The History of China - #238 - Yuan 19.1: She-Wolf & Cub

Episode Date: July 31, 2022

ca. 1470-1480 CE Under the tutelage of his queen Mandukhai, Dayan Khan grows from helpless boy to leader of men, learning along the way that vengeance is a dish best served cold. Part 1 of 2 (whole version available at https://www.patreon.com/thehistoryofchina): Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 238, She-Wolf and Cub There was a female swan who hadn't found her lover. She searched for him endlessly, and found him lastly. They were delighted in their late-found love, and they loved each other as though nothing else mattered. A happy news of expecting came, promised each other to be together forever. Married in their father lake, love and happiness followed. Seven offspring were born to them. How beautiful

was life, how tasty was happiness. The sun went down, here came the chill. The moon went dark and hid behind the clouds. Fierce cold came, and the water body chilled, frozen the streams and the whole earth. It was time to travel back to warm land, but her signets were too young. They tried so hard to fly with half-grown feathers. She took her young ones under her wings to save them from coldness, sacrificed her life, and left this world. As the fire of her eyes quenched, her tears stayed pouring. As the last breath left her body, her heartache was still there. Died in her tears for half-grown feathers, the Mother Swan.

Departed in lullabying between sleeping and awake, the Mother Swan. From The Legend of Mother Swan by The Who. Last time, Dayan Khan began his rule over the Mongols as a weak and damaged boy strapped into a basket on a horse-drawn cart, riding off to war with his regent and wife, Queen Mandukai's newly reformed army. Together, well, with Dayan acting as team mascot, they reforged Mongolia into a united front, and now began to plan their next move against those who would seek to shatter that newfound unity. Dayan's childhood was, in almost every respect, highly unusual. Not that,

as nominal great Khan of the 15th century, he was a child king, no, that was pretty typical. Rather, that the warlord who ruled in his name, Mandukai, had every intent of having him actually grow up to rule and lead for himself. That hadn't happened in more than a century, at least. It had proved far easier for the Taishis and other regents to, when the time came, simply swap out one child king for another when the first was getting dangerously close to coming of age. This could mean subbing the boy out with a brother or cousin if one was handy, or it could mean having the boy produce an heir of his own in his early teens. But it inevitably wound up with the unfortunate pre-teen figurehead winding up face down in a ditch somewhere on the steps once that replacement had been procured. In other cases, such as that

of Mandul, the old Khan from the first episode of this arc, the Taishi had chosen him because he was an ambitious old man who could be stuffed out of the way in the middle of nowhere and trusted not to get any delusions of grandeur. Mandukai, however, for whatever reason, clearly never had any such infanticidal intention. From the start, Mandukai's actions made it clear that she planned for Dayan Khan to rule. He would be a fully functioning and ruling Khan, not a figurehead. Mandukai could have easily left him under the charge of nurses or have built a small, isolated camp for him in one of the many canyons in the Gobi or the Altai Mountains. She could have sent him to live in the remote steppe

where she had lived with her first husband, Mandul. Instead, they bore the campaign hardships together. Although we have no quotes from him at this time in his life, he might well have said the same words that Genghis Khan said to his most loyal followers. When it was wet, we bore wet together. When it was cold, we bore cold together. End quote. Markedly unlike Tamajin of old, with his four unruly, rowdy, and ultimately destructively undisciplined sons, Mandukai had no surfeit of heirs. She had only this one boy, not even her own blood, but completely dependent on her, and she was determined to serve him and his interests to the best of her ability, and to see that he grew from hobbled, sickly boy into a true Mongol leader. Under her protection, in time, the young Dayan Khan would do just that, and rekindle the till then smoldering embers of the Borjigin hearth fire.

Reunited though the northern Mongol peoples now were, they nonetheless faced great threats to their revitalized nation. Both the Islamic warlords of the Silk Road to the south, and the Ming dynasty to the southeast, held firm to their claims of suzerainty over the Mongol nation, who now, with the capture of the Zau Khan Valley, controlled the richest supply of horses on earth. Horses meant trade and riches. Horses meant cavalry and military power. Horses, in short, were the most invaluable resources of the entire region.

