The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (32 page)

Manduhai’s first, and possibly most strategically important, victory came without a battle. She managed to prevent a failed suitor from becoming an enemy. Une-Bolod, the descendant of Khasar and the general under her husband Manduul, remained loyal. She had rejected his marriage proposal, but he recognized the legitimacy of her insistence that all Mongols should rally behind the boy khan.

By remaining loyal to her, and thereby to the descendant of Genghis Khan, he stood next in line to inherit the office of Great Khan and to marry her if anything should happen to the sickly child. Considering Dayan Khan’s condition, caused by his mistreatment as an infant and then the injuries from the fall into the stream while being brought to Manduhai, such an untimely death must have seemed quite possible.

Manduhai had pressed a legalistic case for installing the boy on the throne, but the same logic and adherence to Genghis Khan’s law would force her to accept Une-Bolod next. In the absence of the boy, all the same arguments would support him, and by remaining loyal to her and the boy now, he prepared the way for a legal succession in the future.

Similarly, if Manduhai should be killed in battle or be incapacitated in any way, Une-Bolod stood as next in line to become regent for the boy. By remaining loyal to both Manduhai and Dayan Khan, Une-Bolod would already be well positioned in the middle of the camp, and if anything happened to either the queen or the khan, he would assume power. He would not need to rally an army and descend on the royal camp; he and his warriors would already be in place.

Manduhai’s power base was in the central Mongolian steppe, a
well-watered land good for animals and easily traversed. By having Une-Bolod’s loyalty, she had no worry about the immediate eastern area, since he controlled it. The Siberian tribes to the north had never posed much of a threat to the steppe people. The western tribes offered her the least support, but her most dreaded enemies lay to the south, across the Gobi—the Ming in the southeast and the warlords in the southwest.

Manduhai decided to confront her enemies at home first, before looking south, by strengthening her western flank. After consolidating her rule over the Mongols and attaining a firm grip on the whole of the Mongolian Plateau, she might consider leaving home to confront her southern rivals, but she could not do so with the possibility of resistance or revolt at her back.

Western Mongolia was home to a variety of tribes, independent clans, and factions in shifting alliances. They were Mongols with a mixture of Turkic steppe tribes as well as Siberian forest tribes in a constantly changing array of ethnic, clan, and geographic names. Groups could be referred to by the name of their individual clans, lineages, or tribes. Or they could be referred to by the name of a dominant group in their area, as well as by a geographic feature of the area. As the people moved from one area to another or as one lineage rose and fell in local prominence, the identification might change.

A more diverse assortment of tribes lived in the west than in the more homogenous east. The topography and microenvironments of the Altai Mountains and adjacent steppes offered sustenance for a larger variety of animals than eastern Mongolia. Camel herders lived in the southern deserts. Herders of goats, sheep, cows, and yaks occupied the mountain areas, and reindeer herders lived in the north. All the herders kept horses if the animals could survive, but if not, they rode camels, yaks, oxen, and reindeer.

Through the centuries, the area attracted a variety of ethnic groups from other places as well. When Islam first spread into Central Asia, many Christian tribes sought refuge here, as well as some Buddhists and Manicheans. Later, Muslims joined them, sometimes as
traders, but often fleeing from their own political and schismatic struggles.

Stretching back more than a thousand years, to the time of the Huns and then to the eighth-century Turkic empires, the Mongol state always had its base in the center between the Tuul and Orkhon rivers. The Mongols had strengthened their hold on this area, in part by moving other steppe tribes into the west along the Altai Mountains to serve as a buffer against the unknown but threatening forces of Muslim Central Asia, the Europeans, and the Mongols’ steppe neighbors.

