WHEN CHINGGIS RETURNED TO his camp on the Mongolian plateau at the end of the year, he introduced into Mongol military training all the new knowledge he had acquired in the fighting with the first truly alien people of an alien state he had confronted, the Xixia. The group battle formation was largely altered, with military units all incorporated into the cavalry. As for weapons, they abandoned short spears and adopted longer ones, at the same time introducing the basilisk and cannon in place of bows and arrows. Day by day, battle training grew more strenuous and more strict. Aside from the very young, the old, and the infirm, all men were moved into military barracks and received military training. Those who did not receive such training were assigned to the production of weaponry including “willow leaf armor” and “encompassing armor,” as well as the “ram’s horn bow” and “sounding arrows.” The women tended the flocks of sheep and sewed the clothing. Even when night fell on the Mongolian plateau, the flicker of lantern lights could be seen everywhere. These showed the movement of cavalry troops, torches in hand, in nocturnal military exercises.
Many roads were now being built within Mongolia, and post stations with robust troops and horses were established at strategic points along them. All news was transmitted from station to station, and conveyed to Chinggis Khan’s camp with the speed of an arrow. Similarly, Chinggis’s orders were conveyed like a surging wave to every remote site on the vast plateau.
Laws and punishments were reinstituted with even greater severity. Thieves had to return three times the value of stolen goods. In the case of the theft of a camel, even just one, the thief would be executed. There were even strict penal regulations concerning arguments and the drinking of alcohol. All of these laws and penalties reflected a situation in which the soldiers were out on expeditions and the homeland was emptied of them, leaving only the women behind.
Chinggis spent the entire year of 1210 in preparation for a military expedition against the state of Jin. He had not fully resolved in his own mind, though, just when to attack. He had as yet no idea just how immense was the might possessed by the great Jurchen state of the Jin, as well as its military capacity and its economic clout. Such preparations, having required years, now seemed to be nearing completion, as the Mongols had amassed considerable strength.
In the summer of this year, an emissary from the Jin arrived. Around the time that the delegation appeared at the border, news was transmitted immediately through a dozen or more post stations to Chinggis’s tent. Thus, Chinggis waited for several days for the emissary to arrive.
The ambassador conveyed the news that the Jin emperor Zhangzong [r. 1189–1208] had died and his son Yinji [or Yongji, r. 1208–13] had acceded to the throne. He came on this occasion to encourage a renewal of the now long-abrogated Mongol tribute.
Chinggis treated the ambassador coolly from the start, adopting an attitude fully consistent with interviewing an embassy from a subject state. The person who acceded to the Jin throne had to be a brave and sagacious ruler, but Yinji, he had heard, was not a man of such caliber. It was thus utterly preposterous that he be encouraged to send tribute to Jin. Chinggis said as much and stood up. The emissary and his group had no choice but to return home immediately.
Although news of the death of Emperor Zhangzong had actually reached Chinggis’s ears the previous year, he had been unable to ascertain if it was true. The formal Jin embassy now enabled him to know the truth. That night in a room in his tent, Chinggis decided that the time was right to send his armies against the Jin. On the morning of the second day thereafter, he announced his decision to a group of the Mongol elders. The expedition was to commence six months from then, in the third month of 1211.
From the day he proclaimed the date for launching the expedition, military meetings were held on a daily basis in Chinggis’s tent. Fierce debates ensued among the commanders—Bo’orchu, Jelme, Qasar, Muqali, Jebe, and Sübe’etei, among others—over the attack routes to take against the Jin. The western route passed through Xixia, and now that the Xixia had been subjugated, it seemed the most natural way. It was convenient in terms of logistics, and the road itself was generally clear. The eastern route crossed over one mountain range after another, and after breaking through a corner of the Great Wall, they would have to forge an assault route. Taking the eastern way had the two benefits of catching the enemy by surprise and being able to forge a road of invasion that followed a number of sites along the line of the Great Wall. The western route followed a narrow stretch of land through the southern terrain of the Xixia.
After listening to the opinions of his commanders, Chinggis ultimately decided to take the eastern route. Like wolves crossing a mountain pass on a moonlit night, the pack of Mongol wolves would have to cross the Great Wall at numerous points and surge en masse into Jin territory. For many years, a clear image of this had been in Chinggis’s mind. Although there was no basis whatsoever for this necessarily to have been the choice, Chinggis wagered the fate of the Mongols on the vision he had harbored since his youth, an all-or-nothing gamble.
With the new year of 1211, groups of soldiers began to move all over the Mongolian plateau, gradually aligning and assembling at Chinggis’s camp. A small number of such groups moved uninterruptedly farther and farther upriver to the Onon and Kherlen river valleys.
Early in the third month of the year, Chinggis announced the invasion of the Jin before the entire group of Mongol armies. From that day forward, decrees began to be issued virtually every day about realignment of military units. The broad grassy plain by Chinggis’s camp now was deep in soldiers, camels, horses, and military vehicles. Countless sheep were also gathered in a corner of the field.
