1292.
Marco Polo sits idle in a Sumatran port, waiting for the trade winds to shift so he can return home to Venice.
He spends his time collecting stories about an island called Java.
Mariners say it's "the largest island in the world", he writes,
that it's subject to a great king and pays tribute to no one.
People speak of its wealth and the spices it produces.
Java's ports throng with merchants, and its treasure, they say, is beyond telling
"...and I can assure that the Great Khan could never get possession of this island",
he writes, "on account of the great distance and the great expense of an expedition."
The stories Polo heard were exaggerated.
Sumatra was in fact larger than Java, and the island didn't grow spice.
It just controlled the trade routes, but he was right about one thing.
The Great Khan should have left Java alone.
[Extra History Theme]
Three years earlier,
An imperial envoy makes his case before the king of Singhasari: the greatest power on Java.
The Great Khan, he says, has been monitoring conditions in this southern ocean.
He'd watched as Singhasari had aggressively expanded, taking over Srivijaya's crumbling vassal empire to its east,
and conquering Bali to its west.
The Great Khan had seen how this sent the shipping lanes into disorder,
and it had not escaped the Khan's attention that Singhasari had rebuffed his order
to send royal captives to the Mongol Court, as any good vassal should.
Now, he offered one last chance to comply.
The king of Singhasari had seen this conflict brewing.
For centuries, the archipelago's kingdoms had sent trade missions carrying spices,
resins and fine wood to the Chinese emperor, who then sent back gifts of porcelain and silk.
The Chinese had always called these "tributes",
since the imperial throne did not engage in anything as crass as 'trade'.
As the states of Southeast Asia had gone along with it,
China could call the trade whatever it wanted, as long as the ships kept coming.
Once the Mongols began rampaging through China, and that "tribute" system broke down,
the archipelago began a much more direct trade with Chinese merchants.
Now, these new Mongol emperors wanted to make Singhasari a true vassal.
But Singhasari was a power on the rise.
Their King had built a miniature empire, and controlled the spice for cotton trade with India.
He'd even been inducted into the mystic Himalayan School of tantric Buddhism,
that Kubla Khan himself practised.
The king of Singhasari may have in fact done so in preparation for a conflict,
wanting to be the spiritual equal of the Khan,
and know what mystical powers he could call upon,
Singhasari was no vassal and would not be treated as one.
When the envoy presented himself at the imperial court, the Emperor knew that the mission had failed.
He could read it on the man's face, because the king of Singhasari had cut off his ears.
Or his nose. Or maybe just branded or tattooed him.
The record isn't clear, but one thing was for certain:
Kubla Khan swore Singhasari would pay for this loss of face.
In 1292 the khan's great fleet arrived off Java.
It had 1,000 ships, 20,000 soldiers, and orders to destroy Singhasari.
They would remove the King from his throne, and find a more ... pliant ruler.
Yet upon arrival, they found the job already half done.
The fleet's envoy returned to say that the king was dead.
In the three years since the imperial envoy's visit,
the neighboring kingdom of Kediri had risen up and captured the capital.
There was no longer a Singhasari.
Now the king of Kediri ruled Java.
But this fleet had been sent to bring the king of Java to heel, and they couldn't come back empty-handed.
If Singhasari was gone, Kediri would have to do.
The fleet easily captured the unprepared Kediri Navy, as it assembled at the mouth of a river.
Then, the great ships began to unload their famous Mongol troops,
and push into the heart of Java.
And that's when they got a message.
A very strange message.
It claimed to be from the rightful heir to the throne of Singhasari.
The sender, Raden Vijaya, was the dead king's stepson,
and the blood of his ancestor, the founder of Singhasari,
and avatar of the god Vishnu ran strong in his veins.
But he was besieged in his new capital by the armies of the Kediri.
If the Chinese would help restore him to his throne,
He would happily pay tribute to the Great Khan, and become his willing vassal.
It was an odd proposition to put their original targets heir on the throne, sure.
But eminently practical.
They needed to install a vassal ruler, and here one was.
So they took the deal moving on the capital of Kediri, with Raden Vijaya's troops as their rearguard.
But one thing about Vijaya:
In Indonesian folklore there are two kinds of rulers.
There's the 'righteous prince', a mystic messianic figure that arises to save Java in its time of need.
These figures were devout, steadfast, and morally upright.
Then there are the Jago (mispronunciation: should be with strong "j").
The fighting cock.
Jago are scrappy upstarts.
They're rebels and gangsters; people who are resourceful, cunning, and effective but never to be trusted.
Wijaya's ancestor, the founder of Singhasari, had been a Jago.
Legend said he'd once been the greatest thief in Java;
A man who used theft, flattery and guile to go
from impoverished orphan to usurper of a dynasty.
And Vijaya was a fitting successor to that legacy.
When Singhasari fell, he'd been up north with the army, crushing a rebellion.
While there, he'd received word that the king of Kediri had forced the capital.
His father-in-law had died surrounded by mandalas and ritual objects,
attempting to save his kingdom through mystic ceremonies as the palace burned around him.
But Vijaya had something better than a rituals to protect him. He had an army,
and over the next year, he attacked the Kediri forces handing them three defeats.
But these victories got him no closer to taking the capital.
if he wanted to survive, he'd need to establish a base of operations, and wait for his moment.
So he approached a prince who supported the Kediri rebellion
asking for refuge in exchange for submission.
The prince, who figured allying with Vijaya might be a smart bet in the long term, agreed.
Wijaya settled on the Brantas river, a place between the island's largest port,
and its inland rice terraces.
When he arrived, one of his followers plucked a fruit from a tree.
After tasting it, the man threw it away, complaining that it was bitter.
Vijaya decided that would be the name of his new capital.
Bitter fruit.
Majapahit.
Now that the Mongols were here, the waiting was over.
His chance had arrived.
He led the Mongol armies' rearguard as they battered their way into the Kediri capital.
They captured the usurper, took his family hostage, and broke his army.
The Mongols had done their part
Now it was Vijaya's turn to hold up the bargain, and of course he was happy to pay the tribute as agreed.
Oh, but hey, uh, one little thing.
His Treasury was back in Majapahit, of course.
If they could lend him an escort, he could lead them straight to their reward.
Vijaya was, of course, being polite.
These escorts were prison guards, not honor guards.
He was a captive and had little choice, and so he led them back to his new lands of Majapahit.
...and straight into an ambush :D
The army of Singhasari - now Majapahit
annihilated the Mongols, who weren't so formidable without their horses.
Afterward, Wijaya took his troops into the jungles and rice terraces, engaging the Chinese in a hit-and-run guerrilla war.
Which was not great, as far as the Chinese commanders were concerned.
Guerrilla wars take time, and they weren't supposed to start an occupation.
Their orders had been to destroy a kingdom, and they had done that.
Sure, it was the wrong Kingdom, but, whatever. Check.
And they'd taken royal hostages from ... a family no longer in power, granted,
But let's call that a check.
They'd installed a new ruler.
Which, okay, it WAS the heir to the guy they were supposed to remove,
But, you know what? Check. Good job, everyone.
Roll out that mission accomplished banner, and let's go!
And so the Great Khan's punitive expedition dropped sail, and left.
Chinese fleets would be absent from the archipelago for the rest of the Yuan Dynasty.
And meanwhile Raden Vijaya sat in a new palace.
Heir to his father-in-law's project to expand and strengthen Javanese power,
a new empire was on the rise:
the empire of Majapahit.