So long as the Mongolian tribes remained fractured and infighting, it was easy enough for the Oasis warlords and Ming Chinese alike to roll in and trade with whoever controlled the region at that time, with minimal danger and maximum bargaining power. A united Mongolian front, on the other hand, meant the possibility of harder bargains being struck by the steppe nomads, and even potentially a complete shutdown in those avenues of trade altogether. A truly horrifying prospect. Moreover, the Islamic warlords and Ming court alike still remembered the damage inflicted on each of them the last time the Mongols had even semi-unified under Essen. Great Ming in particular could and would never forget its abject moment of total humiliation of getting its entire army wiped out and its very emperor taken captive in 449 at Tumu

Fortress. Suffice it to say, neither of these southern powers were keen on living through yet another upsurge in Mongolian power. Such were the type of nightmare scenarios that would have kept even high court ministers bolting upright in their beds in the middle of the night in a cold sweat. The main court sought time and again to curtail the rising threat of a united Mongolia by choking it off from its access to trade goods. Given the geography of Asia, the Mongols had precious few options when it came to finding markets for their own export products, namely horses and other animal products. And by precious few, I essentially mean China or nowhere. Everywhere else that might have been interested in such products was so ludicrously far away or otherwise inaccessible that you might as well be talking about seeking trade relations with the moon. As such, the imperial court of Beijing would again and again try to either stop completely,

or at least heavily regulate and control Sino-Mongol trade, limiting it only to a few designated places and only at specific periods of the year. The thought was that it would keep the stepwriters forever dependent on Chinese goods, and thus forever in a weak enough state to not pose a serious problem. The issue with this, however, was, as ever, the breakdown between the high-minded, courtly economic strategy being sat down by the learned men in brocade robes and long fingernails in the halls of the Forbidden City, and conditions on the frontier borders themselves.

Now, we've dedicated entire episodes of this show, previously, to explore just this communication breakdown between the palace and the frontier garrisons. So just to sum it up, the soldiers out there on the northern front didn't see things in quite the same way. They didn't want more horses, they needed more horses for the hands-down single most important, by far, wing of the Ming military, the cavalry corps. And if the people charged with guarding the borders against the barbarians needed something from the barbarians that the stuck-up ministers wanted to drastically curtail, well, guess what they're going to do? That's right, they're going to go through black market means to get what they need. Rules be damned. Now, the imperial court did come to understand

this fundamental problem, and to its credit, did try to take steps to address it. For instance, they tried to set aside land to raise their own domestic supply of horses. The problem with that, though, was that horses and farmers tend to like the exact same types of land, and you really can't use it for both. Now, the peasant farmers didn't really care one whit about the needs of far-flung northern cavalry. They needed that land to grow food for them to eat right now. And once that grassland was torn up with plow, it wasn't like it could quickly or easily go back to being pasturage for horses again. In other situations, the Chinese military sought alternative third-party suppliers, which is to say they'd import horses from ridiculously

far away and for ludicrously expensive prices. Places including Korea, Japan, and even far-flung Ryukyu Archipelago, which is modern Okinawa. None of those places, however, could possibly hope to meet the demand for cavalry-worthy steeds that the Ming army was ever hungry for. As such, the northern border, in spite of official prohibitions, remained forever porous to trade. Horses for all the trade and luxury goods that China could provide. And man, oh man, did it cost a pretty penny. It was a seller's market after all. Black markets typically are. And so Mongolian horses could be sold for a premium. Weatherford writes that, quote, the presentation of an average horse by a Mongol required the

payment of a bolt of high quality silk, eight bolts of coarse silk, and a cash payment equal to an additional two bolts of coarse silk. At horse markets maintained along the border, similarly disproportionate terms remained in effect. A good horse required a payment of 120 jin, or 132 pounds, of tea, and even a poor horse required a payment of 50 jin, about 55 pounds, of tea. Not only did the Chinese have to pay for poor-quality horses, as tribute, they even had to pay for horses that died on the way to presentation. End quote. Chock full of enemies as the lands south of the Gobi were, for Mandukai, they were also her homeland, where she'd grown up before being carted off to Nowheresville, Mongolia, to marry Mandul Khan. This intimate knowledge of the region certainly gave her a

strategic advantage in any attempt to conquer it over the early flailing attempts of Genghis Khan, for instance. Yet it was likewise true that sentimentality and nostalgia in themselves are singularly poor rationales for waging any war, much less one of conquest. Fortunately, that did not seem to be the driving motivation for Queen Mandukai as she turned her forces southward. Her aims were both economic and strategic. He, or she, who controlled the Silk Road, controlled all trade in and out of the Ming Empire. It had already been well proven that the Ming were in little position to hold the western reaches past Gansu itself, and would tolerate foreign possession over them. At least, and maybe more importantly though, was the fact that any unity within the ever-fractious