Mongol soldiers were all assigned to one of six large military units: three units under the command, respectively, of Muqali, Sübe’etei, and Jebe; the left army under the command of Qasar; the right army led by Chinggis’s three sons, Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei; and the central army under the command of Chinggis and his youngest son, Tolui. Remaining on guard at camp was a force of only 2,000 under the command of Toquchar.
Three days before the departure of the troops, Chinggis climbed Mount Burqan alone and at its peak prayed for victory. He tied a sash around his neck, undid the string around his clothing, knelt before an altar, and poured fermented mare’s milk on the ground.
—Alas, god of eternity, because our ancestors have been insulted and injured by the ruler of the state of Jin, I have raised an army and shall avenge them. This is the will of the entire Mongolian people. If you approve of this, then grant us the heaven-sent ability to carry out our task. And, order the people, good deities, and demons of this world below to cooperate with and aid us.
On the eve of the army’s departure, Chinggis assembled his sons Jochi, Cha’adai, Ögedei, and Tolui in his tent and to share a last dinner with their mother, Börte. Chinggis was now forty-nine years of age, Jochi twenty-four, Cha’adai twenty-two, Ögedei twenty, and Tolui eighteen.
“Börte,” said Chinggis, “the four sons to whom you have given birth will all be heading out against the Jin as commanders. As you will be separated from your sons later this evening, so shall I be from them. From tomorrow, father and sons must each follow a different path into battle. The coming front will be different in its great breadth from all of those heretofore.”
“Why should I be so sad,” replied Börte, “to separate from my sons? Did I not marry you and bear you sons to give birth to the wolves that destroyed the Tatars and the Tayichi’uds? Now that those children have grown up, the Tatars and Tayichi’uds whom these children were set to destroy have all been annihilated by you, with even their corpses no longer remaining. The children are hungry. Give them the freedom to cross the Great Wall and seize and feast on the minions of the Jin.”
Börte was a year older than Chinggis, and the golden locks that had glistened when she was young had all now turned to silver.
The dinner lasted well into the night. Chinggis and his four sons left camp late. When he departed from his sons in front of his tent, Chinggis walked toward the center of camp, and there handled a number of arrangements with Bo’orchu until the break of dawn. When all the arrangements were complete, the two men sat down facing each other. That night, when they would depart, he could not know when next he would see this commander, Bo’orchu, who had been assigned to the right army with three of Chinggis’s sons and who since his own youth had shared every pain and hardship with Chinggis.
When he and Bo’orchu parted and left the tent, dawn was beginning to break on all sides. Chinggis walked directly to Qulan’s yurt. The early morning air pierced his skin with its chill. Still wearing her night clothing, Qulan was sleeping with her young child. He was a three-year-old boy Chinggis had sired by the name of Kölgen.
As he approached her bed, Qulan awoke at the faint sound of his footsteps. When she recognized him, Qulan got out of bed and quietly stood facing him. Chinggis felt Qulan’s large, wide-open eyes staring at him earnestly. He had drawn apart from her for a while recently under the great pressure of urgent military matters.
Qulan seemed to be waiting for Chinggis to say something, but he silently came closer to take a look at the child’s sleeping face in bed. The boy looked like Qulan, and in his youthful face one could see Qulan’s exact eyes, nose, and mouth.
Moving away from the child, Chinggis turned and riveted his eyes on the mien of his youthful beloved princess. Not a word had as yet been exchanged between them. Finally, Qulan, apparently unable to bear the silence any longer, said:
“Great khan, what is it that you are trying to say?”
“Qulan,” he replied, “what is it that your ears wish to hear?”
“There is only one thing that I wish to know,” she said. “But isn’t there something beyond that which the great khan would like to say to me?”
“No. It’s just that I’ve been very busy.”
“The great khan hasn’t told me anything at all about the army’s departure for Jin and that it is to take place today. These things I knew myself. But I don’t think I want to hear such things now from your lips.”
“Tell me what it is that you do wish to hear,” said Chinggis.
“Isn’t that something that should come from the great khan? I’ve been waiting here every single day for the past month for this,” said Qulan, with a bit of reproach in her voice.
Chinggis, of course, fully understood what Qulan wanted to ask. Until the moment of his departure pressed near, Chinggis had not wanted to tell her of this because he had not yet made up his own mind. Needless to say, there was the matter of Qulan accompanying him on this military expedition. Considering three-year-old Kölgen, whom she could not leave, she would clearly have to remain behind with her child.
As to how all this resonated in Qulan’s mind, though, Chinggis was wary of heedlessly rushing to speak. Although he was usually able to surmise what someone was thinking, man or woman, only in the case of Qulan was this never true. In his estimation, her mind was as unfathomable as innumerable lakes filled to overflowing with cobalt blue water and shut away deep in the Altai mountain range.
As he now waited anxiously for the appointed time, however, Chinggis had to say something. Her eyes staring right at him, Chinggis scowled back and said:
“Qulan, you must come with me.”
Having disgorged the words, he realized that he had blurted out precisely the opposite of what he had been thinking until this point. He was startled by his own words. At that moment, Qulan’s expression for the time softened.
“Great khan,” she said softly, “had you just now uttered the very opposite of what you said, I believe I would have chosen death. Great khan, you have saved my life. What shall I do with Kölgen?”
