The History of China - #237 - Yuan 18: Mandukhai, Warrior Princess

Episode Date: July 11, 2022

The widow-queen of the Mongols, Mandukhai, seizes the reins of her own fate, entreating the spirits of sky and earth to help her in her quest to reunite her broken people and return sovereignty and glory to Mongolia. Oh, and she also marries a 7-year-old, which is a little strange, but makes sense in context. Time Period Covered: 1470~1480 CE Major Historical Figures: Mandukhai Khatun [ca. 1449-1510] Dayan Khan (Batu Mongke) [1462-1543?] Gen. Une-Bolod [?-?] Ismayil Taishi [d. 1486] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Hello, and welcome to the History of China. Episode 237, Mandukai, Warrior Princess Queen Mandukai the Wise, recalling the vengeance of the former Khans, set out on campaign. She set in motion her foot soldiers and oxen troops, and after three days and nights, she set out with her cavalry. Queen Mandukai the Wise, putting on her quiver elegantly and composing her disordered hair,

put Dayan Khan in a box and set out. From the Altan Togchi, or The Golden Summary, by Guzh Luvsandanzan, circa 1604. We last left our young queen of the Mongols, Mandukai of the Choros, widowed and alone at the age of 23 in about the year of 1470, struggling with what she would do next. Would she marry the elder member of the House Borjigin, the mighty general Unabalor, or the powerful and manipulative Taishi to the south, Ismayil, or perhaps turn herself over to Ming China for a pampered life within the walls of the imperial city? Well, as we finished out last time, she wound up choosing

a fourth path, one she made for herself, and largely by herself. Instead, Mandukai decided that she would continue to rule as Khatun without taking any of these husbandly options, in order to reforge the Mongol Yuan Empire into a unified whole once more. There were just a few problems with this plan. She had no experience in actual leadership. She had no army willing to follow her or do her will. And, as elsewhere, though less so on the steppe than many other places, her womanhood exacerbated both of those other two problems and rendered her all the more vulnerable. Still, she had something neither Una Balad nor Ismail Taishi had. She had received a rather special, and certainly unexpected, gift from the southern Gobi, a young boy. This was not her own child, for she had none of her own,

but rather the son of the golden prince, Bayan Monk, who had so recently met his ignominious end at the hands of bandits in the midst of the desert. This boy of perhaps about four or five, and given the name Batu Monk, was the son of the chosen heir, and direct descendant of both Esen Taishi and Genghis Khan himself, thus making him the unquestionable and rightful heir to the empire. If, that is, he lived to take up such a mantle. When Ismail and his army had pursued the golden prince to his place of birth, a particularly sparse and difficult area of the western Gobi, they had failed to catch their

fleeing prize, but had found the family of his first wife, Syker. She had been among the Taishi's prizes, carried off from the household, never again to enter the story. But the toddler boy had been hidden away somehow, and thereafter passed from person to person. In the harshness of this climate, the young child's condition is said to have grown dire. Without proper care, even what would be considered minor problems in other climates can quickly escalate into major health crises in the Gobi Desert. Jack Weatherford writes, quote, After three years of neglect, Batu Monk was still alive, but just barely. As one chronicle states, he was suffering from sickness of the stomach.

Another reported that he acquired hunchback-like growth. Other reports indicate that he was suffering from acute symptoms of a tapeworm infection as well. Through some means or another, Mandukai had learned of the boy, his identity, and his critical health condition, and had therefore secretly had him transferred from the poor single woman who had up until now tended to him, to a couple better able to address his specific needs. This all had to be done with utmost secrecy, for if Batu Monk's identity became widely known, other forces more powerful than the nominal queen of the Mongols would be sure to track him down and either take the baby for themselves or simply kill him outright. The couple were able to tend to the young prince in a far better manner, and with time and care, both his health

and body shape began to improve. By the time the boy had reached about five years of age, his physical maladies had been taken largely care of. Madukai, her own position at least for now, shored up enough to feel safe in so doing, therefore called the young prince to come and live with her at the royal court. His foster father escorted Batu Monk across the Gobi, but in a startling turn of events, while crossing one of these small seasonal streams that crisscross the desert,

