Today, we continue to discuss the formation of the territory of modern China. In the previous article, we studied the state construction of ancient China, popularized the contribution of the Ming Empire to the territory of modern China, and also used two main texts to explain how the Qing Empire recovered Taiwan, expelled Tsarist Russia, and brought Taiwan and the northeast frontier into the central control.
The Mongol ministries north of the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty have long faced off against the Ming Dynasty
But the Qing Empire's conflict with the Russian Empire on the northeastern frontier had not yet subsided, and another threat was looming from the steppes of Central Asia— we all know that every Central Plains dynasty in ancient China faced a "traditional security threat" from the steppe nomads who plundered southward, and the Qing Empire was no exception. What is different is that the nomadic people who went south this time were more heterogeneous in culture, more advanced in their way of life, stronger in overall strength, and had a heroic steppe hero commander who was ambitiously preparing to rebuild the Yuan Empire. The war between them and the Qing Empire was the Qing-Zhun (Great Qing Empire and Dzungar Empire) War that ran through the middle of the Qing Dynasty. That's where our story begins.
Schematic diagram of the three major parts of Mongolia at the end of the Ming Dynasty
In the middle school history textbook, we have all learned the history of Genghis Khan's unification of the Mongol departments, but as an empire that combined the various parts of the steppe, the political situation of the Mongol Empire at the beginning of its establishment was not very stable--before there were the four mongol khanates divided by genghis Khan's descendants, and then there was the "two capital civil wars" between Kublai Khan and Ali Bu brothers, and after Zhu Yuanzhang's Northern Expedition expelled Emperor Yuanshun from Dadu and fled back to the steppe, the internal contradictions of the Yuan Empire (historically known as "Northern Yuan") were further intensified, and the regime was successively replaced by Weilat (Walla), Under the control of Tatars and other ministers, they returned to the situation of internal strife before genghis Khan's unification. By the end of the Ming Dynasty (Later Jin Mandate of Heaven) period, the Mongolian plateau at that time was divided into three major parts, the first was the southern Mongolia that lived in present-day Inner Mongolia and Outer Mongolia, the strongest was the Chahar department located outside the present-day Zhangjiakou, and the Horqin, Tumut and other departments rich in mutton; and the northern part of Outer Mongolia (including the present-day Russian republics of Buryatia and Tuva) was called Northern Mongolia, which was also divided into three forces, namely the Zasaktu Khan, the Chechen Khan, and the Tushetu Khan. During the time of Genghis Khan, this part of the people belonged to the relatively marginalized "forest people" and were not strong in centripetal force towards the Central Plains Dynasty; finally, the desert western Mongolia, which lived in the area from the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains in present-day Xinjiang to Lake Balkhash in Central Asia, was divided into four major parts: the Dzungar Department, the Heshuo Department, the Turk Special Department, and the Durbert Department. At the beginning of the rise of the Later Jin Dynasty, the first military contact was in southern Mongolia.
Lin Dan Khan was the last Mongol Khan among Genghis Khan's direct descendants, and his death meant that the lineage of the Mongol Khan was transferred from the Genghis Khan family to the Aisin Kyora family
After Nurhaci established his government, he changed the Ming Empire's strategy of ignoring the "mouth" and passively defending the various departments, and began to take the initiative to attack. At that time, the various tribes of southern Mongolia were the strongest, lin dan khan, the head of the Chahar tribe and a direct descendant of Genghis Khan's golden family, and held the heirloom jade seal of the Yuan Empire. In response to this situation, Nurhaci adopted the strategy of "co-opting the weak and besieging the strong", focusing on wooing the Horqin and Lin Dan Khan to the death. At the same time, coupled with Lin Dan Khan's honey juice operation (changing his faith from the Gelug school of Tibetan Buddhism commonly believed in by the Mongolian tribes to the non-mainstream Nyingma school), he also made his prestige in the Mongolian ministries plummet, and then Jin wasted no time in using religion to gather people's hearts, after many confrontations, the Later Jin Emperor Taiji finally completely defeated Lin Dan Khan in 1635, not only forcing Lin Dan Khan to defeat Qinghai, but also obtaining the jade seal that symbolized the legal system of the steppe people, becoming the great khan of the steppe nation. In April of the tenth year of the Later Jin Dynasty (9th year of Ming Chongzhen, 1636), the Later Jin Dynasty was renamed DaicinGrun, and all forty-nine ministries of Southern Mongolia were present, and "changed into banners" and organized into nine leagues, which meant that the Qing Empire incorporated all of Southern Mongolia into the territory and achieved direct legal control.