Chinggis was no longer of a mind to be able to resist Qulan’s will.
“Kölgen too must cross the Great Wall,” he said.
When he finished speaking, Chinggis had finally made up his mind once and for all that Kölgen would accompany them. Although just a three-year-old, he was a member of the Mongolian wolf pack. In such a battle against the Jin, in which they were gambling everything, even if his four limbs had not yet fully grown, what possible objection could be raised before the descendants of the blue wolf to his coming on this mission?
Before Chinggis had finished speaking, Qulan took a step closer to him and gently extended her arm. Chinggis did not respond and his expression grew more severe:
“Do you know,” he asked, “what it means to take Kölgen on this expedition?”
“I do.”
“What?”
“Great khan, do you not understand my heart? When the princes born to Börte all march to the front, I want my son Kölgen to bask in this same good fortune. Although only three years of age, he must be able to join the army. Great khan, you have granted my most earnest wish. There is nothing else I seek. By joining the army en route to the front, Kölgen may be engulfed in the flames of battle, he may be abandoned among an alien people, but that would be his fate. I am not fearful of this in the least. I did not give birth to Kölgen so that he should become a member of the royalty. As a nameless member of the populace, he sets off, and I wish only that he live by cutting open his own road in life with his own might.”
Qulan continued to speak in a calm tone of voice, but it was filled with an intense passion. Chinggis gazed at Qulan’s magnificently glittering eyes. He had never loved her so much as he did at this very moment. He too hoped that Kölgen would live his life in such a manner. This was not the love of a Mongol sovereign but that of a father. A man had to make his way in life through great difficulties, like himself and Qasar and Jelme—this was how it had to be for a Mongol wolf.
From that day until the next, the military units under Chinggis’s command began to deploy from camp according to a prescribed manner and timetable. The first units to set out were those under Jebe’s command and then those under Muqali’s.
When the right army under the command of his sons, Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei set off, the day was almost over and darkness setting in. Following them, when Qasar’s right army left the settlement in a long file, they were all soon engulfed in darkness. Finally, Chinggis and his son Tolui set off with the central army late in the night. Placing himself in the middle of his troops, Chinggis rode his horse in the bright moonlight.
And so, 200,000 Mongol troops, following the eastern route, headed for the state of Jin. After a journey of many days across the desert, they would cross any number of mountains and valleys and then be able to see their objective, the Great Wall, certain to mightily impede any invasion, a sight they had once seen earlier when they surrounded the Xixia capital of Zhongxing.
Occasionally Chinggis looked over his shoulder at the troops behind him to ascertain with his own eyes the overall order of the march. Their spearheads shone dimly in the moonlight, and the line of the light extended across the immense plain like the flow of a river. Somewhere in this flow, Qulan and three-year-old Kölgen were, he knew, in a yurt being pulled by a horse.
Chinggis had organized his army of 200,000 men invading the Jin in a unique manner. At the lowest level were groups of 10; these came together into military units of 100, 1,000, and 10,000, each of which at their respective levels was supervised by a chief. Veteran generals were assigned as leaders of these larger units of 10,000. Chinggis’s orders could be transmitted to them at any time by his staff, and in no time at all the orders could percolate down from his generals to the many lower-level groupings.
Having set off from the base camp in the foothills of Mount Burqan, Chinggis’s expeditionary force against the Jin marched south and advanced along the banks of the Kherlen River; after leaving the river route, which on the fifth day took a sharp bend to the east, they reached a corner of the vast wasteland.
On the day they left the Kherlen, Chinggis was overcome by emotion. He had departed from the Kherlen River two years earlier when they invaded the Xixia and crossed the immense Gobi Desert, but his present mood was altogether different from what he had felt at that time. Waiting for them on the other side of the Gobi was not Xixia but the state of Jin. With terrain many times the size of the Mongols’ and with an army of many times the manpower, the Jin was a civilized state that had built numerous secure citadels and carried on a cultured life of the highest level. It was completely beyond his imagination how the battle would unfold. While he had a certain amount of confidence in victory and all preparations to that end were now complete, he could not sustain this feeling with a clear sense of conviction or surety.
The flow of the Yellow River, a name he had heard from his childhood, had crossed his line of vision only once, from the Xixia capital of Zhongxing, but that was only the farthest extreme of the most peripheral portion of this massive, living entity. Not a single Mongol soldier could so much as conceive a true image of the Yellow River, which, it was said, moved at the will of the gods over the surface of the earth itself. Likewise, they had once while in Zhongxing seen the Great Wall, which had since antiquity impeded the invasions of northern nomadic peoples, but that was only the westernmost edge of this great beast, fortified in its torso by earth and stone, from which fire arrows burst out everywhere when men approached. Of what was actually on the land surrounded by the Great Wall and the Yellow River, they had no knowledge.
