By 1206, Genghis Kahn had united the steppe tribes of Mongolia and set his sights on China. Over the
next 160 years, Genghis and his descendants would conquer all of it and set up a new Mongol dynasty
in China. The Mongols were fierce, brilliant, and often-misunderstood people. At their height,
they controlled the largest land empire in world history. Their armies were ruthless yet fair,
their leaders tolerant yet cunning. Life in Mongol China was not for the weak of heart.
It was a prosperous time for some…and a deadly time for others. From deadly archers and spy
craft to disease and gunpowder, it was a tough era to be alive. Welcome back to Nutty History.
Today, we’re exploring why you wouldn’t survive life in Mongol China. Genghis Kahn and his Mongol
armies began invading northern China in 1205. At this time, there were three main dynasties ruling
the region: Western Xian, the Jin dynasty, and the Song dynasty. Western Xian was the closest to the
Mongolian steppe. It was also weaker than the Jin and Song dynasties. After some preliminary raids
into Western Xian, Genghis Khan began a full-scale invasion in 1209. The armies of Western Xian
didn’t stand a chance against the Mongol Horde. Their archers were unrivaled in their accuracy and
range. They could launch arrows almost 1,000 feet with deadly accuracy using long-range composite
long bows. And they could do it while riding their horses. The Mongols basically grew up on horseback
and were constantly training. The Mongol cavalry moved around in ways that resembled a mass hunt.
They would fan out into separate flanks, eventually forming a ring many miles across,
surrounding their enemy from all angles. They would then close in and devastate the confused,
static armies who couldn’t cope with the mobility, speed, and coordination of the Mongol forces.
It was the first time the Mongols had attacked a sedentary population.
Up until then, Genghis Khan had achieved victories against other nomadic tribes in Mongolia. The
cities of Western Xian were well established, and the Mongols were still figuring out siege warfare.
Out on the plains and in smaller villages outside of main cities, the Mongols were deadly efficient.
But when they got to Yinchuan, the capital of Western Xian, they had a tougher time. They had
yet to develop much of their siege weaponry and had never tried to take such a large city. Genghis
Khan attempted to flood Yinchuan by building a dike to divert the Yellow River into the city,
but the dike broke and ended up flooding the Mongol camp, drowning an untold number
of Mongol soldiers in the process. In the end, the Mongols couldn’t break through the walls of
Yinchuan. But they had decimated the city’s farmland and left its population starving
and broken. Western Xian became a vassal state to the Mongols in 1210 and for the next twenty
years Mongol and Xian forces worked together to move against the Jin dynasty to the southeast.
Genghis Khan was on his way to becoming one of the most powerful leaders in history.
With Western Xian subjugated, Genghis Khan moved west into Central Asia, conquering the Khwarazm
Empire in 1221. Western Xian failed to help him out during that campaign though. The emperor of
Western Xian supposedly told Genghis that if he couldn’t take Khwarazm with his own armies,
he shouldn’t have a claim to supreme power. This made Genghis super angry, and he invaded
Western Xian again in 1225. This time, he took no mercy. Western Xia troops were in full retreat,
and the Mongols basically annihilated everyone and everything in their way, systematically destroying
cities and killing everyone within them. By 1227, he had Yinchuan surrounded and laid siege to the
city for six months. At this point, the Mongols had learned a thing or two about sieges from the
Chinese, and their siege warfare had become devastatingly effective. In August of 1227,
towards the end of the siege, Genghis Khan died of mysterious causes. Some say he fell off his
horse and suffered internal injuries that he succumbed to shortly after. The Mongols kept
this fact hidden from Western Xian, however, and continued with the siege. A month later,
Xian Emperor Mozhu surrendered to the Mongols, who immediately executed him and then went on
to decimate the entire population of Yinchuan. As a result of the second invasion, Western Xian
was effectively wiped off the face of the earth and lost to history. It was such a complete and
devastating, no-prisoners-type of annihilation that some historians have called it the world’s
first recorded genocide. It was an invasion that helped give the Mongols the notorious,
cutthroat image that they used so effectively to consume their enemies. It was an image they used
with great success, oftentimes forcing cities with far larger armies to surrender simply out of fear.
Meanwhile, the Mongols were also tearing up the Jin dynasty. In 1211, Genghis Kahn and
his mighty army had conquered all Jin territory up to the Great Wall of China. To try to appease the
Mongols, the Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji married off his daughter, Princess Qiguo, to Genghis.
It didn’t work. The Mongols eventually broke through the wall and besieged the Jin capital,
Zhongdu – modern day Beijing. In 1215, they took the city and decimated everyone inside. The Jin
emperor escaped though, and moved the capital to Kaifeng. The siege of Beijing wasn’t a walk in the
park for the Mongols. The Chinese had maybe the most advanced military technology of the time:
gunpowder. The Jin were able to fight the Mongols off by firing cannons at them from the walls.
