Ch 6 - Koryo Under the Mongols

Kublai Khan, the Son of Heaven

General Jalairtai's Mongols terrorized and devastated Koryo. After a coup removed the Ch'oe military dictators from power, ruling authority reverted to King Kojong whose government sought peace with the Mongols. Kublai Khan began his final assault against Song China and made overtures to Japan seeking submission as a vassal state of the Mongol Empire.

While Kublai's Mongol armies swept across China, continuing and persistent peasant attacks in Koryo triggered a series of four separate Mongol assaults on the peninsula between 1253 and 1257. To better combat localized resistance, the Mongols commonly split their large field armies into smaller, wide ranging fighting units that could more easily deal with individual towns or strongholds. True to form, the Mongols lived up to their reputation for cruelty in battle. If a city or town failed to submit, the Mongols divided the artisans, women and young children among their soldiers and killed the rest. The corpses of the dead were too numerous to count. General Jalairtai reportedly took as many as 200,000 prisoners during a deadly campaign that reduced the countryside to ashes. Wherever they went, Jalairtai's troops ravaged a landscape already suffering from a series of droughts. The unusually dry weather ruinously magnified the Mongol's scorched earth policies.

The most severe of these destructive incursions came in 1254, when Mongols under the command of General Jalairtai sacked every major city on the Korean peninsula, inflicted a massive slaughter of peasants, and permitted the indiscriminate destruction of numerous temples and palaces. Koryo lost many of its most irreplaceable treasures to the Mongol assault, including the beautiful nine-story wooden pagoda at Hwangnyong-sa in Kyongju and the thousands of carved wood printing blocks of the First Koryo Edition Buddhist canon produced in 1087 and stored at the Puin-sa monastery in Taegu.

The Koryo aristocracy had more to worry about than the Mongol threat. The military ruling authority of the Ch'oe house epitomized the wealth and power enjoyed by Koryo's military rulers. As the supreme arbiters of power, the Ch'oe regime controlled all the affairs of government in thirteenth century Koryo. The personal land holdings of the military officer corps provided the economic foundation that made it possible for them to build small private armies, personal guard units created by arming their household retainers and slaves. The Ch'oe regime effectively appropriated the entire Chinju region as their own private preserve and took all the revenues for themselves. They accumulated such vast stores of grain they began paying the salaries of government officials that the empty government granaries could not provide. They also sought to make it clear they were prepared to exercise full authority in both the civilian and military spheres. They established a Personnel Authority in their own residence and staffed it with men of high civil attainment to handle official appointments, a development that paved the way for the gradual reappearance of civil officials in positions of power.

While General Jalairtai's Mongols both terrorized and devastated the lives of Koryo's peasants and inevitably forced them into lives of hardship, high government officials on Kanghwa Island did little to ease the fate of their own people. They continued to make peasant life even more miserable by exacting harsh taxes from them whenever and wherever they could get them. The Koryo government behaved as though they still lived in Kaesong during peacetime. Instead of pressing ahead with measures designed to help and protect the peasantry, the island government seemed preoccupied with the fear that the Mongols would somehow take to sea and cut off their supply ships sailing the waters between the mainland and Kanghwa Island. This heartless exploitation by the ruling elite bred a deep hostility in the hearts of common peasants and dampened their will to fight the Mongols. The alienation of the peasant population would later come back to haunt the isolated Koryo government.

With peasant support seriously weakened, a grave crisis overtook the Ch'oe military regime and the very survival of the government hung on its solution. Koryo's civil officeholders, men who had long been ignored in the halls of government, found little opportunity to express their views, even after the move to Kanghwa Island. They opposed the move to Kanghwa Island from the beginning and increasingly demanded to be heard. The civilian bureaucracy believed the best way to curb the power of the military regime would be to seek an accommodation with the Mongols. They took advantage of every opportunity to urge peace with the Mongols in the belief that with peace would come a reduction in the power of Koryo's military regime. Even though they knew their position would seriously affect any future expansion of their role in the Koryo government, they decided the first step toward a peaceful accommodation with the Mongols had to be the removal of those who advocated continued resistance;  the military regime of the Ch'oe clan.

In 1258, Yu Kyong led a group of civil bureaucrats acting in collusion Kim Chun and a small segment of the military in an armed attack against the royal house of the Ch'oe clan. The coup began when attackers broke down the front gate to the palace grounds and surprised the residents trapped inside. In fear for his life, Ch'oe Ui, the last of the Ch'oe military dictators, attempted to escape by climbing over a wall at the back of his residence. Armed men quickly surrounded the garden where Ch'oe's bodyguards were trying without success to boost the overweight tyrant over the back wall. Capture and death came quickly to Koryo's portly dictator. In the wake of this short-lived coup, ruling authority in Koryo reverted to King Kojong, whose government decided to seek peace with the Mongols. As a sign of submission, in March 1259, Kojong sent his son, Crown Prince Chon, to meet with the Mongols and convey Koryo's desire for peace and to signal its intent to cease resisting.