When as a boy he had heard stories about the Jin from his father, Yisügei, he always imagined it as a huge vat, and in it something was boiling as if naturally. Everything in it was bubbling up because of unquenchable hell fires from ancient times. The best thoughts people had ever attained, technology, the inborn hindrances of men, ignorance, as well as wealth, poverty, warfare, peace, singing and dancing, splendid court ceremonies, wandering refugees, wine shops, theaters, mass slaughter, gambling, lynching, worldly fame, and ruin, any and everything altogether boiled to a pulp. Eerie bubbles appeared and disappeared continuously on the surface of this ghastly effervescent morass. And so did the Mongol khan Hambaghai, nailed to a wooden donkey and flayed while still alive. Almost every year from time immemorial, innocent Mongolian people by the dozens and hundreds had been kidnapped by soldiers of the state of Jin and tossed into this cauldron.
When they left the course of the Kherlen River, Chinggis himself could not say for certain if he would ever stand on its bank again. This was true not only of Chinggis but also of his 200,000 troops. Standing on a small bluff one morning, Chinggis caught the last sight of the Kherlen flowing at daybreak. He then issued marching orders to all the troops under his command. Although it was already the middle of the third month of the year, corresponding roughly to April, the region they were in was still trapped in a deep winter’s sleep, and whenever they stopped the freezing weather pierced their skin and penetrated their bones.
At about the same time that Chinggis’s troops were to leave camp, Jebe’s forces set off, and then slightly later, on parallel courses, the forces under the commands of Sübe’etei and Muqali decamped. The day was about to dawn, but light from the torches still being held aloft by the soldiers could be seen here and there. The troop disposition of the various divisions differed slightly at the time of departure from camp. Innumerable sheep, camels, horses, and other livestock were absorbed among the cavalry, making the units that much larger. Camels had the task of transporting foodstuffs (primarily meat and milk) and weaponry, while sheep were brought along as a source of food during their trek across the desert. Although the horses served as remounts for the troops, they had a great number, from two or three to as many as six or seven per man. Accordingly, as far as the eye could see, numerous files of troops extending over the desert terrain had long bands of domesticated animals with them.
Each of the soldiers was wearing a leather helmet covering the majority of his head and leather military garb over his body. Each bore a long spear in hand and wore a sword and arrows at the waist, with his bow tied to his horse.
From that day forward, Chinggis rode in an immense yurt as he marched his troops. The yurt was moved on four wheels, drawn by several dozen horses. On either side he was protected by mounted guard troops, and numerous Borjigin banners enveloped the vehicle.
For several days the troops saw nothing whatsoever resembling a tree. All around them stretched a dry, sandy plain, and if anything broke the monotony of the scenery, it was a denuded hillside, the reddish-black hue of rust, or salt water lakes of varying sizes, which appeared from time to time en route.
Continuing their forced march for roughly two weeks, they emerged from the desert onto the plateau region and eventually pushed their way into a spur of the rugged Yinshan mountain range. From around the time they entered this mountainous region, the troops began whispering the name of the town of Datong—never so much as even stated before—among themselves. Until then they had mentioned the name of Zhongdu [Beijing] and had been primarily concerned with reaching it, but at some point the new toponym of Datong had replaced Zhongdu, frequently on everyone’s lips. It made no great difference to the troops whether the object was Zhongdu or Datong. Both were names of unknown cities in an unknown country—they didn’t even know what direction the two cities lay in.
After marching 430 miles, the expeditionary forces led by Chinggis entered a settlement of the Önggüd people, who held sway over the northern side of the Great Wall. Although the Önggüds were one of the nomadic peoples of the Mongolian plateau, they neighbored the state of Jin and were completely under Jin control. Thus, Chinggis considered them a separate ethnicity. The Önggüds had never seen such a huge army as now thoroughly enveloped their settlement, and in blank amazement had no idea what to do. The Önggüd chief pledged fealty to Chinggis and offered personally to lead the troops invading the Jin.
A number of Mongol battalions that had come together to form one powerful unit now split up and headed for discrete objectives. This, of course, applied to the units under Jebe, Sübe’etei, and Muqali; the right army led by Chinggis’s three sons, Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei, to which Bo’orchu had been attached in a guardian function; and the left army under the command of Qasar, to which Jelme had been added—they all proceeded from the Önggüd settlement with several days between them. Only the central army under Chinggis and his son Tolui stayed back at the Önggüd village.
At about the same time, war broke out in the mountains and fields to the north of the Great Wall. The scene on various fronts was conveyed on a daily basis by horseback to Chinggis’s base camp. He ordered his armies to mop up Jin terrain north of the Great Wall, and forbid them to invade deep into the Jin state on their own.
In the middle of the sixth month of that year, news reached Chinggis’s base that a great Jin army had left Zhongdu and was heading for Shanxi province. Chinggis had drawn out the main force of the Jin, and he destroyed it, and thence set a policy to begin a full-fledged invasion. He knew the time was drawing near.
He dispatched Jebe with an urgent message ordering the central army under his command to mobilize. On the eve of their departure, Chinggis summoned Qulan to his tent and asked her if she would remain there until the end of the battle against the main Jin force.
“Great khan,” she replied, “are you about to cross the Great Wall alone and leave me and Kölgen here? If so, then how is that any different from discarding us at the camp by the Kherlen River?”
