The Yuan Dynasty was the first ethnic minority in China to enter the Central Plains and complete the great unification of the dynasty, the reason why the Mongols can become the first ethnic minority to enter the Customs and claim the title of emperor,
Inseparable from the brave and good warrior Mongolian iron horse,
China in the Yuan Dynasty era is the largest era of territory, the Mongolian iron horse to the west and even hit Europe, now many countries in Europe are said to be the descendants of the Mongols of the Yuan Dynasty at that time, the reason why Mongolia can rise so quickly can not be separated from two people, Genghis Khan and Kublai Khan, these two can be said to be the gods of the Mongol army, when the conquest to the west was Kublai Khan's grandfather Genghis Khan, to Kublai Khan but always thought of the Eastern Crusade, the Korean Peninsula at that time was already a vassal state of China,
Therefore, we could only focus on Japan, which was across the sea from us at that time, and the two eastern expeditions to Japan were carried out under the leadership of Kublai Khan.
Before the Eastern Expedition to Japan, the Korean Peninsula at that time was already part of the Yuan Dynasty, so Korea became the province of the Eastern Expedition at that time, before preparing for the Eastern Expedition to Japan, it directly forcibly recruited more than 40,000 shipbuilders in the local area, built 900 large warships at an astonishing speed in only ten months, and directly led 30,000 elites to start the first attack on Japan after the completion of the warships. Now many people attribute the failure of the Yuan army to fight Japan to the fact that the Yuan army is not good at water warfare, in fact, the ideas of war are the same, when the Yuan Dynasty's army only took three days to hit Tsushima Island, and then it did not take a day to completely annihilate the Japanese army on the island, eight days later it occupied Iki Island, and five days later it had already entered the main island of Japan, only one day away from the then Grand Chancellor's Mansion. It was only because of the unfamiliarity with the local terrain and the need to replenish grain and grass because the grain and grass line was too long, so the Yuan army, which was only one step away from victory at that time, retreated back to the sea, in order to prevent the Japanese from sneaking up on the ships transporting grain and grass, it was even far away from the coastline, that is, this time away from the coastline.
It happened to encounter a typhoon, which caused the total annihilation of the army after the arrival of the typhoon, and the first crusade against Japan ended in failure.
At that time, Kublai Khan only attributed the cause to the typhoon, and did not analyze his own reasons, so six years later he began another crusade against Japan, this time directly with forty thousand elites and 100,000 "foreign races", this time it was not so smooth as the first time, after a month of conquest, even Japan's main island had not landed, it lasted for two months, and after two months the typhoon came again, and the last tragedy was repeated again, and the whole army was destroyed. After this defeat, the Southern Song Dynasty also began a rebellion. Kublai Khan chose to quell the civil unrest first, so the Third Crusade to Japan was postponed, and then Kublai Khan died and his crusade plan was terminated.
For many years, later generations have believed that the failure of these two crusades was caused by the Mongols' unfamiliarity with water warfare and the sea climate, but people have not wondered why the ships of the Yuan Dynasty were so fragile. Why are there only remains after the typhoon? It was not until the end of the last century that Japan salvaged three Yuan Dynasty warships between Kyushu and Tsushima
The real reason for Kublai Khan's failure surfaced.
After the three warships were salvaged, experts surveyed the ships and found that the most common feature was that the wreckage of these warships was covered with willow nails, and some even had the mark of "Sichuan Ship" engraved on them. The Yuan Dynasty we all know is a very brutal dynasty, and the army at that time never regarded foreign people as people, so when casting warships, they frantically squeezed the labor force of the people who were forcibly recruited at that time, and within the specified time, they had to forge tasks that exceeded the reasonable workload, otherwise they would be executed.
At that time, the shipwrights could only find ways to complete the task in order to survive, including the transformation of the old ships, and the wreckage of the warships with more willow nails fully showed that the ship plates at that time were directly removed from the old ships, and the engraved "Sichuan Ships" mark showed that some warships were just ordinary river boats before, and in ancient times, "Chuan" referred to the inland rivers, and these ships were indiscriminately filled by shipwrights in order to complete the task and survive.
Kublai Khan's warships were made of old boat plates or directly transformed from river boats, and it was strange that they did not disintegrate in the face of typhoons. Therefore, the Yuan army at that time was not defeated by the Japanese army nor defeated by the typhoon, but only lost to their own eagerness to succeed, or the ancients sincerely did not deceive me "sharpen the knife and do not cut the wood by mistake".