Age of Conquest: A Kings and Generals Podcast

To coincide with the release of the Kings and Generals Biography video of the Mongol general Subutai, for our podcast we’ll present for your listening an extended version of that script, courtesy of our series historian writer. While Subutai is the most well known of all medieval Mongolian generals, the full extent of his career is rarely presented in a single document. With this episode, we’ll hopefully do just that for you; providing an idea of the vast scope of Subutai’s campaigns and his service to three generations of Chinggisids, providing along the way an idea of what made up this man’s personality, and some historiography on him. This version of the script will be accessible to read with full footnotes and sources on the academia.edu page of our series writer, Jack Wilson. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Of all the generals of the Mongol Empire, none stand taller than Subutai, who led armies from China, across Iran, the Caucasus, Russia and into Eastern Europe. Yet, Subutai remains a murky figure, with difficult to access primary sources providing fertile ground for all manner of myths to grow instead. Utilizing the latest scholarship and medieval materials, we will paint for you a more accurate biography of one of history’s fiercest generals.         Perhaps the best place to start would be his name. Subutai, the most common form of his name on the internet, comes from the Chinese rendering of his name( 速不台 ). Numerous transliterations of his name exist, but perhaps the best approximation of the Mongolian is Sübe’etei. The common epithet attached to his name, Ba’atar, signifies bravery and is often translated as hero or knight.        Sübe’etei was born in northwestern Mongolia in 1175-1176, to the Uriyangqat Mongols. There has been modern confusion of the Uriyngqat Mongols, nomadic pastoralists in the Mongolian steppe, with the Turkic Uriyangqai of the forests north of Mongolia, reindeer herders who did not raise the vast herds sheep, goat or horses. This confusion has resulted in the common misconception today that Sübe’etei was a Tuvan. However, the 13th and 14th century sources clearly identify Sübe’etei as a man of the steppe, whose father herded sheep and their family having been in close contact with that of Chinggis Khan’s for five generations, a sublineage of the Mongol tribe to which Chinggis Khan belonged. Stephen Pow in his article with Jingjing Liao on Sübe’etei suggests part of the appeal to this belief of Sübe’etei as a ‘reindeer herder,’ is the irony in one of history’s greatest cavalry commanders being a man who did not learn to ride a horse until well into his adulthood.       Though specific details of Sübe’etei’s early life are lost to us, we can assume it mirrored that of other Mongolian children. He would have learned to ride a horse, shoot a bow, hunt and herd animals from a young age, the basic skills necessary for warfare on the steppe. In the politically chaotic period of late 12th century Mongolia, Sübe’etei and his family likely suffered from raids and predatory marauders. As a young boy, he found a role model in the form of a fellow Mongol named Temujin. Since the time of Sübe’etei’s great-great-grandfather Nerbi, their families had been close allies, and perhaps from Sübe’etei’s earliest days Temujin had appeared as the centre of Sübe’etei’s world. In the Secret History of the Mongols, around 1185 Temujin was elected as Khan of his Mongol lineage, the Borjigon. Per the Secret History’s account, Sübe’etei, perhaps little more than 10 years old, attended, accompanied by his older brother Ca’urqan and their older cousin, Jelme. In Sübe’etei’s most formative years, he attached himself to this rising warlord, whose family he would stay in loyal service to for the next six decades.       Sübe’etei’s role, if any, in the many trials of Temujin’s rise to power are unmentioned. At 14 years old he would have been enrolled into military service as a lightly armoured horse archer. It is not until 1203, when Sübe’etei was about 27, that we have the first described event of his life. That year, Temujin suffered a devastating setback, betrayed by his ally Toghrul, the Ong Khan of the Kereyit. Defeated in battle by Toghrul and Jamukha, another ally turned enemy, Temujin’s army was scattered and with a small force he fled to Lake Baljuna in eastern Mongolia. Slowly, his allies trickled in, one of whom was Sübe’etei’s father Qaban, driving a flock of sheep to Baljuna to feed Temujin’s hungry men. As described in the Yuan shi, Qaban was ambushed and captured by robbers. Sübe’etei and his brother Ca’urqan, not far beyond with the rest of the animals, followed the tracks of the robbers and ambushed them. Bringing down several robbers, the rest panicked and fled. Their father was rescued, and they brought the much-needed sheep to Temujin at Baljuna. Heartened by their loyalty and courage, he rewarded them; Ca’urqan was made a commander of 100, and Sübe’etei was enrolled into the keshig, the imperial bodyguard, as was common for younger brothers of unit commanders. Alongside physically protecting the Khan, the keshig also served as his closest servants, preparing his meals, protecting his herds and maintaining his belongings. The keshig also served as a training school for commanders, where the skills of leading armies, logistical needs and battle were advanced. It is here that Sübe’etei began his education as a general.       By 1206, Temujin had unified the tribes of Mongolia, taking the  title of  Chinggis Khan and declaring the Mongol Empire. Sübe’etei was among those rewarded for his service. It was not without sacrifice, as his older brother had died in the fighting against the Naiman in western Mongolia. With 95 others, in 1206 Sübe’etei was appointed to command a minggan, 1,000 men. His reputation as a ferocious warrior in the name of the Khan had already begun to be established, for at the sametime he was noted among Chinggis Khan’s Four Dogs of War: Jebe, Qubilai Noyan and Jelme Uha. Unlike Chinggis’s four Horses -Bo’orchu, Muqali, Boroqul, Cila’un Ba’atar- who were Chinggis Khan’s personal friends from his youth, the Four Dogs were among the deadliest men of the Khan’s arsenal. To paraphrase the Secret History of the Mongols, the Four Horses were the men at Chinggis’ side, while the Four Dogs were those charging wherever the Khan pointed. Brutal, daring, often cruel yet utterly loyal, the Four Dogs were Chinggis’ swords to wield against Asia. It was in this service that Sübe’etei would excel.       In the first Mongol invasions, against the Tangut Kingdom in 1209 and the Jin Dynasty in 1211, Sübe’etei’s mentions are sparse. In 1212 Sübe’etei was the first onto the walls of Huanzhou. He was richly rewarded for his role in taking the city, and for his courage he earned the title of Ba’atar. Jebe Noyan, with whom Sübe’etei was often partnered with, went on a long ranging campaign across the Jin Empire in 1213, through Manchuria and taking one of the Jin capitals, Tung-ching. It’s possible Sübe’etei accompanied him on their series of long marches, feigned retreats and sacked cities, but such is only speculation.       By 1216 Chinggis Khan was back in Mongolia, his armies having taken the Jin supreme capital of Zhongdu and left them on the backfoot. In Mongolia Chinggis had to deal with rebellions and foes who had survived the unification. One army under Boroqul was sent to subdue the forest peoples around Lake Baikal, who were in open revolt against Mongol rule; Jebe was sent to capture a fugitive Naiman prince who had usurped power in the Central Asian realm of the Qara-Khitai; Muqali was to command the armies fighting the Jin; and Sübe’etei was to accompany Chinggis’ eldest son Jochi far across the western steppes, in pursuit of Merkit tribes who had fled Mongolia and sought shelter with the Qipchap-Qangli east of the Caspian Sea. This was the Mongol Empire’s first great expansion west of the Altai Mountains. The precise dating and presence of Jochi on this western campaign has been debated by scholars, but we will follow the likeliest chronology proposed by historian Christopher Atwood. Before they set out on the long journey, the Secret History of the Mongols has Chinggis provide Sübe’etei an iron reinforced cart for the journey. This statement may perhaps be the partial origin for the myth that Sübe’etei was immensely overweight, and that no single horse could carry him, requiring instead specially made carts! No medieval source describes Sübe’etei’s weight in any capacity, but Stephen Pow noted that Rashid al-Din mentions of an elderly Uriyangqat who needed to be carried everywhere in a cart, as well as a grandson of Orda bin Jochi who was immensely obese and also required a cart to travel, for no horse could bear him. Possibly, such descriptions were confused with Sübe’etei, encouraged, Pow suggests, again by the “irony of a man [unable to] ride a horse becoming the nomadic cavalry’s greatest general.”       In two battles over late 1218 and early 1219, Sübe’etei and Jochi defeated the Merkit and their Qangli allies in what is now western Kazakhstan. On the long trek back across the steppe to Mongolia they made an unexpected meeting. The ruler of the vast Khwarezmian Empire, Muhammad II, intercepted the Mongols somewhere in central Kazakhstan.  Jochi and Sübe’etei informed Shah Muhammad they had no quarrel with him, that their task had been simply to deal with the Merkits. But Muhammad had come north looking for a fight, and the Mongols would have to do. Outnumbered, the Mongols made a good show of themselves, the right wings of both armies pushing back the opposing left. Both armies fought until darkness forced them apart. Lighting many fires to make it appear they were setting up camp, the Mongols slid away into the night. The Khwarezmians awoke the next morning to see the mysterious enemy had vanished. Horrified by the destruction wrought by this encounter in the field, Muhammad Khwarezm-shah seems to have developed a phobia of facing the Mongols in open battle.        Jochi and Sübe’etei returned to Chinggis late in summer 1219, in similar time to the arrival of news of the infamous Otrar Massacre. The Khwarezmian governor of Otrar, Shah Muhammad’s uncle, murdered a trade caravan sent by Chinggis Khan. It is unclear if the massacre took place with or without Muhammad’s support, but when Chinggis’ envoys arrived demanding punishment for the butchery, Muhammad had them executed. As Jebe had by then conquered the Qara-Khitai, the aggressive Khwarezmians were now direct neighbours of the Mongol Empire. Scarcely had Jebe, Jochi and Sübe’etei returned to Mongolia when they set out to invade the Khwarezmian Empire at the end of 1219.       The story of the Mongol invasion of Khwarezm is well told and does not require our attention here. Muhammad, seeking to avoid field battles relied on garrisons within city walls, believing the Mongols, as nomads, lackes sige capabilities. He was sorely mistaken. By spring 1220 the northern frontier of Khwarezm had collapsed. Muhammad fled deeper into his empire, and in pursuit Chinggis Khan unleashed his dogs of war: Jebe Noyan and Sübe’etei Ba’atar, supported by a third tumen under Chinggis’ son-in-law Toquchar.Across Khurasan and northern Iran sped Shah Muhammad. Jebe and Sübe’etei  followed. While Muhammad was their primary goal, as they went they took the submission of cities- those which resisted were marked for Toquchar to secure as he followed behind them until his death outside of Nishapur in November 1220. After Nishapur, Jebe and Sübe’etei split up to cover more ground. In Radkan, Sübe’etei was so pleased by the pleasant climate that he apparently avoided any bloodshed, appointed a Mongol governor and moved on. In Quchan, the Mongols committed great slaughter. In Mazandaran, Jebe captured Shah Muhammad’s mother and his harem, sending them back to Chinggis Khan.   Jebe and Sübe’etei reunited at Rayy, tracking Shah Muhammad to Hamadan. Sources differ on what exactly happened at Hamadan. Nasawi describes a battle near the city, ibn al-Athir has the Shah escape before they arrive and Juvaini wrote that the Mongols caught him on the road, wounding him with arrows before he escaped. No matter what occurred, after Hamadan Jebe and Sübe’etei lost his trail. Muhammad died a few weeks later, succumbing to pneumonia on an island in the Caspian Sea in December 1220.       Spending that winter in Azerbaijan’s Mughan Plain, Jebe and Sübe’etei spent the next two years pinballing across the Caucasus and northwestern Iran. Inflicting a devastating defeat on the Georgian King Giorgi Lasha in February 1221, by the summer they cut back to Persian ‘Iraq where cities they had previously taken were revolting. The Eldeguzid Atabegs of Azerbaijan wisely refused Georgian requests for an alliance and instead submitted to Jebe and Sübe’etei. By mid-1222, messengers had returned from Chinggis Khan, informing them that they could continue the conquest against the Qipchap tribes north of the Caucasus. Striking the enemy from unexpected directions was always a favourite ploy of Chinggis Khan, and the Qipchaq had already shown themselves to be enemies by allying with the Merkit and fighting for the Khwarezm-shah.       While passing north, Jebe and Sübe’etei took the city of Shamakhi, employing a particularly gruesome tactic. To mount the walls, corpses of locals and livestock were piled into a platform. For three days, the Mongols fought from it until it decomposed and collapsed. Such tactics had a use far greater than the individual siege, for they contributed to a dread reputation designed to discourage resistance. Upon exiting the Caucasus, Jebe and Sübe’etei were confronted by a much larger force of Alans and Qipchaqs, perhaps alerted to the Mongol approach by the Shah of Derbend. After a difficult journey through the mountains, Jebe and Sübe’etei were reluctant to fight against such odds. Sending messengers to the Qipchaq, they bribed them into abandoning the Alans. After overcoming the now isolated Alans, the Mongols then fell upon the unsuspecting Qipchaq, killing their most powerful leaders.       Under their leader Kotjen, the Qipchaq survivors fled west to the Rus’ Principalities. There, Kotjen organized an alliance between his son-in-law, Prince Mstislav the Bold of Galicia, and several other leading Rus’ princes. Modern retelling has often presented what follows, the famous Kalka River Battle, as Sübe’etei’s master stroke, perfectly drawing the Rus’ and Qipchap into a long distance feigned retreat. However, as historian Stephen Pow has recently argued, the primary sources suggest a much closer run thing. Often overlooked has been a small engagement in the lead up to the battle, where the Rus’ chronicles described a Mongol general Hamabek being caught and killed by the Rus’s Qipchaq allies. Pow argues that Hamabek is actually how the 13th century Rus’ interpreted Yama Beg, the Turkic form of Jebe’s name and that by which the Qipchaq knew him by. Bold and often leading from the front, Jebe’s recklessness evidently cost him his life, caught hiding in a kurgan and perhaps, embarrassingly, cut in half.        Jebe had been the commanding officer and something of a mentor to Sübe’etei. To suddenly lose him, thousands of kilometres away from any reinforcements and deep in enemy territory, meant Sübe’etei was thrust for the first time into independent command.  The famous nine day feigned retreat which followed may have therefore been an actual retreat. The Qipchap and Rus’ hotly pursued them, until Sübe’etei noticed the enemy had strung themselves out. At the Kalka River in May 1223, Sübe’etei turned about and brought the full weight of his army against the Qipchaps, who broke. Fleeing Qipchaps collided with the oncoming Rus’, breaking their formation as Mongol arrows rained upon them. The result was a massacre. Survivors held up on a nearby hill resisted briefly before being convinced to surrender by Sübe’etei. With guard and weapons let down, the Rus’ were slaughtered, their leaders captured and smothered under boards upon which the Mongols feasted and celebrated.       