Huo Qubing

Huo Qubing (Chinese: 霍去病; pinyin: Huò Qùbìng; Wade–Giles: Huo Ch'üping, 140 BC – 117 BC), born in Linfen, Shanxi, was a general of the western Han dynasty under Emperor Wu. Being the illegitimate son of Wei Shaoer, he was the nephew of Wei Qing and Empress Wei Zifu.

Although raised in reasonable prosperity during the early glory days of the Wei family, he exhibited outstanding military talent as a teenager. Deployed as a commander in Wei Qing's expeditions, Huo Qubing regularly led his own troops deep into enemy territory and inflicted great defeats on the Xiongnu with rapid running assaults, on one occasion claiming victory by capturing the Xiongnu artifact Golden Statue. As a result, he gained great favour with the Emperor.

When he was 20 years old, he and Wei Qing were sent with separate armies to attack the Xiongnu on the largest-scale Han offensive to date. Huo Qubing, leading the elite divisions of the Han army, engaged the Xiongnu's Worthy Prince of the Left (左賢王, literally meaning "Wise King of the Left") and routed his troops, inflicting the lethal blow of a devastating 70,443 casualties on the Xiongnu Confederation. He was greatly rewarded for his efforts, and his fief reached in excess of 10,000 households.

Though a brave general and highly regarded by Emperor Wu, he paid little regard to his men. Sima Qian noted in Shiji that Huo Qubing refused to share his food with his soldiers when their provisions were low, and also regularly ordered his troops to dig up football fields for his personal amusement. However, when it came to martial glory, Huo Qubing never hesitated to share the honor with his men. One of the most famous tale is that when Emperor Wu awarded Huo a jar of precious wine for his achievement, he poured it into a creek so all his troopers drinking the water could share a taste of it. This tale gave rise to the name of the city Jiuquan (酒泉, meaning "wine spring"). At the height of his career, many low-ranking commanders previously served under Wei Qing voluntarily came to Huo's service in the hope of achieving military glory with him.

Huo Qubing died at the early age of 24 due to a plague, possibly the result of a primitive form of biological warfare. It is believed that Xiongnu soldiers put dead horses, cows and sheep in lakes during the Gobi Desert war to contaminate water supplies and spread infectious diseases among the Han soldiers, in a form of native witchcraft curse. (Ironically, the fleeing Xiongnu tribes ended up suffering the worse due to their bad living conditions and poor knowledge in medicine.)

Huo's half-brother Huo Guang was later a great Han statesman who was the chief consul behind Emperor Zhao, and was instrumental in the succession of Emperor Xuan to the throne after Emperor Zhao's death.

Huo presumably at least had two sons. The younger one Huo Shàn (霍嬗) was likely born by his wife and thus succeeded his marquis title but died young in 110 BC, so his title became extinct, as Huo's elder son and his descendants, could not inherit according to the succession law at that time; the elder son, whose name was unrecorded, had two sons: Huo Shān (霍山, note different note than his younger uncle), later Marquess of Leping; Huo Yun (霍云), later Marquess of Guanyang. In 66 BC, when their plot to overthrow Emperor Xuan of Han failed, both Shān and Yun committed suicide and the Huo clan was slaughtered. It was presumably that no male descendant of Huo Qubing nor Huo Guang survived, as in 2 during the reign of Emperor Ping of Han, it was Huo Yang, a great-grandson of Huo's paternal cousin, chosen to inherit Huo Guang as Marquess of Bolu.