Mongol clans would only last as long as she brought them the goods. Looping the Mongol nation back into the Trans-Eurasian network at all would be good. Controlling it at the chokepoint, however, would be even better. And until that trade-based eventuality could be realized, channeling her Mongols' hostility towards one another against outward foreign foes was the safest bet at making sure that the whole enterprise didn't just come flying apart before the objective could be achieved. As ironic as it might seem, a protracted peace would be potentially fatal to the enterprise, while keeping up the constant drumbeat of war

posed actually the least risk. Yet it's important to note here that Mandukai did not, neither at this point nor later on, ascribe to the grandiose vision of total world domination like the Borgegans of old. Rather, she sought to carve out a place of prominence and importance in the world, but one of stability as well. Quote, Mandukai pursued a strategy of geographic precision, better to control the right spot rather than be responsible for conquering, organizing, and running a massive empire of reluctant subjects." Such overreaching delusions of grandeur had spelled the downfall and destruction of many a prior would-be Great Khan, and she did not intend to follow such a foredoomed path. Better to control just the right spot than wrestle the entire beast. Fortunately for Mandukai, at this point both the Ming Empire and the Southern Mongols still loyal to warlords such as Beg Arslan and Ismail Taishi which, as mentioned before, made up the vast majority of the Mongol people as a whole, were both too busy engaging in one

another to be much interested in contending with the Northern Mongols or their upstart queen. The continued disintegration of Ming defenses and the lack of willpower to engage in any real strategy to contend with the raids along their northern borders emboldened the southern Mongols. Ever eager to maximize the profits they could plunder from the tractable south, they heightened the tempo of their own raids. Bit by bit, the Ming had gone from an empire ascendant in the 1440s to an empire back on the defensive by the 1450s, and now by the 1470s and 80s, an empire virtually in retreat, being nibbled away around the edges. The warlord, Beg Arslan, realized that he might, with proper timing and luck,

be able to make a concerted push eastward from his Taklamakan oasis city and take over the Gansu Corridor, the very gateway to China itself. The key to this would be the capture of Yinchuan City, the capital of modern Ningxia Hui autonomous region. As the name implies, this was the capital region of the late Tangut Kingdom of Western Xia, or Xixia, during the reign of Genghis Khan. It had in fact been Yinchuan that had been the last city siege of the great Lord Khan's life, after he had mortally wounded himself in a fall from horseback while hunting in 1225-26. As such, not only was the city a vital location to control the flow of trade in and out of China, it also possessed significant symbolic importance to the Mongols as Genghis's final conquest, and in many respects, the apogee of the empire in spirit, if not size.

He who held Inchuan held the legacy of the Khanate, and attached its support of Genghis and Tangri above. As it stood, Beg Arslan's headquarters in Turfan and Hami were simply too far away from the Gansu Corridor to effectively serve as supply bases for any war of conquest. Thus, he had moved the bulk of his forces to a far closer forward command post, the Ordos Loop, within the Yellow River's Great Bend. This territory, at 83,000 square kilometers, roughly the size of the entire Korean peninsula, was probably the most sought-after piece of territory among the peoples of the steppes. Weatherford elaborates, quote, the river provides for agriculture along its sides if irrigated,

but the interior area can only support grazing. Farmers and sedentary peoples found it alien and hostile, but the Mongols found it inviting and comforting for their aesthetic sensibilities and beneficial to their pastoral way of life. It formed a miniature Mongolia, only farther south and with a more benign climate, end quote. It was in the new year of 1472 that an army of Mongols, but almost certainly under the command of Beg Arslan himself, attacked in force into the Ordos Loop and decisively defeated the poorly disciplined and trained conscript Ming garrison force that guarded it. By the following year, the Ming court, taking the advice of the long-put-upon military commander Wang Yue, who had commanded the undermanned, isolated, and ultimately doomed defensive garrison of the Ordos in its gallant

