Tuesday, August 30, 2016
16 MONGOLS RULE
Song general Meng Gong defeated the Jin general Wu Xian and directed
his troops to besiege the city of Caizhou, to which the last emperor of
the Jurchen had fled. With the help of the Mongols, the Song armies
were finally able to extinguish the Jin dynasty that had occupied
northern China for more than a century. A year later, the Song generals
fielded their armies to occupy the old capitals of the Song, but they
were completely repelled by the Mongol garrisons under Tachir, a
descendant of Boorchu, who was a famed companion of Genghis Khan. Thus
the Mongol troops, headed by sons of the Ögedei Khan,
started their slow but steady invasion of the south. The Song forces
resisted fiercely, which resulted in a prolonged set of campaigns;
however, the primary obstacles to the prosecution of their campaigns was
unfamiliar terrain that was inhospitable to their horses, new diseases,
and the need to wage naval battles, a form of warfare completely alien
to the masters of the steppe. This combination resulted in one of the
most difficult and prolonged wars of the Mongol conquests.[3]
The Chinese offered the fiercest resistance of among all the Mongols
fought, the Mongols required every single advantage they could gain and
"every military artifice known at that time" in order to win.[4]
A greater amount of "stubborn resistance" was put up by Korea and Song
China towards the Mongol invasions than the others in Eurasia who were
swiftly crushed by the Mongols at a lightning pace.[5]
The Mongol force which invaded southern China was far greater than the force they sent to invade the Middle East in 1256
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