The Secret History of the Mongol Queens: How the Daughters of Genghis Khan Rescued His Empire (37 page)

Just as the selection of a reign title for her husband showed Manduhai’s clear political agenda, the names of her children made it even clearer, proclaiming her agenda loudly. She named each of her sons Bolod, “Steel.” The first two were Toro Bolod and Ulus Bolod, meaning “Steel Government” and “Steel Nation.”

Manduhai and Dayan Khan now controlled all the Mongols and Oirat north of the Gobi, and south of the Gobi they had the alliance of the eastern and central clans. By 1483, Ismayil had been driven all the way to the Hami oasis at the farthest edge of the Mongol territory, almost where it turns into uninhabitable desert. With his old ally and rival Beg-Arslan removed, he was the undisputed leader of the ragtag army left behind, and at any moment he might choose to attack again. He certainly would not sit idly at Hami pursuing the life of a melon farmer or winemaker. If the Mongols showed any sign of weakness or distraction, he would return.

Ismayil’s presence at Hami served as a constant alternative to the rule of Manduhai and Dayan Khan. It would be hard for them to assert much authority over the southern tribes if they faced the constant threat that those tribes might bolt to Ismayil. He had to be removed.

Of course, Dayan Khan had a much deeper and more powerful reason to go after Ismayil. After being kidnapped by Ismayil nearly twenty years earlier, Dayan Khan’s mother, Siker, was still with him. Hami was located too far across a barren strip between the Gobi and the sand desert to send a large army after Ismayil. There simply would not be enough grass for the animals to get there and return safely. But sometime around 1484, Manduhai and Dayan Khan assembled a select group of men with the mission to bring back Dayan Khan’s mother and to kill or capture Ismayil.

Heretofore Dayan Khan had not expressed much interest in finding his missing mother, but something in him was changing. Now that he was fully grown and had become a father, some new longing awoke in him to connect again with his original family that had been shattered so soon after his birth.

Her Jade Realm Restored

M
OST OF THE MEN CHOSEN FOR THE RAID AGAINST
Ismayil came from Manduhai’s Choros clan. She trusted them, and they best knew the area that had once been ruled by her father. Because of the difficulty of fielding and supplying an army over vast stretches of desert, Manduhai sent out a small, but highly skilled, detachment that probably consisted of between 200 and 250 men. A man named Togochi Sigusi commanded the raiding party and had 22 experienced officers with him; each of them probably led a squad of about 10 men.

Ismayil lived out in the open fresh air of the desert in a nomad’s camp of
gers
and horses, where a man could breathe free and also freely flee if needed. The circumstances revealed in the chronicles suggest that he may have lost much of his support. Though he once ruled over vast areas, Ismayil had now been forced to flee to the distant oasis of Hami, which he did not actually control so much as harass its inhabitants. The desert beyond the oases certainly could not support a large army. Therefore Ismayil’s troops had been sent elsewhere at the time, or they had deserted him. He apparently retained so few followers that he no longer had sufficient men to post an adequate guard.

The chronicler of the
Altan Tobci
described how, well before anyone could hear their hoofbeats, a servant woman in the
ger
of Ismayil sensed the vibrations in the ground made by the approaching horsemen. “Why is the ground shaking?” she called out in panic,
instinctively bolting from the
ger
and running to the hitching post, where several horses always stood ready.

She untied a horse for Ismayil to ride out and investigate the noise. Ismayil set out alone, perhaps suspecting these might be a returning party of some of the men who had deserted him or someone on a trading mission. Although he was seemingly concerned, there is no mention of real anxiety, and he apparently made no effort to flee.

Ismayil approached the Mongol detachment. The leader, Togochi Sigusi, had an arrow ready, but he waited until he could see clearly enough to determine the rider’s identity as Ismayil. When Ismayil came within firing distance and apparently did not suspect any harm, Togochi Sigusi raised the bow, aimed at Ismayil, and released the arrow. He was an experienced marksman who judged the shot well. The first arrow found its mark, and Ismayil Taishi fell dead from his horse onto the harsh desert ground.

His death came more as a final settling of scores than as a sustained struggle between adversaries. In a certain way, the killing in the desert paralleled the killing of the Golden Prince in the Gobi.

Killing Ismayil accomplished one of the two major goals of the raid; the other was to bring back Dayan Khan’s mother. The party raced to the camp before the people there could suspect the fate of Ismayil and flee. The men would take everything from the camp in a clear demonstration that not only had Ismayil been killed, but his whole property and power base had been seized and distributed by the Mongol victors.

Togochi Sigusi found the mother, Siker. She had not attempted to flee but sat down inside her
ger
, unwilling to fight, yet refusing to be rescued. In the intervening two decades, Siker had not only accepted Ismayil as her husband, she had raised two new sons, Babutai and Burnai, with him as well. She had lost her first son, Dayan Khan, but she did not want to lose these two.

She had surely expected that this day would eventually come. Perhaps she sometimes longed for it and sometimes feared it. Now that the would-be rescuers had arrived, she was not happy to see them. She seemed to hope that if she refused to cooperate, they would leave her.

Togochi Sigusi ordered Siker out of her
ger
, but she began crying. He repeated the command, telling her to mount a horse and follow him, but she obstinately refused. Her stubbornness angered him, and yet he seemed to feel some compassion for her.

As a soldier loyal to her first husband and to her still living son, he asked her if the Golden Prince had been mean to her, because he could not understand why else she would be crying instead of celebrating her liberation from the man who murdered her husband. “Was your husband the
jinong
bad?” he asked her.

She did not answer.

He reminded her of her loyalty to her son and of what an important man he had become. “Is your son the Great Khan of no importance to you?” he asked. “Do you hold your people … in such contempt?”