The Mongols had yet to completely subdue southern China and the situation there remained quite fluid. Mangu Khan decided the time had come for an all-out invasion of southern China to crush the Song Dynasty once and for all. Mangu left his youngest brother, Arik-Boke, to govern Karakorum, and took personal command of a massive four-pronged assault against the Song. General Uriyangkhadai, a veteran of the combined attack on Dali in the Kingdom of Nanzhou, advanced into Song territory from the southwest, while a smaller fourth army struck from the west. Kublai Khan drove south across the North China Plain into the Yangtze River basin taking aim at the Song fortress at Wuchang. Mangu advanced from the northwest, crossing the Great Wall along the Yellow River near the city of Ho-chou (modern Hequ), where his progress was slowed in the face of determined resistance. The general plan was to seize Song territory in the southwest and overrun central China, thereby isolating the Song heartland in eastern China. It didn't work.

The resilient Song Chinese, with far more resources to draw upon than the kingdoms of western Asia, proved to be more than a match for the Mongols and handed them their toughest war. To begin with, the Song state was better organized and more formidable an opponent than many of the Mongols' earlier conquests. New and far more capable Song generals were successfully wresting numerous cities and towns from Mongol control. Adding to the Mongol's difficulties, the terrain of southern China did not favor their typical cavalry tactics. There is an old saying in China, "In the north, you go by horse. In the south, you go by boat."

In June of 1259, while Kublai was in the midst of a siege against the city of Wuchang on the Yangtze River in western Hubei Province, devastating news arrived;  his brother, Mangu Khan was dead. He refused to break off the attack return to Mongolia to attend the quriltai to elect a new Great Khan. Since the quriltai could hardly continue without him, and since a triumphant attack would certainly impress those attending, he disregarded the advice of his generals to wait for better weather and launched a full-scale attack across the Yangtze River. The Chinese fought a bitter defensive battle, but the Mongols would not yield and managed to establish a bridgehead, cutting the Song's vital Yangtze River artery.

The building Mongol threat to Song China prompted Prime Minister Kia Sedao, eager to protect the lifeblood of his realm at all costs, to lead a delegation to negotiate with Kublai. With offerings of annual tributes of silk and gold, Kia Sedao proposed a new frontier between the Jin Empire and the Song Empire and even agreed to recognize Mongol suzerainty over the Song Dynasty in the bargain. Kublai ended his meetings with Kia Sedao by promptly accepting the Song offer. Kublai quickly departed China and rushed his armies northward into Mongolia to begin a long battle for supremacy over the Mongol's vast land empire which was, once again, thrown into turmoil. The Song were safe - for a while.

The Mongol military council met in 1260 at the oasis city of Shangdu west of Dolon-nor (modern Duolun), to elect a new Khakan in an atmosphere tense with the imminent threat of wars of succession. Kublai, the oldest surviving son of Tolui, was not the only man with a legitimate claim to the title Khakan. Other branches of the family were also beginning to maneuver to take the mantle of leadership and were now very close to taking up arms to fight for the throne. Kublai's younger brother, Arik-Boke, had a sizeable following of conservatives, men who wanted to preserve the old way of life at all costs. He not only had his eye on the throne, but commanded a sizeable military force in the one area that mattered most, Mongolia, site of the quriltai. Kublai was a hard-headed politician and military strategist who, despite refusing the title three times as a matter of displaying good manners, had every intention of becoming the Great Khan if he could.

Kublai short-circuited the growing internal feuds by inducing his own relatives, the Mongol generals of his armies in China and the Mongol viceroys of the Chinese provinces, to gather at his own quriltai in the oasis city of Shangdu, north of the Jin capital at Yench'ing (Zhongdu). On June 4, 1260, his own military council proclaimed the forty-year-old Kublai the leader of the entire Mongol world. At the time, the Mongol Empire encompassed all the land from China's Yellow River to the shores of the Danube River in eastern Europe, and from Siberia to the Persian Gulf, an area twice the size of the Roman Empire at its greatest extent.

Kublai Khan may have controlled the most powerful force in the empire, but he had no illusions about his shaky status among many of the Mongol tribes  In a remarkable move, he also had himself crowned as Tien-tse, "Son of Heaven," Emperor of China. He not only became Ruler of the Mongol Empire, but the lawful heir to the realm of the Chinese emperors. Mangu Khan was the last Mongolian Great Khan to actually live in Mongolia. In his quest for Mongol hegemony over Asia, Kublai Khan moved the Mongol capital from Karakorum to where he considered his natural homeland to be;  China.