“Then go with me into the conflagrations of battle,” said Chinggis. “From tomorrow, three soldiers will be attached to you and Kölgen. Death will swoop down on the two of you continuously. You will have to protect yourselves.”
Chinggis then called upon three soldiers with whom he had made prior arrangements and presented Qulan to them. One was an older man, the other two young. Three-year-old Kölgen was placed in one of the leather saddlebags hanging by the side of the older man’s horse and set off to join his unit.
The troops departing from the Önggüd settlement early the following morning immediately came upon mountainous terrain along the southeastern portion of the village. They were all organized into a cavalry force, and every soldier was leading a remount as well. Qulan too was wearing leather armor and helmet and had a remount, and sat astride a white horse amid her guards.
One the second day, the troops reached a point about a half day’s journey from the Great Wall and there paused at sunset. The soldiers had by now filled up the valleys of the mountains that spread out in overlapping, undulating fashion. They took a short rest that evening, and then late at night resumed their march, listening to the chirping sounds of nocturnal birds. The fighting began in the middle of this night. Jin troops guarding the stronghold along the line of the Great Wall first launched an attack of arrows against them.
Although it seemed as though the troop strength on the stronghold was less than half that of Mongols, they were unable to advance their invading army to the Great Wall because of its impregnability. Chinggis spread troops out along the line of the wall in an effort to seize control over one corner of it, in any location. War cries arose in every valley and on every mountain peak, but were met everywhere with ferocious resistance.
The fighting continued for an entire day and night, and after nightfall the forces under big-headed Chimbai held fast to a point on the Great Wall, while losing over half of their men. For the first time, a Mongol flag flew atop a corridor of the Great Wall. From this point forward the fighting unfolded at both the corridors and the stronghold of the wall, and at a number of sites Mongol troops climbed up to the Great Wall’s stronghold.
While the fighting continued, at a site several hundred yards to the southwest, the wall was substantially demolished. The reverberations of bows and arrows mixed with battle cries, and the sound of immense boulders tumbling repeatedly into the valleys below could clearly be heard.
Late in the night Mongol troops crossed the Great Wall through the breach thus opened and rushed inside. Atop the Great Wall the wind was fierce. It seemed to howl as if being torn to pieces right up to the moon. Astride his horse, Chinggis stood on top of the stone corridor of the Great Wall and from there watched when the endless rows of cavalrymen crossed over the wall, one after the next. The moonlit night revealed other stone corridors before and behind where he stood that curved and meandered along a long line. In front of him was a steep slope, as the corridor rose from one high point to the next as if ascending into a corner of the sky. Behind him it extended gently on level ground, but about thirty yards in front of them it suddenly broke off and disappeared. A portion farther ahead abruptly abutted the summit of a rocky hill beyond two smaller prominences. Although Chinggis couldn’t see it from where he was standing, there was an incline on the far side of that hill, and the Great Wall’s corridor swelled up immensely there like a snake’s torso after it had swallowed a frog. It was this site that formed the stronghold where the deadly fighting back and forth had continued since the previous night.
To calm down his impatient horse, Chinggis continuously patted its head. There was ample reason for the horse to be impatient. Unlike the outside edge of the Great Wall, the inside edge led to a gentle sloping terrain, and the cavalry troops who had crossed the corridor galloped down the incline as though they were releasing all at once a force that had been held in check. The trees covering the nearby mountains were all bent low because of the wind, and the troops dashing though them could thus be fully seen in the moonlight.
For a long time now, Chinggis had dreamed of the day when, drenched in the moonlight, Mongol soldiers would cross the Great Wall of China, and now this dream was coming to fruition before his very eyes. Yet while the scene so long depicted in his mind’s eye was a rather quiet one painted in bluish hues, the crossing of the Great Wall that he was now seeing was unfolding in a raging wind. The defensive power of the stronghold, the pain at the time of its seizure, and the forging of an invasion route through it after demolishing a section of the wall, to say nothing of the fact that this was all occurring under a moonlit sky as bright as midday, were all for Chinggis precisely as he had imagined them to be. Exactly the same. Only the wind had not been pictured. He had not envisioned such a ferocious wind howling, pounding heaven and earth. The wind seemed always to howl here as it was now. This stone rampart severely obstructing both nomadic and agrarian peoples for hundreds of years, impenetrable, continued to resound in the forceful wind that had blown down from a corner of heaven for centuries as well.
Until dawn, Chinggis stood on the corridor of the Great Wall. A long period of time elapsed before a huge army of several tens of thousands of cavalrymen and a roughly equal number of horses and camels had completely scaled the wall. As dawn neared, Chinggis’s guard troops were the final soldiers to surmount the Great Wall, and Chinggis was among them. Then, as all the other subordinate troops had done, he and his horse galloped down the steep mountain incline inside.
About ten days later, Chinggis ambushed and defeated a large force under the command of Ding Xue, a Jin general, in the first battle to be fought on the enemy’s home terrain. As a result, the Mongols occupied the area of the two counties of Dashuiluo and Fengli.
A few days after the central army under Chinggis’s command crossed over the Great Wall, a report arrived stating that the first army under Jebe had crossed at a different site and captured the stronghold at Wushabao [in present-day Hubei province]. As if to follow this up, about two weeks later, the news of a victorious massacre at Wuyueying arrived.
