Friday, June 29, 2012

OMG Xanadu

What Up, Nerds?


The great Khan of the Mongols—Mongkehad just died while leading the invasion of the Song dynasty in south China. 




The old Khan was dead and that meant the Mongols were without an leader. The way they usually chose a new leader was to have all the political officials, military officials, and important descendants of Genghis Khan meet together and elect a new Khan.

Kublai, being an ambitious sort of guy, thought that maybe he should become the new Mongol leader.  In order to do that he would need the freedon to devote more attention and resources to Mongol Politics than to the war against the Song. So he negotiated a peace treaty where he wouldn't attack the Song and the Song would pay him off with a heaping pile of silk, and then he headed back north to Mongolia. A pretty good peace, if you ask me.

When Kublai arrived up north he got some bad news. Most of the eligible voters and most of the Mongols thought that his uncle Ariq should be Khan. Only Kublai and his brother Hulagu thought Kublai was the better choice. So Ariq had called a meeting in the Mongol Capital at Karakorum. The meeting had elected him, and he had already been crowned Khan. So Kublai had been beat before the game even began and he returned to the south to restart the war with the Song.

Karakorum. Kind of a dinky little town..
(Pic from Wiki)


Nahhh not really. When Kublai found out he shrugged and said "f*ck this, I own half of China!" He called his own meeting with hand-picked but politically unrepresentative "representatives" from all the important Mongol tribes and he got them to "elect" him Khan. So now there were two Khans, except that Kublai's claim was full of bullsh*t.

But when you own half of China you can get away with a little bull.

Kublai drew up his armies.

In the south, several of the generals who he'd had fighting the Song declared that they were loyal to Ariq. Ariq also held the loyalty of central Mongolia and of the Mongol domain in Russia. Kublai had north China and the loyalty of his brother Hulagu who owned Iran and Iraq. Kublai quickly started to crush Ariq's generals on the border with the Song.


After dealing with Ariq's men to his south Kublai marched his own army straight into Mongolia. He made a beeline for Ariq, who was only too happy to humor Kublai. But when the two armies met Kublai whupped Ariq's army hard. Ariq's primary general and strategist was killed, and Ariq fled. Ariq had bet too much on that battle and he had to disappear for a long while to bring his army back up to fighting shape. Whiae Ariq was busy Kublai moved to attack and capture the Mongol capital at Karakorum. Ariq recovered, and the two armies dueled in the field for several years. Ariq briefly retook Karokorum, but not for long, and the city was mostly destroyed in the fighting.


Over the course of several more years of warfare back and forth, Ariq's army wore down while Kublai just drew on the seemingly infinite strength of China to replentish his own forces. This meant that more and more Mongols started to see the way things were headed and they defected to Kublai. Eventually enough bigwigs like the governor Ariq himself had appointed over central Asia defected, and the war started to wind down

Ariq had to give up and he surrendered to Kublai. Kublai called a new meeting at his capital of Xanadu to confirm his as chief of the Mongols. At the meeting he "forgave" his uncle for totally being the one who illegally usurped Kublai's completely legitimate Khan status, and executed all of Ariq's followers.

When they heard about this, the Mongol ruler of Russia and also Kublai's own brother Hulagu who ruled Iraq and Iran got a little uncomfortable. They sent word that they agreed Kublai was Khan, but didn't come to Kublai's meeting and started to drift away from the central Mongol state. Soon war between the two Mongol provinces broke out. This was no surprise, since that war had been brewing between them for a while. Kublai did his best to force his control over the whole empire, but his rule was unstable and revolts sprung up all over. He would eventually put them down, but things were still shaky.

In the mean time, he was able to turn his attention back to south China. Kublai attacked the Song and started the war back up with an enormous victory, where the Mongols crushed many of the Song armies and where they captured a hundred Song ships. The Mongols started an enormous advance into the heart of the Song south, but were stopped at the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fencheng north of the Yangtze river. The cities resisted a massive siege, and both sides poured massive resources into this one fight. The sided sent fleets of thousands and thousands of ships down the river between the cities and brought up many siege weapons, including explosive devices called "thunder crash bombs" which still sounds like a racist stereotype to me, even though it is historical.

Xiangyang is on the northern edge of central Song territory.


After years and years of struggle at the twin cities, the Song defenders let political infighting get the better of them. Fencheng was stormed and completely butchered and Xiangyang surrendered quickly after that. As soon as the cities fell, the Song sent their own fleet of thousands of ships up the river the cities lay on to take them back. Song forces spent five years attacking before the Mongols finally drove them back.


The Mongols then pressed south and after a very long fight they made it to the Yangtze river. There they built an enormous fleet to use to conquer the rest of Song territory.

It would not be an easy fight. The Song had their own fleet which was also full of thousands and thousands of ships. And the Song ships were technologically advanced too, using paddle wheels and gunpowder to take on the Mongols. The sides fought on and gained and lost ground for years and years. Little progress was made. Everyone died in enormous numbers.

Paddleboats: apparently cutting edge technology.
(Pic from Wiki)


Slowly, Mongol power started to get the edge. As they realized this was the case, the Song districts started to surrender to the Mongols. The as the last districts outside the capital fell, the Song child-emperor saw how the die had fallen and resigned.


After so many years of war though, the hard core Song supporters simply could not stand to let the mongols win. So they took the emperor's younger brothers, enthroned them, and brought them to fight on in Hong Kong and the islands in the very far south of China. The mongols vastly outmatched this tiny force, and it was not too long until last of the Song faced total defeat. Having been completely crushed, the chief Song supporters and the remaining boy-emperor did the only thing they thought would be honorable and committed suicide by jumping off of a goddamn mountain.

And that is how Kublai Khan conquered China. He established the Yuan dynasty, which ruled China until the Ming revolution overthrew them in 1378.

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