Sübe’etei had won a great victory, but was in no position for further conquest. While often presented as the great, undefeated conqueror, the Kalka Campaign had been only narrowly won. On the return journey, sometime in late 1223 or early 1224, Sübe’etei’s forces passed through the territory of the Volga Bulghars along the Volga and Kama Rivers. Laying ambushes for the Mongols had several places, the Bulghars drew the Mongols into feigned retreats, surrounding and killing many. Some modern writers of popular biographies, such as Frank McLynn and James Chambers, have Sübe’etei regroup his forces and inflict a defeat in turn upon the Bulghars. Such statements have no basis in the historical sources. The most detailed description of the encounter with the Bulghars is in the chronicle of ibn al-Athir, who describes the Mongols suffering heavy losses against the Bulghars, before moving on to campaign farther south along the Volga, attacking the Qipchaq settlement of Saqsin. Some authors may have conflated Saqsin as a location in Bulghar territory, or been misled by outdated works like those of  Abraham d’Ohsson and Rene Grousset, who presented the encounter much more favourably for Sübe’etei. The need to dismiss Sübe’etei’s defeat is necessary in order to uphold his popular image as the undefeated champion of Chinggis Khan. The most heavily utilized sources such as Juvaini and the Secret History of the Mongols provide no specific comments on, or outright ignore, the encounter with the Bulghars. In comparison, those who actually provide evidence for the encounter, such as ibn al-Athir and Friar Julian, remain much more difficult to access, allowing the exaggerated version of Sübe’etei’s record to often go about unchallenged.   We can also note another popular rumour relating to this campaign. It is sometimes claimed that Sübe’etei, while venturing into the Crimean peninsula in 1223, formed an alliance with local Ventian merchants there. The Mongols would attack representatives of Venice’s other Italian rival, Genoa, present in Crimea at the port of Sudaq, and provide exclusive trade privileges to the Venetians. In exchange, the Venetians would provide intelligence and maps for the Mongols in Europe, as well as spreading rumours of Mongol ferocity to sow dissent and fear. James Chamber’s The Devil's Horsemen forwards this, among many other false claims on Sübe’etei’s life. As historian Peter Jacskon has noted in his review of Chambers’ book, “Chambers has borrowed the whole idea from Bréhier’s L’église et l’Orient au moyen âge: it is derived ultimately from Cahun’s Introduction à l’histoire de l’Asie (1896), which has all the authority of a historical novel.” The actual Italian presence in Crimea in the early 13th century was minimal. The Mongol sack of Sudaq had nothing to do with Genoa, the major source describing the incursion, ibn al-Athir, signifies the city as a place where the Qipchaq came to sell their wares and slaves, making no mention of any Italians. Historian Denis Sinor describes Suqaq as an outpost of the empire of Trebizond, home to a mixed population of  Greeks and Armenians. Meanwhile A.C.S Peacock has argued that there is evidence that Sudaq, also known as Soldaia, at the time of the Mongol arrival to the Crimean peninsula was actually in the hands of the Seljuqs of Rum. Beyond the story of the Venetians bribing the Mongols into sacking Genoan rivals at Sudaq being false, there is simply no medieval evidence supporting any  alliance between Venice and the Mongol Empire, and appears to be in part a conflation of later Italian contacts among the Mongols, most notable in the form of Marco Polo. This was however, the acts of individual merchants, rather than the Venetian state.       While this campaign from Shah Muhammad’s death until Sübe’etei’s return to Mongolia is often termed the Great Raid, and described as if it was intended to just gain information on the west, this is a modern extrapolation. The contemporary sources describe it in terms no different than any other stage of the conquests. If a reconnaissance-in-force, then it was a great success; but if intended to seize the western steppe and subdue the Qipchap, it was a poorer showing, marred by the humiliating death of Jebe, heavy losses, a military defeat and no conquered land. The Secret History of the Mongols describes the entire campaign in a laconic line: “Sübe’etei Ba’atur had been put in a difficult situation by these peoples.” It would take well over a decade before the region saw a permanent Mongol presence, and Sübe’etei knew that in order to avenge Jebe and his own defeat, he would need to return in overwhelming force.        Upon his return to Chinggis Khan, Sübe’etei was in an imminent position. Despite his great trial in the west, he faithfully returned with loot for the Khan. Chinggis was preparing for the final campaign against the Tangut, but told Sübe’etei to visit his parents, who he had not seen in a decade. Sübe’etei simply responded, “If the emperor will be busy working and the vassal will be at rest, my heart will be in deep uneasiness.” The Khan’s loyal hound, Sübe’etei led in the conquest of the Tangut in 1226, cutting off the western half of the Tangut Kingdom, skirting along the south to subdue Uyghurs and other local tribes before striking the Tangut’s western border. There, he sacked numerous counties along the Tangut-Jin frontier in Gansu, ensuring no aid would come from that direction. 5,000 captured mares he sent to Chinggis Khan, and it was here that he learned of his master’s death in August 1227.       Chinggis Khan was the single most influential figure on Sübe’etei’s life, and in his memory he would continue to loyally serve his family. Attending the coronation of Chinggis’ son Ogedai as Khan in 1229, Sübe’etei was rewarded with an imperial princess as a wife. Soon after his enthronement, Ogedai resumed the war with the Jin Dynasty. A Mongol army commanded by Doqulqu was shockingly defeated at Dachangyuan in the first weeks of 1230 by the Jin general Pu’a and his “Loyal and Filial Army,” made up of captives and deserters from the Mongols. Ogedai lacked the authority of his father and the confidence of many of the generals, who thought his younger brother Tolui was the better captain. Such military defeats uneased the new Khan  and undermined his position. To offset this, in the last days of 1230 Ogedai led an army against the Jin accompanied by Tolui and Sübe’etei.        With the Jin Dynasty’s northern border protected by the Yellow River and its southern by the neutral Song Dynasty, access to Jin territory was through the mountains guarding Henan province’s west, a route blocked by the formidable Tongguan fort. Thre, the garrison wisely refused to be lured into a feigned retreat. Frustrated and not desiring to be stuck in a long and costly siege, Ogedai sent Sübe’etei to find a route through the hills south of the fort. Sübe’etei managed to force a smaller pass, cutting through and ransacking towns in western Henan. Through the hilly terrain his forces became spread out, and the Jin general Chenheshang with 1,000 men of the Loyal and Filial Army cornered and defeated Sübe’etei at Daohuigu 倒回谷. Suffering heavy losses of both men and horses, Sübe’etei  was forced to retreat back to a furious Ogedai. So enraged was Ogedai that he removed Sübe’etei from command, and nearly did Sübe’etei  disappear from history if Ogedai’s brother, Tolui, did not step in and vouch for him.        A new strategy was decided on, a triple pronged assault on all the Jin frontiers. Ogedai with the main army was to cross the Yellow River along its central stretch, another army would probe the eastern end while Tolui and Sübe’etei were to bypass Tongguan entirely, cutting south through Song territory to come behind Jin lines. Unable to diplomatically gain military access through Song lands, Tolui and Sübe’etei had to rush through potentially hostile territory. The result was unexpectedly successful. In the last weeks of 1231 they penetrated the Song frontiers, feeding men and horses in country untouched by the Mongol-Jin war. After a few weeks of plundering they cut north into the Jin lands. The main Jin generals, Pu’a and Hada, pulled back troops from Tongguan to catch Tolui and Sübe’etei, skirmishing over January 1232 until the Mongols were surrounded on Sanfeng Mountain that February. Pu’a sent a threat boasting that he would rape the Mongols’ women once he was done with them. When a snowstorm blew over the armies, Sübe’etei told Tolui to wait it out, telling him the Jin forces were weak people from cities who could not handle the elements, while the hardy Mongols would endure. After three days, deeming the Jin were suitably weakened, the Mongols charged down the hill and routed them.       As punishment for Pu’a’s boast, the Mongols sodomized the Jin prisoners. The captured general Hada asked for death, with his final wish to lay eyes on Sübe’etei. Perplexed when he heard of this, Sübe’etei came to see the captive Hada, telling him, “You will die momentarily. Why do you want to see me?” To which Hada replied, “Each of us vassals work for our respective masters. You are braver than other generals, and by nature you are a hero. Could that all really just be random chance? I have met you and now I shall die in peace.”       One they linked up with Ogedai’s army, Tolui and Ogedai returned north, leaving Sübe’etei as supreme commander against the Jin. With Jin offensive ability shattered, Sübe’etei invested their capital, Kaifeng. It took a year for the city to fall, in which time the Jin Emperor escaped and many losses were inflicted on the Mongols. When Sübe’etei alerted Ogedai to the city’s final surrender in early 1233, he was prepared to carry out the standard practice of massacre for the city’s prolonged resistance. In Sübe’etei’s mind, it was a well deserved punishment and one he was eager to carry out. But Ogedai was convinced by his Khitan adviser, Yelu Chucai, to spare the inhabitants. What followed is perhaps the most illustrative example of Sübe’etei’s worldview, as far as we can understand it. Sübe’etei was to limit killing to just members of the Jin imperial family, the Wanyan clan 完顏氏, and not harm the inhabitants. Having gone from being prepared to kill them all, Sübe’etei, whatever his personal thoughts on the matter, now carried out the Khan’s will to the greatest detail. Halting depredations of Kaifeng and its population, Sübe’etei allowed them to travel unhindered in search of food. Travel was permitted north of the Yellow River to organize food shipments for the beleaguered population, and Sübe’etei’s biographer in the Yuan shi goes as far as to say the people appreciated him for his efforts.       Sübe’etei led the final push against the Jin, ending their dynasty in early 1234. Back in Mongolia by 1235, Sübe’etei took part in the organization of his most well known endeavour:  the Great Western Campaign. Sübe’etei reached his apogee, the senior commander alongside the leading princes of the third generations of Chinggisids under Batu bin Jochi. With a great army, over 1236 they swallowed up the western steppe. The only organized Qipchaq resistance under their leader Bachman was swiftly crushed; the Volga Bulghars who had once ambushed Sübe’etei could do little as the great wave washed over them and destroyed their cities. One of the Mordvin principalities wisely submitted to Sübe’etei; the other foolishly offered a brief resistance. The divided Rus’ principalities were quickly picked off. The Mongols rested men and horses in the summer before resuming attacks in the winter when the frozen rivers were easily traversable. In this way, from 1237 to 1240 the Rus’ cities were burned. Few cities lasted as long as two weeks, though Mongol losses were incurred and part of the army under Guyuk and Mongke returned to Mongolia late in 1239.       By the start of 1241, Sübe’etei and Batu had brought the Mongol Empire to the edge of Europe, splitting their forces to take multiple routes through Poland, Hungary and Transylvania. Sübe’etei wanted to draw the Hungarian royal army onto ground of his choosing, forcing them to cross an exposed bridge over the Sajo River where on the far bank the treeline would hide flanking Mongol forces. King Bela IV foiled this by not crossing the bridge. The new plan was for Batu to force the bridge while Sübe’etei tried to cross downriver and outflank the Hungarians. Either impatient or Sübe’etei was behind schedule, Batu charged the bridge too early, resulting in heavy losses and the Mongols being repulsed. Angered with Sübe’etei’s failure to cross the river, a new plan was used; early on April 11th, the bridge guard was overcome by Mongol catapults. Crossing over the River, near the village of Mohi the Mongols encircled and destroyed the Hungarian royal army.       Despite the success, some Mongol princes were apprehensive of pressing on after the costly fighting. But Sübe’etei shamed them for their cowardice, telling them, “If my lord wishes to retreat, then retreat by yourself. Until I reach Bacha city on the Danube River, I will never return.” The loyal Dog of Chinggis Khan now had to whip his grandchildren into shape. So they pressed onwards, pushing as far as Austria until the Mongols began to withdraw at the end of March 1242. Finding their catapults and siege techniques ineffective against stout stone fortifications, Batu and Sübe’etei desired to step back and restrategize. The withdrawal from Hungary was methodical, campaigning as they went to reduce whoever survived the first pass.        Sübe’etei stayed with Batu up to the Volga River, where in late 1243 or 1244 Batu set up his permanent encampment. Sübe’etei scolded Batu for refusing to attend the quriltai in Mongolia to elect Ogedai’s successor, but before departing, Sübe’etei and Batu came to peace regarding the losses at the battle of Mohi. In time, Batu gave thanks to Sübe’etei, attributing to him the reason for their successes.       Sübe’etei was back in Mongolia by 1246 to meet the new Khan of Khans, Ogedai’s son Guyuk. Now aged 71, Sübe’etei was one of the few remaining individuals left who had personally known Chinggis Khan. The Franciscan Friar John de Plano Carpini, during his journey to Guyuk’s enthronement in 1246, mentions the elderly Sübe’etei, a figure of immense respect among the Mongols “known among them as ‘the knight.” Later that year, the venerable Sübe’etei went on his final campaign, a brief incursion against the Song Dynasty, as described by the Ilkhanid vizier Rashid al-Din. Yet, this campaign goes unmentioned in Chinese sources. Possibly, the elderly Sübe’etei was forced by age or illness to step back from the campaign before it could achieve anything.  Perhaps Guyuk’s death in early 1248 ended this campaign prematurely. Either way, we know Sübe’etei was back in Mongolia by 1248, for he died there later that year, somewhere along the Tula River, aged 73.  Sübe’etei, most famous of all Mongolian generals, was one of the few to die of old age.       Sübe’etei’s sons continued to serve as commanders, the most well known being Uriyangqadai, who accompanied them on the great western campaign, served with Kublai Khan against the Dali Kingdom, occupied Thang-long, modern Hanoi in Vietnam, and fought against the southern Song Dynasty. Uriyangqadai’s son Aju was another of Kublai Khan’s lead generals, who served alongside his father in Yunnan and northern Vietnam. After leading in the siege of the Song fortress-city of Xiangyang, Aju, longside Bayan of the Barrin, was the top Mongol commander in the final campaigns against the Song Dynasty. After the ferocity of Uriyangqadai and Aju, their descendants picked up the pen instead of the bow.  Aju’s son Bolianjidai was an administrator well known for his leniency, while his own son Tongtong was a scholar and academic, and from then the lineage of Sübe’etei disappears from us.       Utterly loyal to Chinggis Khan, perhaps no other commander in history could be said to have travelled so many kilometres. Depending on how one counts, Sübe’etei fought in over 50 battles and sieges against almost every major power of the thirteenth century, though despite some claims was not undefeated. Neither was he the sole strategist of the Mongols, and often his most effective campaigns were those where the planning had been in the hands of Chinggis Khan or Tolui. Sübe’etei had no care for administration, only in carrying out the Khan’s will against his enemies. Frustrated by Chinggis’ descendants, Sübe’etei still carried out their mandate with thoroughness and ferocity. To quote Stephen Pow in his email correspondence with this author, Sübe’etei “emerges from the surviving writings as very loyal to emperors, sardonic toward enemies, and ultimately loyal to Chinggis Khan’s yasa or vision in terms of carrying out missions, following orders even if they went against his own preference.  A bit of Cardinal Richelieu can perhaps be found in him – his only enemies were those of the state... and the state was the khan”.       We hope you’ve enjoyed our extended look at Sübe’etei’s life; you can find the written version of this script, featuring all the various sources and footnotes, on the academia.edu page of our series writer, Jack Wilson. If you’d like to help us continue bringing you great content, please consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one. 

