Chapter 47 preamble

Genghis Khan, the conqueror of the world, died on the battlefield of the Xixia expedition at the age of sixty-six.Since then, although the Mongolian Empire has continued to expand due to inertia, the discord among the descendants of the Great Khan has become a hidden danger to the empire.In 1259 A.D., Meng Ge Khan, who came from the Tuo Lei family, was wounded and died very accidentally when attacking Diaoyu City, a fortress in the Southern Song Dynasty. He was the last great Khan recognized by all the tribes of the Mongolian Empire. When Meng Ge died, his younger brother Kublai Khan was besieging Ezhou, an important town on the Yangtze River defense line in the Southern Song Dynasty. Hulagu was fighting hard with the Mamluk Dynasty in Egypt in the Middle East. Only his younger brother Ali Buge was still in Mongolia.In terms of reason, Kublai Khan should have inherited the throne of Khan. Kublai Khan convened the Kuriltai Conference (Kuriltai) in Kaiping, outside the Mongolian mainland, and proclaimed himself the Great Khan of Mongolia. However, one of the conferences was in Mongolia.However, the Mongolian relatives and nobles on the one hand were afraid of his great talent and general plan, and on the other hand they were dissatisfied with the Sinicization he advocated, so they held the Kuritai Conference on their own and supported Ali Boke as the Great Khan of Mongolia.Kublai Khan returned to his army to compete for the Khan position. The two sides fought for four years. In the end, Ali Boke was defeated and surrendered. Wo Kuotai's grandson Haidu and others launched rebellions one after another, and Mongolia's internal strife was in the ascendant.Kublai Khan, who barely won the Khan throne, had to give up his control over the Khanates in Central and West Asia, and devoted himself to managing the prosperous Central Plains, and went out of Mobei as a prince to resist the invasion.In 1271, Kublai Khan changed the name of the country from "Mongolia" to "Yuan", calling himself the emperor of the Central Plains and the ancestor of the Yuan Dynasty.This marked the collapse of the Mongol Empire.

Kublai Khan, who occupied the Central Plains, continued the policy of aggression and expansion in the Mongolian era.In 1259, he forced Koryo to submit, and then went east to spy on Japan.Since then, Kublai Khan has written to Japan six times, asking it to become a minister and pay tribute.Japan has been deeply influenced by Han culture, and has always been a teacher of the orthodox Chinese dynasty. It has a natural hostility towards the Yuan Dynasty, which perished in the Southern Song Dynasty. In addition, after the collapse of the Southern Song Dynasty, a large number of survivors fled to Japan. influences.Therefore, the Kamakura shogunate refused to submit to the Yuan Dynasty because it "has never heard of the name of Mongolia", and it was quite unfriendly to Kublai Khan's envoys.

Furious, Khubilai Khan invaded Japan twice in 1274 and 1281, but both failed.During the second expedition to Japan, the Mongolian fleet was hit by a hurricane and almost wiped out—because the hurricane saved Japan, it was called "Kamikaze" by the Japanese.At the memorial service for the Japanese samurai who died in battle, Wuxue Zuyuan, the founder of Rinzai Zen in Japan and the founder of Foguang Sect, performed rituals in person.Before that, the old monk wrote a small note to Hojo Tokimune, the head of the Kamakura shogunate, who was feeling heavy because of the Mongolian attack, advising him to "don't worry".However, this loyal old monk is not Japanese. He is called "Du Lai Monk", which means "foreign monk". He was originally an eminent monk of Nengren Temple in Yandang Mountain, China.Although Wuxue Zuyuan helped the Japanese, no one called him a "traitor".

The ancestor was able to speak Chinese, actively reformed the old Mongolian system, and reused Han people, but he regretted it in his later years.After the ancestors, most of the emperors who succeeded the Datong were from the town kings of Mobei. These town kings lived in Mobei for a long time and were deeply influenced by the Hu culture. Most of them could not speak Chinese and stubbornly refused to Sinicize. In the orthodox Central Plains culture. Because of its fierce ethnic and social conflicts, this dynasty was rapidly declining, and it only existed for less than a hundred years.Up to now, this once powerful dynasty has only left a few sections of desolate earthen walls in Beijing, which are called "Yuan Dadu Ruins".