the boy fell from his horse and into the water. It seems that he must have been badly injured in the fall, as he was unable to get back up and nearly drowned before his foster father was able to dismount and drag him out of the stream. He was revived, and their journey continued, but the young prince arrived at the royal encampment once again quite worse for the wear, and with his recovery, and even survival, in serious doubt for some time thereafter. Regardless, Mandukai understood what her next step must be, to install the weak and injured young boy as the new Great Khan, which was somewhat trickier than it might seem. Yes, his lineage made him the rightful heir insofar as that went, but as you'll

recall, from the very outset of the Mongol Empire, merely being of the proper bloodline was not in itself sufficient. Genghis Khan had set out specific rules and regulations for what must be done to properly enthrone a great Khan of the Mongols, and that entailed the convocation of a great Kuraltai in the Mongol homeland, bringing together all the leaders of the Mongol tribes and clans to elect him. If that was not done, or if there was no overwhelming majority who showed up, then such an accession could always be viewed as illegitimate and therefore challenged by another contender. Of course, such a specific set of conditions had run onto the rocks pretty quickly indeed.

Mongkakon's accession had been so irregular that several ranking family members had refused to appear. Genghis Khan's own grandson, Mongkakon's accession, had been so irregular that several ranking family members had simply refused to appear, and it was then abortively assaulted by a band of dissidents. Kublai had then made a mockery of the entire tradition by moving the place of the Kuril Thai from the traditional Mongolian homeland to his own place of birth in China, and simply declaring himself Great Khan, thereby shattering the Mongol Empire into a full-scale civil war from which it never recovered. His descendants had thereafter abandoned the practice entirely

in favor of a Chinese-style successional order. Much later on, Essen had simply tried to claim the title outright, not even being a member of the Borjigin clan. In other words, there was going to have to be some latitude allowed on the formalities of Batu Monk's installation, but Mandukai wanted to do her best to affirm him in the spirit of the ancient successional law at least set forth by Temujin three centuries prior. One possible work around would be performing the ceremony before Genghis's solda, or his horsehair spirit banner,

which would have been a good option, except that Mandukai wasn't in possession of the solda, or his horsehair spirit banner, which would have been a good option, except that Mandukai wasn't in possession of the solda. It had been in the care of Bayan Monk before he had fled in disgrace into his ultimate death, and since then it had either been temporarily misplaced entirely, or else was in the possession of someone Mandukai did not trust to support her in her quest. And so it would have to be done another way. It would need to be something significantly tied to the life of Genghis, and sufficiently spiritual in that respect. Quote, Mandokai needed the support of the people, and to achieve this, she also knew that she herself needed some semblance of spiritual or religious support for what she wished to undertake.

Every time Genghis Khan wanted to rally his people to a cause that he thought might be difficult for them to support, he made a very public pilgrimage up to the sacred mountain, Burkhan Haldun, and prayed there until he felt that he had been granted the support. Yet that traditional method would have been entirely inappropriate for her, a queen, to do. Ascending mountains to pray was ritually a male thing, while feminine spirits were worshipped near bodies of water or in caves, which symbolized life itself and the womb of the earth, respectively. So instead, Mandukai decided to hold her conclave and installation of the young Batu monk at the site of a much more feminine, but no less revered, site. The shrine of the first queen,

Eshi Khatun. Now, on its face, this shrine would not have been much to look at at all. Little more than a tattered felt tent mounted on a cart and pulled by an ox or camel from one Mongol camp to another, and one sacred site to another. But the importance of such a nomadic shrine to the people on the steppe far exceeded its humble and worn appearance. And so it was that in the fall of 1470, Queen Mandukai, Prince Batumang, and a small group of her supporters made their way to the shrine of the first queen. She dismounted and approached alone and on foot as a humble petitioner, before performing the traditional ritual of casting ladlefuls of airag into the air as an offering to the spirits. Then, facing the shrine, but speaking both to the spirits as well as to her human audience,

she laid out her case. She had lost her way, and now wandered aimlessly through a place where black could not be distinguished from white, and in a land so dark one could not distinguish the colors on a horse. Eshi-Katun, the font of all lightness and wisdom, was the only one who could light this night of Mandukai's life and show her the path forward. As such, she intended to present her choice and beg the first queens, and thereby her peoples, acceptance of it. She first explained the myriad problems facing her people, but chiefly, that the office of Great Khan now sat empty,

