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introduction
Since the establishment of the two Han states in the pre-Qin Dynasty, each dynasty and each generation had an enemy from the north, the Xiongnu in the Han Dynasty, and the Sixteen Kingdoms had the disaster of the Five Hu Chaotic China, and after pacifying the Five Hus, the Turks were rampant again in the Sui and Tang Dynasties.
Even the subsequent Khitan, Jurchen, and Mongolia were even more state-built, but these peoples all have a common characteristic——— nomads from the steppe.
(Nomadic safari restoration)
The grassland is sparsely populated, and the cold and arid climate makes the people who want to live in this land all have strong physique. And if you want to be able to tame the fierce horses and livestock, let them ride and shoot well, and plagiarize abnormalities.
With extremely high military force, but lack of living and production property, the historical steppe tribes armed and plundered the rich lands of the Central Plains, which is also the fundamental reason why successive dynasties have great troubles in the north.
The Son of Heaven guarded the gate of the country, and the lifelong enemy of the iron-blooded dynasty Daming of the king died in the society, Wala, defeated the Daming Dynasty that went through the rule of Hongwu, Yongle Shengshi and Renxuan, and became a "dark horse" suddenly killed in history.
(Akihitomune)
First, the origin of Vara, Mongolia in a broad sense
The Vara are a long-standing people, recorded since the Tang Dynasty, and they call themselves Oirat. They were also called differently by transliteration, but the Vara were indeed a nomadic group belonging to one of the western Mongol ethnic groups.
The historical Mongolian plateau is basically composed of two parts, east and west, east Mongolia is called "steppe people", west is the western Mongolia dominated by Vara, they are called "people in the forest", the original meaning of Vara is also "forest people" or "neighbors".
(People of the forest and of the steppe)
But in terms of language and geography, there is a lot of difference between them and our traditional concept of Mongolia, they call themselves Oirats and speak Oirat. It is also the main population living in the northern part of the Western Regions, centered on the Junggar Basin. In the Mongol-Oirat Code of September 1640, the two sides were referred to as "Mongol and Oirat".
Before the Yuan Dynasty, the Vara and the Mongols were not even two tribes that were not related to each other. However, as Genghis Khan unified the Mongol ministries for a generation of Tianjiao, Vara submitted to the might of the Great Mongol State. With the marriage and intermarriage of generations, the Vara in the Yuan Dynasty era was already a subordinate tribe of Mongolia, so the Vara was also Mongolia in a broad sense.
And such a subordination relationship made Wa Ra still regarded as a "remnant of the Yuan court" for a long time after the fall of the Yuan court to the north.
(Distribution map of the situation in the early Ming Dynasty)
Second, the rise of Wala, the steppe version of Cao Mengde
At the end of the Yuan Dynasty, the world was in chaos. Through various internal struggles, the Vara gradually annexed various forces in the Yuan Dynasty, and its own power became more and more expanded, and after the Yuan court moved north, the Vara Dynasty's sphere of influence was not in the southern part of the Central Plains, thus preserving a lot of strength. The Northern Yuan gradually separated under the blows of the Ming Dynasty, becoming three nomadic groups that were not subordinate to each other, the Vara, the Tatars and the Ulyangha.
(Situation map of the middle and early Ming Dynasty)
The strong strength of the Daming Dynasty in the south made Vara and Wuliangha choose to rely on it to continue to preserve their strength. Since then, the Ming Dynasty has only Tatar, a strong enemy, and in order to pacify the north, Zhu Di, the ancestor of the Ming Dynasty, first sent peace talks without success, and then conquered Mongolia five times, but failed to conquer the Mongolian land.
But Vara gradually stood out in this war after war. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, Vara took advantage of the war between Tatar and the Ming court to glimpse a good opportunity, and on the one hand, Vara made a good alliance with the Ming court and asked for a seal, and on the other hand, actively continued to fight with the eastern Mongol nobles, laying the foundation for the rise of Vara .
In the rise of Vara there is also a story of "holding the Son of Heaven to order the princes".
(The image of detachment in film and television dramas)
In 1410 and 1414, the Tatar and Vara tribes were successively defeated by the Ming Emperor Zhu Di because of their disobedience to the Ming Dynasty. The leader of the Vara tribe, Tu Huan, understood that in order to fight against the behemoth of the Ming Dynasty, he must first complete the unification.