Eventually, the Mongols learned from the Chinese, and began using gunpowder to devastating effect.
Many historians refer to the Mongols as “the first gunpowder empire.” Could it be that the
Mongols inspired weapon development on a massive scale? In 1232, the Mongols moved onto Kaifeng,
intent on breaking the Jin dynasty completely. The ensuing siege was catastrophic for both sides.
Fire rained down from the sky. The Jin armies had weapons called “heaven-shaking thunder bombs,”
some of the first bombs in human history. These iron vessels were filled with gunpowder and flung
at the Mongols, where they would explode with a force that could be heard for thirty miles,
sending shards of iron shrapnel through even the heaviest of armor. The Mongols responded
by building big shields of thick cowhide. The shields worked well at long distances, but once
they got up to the walls, the Jin would simply drop the “thunder bombs” down on their heads.
The Mongols managed to prevail against the Jin by splitting up their armies and besieging them
from many angles at once. However, it wasn’t without heavy Mongol casualties. By 1234,
the Jin dynasty had fallen, and the Mongols were on to the more powerful Song dynasty in the south.
The next few decades would include some of the longest, most destructive siege warfare the world
had ever known. The Mongols developed massive bombs that were slung by catapult. They could take
out entire towers within the Song fortresses. But the Song didn’t just roll over – they had their
own gunpowder technology and fought valiantly. In 1260, Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Kahn, rose
to power. In 1268 he besieged the fortress city of Xiangyang…for five years, pummeling it with molten
metal bombs until the city fell in 1273. Four years later, after a two-year siege of Changzhou,
the Chinese were running out of options. With their defeat imminent, a Song general
set off a massive explosive, destroying a huge part of the city and anyone nearby.
In 1279, the Song dynasty was officially defeated, and Kublai Khan founded the Yuan
dynasty, becoming the Emperor of China. It was a victory won through gunpowder.
Defeating the Song dynasty was not easy. The Mongols were skilled warriors on the plains,
but the mountainous terrain of southern China was new territory for them. Luckily, they had the
help of a ton of Chinese defectors. Some of the Mongol armies were almost entirely Chinese. The
Mongols were great at manipulating the rivalries within the Song, Jin and Western Xian dynasties,
and over time had amassed a huge army that fought for the Mongol Empire. The Mongol general Bayan
controlled an army of 200,000. Most of them were Chinese. His army may have been the largest Mongol
army in history. The masses of Chinese turncoats also helped the Mongols out with another method of
warfare they were unfamiliar with - naval warfare. If you lived in China during the Mongol invasions,
there’s a good chance you could die on a boat. The Mongols had the largest navy in the world under
Kublai Khan, a navy which navigated the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers and their tributaries and were key
parts of the Mongol’s siege strategies. In 1265, Kublai Khan captured 146 warships from the Song
after a battle in Sichuan. From there he grew the navy into a goliath, ordering over 7,000 new ships
built and training some 130,000 naval infantrymen. Some of the most intense battles between the
Mongols and the Song were naval battles. During these river fights, both sides would use what’re
known as fireships. Boats would be filled up with explosives and blown into the enemy fleet
or sailed by a skeleton self-sacrifice crew, where they would detonate and wreak havoc.
Naval warfare between the Song and the Mongols came to a head with the Battle of Yaman in 1279.
It is considered one of the largest naval battles in military history.
By 1279, the Song dynasty was already in ruins. Kublai Khan had declared himself Emperor of China
and established the Yuan dynasty in 1271, but the Southern Song dynasty was still holding out,
and had amassed what remained of their navy in Yamen, on the southern coast of China on the
South China Sea. The Mongol navy, led by the Chinese General Zhang Hongfan, could at this
point be called the Yuan navy. True, they were serving under the ultimate command of Kublai Khan,
but by this point the Yuan dynasty had been declared by Kublai, and there were so many
Chinese soldiers serving in the armies that it wasn’t really a Mongol army anymore. Either way,
the Mongol/Yuan navy was outnumbered nearly 10 to 1 in the battle. However, they were able to
cut off supplies to the Song navy, and soldiers were eventually left starving, even resorting to
drinking seawater because there was no freshwater left. General Zhang Shijie, who commanded the
Song navy, ordered that 1,000 Song ships be chained together across the harbor of Yamen.
First, the Mongols tried sending in those explosive fireships to break the chain. But the
Song ships had been coated in a fireproof mud that help neutralize the threat. Then, the Yuan navy,
in true Mongol style, used a bit of deception. They began playing music. Thinking the Yuan forces
were having some sort of party, the Song let their guard down. The Yuan attacked, decimating the Song
navy. It’s said that over 1,000 Song ships were destroyed in the battle and thousands of bodies
remained floating in the water weeks after the battle was over. In the end, the Song dynasty was
no more, and Kublai Khan and his successors would rule the Yuan dynasty for the next 100 years.
