Bayan Mongke’s promotion also meant a demotion for Une-Bolod to the third most important member of the clan. As the new jinong, Bayan Mongke assumed formal responsibility for the ger shrine to Genghis Khan, and he acquired possession of the black sulde from General Une-Bolod, who had been in control of the land and shrines, and who had been, at least unofficially, the presumed heir to the throne.
Despite all the attached ritual duties and ceremonial authority, the office of jinong lacked genuine authority over anything. Neither khan nor jinong exercised the real power since it was in the hands of foreign warlords; Beg-Arslan held the lower-ranking title of taishi, but actually exercised control of the comings and goings of people and goods in and out of Mongolian territory.
Sometime between 1463 and 1465, Manduul also changed Bayan Mongke’s name to Bolkhu, meaning “Rising Up” or “Coming Up,” which carried similar connotations to his own and to Manduhai’s “Rising.” The chronicles make it appear that Manduul installed his nephew not merely as his heir, but as a complete co-ruler. The uncle and nephew lived together “in peace and harmony,” and together they “brought the nation under control with strength and power.” The language used reflected the same organizational techniques used by Genghis Khan in his metaphor of the two shafts on the cart of state.
The chronicles do not describe the ceremony of installation for the Golden Prince, but based upon the golden belt, horse, and deel that he received, the ceremony seemed similar to the one during which Genghis Khan and his childhood friend and eventual ally Jamuka exchanged vows of brotherhood before a “leafy tree” in the Khork-honag Valley, agreeing to become two shafts of one cart. In that ceremony, each of the men put a golden belt around the waist of the other, and they exchanged horses. “They declared themselves sworn friends and loved each other,” according to the Secret History. Afterward, “they enjoyed themselves reveling and feasting, and at night they slept together, the two of them alone under their blanket.”
Bayan Mongke was close in age to Manduhai, and their youthful presence brought a renewed vigor to the staid Mongol court. However, they seemed more rivals than potential partners. He was admired and became the center of court attention, while she seemed ignored by her husband and everyone else, except for General Une-Bolod.
Compared with her aging husband, Une-Bolod was a vigorous man. Compared with the inexperienced crown prince, he was a mature man. While her husband had led an undistinguished life on the margins and the crown prince was much too young to have any accomplishments, Une-Bolod was a traditional Mongol man, a proven warrior. From the start, he seemed aware of Manduhai’s future importance, knowing that the man who had her favor after her husband’s death would become the new khan.
The young crown prince had none of this sophistication. He had won the total support of his uncle, and now his interest was not so much in wooing the attention of a future queen as in striking out for new adventures. He was ready to raid, take to the battlefield, and make his mark in the world.
Without any major accomplishments of his own, Manduul Khan seemed eager to support Bayan Mongke’s aspiration. Manduul’s first effort was to gain control of the local area. The khan and the prince set out to impose their authority on the tribes in central Mongolia. They used the excuse of avenging the murder of Manduul’s predecessor, the boy Molon Khan, but through a series of campaigns they seemed to be establishing control over their base in order to mount a challenge to Beg-Arslan, or whoever came to power in the south. Mounted on his pale chestnut horse, Bayan Mongke led the army and brought the surrounding tribes back into submission under Manduul, who accompanied his heir but did not participate in the fighting.
Conquering other Mongols and raiding small camps may have been gratifying to a young man on his first escapade and to an old man whose life had lacked adventure, but it produced little material or political result. One tribe was about as poor as the next. For real raiding and plunder, they had to look south of the Gobi to the Silk Route or to the Chinese cities. Just at this fortuitous moment, a message arrived informing the Mongol court that the Ming emperor had died in Beijing some months earlier in 1464.
Bayan Mongke had not only a claim on China by virtue of his descent from his ancestors Genghis and Khubilai Khan, who had conquered the country, he had an even more immediate connection to the dead emperor. This was the same emperor whom Bayan Mongke’s grandfather Esen had once captured and held prisoner in 1449.
The crown prince longed for action, and he wanted to break away from the tranquil isolation of the Mongol royal family. He did not seem sure of what he specifically sought to achieve, but he wanted something spectacular. It would not suffice to conquer neighboring clans and fight the endless Mongol feuds. He aspired to follow the heroic tradition of his ancestor Genghis Khan, to conquer whole kingdoms and assemble an empire. The route to fame and glory ran to the south, across the Gobi to the oases of the Silk Route or the cities of China, and now with the death of the old Ming emperor, fate seemed to have opened an opportunity for him in China.
The preoccupation of the Ming court with the rituals and the internecine struggles accompanying the death of the old emperor and the transition to a new emperor provided young Bayan Mongke his opportunity to strike out toward the south and prove himself as a would-be conqueror and future khan of the Mongols. Even if he could not persuade his aged great-uncle to make the journey, he could do it himself. Manduul allowed his nephew to go accompanied by Une-Bolod, the Mongol’s most experienced military leader.
To reach China from the Mongol court, Bayan Mongke and his small party of soldiers had to travel six to eight weeks from the Old Orkhon down the Ongi River, which they followed south into the Gobi until the river dried out in the desert. Moving across routes leading from one spring to another, the army would need to cross the desert, interspersed with several small clumps of mountains, and then finally descend from the Mongolian Plateau into Inner Mongolia.
The small Mongol force lacked the ability to conquer even a single Chinese city, but the Mongols devised a strategy of following the example of Genghis Khan, who acquired a beachhead south of the Gobi by making an alliance with the Onggud prior to his invasion of China. Now these same lands were occupied by Mongols allied to the Ming but performing the same old Onggud function of guarding China from assault by the tribes of the north. Bayan Mongke and Manduul sought to use their ethnic ties and shared heritage to reunite the Mongols north of the Gobi with the ones living under Chinese control. Many more Mongols lived in China under Ming rule than in Mongolia, and perhaps if unity could be reasserted between the two groups, they might be able to overcome the Chinese once again and restore the empire.
Only a teenager could have had such a dream, and only an inexperienced old man could have encouraged him in it. Bayan Mongke headed off on his first major assignment. He rode into the border zone to lure the Mongols away from the Ming and to negotiate a pan-Mongol alliance. He found a receptive audience among the Mongols, who had grown weary of the Ming rule and the unfulfilled promises and obligations of the court. As a youthful soldier, apparently destined to one day become the Great Khan of the Mongol nation, Bayan Mongke excited their pride and ambition. For those prone toward imperial nostalgia and visions of Mongol glory, the dream rose again of uniting the tribes and restoring Mongol rule over China. For those who wished more material rewards, Bayan Mongke stimulated greed for the days when the Mongols controlled all the productive wealth of China and the mercantile traffic of the Silk Road.