So in 1434 AD, Tu Huan led an army to attack and kill the Mongol Great Khan of the Tatar tribe, and then incarnated as the steppe version of Cao Mengde, and supported the descendants of the Yuan family with Mongolian golden blood. Like Cao Cao, he "took the Son of Heaven to order the princes", smoothly integrating the Vara tribes with the Tatars and Ulyangha in Eastern Mongolia, and conquered the north.
After the death of Tuo Huan, his son was also even more ambitious to inherit his father's hegemony, claiming to be the King of Taishi Huai, and Wala's strength was also pushed to the peak under his operation.
(also film and television image)
Third, the pinnacle of Wala, Mongolia unified and established the state
He was also more military and politically savvy than his father.
During the reign of the "steppe chancellor Cao Cheng", Huan Huan only expanded the influence of Vara on Eastern Mongolia through marriage, and constantly encroached on the borders of the Ming Dynasty. In the Mongolian historical document "Mongolian Origins", it is also recorded that Mengkebai of Menggolzin also killed the various troops commanded by Menggoljin, and then sent troops to the Ming Dynasty in the Central Plains.
(Image in film and television dramas)
In 1449, he also attacked the Ming Dynasty in the name of the Ming Dynasty's refusal to trade, and under the attack of the Mongol cavalry, the hinterland of the Ming Dynasty was in a hurry. Emperor Yingzong of Ming Dynasty Zhu Qizhen was very happy, and under the instigation of the eunuch Wang Zhen, he personally engaged the troops of Tumu Fort and Yexian.
Zhu Qizhen obviously did not inherit the heroic martial arts of his father and brothers, and the Ming army was chaotic in command in the Battle of Tumu Fort, first blindly taking the initiative and then squad division, and was defeated by the Mongol army that also commanded first.
Those who captured Ming Yingzong also chose to expand their victories at the first time, and pursued them all the way to prepare to invade and occupy Beijing.
(Ming Yingzong captured)
However, Yu Qianjianbi, who was a military attendant in the Ming Dynasty, fought to the death to defend Beijing. He also began to encircle Beijing in an attempt to force the Ming court to sign an alliance under the city, but it was shattered in the heavy casualties, the weariness of the soldiers, and the contradictions in the rear.
After the siege of Beijing was first retreated, the Ming Dynasty was preserved. He first negotiated with the Ming Dynasty with the captured Ming Yingzong as capital, while the Ming Dynasty set up a new emperor to fight back strongly, and then tried to marry his sister and make peace with the Ming Dynasty, but was also rejected. In the end, he was forced to return Emperor Yingzong in 1450.
After returning Emperor Yingzong of Ming, the two sides resumed normal tribute-to-market relations, but the Vara led by Ye Xian did not enjoy the results of the battle.
(Yu Qian, film and television image)
The Mongolia integrated by his father Tuhuan "holding the Son of Heaven to make the princes" was not a monolith, and the Mongol Great Khan was not a great Khan in name, but the actual power was controlled first. Such a relationship between monarchs and subjects was bound to be impossible, and when they first besieged Beijing, this contradiction continued to intensify.
After reconciliation with the Ming Dynasty, internal contradictions seemed to reach the extreme. Those who control the power also covet the Khan position first, and let the son born to his sister be the prince, and the son born to his sister who is not willing to be a puppet also makes his son a prince, which directly detonates the contradiction between the two.
The war between the two sides was on the verge of breaking out, and Shu Fuhua initially joined forces with his younger brother Agabalzi, and it was quite difficult to distinguish victory or defeat with Yexian's strength, but he also first encircled Agabalzi through a dissociation scheme and defeated Shu Buhua.
(Wala)
Subsequently, he was first captured and killed by his subordinates, and the overall situation was established, and he also booby-trapped and killed Agabalzi first, and historical records recorded: "All the leaders of the former Yuan and Miao were killed." ”
After clearing up internal contradictions and resolving the border trade issue with the Ming Dynasty, the power of Yexian at this time reached an unprecedented degree of strength. He also naturally embarked on the road of being a widow, calling himself the "Heavenly Saint Great Khan" and establishing the name "Tian Yuan", which is also the so-called Vara Empire.