Chinggis learned that his own troops and those of Jebe had encircled en masse from two sides the strategic site of Datong in Shanxi province. Chinggis did not rush to attack Datong. He spent the hot days of summer calming the people’s concerns in the area under siege and allowing his troops and horses a respite. With the fighting only just begun, Mongol troops had crossed the Great Wall and stepped foot only in a small corner of Shanxi. Clearly battles would be fought for years to come.
The two units under Muqali and Sübe’etei had been charged with capturing the fortresses north of the Great Wall. The role assigned them was the most laborious and had shown the fewest results. The steep hills that formed a natural fortification guarding Zhongdu and the numerous strongholds scattered around the region severely impeded the onslaught of these two commanders. Chinggis had given this most difficult of tasks to his two brave commanders. He received continual reports from both armies, and each communication included news of victory, but the pace of their advance was extremely slow. Every inch of terrain required a number of days.
Early in the ninth month of the year, Chinggis joined forces with Jebe’s army and occupied Baideng to the east of Datong, as Mongol troops surged in to surround Datong. They pursued the escaping Jin army headed in the direction of Zhongdu and massacred the majority of it.
About this time Chinggis received news that Muqali had captured Xuande and Jebe had occupied Fuzhou. Now the two strategic sites defending Zhongdu north of the Great Wall and Datong, the most important point in Shanxi, had been occupied by Mongol forces in but half a year from the commencement of hostilities.
The next month Chinggis learned that two Jin battalions had begun an action aimed at recovering Datong. At the head of his armed forces, he led a raid against the vanguard Jin troops and defeated them, then launched a further attack against their base army, but the two Jin commanders rushed to beat a hasty retreat. Chinggis pursued the fleeing army to the banks of the Hui River and there delivered an annihilating attack. In this fighting the Mongol cavalry magnificently demonstrated their might and literally trampled the Jin infantry under their horses’ hoofs.
Taking advantage of early victories, Chinggis ordered Jebe to attack the Juyong Pass, the northern defense of Zhongdu. Jebe and his troops advanced from Datong, marched the great distance to the Juyong Pass, and in no time at all captured it. Chinggis then ordered the right army under Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei to seize complete control over the area north of the Great Wall in Shanxi province.
Reports continually came to Chinggis’s base camp in Datong from his three sons, as if in some sort of competition, of the occupation or mopping up of Yunnei, Dongshengzhou, Wuzhou, Shuozhou, Fengzhou, Jingzhou, and elsewhere. Bo’orchu explained how the fighting progressed with great clarity to Chinggis, so that it was as if he had observed his three young sons in battle with his own eyes.
The following year, 1212, Chinggis reached age fifty in Datong. At the start of the year, he learned that Muqali had captured the two cities of Changzhou and Huanzhou. Following that, one by one the fortresses north of the Great Wall fell to Muqali.
It was at this time that Chinggis heard a report to the effect that the Jin generals He Sheli and Jiu Jian were leading an immense army toward Datong with the aim of recovering that city. At the head of an army, the great khan left Datong, confronted the Jin forces on mountainous terrain en route, defeated them, and sent the Jin reinforcements fleeing in utter defeat.
When Chinggis learned that all the land north of the Great Wall was now completely occupied and a path opened up to invade Zhongdu, he abandoned Datong as no longer of strategic value. Moving his entire army north of the Great Wall, he decided now to set his sights solely on Zhongdu.
In the eighth month of the year, for the first time in fourteen months since capturing the Great Wall, Chinggis crossed the Great Wall, moving this time from south to north. A ferocious wind was blowing on the wall at the time, and everywhere along the stone corridors a sandstorm blew up in the air like a whirlwind. The Mongol troops were altogether changed from those who had passed this way the previous year. They had several thousand Jin prisoners, and mountains of plunder that were being transported over the Great Wall from the south to the north. All the Jin prisoners of war were assigned to haul this booty, and it took a number of days for the groups of camels laden with cargo to traverse the wall.
Chinggis built his base camp at the Önggüd settlement once again, and decided from there to direct his various military units spread out at numerous sites. For the first time in several months, he welcomed to his tent his eldest son, Jochi, and his general Bo’orchu. They had come to coordinate the next battle strategy.
For having seized control over the local river valley region, Chinggis issued an edict to the effect that Bo’orchu was to be awarded high military honors. In taking control over six prefectures between the Yinshan Mountains and the Great Wall, Bo’orchu had had some help; Jochi’s strategy had paid off handsomely, and therefore Bo’orchu petitioned that Jochi also be rewarded for his courageous actions.
Chinggis knew full well that on his first campaign Jochi had conquered a number of peoples living around Lake Baikal and had attained distinguished achievements on the battlefield. Judging from this, the recent successes, as Bo’orchu indicated, were perhaps a result of Jochi’s maneuvers. Chinggis nonetheless offered no special treatment whatsoever.
