Kublai Khan

(1215-1294)
In the West, known by Marco Polo under the name 'Kublai Khan' and this name was pronounced as 'Kubilay', or 'Kubla' (the latter has become especially popular after ST Coleridge's poem Kubla Khan). Like its immediate predecessor, the Great Khan Mongke (1251-1259), Kublai Khan was the son of the younger son of Genghis Khan - Tulu and kereitskoy princess Sorkoktani (Christian Nestorian church, she was the niece of Wang Khan).
Kublai Khan began his journey in the army commander's brother Mongke, which became the Great Khan in 1251, is run by Kublai conquered all the territory of Northern China. When the next year Mongke decided to subjugate the whole of China and entered the war with the ruling in the South Song dynasty, Kublai, he entrusted the operation to lead the invasion of the south-western boundaries of China. In early 1252 the army of Kublai Khan, together with detachments Uriangadaya (son of warlord Genghis Khan - Sabutai) crossed the Yellow River and rushed to the province of Shaanxi and Sichuan. By January 1253 it stood at the walls of the city of Dali, the capital of Yunnan Province, at the time - independent Thai kingdom. After capturing the city and capture the governor of Yunnan, Kublai sent Uriangadaya a hike in the south-west, and he returned to Northern China. Before the main march on the land Sung Empire Kublai Khan founded the city of Kaiping, initially destined for the new capital of his brother Mongke, but later became his own summer residence. Subsequently, the city was named Xanadu, or 'top capital'.

Full-scale attack on the Sung Empire was carried out in autumn 1258. Leaving his younger brother Arik Buga edit his place in the Mongolian capital - Karakorum Mongke rushed with his main army in Shaanxi to Sichuan, while the other two armies under the command of Kublai Khan came through Hubei Province to the Yangtze River. By the spring of 1259 Mongke mastered the entire northern Sichuan, and besieged the city on the river Hechuan Tszyalin. The siege lasted until August, when Mongke perished under the walls of the city, and his troops retreated to the north. The news of the death of Kublai Mongke caught in the Yangtze River, where his army approached the city of Wuchang in Hubei Province. Reports from the Karakoram that Arik Buga going to take the throne, was forced Kublai to make peace with the Sung dynasty, and return to the north. Kublai Khan spent the winter in Yanjing (sovr.Pekin) and in April 1260 arrived in Kaiping. Here at kurultai (Council of the Mongolian nobility), he was proclaimed Great Khan.

Arik Buga to kurultai, assembled in the Karakorum, was also proclaimed great khan, and war broke out between the brothers for power. In 1261 in the south of the Karakoram were two battles. Kublai Khan defeated in the first, but the second did not give a decisive outcome, and Arik Buga, with varying success continued to fight until 1264, when he still had to lay down their arms, and two years later died in captivity.

As his other brother, Hulagu, in this time won the Baghdad and Damascus, Kublai was able to resume the war against the Sung Empire. Hostilities began with the siege of a powerful fortress city Sianyana in Hubei Province, which lasted from 1267 to 1273. In 1275 the Mongol army under the command of the most outstanding military leader Kublai Khan - 'stoglazogo' Bayan - crossed the Yangtze and took possession of all the cities in the valley of the river from Hanyang to Nanjing. In February 1276 the capital of the Sung empire collapsed - Hangzhou. The young emperor was brought to Kublai, who graciously treated with their captive. Sung's resistance forces, however, continued in the south and was suppressed only in 1279 after the fall of Canton and the defeat of the Chinese fleet near the island Yayshan, west of the modern Macau.

With the defeat of the Sung Empire, Kublai Khan became the master of all China, which he has long been regarded as his second home. Having become the Great Khan, he moved his capital from Karakorum in Yanjing, the Mongol name of which - Khan Baliga, or 'Khan's city' - known as Kambalyuk in the writings of Marco Polo. In 1271 Kublai Khan declared himself the founder of the Yuan Dynasty - twentieth official imperial dynasty of China.

Korea paid tribute to the Mongols from 1217. With this state and its ruler Kublai Khan in the period from 1267 to 1273 made several attempts to establish ties with Japan. From Korea, he made two naval campaign against the Japanese. The first (in 1274) was more intelligence raid, but in 1284 gave a huge fleet of the Japanese archipelago, the 150 thousandth army. Unexpected typhoon (known in Japanese history called 'suicide', or 'divine wind') scattered the ships, and all the invaders, until the last soldier had been killed or captured. Frustrated by this catastrophe, Kublai Khan began extensive preparations for a third invasion, but the events that occurred in 1286 in Indochina, forced him to abandon the enterprise.

