The History of China - #283 - Qing 22: Crimson Snow

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

The Kangxi Emperor ruthlessly tracks down Galdan Khan, leaving him and his followers with nowhere to turn and nowhere to hide. The end draws close... Please support the show!: patreon.com/thehistoryofchina Time Period Covered: 1697-8 CE Major Historical Figures: Qing Dynasty: The Kangxi Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Xuanye) [r. 1654-1722] Jean-Francois Gerbillon, Puritan Missionary Tómas Pereira, Puritan Missionary Gen. Fiyanggu Gen. Sunsike Dzungar Mongols: Galdan, the Boshugtu Khan [r. 1679-1697] Lamist Tibetans: The Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso [1683- after 1706] sDe-pa Desi Sangye Gyampo [1653-1705] Major Sources Cited: Perdue, Denis. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Four hundred years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the History of China. Episode 282, Crimson Snow It was not me who wanted to penetrate deeply into China. It was the Dalai Lama's order.

He said that a southern expedition would be auspicious. The Dalai Lama has killed me, and I have killed you people. Galdan Khan of the Jungars, to the remnants of his people, 1697. I vow to send another large army to Yunnan, Sichuan, or Shanxi. Following the precedent of Galdan, I will personally lead an army to punish you. The Kangxi Emperor, in a proclamation to Galdan, 1697. We are going to begin today with a punishment.

One of the highest order, and done in a way that is designed to maximize its impact across, for all intents and purposes, the whole world, or at least the parts of it that matter. This is a state execution, as personally ordered and overseen by the most powerful man on, oh, at the very least, the entire continent of Asia. And this punishment is going to be carried out before the throngs of capital denizens, all cheering for the grisly task to be done. Executions are, by design, performances. They always have been. Now, in the modern era, we often like to pretend that we're all beyond such visceral displays. We've evolved past that need. We typically hide it behind walls and prison bars, rather than display it prominently in the town square. But they nevertheless remain performances. It all relies on everyone, executioners and condemned alike, to play their assigned part in the ritual of death that is taking place.

Executions are rituals. We admit this openly. Everything from the methodology, to the last meal, the final words, the hood cowl, is a ritualistic purging of that crime, both physically and from the people or the state as a whole. Executions are symbols. They are meant to demonstrate state power and command over life and death, and to serve up examples of those who would breach the laws of the peace. They serve as a warning to others. So, if executions are performances, rituals, and symbols, who says they need to be conducted on the living? Yes, the execution we are beginning with today is none other than that of Galdan Khan of the Jungars, at the hands of his victorious nemesis, the Kangxi Emperor of Great Qing.

Or at least, on what's left of him. Because Galdan is already dead, and he's been so for a while. And so the Emperor's victory is somewhat marred. Because he can crush his enemy's bones to powder and scatter them to the winds, and believe me, he will. He can remove Galdan's head and have it paraded through all 49 banners of the Khalkha Mongols. And believe me, he will. He can have his follower disassembled over hours and days, sliced by agonizing slice via Ling Che, and he will. But he can't do what he really wants, what he's needed now for years.

To kill Galdan. Because Galdan has left the building. Chinese custom demands ritual in many aspects of life, both daily and auspicious, and capital punishment is certainly no exception. Peter Perdue writes, Major rebels, however, because of the sheer scale of their crimes, were well beyond the ordinary violation of the law. In fact, if Galdan were treated as a rival power, his actions would not amount to a crime at all, since he would have been playing by different rules. So, Galdan had to be reduced to a common criminal, but treated to a punishment even more extreme than for a common rebel.

Although death by slicing was intended to ensure that the victim's soul could not survive, crushing bones to powder and scattering them over a parade ground went even further. It was a degree of obliteration not found in the penal code. It represented the ultimate in imperial erasure of an enemy from both the human and cosmic realms. The determination to eradicate totally Galdan's alien presence explains the emperor's tenacious insistence on recovering his body. End quote. I told you, it wasn't over. You thought that somehow, maybe

we'd gotten out of the Galdon Infinity Loop, but we're only one more layer up the simulation. It's Galdon's all the way down, my friends. The lone wolf Khan had escaped again, but only barely, and with perhaps just forty of his own men in tow from the disaster at Jaomoto.

As for the rest, killed, captured, or dispersed to the four winds. But the Kangxi Emperor had tasted the Jengar Lord's blood this time, and he did not now mean to stop until he'd been assured of the kill. Yet, at least for the time being, that would, once again, need to wait. Quote, Conditions were unpropitious for a third expedition in 1696. The West army still desperately lacked food. Its horses were exhausted, its carts were all broken, and relief grain from the Central Army had not yet arrived.

