome proves a vital point: prosperity and peace do not rely on an enemy’s mercy but on the iron will of soldiers. The Tang never built a Great Wall because they had a million-strong frontier army—that was their real wall.

The graves of fifty thousand soldiers bought a shift in control between two nations, peace for the people of Helong and Longyou, and the gradual downfall of a formidable neighbor. Was it worth it? In a later era, during the critical Liaoshen Campaign, Marshal Lin Biao famously said, “I don’t care about casualties, I just want Tashan!” This sentiment aptly underscores Geshu Han’s value.

In the north, peace reigned; in the west, the frontier remained still; in the south, defeat was common. Yet Geshu Han alone regularly delivered victories to Chang’an. Every year on the emperor’s birthday, captured Tibetan prisoners paraded down the Vermilion Bird Avenue, a spectacle for the emperor’s pleasure. Such devoted service—how could Li Longji not be pleased?

The Tang Empire, divided roughly by the An-Shi Rebellion, experienced two eras: the early period was extraordinarily strong, with neighboring peoples submissive—not through mere tributes but through military defeat. The later period decayed to the point that eunuchs controlled the throne, deciding emperors’ fates from deposition to death.

Yet even in its decline, the Uyghurs, who unified the northern steppes, never once dreamed of seizing the Central Plains. This starkly contrasts with the late Sui era when warlords eagerly sought Turkic vassalage. The reason: the deep impression the Tang made on surrounding peoples during its first century and more.

Li Longji alone ruled over forty of those years.

Historically, few emperors devoted themselves so tirelessly and persistently to frontier expansion over such a long span.

Hence, even when nearly the entire court, including his own clan, urged An Lushan’s rebellion, Li Longji stubbornly trusted his own judgment.

He extended the same trust to Geshu Han. Of course, An Lushan betrayed that trust, but that is another story.

This stubbornness ultimately doomed the Tang’s golden age. More critically, afterward, the central dynasty never again trusted frontier generals so fully, instead breeding rebellion and spawning numerous autonomous military governors.

At least in the eleventh year of Tianbao, Li Longji remained a wise ruler who created a flourishing era and was revered as the Heavenly Khan, feared by all four barbarians.

That year, he personally drafted the “Edict to Suppress Tibet,” which was read to hundreds of thousands of Tang soldiers preparing to march from the military districts of Anxi, Beiting, Hexi, Longyou, and Jiannan.

Beneath Jishishan, beside the Dafeichuan River, near Qinghai, fifteen thousand troops from Longyou and Hexi camps stretched thousands of li, their banners tattered by the sun—all awaiting one man’s arrival.

The man destined to become the fourth general commanding two military districts, a legendary tyrant whose infamy could silence even a crying infant.

Their commander:

Geshu Han.