Genghis Khan, a man whose saddle was his empire, had no interest in the sedentary way of life and avoided what was left of the Jin capital of Zhongdu. Kublai Khan ended up building two capitals:  In 1264, he built an "Upper Capital" at Shangdu, some 125 miles north of Zhongdu. Just three years later in 1267, a second capital known as the "Central Capital" was built at Khanbalik, "the town of the Khan," slightly northeast of the Jin capital and the site of modern Beijing. Shangdu, with a population of between 100,000 and 200,000 people, looked every bit like a Chinese capital except for the large hunting preserve and garden on the outskirts of the city. In time, Shangdu became a summer residence and retreat where the Mongols could return to their nomadic roots. For a Mongol warrior, to settle down and live the sedentary life was almost heresy. By moving the capital out of Mongolia, Kublai Khan drove a deep wedge among the Mongols, many of whom saw it as a betrayal of their heritage and an abandonment of the Mongol Empire. Kublai Khan had clearly and permanently linked the Mongol Empire's ultimate fate to that of China and made any discussion of a unified Mongol nation beyond the year 1260 meaningless.

Not long after Kublai Khan withdrew his armies north to Shangdu, a Song Chinese force under Prime Minister Kia Sedao massacred a Mongol detachment south of the Yangtze River. After allegedly "negotiating an agreement" with the Mongol Emperor in a devious attempt to "cheat the barbarians" out of south China, Kia Sedao falsely reported to the Song Emperor that his victorious attack on the Mongols caused them to withdraw. Kia Sedao's cowardly act of self-embellishment, preening himself as the savior of Song China, laid the groundwork for the destruction of the Song Dynasty. By breaking his earlier agreement, he directly challenged the Mongol leader and in so doing gave Kublai Khan the only excuse he needed to open a new war of annihilation against Song China.

The word of Kublai Khan held the force of law throughout four-fifths of Asia. Mongol armies marched across Asia and many other ancient lands enforcing the demand for homage, tribute and submission from other rulers. Refusal to submit was tantamount to inviting an invasion. Lacking the shrewdness and tenacity of his grandfather Genghis, Kublai Khan cared little whether his conquests were economically profitable or even whether they brought him advantage. The unbridled love of dominion consumed him and it demanded satisfaction.

From his strategic position on the cultural and ethnic frontier between the Mongolian steppes and the agricultural zone of the North China Plain, Kublai Khan turned to the conquest of the Song Chinese, the greatest military achievement of his career. This would not be a shared command, but his own private war to take southern China intact. Two highly skilled campaign veterans of earlier Song wars stood ready to help him achieve his goal:  General Bayan, the son of his old friend Uriyangkhadai, and the Uighur Arik Khaya. True to his nature, Kublai laid out a carefully planned and meticulous campaign to ensure that southern China would not become a ravaged wasteland.

Kublai Khan enjoyed the wit and intelligence of learned men, scholars, accomplished artists and scientists. He enjoyed their company and welcomed them into his palace more than any other group of people. One of the many Koryo scholars who visited the Mongol court in Khanbalik reported to Kublai Khan on the great wealth of Japan, just the kind of news that pleased him and whetted his appetite for conquest. Motivated perhaps by strategic considerations, Kublai Khan prepared plans to press his attack against the stubborn Song Chinese by using both Koryo and Japan and their close maritime connections with Song China.

A Koryo courtesan, Zhao Yi, further aroused Kublai Khan's interest in Japan in 1265, when he informed the Mongol ruler that Japan could be reached rather easily. The following year, Kublai Khan dispatched two emissaries to Koryo with a request that King Kojong help ease the way for their entry into Japan. No Japanese official would meet with the two men however, and they returned home empty-handed. The Khan's attempt to subdue the Japanese peacefully failed and he decided to use brute force to subdue Japan, the only East Asian country that remained free from Mongol rule.

In 1268, Kublai Khan dispatched an embassy to Japan carrying a message to the Kamakura Shogunate, headed by Hojo Tokimune, stating the Mongol's readiness to accept tribute and homage from the local king. A refusal would lead to a prompt invasion. In due course this stunning message reached the imperial court in Kyoto, where it caused great concern. The Kyoto government analyzed the numerous rumors that arrived in Japan from both Koryo and South China. After carefully considering the potential for catastrophe, they concluded that a very tactful and conciliatory response was in order. Kublai Khan already held possession of a greater expanse of territory than that acquired by either Alexander the Great or the Roman Empire, and the Japanese felt he could hardly be expected to give the conquest of a little offshore principality like Japan a very high priority. Furthermore, the Mongol armies relied largely on their fast-moving cavalry. Amphibious operations would be a wholly new line of endeavor for them.

Tokimune adamantly refused to submit to such demands and, in the end, after several weeks of writing and rewriting their reply to the Mongol initiative, the imperial court decided to send no message at all. Japanese military leaders, aware of the manner in which the Mongols had enforced their rule over Koryo, began a united effort to establish and strengthen their defenses along Kyushu's northwestern coast.

With a sound intuition for the realities of the situation, the Japanese government promptly ordered the Mongol envoys packed off to China without a reply. Their action was tantamount to an open invitation to the Mongols to start a war, an invitation they could be counted on to accept.