As he looked at the dramatically more stalwart Jochi, covered in the dust of the battlefield, Chinggis felt that rewarding Jochi would gradually cause his son to lose something of his innate character. Staring at Jochi’s face with its striking resemblance to his mother, Börte, Chinggis thought the eyes were burning with defiance. He knew that when Börte spoke of Jochi, her eyes showed a fiery light not seen at any other time. Now he thought he was seeing that same light brimming before him in the eyes of his own eldest son.
“Jochi,” said Chinggis. “What should I give you as reward for your fighting on the field of battle?”
The young commander, just twenty-five years of age, replied:
“Give me orders without end full of the greatest of difficulty, and I will carry them out one after the next.”
Jochi’s eyes were fixed unmoving on those of his father. These were audacious words, to say the least. One might even understand them as a declaration of insubordination. This eldest son of his, Chinggis thought, whose blood he was not sure was his own, was effectively informing him that he was now a fully grown man with an individual personality. Staring right back into Jochi’s gaze, Chinggis called out:
“Son of Börte, who has been raised splendidly and bravely, I shall not forget these words of yours today. Henceforth, you shall be obliged on my orders to stand up against every single difficult situation as it arises.”
Chinggis then had arrangements made for food and drink and a short banquet held in honor of his son and his two honored friends who had come from afar. Jochi and Bo’orchu returned to the site where their troops were camped.
After Jochi departed, Chinggis recognized that his own agitation was rising with each passing day. He couldn’t get a sense of the precise character of his feelings toward Jochi. There was both love and hatred there. Based on time and circumstance, these emotions formed a complex mixture in which one of the two would on occasion surface above the other.
When Jochi had earlier pacified the peoples living north of Lake Baikal, Chinggis had issued an edict of congratulations and rejoiced in Jochi’s hard-fought victories as if they were his own, but for some reason, in the present circumstance he could not find such a straightforward emotion in his heart. For deep down, he could not deny his two other sons Cha’adai and Ögedei. Chinggis apparently wanted to avoid recognizing meritorious service on the battlefield for Jochi alone. Although a bit younger than Jochi, they had both participated in the fighting as army commanders, and Chinggis wanted to recognize their merit on the field as well.
For a number of days after meeting face to face with Jochi, Chinggis sensed from that encounter that Jochi had been instilled with a ferocious spirit. Just as Jochi had requested that Chinggis order him to face all the most difficult of circumstances on the field of battle, Chinggis would be making similar demands of himself. As Jochi was on the verge of becoming a Mongol wolf, so too Chinggis himself had to become a Mongol wolf. Having crossed the Great Wall once and defeated the Jin army, Chinggis could no longer just imitate the image of the blue wolf that he had continued to hold within himself since his own youth. He had to become that wolf.
That year, though, Chinggis did not move his troops. He placed all of the units under his command close together north of the Great Wall and bided his time, preparing to surge en masse onto Jin terrain at any moment. In the latter half of the year, he enjoyed a harvest so rich even he could not have foreseen it. Yelü Liuge, a descendant of the royal Liao house of the Khitan people, which had been destroyed by the Jin, led his Khitan kinsmen in opposition to the Jin dynasty in the northeastern sector of the Jin state. When he heard this news, Chinggis immediately sent his commander Alchi as an emissary to forge an alliance with Liuge. For his part, Liuge swore an oath of fealty to Chinggis, and Chinggis promised to protect the Khitan nobility.
The Jin then sent a punitive force against Liuge. The expeditionary force was under the command of Wanyan Heshuo. Chinggis sent 3,000 support troops to aid Liuge, and at the same time he ordered Jebe to launch an attack on the strategic northeastern site of Liaoyang, one of the former capitals of the Liao dynasty. Jebe rapidly brought the city down, and with the approval of Chinggis, Liuge took the position of Liao king. During the fighting, not only the area north of the Great Wall but also the massive territory beyond the Yinshan and Xing’an mountain ranges—an area roughly corresponding to the entire Mongolian plateau—was now added to the Mongol sphere of influence.
When he completed the expedition to Liaoyang, Jebe left his troops there and alone returned to Chinggis’s base camp. Chinggis greeted him with great warmth. Of all the Mongol commanders, Jebe made his name resound most loudly in the state of Jin. His capacity to deploy troops, using his men with great dexterity and never losing on the field of battle, was feared by all Jin commanders as virtually superhuman.
From beyond the Xing’an Mountains, Jebe pulled along several thousand fine horses and brought them into Chinggis’s camp. Thus, the periphery of the Önggüd settlement was teeming with tall horses whose lustrous skin was of a blackish-brown hue. At his audience with Chinggis, Jebe said:
“I once fought as a soldier of the Tayichi’uds against the great khan and injured the great khan’s horse. For some time, I have been thinking of presenting the great khan with a horse by way of recompense, but only now am I able to see that wish to fruition.”
“What you injured that day,” replied Chinggis in good humor, “was not just my horse. Your arrows felled the horse and struck and wounded me in the neck.”
“To compensate for injury done to the great khan’s body,” said Jebe, “I must offer my life. Please send not only your son Jochi but me as well into difficult battles when the occasion arises.”
