The Secret History of the Mongol Queens - Jack Weatherford [75]
During a campaign in 1443–45, Esen quickly took control of the oasis of Hami, along the Silk Route west of the Gansu Corridor, and then conquered the Three Guards, the Mongol units whom the Ming employed to guard their borders. He rallied Mongol unity and called upon them to remember their identity. Mocking the titles given the Three Guards and other Mongol leaders by the Ming, Esen reminded them that, unlike himself, who had no titles directly from Genghis Khan, they held important titles granted by him to their forefathers and that they should honor them above Ming titles. After the defeat of the Three Guards, the Jurched (Manchu) voluntarily submitted to Esen. Officials on the Ming court lacked the ability to take strong military action against their former allies who were now deserting them, and they mistakenly calculated that merely suspending trade with the rebels would soon return them to Ming authority.
Esen reunited not only the Mongolian Plateau but also most of the Silk Route—modern Inner Mongolia (south of the Gobi), part of Manchuria, and some territory south of the Yellow River near the Gansu Corridor. In 1449 he achieved his most important victory over the Chinese and captured the Ming emperor. For the first time in nearly a century since the fall of the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongols posed a real threat to China. From their last effort to rule China, the Mongols understood that it was far easier to conquer China than to control it, and this time they made no effort to occupy or run the country. Esen used the emperor by taking him on raids of Chinese cities in order to persuade them to surrender or at least create fear of fighting the Mongols and thereby possibly injuring their emperor. This tactic did not work for long, and eventually Esen released the bedraggled and discredited emperor, knowing that his return to Beijing would keep the Ming officials busy fighting one another and leave the Mongols in peace for a while.
Esen had united the Mongols and defeated the Muslim ruler and the Ming emperor, but in the most important confrontation of his career, he could not overcome the determined will of his grandmother. Samur supported her grandson throughout his conquests and as he drove out the warlords and the old guards. Early in his career as taishi, he seemed to share her desire to reunite the Oirat and Mongol people under Borijin rule. He had been successful in liberating the Borijin family and the Mongols from foreign rule, but they continued to quarrel among themselves. In hopes of uniting the people, Esen sought to further integrate the ruling families of the two tribes with a marriage between his sister and the new khan.
The plan seemed to work, and Esen’s sister produced a son. With a Borijin Mongol father and a Choros Oirat mother, the infant son seemed the perfect heir, but in a miscalculated move, the khan decided to name another son his heir. As the khan became increasingly independent, Esen grew bitter and ever more skeptical that his grandmother’s Borijin clan had the wherewithal to rule, even when given the opportunity. Esen struck him down and replaced him with another Borijin as his puppet. Again, Esen sought to unite the two families and their respective tribes. This time, he arranged a marriage between his daughter and the son of the new puppet khan. If she could produce a son, he would be a Borijin and be Esen’s grandson.
Suddenly, for some unexplained reason, the strategy fell apart; Esen turned violently against his grandmother’s clan and all the members. They had failed him too many times and turned against him even when he tried to save them. He decided that Mongolia would be better off without the royal family. Instead of returning the Borijin family to power,