Still she would not reply. She seemed to have no words and quite possibly did not know herself which of the many emotions she should be feeling at that moment.

Her continued silence and refusal to obey or cooperate increasingly irritated Togochi Sigusi. “Why are you weeping for another man?” he demanded, “for this traitor, our enemy Ismayil?”

Togochi Sigusi pulled out his sword and threatened her with it. He would not harm her. No matter how she frustrated or angered him, she was still the birth mother of the Great Khan, and he had been sent on the assignment to rescue her. He was determined to fulfill that mission even if she did not want to cooperate.

When Siker still refused to answer or obey, the exasperated officer ordered his men to seize her and forcefully mount her on a horse to be taken away as a captive. He ordered everyone in the camp rounded up and taken prisoner, including Siker’s two sons and a young woman, either an older daughter of Ismayil or a younger wife. Later, in appreciation of his successful raid, Togochi Sigusi received her as his wife.

Upon his return, Togochi Sigusi announced to the khan, “I have killed the one who was envious of you. I have subdued the one who hated you.”

He presented Dayan Khan to his mother, a woman of whom the
Khan had no memory and whom he had not seen in twenty years. No chronicle mentions what she said to him—or he to her—but she was by no means happy to see him.

The convoluted kinship, political, and emotional lines between them were inordinately complex, and no one had a precedent by which to act. Even if Siker was the birth mother to Dayan Khan, Manduhai had raised him and married him. There was no more of a place for Siker in the present or the future of her son than there had been in the past.

The failed effort to reconcile with Dayan Khan’s mother left him and Manduhai where they had always been, emotionally alone. They remained totally dependent on each other and bereft of relatives who might help them.

Around the time of Ismayil’s defeat, and only two years after the birth of her first two sons, Manduhai gave birth to a daughter, whom she named Toroltu—a name similar to Toro, meaning “State” or “Government,” but which had the more specific meaning of giving life or birth and was part of the word for humanity. Over the next decade Manduhai had three additional pregnancies, resulting in five sons. Although the chronicles disagree as to precisely which were twins, they generally agree on the names and birth order. After Toroltu’s birth, Manduhai had two boys, Barsu Bolod, meaning “Steel Tiger,” and Arsu Bolod, “Steel Lion.” Soon after came Alju Bolod and Ochir Bolod, followed by the final single birth of Ara Bolod.

After the birth of two sons, Manduhai or Dayan Khan could straightforwardly have terminated their relationship, or if they had been so inclined, disposed of each other. With such heirs, Manduhai could have ruled as regent without sharing power. Had she wished to live with Une-Bolod for example, she could easily have rid herself of her husband and taken whomever she wished.

As he grew older, Dayan Khan also had the option to replace Manduhai with another woman; he could simply have left her with her
retainers in some distant part of the country, or if he feared what she might do under those circumstances, he could easily have arranged her death. Many rising young soldiers would be anxious to curry favor with the monarch by committing such an act, by testifying against her in a trial, or by assisting in any one of a dozen other methods to dispose of an unwanted queen. Such killings of khans and
khatuns
had occurred routinely among the Mongols in the generations since the successful attacks on Genghis Khan’s daughters. Despite such opportunities to each be rid of the other and have a different life, Manduhai and Dayan Khan stayed together willingly and seemingly with great affection. They had a solid political and marital union.

As the sons grew older, Manduhai sent them to live with allies in different tribes. In this way, they became acquainted with different parts of the country in preparation for their role as rulers. At the same time, each son provided Manduhai with information about the tribe where he lived and served as her link to the local population. Manduhai began using her sons as “intercessors” in much the way that Genghis Khan had used his daughters.

The Chinese had left the Mongols to fight among themselves and scarcely noticed the comings and goings of the barbarians. The court had never been a vibrant place, but with the aging of Lady Wan and her increasing attention on keeping the emperor comfortable while making her formerly impoverished relatives rich, life in the court grew stagnant and stale.

Being pregnant, giving birth, and raising children did not initially slow Manduhai’s military campaigns. She and Dayan Khan continued to live the life of nomadic warriors. Like Genghis Khan, Manduhai recognized that a nation conquered on horseback had to be ruled from horseback. Genghis Khan had fought and lived in the field, but his sons and grandsons had settled down to build cities, and eventually their descendants had lost all that Genghis Khan had acquired for them.

The couple crisscrossed the land fighting border skirmishes, raiding
into China, trading along the Silk Route, putting down revolts, and imposing a stronger centralized rule than Mongolia had enjoyed in the intervening centuries since Genghis Khan’s death. The combination of fighting and giving birth became ever more strenuous for Manduhai. She was forty years old when she became pregnant for the fourth time, with what turned out to be her final set of twins, and when she entered into what would be almost her final battle.

Although advanced in her pregnancy, Manduhai insisted on leading her troops into battle, just as she had so often done over the past fifteen years. In a scene reminiscent of her helmet falling from her head in the middle of battle during her first campaign against the Oirat, Manduhai unexpectedly lurched in her saddle. She then swiveled awkwardly and plunged to the ground, where she lay in a twisted heap. Had she been wounded, fainted, gone into labor, or simply fallen? Was she alive or dead?

The sudden fall of the highest commander on the battlefield presents a shocking spectacle for the soldiers, and such a misfortune can easily change the outcome of an engagement by disrupting the chain of command and confusing the warriors, as well as disheartening them at a crucial moment in their struggle. If seen by the enemy, the fall will almost certainly encourage them and reinvigorate their fighting.

Such an event can also provide an unexpected opportunity for potential rivals within the commander’s army, giving them an opening into which they might rush forward and seize control. The year 1488 was the Year of the Earth Monkey, a capricious creature in whose era earthshaking events like this could be expected.