but futile fight against the previous Mongol push, had decided to make the retreat out of the area permanent. Now, we get into a lot more of the ins and outs of the Ming court policies and bickering and near-comical levels of disastrous indecision at the highest echelons in the Ming series, starting from about episode 230 on the reconstruction of the Great Wall, which is right about at this time. But suffice it to say, for our purposes, the days of Chinese hemming and hawing over whether to commit to an offensive

or continue to cool their heels on a permanent rearguard defensive, we're reaching a decided middle right about now. As for himself, Commander Wang was able to get the go-ahead to launch a surprise attack against Beg Arslan, as a Central Asian commander began his push against Ningxia directly. Wang would not attempt to strike the Mongol armies directly. Such a tactic had, time and again, for centuries at this point, proved to be pretty much useless. By the time a Ming strike force could respond to a Mongol raid, the step-riders had already long since moved on to some other target. It was like trying to play whack-a-mole, but you're heavily sedated, and the mole is on speed. Instead, Wang decided to strike a far easier target,

the Mongol raiders' civilian base camp, which his spies had just so happened to locate near the Red Salt Lake. With a force of some 10,000 cavalry, Commander Wang marched out from his garrison fort against the unsuspecting winter encampment. Marching some 60 miles in the course of two days and nights, they moved at nearly the speed of a tumen. As the Ming force approached the camp, it split into two pinchers to surround the civilians. An effective strategy used by the Ming forces in earlier fights with the Mongols involved trapping them along a river or lake that prevented their fleeing. Unable to swim, the Mongols could either die by drowning or by slaughter at the hands of the attackers. Perhaps intended, or maybe by simple luck,

Wang's attack came at one of the windiest times of the year, which managed to kick up a dust storm large and violent enough to almost entirely obscure his strike force's advance, both visually and audibly. As such, they were able to achieve almost complete surprise, an almost singular rarity against the typically very keenly observant sentries of the steppe. They fell upon the unsuspecting camp, killing, by Chinese accounts, some 350 Mongols and raiding most of their supplies. Understanding that those who had escaped would surely race to beg Arslan himself and inform him of their surprise attack, Wang decided that instead of beating a retreat, he would set up his men in ambush and await the main Mongol forces' arrival.

In due course, the Mongol warriors returned in haste to their camp and found the ruins of their homes and families. This broke their morale so thoroughly that, when set upon by the Ming troops waiting in ambush, they did little more than abandon the majority of the loot they'd raided from the Chinese cities across Ningxia and retreated directly across the frozen Yellow River and back to the Gobi beyond. Commander Wang himself proudly reported back to the imperial court, quote, When the unfortunate Mongols learned of the massacre of their wives and children, they fled with tears in their eyes, and for a long time afterwards did not show up in He Tao. End quote. For the time being at least, Begarslan and his

Mongols' dream of seizing Yinchuan for their own was defeated, and insofar as the Chinese were concerned, they vanished back across the wasteland to places unknown. History isn't black and white, yet too often it's presented as such. Grey History, The French Revolution is a long-form history podcast dedicated to exploring the ambiguities and nuances of the past. By contrasting both the experiences of contemporaries and the conclusions of historians, Grey History dives into the detail and unpacks one of the most important and disputed events in human history. From a revolution based on hope and liberty to its descent into the infamous reign of terror,

there's plenty to discuss and plenty of grey to explore. One can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution. So if you're looking for your next long-form, binge-worthy history podcast, one recommended by universities and loved by enthusiasts, then check out Grey History The French Revolution today, or simply search for The French Revolution. But far from castigating the stepwriters into accepting their blower and defeated position, it lit the fire of vengeance in their hearts. From that time forward, Begarzlan's primary focus would be bent on returning to reclaim the Ordos from the Chinese, and exacting every ounce of the blood shed through such treachery.