and with no man of the royal house to fill it. Quote, The Bojagins, she stated matter-of-factly, face extinction. End quote. The Mongol nation, therefore, was enduring a time of chaos and violence such as they hadn't endured in centuries, and the world itself seemed unstable under their very feet. The people could no longer differentiate good from evil, or Khan from commoner. If there was not some intervention,

some drastic change in their fortunes, they would surely all be ground into nothingness. Next, Mandukai laid out her own personal situation, that she would, by dint of her station and pressure from her people, be forced yet again into marriage against her will. Unabalad, she explained, quote, because he is big and powerful, wants to take me for his wife, end quote. She then declared that she categorically rejected him as an option, going so far as to implore Eshi-Katun to lay a curse upon Mandukai, quote, Weatherford speaks to the reaction that must have run through the crowd at so harsh a rejection, quote, For the people gathered at the shrine, it must have been disappointing and perplexing as they sought to understand what the queen wanted.

If she ruled out, so steadfastly, the most popular of Mongol generals, then would she choose one of the Muslim warlords? Or an already arranged deal through the Ming court? Was their queen about to deliver their nation into the hands of foreigners? Was she about to betray them and the office she had served? End quote. Yet Mandukai was quick to dispel any such notions, with a reassertion of her loyalty to the people. Again, she addressed the first queen, quote, If I desert you or your descendants, then take your long horse snare and lasso me. End quote. She declared in the strongest possible terms that a Mongol could,

that should she bring harm to her people through her actions, she wished the first queen to She was asking for the most ignoble form of execution that could be meted out. A destruction not just of her body, but of her very soul. This was the strongest and most powerful form of oath that could possibly be taken. With this affirmation of loyalty, Mandukai thus invoked the protection and blessing of Eshi Khatun. I act as daughter-in-law to the Borjigin clan. She was not just rejecting Unabalad, but every option heretofore on the table.

She would keep power in her own right, surrendering it to no man. She would reign on as Khatun. But then, who would be Great Khan? Presently, she called forth her choice before the first queen and her subjects, and a truly unexpected figure stepped awkwardly forward. Not a man, but merely a boy of six or seven. Batu Monk. An undergrown child who is still recovering from a lifetime of physical deprivation and recent injury. Who even now had to wear stiff, oversized boots to support his weakened legs through the long and complex ceremony. This boy, who could barely command a horse, who could barely command

his own body, was to be the one to command the Mongol nation? How could such a thing be? It was a remarkably brazen maneuver, and one that all present, young Batu monk included, knew carried extreme physical risk for both participants and any supporters. At any moment, forces loyal to one of any of the other potential claimants could ride down and seize the Mongol queen to take her as their own. But more than that, now that she'd proclaimed this boy as the Great Khan, they would be forced to slay him in order to make their own claim viable. Mandukai had, essentially, marked Batu Monk for death. And this wasn't some hypothetical proposition, either. Looking back over the centuries and even

the most recent decades, one could point out literally dozens of incidents that went basically just like that. His only salvation at this point would be to trust in Mandukai completely, and not just her ability to lead them down this unknown path, but that she would remain loyal to him and to his interests. It would prove to be a trust well-founded, as she would never betray him, and always guard his safety and political interests up to her dying breath. Both shared a sense of identity in being utterly alone in the world, and dependent solely on one another. Quote, the most dreaded misfortune in life was to be without family. The tragic

figure in Mongol mythology was always the orphan. Many songs and poems bemoaned the sad fate and the empty future of such a person. The second most tragic fate was the widow whose husband left no male relative to marry her, end quote. How strange, fateful even, that these two were just such outcasts, now banding together. Now, however strangely, no longer alone in the world. The other interesting little twist in the ceremony was that, in elevating the boy as Great Khan with herself remaining Khatun, she was formally marrying him. This was, of course, a ceremonial formality that would be renegotiated upon the boy reaching his own manhood. Quote,

For now, an inexperienced young queen that was barely more than a girl herself stood united with a crippled little boy of seven. Nothing about them appeared encouraging or inspiring. It scarcely seemed plausible that such an unlikely pair could survive the coming winter, much less conquer the quarrelsome Mongol tribes and take on foreign enemies, end quote. As it would turn out, that propensity to underestimate them and their capabilities would often work to their advantage and to their foes' undoing. Most thought that nothing on the steppe mattered except for the strength of arm and skill at horse and bow. Very few were able to understand or indeed counter

the advantages that virtues like patience, intelligence, planning, consistency, and charisma could bring to the battlefield, both physical and political. Thus it was that Batu Monk was proclaimed the 28th Kayan of the Yeka Monka Ulus, ruler of all the lands and people of the world entire. He would henceforth be known by his title, one already picked out in advance by his queen, and a highly auspicious one at that, Dayan Khan,