Schematic diagram of the three parts of Khalkha Mongolia
After southern Mongolia was incorporated into the Qing Empire, Northern Mongolia felt great pressure and began to pay tribute to the Qing court. However, at this time, the Qing Empire had not yet incorporated Northern Mongolia into its direct jurisdiction, only the relationship between the "Son of Heaven" and the "Foreign Domain" in ancient China, after all, the three parts of the Northern Desert were still commanded by the Three Kings Khan, and the Qing Empire could only balance it by "pulling one faction and fighting one faction". But at this time, the "outsiders" swept in from the steppes of Central Asia broke this fragile balance, which is what we called the steppe hero Kaldan.
Statue of Kaldan painted by the Russians
In the Ming Dynasty, the four parts of Western Mongolia located in the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains were the strongest, but from the end of the Ming Dynasty, the Dzungars began to rise and occupy the dominant position of the four parts of the Western Desert, resulting in the Heshuo Special Department having to go south to Qinghai and Tibet, with Lhasa as the core to establish the Heshuo Khanate; and the Turks simply moved all the way west and went down the Volga River in Russia to avoid disasters. But the rising Dzungars were also in chaos, in the ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1670), the Mongol nobles of the Dzungars had infighting, Kaldan and his brother Sanghat Taiji were killed, at that time Kaldan was still studying under the seat of the Fifth Dalai Lama of Weizang, and after receiving the support of the Gelug religious group of Tibetan Buddhism, Kaldan quickly returned to the Dzungars to preside over the overall situation, and he not only quelled the civil strife in the various ministries as quickly as possible, but also performed a series of dazzling operations: subjugating the Durbert Department, the Southern Expedition to the Yarkand Khanate, From the ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty to the twenty-second year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1683), Kaldan led the Dzungars to conquer a large area of land from the north and south of the Tianshan Mountains to Central Asia, and established land power in Central Asia. Subsequently, Kaldan led his army straight to the Mongolian steppe, preparing to learn from Genghis Khan to unify Mongolia again.
Jungar was not a region under the jurisdiction of the Qing Dynasty, and the war between the Dzungar Khanate and the Qing Empire was a war of hegemony between the two countries
In the twenty-seventh year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1688), Kaldan led his troops to suddenly cross the Hangai Mountains and launched a raid on the Tushetu Khanate of Northern Mongolia, and at the same time launched an attack on the Chechen Khanate and Jebtsundamba Hutuktu, and northern Mongolia was completely unable to resist the powerful Dzungar army, and was defeated and had to ask the Qing Empire for help. Although at this time, there was another infighting within the Dzungar Khanate, and Gardan's nephew Tse-alam Alabutan staged a coup d'état to severely damage the Kaldan troops of the Eastern Expedition, Kaldan was already blinded by the idea of "rebuilding the Great Yuan Empire", and began to attack the southern Mongolia in the twenty-eighth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, seriously threatening the security of Beijing, and in the twenty-ninth year of the Kangxi Dynasty, he sent envoys to Irkutsk, the capital of the Tsarist Empire in Siberia, to ask Tsarist Russia to send regular troops to assist in the war. This two major moves, southern And Northern, attacked the southern Mongols to threaten the ruling base of the Qing Empire, and asked Tsarist Russia to send troops to assist them, which was a literal foreign country, and eventually led the Kangxi Emperor to decide to completely solve the Kaldan problem. In this way, the collision between the Qing Empire in the Central Plains and the rising steppe empire, the Dzungar Khanate, opened the curtain.
The Jungar army in the Kazakh movie "A Thousand Warriors" is well-equipped, fierce and brave
In June of the 29th year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1690), the Qing army and the Dzungar army began military contact at Urhuihe and Uzumuqin, but both battles were lost. The Kangxi Emperor realized that Kaldan's strength should not be underestimated, and was determined to personally conquer Kaldan, and Kaldan and the Qing army won two battles and two victories, deepening his honey confidence, so the whole army went south to Ulanbutong, which was only 300 kilometers away from Beijing, and the three-way Qing army led by the Kangxi Emperor (later changed to Ai Xin Jueluo. At this time, Fu Quan had also crossed the Great Wall Pass and began to march towards the Ulanbutong area. In this way, a strategic decisive battle was finally launched on the grasslands of Ulanbutong.