This episode details the Mongol-Song war from the fall of Xiangyang to the capture of Hangzhou in 1276, and the final stand of the infamous Song Chancellor Jia Sidao, and the failures of the Song court to avert disaster.

With the loss of control over the western half of the Mongol Empire, Kublai Khan was left to direct his considerable energies against the single strongest holdout to Mongol rule; the Southern Song Dynasty, dominating China south of the Huai River since the early 1100s. An immense economic and military power, the conquest of this dynasty would be no small feat- trying to do so claimed the life of no less that Kublai’s predecessor the Grand Khan Mongke in 1259, as covered in episode 31. The completion of the conquest of China was to be Kublai’s greatest accomplishment; but first Kublai needed to overcome the mighty walls of Xiangyang, the key to Song China. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.       As discussed in episode 31 and 32, at the end of 1259 Kublai was forced to withdraw from his campaign against the Song, returning to his residence in Inner Mongolia where he declared himself Khan in the first months of 1260. The led to war between Kublai and his brother Ariq Boke for the throne, culminating with Ariq’s surrender in 1264 and Kublai securing his title as Khan of Khans. However, the upheaval of this conflict broke Mongol imperial unity, and by the mid 1260s the Mongol Empire was irrevocably broken into independent Khanates. Kublai had little authority over these western Khanates, his effective power only with difficulty reaching to the Altai Mountains and the Tarim Basin.        Unlike the previous Khans whose power centres were in Mongolia proper, Kublai’s very legitimacy was tethered to his Chinese territory. Aside from his own personal interests in Chinese culture, it had been the resources of northern China which had allowed him to overcome his brother Ariq. Abandoning Karakorum in Mongolia, which was exposed and difficult to support, Kublai moved his capitals south: first at Shangdu, in what is now Inner Mongolia on the very border of the steppe and China; and then at the site of the former Jin Dynasty capital of Zhongdu, where modern Beijing sits. This was Dadu, the “great city” in Chinese, or as it was known to Turks, Mongols and Marco Polo, Khanbaliq, the Khan’s city. The indications were clear from the outset; Kublai was not just a Mongol Emperor, but Emperor of China- though the specifics of this political aspect we will explore in a future episode.        As a part of this, Kublai needed to bring the Song Dynasty under his rule. Kublai, much like his brothers, was a firm believer in the eventuality of Mongol world domination.  It was not a debate of if, but when. Kublai may have cultivated an image as a more humane conqueror than the likes of Chinggis or Mongke, but he was a conqueror nonetheless. The Song Dynasty had to accept Mongol overlordship or be destroyed. For a man also trying to overcome his ‘barbarian’ origins to show himself as rightful ruler of China, having a rival dynasty claiming to be the heirs of the illustrious Han and Tang Dynasties was a major hurdle to his legitimacy in the eyes of many Chinese. The flight of refugees from north China to the Song Dynasty was considerable throughout the thirteenth century, and any revolt within Kublai’s domains could see Song aid, financial, moral or military.       The subjugation of the Song to solidify his rule as both a Mongol Khan and a Chinese Emperor was, in Kublai’s mind, absolutely necessary. The problem was actually doing that. Warfare with the Song broke out in 1234, months after the final defeat of the Jin Dynasty. Thirty years later, in 1264, the frontier had hardly shifted. The Mongols controlled the territory across the Song’s northern and western frontiers, including Tibet and the Dali Kingdom in Yunnan. Even the northern Vietnamese Kingdom of Dai Viet, known to the Chinese as Annam, now paid tribute to the Khan. Advances against Song were difficult; western Sichuan was under a tenuous Mongol hold, unmoved since Mongke’s death in that province. The Mongols had found they could often easily penetrate the Song border, but holding territory was another matter. Unlike northern China, marked by the relatively open North China Plain, the south was a myriad of thick forest, mountains, rivers and canals, the available space covered in rice paddies and other agriculture. This was not the open terrain so suited to Mongol cavalry warfare. The humidity and heat grew ever more oppressive the farther south one travelled, spreading diseases the Mongols and their horses struggled against. It was also home to the largest cities in the world. The Song capital of Linan, modern Hangzhou, held well over one million people- about the population of Mongolia when Chinggis Khan unified the tribes in 1206. The Song fielded a regular army of at least 700,000, supported by a large navy. The many huge cities built along the Yangzi River could be resupplied by naval support, an area in which the Mongols had little experience. The thoroughly planned campaign of Mongke in 1258-9 had wrought much devastation but little gain, and on the Mongol withdrawal at the end of 1259 the Song reoccupied most of the lost territory.       A military conquest of the Song was an immense task, and something Kublai wanted to avoid. Soon after declaring himself Khan in 1260, he sent an emissary with terms. The Song Emperor, Lizong of Song since 1224, could continue to reign as a client of the Khan. They had merely to recognize Kublai as the Son of Heaven and they could continue to rule, with of course yearly tribute and prayers in the name of the Khan. It was, from Kublai’s point of view, a chance for them to enjoy great prosperity and avoid the many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of lives that would be lost by further fighting.  Since it didn’t involve extensive retribution as punishment for thirty years of fighting, Kublai must have thought it a very generous offer.       Kublai’s envoy, one of his top Chinese advisors named Hao Ching, was promptly imprisoned. He would not be released for 15 years. Hao Ching had run afoul of the man now in charge of the southern Song, the infamous Jia Sidao. To some, Sidao was the last intelligent man in Hangzhou, deftly guiding the dynasty against an indomitable enemy, outmaneuvering his foes and a political mastermind let down by a corrupt and rotten dynasty. To others, Sidao is the archetypal “bad minister,” overconfident and inept, downplaying the Mongol threat and hiding the truth from the emperors until it was too late. For some, he is best known as the ‘Cricket Minister,’ who liked to train the insects to fight each other. Sidao’s role in the fall of the Song is complicated, though his 15 year mastery of the Song court saw the loss of the final chance to avoid disaster.       Unlike the majority of the court officials, Jia Sidao was no graduate of the Examinations from which most bureaucrats from the Tang to the Qing were chosen. Born in 1213 to a military family in Zhejiang province, Sidao’s father Jia She was a respected Song military commander in Shandong, and Sidao followed in a variety of military and civil positions in strategic areas along the Yangzi River. Sidao’s good fortune was helped by his talent and the fact his sister was a favourite consort of Emperor Lizong. Lizong and Sidao did not meet until 1254 when Sidao was Associate Administrator of the Bureau of Military Affairs, and immediately struck up a friendship. Promotions quickly followed. The relationship seems to have been genuine; contrary to the Netflix series where Sidao’s rise is due to his sister’s influence, Sidao’s sister had died in 1247, leaving Sidao to ascend on his own charisma and competence.        In Sichuan when Mongke attacked in 1258, Sidao returned east after the Khan’s death. His timing was good; the removal of the Chancellor of the Right, Ding Daquan, left an opening at the top of the Song court, which Lizong replaced with his buddy Jia Sidao at the end of 1259. One of Sidao’s first acts was to play up Kublai’s withdrawal, acting as if Sidao had won a great victory. It was Sidao who imprisoned Kublai’s envoy, Hao Ching in 1260. Acting as sole Chancellor from 1260 onwards, Sidao wished to fervently resist the Mongols, something in which the court was in agreeance. How to do it was another matter. For Sidao, an important step was fiscal reform to strengthen the dynasty. The economic cost of the war was immense. A massive standing army, destruction of valuable regions across the frontier, alongside rampant corruption and hyperinflation of their paper currency put the Song court in a precarious economic position. Sidao ordered land surveys in 1262 to find those avoiding taxation. In 1263, he ramped this up with his Public Fields Measures, wherein officials with tax exempt status had  their excess lands confiscated. The government was supposed to purchase the land from the owners, but they were largely paid in the increasingly worthless paper money, or the land was outright seized.  Sidao hoped to use this land to grow the foodstuffs necessary for the Song army, but his effort had the side effect of creating a large body of Song officials and elite highly antagonistic to Sidao.        Sidao also set up letter boxes to anonymously report corruption and official offensives. It was a fine sentiment, though it turned out many of these corrupt officials also happened to be the ones Sidao didn’t like. Removing and at times executing those who stood in his way, Sidao appointed his own men to their positions. The polarization of the court was intense, though Sidao could overcome this as he had the strong support of the Emperors. Lizong died suddenly in November 1264, succeeded by his 24 year old nephew Zhao Qi, known by his temple name Duzong of Song. Duzong, if anything, had an even closer relationship with Jia Sidao, who had been his tutor. Duzong was much more interested in extravagant feasts and women than affairs of state -hardly the image of austerity expected when facing the threat of the Mongols, when other lordly men were required to give up lands and sons for the cause. The new Emperor was immensely loyal to Sidao, and in some depictions subservient to him. In 1269 when Sidao played with resigning from the court, Emperor Duzong came on his knees begging and crying for Sidao to return, which Sidao did with the dismissal of more of his court foes.       While this was going on, Sidao was putting substantial investment in defense, especially around the region of Xiangyang, which we will get to shortly, and in improving the walls of the capital. Diplomatic efforts were at their lowest with the Mongols since the outbreak of war in the 1230s, and even though Kublai Khan routinely released captured Song merchants and prisoners in an effort to build goodwill, Jia Sidao did not budge. And since Sidao controlled the court and policy of the Song, the Song court did not budge either.       Aside from retaking some cities and border skirmishing, Jia Sidao did not take any larger offensives against Kublai during his occupation with Ariq in Mongolia. Sidao likely recognized that, with their well-built walls and defensive weapons supported by rivers and ships, the Song’s defense could stick up to the Mongols. Yet on the offense, especially in the more open territory of the north, the Song armies would suffer the same results they had on every other northern expedition in the Dynasty’s 300 year history; a dismal defeat against the cavalry based armies.  Perhaps the most notable effort at undermining Kublai’s rule in north China was by encouraging a Chinese warlord in Shandong allied to the Mongols, Li Tan, to revolt. Despite both he and his father, the Red Coat warlord Li Quan, having fought the Song for decades, Li Tan was not feeling like he was favoured under Kublai. Encouraged by Song promises and Kublai’s conflict with Ariq, in February 1262 Li Tan declared for the Song and threw off Mongol rule.        It took about a month for Mongol forces to arrive and defeat Li Tan’s rebels in the field. Li Tan was caught in August 1262 and executed. The Song had provided no direct aid for Li Tan, whose small forces were quickly overcome by Mongolian and Chinese under Shih Tienzi, a Northern Chinese whose family had loyally served the Mongols since the late 1210s. Jia Sidao may have wanted to see if the Chinese of the north would rise up against the Mongols, but the Mongol response was quick enough to violently put a stop to any talk of rebellion. The most significant outcome of the rebellion was upon Kublai himself. Not only had Li Tan, a Chinese warlord considered a loyal subject of the Khan rebelled, but Li Tan’s father-in-law Wang Wentung was found to have been complicit. Wang Wentung was the Chief Administrator of Kublai’s Central Secretariat, and one of the most influential figures in Kublai’s administration. Executed only weeks after Li Tan’s initial revolt, it was a blow to Kublai’s trust of the Chinese in his government. In the aftermath, Kublai decreased the power of many of the Chinese in the upper echelons of the bureaucracy, replacing them with Central Asians, Muslims, Turks and Tibetans. Many of the Chinese warlord families who had served the Mongols since Chinggis Khan saw their holdings reduced or forfeited. The family of Shih Tienzi, a man noted for his loyalty to the Mongols over many decades of service, ceased to be feudal lords, though this was partly on Tienzi’s urging in order to not lose the trust of the Khan.  Such was the effect of Sidao’s effort to undermine Mongol rule in North China.       Kublai’s first years as Khan were focused on consolidating and establishing his governing apparatus of northern China, and for the first half of the 1260s conflict with the Song was relegated to border skirmishes. Aside from diplomatic efforts to encourage a surrender of the Song Dynasty, Kublai also offered great rewards and lands for defectors in an effort to encourage desertions. Here, Kublai had some successes, perhaps the most notable early on being Liu Zheng, who became one of Kublai’s staunchest supporters and the ardent proponent of a navy. Liu Zheng and other like minded men convinced Kublai that the key was not multi-front attacks, but seizing control of the Yangzi River, the backbone of the Song realm where the Dynasty’s most prominent cities sat. To do this, the Mongols needed to build a navy and take the stronghold of Xiangyang.       If you look at a topographic map of China, three river systems should stand out to you, running in three lines from west to east. The northernmost and the longest is the Yellow River, which curls from the foothills of Tibet down into the Ordos desert, where it forms its great loop before cutting across the north China plain to spill out into the sea by the Shandong peninsula. This was the barrier which the Jin Dynasty moved their capital behind in an effort to protect themselves from Chinggis Khan. South of the Yellow River is the Huai, the shortest of the three rivers here, which marked the border between Jin and Song for a century, and now served as the Mongol-Song border line. By Kublai’s time, the Mongols had failed to hold it, the area south of the Huai a mess of canals and smaller rivers serving agriculture, terrain unsuited to cavalry maneuvers. Our third river on the map is the Yangzi, a wide and fast flowing river which was the natural defense against any northern invader. The most populated cities in the world were clustered along it, including the Song capital of Hangzhou, a short trip south from the River’s eastern end on the ocean. The Yangzi could only be crossed with difficulty, and the Song used it as a highway to reinforce and resupply cities, ferry troops and generally prevent a Mongol conquest. Lacking any beachheads on the Yangzi, the Mongols had nowhere to build up a navy and begin to challenge Song authority there.       