Biography
Family Background and Early Years
Tuoba Tao was born in 408 (Tianci 5) in the Eastern Palace at Pingcheng, Northern Wei’s capital. His grandfather was Tuoba Gui, the founder of Northern Wei, his father was then crown prince Tuoba Si, and his mother Lady Du was Han Chinese. The source says that Tuoba Tao’s appearance at birth was unusual and that Tuoba Gui, greatly impressed on seeing him, declared that this child would one day accomplish his work.
In 409, Tuoba Gui died and Tuoba Si succeeded as Emperor Mingyuan. As the eldest son, Tuoba Tao received education and military training from childhood. At age twelve he was already sent to the Hetao region to resist Rouran incursions, where the source credits him with reorganizing frontier military affairs and displaying precocious military ability.
On the second day of the fourth lunar month of 422, Tuoba Si enfeoffed Tuoba Tao as King of Taiping, appointed him chief minister, and additionally granted the title Grand General. In the fifth lunar month Tuoba Tao began supervising state affairs, and in the eleventh personally commanded the Six Armies at the frontier. During Tuoba Si’s illness he was entrusted with overall responsibility for affairs at court and handled them with composure. Tuoba Si died on the sixth day of the eleventh lunar month of 423, aged thirty-two. Three days later Tuoba Tao formally ascended the throne as Northern Wei’s third emperor, at age sixteen.
Young Emperor and Early Campaigns Against Rouran
Although only sixteen at accession, Tuoba Tao quickly displayed firmness and decisiveness. In 424 (Shiguang 1), Rouran’s Yujiulü Datan, titled the Mouhanheshenggai Khagan in the Chinese source, led sixty thousand cavalry into Yunzhong, killed and plundered officials and civilians, and captured the former capital Shengle. Tuoba Tao rode out with light cavalry and became encircled in multiple lines by the Rouran. He remained composed and stabilized his troops. Only after a Northern Wei force killed the Rouran commander Yu Zhijin did the Rouran withdraw.
The invasion convinced Tuoba Tao that Northern Wei could not safely attack rival regimes to the west and south while Rouran threatened its rear. Despite opposition from the empress dowager and many ministers, he decided, with support from Cui Hao and others, to attack Rouran first. In the twelfth lunar month of 424, he personally campaigned north, reportedly killing several thousand and capturing more than ten thousand horses. In the tenth lunar month of 425 he launched another northern expedition, advancing on five routes from east and west. After reaching south of the desert, the armies abandoned baggage and carried fifteen days of rations by light cavalry across the great desert. Rouran khagan Yujiulü Datan withdrew north in alarm. Neither campaign destroyed Rouran, but both reduced the immediate pressure on Northern Wei’s frontier.
Destruction of Hu Xia in the West
In 425, Hu Xia founder Helian Bobo died and was succeeded by his son Helian Chang. Learning that Helian Bobo’s sons were fighting among themselves and Guanzhong was in disorder, Tuoba Tao seized the opportunity to attack. In the ninth lunar month of 426, he sent Minister over the Works Xi Jin by one route against Puban and General Zhou Ji by another against Shancheng, threatening the Guanzhong center of Chang’an. In the tenth lunar month, Tuoba Tao personally led a rapid attack on Tongwan, the Hu Xia capital. At Junzi Ford severe cold had frozen the river, and he led twenty thousand light cavalry across the ice to Heishui, little more than thirty *li* from Tongwan. It was the winter solstice, and Helian Chang was holding a palace banquet when news of the Wei advance arrived. He hurried out to fight, suffered defeat, and withdrew before the gates could be fully closed, allowing Wei troops to enter through the western gate. Northern Wei did not immediately capture the whole city, but its armies dispersed to plunder the surrounding region, took more than one hundred thousand cattle and horses, and relocated more than ten thousand households. The other Wei armies also occupied Hongnong, Puban, and Chang’an.
