In 1207 CE, after Chingiz Khan had been proclaimed as the sole ruler of all Mongolia, he decided to decisively settle outstanding military issues. In 1204 CE he had sent an exploratory force to subdue the Turkic Kirghiz of Siberia to the north. After initial successes of the Mongols they were repulsed by the energetic Khan of the Kirghiz. Chingiz Khan was hardly the one who would take such things lightly. Thus, in 1207 CE he dispatched a force, which might have numbered up to 15,000, under the leadership of his eldest son Jochi to conquer Siberia. He had the following strategic objectives: 1) He correctly reasoned that to conquer the Jin empire (i.e. the Jurchen, the ancestors of the Manchus) it would be good to have strategic depth to their North and Northeast. 2) He wished to bring the various Tungusic tribes under his banner and there by prevent them from forming a truck with their Jin cousins. 3) He wished to unify the Mongolic and Turkic people of those regions who shared a common ethnicity with his peoples into the core of his empire. 4) Erase the Kirghiz Khanate. In 1207 Jochi’s army first defeated the Turkic nations of the Uriankhai (and related Tuvans), Barga, Bashkir (who in the old days had founded the Bulgar Khanate in the west) and Khakas (a sister group of the Kirghiz) and incorporated them into the Chingizid empire. In the following months the Mongolic nations of the Buryat and the Oirat (Who were to later rise to greatness under the Khans Esen Taiji and Amasanji Taiji) were annexed. With all these peoples accepting Chingiz Khan as their overlord, they were recruited to further strengthen Jochi’s ranks to launch an assault on the Kirghiz. To the west the Khanty nation [Footnote 1] of Ugric people speaking a language related to Hungarian accepted the rule of Chingiz Khan without a conflict and joined Jochi. In 1208 CE Jochi launched a major operation on the Kirghiz. Now with all the other tribes being incorporated into the Mongol empire the Kirghiz were isolated and had little chance of gaining any allies. But their Khan who saw himself as a descendant of their great leaders like the legendary Manas and those who had destroyed the then mighty Uighur Khanate centuries ago and believed he could over come Chingiz. He fought 3 pitched battles in 1208 against Jochi’s now enhanced invasionary force but was defeated on each occasion; with each defeat he found the Mongols closing a circle around him. Finally, in 1209 Jochi launched a devastating attack on the Kirghiz in which their Khan was killed and the Kirghiz Khanate was formally annihilated. The Mongols let the Kirghiz stay in their original territory but incorporated it under their direct rule.
In 1209 CE Chingiz Khan moved Southwest against the Tanguts (of Tibetan ethnicity) after noting that they had failed conclude an alliance with the Jin. Having taken many of their towns and cities he forced them surrender. In 1211 CE he performed a major ritual to various Tengris and set out to attack the Jin. The great Khan personally led a force of 60,000 men assisted by Yelü Tuhwa, a prince of the old Khitan clan, while his three sons Jochi, Chagadai and Ögödei marched with 10,000 men each to perform an outflanking operation. The four Mongol armies eventually converged at the pass known as Badger Mouth in China where they completed the encirclement of the gigantic Jin force of 450,000 men. In the battle which followed the Khan deployed a remarkable combination of tactics: first opening with an unexpected rear attack, followed by several rounds of unrelenting cavalry charges from mount slopes interleaved with showers of arrows and ballistas from heights followed by a final frontal attack after a controlled retreat. It resulted in one of the most dramatic victories scored by any army against a vastly numerically superior force, with over 400,000 Chinese and Jurchen lying dead on the battle ground.
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Footnote 1: The Khanty people remained heathen for long despite vigorous attempts to impose the Christian delusion on them by the Rus. They were finally subjugated by the 1800s and partly converted. In the 1900s they were subject to ethnic cleansing by Stalin who systematically suppressed their heathen religion and killed off all their shamans.
Continued…
Filed under: History
