Marco Polo - Laurence Bergreen [134]
Marco brings his story to an eloquent climax: “When the lord and the people of the island saw that they had lost their city and their fleet, and…when they had learned of the taking of the city and the fathers or sons driven out and the women kept, to their extreme disgrace, and especially the king, they wished to die of grief, knowing that so great a mistake with their extreme disgrace of the fatherland came about not through the power of the enemy but only through lack of prudence.”
AFTER THIS DISPLAY of ritual self-castigation, the Japanese, drawing on inexhaustible reserves of strength, mounted another defense against the invaders. Marco relates that “brave citizens encouraged the king, saying that this was not a time to lament, but to put themselves all of one mind to avenge themselves of so great an injury.”
The Mongols executed their plan with renewed vigor. “They came back to their island with other ships, having found many of them about those harbors, because owing to the vast multitude of ships, the Tartars, who were only thirty thousand, and also like men who flee, had not been able to remove them all. So having gone on board as best they could, they carried themselves over to the island.” Although the Japanese surrounded the Mongols, the trapped invaders held the women of the island hostage, “so that none would be able to go there nor to come out without their consent and will.”
The standoff between the Mongols occupying the city and the Japanese trying to retake it lasted seven months. Throughout, the Mongols “took pains day and night to find out how they could make this affair known to the Great Khan that he might send them help,” but the Japanese captured all their messengers, no matter how great their stealth and daring.
All the while, Kublai Khan remained ignorant of the protracted contest taking place in his name. “The Tartars day and night did not cease to attack the people of the island with very great damage and loss. And when they saw that they could not do this that they proposed by any device, and seeing that they lacked food and that they could hold out no longer, then finally they made agreement and truce with those outside, and gave themselves up, saving their persons in such a way that they must stay there all the days of their lives.”
IT FELL TO the combatants to negotiate a peace, as Marco carefully explains: “The islanders who for very many years had not had war and bore it very ill, and especially the loss of their women who were in the hands and power of their enemies, believing that they would never have them again, when they saw that the Tartars were willing to give them back the place and the women, joyful and satisfied with so great an offer all with one voice constrained the king to make peace on the terms offered. And so it was observed and the peace was made and the place returned to the king.”
Marco told a remarkable tale, but it is impossible to verify. Unlike other aspects of Kublai Khan’s failed siege of Japan, this suspiciously sweet denouement lacks corroboration in other sources. Yet his account fits so neatly with what is known of the failed effort that it is likely based on historical fact, and lost sources, all related con brio.
ALTHOUGH A significant portion of Kublai Khan’s forces survived, his campaign to bring Japan into the Mongol fold ended in the worst disgrace of his reign, threatening his prestige and throne. To the deeply superstitious Mongols, the entire episode, and especially the intervention of the Divine Wind, suggested that the heavens had turned against the emperor’s designs.
Kublai looked for scapegoats, and they seemed to be everywhere. Learning of the bickering and resentment among his generals, Kublai “immediately made them [the Mongols] cut off the head of one of the barons who was captain of that army who had fled so evilly, and the other he sent to the desert island named Ciocia, where he had many people destroyed for grave offenses.” The dishonored leader, never named by