Mongol Operations against Xi Xia in 1207
Xi Xia used to be an ancient state, located in China, on its northwestern border. The state became the first to fall into the Mongol hands, once Genghis Khan began his campaign of conquest. He planned to wage war against Jin and had to take out Xi Xia to secure his flank. The battles against the armies of this Chinese country would be the first confrontations between his barbaric horde and the civilized state (Cleaves 192).
The campaign did not begin on a whim. A few years before the main assault, in 1205 and 1206, several raiding sorties were launched. Their purpose was not to simply raid and pillage, but also to gather intelligence. After measuring the opponent, Genghis Khan began a bigger operation in 1207. His army had traveled over 650 miles, half of the journey across the scourging Gobi desert. Their destination was the fortress of Wuhai, which guarded the road to Yinchuan – the capital of Xi Xia (Turnbull 14).
The Mongols were new to siege warfare and fighting against fortifications. However, the element of surprise had served them well – the soldiers of Xi Xia were not expecting an army to dare to cross the dangerous Gobi desert. The fact that the army managed to do so without taking many casualties, or ending up winded, shows that even in the early days of the Mongol Empire, their army was well prepared and disciplined to make such a journey.
The Mongols relied on their traditional tactics here, using mobile cavalry and sudden rushes to overwhelm the adversaries. Attacking at night, and having mostly ladders, ropes and hooks to assist them, the Mongols managed to scale the walls and catch the defenders off-guard. They successfully overpowered the Chinese soldiers and open the gates for the main forces to come through.
The city was taken and promptly sacked. This was a major victory, as the fortress of Wuhai housed a very large garrison, and its annihilation paved the way for a bigger campaign. Genghis Khan retreated from the region in 2008, in preparation for the main invasion. It came a year later and ended with the siege of Yinchuan, which turned out to be the first real taste of actual siege warfare for the Mongols.
The Siege of Zhongdu in 1215
Zhongdu, or modern-day Beijing, was the capital of the Jin Empire, and thus an obvious target for Ghenghis Khan, who was waging war against it for several years. The city was famous for its powerful fortifications, which were considered mighty even by Chinese standards of the time – the walls were over 12 meters in height, and almost a thousand towers were dotting the city’s perimeter (Turnbull 31).
The Mongols had learned to take fortified cities by now. They were very adaptable and eager to adopt a new tactic. They employed engineers and siege experts from conquered Chinese states among their ranks. Even then, the city seemed to be impossible to take by force, so the Mongols were forced to put up a siege. They were brutally efficient at conducting it (Sinor, Shimin, and Kychanov 205).
Without mercy, the raiders set the entire Yellow River ablaze, burning fields, crops, villages, and cities in their wake. This move aimed to cut off food supplies to the city. It worked out splendidly in the end. This tactic severely undermined the region’s economy, and spread fear among the populace, sapping their will to resist and fight back. After successfully implementing it in China, the Mongols used it in Khwarezm, Kievan Rus, and other countries they subjugated.
There was a great army inside the walls, and an even greater number of civilians, which needed food and water. Without a steady flow of goods, the supplies within the city began dwindling very quickly. By the summer of 1215, there were recorded cases of cannibalism – the people ate their dead. The Emperor had left the city, moving to Kaifeng to prepare an offensive to reclaim the lost lands. The commander he left behind to be in charge of the defense soon followed. Leaderless, the army and the city promptly surrendered to the Mongols, hoping for mercy.
There was none. The city was burned and the populace slaughtered. It is what the Mongols often did to those who resisted their rule. People with useful skills, such as engineers, doctors, and blacksmiths, were taken away to work for the Empire. The rest were killed. After such brutal examples, many forts and cities surrendered without a fight.
An eyewitness that passed through the remains of Zhongdu several months later reported seeing mountains of bones of the slaughtered citizens, and that the earth beneath his feet was slippery and greasy from human fat (Turnbull 32). The Mongolian victory in Zhongdu marked the long-term domination of the Mongols in the region. The Jin Emperor never managed to retake back his country, and fell along with his southern capital of Kaifeng in 1232 (Turnbull 32).
Works Cited
Cleaves, Francis. The Secret History of the Mongols; For the First Time Done into English out of the Original Tongue and Provided with an Exegetical Commentary, Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1982. Print.
Sinor, D., Geng Shimin and Y.P. Kychanov. “The Uighurs, the Kyrgyz and the Tangut (eighth to the thirteenth century).“ UNESCO Publication Chapter 4.1 (1998): 191-214. Print.
Turnbull, Stephen. Genghis Khan & the Mongol Conquests 1190-1400, Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003. Print.