Khan of the Complete, or the Complete Khan, referring to a restoration of the whole that had once been the mighty Mongol nation. To Chinese ears, however, it carried a far more ominous sound, as it was a near homophon for Dayuan, the Great Yuan, that had conquered China centuries prior, and apparently a clear reassertion of that bygone imperial authority. Very fortunately for the young Great Khan, the Ming were, by 1470, in such a position that they could not afford to send out some vast punitive army to capture or kill this presumptive regenerator of the Mongol Empire that had once subjugated China, but could instead only offer irritated, symbolic, and ultimately toothless criticism. Fighting words with words, the Ming court refused to recognize the title of Daian Khan, instead bestowing upon him in the records

of this period the far more diminutive title of Xiao Wangzi, simply the Little Prince. Which, all right, I guess fits the bill at seven years old. But here's the thing, the Ming authorities would continue to use that title throughout his entire reign. I mean, wow, sick burn, guys. Napoleon Bonaparte rose from obscurity to become the most powerful and significant figure in modern history. Over 200 years after his death, people are still debating his legacy. He was a man of contradictions, a tyrant and a reformer, a liberator and an oppressor, a revolutionary and a reactionary. His biography reads like a novel, and his influence is almost beyond measure.

I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast, and every month I delve into the turbulent life and times of one of the greatest characters in history, and explore the world that shaped him in all its glory and tragedy. It's a story of great battles and campaigns, political intrigue, and massive social and economic change, but it's also a story about people, populated with remarkable characters. I hope you'll join me as I examine this fascinating era of history. Find The Age of Napoleon wherever you get your podcasts. Yet for all the seeming pretensions a title like Dayan Khan imparted, throughout both their lives and reigns, neither Khan nor Khatun showed any real interest in

rebuilding the world-spanning Mongol Empire of Genghis Khan. Quite simply, it was no longer in the cards. Time, and even more importantly, technology, had moved on. In the 13th century, firearms had at least been at a primitive enough state of development that they could not be effectively fielded against fast-moving Mongol cavalry, while their own archery could be used to devastating effect in the field. And while it was certainly true that Genghis had employed the firepower of the day to devastating effect in the course of his campaigns, that had been almost solely the purview of captured Chinese and Islamic engineers, a luxury of expertise and manpower that the Mongols of the 15th century

no longer enjoyed. By the late 1400s, at least as far as any kind of sustained war of conquest went, the way of the horse and bow had been permanently eclipsed by the way of cannon and musket. Instead, Mandukai and Dayan would set out on a course to carve out a unified, strong, but limited and coextant nation alongside Ming China and the nations of Central Asia. One that would be able to loop itself back into the global trade network rather than clinging to bare existence on its fringes, and utilize the superior Chinese production and trade capabilities. This could, and would, take the form of regular trade relations where and how possible, but it could, and would, also take the form of border raids to take what they could when trade could not.

That winter, Mandukai and Dayan moved their camp southward to the northern edge of the Gobi, along the banks of the Ongi River, a seasonal stream and the only body of water that flowed south into the vast emptiness beyond. Beyond just being a seasonal move typical for such nomads, this move in particular is characterized as being a firm break with the past. Quote, Whether intentionally signaling her plans or merely following her own preferences, the move south and out into an open area closer to a trade route indicated a new engagement with the world. She herself probably did not yet know the precise nature of the policies she would pursue,

but she certainly knew that they would be different from the past. End quote. Her ritual enthronement of the boy Khan before the shrine of the first queen had gone as well as could have been hoped. They were not, for instance, struck down then and there by a disapproving spirit or by vengeful arrows from their enemies, and she had successfully proclaimed Batu Monk as a new great Khan, Dayan, and her as his Queen Regnant. But what was most necessary, now that the ceremonial stuff was taken care of, was backing up those words with the physical strength necessary to make it anything more than empty words. She and her paltry band of attendants and supporters, had enemies on all sides and from every quarter. Mandukai had to be very careful and very intelligent into how she went about engaging

