In February 1211, Genghis Khan from the northern steppes led an army of 100,000 Mongols to launch an attack on the Jin Dynasty, opening the curtain on the more than 20-year-long Mongol war to destroy the Jin Dynasty, giving birth to a war giant who would conquer Eurasia in the future and change the fate of the history of the East and west.
Mr. Jin Yong, a famous Chinese writer of martial arts novels, based on the rise of Mongolia and the destruction of Jin and Song as the historical background, created our well-known martial arts novel "Legend of the Archery Hero". The war against the Jin Dynasty initiated by Genghis Khan was a crucial battle for the gradual rise of the Mongols.
However, this war of great historical value was recorded in the historical records extremely sparsely, and it made everyone wonder why the Mongols, as a new and fledgling nomadic group, dared to challenge the powerful Jin Dynasty Empire at that time.
Genghis Khan
The great war between Mongolia and the Jin Dynasty affected a very large area, from the present-day city of Chifeng in Inner Mongolia to the area around Zhangjiakou City in Hebei Province, which was the transition zone from the Mongolian Plateau to the North China Plain, and was also the meeting area of nomadic civilization and agricultural civilization at that time.
In 1206 AD, Temujin unified the Mongol tribes, was honored as Genghis Khan, and became the supreme ruler of the Mongol tribes, condensing the military and political power that had been scattered among the tribes into a powerful whole.
For Genghis Khan's fledgling Mongolian steppe regime, they were hungry for wealth and territory.
On the one hand, Genghis Khan had so many tribal leaders and supporters under him that it required some economic benefits to motivate them. On the other hand, the Mongol steppe regime needed to be consolidated, and the outward expansion of territory became inevitable.
Map of the territory of Mongolia and the Jin Dynasty
Genghis Khan wanted to expand his territory and ask for wealth, and the Jin Dynasty in the south became his number one target, because the Jin Dynasty not only had huge wealth and resources, but also had a blood feud between Mongolia and the Jin Dynasty.
The various tribes of Mongolia have long been bullied and oppressed by the Jin Dynasty, and even often encountered the unbearable killing of some Mongolian people by the Jin Dynasty to reduce the population and avoid the threat posed by the Mongols to the Jin Dynasty.
In February 1211, just five years after the unification of the tribes, the Mongol Khanate, which had not yet developed and grown, began a war machine against the Jin Dynasty, and these Mongolian nomadic tribes also followed Genghis Khan to begin the conquest.
Genghis Khan gathered an army of 100,000 men on the Mongolian steppes and launched an attack on the borders of the Jin Dynasty. However, the enemy they had to face was an unprecedentedly powerful Jin Dynasty Empire.
Mongol Army
In 1125 AD, the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Liao Dynasty, and then defeated the Northern Song Dynasty, capturing the sons and sons of Emperor Huizong of Song and Zhao Huan of Song Qinzong, as well as a large number of harem concubines, Zhao royalty, and imperial court ministers, and escorted them to the Jin Dynasty, that is
"The Shame of Jingkang"
。 Since then, the Jin Dynasty has become the most powerful empire in East Asia.
Before the war between Mongolia and the Jin Dynasty began, the Jin Dynasty, which dominated the Central Plains, had been established for 96 years, and it was the peak of national strength, with a population of nearly 50 million, more than 40 times more than Mongolia, which had a population of just over 1 million. Moreover, at this time, the Jin Dynasty army was more than one million, and the Mongol army was only 100,000, and from the perspective of the number of troops, the Jin army showed a clear absolute crushing trend.
In the face of such a huge disparity in strength, why did Genghis Khan dare to rush to launch a war against the Jin Dynasty, and where did his confidence come from? In the historical book "Western Xia Shushi", it is recorded:
"If the enemy attacks each other, the blessings of our country will not be troubled."
Finish the portrait of Yan Yongji
The meaning of this passage is that in 1209 AD, when the Mongol army attacked the Jin Dynasty's vassal state of Western Xia, the Western Xia urgently requested support from the Jin Dynasty.
In the face of Western Xia's request for help, the emperor of the Jin Dynasty, Wei Shao, said:
"The enemy's cannibalism is my blessing."
In desperation, the Western Xia could only turn to Mongolia. Genghis Khan saw that Yan Yongji was a faint and unsightly emperor, so he was even more dismissive of the Jin Dynasty. He even spat at the Jin Dynasty in the south, saying:
"I thought that the Emperor of the Jin Dynasty was a very remarkable person, and such a mediocre person as Yan Yongji could even become an emperor."
In addition to the low ability of the leader of the Jin Dynasty, Yan Yongji, the international strategic posture of the Jin Dynasty at this time also allowed Genghis Khan to see the weaknesses in the powerful body of the Jin Dynasty.
Emperor Gaozong of Song zhao
After the Jin Dynasty destroyed the Liao Dynasty and the Northern Song Dynasty, the Southern Song Dynasty established by Emperor Gaozong of the Song Dynasty became almost the only war opponent, and in the past hundred years, the offensive and defensive wars between the Jin Dynasty and the Southern Song Dynasty continued to occur.
Faced with the will and combat strength of the Southern Song army and people to recover their homeland, the Jin army adopted the military strategy of "attacking the south and defending the north", and most of the main forces of the Jin Dynasty were placed on the border between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Jin Dynasty in the south, while in the northern region where the Jin Dynasty and Mongolia met, only a few second-line troops were stationed.
The weakness of the Jin army's insufficient strength at the border between the Jin Dynasty and the Mongols was exactly where Genghis Khan's fist could reach.