In 427 Tuoba Tao attacked Tongwan again. He accepted Cui Hao’s plan to hide the main army in valleys and send only a small mounted force to the walls, deliberately appearing weak and tempting Hu Xia defenders out of the city. When they pursued, the concealed Wei troops struck and won decisively, capturing Helian Chang. Helian Ding fled to Pingliang, assumed the throne, and continued resistance. In 430, Northern Wei attacked again and took Anding, Pingliang, Chang’an, Linjin, Wugong, and other places, gaining all of Guanzhong and leaving Hu Xia only nominally in existence.
Campaigns Against Rouran and Unification of Northern China
While Tuoba Tao’s main forces were campaigning against Hu Xia, Rouran repeatedly raided Northern Wei’s northern frontier. In the fourth lunar month of 429, Tuoba Tao reviewed troops in the southern suburbs and divided the northern expedition into two armies: Zhangsun Han, King of Pingyang, advanced by the western route toward Da’e Mountain, while Tuoba Tao personally led the eastern army toward Black Mountain, with the two to meet at the Rouran khagan’s court. In the fifth lunar month the eastern army reached south of the desert, abandoned its baggage, and advanced rapidly. The khagan’s younger brother Pili Xian attempted to reinforce him but encountered the western Wei army and was defeated. Tuoba Tao marched west along the Su River and in the sixth lunar month reached Tuyuan River, more than 3,700 *li* from Pingcheng. Wei detachments searched widely, reaching east to the “Vast Sea,” west to Zhangye River, and north beyond the Yanran Mountains. Gaoche groups formerly subject to Rouran seized the opportunity to break away; the Chinese source states that more than three hundred thousand encampments submitted to Northern Wei and that over one million cattle and horses were taken. In the seventh lunar month Tuoba Tao began returning east and sent Left Vice Director An Yuan with cavalry against eastern Gaoche groups, accepting the surrender of hundreds of thousands more encampments and relocating them to territory south of the desert under Wei control. The army returned to Pingcheng in the tenth lunar month. The source calls this the Northern Wei campaign that broke Rouran and states that Rouran was so weakened it required nearly a decade to recover.
Tuoba Tao continued campaigns for unification. In 432, Northern Wei attacked Northern Yan, whose ruler Feng Hong sent his younger daughter, later Left Zhaoyi Lady Feng, to the Wei court in marriage. In 436, Wei captured Helong, present-day Chaoyang in Liaoning, and Northern Yan fell. In 439, Tuoba Tao personally campaigned against Northern Liang, using Tufa Poqiang as a guide. Northern Liang strongholds submitted with little fighting, and ruler Juqu Mujian, trapped internally and externally, bound himself and surrendered together with his civil and military officials. Northern Liang was destroyed. Tuoba Tao had now eliminated Hu Xia, Northern Yan, and Northern Liang, ending the fragmentation of the Sixteen Kingdoms in northern China and bringing northern non-Han groups other than Tuyuhun under Northern Wei domination. Liu Song remained in the south, establishing the political pattern of the Northern and Southern Dynasties.
State Governance and Policies of Cultural Assimilation
During the unification of the north, Tuoba Tao actively recruited and employed Han Chinese scholars. In 431, he issued an edict summoning several hundred educated men from the regions east of the passes, bringing major families such as the Lu of Fanyang, Cui of Boling, and Li of Zhao Commandery into the Northern Wei state. Gao Yun, one of the recruited scholars, later commemorated the event in *Rhapsody on the Recruited Scholars*. After Northern Wei absorbed Hexi in 439, many literary scholars from that region entered Wei territory and were recruited to office in Pingcheng, where the source says they contributed to the flourishing of Confucian learning.
Tuoba Tao personally lived frugally, holding that wealth was the foundation of military and state affairs and should not be spent lightly. When ministers requested expansion of the capital’s palaces, he refused on the ground that security depended on virtue rather than fortifications. He was generous in rewarding meritorious officials, particularly for military achievements. The source praises his ability to recognize talent, including promoting men from among ordinary soldiers, and says that rewards did not overlook the lowly and punishments did not spare the noble. It also states that he was violent and quick to order executions, often regretting them afterward.