As for Galdan, he was, with effort, able to either find or re-link up with not even 5,000 of his people by some point after Jaomoto, but to call such a bedraggled, defeated, and shattered group even a force, much less an army, would be to beggar belief. He led them, what we can really only call a refugee caravan at this point, first to Wangjin, which posed a decision point. From there, Galdan could turn his paltry band northwest and make to attack the oasis city of Hami at the far mouth of the Gansu Corridor. Or he could turn southwest and make the trek across the Tibetan highlands for the presumed safety of Lhasa and the Dalai Lama. Unfortunately, time was working against him at both ends. Already, the Kangxi Emperor had ordered his general, Fiyangu, to send his heavy artillery back to the capital, burn all provisions that they could not

carry to prevent its capture, and then to make with all haste to block Galdan's further aggression. For their own part, Galdan's own lieutenants weren't helping in this either. The Khan met with his fellows, Danjila and Arabdan, but they could not come to any agreement as to what to do next. Quote, Galdan wanted to seize grain at Wangjin and march on Hami. Danjila favored heading for the Altai. Arabdan wanted to loot the Russian area. End quote. As ever, the complex, semi-parliamentarian style of inter-Khanate politics proved to be an, ironically, further hobble at this point. With a majority set against him, even as the Khan, Galdan could make no firm decision. In short order, Arabdan broke camp in frustration and departed with his own host of 2,000 men.

That left Galdan and Danjila with less than a thousand troops between them. Quote, No tents, no clothing, and no food. His men were only following him to death, searching for a place with land, You Guo Tu Zhi Di. End quote.

Now far too weak to attempt to assault Hami, they instead turned north and headed toward Tamir, near Lake Baikal, the deepest and one of the most remote bodies of fresh water in the world. There, they plundered what they could from the region before setting out, just further on into the wastelands. Perdue writes, By now, Galdan had just one or two horses and no cattle or sheep. Perdue writes, It was, for all intents and purposes, a death march. In the meantime, the Kangxi Emperor's star only continued to rise, and with it came yet new followers. This would notably include the Huihui King Abdul Shitte of Yarkand in far southeastern Xinjiang, on the far side of the brutal vastness of the Taklamakan Desert.

He now personally visited the Kangxi Emperor at his center of power in Beijing. More than a decade prior, in 1682, Kangxi had taken Abdul Shitte's father into his custody at Ili, and was now, the Emperor assured the King, only too happy to return the beloved family patriarch to such an esteemed ally. The deal was thus struck, and the Huihui King vowed to use his 20,000 men at Yarkand to do either of the following tasks, to track down and capture the rogue Galdan, or to march against Turfan and capture his confederate, Arabdan. As for Sewang Rabdan, he was praised for his loyalty to the

Qing throne, reconfirmed in his possession and governance of Hami, and further charged with the capture and summary execution of the rebel Galdan if he should, you know, happen by. Quote, We cannot let Galdan remain in the human world, wrote Kangxi in a missive to the Oirat prince. If he wanders into your territory or flees to Hami, if you capture him, execute him, and send his head to us, this will display your obedience. End quote. him, execute him, and send his head to us. This will display your obedience." As the Qing imperial army paused to allow itself to resupply and re-amass its forces, the Kangxi emperor kept up pressure on Lasha to break from the Depa's pro-Galdan position,

and also had scouts along the roadways to intercept potential messages between the Dalai Lama and the Khan. This did prove successful in confirming that communication was taking place between the two figures, or at least attempting to be done, and that Galdan was asking for the Dalai Lama's further support and, yes, divine intervention in the form of having his sub-Lamas recite sutras in Galdan's favor. And I do just want to take a beat here and linger on that, the asking for support in the form of spiritual protection. In modernity, at least for some of us, that can be sort of easy to almost write off as a kind of meaningless sending thoughts and prayers on the

internet sort of way. But I'm also sure that there are a lot of you out there who either do believe in some way, or at least are close enough to people who do, to know that for people who really do believe in what they believe, that kind of divine intercession is not only sincere, but real. And not in some kind of metaphorical way of real, like how literally now means symbolically, but there are measurable effects as to what that kind of empowerment can have on the real world. I would tend to explain that as the power of human psychology itself, much like the placebo effect, or the D&D idea that it doesn't matter what a paladin believes in so long as they believe it enough. But you could