It wasn’t all smooth sailing for the Mongols and the Yuan dynasty, though. Kublai Khan
tried to invade Japan twice. Both times, the Yuan naval fleets were crushed. Not by the Japanese,
but by typhoons that the Japanese called “Kamikaze winds”. The first attempted invasion occurred
in 1274. By this time, the Yuan had subjugated Korea, then called Goryeo (gory-yo), and mounted
an attack from the Korean peninsula. They sent 30,000 troops and hundreds of ships towards Japan.
The fleet managed to land on Japan’s third-largest island, Kyushu . A fierce but brief battle ensued.
Although the Japanese were outnumbered, their samurai warriors knew the land, and the Yuan
forces were held back. Then, the Kamikaze Winds arrived. The typhoon destroyed an untold number of
Yuan ships. Some accounts say nearly 200 ships were lost. Of the 30,000 troops that invaded
Japan, more than 13,000 were lost. Japan remained sovereign. The second attempt came in 1281.
By then, the Song dynasty had been fully defeated, and Kublai was able to amass an even larger navy
to sail onto the Japanese. Some say the fleet had as many as 184,000 soldiers on 900 ships. Despite
the massive navy, the Yuan and the Japanese fought to a stalemate along the Japanese coast.
And then once again, the kamikaze winds struck. The Yuan and Japanese fleets were torn apart.
The Yuan boats that survived fled, leaving thousands of Mongol,
Korean and Chinese soldiers stranded. They were eventually decimated by the Japanese.
Some sources indicate that 90 percent of all the Yuan soldiers who invaded Japan died. After
the second attempted invasion, the Yuan navy would never recover. Mongol naval hegemony was finished.
Things weren’t much better on the mainland. There were certainly many positive aspects of Kublai
Khan and the Mongol’s Yuan dynasty. The Mongols didn’t just destroy everything they touched;
they were very effective administrators. It was a time known as the Pax Mongolica,
or the Mongol Peace. It was the first and only time that the entire Silk Road was contained
within a unified empire. Trade flourished throughout Asia. Religious tolerance was promoted.
An effective monetary system was created. A speedy postal service made communication easier.
However, there are some things that people just can’t control, especially back then.
One of those was disease. If you were living in Mongol China in the middle of the 1300s,
there’s a good chance you’d be taken out by plague rather than by an invading army.
It’s uncertain when the Black Plague started, how it started, and whether it was just one disease
or a few different ones. Some say it was transferred from rats to humans as early as 1252
in Southern China when Mongol soldiers invaded the area. Several other diseases were recorded
throughout China in the early 1300s, but the true devastation occurred in three waves between 1331
and 1350. It’s thought that a full third of the population of China was killed by the plague.
However, there’s still a lot of contention about whether it was indeed the Black Plague,
or whether it was a different disease that rampaged through the region. Whatever it was,
it spelled disaster for the Yuan dynasty, which was defeated shortly after the final epidemic,
falling to the Ming dynasty in 1368. The Mongols may have set themselves up for failure, however.
During their 13th century conquest of China, they burned tons of farmland, which led to widespread
famine. According to census data from the period just before the Mongol invasions, the Chinese
dynasties had a combined 120 million people. By 1300, that number had been cut in half. That
half the population of China was lost in a few short decades is one of the greatest historical
tragedies nobody really knows about. With all the disputed accounts, it was probably a perfect
storm of war, famine and disease that combined to wreak havoc on the people of the region.
In the waning days of the Yuan dynasty, Kublai Khan’s descendants became increasingly insular.
Many thought the Mongols were becoming too Chinese, and they began rejecting Chinese culture.
It was a direct 180 from Kublai’s acceptance of all religions and ethnicities at the beginning of
the Yuan dynasty, an acceptance that allowed the Mongols to win over so many Han Chinese
to their side. Infighting and rivalries among the Mongol Khans towards the end of the Yuan
dynasty further weakened their power. Famines, floods, disease, and a growing number of outlaws
ransacking the countryside pushed an already unhappy Han Chinese majority towards rebellion.
Then, in 1244, the Yellow River flooded. It was a massive natural disaster that ended up redirecting
the entire river south of the Shandong Peninsula. The flood had horrible consequences for the Yuan
dynasty. A group called the Red Turbans, who wanted to restore the Song dynasty,
began visiting sites affected by the flooding in order to recruit soldiers for a rebellion.
In 1351, a series of fights broke out. The Red Turbans were ultimately unsuccessful in restoring
the Song lineage they were fighting for. In the shattered remains of the Yuan dynasty,
the Ming dynasty was born, and would rule over China for the next 300 years.
Mongol rule in China was finished. It would soon be finished everywhere across its once-vast
empire. The Mongols were a mighty yet brief blip in world history. They managed to change
so much in so little time. What do you think? Would you have survived life in Mongol China?
Let us know in the comments. And don’t forget to like and subscribe for more Nutty History!