As for the Ming, in typical fashion of the time, rather than capitalizing on the Mongols' retreat and retaking the Ordos in force, they waffled. The imperial court did not want to pay the upkeep cost of guarding such a vast, and in their estimation, unprofitable, region as the Ordos Loop, and so simply abandoned it to focus on their long-wall construction project south of the area. Which was, of course, a completely excellent idea that would never ever prove short-sighted or come back around to bite them. For Queen Mandukai, news of this Chinese victory was grounds for only limited, if any, celebration. Yes, her foe in Beg Arslan had

been humiliated and defeated, but he was still alive. His army had lost many women and children, but very few warriors. Moreover, they were now back north of the Gobi, much closer and therefore more immediately dangerous to her own position. Worse yet, the Ming's turn inward towards its construction of its vaunted Great Wall, rather than active military pursuit of the southern Mongols, meant that she could not rely on the Chinese to hunt down and dispatch the Islamic warlords for themselves. As with so much else in her life, if Mandukai wanted a thing done right, she'd have to do it herself. As such, she began wheeling and dealing, making alliances with any faction of the southern Mongols that she might, in order to smooth the path towards her vision of

ultimately uniting the two halves of her people on either side of the Gobi. She knew she dared not try to engage Beg Arslan and Ismail Taishi at once, or she'd surely be doomed. It's unclear whether she actually entered into an alliance of convenience with Ismail, or if perhaps a rift between the two southern warlords simply developed on its own. Whatever the mechanism, it is recorded that she made her move against Beg Arslan at a time when the Taishi and his forces were conspicuously absent. She, through marriage ties, and surely a good dose of old-fashioned wheeling and dealing, was able to form an alliance with one of the major powers of the Southlands, a contingent of clans and lineages known collectively as the Three Guards.

This name stemmed from their former profession as sworn border guards to the Ming, a job they'd all effectively resigned en masse from about 30 years prior when they ditched their posts and joined up with SN Taishi round about 1448. Following SN's untimely and violent demise, they'd become mercenaries and raiders, quote, following first one and then another leader while raiding and extorting the Chinese when they could, end quote. In time, they came to serve under Begarslan, but with his pulling back westward, they became physically more distant, ultimately straining the relationship to and then past its breaking point. In the Mongol chronicles, as is fairly typical, large-scale political events are

told in terms of personal events. As such, the major break between Beg Arslan and the three guards is presented not as the sociopolitical sands shifting underfoot, but as a singular act of cruelty and deception by the Muslim warlord. The leader of the three guards visited Beg Arslan's gur and noticed that the warlord was sipping from a bowl of freshly made butter soup. The guard commander asked for some, but Beg Arslan managed to stealthily swap out his cooled bowl for one that had just been poured from the boiling pot. The chieftain, not realizing the old switcheroo and having just seen the war lord gulping from his bowls without difficulty, eagerly drank deep into the savory-smelling dish. Weatherford writes, quote, Mongols pride themselves on their ability to abide both heat and cold. Dropping or refusing food is too hot shows unmanly weakness.

Spitting food out is an unforgivable insult, end quote. The guard commander thus felt he had no choice but to hold the boiling liquid in his mouth until it was cool enough to swallow, causing the entire inside of his palate to burn. Outwardly, he pretended that nothing was wrong, but he silently vowed, quote, Until I die, I shall never forget this hate. One day, I shall think of it. End quote. Was it truly a burned tongue from soup that split the three guards from Beg Arslan? Unlikely, but it's an amusing, and probably metaphorical, tale. By showing such disrespect and cruelty towards his underlings, the warlord would have effectively alienated them to the point

that they were willing to hear out competing offers of employment. As such, when Mandukaya and Dayan Khan rolled in with their insider track of marriage and kinship ties, the three guards apparently wasted little time in ditching Begarslan and joining up with them instead. It would be in the year 1479 or thereabout that Dayan Khan would lead his first command in reality rather than just nominally. He would be about 15 or 16 at the time and would lead his army, that is rather than just nominally. He would be about 15 or 16 at the time and would lead his army, that is the forces of Unabullad as well as those of the three guards, against Obeg Arslan's position. A spy was sent forth to locate the warlord's campsite, and in relatively short order was able to find it. He premised his visit on being sick and needing

medicine. Though Obeg Arslan did give the apparently in-need wanderer a cup of medicinal liquor before sending him on his way, the unexpectedlan did give the apparently in-need wanderer a cup of medicinal liquor before sending him on his way, the unexpected arrival did raise the warlord's hackles of suspicion. And so he did what any reasonable, logical man of the 15th century would do. He consulted an oracle. As they so often do, the soothsayer gave him an ambiguous answer to his query, which itself proved enough of an alarm bell for Begarslan to summon his army to him, out of an overabundance of caution. As luck would have it, though, his forces had scattered far and wide in search of fodder for their herds, as the times were exceedingly dry and growth was minimal.