also call that the bestowment of some kind of divine favor. So, all of this to say is that, even if the Kangshi Emperor doesn't believe that the Tibetan Llamas reciting sutras would have any cosmic effect on the universe, it's still in his interest to stop that from happening so that Galdan and his warriors don't get, like, inspired by the idea of it happening and rally to some improbable victory, let's say. That's the kind of, it has-real-effects I'm talking about. Regardless, by October, the preparations had been finalized, and the army made fully ready to mobilize once again. At least, by the Emperor's reckoning it was. However, his general, Fiongu, still objected, annoying the sovereign to no end. He still hadn't forgiven the commander for having failed to get to his previous rendezvous

point in time to totally entrap Galdan at Jaomoto. Quote, now that Galdan was starving, this was a great opportunity sent from heaven which they could not pass up. End quote. That was good enough for Kangxi, who announced that, on October 14th, 1696, he was set out from the capital on a hunting expedition to the Ordos. Yet in this, the object was not actually to capture or kill the rogue Jungar Khan, a feat still impossible as his specific whereabouts were still unknown. Rather, this was going to be a parade of sorts. This hunting expedition was going to be intended to demonstrate king wealth to the Mongols of the region, hoping to entice all of Galdon's supporters to surrender. I hate to say that it's a classic case of, hey, look at the shiny jangling keys, but the facts are in evidence.

And, as it so often does, it works. Big time. Of course it course it did we are at the very core of all our pretense very simple creatures starvation just strips away any kind of edifice the people love bread and they love circuses the end from fort sumter to the battle of gettysburg the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. The Civil War and Reconstruction was

a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, 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. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. Quote, Hosted by leading lamas in the region, Kangxi traveled at a leisurely pace. 100,000 sheep traveled with him. Passing through Guihua, he reached the shores of the Yellow River on November 22nd,

the site of a large warehouse for rice containing 70,000 shi. Twenty days' supplies were distributed. On the next day, the emperor measured the breadth of the river with his Jesuit surveying instruments, reporting that the grass there was so high you can't see the horses. A week later, he crossed the frozen Yellow River with his supply trains and entered the Ordos region. End quote. From Wangjin, General Fiongu made report that Jungar efforts to raid enemy grain stores had not succeeded, leading to most of the supplies being burned in the attempt and insufficient grain to feed Galdan's rebel troops throughout the region.

Now, the Khan's only hope of resupplying his men before they starved to death or deserted him must be to attack Hami. It cannot be overemphasized just how desperate of a gamble that was for Galdan. He had already written off Hami as being too strong to successfully attack, and that was before, when they had been stronger and better fed. Now, it was essentially his last card to play, should he choose to play it. Or, he could take the possibly equally dangerous second option of just... riding out the winner where he was,

and hoping against hope that their meager provisions could carry at least enough of them through the frozen depths of the season. At this, surprisingly, it was the Emperor, not the Khan, who wavered in his resolve. Quote, Why waste men and horses trying to crush Galdon now, especially since it would be impossible toten their horses over the winter, and let Galdan eke it out in his frozen hovel, only to ride him down at his weakest when spring at last arrived. From Perdue, quote,

The Ordos was a rich region with fine grass for horses and excellent prospects for hunting. In his letter's home, the emperor praised the invigorating fresh air, the wonderful taste of the mutton, and the fine workmanship of the Mongolian saddles. The Mongols, in turn, were extremely impressed with the huge herds of cattle that the Manchus had brought with them. Observing herds of 16,000 cattle and 70,000 sheep for one banner, they said, Since our ancestors' times, we have considered 1,000 to 2,000 head as making a man rich. We have never heard of 10,000 head. End quote. At last, the exhausted men of the western route

army arrived under the command of General Fiong'u, whom the emperor praised for their tremendous endurance and tenacity by hosting a grand celebratory banquet in their honor. Now, at least with adequate supplies, the west route troops were still badly in need of rest and recuperation after their harrowing trek across the wastelands of the Imperial frontier. All signs pointed to the same obvious answer about what to do. They ought to just all stay where they were and recover, while the rebel Jungars all starved and froze to death alone in the snow. Quote, Surrounded on all sides by enemies, he was like an animal in a cage.