After the establishment of the Vara Empire, it began to expand wildly, unifying the empires of Eastern and Western Mongolia, and its power extended from West Asia in the west, Black Mountain and White Water in the east, Siberia in the north, and Mingbian in the south. For a time, "the eastern and western lands of the north of the desert, there are no people who dare to resist it", forming an unprecedentedly huge nomadic empire.
(Map of the power of the Vara Empire)
Fourth, the end of the Walla lacks the sadness of far-sighted thinking
The strength of the empire also lost his previous judgment, and he was eager to further determine the legitimacy of his power, and it was not difficult to see from his founding name "Tian Yuan" that ruling in the name of the Yuan Dynasty was undoubtedly the only way to ensure the legitimacy of his imperial throne.
Therefore, when he ascended the throne, he also wrote to the Ming court that he had the jade seal of the country, and wanted to exchange his belongings for the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, such as uniforms, golden bowls, ceremonial guards and other imperial items.
The Ming Dynasty has always regarded the jade seal of the kingdom as a dead hole, and as early as when Zhu Yuanzhang founded the state, he could even give up the land that had been captured for the sake of the jade seal of the kingdom, and he first told the Ming court that he had mastered the jade seal of the kingdom to ascend the throne as the emperor of the Yuan Dynasty, and the Ming court naturally would not admit it, and in the letter of return, he only called him the Khan of Vara first.
(Image)
Those who were rejected did not care much, and he even thought that the Ming court was just deceiving himself, and that he who had mastered the jade seal already occupied absolute legitimacy in the traditional feudal system. Therefore, although he regretted that he could not get the royal items, he then focused on expanding the power of the empire.
As far as economics is concerned, the nomadic economic foundation of the ancient Mongolian plateau could not support a huge empire, especially after the population skyrocketed.
Although it briefly unified the Mongolian plateau and established a huge empire spanning east and west, as the Ming Dynasty cut off its connection with the north, the Vara Empire soon entered an extremely difficult situation.
(Wala)
It is not difficult to see from the lessons of history that any regime that occupied the grassland in ancient times eventually developed south, such as the successful Yuan Dynasty and the Manchu Qing Dynasty, and even the Liao and Jin before it. Unfortunately, he did not have such foresight, and he lost the support of the Ming Dynasty and was murdered by his subordinates after only three years in power.
After his death, his power could not be as powerful as that of the first emperor, and Vara gradually weakened. The two sons split into the Durbot Department and the Dzungar Division, and in the Qing Dynasty, they were divided into the Heshuo Branch and the Turkut Division, and the Vara Empire was dissolved into four tribes.
(Photo of the National Integration Meeting)
It is worth mentioning that the later four Dzungar departments stood out and counterattacked the Manchu Qing Dynasty under the leadership of Gardan during the Kangxi Dynasty, intending to drive away the Central Plains. But it was later pacified, Gardan was killed, and the Dzungar Khanate also perished under the operation of the Qing court for many years. The last bloodline of the Vara people, the Mongol struggle for hegemony since the seventeenth century ended in failure.
Throughout the history of Wala, from the vassal clan to the chasing deer of the world, it later flourished for a while across the east and west, but it split and disintegrated like a bubble, and the resistance of the descendants' bloodlines was also quelled, and finally withdrew from the historical stage.
There are so many successes and failures in history, but from a national point of view, the non-authentic broad Mongol ethnic group has made its own nation colorful, and first broke the traditional Mongolian concept that non-golden clans cannot be called khans, and became the first and only great khan in Mongolian history that is not from a golden family.
(Picture and text are not related)
It is precisely because the tribes on the steppe are not very strict about bloodline, so after the Vara split, some of them were completely integrated into the Mongols, some were integrated into the Tibetans during migration, and some were integrated into the Manchus, who were also forest tribes. And these ethnic groups also have a unified ethnic group in this era, that is, the Chinese nation.
The inheritance of the nation is not the continuation of the theory of blood, but the development of a spiritual civilization, and the future of the Chinese nation will also be passed on eternally!
Resources
Cherchen Saga. Mongolian Yuanliu[M].Inner Mongolia People's Publishing House,1980.
BAI Cuiqin. Guangxi Normal University Press,2006.