As such, when the approaching dust cloud of Dayan Khan's army appeared on the horizon on rapid approach, not nearly enough of his own men had yet heeded his call to assemble. With nothing more than his few personal bodyguards, he was forced to tuck tail and flee. Dayan Khan's outriders saw his flight and the Mongol army pursued. In desperation, Begarslan traded his distinctive helmet with one of his bodyguards, and then had him ride in an opposite direction to lure the attacking army away from the leader. Though this gambit initially worked, the decoy was quickly caught up with and captured. To save his own life, he pointed out the direction that the real Beg Arslan had ridden. The details of the final leg of this pursuit are typical of Mongol chronicles, terse to the point of being almost laconic. From the Altan Tobchi,

they caught up with Beg Arslan and seized him, and killed him in the depression of the Kilgir. It is said that salt grew at the place where he was killed. End quote. Dayan Khan had been born when his own father, Bayan Monk, the Golden Prince, was just 14. A not at all unusual age of marriage and beginning of family for a young man of the steppes in the 15th century. Yet great Khan, though he was, Dayan passed his 14th and then 15th birthdays without taking a wife in truth. We mentioned before the political marriage to Queen Mandakai, but that, of course, had been in name only as the boy had grown. Now, there was no stated or legal difference in Mongol culture between engagement

and marriage itself, save only that typically the groom-to-be would be expected to serve at the bride-to-be's family home for a period of months to even years, as a sort of payment via labor known as bride service. During that time, the boy would not only serve the family, but the pair would be monitored and assessed for mutual compatibility. Assuming that was met, they would get to know each other better and develop a relationship in time, until the two were deemed ready to be married in truth and consummate their union. Obviously, none of that had ever been on the table for this pair of effective orphans, Mandukai and Dayan. Yet, in a sense, perhaps, there was still something of that going on. Weatherford writes, quote,

While exempt from formal bride service, in a sense Dayan Khan was performing it by proving himself capable to fulfill his duties as Great Khan, end quote. His not only leading his army in battle, but capturing and killing the Mongols' greatest enemy to date must have served as a powerful proof that he had passed that test with flying colors. As such, in or around the year 1480, the 16-year-old Dayan Khan and the 30- or 31-year-old Mandukai Khatun became husband and wife in truth, as well as king and queen. They renewed their vows to each other and began to cohabitate. Somewhat unusually for a marriage, even one as already unusual as this, was that the pair did not produce a child for the first couple of years. Whether this was due to a

slow easing of the relationship into sexuality, or any number of other possible factors, including just the vagaries of biology, it wasn't until the third year of their adult marriage that Mandukai became pregnant. In 1482, however, they certainly began to make up for lost time, with twins right out the gate. And that was just the beginning. Over the following dozen years, the couple would wind up having eight children. Seven boys, one girl, and those seven boys included three sets of twins. Now, the choice of a name for one's child or children is, of course, one of the most important and first decisions for any parent, and so too it was for Dayan and

Mandukai. Just as with her husband's regnal title, Mandukai had preselected names for her children steeped in symbolic meaning. All of her sons would incorporate the name Bolid, meaning steel. Her first two twin boys, for instance, would be given the names Turbolid and Ulusbolid, meaning, respectively, steel government and steel nation. Their third son was Bbald, Steel Tiger. By 1483, Dayan Khan and Mandukai Khatun, as co-rulers, controlled the entirety of Mongolia and its peoples north of the Gobi, as well as a strong alliance with the regional leaders of the Mongols southeast and south-central of the desert.