Only at this moment did Chinggis realize that Jebe had seen through the subtle relationship he shared with Jochi and was delicately admonishing him for it. And not only Jebe, for it seemed certain that Jelme and Bo’orchu also understood; this had become something of a lamentable issue among those who had offered meritorious service in the inception of the Mongol state. At this point in time, Chinggis said nothing about this to Jebe. Chinggis was unable to properly explain his love-hate feelings for Jochi to this fierce and obstinate commander with a pointed skull like an arrowhead, nor did he feel so inclined.
The start of 1213 was the second new year on which Chinggis found himself in a foreign land. To a new year’s banquet, he invited from their various war fronts Muqali, Bo’orchu, Jebe, Qasar, and his three sons Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei.
When they all met, he consulted with them about the sweeping assault on the state of Jin. Less a consultation, it was more an opportunity to unilaterally issue orders. He announced that the three commanders Muqali, Jebe, and Sübe’etei would strengthen the rear, while everyone else in the other three armies would be committed to Jin terrain. He was referring, in other words, to the three forces of Qasar’s left army, Jochi’s and his brothers’ right army, and Chinggis and Tolui’s central army. He decided as well to reassign Bo’orchu, heretofore guardian with the right army, to his own central army as its highest officer. Accordingly, leadership of the right army was entrusted completely to his three sons.
“The three of you must deal with things as a single unity,” said Chinggis to Jochi, Cha’adai, and Ögedei. “Jochi shall have highest leadership authority. Cha’adai and Ögedei, help your elder brother. These are your orders: Enter the low ground of Hebei from Shanxi and then gallop across all of Jin territory. Seize every settled area that you pass by. When you attack, you must precede your troops in scaling the walls.”
“We shall obey your order, great khan, our father,” responded Jochi, representing his brothers, “and carry to fruition everything as you have ordered it.”
Jochi’s face had turned a pale green. Whatever they might all have thought, these were orders nearly impossible to execute. A hushed silence fell over the entire group. Bo’orchu, Jelme, and Muqali kept quiet, uttering not a word. With the order given and Jochi having accepted it, there was nothing further to say.
Chinggis next issued orders to his brother Qasar:
“Attack the area west of the Liao River, north of the Great Wall until you reach the sea. When winter comes to that region, everything is frozen solid, and neither humans nor horses can move. Complete the fighting by winter, for you are not to lose troops or horses due to the cold.”
“Understood!” replied Qasar in a slightly wild tone of voice. Qasar seemed a bit displeased at not being able to attack the heartland of the Jin state.
Finally, Chinggis issued the orders for his own units:
“Tolui and I will bypass Zhongdu, move into Hebei, cross the Yellow River, and attack Shandong. Bo’orchu, you will always be with me.”
The mission for his three units was not particularly difficult, in his estimation. In the fighting over the previous two years, he had come to know the Jin troops’ capacity on the battlefield and to see that not a single Jin statesman was present there. The defenses around Zhongdu were weak, morale low, and the possibility of civil strife erupting at any time high. The Mongol cavalry could become a sharp awl and break through any time.
Chinggis had not considered, though, whether all of those assembled there that day would be able to meet face to face without incident after the conquest of the Jin. In particular, he hadn’t taken into account whether everything among his three young sons would run smoothly.
It had been Jochi’s wish for Chinggis to give him the mission fraught with the gravest difficulties, and this was Chinggis’s wish as well. “Jochi, you are to become a wolf!” Because he had assigned such a task to Jochi, Chinggis was sacrificing the children with whom he was sure he shared blood—namely, Cha’adai and Ögedei—and placing their fate together with his. Chinggis made appropriate arrangements so that he would not show any special feeling toward Jochi and so that he would understand what his commanders were feeling. In addition, he knew that this was necessary for himself. On behalf of his wife, Börte, whom he had left back in the camp at Mount Burqan and had not seen for nearly two years now, he had to treat the children she had borne him all fairly.
The new year’s banquet with Chinggis at its center was a grand affair of unprecedented proportions. Women escorted from Datong and many other places came and went amid the drinking. Outside the tents, snow came fluttering to the ground, but inside the broad tents were outfitted with floor heaters, making it nice and warm.
The drinking lasted from morning till night. In the evening, Chinggis stood at the entrance to his tent and looked at the outdoors painted completely in white. In the distance he saw a group of soldiers moving toward a hillside far to the east. He called his guard and asked whose troops they were and what they were about to do. The young guard immediately conveyed the name of the unit and that they were marching out in the snow. Chinggis never tired of gazing at the narrow defiles of troops here and there. The name of their leader was new to Chinggis. They were a beautiful sight. To Chinggis they appeared like a pack of young wolves.
Chinggis then shifted his line of vision to the young soldier standing at attention before him. Falling snow was mounting on their caps and shoulders. He too was without a doubt a Mongol wolf.
Although he returned to the festivities, Chinggis sensed that Bo’orchu, Jelme, and Qasar all seemed to have aged. At some point in time, he and many of his meritorious followers had grown older, and half of their hair had turn to white. Only the middle-aged Muqali, Jebe, and Sübe’etei still seemed young. Chinggis was coming to realize that the era of Muqali and Jebe—and then the era of a group of young leaders as yet unknown to him—was about to dawn.