Northern Yuan

History

When Ming armies closed in during 1368, the last Yuan emperor, Toghon Temür, left the capital Dadu - Dadu was the Yuan capital that Kublai Khan began building in 1267 on the site of present-day Beijing. Mongols called it Khanbaliq, 'the city of the Khan'.It was a planned city with a grid of straight avenues inside square walls, and the Grand Canal was extended right into it so grain barges from the south could unload at its docks. A ruler of the steppe had built himself a Chinese capital.This is the city Marco Polo is said to have visited. When Ming armies approached in 1368 the last Yuan emperor abandoned it for the steppe; the Ming renamed it Beiping, and it later became Beijing. (present-day Beijing) and withdrew north to the steppe. The state did not end; the whole court simply moved, and so people called it the Northern Yuan — the Yuan court in the north. It still called itself the Great Yuan, and still regarded China as its own to win back.

A khan back on the steppe

Toghon Temür fell back through Shangdu to Yingchang, where he died in 1370. The court then centred itself on Karakorum - Karakorum was the capital of the Mongol Empire, founded by Ögedei Khan on the Orkhon River in 1235, near present-day Kharkhorin in Mongolia.Standing in open grassland, it had to be fed by grain convoys from the farming lands to the south. That weakness decided a war: when Kublai cut the routes in 1261, Ariq Böke's hold on the capital collapsed without a decisive battle.It was also a city people reached from all over the world. Guillaume Boucher, a goldsmith taken captive in France, built a great silver tree in the palace whose pipes are said to have poured out wine and fermented mare's milk. Only ruins remain today, beside the Erdene Zuu Monastery built from its stones., the old capital from the days of Genghis Khan. Back on the grasslands the Northern Yuan proved anything but easy prey. When the Ming sent three armies deep into the steppe in 1372, the Northern Yuan commander Köke Temür gave ground, drew them far into the desert, and beat them badly. After that defeat the Ming gave up the idea of conquering the steppe, rebuilt the Great Wall - The Great Wall of China is a series of fortifications built across the historical northern borders of ancient Chinese states and Imperial China as protection against various nomadic groups from the Eurasian Steppe. The construction of the wall spanned over two millennia, with major sections built during the Qin, Han, and Ming dynasties. According to legendary lore, the tragic myth of Meng Jiangnü tells of a devoted wife whose tears of grief for her husband—who died of exhaustion while building the wall—were so intense that they collapsed a massive section of the stone wall, revealing his bones. It serves as an enduring symbol of both engineering grandeur and human sacrifice., and settled for guarding the frontier.

The khanship shaken

The turning point came in 1388, when the Ming general Lan Yu surprised and shattered the court at Buir Lake. Khan Tögüs Temür escaped the battlefield but was killed soon after by a rival power among the Mongols. From then on the line of khans descended from Kublai was broken, and the Mongols split into the Tatars in the east and the Oirats in the west, each contesting the title.

Mandukhai, the heroine of the steppe

A story Mongolians still love to tell comes from this era. In the late 15th century a woman named Mandukhai Khatun took a seven-year-old orphan boy, Batu Möngke, under her protection, had him proclaimed khan, put on armour herself, and led the armies that gathered the scattered Mongol tribes back together. In the telling, she was thrown from her horse in battle and simply climbed back on and fought on. The boy grew up to be Dayan Khan, who reunited the Mongols.

Two more centuries

The Northern Yuan lived alongside the Ming for more than two hundred years, sometimes fighting, sometimes trading horses for silk. In 1449 the Oirat leader Esen went so far as to capture a Ming emperor. The line of Mongol khans ran until 1635, when the son of the last khan handed the imperial seal to the Manchus.