Late-Reign Crisis and Assassination
In 445, an armed uprising led by Ge Wu among the Lushuihu broke out in Guanzhong. The movement reportedly grew to more than one hundred thousand people. Tuoba Tao personally led the suppression, dividing forces to contain and defeat the rebels in detail, and put down the uprising in 446. The source states that during suppression he carried out severe killings among groups that had responded to the rebellion.
In 450 Tuoba Tao initiated the State History Case. Cui Hao, then Minister over the Masses, had supervised compilation of a state history that recorded Northern Wei ancestral affairs in detail, including material that may have touched on Xianbei customs and private matters regarded as embarrassing. Tuoba Tao became enraged and executed Cui Hao. Members of Cui Hao’s branch of the Cui clan of Qinghe, together with his marriage relatives in the Lu clan of Fanyang, Guo clan of Taiyuan, and Liu clan of Hedong, were implicated, and the source says several thousand people were killed. Tuoba Tao later reportedly lamented that “Minister Cui was a pity,” suggesting regret. In the same year he led a southern expedition against Liu Song. Although his army reached the Yangtze and achieved some military success, nearly half its men and horses were lost, and both troops and civilians were exhausted.
In 452, crown prince Tuoba Huang died amid a father-son power conflict after accusations by the eunuch Zong Ai. In the third lunar month Zong Ai then killed Tuoba Tao. The emperor was forty-five. He received the posthumous title Emperor Taiwu and temple name Shizu.
His Birth, His Enfeoffment, and His Conduct of the Government
In the fifth year of Tianci, 408, Tuoba Tao was born in the eastern palace at Pingcheng, "of a marvellous appearance," and the founder Tuoba Gui, much astonished, said with delight that he who would complete his work must be this boy. On the second day of the fourth month of 422 Emperor Mingyuan enfeoffed Tuoba Tao as prince of Taiping and made him chancellor of state and general-in-chief; in the fifth month of the same year he took charge of the government, and in the eleventh month he led the six armies in person to hold the frontier, with the prince of Anding and the duke of Beixin keeping the capital. When Emperor Mingyuan fell ill he put the business of the court in Tuoba Tao's hands, and he was "intelligent and large-minded and dealt with it easily." In 423 Emperor Mingyuan died and Tuoba Tao came to the throne.
His Two Northern Campaigns against the Rouran
In 424, soon after his accession, the Rouran khan Datan, Hedou Gai, entered Yunzhong, the old capital, with sixty thousand cavalry, "killing and plundering the officials and people and storming the Shengle palace"; and though the officer Wei Puwen drove them off with light horse, and Tuoba Tao sent Zhangsun Han, prince of Pingyang, against their detached commanders and broke them, killing several thousand and taking more than ten thousand horses, the Rouran raids tied down the strength of Wei so that it could neither subdue the other separatist regimes nor go south to contend with the Liu Song; and Tuoba Tao, clearly seeing this, held that unless the Rouran were first subdued they would be attacked front and rear, and against the objections of the empress dowager and many ministers, supported by Cui Hao, resolved on a northern campaign. In the ninth month he reviewed the troops and vehicles, drilled them in the eastern suburb and divided five thousand horse for the expedition; and in the twelfth month he went in person, sending Zhangsun Han by Canhe and leading one force himself to Zhashan, where he met the Rouran cavalry under Afugan, took several thousand heads and more than ten thousand horses and returned in triumph. In the tenth month of 425 he again drilled his troops in the western suburb and marched north on a great scale by five roads east and west, and reaching the south of the desert left his baggage and pressed on with light horse carrying fifteen days' grain across the great sand, so that the Rouran fled north. These two campaigns, though they did not deal the Rouran a mortal blow, eased their raids on Wei.