The one-time lackey of Begarslan, Ismail Taishi, was forced to pull back his own forces to the Hami oasis, and thereafter took in the remnants of the slain warlords' forces that had managed to effect their escape. This retreat was, however, little comfort. The Mongol nation would need to constantly remain on guard and looking over its shoulder for as long as the Taishi remained free and active, for, quote, he certainly would not sit idly at Hami pursuing the life of a melon farmer or winemaker. If the Mongols showed any sign of weakness or distraction, he would return. End quote. His very existence served as an ever-looming foil to the assertion of royal control over the Southlands. After all, what force could the Great Khan or his queen really hope to exert when anyone

dissatisfied with their dictums could just defect over to Ismail at any moment. Quite simply, he had to go. There was, however, a significantly more personal reason for Dayan Khan to wish to remove Ismail from the picture. The fact that by this point nearly twenty years prior, the Taiji had stolen away his very mother, Saiker, and thereby unintentionally set the infant Batu monk upon this path. And it was as much a law of the step as a sun rising in the morning that one ill turn deserved another. Prior to this point, the great Khan had apparently expressed little, if any, interest in his birth family. But that had been changing as of late. Quote, now that he was fully grown and had become a father, some new longing awoken him to connect again with his original family that had been shattered so soon after his birth."

One of the difficulties any such operation against Ismail's holdout at Hami was that it was located across a vast and almost completely barren strip of wastelands between the Gobi and the Taklamakan, which could not provide enough grass to sustain a sizable cavalry force. So instead, it was decided that they were going to have to Rainbow Six this. Sometime around 1484, an elite strike force was assembled to undertake and complete the twin objectives of capturing or killing Ismail and bringing back Dayan Khan's mother safely. The majority of this force were of Mandukai's own birth people, the Choros clan. She not only trusted them implicitly, but they were from that very region and knew it well. The commander was a man called Toguchi Sugusu, and he would lead this force, probably 200 to 250 strong,

divided into the typical Mongol squadrons of 10, each under their own experienced officer, to Hami and execute these objectives. The chronicle suggests that by this point, Ismail may have actually lost the majority of the support he'd once held. He lived not in Hami itself, but on the desert flats just outside it, where he, quote, did not actually control the city so much as harass its inhabitants, end quote. This may have been due to the logistical constraints of such a harsh environment, much the same as what Dayan Khan's strike force was assembled to overcome, such that the Taishi's forces had been widely dispersed so as to have enough to eat.

Ultimately, they may have just deserted the aging warlord entirely. In either case, it's stated that he no longer had sufficient forces at his disposal to so much as post a reasonable sentry guard. As such, when Dayan Khan's strike force was detected on approach, Ismail saddled up one of his horses and rode out by himself, alone, to investigate. Perhaps he thought it was a contingent of his men returning to him, or maybe a trade mission to his little desert camp. As the lone rider approached this incoming mystery force, Commander Togachi Segusa was able to make a positive identification that this was, in fact, Ismael himself. Ismael still suspected nothing and rode yet closer into the effective range of Mongol bows. Commander Segusa knocked his arrow and fired. Being the experienced marksman that he was, his first shot found home, burying the shaft deep into the Taishi's chest. And it was

thus, without battle or fanfare, that Ismail slumped over and fell from his horse to the hard-packed desert ground, dead. Weatherford puts it, quote, His death came more as a final settling of scores than as a sustained struggle between adversaries. In a certain way, the killing in the desert paralleled the killing of the golden prince in the Gobi, end quote. Vengeance, that dish that is as ever best served cold, had been supped upon at last by the son of Bayan Monk.

Only time would tell, however, if that would ever cycle back around on him. The death of Ismail took care of one part of the strike force's mission, and so now it was time for the second objective. Racing to the fallen Taishi's camp before anyone else could realize what had happened in the desert and attempt to flee, the force pillaged and looted to their heart's content. In the midst of all this, Commander Seguse found Dayan Khan's mother, Syker. She sat quietly in her own gur, unmoving and making no attempt to escape. She would not attempt to fight these invaders, but nor would she accept or go along with any of their plans to quote-unquote rescue her,

and she declared as much to the Mongol commander. It had been, after all, two decades, and in that time, she had not only come to accept her status as Ismael's wife, but accepted him as her husband and raised a family with him. Two sons, named Babutai and Bumai. She had lost a son once, a lifetime ago, and she was not now willing to be parted with these two, not even on behalf of the first child, whose life she had barely known. Quote, she surely had expected that this day would eventually come. Perhaps she sometimes longed for it, and sometimes feared it. Now that the would-be rescuers had arrived, she was not happy to see them. She seemed to hope that if she refused to cooperate,