That is, except for the Han River. Nestled between the mountains of Sichuan in the west and end of the Huai river to its east, runs the Han River, cutting north to south to intersect with the Yangzi at what is now Wuhan. The Han was the strategically vital access point, one where the Mongols had the potential to build up a river fleet in security before assaulting the Yangzi. Kublai knew this, and so did Jia Sidao, who for this reason spent huge amounts improving the defences of the twin cities of Xiangyang and Fancheng, which today are the super-city of Xiangfang. Sitting on opposite sides of the Han River, the two cities stood at the edge of the Song Dynasty and the Mongol Empire. Xiangyang and Fancheng were both huge, well fortified with wide moats, well provisioned and guarded by large garrisons and a variety of counter siege weapons. With both cities right on the river, they could continually be resupplied and deny the Mongol advance. Liu Zheng and the other Chinese defectors argued that Kublai should forget the favourite Mongol ploy of vast pincer movements. The Song had resources and moral enough to withstand these. Instead, the defectors argued, Kublai needed to throw his total might against Xiangyang and Fancheng.        Preparations began in the second half of the 1260s with the creation of a river fleet. In 1265, the Mongols won a battle at Tiaoyu Shan in Sichuan against the Song, capturing 146 boats. Koreans, Jurchen and Northern Chinese were put to work building more ships; in early 1268, officials in Shaanxi and Sichuan were ordered to construct another 500 vessels. By the last months of 1268, a large force of Mongols, Turks and northern Chinese converged upon Xiangyang and Fancheng. The Song defector Liu Zheng was placed in charge of the Mongol fleet, blocking off the Han River south of the cities to cut them off from the Yangzi. Aju, Subedei’s grandson, was entrusted with the siege of Fancheng; Shih Tienzi, the Chinese warlord long in service to the Khans, held overall command outside the walls of Xiangyang. A frontal assault was dismissed; the wide moats and thick walls were all but impervious to the catapults the Mongols brought with them. Attempting to storm the cities would result in heavy losses. No, they would need to be starved out. To do so, the Mongols erected walls and defensive works around the cities to cut off land access, while Liu Zheng and his fleet prevented Song reinforcements from the river.        In December of 1268 the garrison made an attempt to break out before the cordon could be tightened, but this was repulsed. The Song commander in Xiangyang, Lu Wenhuan, was a steady hand and kept moral up. They probed the Mongol besiegers continuously, trying to find the weak point in the lines. By March 1269, Shih Tienzi requested another 20,000 reinforcements from Kublai for this reason. The large cities and river access made closing them off a great challenge.       While Jia Sidao has often been accused of hiding the details of the siege of Xiangyang from the Song court, this is a baseless accusation. Duzong of Song may have taken little interest in military matters, but it was beyond the skill of Jia Sidao to hide the massive efforts going on outside Xiangyang; everyone along the Yangzi River would have known of it. The court was very much aware of the siege; the annals of the Song Dynasty, the Song shih, describe the court heaping rewards onto the defenders of Xiangyang in order to encourage their resistance. The court was still united in the opinion of resisting Kublai, even if the how was not agreed upon. Sidao sent multiple armies to relieve the defenders, some of them led by his own brother-in-law, Fan Wenhu. In August 1269, the first of these relieving forces sailed up the Han River to Xiangyang, but was defeated by the Mongol fleet and their boats captured.        In March of 1270 another attempt by the garrison of Xiangyang to break out was defeated and another Song relief fleet was repulsed. Though by then the city was largely closed off by the ever expanding Mongol fortifications, the Mongol commanders needed more men: 70,000 men and 5,000 more ships were requested, giving an image to the scale of the task to really surround these cities. Xiangyang was a whirlpool pulling in men from across the Mongol and Song empires, neither side willing to budge. Several times in later 1270 and 1271 Sidao’s brother-in-law Fan Wenhu led fleets up the Han River to assist Xiangyang, and each time the new Mongol navy proved victorious. The skilled Mongol fleet commanders, most notably the Chinese Liu Zheng and Zhang Hongfan, were adept at this river warfare, luring the Song into ambushes and developing a lengthy system along the Han to detect approaching fleets and communicate response. Jia Sidao ordered attacks on Sichuan, along the border and even a naval attack on the Shandong peninsula. His hopes these would divert Mongol resources were dashed, as most of these were inconclusive, won only minor victories or were outright disasters, as with the Shandong attack. All Sidao achieved was the wasting of Song resources while the noose tightened on Xiangyang.       Though the Mongol navy had a good chokehold on Xiangyang and Fancheng, the cities stood defiant. Well stocked and moral still high, any sort of frontal assault would still result in high losses and possibly allow the Song to break the siege. In 1272 one relief force actually pushed through to reach the city, albeit with heavy losses of most of their men and resources.  Kublai needed something to bring the siege to an end, and reached out west to see about acquiring some news tools.       In 1271, Kublai’s nephew Abaqa sat on the throne of the Ilkhanate. Abaqa was Hulegu’s son, and unlike his cousins in the Golden Horde, still recognized Kublai as the nominal head of the empire. When Kublai’s envoys arrived in 1271 asking for something to assist in the siege, Abaqa had just the ticket. Abaqa sent two Muslim siege engineers, Ismail and Ala al-Din, experienced in the newest advancement in projectile weaponry; the counterweight trebuchet. Developed in Europe in the early thirteenth century, it spread to the crusader kingdoms by the end of the 1250s, where Hulegu may have utilized them in his campaign in Syria in 1260. They were pretty nifty; instead of manpower, as required by the Chinese catapults the Mongols used, the trebuchet used its counterweight and gravity to hurl projectiles with greater accuracy, power and distance.        By the last weeks of 1272, Ismail and Ala al-Din arrived outside the walls of Fancheng and began to build the machines. In December, the first shots were launched into the walls of Fancheng. Within days, they were breached, the Mongols in the city and Fancheng was overrun. A massacre was conducted on those found within, ensured to be visible from the walls of Xiangyang. Still, Xiangyang held out.  Carefully, the trebuchets were disassembled and transported across the river. In the first weeks of 1273, the weapons were carefully set up at  the southeastern corner of Xiangyang. The trebuchets were carefully calibrated and launched a projectile supposedly nearly 100 kilos in weight. The first shot hit a tower along the city walls, a crack like thunder heard across Xiangyang. Panic set in, Xiangyang’s formerly untouchable walls now under real threat.       One of the Mongol commanders, a Uighur named Ariq Qaya, rode to the walls and called for the city’s commander, Lu Wenhuan. He commended Wenhuan on his skilled resistance, but now it was time to submit; do so now, and he would be rewarded by Kublai. Resistance would meet the same end as Fancheng. Lu Wenhuan recognized there would be no relief force from the Song for him now. On the 17th of March, 1273, Lu Wenhuan surrendered Xiangyang to the Mongols. After a 5 year siege, the battle was decisely won in the favour of the Mongols, and the Han River could now become a veritable shipyard for the Mongol advance on the Song.       The fall of Xiangyang sent shockwaves across the Song Empire; Jia Sidao’s authority was greatly undermined, though Duzong of Song’s confidence in him was not shaken. He had  now to prepare for a full river and land invasion of the Song heartland. For Lu Wenhuan, the Mongols kept their promise; siding with the Khan, he would now lead the Mongol spear thrust against the Song. Xiangyang was perhaps the decisive victory in the Mongol-Song war, its fall ensuring the Mongols had a route to truly conquer the dynasty. So great was the story that Marco Polo retold it time and time again on his return to Europe; either through his own ‘enhancing’ of the story, or that of his ghost-writer Rustichello, the account was shifted to remove the Muslims’ role from the siege. Instead, Polo, his father and his uncle became the ones who shared the knowledge of the trebuchet with Kublai. Considering that the siege ended in early 1273, and Polo did not arrive in China until 1274 or 5, we can rather safely dismiss that. However, Polo, the Chinese language Yuan Shi compiled around 1370, and Rashid al-Din, writing in Iran in the early 1300s, all include the story of Kublai gaining his siege equipment from westerners.  Polo just happened to be the only one indicating it wasn’t a Muslim.     Kublai Khan was now poised to end the forty year long war with the Song Dynasty, completing the conquest of China begun by Chinggis Khan some sixty years prior. Our next episode will look at the fall of the Song Dynasty, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast. If you’d like to help us continue bringing you great content, please support us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one. 

As Kublai Khan and Ariq Boke fought for the Grand Khanate in the east, in the western half of the Mongol Empire another dramatic war broke out. This was the Berke-Hulegu war, the concurrent civil war which permanently fragmented Mongol unity. Though influenced by the war for the throne, the battles between Berke and Hulegu emerged from long simmering tensions, brought violently to the surface with the absence of a central imperial authority, and set the stage for an antagonism which defined the Golden Horde and Ilkhanate for the next sixty years. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of  Conquest.   To understand the conflict which broke out in 1262, we must step back to the mid 1220s. Around 1225 or 1227, Jochi, the eldest son of Chinggis Khan and Borte, died. Though there had been tension between Jochi and his father, Chinggis did not extend this to Jochi’s many, many children. In fact, they continued to hold suzerainty over the ever-growing Mongol dominated western Eurasian steppe, led by Jochi’s two oldest sons, Orda and Batu. While Orda was the older, Batu was the more ambitious, maneuvering himself into leadership of the Jochid lineage. By the start of the great western campaign in 1235, Batu held not just a preeminent place on the campaign, but in the Chinggisid hierarchy. Only Ogedai Khan and Chagatai, Chinggis’ two surviving sons with Borte, ranked higher. Batu led Mongol armies to seize the remainder of the western steppe, the Rus’ principalities and into Hungary. When he departed from Hungary in 1242, Batu’s influence grew with the deaths of Ogedai and Chagatai, leaving Batu as the aqa, the senior prince of the family. Insteading of returning to Mongolia or his Jochi’s ordu along the Irtysh River, Batu set up on the rich grasslands of the lower Volga, where he built a capital, Sarai. As we have covered in previous episodes, Batu butted heads with Ogedai’s successors, the regent Torogene and her son Guyuk, before finally taking a lead role in the election of Mongke Khan in the 1250s. Outside of political machinations, Batu strengthened the Jochid ulus. He oversaw the rebuilding of overland trade routes and cities, established administrative ties to the Rus’ cities and sought to enforce Jochid hegemony over the Caucasus, Anatolia, Mazandaran, Khurasan and Khwarezm. In the initial dispensation of lands, Chinggis Khan had granted Jochi and his heirs everything as far west as the hooves of their horses would carry them, something Batu took very seriously.   Mongke Khaan largely confirmed these holdings, and Batu was essentially the Grand Khan’s viceroy of western Eurasia. Though immensely powerful, Batu still had to accept Mongke’s tax collectors, census takers and provide troops when demanded, as he did when Hulegu set out on his campaign against the Ismaili Assassins and Baghdad. By the time of his death in early 1256, Batu created a fine foundation for his successors. So influential was his reign that the citizens of his realm remembered him as Sain Khan, the “good Khan.”    We should briefly touch on a somewhat confusing matter. You will recall we mentioned Batu’s older brother Orda. See, Orda, as with the rest of Jochi’s children, got his own territory, with Orda’s number 2 only to Batu’s. Orda and his descendants ruled over the steppe east of the Ural River, the left wing of the Jochid ulus bordering on the Chagatayid ulus and towards Mongolia. This was called the Blue Horde… or maybe the White Horde. See, Persian and Rus’ sources give conflicting descriptions: that Orda ruled the Blue Horde and Batu the White, or Orda ruled the White Horde, and Batu the Blue. Further confusion comes from a tendency to refer to the section ruled by the Batu as the Golden Horde. For our purposes, we’ll assume Orda ruled the Blue Horde, for that also corresponds with the Turko-Mongolian colour designations for the directions; Blue for east, White for west, and yellow or gold for the centre. Black by the way, is the colour for the north, and red for the south. The specific relationship of the Blue Horde to Batu’s territory is unclear. Was it fully independent, as the Chagatayid ulus was? Was it subject to the line of Batu? Or was Batu and his descendants, the “Jochid Khans,” merely first among equals within the lines of Jochi’s children? The answer is unfortunately vague, and shifts depending on the specific period we’re talking about.    On Batu’s death in 1256, it seems he had a clear successor in the form of his son, Sartaq. A Nestorian Christian and firm ally of the Grand Khan, Sartaq was duly confirmed by Mongke in Karakorum and returned to the Jochid ulus. Sartaq was a more pleasing choice to Mongke than Batu’s brother Berke. Berke, the third son of Jochi, was ambitious, overbearing, and something of a black sheep, for he was an early convert to Islam. Precisely how and when Berke converted is contradicted in the sources. He was Muslim at least by 1250, and some sources state he had been since his youth. At the time, it was very uncommon- few Chinggisids, especially of the third generation, converted. It’s possible Berke did it to make his rule more acceptable to Muslims across the Jochid ulus, but it may have been genuine devotion. Jean Richard has argued that Berke’s mother was a captured daughter of Muhammad Khwarezm-shah, thus making it possible Berke was raised a Muslim, though the evidence for his mother’s identity is not conclusive.   In most nomadic steppe societies, succession was not restricted to sons, but could go brother to brother, and it seems Berke wanted it to do just that. Sartaq’s reign was cut suddenly short before the year was even out. Armenian sources directly accuse Berke of poisoning Sartaq, and frankly it’s pretty likely. In 1257 Mongke placed Ulagchi, a young boy who was either Sartaq’s son or brother, onto the Jochid throne, with Batu’s widow Boraqchin as regent. Late in 1257 or 1258, with Mongke occupied with the beginning of his campaign on the Song Dynasty, Berke made his move. Ulagchi suddenly “disappeared,” Boraqchin was accused of treason and executed, and Berke stepped up to become the Jochid Khan. By the time he learned of this, Mongke was deep into Song territory, and could do little but turn to the west and shake his fist in frustration.   Though Mongke spent the rest of his life distracted by fortresses in Sichuan, Berke had a more immediate Toluid presence to deal with; Hulegu and his massive army rolling over the Islamic world. Hulegu, as you’ll recall, spent February 1258 sacking Baghdad and killing the Caliph, the oft-cited great psychological blow to Islam. Sometimes, you’ll see it said that Berke, as a good Muslim, took it upon himself to wave the black banner of jihad against Hulegu. Some statements from the medieval sources support this interpretation, but frankly it does not reflect Berke’s immediate actions. Baghdad was sacked early in 1258; Hulegu and Berke were not at war until 1262. At the outset of his reign, Berke had no apparent goal to unravel the Mongol Empire- in fact, his interests seemed more so securing his own power on the Jochid throne, and maintaining Jochid claims from Anatolia, the Transcaucasus across Iran and into Khurasan.    