End quote. That was the smart play. That was the smart play. That was the right play. But to take my own stab at trying to get into the guy's head for a moment, my read on the Kangxi Emperor was that he felt deep down in his toes that it just wasn't the heroic thing to do. It's obvious by this point what he really wants out of this, isn't it? He wants nothing less than a grand finale. Knock down, drag out, final battle of the Pelennor Fields with himself leading the charge, thanks very much. And waiting around

to just blithely pick through the bones of a winter-ravaged campsite come spring just wasn't going to scratch that itch. He wanted, no, he needed to get to Hami and make that enduring vision of awesomeness come to pass. Fiyangu was first in line to cut right on through that imperial daydream. What do you mean we should decamp? We just got here after nearly dying of exhaustion to do so. Now you're talking about another 1500km march,

mid-winter, so far away that we'd have to leave a sizable portion of the army behind at Suzhou just for lack of rations? Still, the emperor pressed, surely they could at least get as far west as, like, Ningxia so as to be closer to Hami when the weather got better. It was only on December 19th, when he met for the first time with the hollow-faced, skeletonized figures of his actually famished troops from the march that it finally became real to him just how critically, dangerously exhausted his troops were. And, as luck would have it, this moment of stark realization happened to be closely accompanied by a new turn of events. Galdan Khan had sent forward an envoy, Geleguying,

to discuss the Jungar Lord's terms of conditional surrender? Surely this must be too good to be true. Some kind of trick. Fiongu, ever cautious, recommended taking envoy Geleguying captive and holding him at the Qing camp as a precaution. Yet, when presented to the Manchu son of heaven, Geleguying kowtowed before the emperor with dignity and apparent sincerity, vowing that the Jungars sincerely recognized their crimes and

wished to surrender. We Jungars were ignorant. We coveted the wealth and women of the Kalkas and did not realize that heaven's will is without partiality. This was our crime. Now many Jungars want to submit. Our lord cannot be ranked with the Kalkas. End quote. At this, the Kangxi emperor beamed and spoke in reply. Quote,

These words are just. Even though you are foreigners, You understand reason, Li. Galdan is ignorant. He has failed to accept my benevolence. He has chosen his own death. End quote. With that, he offered the surrendering Jungars generous terms.

Nobles would be given official Qing ranks, with others assigned to banner service, while the captive Jungar women and families would be returned. Kangxi took pains to point out that in offering such terms of surrender, he had actually increased his own glory, since unlike other previous rulers who'd lusted after blood and conquest, Kangxi put peace foremost. Perdue writes, The traditional Chinese conception of coerced followers, Xie Cong, also provided grounds

for pardoning even the most treacherous rebels. Offers of wealth and honors were expected to bring around even the stubborn Galdan. And this really gets back to the other side of the coin here for the Kangxi Emperor, the super-ego balancing out his glory-hound Id wanting that final showdown. As we discussed several times, but it's always worth bringing up again, is that the imperial Chinese conception of international relations is fundamentally predicated on a different set of ideas, or at least different sets of terminologies, than we're used to today. For instance, when it comes to what we would call trade relations or

missions, other nations quickly found that it had to be dressed up as tributary missions of vassal lords to fit in with the Dragon Throne's cosmic order thing. But in this case, and especially when dealing with rogue elements of Mongols, there's even more to it. Because we must remember that the line of political legitimacy of the Dragon Throne had to pass through the Yuan Dynasty back in the 14th century. The Mongols had held legitimate state power, and here's the thing, never did quite formally give that up. Much of the entire state apparatus of the early Ming Dynasty, especially, had been bent on hunting down the last Borjigin princes to the ends of the earth until they had formally surrendered to the imperial Zhu family that had overthrown them. But they'd never quite managed to finish the job.

The legacy of the great Khans of old still held enough power to stir the steps into alarming action even 400 years after Genghis had left Earth. And that was still terrifying to its settled neighbors. The only real, permanent way of nullifying the power of the Khans was to absorb and consume them by accepting the formal surrender of the last scions of House, was to absorb and consume them, by accepting the formal surrender of the last scions of House Borjigin and rendering them into pampered and kept nobles within the realm, at last adding that winter direwolf into the imperial menagerie now as a muzzled lapdog. It therefore wasn't even enough for Galdan to simply die, that outcome would only leave the black horsehair banner for another to take up. But captured and willingly surrendering would end that

persistent threat for good. At least, that was the theory. This was the sort of deal that, according to his emissary, Galdan was now willing to accept. Galali Guying produced a letter written by his master to the emperor. It read, Buddha teaches that humans cannot clearly foretell events, but all great Khans who unify the world worship the three treasures of the Dalai Lama, as we have. We have each lived peacefully in our separate lands. We have not waged war on the Jebzong Danba Khutuktu or the