Through the centuries, the Oirat, called Kalmyk by the Muslims and Russians, had spread out of their original forest home in Siberia; by the time of Manduhai’s reign, their name had expanded into a generic term encompassing all the western Mongol and Turkic tribes around the Altai Mountains. Since the time of Genghis Khan’s daughter Checheyigen, the Oirat, as a son-in-law nation, usually had a female of the Borijin clan come to marry their leader. Over time, the leader of the Oirat came to be known as the
taishi
, while the title
khan
was reserved primarily for the Borijin leaders. For a while, the joint titles and the marriage alliance kept the two parts of the Mongol nation closely connected.

When the Mongols weakened in the time of Elbeg Khan, both the Ming court and the Silk Route warlords tried to separate the eastern and western Mongols and play them off each other. Both foreign powers sought to promote the Oirat as a separate nation, apart from the Mongols in the east, with equal leaders deserving of their own titles.

As the Ming Dynasty declined in vigor and the ties with western Mongolia became harder to maintain, the warlords of the Silk Route began pursuing the same strategy of dividing eastern and western Mongols, and they had more success. Until the time of Esen, the
taishi
was a western Mongol and lived among the people over whom he ruled. After Esen’s assassination, the Turkic warlords such as Beg-Arslan and Ismayil claimed the title and the right to rule the Oirat, although they preferred to stay close to their trade oasis cities along the Silk Route and to control the Oirat indirectly from a distance. As long as the
taishi
kept trade goods coming into the Oirat territory, no one seemed to mind.

Manduhai had to retake control of the Oirat, unite the Mongols, and thereby deprive Ismayil, and the future warlords, of the title or power to rule over the Oirat. She did not yet have an army large enough to cross the desert and conquer the oases of the Silk Route where the warlords held their power base and where large segments of the Oirat lived. But she was ready to challenge Beg-Arslan and Ismayil for command over the Oirat living north of the Gobi. Even if she could not conquer them completely, she needed to neutralize the warlords’ ability to use the Oirat against her.

In preparation for the first major campaign, Manduhai sent a train of ox carts laden with equipment and provisions with an infantry escort to guard them. She and the main army would leave later and pass by the infantry and supply carts. The organization of the army showed clearly that Manduhai’s plans for making war reached a much higher state of forethought and execution than the usual raids that had characterized much of steppe warfare over the previous two centuries. In an organization uncharacteristic of steppe leaders, she used infantry and cavalry as well as the caravan of supply carts; her army more closely resembled that of a sedentary state than that of a nomadic one.

Three days later, the young queen was ready to depart. The chronicles all agree that she fixed her hair to accommodate her quiver. The hairstyle of noble married women of that era precluded fighting or any other manual endeavor. She removed the headdress of peace and put on her helmet for war.

By taking off her queenly headdress, known as the
boqta
, she removed virtually the only piece of clothing that separated a man from a woman. The
boqta
ranks as one of the most ostentatious headdresses of history, but it had been highly treasured by noble Mongol women since the founding of the empire. The head structure of willow branches, covered with green felt, rose in a narrow column three to four
feet high, gradually changing from a round base to a square top. A variety of decorative items such as peacock or mallard feathers adorned the top with a loose attachment that kept them upright but allowed them to flutter high above the woman’s head. The higher the rank, the more elaborate the
boqta
, and as queen, Manduhai would have worn a highly elaborate one. She would have worn her hair in a knot underneath a hood that helped to balance the
boqta
. The contraption struck many foreign visitors as odd, but the Mongol Empire had enjoyed such prestige that medieval women as far away as Europe imitated it with the
hennin
, a large cone-shaped headdress that sat toward the back of the head rather than rising straight up from it as among the Mongols. With no good source of peacock feathers, European noblewomen generally substituted gauzy streamers flowing in the wind at the top.

As in many martial cultures, the bow and arrow served not only as a major weapon in war but also as a major political and martial symbol. For the Mongols, hanging up the bow and arrow in the
ger
symbolized peace, and taking them down symbolized war. Even a young boy such as Dayan Khan could have easily taken down the bow and quiver of arrows and strapped them on to symbolically lead the army. By stressing that Manduhai did it, the chronicles show clearly that she personally commanded the army.