Before his death, Batu supplied soldiers for Hulegu’s expedition; perhaps three tumens under his relatives Quli, Balaghai and Tutar. Over the march through Khurasan and Iran, the three Jochid princes had sought to reaffirm Jochid privileges at various cities on the route. Some of these, such as the Kartid dynasty in Herat, went to Hulegu, asking him to intercede between them and the Jochid princes. Hulegu sided with the local dynasties as a means to encourage them to send the tribute to him instead. Further, the Jochid princes and Hulegu argued over the conduct of the campaign itself. Local commanders affiliated with the Jochids, such as Baiju in Azerbaijan, were bossed around and ordered out of territory they had garrisoned for over two decades. After sacking Baghdad, Hulegu chose not to send the loot allocated for Berke, another thorn in the side, if the city’s destruction wasn’t already enough of an affront to Berke’s religious sensibilities.    Both Hulegu and Berke learned of Mongke’s death early in 1260. Notably, there was no immediate outbreak of hostilities. Though tensions were mounting, the cause for war can be found in events over 1260 and 1261. In an era of massive princely egos, it must be noted from the state that Berke and Hulegu did not like each other. Back in 1251, Batu had sent his brother Berke to Karakorum for Mongke’s enthronement. Berke was in attendance on Mongke, and in this position sent constant demands to Hulegu to carry out Mongke’s whims for the coronation. As the senior prince, Berke thought he could boss Hulegu around; Hulegu found Berke burdensome and overbearing.  During his campaign against the Assassins and Baghdad, Batu and Berke’s representative princes -the aforementioned Quli, Balaghai and Tutar- had continued to berate Hulegu, challenging him and seeking to exert Jochid privileges across the region. Given a limited military command by Mongke, Hulegu had no authority to punish members of the royal family. But upon learning of Mongke’s death, Hulegu saw a chance to take out his frustrations. The sources differ on the why, when and how, but the result is the same. Quli, Balaghai and Tutar were all dead before the end of 1261. At least two of them were accused of sorcery- a serious condemnation for the Mongols- and Hulegu asked Berke if he could punish them for it. Expecting perhaps a slap on the wrist, Berke had given Hulegu permission to punish them- and was angered to find Hulegu went ahead and executed his kinsmen.    Hulegu did not stop there.With the immobilization of the central government due to Kublai and Ariq Boke’s fighting, Hulegu sought to strengthen his hand in the area west of the Amu Darya. We’ve mentioned repeatedly how the Jochids had claims on territory in Anatolia, the Caucasus, northern Iran and Khurasan. These consisted of cities and regions taken by members of Jochi’s lineage in past conquests, which then owed yearly tribute to the Jochids.  Many of these were prime estates, especially the fine pastures and trade cities of Azerbaijan, the plains of Arran and Mughan. When Mongke was alive, Hulegu had already bossed around Jochid representatives in these areas, most notably Baiju and his tamma forces in Azerbaijan. With Mongke dead, Hulegu seized these regions for himself, incorporating them into a new ulus ruled by him. Berke was aghast; this Toluid upstart was taking his lands, solely without the Khan’s authority! Combined with the murder of the Jochids princes, Hulegu was acting aggressively. The Jochid troops under Hulegu’s command were given leave by Berke to flee. Some made it back to the Jochid ulus and a major contingent fled under their commander, Neguder, to what is now Afghanistan.   Enraged by Hulegu’s occupation of territory that belonged to the house of Jochi, the execution of Jochid princes, harassment of Jochid merchants, officers, and representatives in Iran, Berke decided it was time to pay Hulegu back with more than just words. With Kublai and Ariq locked in conflict, there was no one to mediate between them. Early in 1262, Berke began mobilizing his troops to seize Jochid claims in Azerbaijan by force. Setting out in spring of 1262, Berke marched south with some 30,000 men, alongside his commander-in-chief, friend and grand-nephew, Nogai. Nogai was a Muslim, and perhaps had converted at similar time to Berke. The appointment of Nogai was hardly coincidental, for he was also the son of Tutar, one of the Jochid princes executed by Hulegu. For Nogai, this was to be a deeply personal conflict.   Early in summer 1262, Berke and Nogai took the great fortress of Derbent, guarding one of the primary passes through the Caucasus mountains and encamping outside of Shirvan.  Hulegu’s response was quick, though he had not anticipated the attack. He sent word to his dispersed forces, rapidly mobilizing and setting out with his main army in August, while multiple smaller armies, consisting of Mongol garrisons from Anatolia to western Iran, followed. Berke responded quickly, splitting his force between himself and Nogai to meet the oncoming enemy. In the pastures of Azerbaijan Berke defeated Hulegu’s vanguard in mid-October, but Nogai was forced to retreat in another engagement. Learning of Nogai’s flight, Hulegu pressed the advance and in late November met Berke’s reconstituted army outside Shemakhi, and forced the Jochids to withdraw.   In the first days of December 1262 Berke and Nogai sped past Derbent, leaving a token garrison there in an effort to slow Hulegu down. The fortress fell by December 7th.  On the 15th, Nogai took part of the army to try and slow down Hulegu’s vanguard, commanded by his son Abaqa. Nogai was defeated and continued to flee, now in the lowlands north of the Caucasus and at the edge of the Volga steppe. The more experienced commanders in Abaqa’s force, Shiremun Noyan and Abatai, told prince Abaqa it was time to return to Hulegu and the main army, fearing they would be drawn into a feigned retreat. The haughty Abaqa dismissed their concerns and instead ordered reinforcements from his father, then followed the Jochids’ trail. After several days, by 10 January 1263 they came across the camp of Berke’s army on the north bank of the frozen Terek River, where tents, herds, treasures and families were abandoned and Berke’s army was nowhere to be seen. Presumably, in their cowardice they had disappeared deep into the steppe. Abaqa rewarded his men with three days of drinking and celebrating on Berke’s captured goods, “reveling and carousing with lovely girls” Rashid al-Din says euphemistically.    On the 13th of January 1263, Berke and Nogai returned. They had allowed Abaqa’s men three days to get drunk and drop their guard, and when the Jochids returned it was a massacre. Abaqa ordered a retreat and his bewildered, panic stricken army sped across the frozen Terek river. The weight of the fleeing men and horses proved too much. The ice broke and the cold waters swallowed up men and horses. Abaqa, with his tail between his legs, returned to Hulegu with what was left of force. Hulegu led an orderly withdrawal from the frontier, and Berke retook Derbent, and for a time the cousins were at a stalemate. According to the contemporary Mamluk author ibn Wasil,  Berke surveyed the carnage and cursed Hulegu, stating “Mongols are killed by Mongol swords. If we were united, then we would have conquered all of the world.”   Sometime in late 1262, Berke received a surprising letter; from Baybars, the Mamluk Sultan of Egypt. News of hostilities between Berke and Hulegu had filtered down to Baybars over 1262, with greater detail coming in that November when 200 Mongol refugees, survivors from Hulegu’s attack on the Jochids in his army, came to Cairo seeking shelter. They had been unable to return north due to the outbreak of war. Now properly illuminated on Berke’s conversion to Islam, the cunning Baybars stumbled across an idea. Though his forces won at Ayn Jalut in September 1260, he doubted he had the strength to withstand a full Mongol invasion. Without a large army, Baybars had to win every battle- Hulegu only needed to win one, and he would overwhelm the newly established, and still quite fragile, Mamluk Sultanate. Without any local allies to provide reinforcements, Baybars needed to look further afield for assistance. The Jochid antagonism with Hulegu would do the trick, the enemy of my enemy being my friend and all that. Sometime late in 1262 Baybars sent a message to Berke, playing on the co-religiosity of the two men, encouraging Berke to adhere to the jihad against the non-Muslim Hulegu, even if Hulegu was Berke’s cousin. Another embassy was sent by Baybars in the winter of 1262, again encouraging Berke to battle Hulegu, and telling him that the 200 Mongol refugees were being well treated in Cairo. It spoke of the strength of the Mamluk Sultanate, but expressed admiration and affection for Berke. Berke was delighted, and organized a prompt response   Berke’s response was encouraging. Hulegu, the letter states, had broken the yassa of Chinggis Khan, -likely reffering to the murder of the Jochid princes, the seizure of Jochid territories and refusal to send tribute to Berke. Berke reaffirmed his conversion to Islam, and his willingness to take vengeance for the death of the Caliph in Baghdad. So began the Jochid-Mamluk alliance against Hulegu. For the first time the Chinggisids had shown willingness to ally with a non-Mongolian, independent power against fellow Mongols. While the alliance would never result in tangible military cooperation between them, it did mean that Hulegu and his heirs were stuck between two antagonistic powers on their north and south; leaving one border alone too long would allow either the Jochids or Mamluks to attack.  Our understanding of this alliance comes largely from Mamluk authors, who sought to stress what good Muslims their allies were. It is difficult to gauge how Berke and his successors saw it, and it has been argued that to Berke it was not cooperation between equals, but the submission of the Mamluk Sultanate to the house of Jochi. Since the Mamluk elite were largely Qipchaps, who made up much of the population of the Jochid territory, it was only natural that they bowed to the Chinggisids- the right Chinggisids, that is. Despite his willingness to combat Hulegu, Berke had not forgotten the purpose of the empire; if the quote by ibn Wasil has any basis in fact, Berke may have rued this distraction from the continued subjugation of the world. A diplomatic submission of the Mamluks was as good as conquering them, as far as Berke was concerned.   The war between Hulegu and Berke was quieter over 1263 and 1264. Nogai made threatening moves from Derbend, while Hulegu stayed in Maragha, now his capital. Local forces, such as the Georgians, newly humbled after a brief rebellion, were forced to man border defences against attacks by Berke. In the meantime, Hulegu engaged in his other passions. Hulegu always showed an interest in sciences and astrology, constructing centres for these men and filling his court with the learned of the region. Most famous of these men was Nasir al-Din Tusi, for whom an observatory was built in Maragha. Hulegu spent considerable money on alchemists and efforts at transforming raw materials into gold. Rashid al-Din some 40 years later wrote with scorn that “in transmutation they had no luck, but they were miracles in cheating and fraud, squandering and wasting the stores of lordly power.” Hulegu took steps to organize his emerging empire, such as widening his administration. Reconstructive efforts were overseen through the appointment of the new sahib divan, Shams al-Din Juvaini. Shams al-Din’s brother, the historian ‘Ata-Malik Juvaini, was appointed governor of Baghdad and the restoration process there. Members of what had been the imperial Secretariat for Iran and western Asia like Arghun Aqa were now taken into Hulegu’s new government. His sons were allotted appanages and territories to oversee: Abaqa was given most of the eastern half of the state to act as viceroy over, valuable experience for the man who would be his father’s heir.   With the surrender of Ariq Boke late in 1264, Hulegu and Berke soon learned of Kublai Khan’s victory. Kublai’s messengers demanded Berke, Hulegu and the Chagatai Khan Alghu come to confirm Kublai’s enthronement and decide Ariq Boke’s fate. All declined- Hulegu may have had little choice, as he fell ill in January 1265, and died the following February, about 50 years old. His respected wife, Doquz Khatun followed him four months later, and in June Hulegu’s eldest son Abaqa ascended the throne of the Ilkhanate. Humbled since his humiliating defeat over the ice on the Terek River, Abaqa sought to secure his rule before taking any actions against Berke. Abaqa sent armies under his brothers to guard the frontiers with the Jochids and the Chagatais; he redistributed lands to loyal emirs; political appointments like Shams al-Din Juvaini and Arghun Aqa, were maintained. Moving the capital from Maragha to Tabriz, Abaqa soon received an official investiture from his uncle Kublai Khan, a nice bit of legitimacy and homage to the Mongol Empire, but an act with little actual power.    For Berke, it seemed  primetime to seize the Caucasus with the ascension of Abaqa. In July 1265, only a month after Abaqa’s enthronement, Nogai was sent with a large army from Derbent. Abaqa had reinforced the region with an army under his brother Yoshmut, who met Nogai on the Akshu River in what is now Azerbaijan. The fighting was fierce; during the battle an arrow took Nogai’s eye, and his army was defeated with heavy losses, withdrawing to Shirvan. Both Abaqa and Berke collected large forces to prevent the other from seizing the advantage. Sometime in 1266, both armies formed up on opposite sides of the Kura River. For fourteen days, the two armies shot arrows over the river at each other, but were unable to cross. Frustrated, Berke marched westwards towards the Georgian capital of Tbilisi to find a crossing there. En route, Berke fell ill and succumbed, leaving his army and empire without a Khan. Nogai, who in just a few years had lost his father, several battles, his eye and his Khan, led a general retreat back to the Jochid capital of Sarai. Having learned his lesson, Abaqa did not pursue; later in 1266 he had a wall and trench built along the Kura River to guard against Jochid attacks, then withdrew back south. So ended the Berke-Hulegu war.   This was not the end of the fighting between the Ilkhanate and the Jochid realm- what later historians call the Golden Horde, though the term was not used at the time. Fighting picked up every few years, usually taking advantage of the Il-Khan being distracted by conflict with the Mamluks, the Chagatais, or the Neguderis of Afghanistan, who began to make a name for themselves as raiders. But for decades, Berke’s efforts were the most serious attempts by the Golden Horde to take control of the Caucasus, to no success. The region remained under the hands of Hulegu’s successors until the last days of the Ilkhanate. Berke was succeeded by Batu’s grandson Mongke-Temur, who was the first fully independent Khan of the Jochid state, minting coins in his own name. It is under Mongke-Temur that we can really speak of the Golden Horde as an independent Khanate. The one-eyed Nogai continued to grow in influence, transferred to the western half of the Golden Horde where he became the prime intermediary between the Jochids and Europe. Though kept in check by Mongke-Temur, his successors would not have the same control over him.  Abaqa began a nearly 20 year reign, during which time he undertook wide ranging diplomacy with Europe in an effort to open a second front against the Mamluks. Dealing with rebellions and invasions, Abaqa spent most of his years jumping from frontier to frontier of the massive Ilkhanate, using the odd break to order unsuccessful invasions of Syria. Though both the Ikhanate and the Golden Horde had immense military power, the days of successful foreign conquests in western Eurasia were at an end, squandering it against each other. But we will pick up with the later history of the Il-Khans and the Golden Horde in future episodes. By the end of the Berke-Hulegu war, both were fully independent of Kublai Khan. It is back to Kublai that we head to next, to see how he undertook the final push to conquer the Song Dynasty, and complete the reunification of China- all under Mongol auspices, of course. So be sure to subscribe to the Kings and Generals podcast. To help us keep bringing you great content, please support us on Patron at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one.

