In the history of the world, the Yuan Dynasty was a dynasty with very important influence. Its territory was extremely large, almost reaching the peak of Chinese history, and it had suzerainty over the other four khanates that belonged to the Mongol Empire, and successively destroyed a series of great powers of the time, such as the Jin Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty, and the Western Xia, not to mention the conquest of Central Asia, West Asia and Eastern Europe by the remaining khanates.
But in the long history of conquest of the Yuan Dynasty Empire, there were as many victories as there were actually failures.
In the face of much weaker than the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty, Vietnam, Japan and even Java, the Yuan Dynasty have lost a mess, why is this? Let's analyze it together.
First, the big countries are soft persimmons
Beginning in the time of Genghis Khan, the Mongols embarked on the largest and most extensive unprecedented conquest in the history of the world. Genghis Khan was originally a nobleman of the Beggars department on the Mongolian plateau, although he suffered hardships in his youth, he also trained his iron will, and after many years of conquest, after destroying his righteous brother Zamu and unifying all of Mongolia, he led an army to conquer the east and the west. First attack the Jin Kingdom in the Wild Fox Ridge series of battles to eliminate hundreds of thousands of jinguo main forces, besiege Jin Zhongdu, and fight only half of the Jin kingdom.
Above_ The Great Mongol State in the last years of Genghis Khan
At that time, Kim Sejong went to Mongolia every year to "reduce Ding", but he did not expect that his descendants would be beaten by the Mongols and had nowhere to hide. Defeating the old enemy of the Jin Dynasty, Genghis Khan's sword bladed westward, and then swept the Western Xia And western Liao, washing the flower and the mold in blood, and the momentum shook the whole of East Asia. By the time genghis Khan died, the former Central Asian power, Hua Lazimo, was already dying, the Western Liao had collapsed, the Western Xia was nearly destroyed, and the Jin Dynasty was surviving. It can be said that Genghis Khan's life was a life of continuous conquest, except for the great defeat of Zamuhe in the Battle of the Thirteen Wings, he actually did not have a single defeat, it can be said that he was born as a god of war and a spokesman for death.
After Genghis Khan, the established policy of the Mongols remained unchanged, and the purpose was still to expand, and Genghis Khan put his own military households before his death. That is to say, the military power of Mongolia was distributed to each son as a legacy, which can be called the most hegemonic inheritance in history, and it is worth mentioning that Tuolei as the younger son was the most favored and divided into the most military households, so in the future, the Yuan Dynasty was the strongest of the kings of the Tuolei system and even became the imperial family.
After Genghis Khan, Wo Kuotai began to use troops to the Jin Kingdom, when there was only half of the Jin State left, ironically, the Territory of the Jin State at that time was roughly the same as the situation of the Northern Song Dynasty against the Liao State, and the result was similar to the Northern Song Dynasty. Emperor Aizong of Jin also suffered a joint blow from the Southern Song Dynasty and the Yuan Dynasty, and the Song army finally attacked CaiZhou, and Emperor Aizong of Jin was defeated and killed. At that time, he still thought that he could revitalize the Golden Kingdom, but as a result, the Three Peaks Mountain was surrounded and suppressed by Tuolei, and the elite was lost, even if he finally killed the powerful minister, he was unable to return to heaven, which was indeed sad and lamentable. After the death of Emperor Aizong of Jin, the Yuan Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty basically tacitly acquiesced to the direct entry of the two countries into a state of war.
Above_ Boer Only Jin Tuolei (Mongolian for mirror, 1193-1232), the fourth son of Genghis Khan BoEr Jin Temujin (picture left)
Within the next fifty years, the Yuan Dynasty launched a protracted conquest of the Southern Song Dynasty, during which time the Yuan Dynasty was busy sneaking around Dali to occupy Yunnan, while other descendants of Genghis Khan were also marching westward. For example, Batu first swept Russia, then attacked Hungary on a large scale, established the Chincha Khanate, and fought in Eastern Europe, which was also a wind and a rumble, if it were not for the news that Mongolia wanted to establish a noble reason for khan at that time, I was afraid that drinking the Maline River was not a dream.
