Ch 5 - Koryo and the Mongols

Genghis Khan, the Universal Prince

Born to an aristocratic Mongol tribe, Temujin became a hardened and impassioned warrior, intent upon claiming the power that was his birthright. Given the title Genghis Khan at the age of twenty-seven, Temujin united the Mongols and awakened them to their remarkable destiny.

While the government of Koryo suffered the convulsions of military and peasant uprisings, events far away in Mongolia set in motion a chain reaction that forever altered the history of East Asia. In the steppe lands between the upper reaches of the Onon and Kerulen Rivers, Tatar nomads were in search of a Mongol thief. Yesugei Bahadur (Yesugei the Valiant), leader of the Kiut-Borjigin tribe, had robbed a group of Tatar men from a rival tribe who never forgave or forgot the affront. Around 1175, some three years after the robbery, a group of Tatar riders caught up with Yesugei and murdered him in his camp.

The contentious struggle for leadership that followed Yesugei's death caused a chaotic split among the once united Kiut-Borjigin clans and they broke from the tribe. The rightful heir and logical successor to Yesugei's leadership position was his nine-year-old son Temujin, whose name translates loosely as "one who forges iron" or "man of iron." Dejected by Yesugei's murder and refusing to believe a mere boy could ever be strong enough to protect them, the Mongol clans dispersed to follow other chieftains.

Though still a boy, Temujin knew why the clans left and would likely have done the same in their place. Shunned and isolated by their own people, Temujin, his mother Hoelun, and younger brothers Qasar and Bekter, survived by their own wits. For nearly a decade the small family lived a precarious existence fishing, snaring small animals, and foraging for berries and wild onions. These lean and dangerous years taught the adaptable young Mongol to be patient, steady, shrewd, and practical. One day after fishing, Temujin had successfully trapped a small bird for food. His half-brother Bekter stole the days catch for himself. In revenge, Temujin and Qasar ambushed the boy and murdered him. In a rage, Hoelun accused her sons of being unable to win back the leadership of their father's own clan;  "Except for your shadows, you have no companions ... except for your horse's tails, you have no whips." Mongol children were not hardened to suffering;  they were born to it.

At the age of fifteen, Temujin and Borte were married in Mongol fashion. Borte's father, who had arranged the marriage when the two were just children, prepared a feast for the wedding party. The bride then ran off to hide with relatives. In the meantime, the father ceremoniously gave his daughter to the groom with instructions to take her wherever she may be hiding. Temujin and his friends rode off in search of the girl. When they found her, they took her back to the groom's tent in a mock show of force, where the marriage was consummated. Mongol men had as many wives as they could keep. The early Mongols did not marry within their tribe, but often resorted to kidnapping a woman from a neighboring tribe in order to get a wife. This practice of "wifenapping" led to a number of inter-clan wars on the steppe.

Already a skilled archer, horseman and raider with a strong sense of loyalty to those who rode with him, Temujin attracted a small following of Mongol warriors. As a descendant of a royal bloodline of the Borjigin clan, he considered himself an aristocrat of the steppes. He had married well and headed a family that included three valiant warriors:   his brother Qasar, Belgutei, and Jelme. Temujin wanted more. He wanted the power to attract strong families into alliances and force enemy tribes into neutrality or submission. To improve his station in life however, he needed the protection and help of someone stronger.

Temujin noticed everything and forgot nothing. When he learned from his messengers that an emissary of Jin Emperor Changzong had recently arrived on the steppes to visit Toghrul Khan, chief of the rival Kerait tribe, Temujin decided to invite the Chinese diplomat to pay him a visit as well. The Jin emissary promptly accepted the invitation, eager to gather intelligence and report back to China on all events taking place in the northern steppes. The personal encounter between these two men forged the key that opened the door to all of East Asia. From lengthy conversations with his Chinese guest, Temujin learned that a great Tatar tribe had again mounted a campaign against China's western frontier and that the emissary was to seek assistance from Toghrul Khan against the Tatars. Temujin quickly saw the opportunity at hand.

Toghrul Khan, leader of the Kerait tribe, ruled a large area between the Onon river and the northern Chinese border as a vassal of the Jin emperor. The arrangement was part of a long-standing Chinese tradition that encouraged conflict between the various nomadic tribes along China's northern frontier. Toghrul was also a close friend and blood-brother of Temujin's father, a spiritual bond that, according to Mongolian tradition, was more binding than biological kinship. Temujin offered an alliance with the Kerait against the Tatars. Toghrul felt obliged to accept the young Mongol warrior's offer and promised to help him reunite the clans who left when his father died. Influenced in part by Temujin's gift of a luxurious black sable coat that was part of his wife's dowry and a modest string of victories, Toghrul kept his promise. Temujin's alliance not only exacted a measure of vengeance for the murder of his father, but greatly enhanced his own prestige among the Mongols.