Mongke Khaan was dead. Over his 8 year reign, he had ruled the Mongol Empire firmly, strengthening government and renewing the conquests. Yet had not solved the tensions and problems which had been simmering below the surface since the death of Ogedai. Having not designated a successor, Mongke’s brothers Kublai and Ariq Böke would stand in to fill the void, with disastrous results for the empire. In the aftermath of Mongke’s death, the Mongol Empire was irrevocably torn apart, ending the dreams of Chinggis Khan for Mongolian unity. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Before we carry on with our narrative, we must note that following events are highly coloured by who won- quite literally a case of history being written by the victors seeking to justify their victory. Based on recent scholarship and recognition of these biases, we will try to offer a slight reinterpretation of the events, though the outcome remains the same.   Mongke died in August 1259 while on campaign in China, fighting the Song Dynasty in Sichuan. His plan to overwhelm the Song came to a crashing halt, bogged down in sieges and mud, before his demise caused his army to fall back. Perhaps the sole safe guard left in place in event of his death was his youngest brother, Ariq Böke, left as regent in the imperial capital, Karakorum, while Mongke marched on China. Intended to keep the empire running smoothly in Mongke’s absence, it’s possible Mongke, as with so much of his reign, had tailored this as reaction to the regencies after the deaths of Ogedai and Guyuk. Rather than repeat the chaotic periods of control by Torogene and Oghul Qaimish, Mongke may have wanted Ariq to seamlessly step up and guide the empire to an organized quriltai, rather than rely on conniving mothers to do it themselves. Thus was Ariq brought to the forefront of the world stage.   So who was Ariq Böke? The youngest son of Tolui and Sorhaktani Beki, he was born sometime in the early 1220s, putting him in his early forties at Mongke’s death. Unlike his older brother Kublai, Ariq never showed any affinity to Chinese culture, despite being provided Confucian advisers. Instead, he is generally portrayed as a proud supporter of Mongolian culture, priding himself as a nomad uncorrupted by the sedentary world. The second part of his name, Böke, is an epithet, which means variously ‘bull, strong/unbreakable, wrestler.’ Evidently, he was a man of quite some physical prowess, perhaps a star in that favourite Mongol pastime of wrestling. He seems to have had an affinity to Christianity: the Franciscan Friar, William of Rubruck, during his visit to Mongke’s court in 1254 interacted with Ariq and noted that he listened to Christian oratory several time, made the sign of the cross and stated that he knew the Messiah is God. Considering that Rubruck remarked on Mongke’s own refusal to convert to Christianity or Islam and his personal failures to convert anyone, there’s no reason to think he lied on Ariq’s interest in the religion. Ariq’s mother Sorhaktani and at least one of his sons, Mingliq-Temur, were Christians. His chief wife was an Oirat princess, Elchiqmish (el-chiq-mish), described as very tall and as a granddaughter of Chinggis Khan via his daughter Chechiyegen (Chech-ee-yeg-en), she was also Ariq’s cousin. They had no children, but Ariq is said to have loved her very much.    One of Mongke’s sons who accompanied him on the campaign into China, Asutai, brought his father’s body to Mongolia in autumn 1259. Immediately, Ariq Böke stepped into his duties as regent. Messages were sent across the empire to alert princes and notables of the Great  Khan’s demise: Kublai, Mongke’s brother closest in age and also campaigning in China, learned of his death in September. Their third brother, Hulegu, learned of it in spring 1260. Representatives of the family were told to come to Mongolia in order for Ariq to arrange a quriltai and decide who would succeed Mongke. But trouble came from a perhaps expected direction: Kublai, their brother who had often butted heads with Mongke, now refused to return to Karakorum.    Over Mongke’s reign, Kublai had been a repeated problem for both the Khan and his chief officials. After his return from the Dali campaign in 1254, Kublai began administering a large swath of northern China. There he showed what some modern authors interpret as inclinations to independence; or at the very least, pretensions to greater autonomy. The first sign was Kublai butting heads with the head of the Secretariat for China, the long-time servant of the Central Government, Mahmud Yalavach. Yalavach was reappointed to the position in 1251, and nominally in charge of tax assessment and collection, but found his efforts challenged by Kublai and his Chinese advisers who desired a more ‘Confucian,’ and local method of taxation and governance. Yalavach was never on good terms with the Chinese, and found many enemies among Kublai’s faction. Accused of malfeasance by Kublai’s followers, around 1254 Yalavach was removed from his post and soon died, though the exact details are murky. So ended the long career of a man who had once served as Chinggis Khan’s envoy to the Khwarezmshah.   Without Yalavach’s meddling, Kublai could strengthen his local influence and position. Most apparent was in the building of a city in 1256 in what is modern Inner Mongolia, on the very edge of the steppe and north China. Called Kaiping, it was built in Chinese style and looked rather suspiciously like a capital city, a rival to Karakorum. The next year, some of Mongke’s ministers under Alandar led an investigation into Kublai’s administration, finding numerous infractions. Kublai’s authority was curtailed, his powers of tax collection rescinded, and some of his men executed. But there were further concerns, most identifiable in Kublai’s affinity for Chinese culture. Filling his staff with Buddhist and Confucians, Kublai’s administration looked a little too Chinese for Mongke’s tastes. The Mongol Empire needed to be ruled by Mongols, afterall, and placing more power into the hands of the Chinese simply would not do. Kublai remained in Mongke’s bad graces until 1258, when Mongke needed him for the oncoming campaign against the Song Dynasty. Provided one of the main armies, Kublai led his force through Central China to O-chou, modern Wuhan, where he learned of Mongke’s death in September 1259. Ariq Böke’s officials were there to get Kublai to move north for the quriltai, only for Kublai to spurn them.     While Kublai’s official excuse was that he could not depart with his task unfinished, an alternative explanation is often provided by modern authors. That is, that Kublai saw this as his chance to take the throne, but needed to beef up his military credentials with victories- so far unearned in that campaign. Ariq Böke, to our knowledge, had not led any armies, making this perhaps the one area Kublai could one-up his brother in the eyes of the Mongol aristocracy. Keep in mind how Ariq’s epithet stressed his strength and ability as a wrestler. In comparison, Kublai suffered from gout and may have already been overweight. Already seen as soft for his interest in Chinese culture and known for having lost Mongke’s trust as an administrator, Kublai needed every advantage he could get in an election against Ariq. If he could paint himself as the better, more experienced military commander, that could be all the edge he needed. Since elections took a while to be called to allow for the appropriate princes and representatives to return to Mongolia, Kublai e predicted he had plenty of time to take a few cities and score some victories of his own.   Kublai spent the next two month crossing the Yangzi River and taking O-chou, linking up with another commander, Uriyangqadai, the son of the illustrious Subutai. The news of Kublai’s continued campaigning was not well met back in Karakorum. Two members of Mongke’s keshig were particularly displeased by this: Alandar, the official who investigated Kublai’s administration, and most importantly, Bulghai, the chief judge of the empire, a Nestorian Christian and Mongke’s #2. Neither was friendly with Kublai. As brother closest in age to the late Khan, Kublai was a prime candidate for the throne, albeit one too interested in Chinese culture and a threat to the current top men of the empire. Therefore, Bulghai and Alandar began to organize the election of Ariq as the next Khan of Khans, if Ariq had not already begun to encourage this himself. With the burial of Mongke, his son Asutai and his generals returned and presented Mongke’s jade seal to Ariq.    Part of organizing a quriltai was getting the appropriate bribes -again, sorry, gift giving- out in time to ensure the princes voted for the right candidate. It had taken Torogene a matter of years to organize the proper support for Guyuk’s coronation, and this was not a process done in secret. That Ariq was left as regent in Karakorum suggests he had a good relationship with those top officials of the Central Secretariat. Having these men and their government institutions on his side made for a powerful campaigning apparatus. Quickly, it seems Ariq gathered widespread support, particularly from the imperial administration and Mongke’s family, especially his sons Asutai and Urungtash who, for reasons we cannot discern, do not seem to have ever been considered as candidates.   In November 1259, messages reached Kublai from his wife, Chabi, at that time in Kaiping. Kublai highly valued Chabi’s advice, and when she sent word that Ariq looked to be moving to claim the Khanate, Kublai was forced to give up his advance to China. That this exchange occurred suggests Kublai’s primary interest was not carrying out the expansion, but securing his own claim for the throne. Withdrawing north to Kaiping, he left only a token force behind to guard his conquests, which was soon crushed when an army was sent by the Song chancellor, Jia Sidao. Sidao portrayed it as a great victory, playing it up to secure his newly taken place at the head of the Song court. Kublai could only send envoys seeking a diplomatic settlement, who were imprisoned by the chancellor, an anticlimactic end to Kublai’s effort at military glory in time for the election.   Returning to Kaiping in Inner Mongolia in the first days of 1260, Kublai watched the support for Ariq’s election continually grow. Having been forced to give up his military conquests in the south, and therefore not creating a reputation as a great conqueror, Kublai may have felt he lost the chance to win an election on Ariq’s term. Perhaps fearful that Ariq may try to arrest him if he approached Karakorum with a small entourage, yet knowing approaching with a larger escort would look like he was attacking the city, Kublai felt he had only one choice: declare himself Khan first, on ground of his choosing. In April or May 1260, at his own city of Kaiping, did Kubla Khan a stately reign decree, and in doing so signed the death warrant for Mongol imperial unity. By all standards, it was illegal: Kublai had neither the support of the four branches of the family and the election was not in the Onon-Kerulen region, the homeland of Chinggis Khan, but in his Chinese-style city. Kublai Khan had just usurped the throne.    He had one small feather in his cap; Kublai could boast he was already recognized by a foreign power. When moving northwards, Kublai met the travelling Crown Prince of Korea, Wang Chon. Having been sent as a royal hostage to Mongke’s court, his timing was poor: while on the road, both Mongke and Wang Chon’s father, King Kojong, died. Korean sources assert that upon learning of Mongke’s death, like a good loyal subject Wang Chon sped to recognize Kublai as the rightful Khan. The idea that Wang Chon had any choice of the matter is generally dismissed by modern scholars. As part of Kublai’s entourage, he witnessed Kublai’s election and was soon sent back to Korea to be installed as the new King, Wonjong. A powerful opening move, it was the beginning of a decades-long close relationship between Kublai, Wonjong and their descendants. Kublai followed up his election with official messages to the Song and official proclamations; that his goals were to feed the hungry, reduce taxes and burdens on the people. Within days of becoming Great Khan, Kublai took a Chinese era name. In Chinese imperial tradition, emperors denoted sections of their reign as eras, which was used for year identification. It’s the kind of thing one does if they want to be associated with Chinese customs of leadership. From the start, Kublai Khan did not just hold an illegal election, but a shockingly Chinese one as well.  For Ariq’s faction in Karakorum, this was a shocking demonstration against the legacy of Chinggis Khan. More immediately, it was a dangerous grab for power.   In reaction, in July of 1260 Ariq Böke finally held his election and was declared Khan in an appropriately placed, decidedly non-Chinese process. Ariq held a better claim to legitimacy, for it seems he actually had the support of the branches of the family. The regent of the Chagatai Khanate was the popular Orghina Khatun, sister of Ariq’s beloved wife Elchiqmish, who gave her support. The Jochid Khan, Berke, sent his support, as did some Ogedeid princes, and it seems so did Kublai and Ariq’s brother, Hulegu, whose son Jumqhur attended.  Mongke’s sons Asutai and Urungtash, his widows, his keshig and the Central Secretariat led by Bulghai and Alandar, sided strongly with Ariq, and so did the venerable Shigi Qutuqu, an adopted son of Chinggis Khan now well into his 70s.    Over summer 1260, as tensions heightened, messengers sped between the two brothers. Each wanted the other to submit and recognize their rule. Neither yielded. While Ariq had the official support, Kublai was decidedly in the advantage in terms of position. Kublai could exert his hold across northern China, ousting officials who had declared for Ariq and allying with  Qadan, a son of Ogedai and the prince holding the Uighur territories around Beshbaliq. Between them, they sought to close off access to north China to Ariq. For Ariq in Karakorum, this placed him in an unsustainable position. Karakorum could not support itself, requiring hundreds of cartloads of supplies daily, largely from northern China. With his army stationed there, this was even more imperative. In a contest of resources, Kublai’s hold of north China was a trump card.    To further starve out Karakorum, Kublai sought to install a new Chagatai Khan loyal to him, a great-grandson of Chagatai named Abishgha. With a small party, Abishgha was sent to oust Orghina Khatun and take power there, denying the Chagatai ulus’ resources and men to Ariq. Abishgha and his small party were captured and brought to Ariq. Tensions boiled. It was a diplomatic impasse. By autumn, it was war. Kublai began to occupy Mongolia, while Ariq sent an army under Alandar to seize the former Tangut territory, the Gansu corridor, the conduit which links north China to Central Asia. In October, Alandar was killed and his  army defeated by Kadan and Kublai’s loyalists. Kublai could now exert control across the northern Chinese right to Kadan in Uighuria. At a similar time, part of Ariq’s army was also defeated by Kublai’s troops at an unknown site called Baski. A panicked Ariq had Ahishgha executed, then moved his army from the untenable position at Karakorum, falling back to the Yenisei River valley. Northwest of Mongolia proper, the Yenisei is a valuable region producing wheat, millet, barley and craftsmen, but no place to conquer China from. Sending messages of peace to Kublai, Ariq managed to diplomatically hold off Kublai, stopping him from seizing Karakorum and providing Ariq time to think of new plans.   With the start of 1261, Ariq implemented his new schemes. While popular in the Chagatai ulus, Orghina Khatun, regent for her young son Mubarak Shah, was not a war leader. Ariq had her replaced by Alghu, a grandson of Chagatai who could hopefully rally the ample resources of the Middle ulus for Ariq’s needs with loss of access to resources of China. In the summer, Ariq sought to wrest control of Mongolia from Kublai’s men. Ariq won the first engagement, but Kublai merely sent another army against his brother. In November 1261, at Shimu’ultu Lake in southeastern Mongolia, Ariq Böke Khan’s army was defeated and forced to retreat. Ariq had to abandon Mongolia for good, falling back to the Yenisei River.    