The Coming of the Mongols
For all these reasons the Song, unlike their predecessors, were not the victims of any popular uprising. Their fall was solely due to foreign events, the origin and development of which were not China’s work.
As we have said, in the course of the previous centuries, Islam had set up a barrier in the west of Asia. The Islamised Turks on the western side of the Pamirs had blocked the passage through which the nomads of the eastern steppes were wont to expand. Now the force that impels the horsemen of central Asia to press towards the west is something that cannot be held down. It again manifested itself, and this time with a violence that was all the greater because of the forces opposed to it. The thirteenth century produced the gigantic Mongolian cavalcade that was only equalled in power by Attila’s, the formidable outburst of Genghis Khan [13] and his lieutenants.
These Mongol invasions were the counterpart of the Crusades. They were Asia’s counter-offensive against Islam, just as a short time previously the Crusades had been Europe’s counter-offensive against this same Islam. The success of this counter-attack, just like that of Europe, was at first total. Just as the Crusades had led to the capture of Jerusalem in 1099, [14] so in 1259 the Asian crusades were to capture Baghdad, the seat of the Caliphate. [15] But although as simple counter-attacks designed to halt the Muslim pressure, the two Crusades achieved their aims, these counter-attacks were not transformed into counter-invasions, so the Mongols as well as the Latins had to abandon their conquests, and Islam regained complete possession of its former territories. The Latin kingdom of Jerusalem did not last a century, [16]and Mongol domination of the Middle East only lasted a little longer, 150 years. [17]
Before turning against the Muslims of the west, Genghis Khan deemed it prudent first of all to secure his rear by subduing his compatriots, the Nüzhen, who had been established for a century behind the Great Wall, and reigned over the whole of northern China. Accordingly, in 1211, Genghis Khan crossed the Great Wall, razed Beijing, pushed into Shandong, and reduced the Nüzhen kingdom to Kaifeng and the area around it. [18] He and his successors were thus in a position to pass on with equanimity to the west as far as Poland and Hungary, some 7000 kilometres from the point of their departure.
China, however, the old traditional Mongol objective, was not to be spared for too long from fresh incursions on the part of those powerful tribes who were in the process of conquering almost the whole of Eurasia. So it happened that in 1233, Genghis Khan’s first successor, Ogodai, began his conquest of what remained of the Nüzhen kingdom, and so became master of all northern China. [19]
On the morrow of this event, a new situation arose. We have seen that hitherto the Mongolian pressure had exerted itself almost without ceasing on the China of the Yellow River, the barbarians hardly ever failing to occupy it, at least in part, either as mercenaries or as rulers. On the other hand, the China of the Blue River had almost always remained untouched, a fact that conferred on it the distinction of becoming the true Chinese territory, the asylum alike of Chinese civilisation and of Chinese independence.
From now on, it was no longer to be the same. There was to be no more Byzantium. From now on, every time that the barbarians entered China, it was not only to establish their dominion locally, but to establish their power over the entire country, as much over the Blue River as over the Yellow River, from Beijing down to Canton. This was doubtless a result of the strengthening of China’s geographical unity due to the great development of the means of communication. [20]
Thus then, after having gained possession of northern China, again with the aid of the Song, who, repeating their former error, had supported the Mongols against the Nüzhen, [21] just as a century earlier they had supported the Nüzhen against the Khitan, Ogodai threw his hordes against the China of the south, and finally Kublai Khan, Genghis Khan’s fourth successor and grandson, completed the conquest in 1276 by the capture of the capital, Hanghzhou, and of Canton, the most southerly of China’s great cities.
Kublai Khan could then legitimately proclaim himself emperor of China, [22] but it had taken the Mongols a good 50 years to achieve their objective, because in spite of their former pacifism, the Song had made a desperate resistance to the invaders over a period of 40 years, and after the last defeat the last Chinese general jumped into the sea with the last Song emperor
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