and subduing them. For her and young Dayan Khan to have any chance at all, she would have to be the one determining the flow of these campaigns, and the one choosing the time and place of each battle. She could not afford to lose the initiative or be caught unprepared, not even once. Unsurprisingly, the cast of potential enemies she now faced down was just about precisely the same as those who'd just been vying for her hand and or submission. General Unabalad to the north in Mongolia, the Muslim warlords such as Ismail who controlled the Silk Road network to the southwest, and who still sought to control the Khan as a figurehead to

bolster their own prestige, and finally to the southeast, the vastness of Ming China, which, though listless and slow to move, still presented a major threat to the long-term stability of the Mongol nation. These would each have to be dealt with in turn, and each according to how Mandukai's intellect understood as being the most effective method to remove them as threats to her, her young husband, and her people as a whole. In the case of the Mongol general, Unabolod, Queen Mandukai got very lucky. She managed to prevent the powerful commander from becoming an enemy altogether. Though she had rejected him in marriage, he nevertheless remained loyal to his people and his house.

As a descendant of Temujin's brother, Khasar, and thus a cadet branch of House Borjigin, he still stood as next in line to inherit the title of Great Khan and the hand of the Khatun, should anything bad happen to the undergrown, sickly child. And as we've already said, in environments like the steppe and the Gobi, even in ideal conditions, Dayan Khan's quick death would have seemed a very likely proposition. But, I mean, taking him into war now against some of the

greatest powers in the region? You have to think that Unabalad must have liked his odds very much. Moreover, if Mandukai herself were to fall in battle, well then, Unabalad himself stood to inherit the regency over the boy. So it was pretty much win-win for him to simply bide his time and wait for one of them to drop dead. For Mandukai, having Unabalad on her side not only freed her of a powerful enemy coming from her own homeland, but also critically put an actual army at her disposal. With this, she could now move against what she had decided would be her first actual target, a bit of housekeeping before setting off to bigger and more difficult projects, the unsupportive tribes of Western Mongolia.

Quote, Western Mongolia was home to a variety of tribes, independent clans, and factions in shifting alliances. They were Mongols, with a mixture of Turkic steppe tribes, as well as Siberian forest tribes, in a constantly changing array of ethnic, clan, and geographic names, end quote. By the time of Mandukai, however, what had once been a term that referenced a specific body of people from the time of Genghis Khan, the Oirat, had become a kind of catch-all name for all these various shifting groups of Western Mongols. The Oirat then, such as they were by this point, were firmly under the direction of the Taishis,

which you'll recall is the title referring to what is formally the chief advisor of the Khan, but in reality had been the actual power behind the throne for centuries at this point. And that position of Taishi had been taken over by the incoming Central Asian Muslims, such as Beg Arslan, and more recently, Ismail. Rather than live among the Uyghurs directly that they ruled over, quote, they preferred to stay close to their trade oasis cities along the Silk Road and to control the Uyghur from a distance, end quote, much like Begarslan had done with Mandul Khan and his Eastern Mongols in the last episode. As long as the Taishi kept trade goods coming into the Oirat territory, no one seemed to mind. Manduka's primary objective, therefore, must be to retake control over the Oirat and reunite them with her own Eastern Mongol faction, thereby depriving the likes of Ismail

the title of Taishi and the ability of him, and outsiders like him, to claim authority over the Mongol nation in lieu of the one true Khan. Only at that point, having absorbed their strength into her own, would she have the sufficient power to challenge the Muslim warlords of the Silk Road directly. She began this campaign by sending a train of oxen carts laden with all manner of supplies and provisions off ahead of the main force, along, of course, with an armed escort. Her main force would set out later, and moving at a much faster pace than they burdened execution than the usual raids that had characterized much of steppe warfare over the previous two centuries. In an organization uncharacteristic of steppe leaders, she used infantry and cavalry, as well as the caravans of supply carts. Her army more closely resembled that of a sedentary state than that of a nomadic one." After three days of further preparations, the queen was at last ready to

move out. The chronicles all agree that she fixed her hair to accommodate her quiver. The hairstyle of noble married women of that era precluded war or any other manual endeavor. She removed her headdress of peace and put on her helmet of war. End quote. And for point of reference, when it comes to noble hairstyles and headdresses for women, you need think little further than the elaborate updos and headdresses of Queen Amidala in Star Wars Episode I. Mongolian and Tibetan styles were exactly what they based her queenly hair on.