As described in the
Altan Tobci
, “Queen Manduhai the Good, like the great khans of former times, set out on campaign.”

She did not, however, leave the boy behind. He was the khan, and he would accompany her army whether he was yet capable or not. In the words of the
Altan Tobci
, she put the young khan “in a box and set out.” Other sources described the container as a leather case, a woven basket, or a wooden box strapped to a horse.

When moving from camp to camp, Mongol parents often put young children in a specially made box without a top that they tied to the side of a camel’s two humps. From this secure place the children could be easily moved and kept out of the way, and they could often be seen with their heads poking out of such boxes as they bounced along on the camel.

By age seven, however, Dayan Khan certainly should have been able to ride a horse with some degree of mastery. Children began riding at age three or four, and by age five, many of them, both boys and girls, were able to engage in grueling races of more than fifteen miles. Particularly since the boy now occupied the highest office in the Mongol world, it seems odd that he would not be riding a horse. At the same time, the chronicles mention that his box was carried by a horse, and not a camel; horses are not used as pack animals, so the choice of animal indicates an unusual situation.

The young khan possibly still suffered from the ailments of his earlier childhood, and perhaps he could not ride. Several times in his life he had accidents falling from a horse, and therefore Manduhai seemed to be taking no chance of having the young khan injured as she went off to battle. Because she led the troops in his name, his presence, in some form or other, was vital to the legitimacy and success of the campaign. For generations, the men who held the title of Great Khan had rarely ventured forth on a real military campaign, but Manduhai was showing that although he might be a crippled boy, he was still the khan and would go with her into battle. Her leadership and his bravery inspired others to follow her as well.

The Mongol armies at the time of Manduhai still utilized the left-right organization of Genghis Khan. Whether in camp or on the battlefield, the leader remained always at the center of the army, surrounded by several concentric circles of protectors. The main detachment then spread out as two large wings from the center. Even when moving across the countryside, the army moved in this spread-out formation rather than in the single-file formation of most batallions. In this way, the Mongol army was constantly in formation to move into battle.

In some armies, the commander rode at the front of the troops. But in the wing formation, with the commander in the center, the two wings moved out somewhat ahead of the leader. From this position at the rear, the commander could see the entire army and be in a much better position to make decisions and give orders. The commander
could call for a large number of battle formations to be used in attack, and these could be changed frequently in a cascade of attacks that confused the enemy.

At the beginning of the Mongol Empire, uninformed opponents sometimes mocked even Genghis Khan as a coward for staying behind the front line in battle, but the effectiveness of the Mongol strategy proved itself not only in their consistent victories, but also in the rare loss of life of their commanders. Despite her untraditional approach to organizing her army, Manduhai knew better than to depart from this proven military formation. She took her position at the center of the army.

A herd of horses can move only as quickly as its smallest and youngest members can run. Horses can outrun most dangers, but wolves are swift, nimble, and wily. The wolf pack cannot threaten the strong stallion, who can attack with his hooves and severely injure or kill an adult wolf, but because there is only one such stallion, he poses little threat to the pack as a whole. To protect the vulnerable foals and colts, the females herd them into a tight circle that the mares then surround in a tight fortification, thereby forming a wall of hooves against the attackers. Thus fortified, the mares easily beat off with their hooves any wolf that may nip at them, but the horses remain rigidly in place until the wolves move on toward easier prey. The lone mature stallion circles around almost helplessly as a sentry, lunging ineffectively at the wolves that easily jump out of his range.

From thousands of years together on the steppe, the two animals know each other’s threats and each other’s defenses. The wolves stand little chance of breaking the mares’ defense, but sometimes they can lure out an overconfident and easily provoked young male that lacks the instinct or experience of the females. Such an untested male will strike out against a wolf that then lures him toward the rest of the wolves, which are hiding in ambush. They race out, attack the startled young male, and rip his flesh apart.