War of the Heavenly Horses

War of the Heavenly Horses
Date 104–101 BC Location Ferghana Valley Result Han victory Dayuan becomes a puppet-state of Han Han gets 3,000 horses to begin building its cavalry force Yucheng conquered and royal family executed Establishment of Protectorate of the Western Regions
Belligerents
Han dynasty	Dayuan Yucheng Luntai
Commanders and leaders
Li Guangli Shangguan Jie Wang Shensheng Hu Chongguo	Wugua Jianmi
Strength
1st (104 BC): 20,000 infantry 6,000 cavalry 2nd (102 BC): 60,000 infantry 30,000 cavalry 100,000 oxen 20,000 donkeys and camels	Dayuan: ? Yucheng: 3,000 Luntai: ?

The War of the Heavenly Horses (simplified Chinese: 天马之战; traditional Chinese: 天馬之戰; pinyin: Tiānmǎ zhī Zhàn) or the Han–Dayuan War (simplified Chinese: 汉宛战争; traditional Chinese: 漢宛戰爭; pinyin: Hàn Yuān Zhànzhēng) was a military conflict fought in 104 BC and 102 BC between the Chinese Han dynasty and the Saka-ruled (Scythian) Greco-Bactrian kingdom known to the Chinese as Dayuan, in the Ferghana Valley at the easternmost end of the former Persian Empire (between modern-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan). The war was allegedly instigated by trade disputes compounded by the extended geopolitics surrounding the Han-Xiongnu War, resulting in two Han expeditions that eventuated in a Han victory, allowing Han China to expand its hegemony deep into Central Asia (then known to the Chinese as the Western Regions).^[1][2]

Emperor Wu of Han had received reports from diplomat Zhang Qian that Dayuan owned fast and powerful Ferghana horses known as the "heavenly horses", which would help greatly with improving the quality of their cavalry mounts when fighting the Xiongnu horse nomads, so he sent envoys to survey the region and establish trade routes to import these horses. However, the Dayuan king not only refused the deal, but also confiscated the payment gold, and had the Han ambassadors ambushed and killed on their way home. Humiliated and enraged, the Han court sent an army led by General Li Guangli to subdue Dayuan, but their first incursion was poorly organized and undersupplied. A second, larger and much better provisioned expedition was sent two years later and successfully laid siege to the Dayuan capital at Alexandria Eschate, and forced Dayuan to surrender unconditionally. The Han expeditionary forces installed a pro-Han regime in Dayuan and took back enough horses to improve Han's horse breeding.^[3] This power projection also forced many smaller Tocharian oasis city-states in the Western Regions to switch their alliance from Xiongnu to the Han dynasty, which paved the way for the later establishment of the Protectorate of the Western Regions.