The Russians drew a map of the Qing army and the Dzungar army fighting, with the Qing army on the left and the dzungel army on the right
Contrary to what many people think, although the Dzungar Khanate still nominally belongs to the category of "steppe empire", its productivity and production relations have developed to a high level, and in terms of army formation and weaponry, it has also departed from the simple "mounted archer + armored cavalry impact" model, and in the Battle of UlanButong, the Dzungar army adopted the rather popular chariot formation in Europe in the 16th century, tying more than 10,000 camels to four hooves, lying on the ground, forming a field fortification ring. Dzungar soldiers, armed with heavy "Zambala" arquebusiers, lay down behind them and opened fire on the charging Qing troops. The Qing army's arquebusiers were unable to penetrate the "Camel City" for a while, and the implementation of the strong attack suffered a lot of casualties, so that the Kangxi Emperor's uncle and general Tong Guogang was also shot and killed when he led the charge. However, as the Qing artillery began to join the battle, the battle situation was reversed again - the red-clad cannon with low trajectory and the high-throwing general Weiyuan cannon coordinated, and soon opened a breakthrough in the fortifications of the Dzungar army, the two sides fought until late at night, Kaldan finally could not hold on and began to flee the battlefield, the qing army's elite escort camp heavy cavalry immediately joined the pursuit, the Gardan army was completely defeated, and the Battle of Ulanbutong ended with the victory of the Qing army.
A shot of the Kangxi Imperial Driving in the TV series "Kangxi Dynasty"
Kaldan was temporarily run away, and how to close up the scattered three parts of northern Mongolia became a key issue facing the Kangxi Emperor. At that time, in addition to the Qing Empire, the Tsarist Russia was also actively active, striving to incorporate the three former sites of Northern Mongolia into the territory of Tsarist Russia. At the crucial moment, the opinion of the Tibetan Buddhist leader Jebtsundamba Hutuktu of Northern Mongolia played an important role, saying: "Russia has never worshipped Buddha, the customs are not from my generation, different words and different opinions, it is not a plan for long-term peace, if you all migrate internally, surrender to the great emperor, you can invite the blessings of ten thousand years." In this way, the remnants of the Northern Mongols finally made up their minds to submit all of them to the territory of the Qing Empire.
In the TV series "Dashengkui", the Jungar Army relies on the defense of Camel City
In the summer of the thirtieth year of the Kangxi Dynasty (1691), the Kangxi Emperor set off from Beijing and met with the chiefs of the mobei Mongol tribes and the zhebuzundan bahutuktu on the shores of the Dorennuoer Lake in Inner Mongolia (now Duolun County, Inner Mongolia), and all the large and small chiefs of the mobei Mongols were present and shouted to the Kangxi Emperor long live the mountain, and then, like the monan mongolia, it was sealed as the thirty-five banners, and at the same time delimited the jurisdiction of each banner and grassland, known in history as the "Duolun Huimeng", since the monan mongolia was all directly under the jurisdiction of the Qing Empire in 1636. Northern Mongolia was also incorporated into the qing empire in 1691, and since then, the entire territory of inner and outer Mongolia has finally come under the direct rule of the Central Plains Dynasty, and the border troubles of the steppe ethnic groups that have lasted for thousands of years have been completely eliminated until 1946, when they were handed over by the Kuomintang.
After the Duolun League, the ancient Great Wall completed its historical mission and became a historical relic. The grasslands and the Central Plains are finally integrated
It is worth mentioning that after the Duolun Alliance, Kangxi passed through the Great Wall on his way back to Beijing. Seeing that the Great Wall had fallen into disrepair, and some ministers proposed to rebuild the Great Wall, Kangxi said an intriguing passage: "Since qin built the Great Wall, the Han, Tang, and Song dynasties have often repaired it. At the end of the Ming Dynasty, the great soldiers of our grandfather drove straight in, and all the roads disintegrated, and they did not dare to do it. It can be seen that the way of defending the country, only in the cultivation of the law to cultivate the people, the people's hearts are happy, then the state is obtained, and the border is self-reinforcing, and the so-called people who are determined to become a city are also! Kangxi decided not to rebuild the Great Wall in the future. The Great Wall, which has separated the grasslands from the Central Plains for more than two thousand years, has since ceased to function and has become a relic of history. By subjugating Inner and Outer Mongolia, the Qing Dynasty gained strategic depth of thousands of kilometers north of the Great Wall. The vast steppe was no longer a problem for the Central Plains, but had become the strongest barrier in the north of the Central Plains. At the same time that the Great Wall withdrew from the stage of history, a unified multi-ethnic country that integrated the "grassland" and the "Central Plains" finally stepped onto the stage of history!