However, although the Europeans were miserable, they were also miserable to the Arabs, and after the collapse of the Khwarazm, the Persians and Arabs of West Asia thought that they could sit back and relax, after all, it was rumored that there was an eastern empire that would sweep away the Arab world, and it turned out that the empire was Mongol. After the Battus Expedition, Hulagu's troops pointed at Persia, which was like a broken bamboo, sweeping all the way, Baghdad Damascus and other world famous cities became his pockets, established a huge Ilkhanate, if it were not for the Mamluk cavalry defeating his confidants, I was afraid that even Egypt would have to be included in the territory of the Mongols.
Above_ The province of Central Burma, also known as the Province of Zhengmian Province, is placed on behalf of the Burmese state (Bagan Dynasty), because it is commonly known as the rule, and the nature of other provinces of the Yuan Dynasty is different
At the same time that the Mongol Empire's conquest of the West was at its peak, Kublai Khan finally won the civil war, inheriting the legacy of his unfortunate old brother Möngke and destroying the Southern Song Dynasty, completely unifying the north and the south of the river. In a sense, China's territory has reached its ultimate peak since the Tang Dynasty, and even Kublai Khan attacked Burma, once establishing the so-called "Burmese-Chinese Province", creating an unprecedented history.
However, what is interesting about the conquest of the Yuan Dynasty is that in the face of the Yuan Dynasty, which was almost invincible to the world powers, it was repeatedly defeated in the face of those small states. For example, the two conquests of Japan suffered disastrous defeats, 500,000 troops attacked Vietnam but were beaten to lose their armor, and in Java they were even more defeated, so why did the Yuan Dynasty face such a powerful country in the face of great powers, and defeated again and again against these small countries?
Above_ Mongol heavy cavalry
Second, small countries are all hard bones
To say that the Mongols' achievements in these small countries can be said to be unbearable, such as the two Mongol conquests of Japan.
The first time in 1274, the Mongol army sent 30,000 troops to Kyushu. It sounds like no more than 30,000 horses, which seems to be not enough to sweep through Japan, but the gap between Japan's military and the Yuan Dynasty at that time was not a star and a half. The weapons and tactics of the Yuan Dynasty were stronger than those of Japan, and they did not know where to go, Japan saw for the first time the amazing power of firearms and Mongolian iron horses, and the two sides were at an absolute disadvantage to japan, but at the critical moment when Japan was about to be defeated, the mountainous terrain in the Kyushu region saved them, the Mongols could not attack for a long time, and they also encountered a typhoon, and more than two hundred warships were all destroyed, and they had no choice but to return.
The second attack on Japan, the Yuan Dynasty can be even more powerful, this time there are nearly 200,000 troops, including more than 100,000 Han troops, want to annex Japan in one fell swoop. However, this time the Yuan Dynasty can be said to be more unlucky than the last time, it encountered a typhoon without waiting for the landing, and when it had to land, it encountered the Japanese army that had already been in a strict position waiting for the strength of the whole country to resist the Yuan army, and as a result, the Yuan army was broken by the Japanese army, which can be said to be unlucky to go home.
Above_Gensei Japan encounters "kamikaze"
Similar to the failure to attack Japan, there was also the failure to attack Java, which was then the area around present-day Indonesia. (But at that time it was fragmented, not today's Indonesia) To say that Vietnam and Japan are a similar country, the strength of Java at that time can be said to be quite weak, and at that time, the strongest Majapahit in Java was still united with the Yuan Dynasty, but the Yuan Dynasty did not expect that the Majapahit actually used the Yuan army to eliminate its nemesis, the Shinha Shali Country, and after eliminating the Shinha Shari Country, the Majapahit turned around and drove the Yuan army to the sea.
If the Yuan Dynasty's great defeat against Japan was due to the unfortunate encounter with typhoons, it was because of the excessive length of the supply line against Java. Then the repeated failures of the Yuan Dynasty against Vietnam seem to be a bit unreasonable.
In 1257, 1282 and 1287, the Yuan Dynasty invaded Vietnam three times on a large scale, especially in 1287, when Kublai Khan, the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty, was determined to eliminate Vietnam as a thorn in the eye and a thorn in the flesh. The size of the mobilized army reached 500,000, of which more than 300,000 people directly participated in the battle, the Yuan Dynasty concentrated the soldiers and horses of Jianghuai, Jiangxi, Huguang, plus the Yuan army in Yunnan, concentrated on attacking Vietnam, did not expect that the Vietnamese army adopted the tactics of luring the enemy to go deep, launched a sudden counterattack in the Qinghua generation, the Yuan Dynasty was caught off guard, the commander escaped from the huan, and hundreds of thousands of troops collapsed, including more than 50,000 surrenders.