The Campaign against Xia and the Affair of the Tongwan City
In the ninth month of 426 Tuoba Tao sent the minister of works Xi Jin against Puban and the general Zhou Ji against Shancheng, pressing on the strong point of Chang'an in Guanzhong; and in the tenth month he led the main army in person against Tongwan city. Reaching the Junzi ford, where the weather turned bitterly cold and the river froze over, he crossed on the ice with twenty thousand light horse and came to the Black river, within some thirty li of Tongwan. It was the winter solstice, and Helian Chang was feasting his ministers in the palace when the news came, so that high and low were in terror; and Helian Chang, hurriedly leading troops out, was heavily beaten and fell back, and the gate not being shut in time the Wei troops forced their way into the western gate. Helian Chang withdrew into the palace and shut the doors, and Tuoba Tao, seeing he could not take it at once, divided his troops the next day to plunder, taking more than a hundred thousand cattle and horses and moving more than ten thousand households away; and meanwhile the other two Wei armies took Hongnong, Puban and Chang'an. Afterwards, by the Northern History, when the ministers all advised that the city was strong and could not be taken in ten days and that it were better to bring up the foot and the siege engines together, the emperor said that in the art of war the assault of cities was the lowest resort, to be used only when there was no other way; that if the siege engines all came at once the enemy would be frightened and hold fast, and that if the city were not taken and the food ran out and the troops were weary with nothing outside to plunder, it would be no good plan; whereas if he came to the wall with light horse, the enemy, having heard of the foot but seeing only horse, would be at ease, and he would show weak troops to lure him, and if a battle could be had he would surely be taken. So he marched to the Black river and divided his troops to lie in the deep valleys while a small force came to the wall. In the fighting a wind rose and the diviner Zhao Ni advised waiting for another day, but Cui Hao cursed him, and Tuoba Tao divided his horsemen to left and right to pin the enemy; and when his horse stumbled and threw him and the enemy were upon him, he mounted again and killed their secretary Huli Wen and more than ten of the horsemen, and though a stray arrow struck him he "did not slacken his blows," so that Helian Chang's army broke utterly and could not get back into the city but fled to Shanggui. After the rout Tuoba Tao resolved to put on Xia uniform and enter Tongwan city to see for himself, and though Tuoba Qi remonstrated he would not be dissuaded; and so he and Tuoba Qi with several Wei officers changed into Xia uniform and followed the fugitives into the city. But some of the fugitives had seen them change, and the garrison, learning of it, shut all the gates; and Tuoba Tao and his companions, putting on an unconcerned air, made their way into the Xia palace and got some women's skirts, which in the evening they tied to one another and fastened one end to a spear and wedged the spear in a battlement, and under cover of night slid down the great wall by these skirts.
The Destruction of Northern Yan and Northern Liang, and the Unification of the North
In the fourth month of 429 Tuoba Tao drilled his troops in the southern suburb, divided his generals, and sent Zhangsun Han, prince of Pingyang, by the western road towards Da'e mountain and himself by the eastern road towards the Black mountain, to meet at the Rouran khan's court. In the fifth month the eastern army reached the south of the desert, left its baggage and pressed on with light horse; and Datan's brother Pili Xian, hearing of the Wei attack, led his men to the rescue and fell in with the western army and was broken. Tuoba Tao led his troops west along the Su river and in the sixth month reached the Tu garden water, three thousand seven hundred li from Pingcheng; and dividing to search the country, east to the Hanhai, west to the Zhangye water and north beyond the Yanran mountain, the Gaoju tribes that had been under Rouran rule took the chance to free themselves, and those who came over to Wei were more than three hundred thousand households, with more than a million cattle and horses taken. In the seventh month he led east and came back south of the desert; and hearing that the eastern Gaoju were pasturing at Yini bei with many men and beasts, he sent the left president An Yuan with cavalry against them, brought over several hundred thousand households of eastern Gaoju and moved them into the Wei lands south of the desert; and in the tenth month the army returned in triumph to Pingcheng. This campaign has been called the beginning of Wei's great strategic counter-offensive against the Rouran. In 436 he took Longcheng and destroyed Northern Yan, and in 439 took Liangzhou and captured the Northern Liang lord Juqu Mujian. He also beat the Rouran, the Gaoju and the Tuyuhun again and again, and using both pacification and force brought the states of the Western Regions and the northeast to send tribute, completing the unification of the north and ending the division of the Sixteen Kingdoms to face the Liu Song in the south.
