by John Man
fn3 For those who doubt Marco’s veracity, the find confirms his words: ‘There is at this place a very fine marble palace’, though which palace exactly remains obscure.
fn4 This and the next quote are from Miscellaneous Songs on the Upper Capital, with thanks to Richard John Lynn (see Bibliography).
fn5 Thanks to Tom Man and Ben Godber for the CGI. Details are in my Xanadu. The results are in the colour section of this book.
14
KUBLAI EMERGES
LIKE MANY DICTATORS, MÖnke relied on foreign conquest to pre-empt dissent at home, bring in a flow of booty and provide employment for the elite. Not that anyone would have put it in those terms, because those motives were hidden by the overwhelming truth, as the Mongols now saw it, that they had unfinished business with the world at large. Three of Sorkaktani’s sons – Mönkhe, Kublai and Hulegu – were now all dictators, all eager for further expansion. Persia and southern Russia were secure; so now for the rest of China; and then the rest of the world.
The task ahead was formidable, but less formidable than it had been before the conquest of north China. The Mongols had battle-hardened armies based in Xanadu and Yunnan, north China and ex-Western Xia. The Song armies were unwilling mercenaries led by scholar-officials. And the Mongols knew what they had to do, because they had done it before in north China: take a city or two, seize Chinese infantry and siege engines, and make themselves into a juggernaut. True, the climate was subtropical in summer, the landscape tortuous, the distances immense and diseases rife. Who would bet on success?
At least Mönkhe had a good HQ. Set up thirty years before by Genghis himself, Kaicheng lay some 200 kilometres south of the Yellow River, near the head of the Qing Shui River, in the forested foothills of the Liupan Mountains, where Genghis had spent the summer of 1227 before he succumbed to the disease that killed him. It was a good site, because it was out in the open, yet within a day’s gallop of the Liupan’s secret valley, with its steep forests, fertile soils and medicinal plants. It lay just 70 kilometres from the Song border.
Mönkhe knew well enough the immensity of the task. His plan was to start big, by cutting his opponent in half. Three columns would converge on the Yangtze at Wuchang (now part of the mega-city of Wuhan), the key to the lower Yangtze and thus to the capital, Hangzhou. One of the columns would be Kublai’s, advancing from Xanadu south for 1,400 kilometres. Actually, Kublai’s involvement was in doubt for a time because he was suffering from gout, the disease that would afflict him all his life. When Mönkhe suggested he be replaced by one of Genghis’s nephews, he was indignant. ‘My gout is better,’ he protested. ‘How is it fitting that my elder brother should go on a campaign and I should remain idle at home?’ In Wuchang, Kublai would meet up with the two other columns: a second led by Uriyang-khadai, arriving from Yunnan (almost 1,500 kilometres away), and a third from Kaicheng. Mönkhe himself would lead an advance into the centre of this region, striking southwest for 650 kilometres, taking Chengdu in the heart of Sichuan, finally turning south-east (for 250 kilometres) to Chongqing, the river port that was the link between the Yangtze’s downriver trade and the overland route to Tibet.
Mönkhe arranged for the correct rituals to ensure Heaven’s backing – honouring his grandfather’s spirit at his grave-site, scattering milk from his herd of white mares – then headed south, across the Gobi, through what had once been Western Xia and was now imperial land, to Kaicheng. The summer of 1257 he spent in the Liupan Mountains, gathering his forces. The following spring, his army took Chengdu and moved on through Sichuan’s mists, so thick, it is said, that dogs bark when they see the sun.
Progress was slow. It was early 1259 before he reached Chongqing. To take it, he first had to seize a formidable fortress 60 kilometres to the north. Set on a sheer 400-metre-high ridge, it dominated three rivers which flowed together before joining the Yangtze. This operation brought Mönkhe to a dead halt. Weeks turned to months, spring to summer. The heat built up. Disease struck. Several thousand of his men died.
In August, escaping the heat in the nearby hills and drinking far too much wine, he went down with something very serious – probably cholera. His bowels turned to water, cramp wracked him, and he was dead in ten days.