Three years later, after the retreat of Kublai from Yunnan (1254), his military commander Uriangaday invaded the kingdom of Annam (roughly corresponds sovr. North Vietnam) and captured the city of Hanoi. In 1258 the ruler of that state pleaded vassal of Kublai. Nevertheless fealty Annam caused strong doubts. When Kublai Khan sent his son Togan through the territory of Annam to the aid of his captain Sogetu, who was in a difficult war in the jungles of State Tyampa (sovr. South Vietnam), prevented the advancement annamtsy Togan. When Togan battles battling its way through Annam, was joined by retreating to the south Sogetu. The latter, however, was crushed by Annam troops and was killed, and Togan hardly found salvation in China. The parties entered into a difficult world: the rulers of Annam and Tyampy agreed to remain in the tributaries of Kublai Khan's withdrawal of the Mongol army, but was soon followed by a new invasion of the Mongols in Annam, interrupted only by the death of Kublai in 1294.

From Yunnan Army Kublai Khan entered the west, in the State Mian (roughly corresponds sovr. Burma). The first armed clash occurred in 1277, when the Mongols invaded the roads leading to the valley of the Irrawaddy and Bhamo. A full-scale military operation carried out in 1283-1284, made them masters of the whole northern part of the country. Burmese capital g.Pagan was taken, the king had fled the state Mian.

His murder committed in 1287 by one of his sons, was the occasion for a new invasion of this country, and Burma once again became a tributary of the Great Khan.

The last of the southern campaigns of Kublai Khan became the expedition to o.Yava. In 1293 20-thousand troops, sent by sea from Quanzhou (sovr. Fujian province), defeated the forces of the governor of East Java and captured his capital, but soon being damaged by troops of another leader, was forced to retreat.

Waging a military campaign in the southern borders of the empire, Kublai Khan was forced to defend the northern border. He had barely had time to deal with his rebellious brother, Arik Bugoy, as he has emerged a far more serious rival in the person of Hajdu, grandson of the Great Khan Ugadei (1229-1241), inherited from the grandfather's possessions in the north of present-day Kazakhstan. Hajdu, who considered himself the head of the house Ugadei, whose power was usurped by the house of Tula (origin of Kublai Khan), first (1267-1269) attacked Barak, who made the ruler Kublai Shagatayskogo Khanate in Central Asia. Capturing the eastern part of the possessions of Barack and turning it into a vassal, Hajdu began to move to the Karakorum. In the face of new threats to Kublai Khan in 1275 threw the army of his son Nomogana in the area of the modern city in the north of Yining in Xinjiang. After the betrayal of several khans, consisting of his army, Nomogan was captured and brought to ally Hajdu Menge-Timur, ruler of the Golden Horde, but Qaida in 1277 went up to Karakorum. To address this threat to the north was sent troops Bayan, the recent winner of the Sung empire. Pushed back into their possession, Hajdu was forced to wait in the wings until, until in 1287 an uprising of several Mongol princes in Manchuria (primarily Nahyan, the descendant of a brother of Genghis Khan) has not helped him to repeat attack. In the area of Karakorum was nominated Bayan, as Kublai himself went with his army in Manchuria. Nayan was defeated, captured and executed in 1288, and the suppression of the Manchu rebellion was completed and the future successor, his grandson Kublai Khan Temur Oldzeytu. Discouraged by this turn of events, Hajdu refrained from collision with Bayan and withdraw its forces to the west, for Khangai Highlands. In 1289 he again crossed the Khangai and attacked Kamal Khan, grandson Kublai Khan, who ruled in the Karakorum. At this time the Great Khan, who turned 74 years old, was not confined area there Bajan and he became head of the troops. Hajdu immediately retreated. Bayan stayed in the Karakoram and in 1293 paid Hajdu another defeat. Nonetheless, Hajdu experienced and Bayan, and his master. In 1301, after losing a major battle Timur Oldzeytu, he was killed during the retreat. Kublai Khan died Jan. 18, 1294, Bayan, died less than a year after the death of Kublai Khan.