So, yeah. Oh, as another aside, another unlikely link between a galaxy far, far away and Mongolia, Ewoks. Yeah, the language those little cannibal teddy bears of Endor use is based on the Kalmyk dialect of Mongolian. So, yup, yup. Now, for someone like Mandukai, it was something a bit less involved than what they put Natalie Portman through. A headdress called a bokhta, which is a structure of willow branches covered in green felt in a, quote, narrow column three to four feet high, gradually changing from a round base to a square top.

A variety of decorative items, such as peacock or mallard feathers, adorned the top with a loose attachment that allowed them to flutter high above the woman's head, end quote. It was also quite popular in its day as a symbol of womanly nobility. So popular, in fact, that it was imitated far and wide, as far away as Europe, where it mutated into the hennin, those classical colorful cone hats that you see on princesses all over medieval pictures and fairy book tales, with streamers on top of the hat instead of peacock feathers. Thus it was that, as per the Altan Taubshi, And it is pointed out that she, very unusually, did this personally. As with much else in the Chronicles, recorded actions carry significant meanings.

Anyone could have symbolically led this army. Even young Dayan Khan could have been said to strap on the war bow for this campaign, even though he would not have been actually fighting. But the tale goes out of its way to stress that it was Mandukai who would personally lead from the center. This is not to say that the young Khan would be left behind or whatever. Again, such symbolism was highly important. So it was critical that the great Khan be present on campaign, even if just as team mascot. So it was that the young boy was strapped into a cart or a box, which was pulled along by a horse, and that's important too, a horse rather than an oxen or a camel. He was on a horse,

even if he wasn't quite on top of it, right along with the rest of the Mongol army, and westward they rode. As they approached the Uyrat encampment, Mandukai formulated her battle strategy. She, quote, already knew the lesson of the mares, but now she needed to learn from the wolf. She could already protect and guard, but Mandukai needed to learn to hunt, stalk, retreat, lure, attack, and win, end quote. Like a wolf pack facing a herd of grazing animals, she was up against vastly superior numbers, and couldn't hope to take them on in a straight fight. Instead, as with any predator, she would need to rely on her keen intellect and seizing any opportunity she might to break up that herd unity and single out individuals to pounce upon for the kill.

As such, she selected the place of battle very carefully. It would be a vast stretch of open steppeland, now called Zav Khan, framed between the Kangai Mountains to its east and the Altai Range to its west. Its openness made it one of the best areas in western Mongolia for raising herds of horses, and as such, control over it was pivotal to control over the west. It had, in fact, been this very open plain upon which Kaidu Khan and his daughter, Kutulun, had their final, fateful confrontation with their Kublaid cousins of the nascent Yuan dynasty centuries ago. It was here that Kaidu had been slain, and Kutulun had stayed to watch over his tomb ever after. It's uncertain if Mandukai knew any of this, or indeed how much of her own people's history she might have known at all. Had she studied the war tactics of Genghis Khan? Did she defer to the strategic know-how of her general, Unabulad? Did she perhaps simply have some kind of inborn tactic and strategic

genius? Such questions must remain unanswered. What is clear is that, however it came about, throughout her campaigns of conquest, she displayed a degree of foresight, strategy, and insight that had seemingly all but vanished from the steps for generations. Her bringing of Dayan Khan, for instance, largely sealed her victory in the Uyrat homeland. Opposite the Gobi from Ismail Taishi's headquarters, he could not afford to send any kind of great force to oppose her across that vast wasteland. Meanwhile, the Oirats understood that whatever their loyalty to the Taishi might be, which was largely born of convenience and, as mentioned earlier, a beneficial trade relationship, they still owed their ultimate loyalty to the true Kion, to whom the Taishi was merely an advisor.

For some of the Oirat, that was enough, and they joined with Dayan and Mandukai from the outset. For others, they had to be, hmm, convinced through battle. Notably, though, there would be no large-scale battles throughout this campaign, in the traditional sense. At most, we are told of a number of medium-sized skirmishes, resulting in moderate casualties. Still, that did not mean that such engagements were without considerable danger. Infamously, in one of her very first engagements, in the thick of combat, Mandukai's helmet slipped off. Given that such warhelms were sized to fit men, it's hardly surprising that this one may not have been sized to her frame.