All action should have ceased as Mongol leaders refocused their attention on the succession. First came the rituals of burial, which took at least a month, perhaps two: the preparation of the body for travel, the 1,800-kilometre, month-long return to Karakorum, four consecutive days of mourning, then the final 500-kilometre procession eastwards over the grasslands, into the Mongols’ original heartland, up the Kherlen River, and thus at last to the sacred mountain of Burkhan Khaldun, the burial place of Genghis and his son Tolui. The site itself was of course secret, with horses trampling the graves and saplings and coarse grass slowly covering the spot. There are many theories, but, as we shall see, where exactly Genghis, Tolui, Ogedei, Mönkhe and later emperors lie is still a mystery (to be addressed in Chapter 24).
Next on the agenda would be the great assembly of the princes and the clan leaders, the khuriltai, that would elect the next khan. But winter was coming on. The election would take place the following spring, allowing time for claimants to ensure they had the backing they needed.
And what meanwhile of Kublai? He had been about to cross the river now known as the Huai, 250 kilometres into Song territory, when news came of Mönkhe’s death. He had been on the road for weeks, had covered 1,000 kilometres, and had another 400 – perhaps ten days’ march – to go to reach his rendezvous. There was a Song troop ahead. Scouts were bound to hear of his brother’s death and spread the news, and inject new heart into the Song opposition. So he had a decision to make: to sit about doing nothing and allow the Song time to mount a counter-offensive; to retreat, and abandon conquered territory; or to act. He knew from experience what was right. He talked the matter over with his No. 2, Batur. The same age as Kublai, Batur came from an eminent military family, being the grandson of Genghis’s great general Mukhali. Between them the decision was made: they would pretend the news was merely gossip designed to spread fear and despondency, and would carry on with the invasion. ‘We have come hither with an army like ants or locusts,’ Kublai said, according to Rashid al-Din. ‘How can we turn back, our task undone?’
His advance continued, to the universe of water that was the Yangtze, meandering lazily across rice-rich plains, more inland sea than river, a barrier over 10 kilometres wide. Having crossed it, he laid siege to Wuchang, to be joined some three weeks later by Uriyang-khadai’s 20,000-strong force from Yunnan. They’d had a hard time, taking fortresses on the mountain passes, losing 5,000 men to disease. The town would surely have surrendered but, in early October, Song contingents, released from fighting Mönkhe by his death, arrived to fight Kublai.
Kublai faced a tricky decision: to continue the siege of Wuchang, or return to Mongolia to engage with the business of the succession. Increasingly, imperial strategy was being trumped by affairs back home. In December, Kublai decided he could hesitate no longer. But which to choose: finish the job, or pull back?
The Song commander, Jia Sidao, a wily diplomat who undoubtedly knew of the pressures on his adversary, tried to nudge him into withdrawal. Jia, one of the most famous and controversial men of his age, has an important role to play in Kublai’s story. His grandfather and father had been men of medium-grade military rank, nothing exceptional, but good enough to put a silver spoon in Jia’s young mouth. In his home town, the Song capital of Hangzhou, he had been one of the jeunesse dorée, with a penchant for pretty girls, drinking and gambling. He was also lucky. His sister had been chosen as an imperial concubine; she became the emperor’s favourite, bearing him a daughter, his only surviving child, and rising to the high rank of Precious Consort in the harem. In 1236, the emperor had fallen ill and a senior official was going to suggest pensioning him off. Jia heard of the plot, told his sister, who told the emperor, who acted to save his throne. Good jobs followed
, and by the time he was forty Jia was powerful and rich. He dabbled in art and antiques. He had a glorious estate in the hills overlooking the West Lake, where he threw parties for guests by the thousand. With time and wealth enough, he was able to indulge a very strange hobby: he loved to set crickets fighting each other. Indeed, he became such an expert in crickets and their aggressive ways that he wrote a handbook on the raising and training of champion crickets. He also had literary pretensions. His rivals (of course) called him arrogant and frivolous, and muttered about the way he siphoned off state cash to buy art treasures for his mansion, the Garden of Clustered Fragrances. In 1259, when he was forty-six, he was appointed Chancellor of the Empire with responsibility for upgrading Song’s shaky finances and armed forces. He thus found himself in charge of the defence of Wuchang.
He opted for diplomacy, proposing to pay an annual tribute in exchange for the Mongols agreeing that the Yangtze be the new frontier between the states. Kublai would have none of it. After all, he was already into Song territory. Yet he was in no position to continue the invasion, not just because of Jia’s opposition, but because something rather ominous was afoot back home.
As Kublai learned in a message from his worried wife, his younger brother Ariq Böke – Ariq ‘the Strong’ – master of the empire’s nomadic heartland, was raising troops, presumably because he wanted to be khan. Could Kublai possibly return? If Kublai needed a further reason, he had it two days later when messengers came from Ariq himself, bringing nothing but innocuous greetings and enquiries about Kublai’s health. Kublai asked what their master was doing with the troops he had raised. Disconcerted, they wriggled. ‘We slaves know nothing. Assuredly it is a lie.’ Kublai smelt treachery. Politics now trumped empire-building. He abandoned the siege of Wuchang and headed back to Mongolia.
It was the end of the invasion for the time being. Jia soon recaptured what had been taken. Song would remain unconquered for another twenty years. Kublai found all his attention focused on a dispute that would rapidly escalate into civil war.
As 1259 turned to 1260, ploy was followed by counter-ploy, with messages being carried back and forth across the steppes and the Gobi at full gallop, and the two would-be emperors dicing for advantage as if they and their supporters were pieces on a vast chessboard. In the spring, Ariq, newly arrived in his summer quarters in the Altai Mountains in Mongolia’s west, declared himself khan. Kublai was incensed. This was outright rebellion, not so much against Kublai, but against the tradition of the khan being elected by the princes. The leading ones – Hulegu and Jochi’s son Berke, now ruler of the Golden Hordefn1 in southern Russia – were not even in Mongolia, and were anyway bitter rivals over both territory and religion. Berke had converted to Islam the better to rule his Muslim subjects; Hulegu had been killing Muslims by the thousand.
Ariq’s bravado backfired. Princes and generals who had not responded to his call rallied to Kublai. To save the empire, there was one thing to be done: he had to declare himself khan, with as much validity as possible. This could not happen with total validity, because that would take a full assembly in Karakorum, which he was not yet ready to hold. So in early May 1260, those who backed Kublai were called to Xanadu for the ceremony.
He was, as ever, between two worlds. His roots were in the grasslands, yet he had Chinese estates. Here he was in a Chinese-style city built on the grasslands, about to declare himself emperor – of what exactly? A Mongolian empire? A Chinese empire? Quickly, he saw that in order to rule, Chinese traditions had to trump Mongolian ones. He proclaimed his virtues, in the style of a Chinese emperor: he would rule with goodness and love, lower taxes, feed the hungry, revere the ancestors. He did not summon Mongolian shamans to examine the scorched and cracked shoulder-bones of sheep. Instead, he called upon a Chinese adept who knew how to cast the I Ching (Yi Jing in pinyin), the Book of Changes, the 2,000-year-old oracle that holds a unique place in Chinese culture. The reading produced a hexagram, the Qian, representing primal power, the power of Heaven. One of its attributes is a word with many positive meanings. The dictionary lists some: the first, chief, principal, fundamental, basic substance. It has an aura of associations, suggesting whatever is sublime, original and great. It hints at the powers behind the origin of the universe.fn2 No name could have better appealed to Chinese sensibilities, which is why, incidentally, it is also the name of today’s Chinese unit of currency. When the time came, the word would be the perfect name for Kublai’s dynasty: the Yuan.
On 5 May 1260, Kublai took the plunge. The assembled princes begged him three times to accept the throne, which as tradition dictated he declined twice. The third time, he graciously accepted. The princes swore their oaths of allegiance and proclaimed him the new emperor – not yet of the Yuan dynasty, but of the Great Mongol Nation as founded by his grandfather.
Now the empire had two Great Khans – a khan and an anti-khan. Which would turn out to be which?
Through that summer, the two sides did more jockeying, each tit-for-tat move raising the stakes. Ariq returned to Karakorum to assert his rule from there. Kublai tried to put his own man in charge of his uncle Chaghadai’s realm, only to hear that the 100-strong mission had all been caught by Ariq, who made his own candidate khan of Chaghadai’s lands and then executed all of Kublai’s envoys.
Kublai closed down the frontier, starving Karakorum of the supplies which until then had been imported from China. He could do this because his cousin, Khadan, controlled Western Xia and the Uighur regions further west. As winter came on, Kublai recruited more troops, bought 10,000 extra horses, ordered 6,000 tonnes of rice – a year’s supply – then led his well-supplied army northwards. The next autumn produced a showdown in the grasslands of eastern Mongolia. Two battles ended inconclusively, with great loss of life on both sides. But Ariq had no resources left. He pulled back into the forests and mountains of Siberia and then, abandoned by allies, fled to Chaghadai’s realm, whose isolated capital, Almalik, became a place of ‘dearth and famine’. Kublai occupied Karakorum for the winter. In the spring, Ariq found his support draining away, symbolized for his aides when a whirlwind tore his audience tent from its 1,000 pegs, smashed its support post and injured many of those inside. To his ministers, it was an omen of coming defeat.
At which moment – early 1262 – he was saved by rebellion against Kublai back home. The trouble came from Shandong, the heart of north China, a rich coastal area near the mouth of the Yellow River. The local warlord, Li Tan, was the son-in-law of one of Kublai’s top officials and had helped Mönkhe fight the Song. Kublai thought he was a staunch ally and backed him with injections of cash. It seemed a good bet, because Li’s son was at court, in effect a hostage. But Li, in control of the local salt and copper industries, was more interested in feathering his own nest than keeping in with Kublai. He decided that he, as a Chinese, had a better future with the Song than with the Mongols. He arranged for his son to slip away from Kublai’s court, then turned his army loose on local Mongols, seized warehouses, and was clearly intent on establishing his own breakaway kingdom. It took several months to crush him – literally, for his punishment was to be sewn into a sack and trampled to death by horses, the traditional fate reserved by Mongolians for those of princely rank. Only then was Kublai free to turn back to the business of dealing with Ariq.
The winter of 1263 was a harsh one for an army to be trapped in Central Asia. Ariq was short of food and weapons and friends. Men and horses starved. Allies – even some of his family – defected. The following year, he accepted the inevitable and came begging for peace, brother submitting to brother. As Rashid describes it, the meeting was full of emotion. Ariq approaches Kublai’s huge palace-tent in the traditional manner, raising the flap that covers the door and letting it hang over his shoulder, awaiting the call to enter. Summoned inside, he stands among the secretaries, like a naughty schoolboy. The two brothers stare at each other. Kublai softens. Tears come to the eyes of both men. Kublai beckons.
‘Dear brot
her,’ he says, ‘in this strife and contention were we in the right or you?’
Ariq is not quite ready to admit the fault is all his: ‘We were then and you are today,’ he says. It is almost good enough for Kublai. He assigns Ariq a place among the princes.
But he is not free. The following day, there is an examination to establish how things had come to this pass. There follows much finger-pointing as commanders dispute who had influenced Ariq the most. These are difficult matters, because Kublai wishes to establish guilt, yet find cause not to execute his own brother.
In the end, ten of Ariq’s associates are put to death, with Ariq and his top general being spared, though still under arrest. What to do about Ariq? Who would rid the khan of his troublesome brother? Not, it seemed, Eternal Heaven, for Ariq was not yet fifty, and in fine fettle, a constant reminder that Kublai’s claim to the throne was not unchallenged.
Then, suddenly, out of the blue, in unexplained circumstances, as Rashid baldly states, Ariq ‘was taken ill and died’. Was he murdered? Some suspected so at the time and others have claimed so since. It was certainly a wonderfully convenient solution to an intractable problem.
And then Heaven, or at least fate, stepped in again. Hulegu in Persia, Berke of the Golden Horde in southern Russia, and Alghu, the restored khan of Chaghadai’s realm, all died within a few months of Ariq’s death. As a result of Ariq’s opposition, what a waste the last five years had been. The great task of invading China had been put on hold, the stability of Mongol rule across all Eurasia threatened, the Mongol heartland divided against its Chinese territories, the rulers of the three western khanates set at each other’s throats. Now, at a stroke, all was resolved. Never mind that his coronation had not been strictly legal: Kublai was now head of the family business, in direct command of Mongolia, north China, much of Central Asia and some of Song, and overlord of his subsidiary khans in Persia and southern Russia.