Ariq could never come back from the defeat at Shimu’ultu. He lacked the manpower to engage in any attrition with Kublai, and over 1262 the chance of victory was wrenched from his grasp. That year Kublai’s forces entered Karakorum, though his direct actions against Ariq were limited due to an uprising within his Chinese territory. In the west, Ariq’s ally Berke was unable to provide support with the opening of war between him and Hulegu over the Caucasus.  Alghu, Ariq’s appointee in the Chagatai realm, started to attack Jochid possessions in Khwarezm and Tranosxiana, ousting Berke’s representatives. Killing Ariq’s envoys, by the end of the year Alghu declared for Kublai. Ariq’s only chance at securing anything depended on the resources of the Chagatais, and in 1263 from his base on the Yenisei he attacked Alghu. Alghu won in the first two engagements, but Ariq had the better of the third, forcing Alghu to flee to Kashgar.    Ariq took the Chagatai capital of Almaliq, in modern Xinjiang close to the border with Kazakhstan. It was here that Ariq spent the final days of his reign. An incredibly harsh winter in 1263 brought famine to men and horses on the steppe. A frustrated Ariq Böke took his anger out on captured Chagatai prisoners. Harsh treatment of fellow Mongols alienated Ariq’s supporters and coupled with the conditions, led to desertion. Hulegu’s son Jumghur left, as did Mongke’s son Urungtash, who brought his father’s seal to Kublai. The omens were bad: harsh winds tore Ariq’s tent right from its pegs, causing it to crash about and injure many. At its end and with an ever decreasing circle of supporters, Ariq knew the gig was up. In August of 1264, he came in person before Kublai at Kaiping, now renamed to Shangdu. Per the account of the Ilkhanid historian and vizier Rashid al-Din, Ariq waited in front of Kublai’s ger for permission to enter, and upon coming face to face with his brother burst into tears. An emotional Kublai asked, “my dear brother, during this strife and contention, were we right or were you?”   To which, as written by Rashid al-Din, Ariq Böke replies “we were then. But you are today.”   Blame was placed onto Ariq’s generals, who were accused of instigating Ariq’s “revolt.” 10,  including Bulghai, were executed. Ariq was to be put on trial before the other heads of the family, but all of them- Berke, Hulegu and Alghu, refused to come. Yet Kublai’s generals demanded punishment. The problem was fixed when illness very conveniently struck down the erstwhile healthy Ariq Böke. The timing was certainly handy, and accusations fall on Kublai. Yet it’s possible that a depressed Ariq, brought down by a difficult and fruitless civil war, drunk himself to an early grave. So it was that Kublai was the sole claimant as Khan of Khans.    Having won the war, Kublai lost the empire. Only Hulegu provided his nominal support, but neither he nor Berke or Alghu ever made an attempt to submit in person. Over 1265 and 1266, the three of them died. Hulegu’s successor, his son Abaqa, received an official investiture from Kublai, but Kublai had no power to depose or appoint him or his successors. Kublai sent another descendant of Chagatai, Baraq, to take Alghu’s place, but Baraq soon operated independent of the Great Khan, and fought with the rising prince of the Ogedeids, Qaidu. By 1269, a brief peace was organized between Baraq, Qaidu and the new Jochid Khan, Mongke-Temur. The Peace of Qatwan as it’s known, saw territorial distribution and allotment totally without Kublai’s consideration, circumventing utterly the Great Khan’s authority. Kublai’s rule as Great Khan was nominal in the western half of Mongol territory, a spectre of illegitimacy hanging over him. By 1271, we can speak in earnest of the divisions of the Empire as independent entities, khanates:  the Golden Horde, the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate and the Yuan Dynasty, the latter being the Chinese dynastic name Kublai gave to his reduced empire. As well, there is the matter of the Ogedeid Khanate under Qaidu, the Neguderis and the Blue and White Horde, but we will illuminate these in future episodes.   Most of our sources from within the Mongol Empire come from areas ruled by the descendants of Kublai and Hulegu, the Yuan Dynasty and the Ilkhanate. In the Yuan Dynasty, the need to justify Kublai’s election as legitimate is obvious. The most influential of Ilkhanid authors was the vizier Rashid al-Din, whose Compendium of Chronicles is among the most valuable of all medieval sources on the Mongols. Writing around 1300, Rashid was personally informed of the events of the 1260s from Bolad Chingsang, one of Kublai’s judges who took part in the trials against Ariq and his generals. This pro-Kublai bias strongly affected Rashid al-Din’s work, who dubbed the war as “Ariq’s revolt.” Like so many other figures of the Mongol Empire, only by carefully sifting through the surviving sources can we hope to see through the biases of the winning side. Doubtless, had Ariq had won, Kublai’s name would have been the one tarnished. But Kublai secured his empire, and now the long reign of Kublai Khan was to begin.    The Mongol Empire as a united entity ceased to exist by Kublai Khan’s victory in 1264, but it’s history does not end there. Our future episodes will discuss the other great breakup of the empire, the Berke-Hulegu war, and the continued histories of the successor Khanates, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast. If you’d like to help us continue bringing you great content, consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one!

Now that we’ve taken you through Hulegu’s campaigns during Mongke’s reign, it’s time we cut back east to Mongke himself, and the Mongol invasion of the Song Dynasty, the great and immensely wealthy masters of southern China. Among the largest and most thoroughly planned of Mongol campaigns, it was one cut suddenly short with drastic consequences for the Mongol Empire. I’m your host David, and this is Kings and Generals: Ages of Conquest.   Planning a war against the Song Dynasty was no easy task. All of Mongke’s actions of his reign from 1251-1258 can be understood as him making preparations for it: cataloguing the resources and manpower of the empire, strengthening the central government and securing his various flanks. Mongke had valuable experience to use to determine his strategy; since 1234, the Mongols had fought rounds of inconclusive warfare with the Song; penetrating deep into the Dynasty’s territory, routinely defeating armies and taking cities, yet never able to make substantial gains and frustrated by Song tenacity, all in an environment almost tailor made to hampher cavalry armies.   To understand the war with the Song, it’s  necessary to introduce the Dynasty and its ruling house of Zhao- but what a task that is! In its 300 year history the Song were among the most complex and fascinating of all of China’s imperial dynasties, a period when Chinese culture reached staggering new heights. To summarize it with any accuracy requires an entire podcast series to do so-  the Cambridge History of China managed to get it down to two volumes totalling over 2,000 pages. The Song emperors oversaw a period of amazing economic, technological, agricultural and cultural achievements. Urbanization increased; the southern Song capital of Linan, modern Hangzhou, had a population in the 13th century conservatively estimated at 1.5 million. Paper money, a massive expansion and improvement of farming and rice cultivation, foreign and overseas trade, gunpowder, porcelain… the list goes on and on for either innovations or improvements the Song undertook. The wealth of the Song was immense, and it is rightly considered a Golden Age.    The Song were a dominant force in China since the 960s, emerging in the decades after the fall of the powerful Tang Dynasty, a period of disunity called the 10 Kingdoms and 5 Dynasties.  Through great effort the Song swallowed up the other kingdoms of southern China and marched up into the north China plain, where they butted heads with the Khitan ruled Liao Dynasty. Rounds of warfare followed for the remainder of the 10th century, but a pattern which became all too routine emerged. The northern, largely cavalry based armies could outmaneuver and often annihilate the Song armies, whose offensive performance was poor even at their height. Yet the Khitans were frustrated by the defensive ability of the Song, and were unable to hold gains made against them- particularly when a giant Song crossbow speared the Khitan leader in 1005. Weeks later, the Song and Liao came to terms for the infamous Chanyuan Treaty, marking their borders and requiring the Song deliver a massive annual tribute of silk and silver to the Liao.   Part of the reason for the often criticized poor offensive military performance of the Song goes back to its founder, Zhao Kuangyin (kuang-yin), Taizu of Song. Zhao was a military man, as was his father and grandfather. Zhao owed much of his rise to the military- and also blamed it for the dissolution of the Tang Dynasty. Often, new Chinese dynasties structure themselves on what they perceived to be a key weakness of the preceding dynasty. To Zhao Kuangyin, the breakup of the Tang Dynasty came from military leaders and generals who grew too powerful, ignoring the imperial court to seek their own power, such as An Lushan in the 8th century. To Zhao, internal stability of the dynasty could only be secured with the military on a tight leash. Soon after consolidating power, the military leaders who had helped Zhao rise were eased into retirement and the army placed under permanent civilian command, the Bureau of Military Affairs. While often lambasted by later commentators, especially in the Youtube comments section, it wasn’t a horrible idea. The Song Dynasty was never beset by warlords seeking independence and still succeeded in seizing most of China. The fact the dynasty went up against some of the fiercest military powers of the medieval world could not have been predicted.   While an uneasy status quo was reached with the Khitans, in the early 12th century a major upheaval arose in the form of the Jurchen and the Jin Dynasty. In a few short years the Jin crushed the Liao; the Song allied with the Jin in an effort to seize Chinese territory and failed miserably. The alliance between Jin and Song hardly outlived the Liao Dynasty. In 1125 the Jurchens’ fearsome heavy cavalry tore through the Song; by the end of the 1120s the Song capital of Kaifeng was taken, the Song Emperor Qinzong,  whose father who had recently abdicated,  and most of the imperial family and court, were all captured. Northern China was taken,  the Song Dynasty was in turmoil and nearly collapsed. The ninth son of the abdicated emperor managed to flee south, and recentre the Dynasty around Linan, modern Hangzhou, a coastal city at the mouth of the Yangzi River. This much reduced dynasty is usually termed ‘the Southern Song,’ to distinguish from the ‘Northern,’ when it ruled most of China. Over the 1130s leadership issues among the Jurchen, difficulties campaigning in south China and renewed defensive vigour by the Song halted Jin expansion, and a treaty in 1141 marked the Huai River as the boundary between Jin and Song. The Treaty of Shaoxing reimposed similar annual tribute demands as that of the Chanyuan treaty, thousands upon thousands of taels of silver and bushels of silk to be delivered to the Jin, and the Song had to recognize the Jin Emperor as the Son of Heaven- traditionally reserved for only a single ruler of China. The treaty was a humiliation and economic burden, on top of having to lose northern China. The peace was tense, and every few decades war resumed between Jin and Song, with neither able to make gains beyond the Huai.    Relations were somewhat cordial from the 1160s to the end of the 1180s, during the long and stable reigns of Shizong of Jin and Xiaozong of Song, something of a golden age for both states, though neither abandoned their territorial claims. Their successors were not nearly as capable and lacked the will, ability or the interest to direct forces within their courts. In the early 1200s, as the Jin were distracted by the northern steppes and ecological disasters, Song revanchism reached a new height. Seeking to take advantage of perceived Jin weakness, the Song launched a surprise invasion in 1206:  before the end of the year, the Song were sending peace overtures to the Jin. Song forces were largely repulsed, the top military commander in Sichuan defected to the Jin, and the Jin counter attacked with a massive, nine pronged assault along the entirety of their 2000 kilometre long border. Despite this massive expenditure of manpower, the Jin made no gains, Peace was reached by 1208, the Song providing an increased annual tribute of 300,000 ounces of silver and bolts of silk, and heads of the ministers seen as responsible for promoting the war. Humiliating as it was, the Song at least did not have to make territorial concessions.    Perhaps the greatest consequence of that brief round of warfare was that it distracted the Jin and occupied its considerable resources from the trouble brewing on their northern frontier; the unification of the Mongol tribes under Chinggis Khan. In 1211, Chinggis Khan invaded the Jin Empire, as covered far back in episode seven. The initial Song reaction was somewhat mixed; no tears were shed in Linan for the suffering of the Jin, but whether this was something the Song should take advantage of was another matter. Either way, in the aftermath of the peace in 1208, for the next 25 years the Song court was largely dominated by the Chancellor Shih Mi-yuan, a man who urged stability and moderation rather than progress or reform. No risky military escapades would be undertaken on his watch.    The Song were unable to provide their annual tribute due to the fighting from 1211-1214. Many voices in the court loudly argued against continuing it all, for what was the use in sending it to a dying dynasty? Demonstrating his often indecisive policy making, Chancellor Shih Mi-Yuan did not actually stop the tribute, but held the allotted tribute in storage. He may have secretly resumed it in 1214, hoping to keep the peace with the Jin while avoiding angering more voices in the capital. The fact that even the Tangut and Korea had halted their payments to the Jin was not lost on Shih Mi-Yuan’s detractors. Neither was this appeasement even successful, for in spring 1217 the beleaguered Jurchen, having lost most of the northern half of their empire to the Mongols, attacked the Song. The intention was to restore both some dignity to the dynasty, and further space for the Jin court to flee from the Mongols if necessary. The result was not what they anticipated. Shih Mi-Yuan, while openly favouring the status quo and not mobilizing armies, had also ordered border defences improved and gave regional commanders greater autonomy with little interference from the central government. Song defensive forces responded quickly, and Jin offensives were not just actively repulsed, but in some cases led to successful Song campaigns into Jurchen territory. For the Jin it was a great shock, a blow to morale and resources at a time where they had little enough of either to spare. The Song and Shih Mi-yuan in particular had a new confidence against the Jin, spurning their envoys and in 1219, cutting off all diplomatic contacts with them.   About this time, in 1221, the Song sent their first diplomatic mission to the Mongols, notable in that it was recorded in a written account still accessible today, the Mengda beilu. The initial Song perceptions of the Mongols, as described in an excellent article by historian Chad Garcia, presents the Mongols as a ‘different kind of northerner.’ Contrasting them to the deceitful and malicious Jurchen of the Jin Dynasty, the Mongols are something of “noble savages;” honest, straightforward, physically strong if not attractive. Chinggis Khan is described in heroic characteristics fitting the archetypal Chinese emperor, with a large, broad forehead and long beard. No mention is made of them as especially terrifying or cruel.   