General of Ershi, named for the Dayuan town his army had been sent to take, and brother of a consort the emperor was burying honours under. Thirty thousand horse out of Jiuquan, and out again with a hundred-odd men after an encirclement.
Among the reasons the emperor made Li Guangli a general was that he wanted to ennoble the family of a favourite concubine.The historians' statement of why the Dayuan command came to him — the record puts no speech in his mouth; Shiji, juan 123; Hanshu, juan 61, Memoir of Zhang Qian and Li Guangli
Appears in
Relations
- Emperor Wu patron — He was given the army, and the title General of Ershi named for the Dayuan town he was sent to take, because of the sister the emperor was burying honours under.
- Li Ling colleagues — The great army was dispatched for his sake and Ling's five thousand foot were ordered to be no more than a supporting force — and when Ling met the Chanyu, his merit was small.
Myth vs record
The horse wars won the heavenly horses and brought the western states in, and Li Guangli was the emperor's capable general out there.
The record keeps the arithmetic and the motive. The first expedition reached Yucheng with a few thousand starving men, was beaten there, and got back to Dunhuang with one or two in ten, which is why the Jade Gate was under orders to cut down anyone who rode in; the second took sixty thousand out of the garrison commanderies with a further 180,000 posted north of Jiuquan and Zhangye to hold the line, and came back through the gate with a little over ten thousand men and a thousand horses (Shiji, juan 123; Hanshu, juan 61). He had won with thirty thousand horse at the Tian Shan in 99 BCE, and the court was not allowed to call his later failures defeats. His last army out in 90 BCE was the largest of the reign and it ended in his surrender; the Book of Han puts his death in the steppe down to the hostility of Wei Lü, the surrendered officer who ranked above him (Hanshu, juan 54).