Still, such a faux pas was about the second worst thing that could happen to a warrior mid-battle, and worse yet so for a commander. After all, of all the places you don't want to get struck with an arrow or a sword, the head is right about at the top of the list. The only thing worse a warrior could lose in the thick of battle would be their mount itself. To dismount and retrieve it would have risked even greater possibility of getting trampled in the chaos, either by the enemy or even by her own side. Now, of all the people who could have possibly noticed Mandukai's loss, it was one of the Oirat.

Because of course it was. Weatherford writes, quote, The queen has no helmet! He called out. Such a cry almost certainly seemed like an invitation to mob her like wolves on a wounded deer. But instead of taking advantage of her unexpected vulnerability, the Oirat soldier shouted for someone to bring another! When it appeared obvious that no one had a spare helmet to offer, he removed his own helmet in the midst of the battle and presented

it to her. End quote. It's unknown just who this soldier was, only that he was Oirat. It's not even known whether he was one of those who had joined with Mandukai from the outset, or perhaps even an especially chivalrous enemy combatant, who nevertheless held reverence and respect for the sanctity of the royal family. Donning her new helmet, the queen charged back into battle with all the more fervor, determined now to turn what could have easily been a morale-shaking sight for her forces, their queen and commander losing her helm in the thick of battle, which was considered a particularly inauspicious sign, into a promise of certain victory,

that she had cast aside fully her old identity and donned this new one as victorious leader and war chief. From the Altan Tobchi, quote, Her enemies swarmed thick as dust, but she fell upon them and destroyed them utterly and annihilated them. End quote. At the end of the day, the enemy Oirat army had surrendered completely, and she ordered that their leaders, who had shown themselves as disloyal to the Great Khan and his Khatun, be put to death.

Victory in battle on the steppes typically meant the imposition of new and punitive laws over the defeated. This was usually of relatively little material significance, but symbolically important, and so it was here. Mandukai stipulated that thenceforth, the Uyrat helmets could have crests no taller than two finger lengths, that they were no longer allowed to call any of their Gur homes palaces or ordun, and when in the presence of Khans, they must sit on their knees. Weatherford also mentions that the texts claim that they were no longer allowed to use knives and had to instead gnaw on their meat, but then dismisses such an outlandish possibility, saying, quote, such a law probably never existed. But Mandukai may have confiscated their knives as a security

measure, thereby temporarily depriving them of their knives for eating meat until they were again allowed to acquire them, end quote. At long last, the Mongols were once again united in truth under their great Khan and his warrior Khatun. They controlled the strategically vital region of Zav Khan, and thereby firmly held the regions of western Mongolia. Now added to the strength, Unabalad's loyalty gave her over the eastern reaches. At least as important to this victory over the Oirats and their reintegration within the Yekemonko Ulos, though, was its importance in a symbolic and propagandistic sense. Mandukai had entreated for the twin blessings of Tangri, Eternal Blue Sky, and that of the First Queen, Eshi-Katun. But there had been many doubts, likely even within herself, as to whether her desperate prayers had even been heard, much less granted. Now there could be little doubt indeed. Mandukai Khatun had demonstrated that she

ruled the Mongol nation, not just in a ritual sense, but in a very real, battlefield sense, sharing the dangers of war with the very troops she asked loyalty of. And as for young Dayan Khan, a little boy in a box in the rear of the battlefield he might still be, but that wasn't nothing either. There's a good reason any team has a mascot, a rallying point, and a figure to cheer them on. And by not only stepping forth to claim the dangerous and uncertainty of the Khanhood, but then also making his way across Mongolia to cheerlead his troops, this sickly, semi-crippled seven-year-old boy had shown more personal bravery in the face of deadly danger, and yes, even a type of leadership and inspiration in its own way, than many so-called Khans had displayed throughout their entire lives,

just by virtue of being present. Dayan Khan, too, had earned his measure of respect. And so next time, Queen Mandukai will continue her campaign to reunite Mongolia as a whole, and Dayan Khan will, against all odds, grow up. Thanks for listening. The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. When a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. I'm Tracy. And I'm Rich. And we want to invite you to join us as we take an in-depth look at this pivotal era in American history. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts.