, so that
before long he was able to attack the Hsiung-nu. The small states in
Turkestan, however, regarded the overlordship of the distant China as
preferable to that of Yarkand or the Hsiung-nu both of whom, being
nearer, were able to bring their power more effectively into play.
Accordingly many of the small states appealed for Chinese aid. Kuang-wu
Ti met this appeal with a blank refusal, implying that order had only
just been restored in China and that he now simply had not the resources
for a campaign in Turkestan. Thus, the king of Yarkand was able to
extend his power over the remainder of the small states of Turkestan,
since the Hsiung-nu had been obliged to withdraw. Kuang-wu Ti had had
several frontier wars with the Hsiung-nu without any decisive result.
But in the years around A.D. 45 the Hsiung-nu had suffered several
severe droughts and also great plagues of locusts, so that they had lost
a large part of their cattle. They were no longer able to assert
themselves in Turkestan and at the same time to fight the Chinese in the
south and the Hsien-pi and the Wu-huan in the east. These two peoples,
apparently largely of Mongol origin, had been subject in the past to
Hsiung-nu overlordship. They had spread steadily in the territories
bordering Manchuria and Mongolia, beyond the eastern frontier of the
Hsiung-nu empire. Living there in relative peace and at the same time in
possession of very fertile pasturage, these two peoples had grown in
strength. And since the great political collapse of 58 B.C. the
Hsiung-nu had not only lost their best pasturage in the north of the
provinces of Shensi and Shansi, but had largely grown used to living in
co-operation with the Chinese. They had become much more accustomed to
trade with China, exchanging animals for textiles and grain, than to
warfare, so that in the end they were defeated by the Hsien-pi and
Wu-huan, who had held to the older form of purely war-like nomad life.
Weakened by famine and by the wars against Wu-huan and Hsien-pi, the
Hsiung-nu split into two, one section withdrawing to the north.

The southern Hsiung-nu were compelled to submit to the Chinese in order
to gain security from their other enemies. Thus the Chinese were able to
gain a great success without moving a finger: the Hsiung-nu, who for
centuries had shown themselves again and again to be the most dangerous
enemies of China, were reduced to political insignificance. About a
hundred years earlie