As we’ve mentioned no shortage of times in the past, the absence of Chinggis Khan in the west against the Khwarezmian Empire and death of Mukhali, the commander in the Chinese theater in 1223, resulted in a great reduction of Mongol pressure on the region. The deaths of the Tangut, Jin and Song rulers over the following years allowed new voices to come to the fore. This is dealt with more fully in episode 14 of this series, but the result was a general ceasefire between them. While a brief respite, it was no more than a breath before the plunge; episode 14 also details the destruction of the Jin Empire in the early 1230s during the reign of Chinggis’ son and successor, Ogedai. Song Chancellor Shih Mi-yuan sought to stay out of the conflict and maintain Song neutrality- though the Mongols penetrated the Song border and raided in order to outmaneuver Jin forces, while also demanding an alliance against them. There was a minority of voices within the dynasty warning of the danger of the Mongols. Once the Jin no longer stood as a buffer between them, what then? Shih Mi-yuan may have been mindful of this, but was dead by autumn 1233. In the weeks before his death, as age reduced his presence in the court, the Song had agreed to assist the Mongols in the final attack on the Jin, reduced to a strip of  land along the Song northern border. The Mongols needed to ensure the Jin emperor, Aizong of Jin, could not flee into Song territory. In return for this aid, the Song were given vague promises of land to be restored.   In the first months of 1234 the Jurchen Jin Dynasty was destroyed, its last emperor killed fighting in the streets. Yet, the promises of land did not materialize; Kaifeng, once the capital of the Song Dynasty, still remained in Mongol hands. Angry and belligerent voices, particularly among those who had only fought rebels with no experience of the Mongol way of war, were particularly loud in their complaints on the matter. Seeking to restore what was ‘rightfully theirs,’ and anticipating the local Han Chinese population would gladly rise up to join them, several Song armies marched over the Huai river in the middle of 1234… and promptly found a desolated, war torn landscape, a population unable to feed these armies let alone take up arms. The Song armies began a disorganized retreat, which turned into a rout when Mongol forces returned. Foolishly, the Song had just begun a 45 year long war.   Ogedai Khaan sent armies under his sons Kochu and Koten to lead raid the Song. Generally, these were in two regions: along the central frontier on the Huai River, and more westerly in Sichuan. Sichuan, where we’ll spend much of the rest of the episode, was, before the permanent incorporation of Tibet, Xinjiang and Gansu, the westernmost part of China. Roughly a bowl surrounded by mountains cutting it off from the rest of China, the Sichuan basin juts up against the eastern reaches of Tibet. Fertile, is one of the most densely populated regions of China, the Yangzi river which flows through it providing ample moisture for rich cultivation of rice, and a route to connect with the rest of southern China. Hot, humid and famous for its thickly forested mountain slopes, Sichuan saw more than its share of it fighting in the coming decades.   In both 1235 and 1236, attacks were led upon the central border and Sichuan; Koten led a particularly large, multi-ethnic force into Sichuan in 1236. The damage was immense. By the end of the year, only 4 of Sichuan’s 58 prefectural capitals still stood and Chengdu, the regional capital, was taken. The sudden successes were soured with the death of Kochu in November 1236 and retreat of most of the forces. Attacks in the rest of the 1230s were repulsed, often by the star Song general of the period, Meng Gong.  Whether the Mongols actually wanted to fight the Song at the time is unclear- certainly in 1234, they were not planning on it. In 1238, they sent envoys to the Song for a ceasefire, which the Song rashly brushed off. Deliberately they were choosing not to hold cities. In 1241 Hanchou fell to a general massacre, followed by a sudden Mongol withdrawal. Such actions may have been a reaction to a necessity of fighting against the Southern Song. The Song had no lack of manpower to fall upon, and the trouble with any rapid assault was that it would need to be able to reliably hold onto any territory taken. Mongols could rapidly penetrate the border defenses, but the threat of being surrounded was quite real. At the very least, without sizable garrisons any city could be quickly retaken by Song forces when the Mongols moved on. The generally hot, humid weather of southern China strained the Mongols and their horses, disease spreading quickly among troops unused to the climate. The general preponderance of rivers, mountains and forest made large cavalry operations difficult to effectively operate. On top of all of this, while the Song are often derided for some sort of innate military ineffectiveness, the most pressing issue was the fierceness of the Song defenders. Resistance was strong, and it was not unusual for the Mongols to find a campaign suddenly held up by valiant defenders in one city, locking at least a portion of the Mongol army in place for months and, in some cases, years.   By the time of Ogedai’s death at the end of 1241, no major gains had been made, though the Song had suffered a good mauling. Little effort was made over the remainders of the 1240s, the Mongols dealing with the political issues relating to the regencies and short reign of Guyuk Khan. Diplomatic discussions took place in 1247, which went nowhere. The Song could in the meantime prepare border defences, repair walls and mobilize men, though at great cost. Printing yet more paper money to solve inflation did not, it turns out, do so. Taxes made it back to the capital in smaller and smaller amounts as regional governors and commanders seized them to pay for the war effort. Sichuan suffered so terribly that it apparently provided no revenue to the capital after 1234. For the Song, the yearly cost to simply keep their armies mobilized was immense. Drought, flooding, epidemics, fires and locusts struck often over the 1240s-50s, another layer of cost which, through augmenting the destruction of farmland from Mongol attacks, further strained government resources. An ever growing bureaucracy brought more corruption, more cost and more issues. The emperors of the thirteenth century showed less and less interest in governing, leaving an ever-more divided imperial court to run things. After the death of Shih Mi-yuan and the last of his followers in 1251, the Song court was hamstrung by fighting between eunuchs and bureaucrats vying for power. Despite their vast wealth, they were under immense pressure threatening to collapse the dynasty, just as Mongke Khaan prepared to hurl the weight of the Mongol Empire upon it.   Mongke knew the assault on the Song was an immense task. In 1252, sending his brother Hulegu to the far west to subdue the rest of the Islamic world, Mongke ordered his other brother Kublai to take another army against the Song. Rather than throw men at the well defended Song northern borders- a strategy so far ineffective- Mongke sent Kublai to subdue the independent kingdoms along the Song’s southwestern border in what is now China’s Yunnan province, where Song defences were much weaker.   Kublai had not yet commanded armies in person before this campaign, so Mongke provided him a guiding figure: Uriyangqadai, the son of the mighty Subutai. Setting out in late 1253 from forward bases in Gansu, the former territory of the Tangut, Kublai’s army marched in three columns; an eastern column under the Chinese defector Weng Dezhen, which marched through Sichuan, the main army under Kublai and the western column under Uriyangqadai, both marching hrough the eastern edges of Tibet. Tibet’s conquest by the Mongols is a bit of a shadowy thing, difficult to reconstruct due to only brief mentions in the sources. By the early 1250s, most of the Tibetan tribes were subdued or paying tribute to the Mongols, who had sent repeated armies into the region over the previous two decades. By the mid-1250s, Tibet was largely under Mongol authority, though it would need to be reimposed and strengthened later in the century.    Cutting through the mountains of Tibet, Kublai’s army fell upon the hills of Yunnan and the Kingdom of Dali. Founded in the 10th century, Dali controlled the valuable trade between the Song Dynasty and the kingdoms of  Guizhou, Tibet, Vietnam and the rest of Indochina. Relations with the Song were amicable, and Dali became the Song’s major supplier of horses with the loss of Northern China; but Dali was independent and somewhat isolated from the affairs of the Chinese. Central authority of the Dali kings had declined by the thirteenth century, their actual rule hardly extending beyond their capital, also called Dali. By the time of Kublai’s invasion in 1253, the Dali King was puppet for his chief minister, who had ordered the deaths of Mongol envoys. Dali’s army would be no match for the Mongol forces, even under an inexperienced commander like Kublai. Crossing a river on sheepskin rafts, Kublai’s army surprised and destroyed the main Dali army under the Chief Minister, who fled back to the capital. In the last days of 1253, Kublai’s three armies converged on Dali City. In Chinese sources, Kublai’s confucian teacher Yao Shu convinced Kublai to spare the city’s inhabitants, and in January 1254 Dali submitted to the Mongols. The victorious Kublai returned back to north China, where he was appointed administrator and got up to other problems, as detailed in episode 23.  Uriyangqadai was left to subdue the remaining local powers and prepare for the great assault on the Song, as well as recruit locals to serve in the army. He moved against the independent kingdoms of China’s modern Guizhou province, the intermediate area between Song and Dali. He returned briefly to Gansu in early 1257, but in his absence revolt broke out in Dali, bringing Uriyangqadai back into the region. His efforts eventually led him to ride into northern Vietnam, Dai Viet, called Annam in Chinese sources. His envoys were killed, and Uriyangqadai attacked the capital, Thang-long, modern day Hanoi. Thang-long was greatly damaged, the king forced to flee to an offshore island, and send a son as royal hostage to the Mongols as well as tribute. Dai Viet was now vassal of the Mongol Emperor.   Though the Yunnan-Guizhou region would not be fully pacified until the 1280s, it was secure enough to act as a staging ground for the assault on Song. With affairs in order and resources from across the empire pooled, Mongke felt confident to launch the final war on the Song. The total force was immense: as many as 600,000 in some sources to attack Song from several directions. Mongke gathered his forces in the Liupan mountains in 1258, not far from where his grandfather, Chinggis Khan, had died some thirty years prior. Mongke was to take his force against Sichuan; a second army under his cousin Taghachar, was to strike east from the Liupanshan to the Song metropolis of Xiangyang, which controlled access to the vital Song river routes; Kublai was to take a third force from north China to the central regions of the Yangzi river, focusing on the city of O-zhou, today’s Wuhan. The fourth army was under Uriyangqadai, who from Yunnan would hammer the Song from the west and link up with Kublai and Taghachar along the Yangzi.   The idea was twofold. By striking the Song along so many frontiers, they would be unable to converge against a single army, while the Song empire could be split in half. With the capital and administration based on the far eastern edge of the Song realm, the Mongols could isolate it and perhaps drive a mammoth wave of refugees to it.    In the Autumn of 1258, Mongke’s host descended upon Sichuan. 100,000 troops had recently been sent by the Song to reinforce it, but frustratingly little else had been done by the central government to help repair fortifications of that western region. During the march on Dali some five years prior, much of Sichuan was occupied, but the major population centres stood defiant. The Grand Khan himself was now taking the field against them. Sichuan’s capital, Chengdu, a population of almost one million, quickly fell and it’s plain was soon in Mongol hands.  Initial successes were significant, but as 1258 turned to 1259, Mongke found himself bogged down in sieges in eastern Sichuan. Outside of the plain of Sichuan, the province turns to rugged mountains and valleys. Recently constructed mountain tops fortresses proved difficult to take; Chongqing, one of the major cities along the Yangzi in the region, was turned into a network of fortresses. Defenders fought tooth and nail, knowing defeat meant slaughter for them and their families. Mongke’s problems grew as he sought to take Ho-chou. For five months, the city resisted his efforts,  heavy losses frustrating him. By June, rain became incessant. Humidity and the climate proved an effective weapon. Disease spread rapidly among the Mongols and their horses. Even troops levied from northern China were unused to it, and progress halted. Mongke fought the rest of the summer in the hills around Ho-chou, trying to keep up the army’s momentum. Precisely how things went in August is not agreed upon in the sources. Mongke seems to have been drinking heavily, perhaps recognizing the water spread foul diseases to his men. His judgement and reflex may have been impaired, perhaps his own fortitude suffering. The sources speak of an arrow from the defenders of a local fort, or a projectile launched from a catapult. Others, of cholera or dysentery brought on by the conditions. No matter what it was, on the 11th of August, 1259, Mongke Khaan was dead.   His army ground to a halt. Messages were sent to the other armies, and Mongke’s son Asutai quickly took his father’s body back to Mongolia for burial. According to Marco Polo, the army killed everyone they came across as they hauled his corpse. News spread quickly, the Song found new heart: the great Khaghan was dead! Taghachar Noyan’s army had already floundered outside the walls of Xiangyang. Kublai, delayed by his severe gout, had not yet even crossed the Yangzi River when he learned the news of his brother’s demise. Only Uriyangqadai had made progress, perhaps due to a greater number of locally raised troops from Dali suited to the climate. From Dali or Dai Viet, he had marched through the modern provinces of Guangxi and Hunan to reach Kublai on the Yangzi, allegedly fighting 13 battles, killing 400,000 Song soldiers and capturing several major generals.    On learning of Mongke’s death, Kublai continued to campaign for another two months, initially dismissing it simply as a rumour, then stating he had been ordered south by the Khaan, and it was his duty to carry out his will. Crossing the Yangzi, he succeeded in taking O-chou, modern Wuhan. Perhaps the desire to get something done on the campaign drove him, or perhaps a thought crossed his mind: he didn’t have much for a military reputation. Taking a major city like O-chou would alleviate that, and make him a better candidate for the leadership to succeed Mongke. Doubtless, he imagined it would be months before an election would be held, giving him ample time to score some victories for his resume.   Therefore, he was quite surprised when messages came from his wife, Chabi, in late November 1259, warning that Kublai’s youngest brother, Ariq Boke, was making moves to become Khaan. Ariq had been left as regent in Karakorum while his brothers were on campaign, and now looked to declare himself Khaan before the families had all assembled. For Kublai, this was an opportunity he could not afford to lose. Thus he departed Wuhuan in winter 1259, the Song, under their new chancellor Jia Sidao, warily watching the frontier and seeking to reclaim the lost territory. Little could they have predicted, but the age of the unified Mongol Empire had just ended. Providing no designated successor, Mongke’s death opened a vacuum, one which would tear every fracture within the empire to the surface.  Civil war across Eurasia was about to follow, and the Song were offered a brief respite from the Mongols.  Our next episodes look at the great civil wars of the Mongol Empire, so be sure to subscribe to our podcast for more. If you’d like to help us keep bringing you outstanding content, please consider supporting us on patreon at www.patreon.com/kingsandgenerals. I’m your host David, and we’ll catch you on the next one.