Jasaktu Khan. They failed to respect the Dalai Lama's representative, causing the great turmoil. My cause was just, but I will submit to the Emperor's grace. It is an interesting tone to take. He's quite evidently willing to grit his teeth and bend the knee, but Galdan even still seems to adamantly refuse to actually admit any guilt of wrongdoing. To be sure, the Jungar Khan was under tremendous pressure from his followers and ministers to take the deal and submit. But most likely, Galdan was still using this whole process as pretty much just a stall tactic. If he could string these out over the remainder or even most of the rest of the winter, then his people would be mollified enough to stick it out alongside him. Once spring arrived, he must have hoped, they would then be able to

slip away once again, or perhaps be finally relieved by the rescue parties that were surely being dispatched by the Dalai Lama and the Khans of Kokonor to assist their loyal servant and champion. It was midwinter, December 21st, when the Kangxi Emperor gave approval to accept Galdan's offer of surrender. The Qing army released the emissary, Gelei Guying, to return with such news to Galdan's encampment, with a time limit of 70 days for the Zhengar lord to return an affirmative reply. Should no reply be sent, Kangxi would advance his army. This is not to say that life was great for the Qing troops either, by the way.

They weren't starving as quickly as their Zhengar foes, but was starving slightly more slowly really to be counted as better? committed at this time the notable error of memorializing to the emperor that the army was running out of supplies and would, you know, need to turn back before they all starved to death. For this, the emperor accused the man of, quote, stirring up doubts among the people, end quote, and ordered his immediate execution. Kangxi then thundered, If grain supplies are exhausted, we will go to the riverbanks and marshes to get grain. I will eat snow to pursue Galdan.

We absolutely cannot turn back. End quote. And see, the thing is, it wasn't that Da Da Hu Hu had been wrong. It was that he decided to speak up about dirty laundry in front of company. With the unfortunately loose-lipped bondsman disposed of, the Emperor had the Mongol envoy marched under full military escort to the edge of the encampment and further followed until it was confirmed that he was far in the distance. And then...

Then... Kangxi turned, said... That dead guy was right, you know. And announced that his army would indeed return to Beijing at once. The troops delighted. Dadahuhu's blood soaked into the snow. Rich though it was, the Ordos region could not be expected to maintain a large army over an entire winter. Moreover, Kangxi was getting cold and uncomfortable, and he missed his sons.

So, in spite of what he'd declared before Emissary Geleguying, he decided that he was going home to wait the 70 days for Galdan to write him back. He arrived back at the capital on January 12th, 1697, after this third campaign having lasted 91 days. There had been no decisive battle this time, but even so, thousands of Jungars had surrendered into the Qing fold, and it had blocked Galdan from making good his escape to either Qinghai or Tibet. It was another win, but still an unfinished one. Kangxi likely had little expectation that Galdan would actually surrender. Yet he also knew that another expedition would require even more time and planning.

Once again, opposition surfaced. His censorate objected that it was unnecessary for the emperor to personally pursue such a minor affair as capturing some bandit, which could easily be left in the hands of some lesser officiant or general. But the emperor replied that no, he must be the one to track Galadon to the bitter end. The Kangxi emperor had his white whale to hunt. From Perdue, quote, he invoked the great consequence of Wu Sangui's uprising 20 years earlier, which had spread unrest even to the northwest frontier. Still, he wavered for some time until the beg of Hami reported the capture of Galdon's 14-year-old son, Sebteng Balger, end quote. Oh yeah, you heard that right.

They got his kid. It's about to get really real. And the Kangxi court instantly knew it. This was, surely, checkmate. It left Galdan without even an heir, stranded and utterly alone. Qing officials are written to have viewed this turn of events as quote-unquote heaven's gift to the dynasty. Galdan had, by this point, Qing officials estimated just five or six hundred men left with him total. When word reached them that the Khan's heir had been captured, they would surely despair and also realize that all was lost. It would therefore

be the perfect time to send in a new army to the northwest and confront the disheartened Jungars, many of whom would surely desert him when faced with a strong military presence. So that will be where we finish off today. Since it is a new year, I'm going to be trying something a little bit new with the way the episodes roll out. But starting with the episode after this, what I'm planning to do is release the next episode early on Patreon for patrons. And then release it in a week's time for the normal fee. So if you are a patron, please look in the next few days to see that pop up there. If you are not, please consider joining.

But until then, see you next time, and thank you for listening. 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. From a revolution of hope and liberty to the infamous reign of terror, you can't understand the modern world without understanding the French Revolution.

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