Although the Jin army adopted the military strategy of "attacking from the south and defending the north", it did not completely ignore the military pressure from the northern Mongolia. With genghis Khan's unification of the Mongol tribes, the Jin army built a large-scale Jinjie trench (Jin Great Wall) in response to the combat characteristics of the Mongol cavalry, trying to use the Jinjie trench to block the attack of the Mongol army.
Ruins of the Golden Great Wall
According to historical records, the most special feature of the construction of the Golden Great Wall was that a trench 3 meters deep and 3 to 4 meters wide was first excavated outside the city wall as a trap for cavalry. Rammed earth walls were then built along the trenches, creating a drop of up to 6 meters, which was definitely a double obstacle that was difficult to overcome for the Mongol cavalry.
The Golden Great Wall is a strict defense system composed of three kinds of military fortifications, namely the Juma Trench, the Defensive City Wall, and the Large and Small Military Forts that support each other behind the city, and almost completely sealed off the border between the Jin Dynasty and Mongolia
"The Mongol cavalry could not overcome this artificial graben"
Thus, the vigilance against the Mongol army was relaxed.
After completing the gathering of the Mongol army of 100,000, Genghis Khan began to move towards the Jin army's defensive line, and duji Sizhong, the northern commander of the Jin army who received information, began to speculate bitterly about the direction of the Mongol army's attack.
As an opponent of Genghis Khan, Duji Sizhong had an outstanding performance in the battle against the Southern Song Dynasty and was regarded by the Jin Army
"A pillar of the military"
。
At this time, the Jin army troops in Duji Sizhong's hands were still scattered in Huanzhou, Changzhou, Fuzhou, and more than 20 military tuns, so he had to judge the attack point of the Mongol army as soon as possible before he could concentrate his forces to engage the enemy.
Duji Sizhong set his sights on the area around Darry Lake outside the northeastern border of the Jin Dynasty.
Dali Lake is one of the four famous lakes in Inner Mongolia, located in Keshketeng Banner, Chifeng City, Inner Mongolia, where the water and grass are abundant, it is a natural high-quality pasture, at the same time, it is also an extremely important strategic place.
The Golden Army in film and television dramas
Historically, Lake Dali was a crossroads in the northern steppe, a place of contention between soldiers and families in ancient China, from the age of cavalry to the age of firearms, for more than a thousand years.
The Area of Lake Darry was not only at the junction of the steppe passage, but also at the critical point of the two major forces of the Mongols and the Jin Dynasty at that time, and the Jin army's defensive line was close at hand, which was an excellent location for Genghis Khan's Mongolian steppe tribes to launch a southward offensive, and naturally became an ideal place for the Mongol army to assemble before the war.
Lake Darry was Genghis Khan's first stop from the north to the south, because the grassland to the north was dry and water-scarce, and in this place it was the confluence of four rivers, and the surrounding Gonggar steppe could also provide a grazing environment for the horses of the cavalry.
In addition, Duji Sizhong also judged that the attack of the Mongol army was of a predatory nature. Once the Mongol army broke through from Lake Dali, their target was most likely the three states of Huanzhou, Changzhou and Fuzhou, which were rich in materials.
Since Changzhou and Huanzhou were only 200 to 400 kilometers away from Dali Lake, while Fuzhou was more than 400 kilometers away, Duji Sizhong decided to concentrate the Jin army mainly on Huanzhou City and Changzhou City.
Sure enough, as DujiSizhong expected, Genghis Khan's 100,000-strong army soon arrived at Darry Lake, and the Jin army was also waiting, ready to teach the Mongol army from the north a painful lesson.
However, what Duji Sizhong did not expect was that after the huge Mongol army reached The Darry Lake, it did not take any military action, but instead stopped the flag and did not move.
Genghis Khan's 100,000-strong army had already gathered in the Gonggar steppe on the north shore of Lake Dali, and why he did not directly attack the three states north of the Jin Dynasty made Duji Sizhong wonder:
"What kind of medicine is sold in Genghis Khan's gourd?"
Ruins of the Golden Trench
The reason why the Mongol army garrisoned Dari Lake but was not in a hurry to start a war was actually hidden in the details of the life of the steppe nomads.
The mares in February were almost always in breeding and could not fight, and the foals could not march with the troops for half a year. Moreover, judging from the previous battle situation, the Mongol army with cavalry as the main body rarely launched offensive operations during this season.
In addition, another reason why the Mongol army did not move in The Lake of Dali was that the horses in the nursing period would produce a large amount of horse milk, and the milk milk that was milked was an important raw material for sour horse milk, and this horse milk was also an important military food for the Mongolian army at that time.
It can be judged from this that allowing the Mongol army war horses to cross the breeding period in the water and grass-rich Dari Lake, and to reserve a large amount of food using horse milk as raw materials, recuperate and recharge their strength, and wait for the opportunity for battle, which is obviously an important reason for the Mongol army to stay still in Darry Lake.
Battle of Monkin
As the ice and snow melted, the war once again surprised the commander of the Jin army, Duji Sizhong, and the fierce Mongol army did not attack the Golden Great Wall at Lake Dali, but suddenly withdrew overnight and disappeared without a trace.
Although Duji Sizhong repeatedly sent scouts to check the intelligence, half a year later, there was still no news about the Mongol army.
Just when Dujisi thought that everything was fine, the 100,000 Mongol army led by Genghis Khan suddenly rushed out from the hinterland of the south and directly attacked Fuzhou in the territory of the Jin Dynasty.