His Domestic Government: Offices, Economy, Frugality, and Military Discipline
In offices, in the first month of 424 he set up the ministry of the right people; in the third month of 428 he established left and right presidents and assistants and more than ten ministers of the several departments, each in its own office, and in the seventh month ordered the frontier commanders to open their offices by rank and appoint their staff; in the third month of 432 he changed the governorship of Dai into that of Wannian, and afterwards restored it; in the first month of 445 he put the palace attendant and director of the secretariat Mu Shou, the duke of Yidu, the minister of education Cui Hao, duke of Dongjun, and the palace attendant Zhang Li, duke of Guangping, in charge of the government with four masters of transmission, and chose good clerks for the several departments to serve the eastern palace; and in the seventh month of 451, the clerks being many, he reduced their number. He greatly honoured Confucius, promoted the Confucian learning and took many Chinese scholar-officials into the government, meaning to rule the people's minds by the Confucian teaching and to use Chinese learning and experience in governing. On the economy he said that "wealth is the root of army and state," and it is recorded that "on his accession the emperor opened the four seas, and because the peoples of the five quarters each had their own nature he doubled their instruction without changing their customs and unified their government without altering what suited them, taking in their local tribute to fill the granaries and collecting their goods to fill the treasuries," holding firmly to a policy that did not change the traditional modes of production, ways of life and customs of the several peoples, valuing both the farming of the Chinese and the herding and hunting of the others. In farming he promoted the practice by which households with oxen and households without exchanged labour in the fields, so that "the land opened up was greatly increased," and issued again and again edicts that taxes should be lightened and the people given rest, rewarding governors who "encouraged farming and equalized taxes" and punishing the corrupt. In herding he moved the Rouran and Gaoju who submitted south of the desert to farm and herd and pay tribute, "and from that time among the people of Wei horses, cattle, sheep and their felt and hides fell in price"; and in the Shenjia era, "when the emperor pacified Tongwan and settled Qin and Long, he took the good water and grass of Hexi for pasture, and the herds multiplied, horses to more than two million, camels nearly half as many, and cattle and sheep beyond counting." He was himself "plain and frugal by nature, and in carriages, clothes, food and drink took only what he needed, caring nothing for rare and fine things, eating no second dish, his consorts of the first and second ranks wearing no double colours," and all his gifts went to the families of those who had died in service, "nor did his kin and favourites ever get anything beyond their due." When the ministers asked him to raise the walls of the capital and build a palace, citing the principle that princes make fastnesses to guard their states and Xiao He's saying that the son of Heaven takes the four seas for his home and that a palace not magnificent enough would not show his majesty, he answered that the ancients had said that it lay in virtue and not in the fastness, that Helian Chang had built his walls by steaming the earth and yet he had destroyed him, and asked whether that was a matter of walls; that the realm was not yet at peace and the people's strength was needed, and that works of earth he would not undertake, and that Xiao He's saying was no elegant word. Seeing the Tongwan city that Helian Chang had built, with walls ten fathoms high, thirty paces thick and ten paces broad at the top, palace walls five fathoms high, and towers and flying galleries joined in carving and painting, he told those about him that so small a state should use its people thus, and asked how it could fail to perish. In military discipline he rewarded with rank or with men, beasts, gold, silver and silk those who were loyal and bore the brunt, and punished breaches of discipline severely, sparing neither kin nor great ministers: the Xianbei noble Qiu Dui, who had fled with his troops when Xi Jin was captured, was beheaded by his order, and another because he had forged orders to change the day of the meeting against the Rouran and let them flee, and because of bribery besides, was destroyed to the third degree. He was himself foremost in battle: leading thirty thousand light horse against Tongwan he bore wind and sand and hunger and thirst with his men, and once thrown by his horse, mounted and fought on, killing more than ten Xia officers at once, and afterwards, wounded by an arrow, "did not slacken his blows," so that it is recorded that "men thought of giving their lives and there was nothing they did not overcome."