they would leave her. End quote. Those were not Commander Sagusa's orders, however. After repeatedly asking, then cajoling, and even threatening her as to why she was crying rather than celebrating her liberation from her husband's murderer, she still refused to answer. In such a moment, who could possibly know what rushing mix of emotions she might feel? It seems likely that she'd said nothing because she didn't have the words to describe the confusion and discord such a situation presented her. At length, with her still mute and uncooperative, Segusa ordered the twice-wittered woman to be seized by his men and forcibly put on a mount to make ready their return to Dayan Khan's encampment. The rest of the camp residents were taken prisoner, including Syker's two sons, by Ismail,

and their goods and possessions seized as war booty. Upon the strike force's return to the great Khan's camp, Togolche Segusi victoriously announced to his awaiting king, quote, I have killed the one who was envious of you. I have subdued the one who hated you, end quote. He then presented to the young monarch the mother he hadn't seen since he was an infant. Yet even now, Syker seems to have been unmoved by this reunion. She had lost her first son, Batu Monk, a lifetime ago, and she had no connection to this Dayan Khan, who regarded her now, upon whose orders her husband of twenty years had been murdered,

and her two living sons' father taken forever, and all three of them now rendered his prisoner. What was there to say? What could there have been to say? What relationship was there to reconcile? Had there ever been? Yes, she had given birth to him, but the woman who had raised him, first his mother, then his queen, and now his wife, sat beside him. Mandukai, not Syker. There was no place for this aged woman stranger in the Great Khan's present or in his future, no more so than she'd been a part of his past. They would prove to be irrevocably lost to one another, and always had been, but it had taken this meeting to finally confirm that with the saddened Great Khan. Syker, and presumably her sons, were nevertheless kept on at the royal encampment. In time, the mother of the Great Khan would be proclaimed Empress Dowager, but this pleased her little, if at all. Shortly thereafter, she died.

Less is known about the ultimate fate of her two younger sons, Dayan's half-brothers. One way or another, they pass out of the tale as well, leaving Dayan much as he'd been before this, emotionally alone, save only for his queen Mandukai. Well, not only Mandukai. For around this time, the Khan and Khatun welcomed into the world their first daughter, who was named Torultu, meaning roughly, Life-Giver. They would go on to have five more sons over the subsequent ten years. Barsbold, the Steel Tiger. Asubold, the Steel Lion.

Then Aljubold, Ochiabold, and finally Arabold. Unfortunately, these last three I could not find translations for, but they really don't factor into much of any of the chronicles, so oh well. Weatherford notes, interestingly, that after having given birth to their first set of twin sons, a ready-made heir and spare, this presented both Mandukai and Dayan with a litany of options regarding their relationship status that were so common to the steppe, but almost unheard of anywhere else. He writes that they, quote, could have straightforwardly terminated their relationship, or, if they had been so inclined, disposed of each other. With such heirs, Mandukai could have ruled as regent without sharing power.

Had she wished to live with Unabullad, for example, she could have easily rid herself of her husband and taken whomever she wished, end quote. So too with Dayan. Had he wished, he could at this point have arranged for Mandukai to be retired to some distant valley in the Altan Mountains, safely out of the way, or simply ordered her death, and taken up with his choice of another woman or women. Quote, Many rising young soldiers would be anxious to curry favor with the monarch by committing such an act,

by testifying against her in a trial, or by assisting in any one of a dozen other methods to dispose of an unwanted queen. Such killings of Khans and Khatuns had occurred routinely among the Mongols in the generations since the successful attacks on Genghis Khan's daughters, end quote. Horrifying as all that is, it's all the more a testament to the fact that both Mandukai and Dayan opted, and indeed actively decided, to stick together, and apparently to great mutual affection. As their sons grew older, they were sent to live with the families of close allies, both to learn from them as a kind of apprenticeship, and also to acquaint them with the myriad peoples they would one day be tasked with ruling. They likewise provided a direct link between the Khan and Khatun themselves, and those regional tribal leaders

within the nation. End of part one. Hi everyone, this is Scott. If you want to learn about the world's oldest civilizations, find out how they were rediscovered, follow the story of Mark Antony and Cleopatra's descendants over ten generations, or take a deep dive into the Iron Age or the Hellenistic era, then check out the Ancient World Podcast. Available on all podcasting platforms or go to ancientworldpodcast.com. That's the Ancient World Podcast.