This incident made Kublai Khan grumble before his death, Kublai Khan was still planning to continue the conquest of Vietnam before his death, if he had not died of illness, it is estimated that the crusade would have had a fourth anti-Yuan war.
Above_ Kublai Khan (1215-1294), also known as the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty
Third, the end of expansion
In fact, if we look at history, we can find that the expansion of the Yuan Dynasty seems to be different from what we think. In fact, the reason why the Yuan Dynasty was unable to take these small countries was roughly three reasons:
1. The motive is not pure, and the teacher is unknown
The Yuan Dynasty's conquests of small countries often had some reasons that were not pure. After all, the Jin people regularly went to the Mongolian steppe to kill people and set fires to stir up dissension, and although the Western Xia and Southern Song Dynasties were not famous, they were also "bright and righteous" invasions, the Mongols fought the vanguard of the main battle, and other servant armies followed behind, but the attack on Japan and Vietnam was not the case.
When attacking Japan, the New Auxiliaries of the Southern Song Dynasty and the Goryeo people occupied the absolute main force, and the Fight against Vietnam was mainly han troops, and the Mongol army was actually not much, so this arrangement actually had a lot to do with Kublai Khan's desire to use the power of Japan and Vietnam to consume these troops.
After all, the territory of the Yuan Dynasty is too large, these surrendered armies are ten times more than the Mongol army, difficult to control, so Kublai Khan will be a large-scale conquest, on the one hand, can open up the territory, on the other hand, can also consume these difficult to control foreign armies, but the problem is that there is no belligerent Mongols as the core, these armies are no morale, will have no war will, for expansion is not at all cold, so the poor results are also reasonable.
The Third Yuan-Vietnam war (1287-1288)
2. The weather is unfavorable and the location is not harmonious
The failure of the Mongol offensive has a lot to do with geographical factors, due to the typhoon, the two attacks on Japan have failed miserably, it can be said that the defeat of the Mongols is not simply a military problem. To a large extent, the Mongols were able to break through on the mainland and the absolute advantage of the Mongol cavalry on land, but when they reached the sea, the Mongols could be blinded. The reason why the Southern Song Dynasty could not be attacked for a long time, in addition to the Southern Song Army's people's ambition to become a city, the Mongols were not good at water warfare was also an important reason.
This problem is the same in Japan. The Vietnamese army also saw the Mongol problem to lure the enemy deeper, and the Mongols entered the hinterland of Vietnam, which was crisscrossed by mountains and rivers, and even the high-tech American soldiers were helpless, let alone the Mongols.
Above_ Map of the Mongol army besieging the city
3. No foundation, blind expansion
When the Mongols attacked the pre-country countries, they often took advantage of their internal contradictions and reaped the benefits of the fishermen. For example, there were rebellions by strong ministers within the Jin Dynasty, such as Pu Chaguan Nu Hu Shahu and others, and the Southern Song Dynasty had the dictatorship of Jia Xiangdao, which led to the rebellion of Liu Zhen, such as the struggle for power within dali by the Duan clan of the Gao clan, and the rebellion within the Western Liao. These internal problems have empowered the Mongols, but Vietnam is different from Japan.
Japan itself is isolated overseas, the Yuan Dynasty has almost no understanding of Japan, and the Vietnamese military and civilians are united, and the Chen Dynasty's relatives and nobles were very united at that time, so the Yuan Dynasty could not rely on their internal strength to cope with the internal and external cooperation, and it was precisely because of this that the Yuan Dynasty would be attacked on all sides, it was difficult to move forward, and eventually suffered a fiasco.
It can be said that the failure of the Yuan Dynasty in these countries proves that the Mongols are not invincible on iron horses, they can conquer such a huge land, they can not only rely on force to succeed, there is no time and place, the Mongols will also suffer failure, so Zhu Yuanzhang can easily sweep the Yuan Dynasty.
Text: Sanqing Miaoyin
bibliography:
[1] Song Lian et al. "History of the Yuan"
[2] Fizzini's History of the Conquerors of the World
[3] Chen Zhongjin's "History of Vietnam"
[4] Rasht's "History Collection"
The text was created by the History University Hall team, and the picture originated from the Internet and the copyright belongs to the original author