Temujin had been married for less than a year when the Merkit tribe learned of his marriage to Borte. His father had earlier stolen a Merkit bride for himself and in Temujin, the Merkit saw a long-awaited opportunity for revenge. Alerted to the ambush by his mother's servant, who heard the approaching thunder of hoofbeats, Temujin escaped death only by the speed of his horse. Some 300 Merkit warriors swarmed into Temujin's camp and captured Borte and several other women. After fleeing to the Kentai Mountains, Temujin gathered his allies, including several hundred of Toghrul's Kerait warriors and led a military campaign against Merkit tribe. He succeeded in defeating the Merkit and rescuing his wife.

Temujin's success against the Merkit marked him as a major "player" in the tangled and bloody politics of the Mongolian steppes and his daring and charisma drew followers from throughout the region. In 1187, the Year of the Sheep, many aristocrats of various clans and their families joined under Temujin's banner and offered their allegiance to him. They saw him as the ideal steppe warrior, the best man to lead them. Despite his own rapidly growing prestige and authority he took care not alienate his patron, the anti-Tatar chieftain Toghrul Khan. Instead, he concentrated on destroying his family's long-time enemies, the Tatar. In alliance with the Kerait and with the support of the Jin, Temujin defeated one rival tribe after another and all but annihilated the Tatars. The success of his campaign attracted the attention of the Chinese, who in gratitude declared Toghrul Khan to be wang, the king of all lands north of China.

In the final years of the twelfth century, Temujin fought a number of campaigns, ostensibly on behalf of the Kerait. Powerful clans flocked to join under his bold and enterprising leadership and the Mongols and several neighboring tribes began hailing him as their khan, or leader. Temujin had become a hardened and impassioned warrior intent upon claiming the power that was his birthright and quickly earned a reputation as a man who had to be obeyed or forever feared. Shamans in Temujin's camp spread the word of a heavenly mandate for his power. Temujin himself reportedly declared, "My strength was fortified by Heaven and Earth."

As the rightful overlord of the Borjigin tribe, the young leader of a 13,000 man army instilled discipline and cooperation in his men and treated them with dignity and respect. As his strength grew, the once dispersed Mongol clans of the steppes gradually returned to their traditional homeland in the Onon and Kerulen river basin. A massive gathering, or quriltai, of the purely Mongol clans in 1194 proclaimed the twenty-seven-year-old Temujin "universal prince" of the Mongolian steppes, the Genghis Khan. The Mongols new that the best grazing land and hunting grounds went to the strongest khan and they expected him to lead them to conquer rich pastures, capture beautiful women, and acquire good horses and hunting grounds.

In the words of the Mongol shaman Teb-Tengri, before the arrival of Genghis Khan, "Everyone was feuding. Rather than sleep they robbed each other of their possessions. ... The whole nation was in rebellion. Rather than rest they fought each other. In such a world one did not live as one wished, but rather in constant conflict. There was no respite, only battle. There was no affection, only mutual slaughter." The shaman's words testify to Genghis Khan's ultimate purpose, to end the useless hatred and destruction and awaken the Mongolian people to their remarkable destiny.

Genghis Khan's strength and power during his early years as leader of the Mongols was unstable. Although he had authority over the tribal chieftains, he knew that if anything went badly, any or all of them could desert his camp. What tipped the scales in his favor was a core group of loyal companions who stood by him no matter what. When Genghis Khan was struck in the neck by an arrow during one battle, Jelme, one of his earliest companions, dragged him from the battlefield and sucked the clotted blood from the wound until it finally closed. Jelme would later rise to become a leading Mongol general. Following a hard-fought battle with a rival tribe and the massacre of a high percentage of its captive warriors, Genghis Khan came across a bowman accused of bringing down the Khan's own horse. The young warrior proudly admitted the fact, whereupon Genghis Khan spared his life, renamed the courageous fighter Jebe, meaning "the arrow," and won the undying loyalty of a man who would eventually become the most illustrious of Mongol military leaders.

The conquest of territory required a well-trained, well-equipped army. The Mongols had always been excellent warriors, but then so had all the nomad tribes of Central Asia. The riders from each clan under Genghis Khan were essentially small military units able to move swiftly and shoot accurately. A rigorous life and the ability to hunt skillfully permitted the steppe tribes to field groups of armed horsemen who were so savage they seemed impossible to defeat. Still, Genghis Khan realized that his collection of skilled warriors did not constitute an army. They needed discipline and organization. Genghis Khan took Mongol horsemen as young as fifteen and as old as seventy and molded them into an effective fighting force instilled with a discipline that was both practical and severe. Death came to any man who left his command to join another, who plundered without permission, who deserted a fallen comrade, or who slept on guard duty.

The scattered Mongol tribes lived according to local custom, but once they submitted to the leadership of Genghis Khan, they united under his maxims, regulations and instructions. The laws, rules, and words of wisdom, which he continued to develop during his lifetime, amounted to a codified legal standard for all Mongols that let every man know his place and know what was expected of him. The collection came to be known as the Great Yasa and it applied to all tribes. Most provisions of this code were punitive in nature, designed to ensure the execution of the Khan's personal orders, the observance of the Great Yasa itself, the carrying out of military orders, and total adherence to Mongol custom. The Great Yasa was far more than a legal code however, its powerful spiritual and philosophical content became a talisman containing secret magical formulas and ethical guidelines for the Mongol people.