Writing, Schools, and the Persecution of Buddhism
Because one character then bore many meanings and readers were easily misled, Tuoba Tao of his own motion ordered more than a thousand new characters to be made; and he issued an edict saying that in the time of the Yellow Emperor Cang Jie had made characters after the tracks of birds and beasts, that since then characters might be altered at will, that the small seal, the clerical, the cursive and the regular all went side by side in the world, and that for this reason the older a text the more easily errors crept into its transmission so that readers could not follow the sense; and therefore "from this time on I have resolved that throughout the realm the regular script shall be the standard style, and that documents shall always be written in regular script." In the fifth year of Taiping Zhenjun, 444, he further decreed that from the princes down to the officers all their sons should attend the grand college, and that the sons of the hundred craftsmen and of grooms and runners should follow their fathers' and brothers' callings and were not to set up private schools, the teacher being put to death and the household destroyed to the third degree for a breach. At the beginning of his reign he would often bring in monks of high virtue and talk with them; but the Buddhist power grew too fast and the number of its adherents increased, so that in his wars he felt the lack of men more and more; and Buddhism, having entered the central plain, had also absorbed the lore of portents and practised mysterious doctrines that encroached on the emperor's authority. Besides, the man he favoured, Cui Hao, was deeply devoted to the Taoist teaching, and under Cui Hao's disparagement Tuoba Tao gradually drew away from Buddhism. In 438 he ordered all monks under fifty to return to lay life and serve in the campaigns, to meet the need for men in the western expedition of the following year; and in 444 he issued the edict against Buddhism, reproaching the monks for "borrowing the empty tales of the western barbarians and breeding monsters," which was no way to unify the government and spread pure virtue through the realm, and providing that from the princes down to commoners, all who kept monks or wizards or workers in gold and silver privately in their houses must send them to the authorities before the fifteenth of the second month and must not conceal them, and that if the time passed and it was discovered, the monk should die and the master's household be destroyed. In 446 he issued the edict of suppression, declaring Buddhism a false teaching, burning all images and scriptures everywhere, "burying monks of whatever age in pits," and forbidding its spread; and through this persecution the Buddhist power in the north fell for a time into decline, and only after his death and the accession of Emperor Wencheng did it gradually revive.
The Rising of Gai Wu and Its Suppression
The land where the Lushui Hu and other peoples were gathered had been garrisoned by Wei after the pacification of Guanzhong to hold the Lushui Hu in check, and the government moved them about and laid heavier taxes on them. When the rising broke out the deputy commander of the Chang'an garrison, Yuan He, marched against them and was beaten, whereupon all the peoples of Guanzhong answered, and the rebels grew to more than a hundred thousand men in three columns: one under Bai Guangping to the southwest, threatening Chang'an from the east; and Gai Wu in person taking Li Run fort and driving at the north of the Wei to attack Chang'an. Tuoba Tao hastily called out the Chile cavalry of the Gaoping garrison to Chang'an and ordered the general Zhangsun Ba to gather the troops of Bing, Qin and Yong to hold the north of the Wei. Xue Yongzong in the eleventh month of 445 raided the Wei pastures east of the river, seized horses and raised three thousand cavalry in rebellion at the Fen bend; and sending to Xue Yongzong, who accepted from Gai Wu the office of governor of Qinzhou, the two forces joined and supported one another like the horns of a beast, so that from Xingcheng in the north to the north of the Wei in the south, from Lanzhou in the west to the east of the river, the whole region centring on central Shaanxi and including eastern Gansu, southeastern Ningxia, southwestern Shanxi and northwestern Henan was under their control or influence. With the Wei rule in Guanzhong tottering Tuoba Tao went in person, using the plan of holding off one force while striking each in turn: the palace secretary Yi Ba with thirty thousand horse against Gai Wu, the duke of Xiping Kou Ti with ten thousand against Bai Guangping, and himself with the main force against Xue Yongzong. In the first month of 446 the army came to the Fen bend, used the local strongmen to build ramparts and cut the connection between Xue Yongzong and Gai Wu, and then, when the rebels were off guard, attacked suddenly and destroyed that force; and in the second month he crossed the Yellow River to the Luo river bridge, where Gai Wu, surrounded by the Wei troops and heavily worsted, memorialized Emperor Wen of Song again for help, which did not come, and in the eighth month Gai Wu was killed by a traitor and the rising was put down. In the course of it Tuoba Tao slaughtered cruelly the peoples who had answered the rising along his way.