To protect himself from sudden raids, Genghis Khan organized his own camp first. He appointed a personal guard of armed warriors, 80 night guards and 70 day guards. He then made provisions to care for and protect his large stable of horses and to train remounts. Whether from the pastoral tribes of the steppe or the hunting and fishing tribes of the northern forests, Mongols were natural born hunters. Since hunting was conducted like a military campaign, Genghis Khan used the hunt as a training ground for war. An idle army could mean trouble, so the hunt became both a way to keep the men in fighting trim and a method of keeping his growing armies under tight control.

Discipline and organization were key factors in every Mongol battle. Horsemen drilled in simulated fights, where they learned to obey the orders of their captains without question. Maintaining tight, well-ordered formations mounted on their study, swift horses, they turned and retreated by turns, shooting over the backs of their horses. After a short distance they would turn again to attack. This type of constant drill created a fighting force that acted as a single man and presented a united front to the enemy. It was a common practice that defeated armies tended to break up and scatter in confusion. Even though Genghis Khan's army suffered an occasional defeat, his men always retreated in an orderly formation and regrouped around him to fight again.

While still securing his ruling authority over the Mongols, Genghis Khan broke with his blood-brother Jamuqa over a rivalry. In 1201, Jamuqa joined the Jadirat tribe, where he was elected leader and given the title Gur Khan. Out of a sense of anger, Jamuqa began to form a tribal coalition against his former long-time friend. Genghis Khan's power made it almost inevitable that sooner or later he would break with the Kerait and his patron Toghrul Khan. Within two years after he broke the Mongol alliance with the Kerait, his armies suffered a tremendous defeat in a Kerait ambush near the headwaters of the Khalka River. Genghis Khan and the few followers that remained with him retreated to survive in the inhospitable wasteland of northern Mongolia.

When the quarreling Kerait tribal coalition finally collapsed in 1203, Genghis Khan and his forces stormed out of northern Mongolia and crushed them. Toghrul Khan fled to the safety of the Naiman tribe, but was accidentally killed by a warrior who failed to recognize him. The defeated Kerait people submitted to Genghis Khan's leadership and became his loyal servants, but he was never sure of their loyalty and disbursed them among the Mongol tribes.

The defeat of the Kerait left only the Naiman tribe standing between Genghis Khan and complete domination of Central Asia. At the time, the Naiman tribe had alliances with a large number of minor tribes, including the Merkits, the Jadirat under Jamuqa, the Dorbet, Katagin, Seljiut and various surviving Tatar clans. For more than a year, the Mongols of Genghis Khan defeated their enemies in battle after battle. In one of the final battles in 1205, the Naiman chieftain, overwhelmed and retreating to a nearby hill with his companions, demanded to know the identity of the four determined warriors still pursuing them like wolves. Jamuqa, leader of the Jadirat, told him they were the four hunting dogs of Temujin:

"... fed on human flesh and leashed with iron chains;  their skulls are of brass, their teeth hewn from rock, their tongues like swords."

When asked who the man was who followed them, Jamuqa replied, "That is my blood-brother Temujin, wearing a coat of iron."

During the fighting, a group of Jamuqa's followers betrayed him and took him to Genghis Khan. Despite Temujin's generous offer to renew their brotherhood, Jamuqa insisted that he be executed. Temujin accepted the request, and then turned on his betrayers and executed them as well, for he could never abide by treasonous, unprincipled people who would betray their own master. As the Naiman chieftain lay dying on the hillside, his loyal warriors charged down slope into the victorious Mongols. Genghis Khan admired their loyalty and offered to spare their lives, but they rejected his offer and fought to the last man.

At the time of Temujin's birth, c.1167, there was no central power in Mongolia. Within the span of two generations, the son of Yesugei the Valiant, the "universal prince" of the Mongolian steppe had taken effective control of all Mongolia and ruled a nation of approximately two million people. In 1206, the Chinese Year of the Tiger, Genghis Khan proclaimed a great quriltai, a general assembly of all the minor and major leaders and shamans. Nearly 400,000 Mongols gathered under the nine-tailed white banner in an enormous city of felt tents spread across the Delugun Boldok plain at the headwaters of the Onon River. They came to select and proclaim the 39 year-old Temujin as the Khakan, the Ruler of Rulers, the supreme "Khan of all who live in felt tents," the leader of all Turkish and Mongol tribes in Central Asia, the Emperor of the Steppes.

It had been a great achievement, secured in no small part by Temujin's intelligence and intuition, his intensely ambitious yet selfless nature, and his endless capacity for devotion and loyalty. The historic gathering on the Delugun Boldok plain did more than select a supreme leader of the Mongols. It generated a sense of national pride and personal honor among the nomads for the first time in their history. Under his rule, no Mongol would be a slave or servant. His sole duty would be to bear arms as an honorable subject of the Khakan. As time passed, the ideal of personal honor became so deeply ingrained that violent robbery, murder, theft, and adultery virtually disappeared among the Mongol tribes. Sitting at the head of world-class military machine, Genghis Khan suddenly faced a problem that puzzled every nomad leader who managed to unite the fractious and predatory tribes of Central Asia. What should he do now?