The Case of the National History, the Northern Campaign of Emperor Wen of Song, and His Murder
Cui Hao served several reigns, and whether in pacifying the north, the states of the Western Regions or the war against the south his counsels were decisive for the victories of the Wei armies, and he rose to be minister of education. But being a firm believer in the Taoist teaching he prompted the emperor to suppress Buddhism, and Tuoba Tao did as he said and found an occasion to kill the monks throughout the realm and destroy the temples; yet from the heir and the chief ministers down to the common people the believers were without number, and Cui Hao's act offended a great body of Xianbei nobles. Besides, when Cui Hao compiled the national history he wrote it straight without avoiding taboos, and its contents touched on many killings among kin, outrages and debaucheries in the Wei ancestral house; and he had the history cut on stone tablets at a cost of three million in silver, a hundred and thirty paces square, wishing its contents to be handed down for ten thousand generations. The ministers therefore memorialized one after another and so enraged Tuoba Tao that he destroyed Cui Hao's whole clan and the Fan yang Lu and Taiyuan Guo families related to him by marriage; and as several great Chinese clans of Yan and Zhao were thus heavily struck, the institutional sinicization of Wei, till then flourishing, was clouded over. Later scholars have examined the matter deeply, some holding it a result of the conflict between the Hu and the Chinese within the ruling class, and others that Cui Hao in his later years, long favoured by the emperor, "forgot himself," and came to contend with the heir over appointments and "to overmatch his superior." Tuoba Tao in his last years drank heavily and was of uncertain temper; and as Cui Hao had long offended many Wei magnates and this setting up of the history on stone shamed them, someone accused him of "exposing the evils of the dynasty," and at the urging of many magnates the clan was destroyed. In the seventh month of 450 Emperor Wen of Song, Liu Yilong, issued the edict for the northern campaign, and the Song at first prospered, taking Jizhou; but Tuoba Tao marched to Dongping and forced the Song troops to abandon Jizhou, and ordered his generals, regardless of strong cities left behind, to advance boldly south in five roads: Tuoba Ren from Luoyang straight to Shouchun, the president Zhangsun Zhen to Matou, the prince of Chu Jian to Zhongli, the prince of Gaoliang Na from Qingzhou to Xiapi, with the emperor himself on the middle road. Tuoba Ren took Xuanhu and captured the Song commander Zhao Huai, sending him to the capital to be killed, and passing Ding and Xiang cities and the west of the Huai he heavily defeated the Song general Liu Kangzu and killed him. By the twelfth month Tuoba Tao had reached Guabu, Tuoba Ren the west of the river and Tuoba Na Guangling, "all the armies coming to the river on the same day, and wherever they passed the cities crumbled at the sight of the dust, and those who surrendered were past counting," while the Song themselves acknowledged that "the northern campaign has failed and several prefectures are lost." But the Wei had not the means to cross the river and destroy the southern state, and the northerners could not bear the southern climate, so that plague broke out in the army and they turned north; and hearing on the way that there were defenders at Xuyi, they attacked without success and with heavy loss, while the plague grew worse and "very many died of it," and Tuoba Tao, learning that Pengcheng had cut his road home and that the capital had sent a fleet by sea into the Huai, raised the siege and fled on the second day of the second month. In the hour of victory he had of his own accord sent envoys to seek peace and a marriage, showing his grandson to the Song envoy with the words that he had come so far not for fame but to continue good relations and rest the people and to bind the two houses by marriage forever, and that if Song would give a daughter to this grandson he would give a daughter to the prince of Wuling, and from that day not a horse would look south again. In his last years Tuoba Tao was violent in temper and killed too many, often repenting when the deed was done; and on the day jiayin of the second month of 452 the palace attendant Zong Ai, fearing to be killed, murdered the emperor, the left president of the secretariat Lan Yan and the palace attendants He Pi and Xue Ti keeping the death secret. Tuoba Tao was then forty-five, having reigned twenty-nine years; he was buried at Jinling in Yunzhong with the temple name Shizu and the posthumous name of the Great Martial Emperor.