Bayan Mongke was not Esen. He stirred up some mild enthusiasm with the border Mongols, stoked the ashes of past glory, and tempted their appetites for adventure and plunder. During this time, the Ming border guards, disguised as Mongol bandits, raided the goods being sent to the loyal Mongols who were helping the Ming protect the border. This system of theft had frequently been used by the underpaid and underappreciated Chinese soldiers to supplement their difficult life in a forsaken post. The local commanders, who benefited from the corruption, wrote back reports blaming all such raids on outlaw Mongols. In addition, when the Mongols loyal to the Ming attempted to send tribute to the emperor, Chinese soldiers robbed them as well, and again blamed it on other, savage Mongols living in the wild. The local Mongols lost their goods and got the blame for the robbery.
The misconduct of these Ming soldiers probably had more to do with causing the border tensions than the arrival of the ineffectively young crown prince of the Mongols. Fearful of the discontent brewing along the border, and fully aware of the danger Bayan Mongke’s visit might spark among these tentatively loyal Mongols, the Ming court sent out an expedition to capture the provocateur and reinforce its authority. If they could capture the heir to the title of Great Khan of the Yuan, they might have their ultimate triumph over the old dynasty, which still had not surrendered. By luck, the first Ming force sent to capture Bayan Mongke failed in the summer of 1468, but in the following year, a stronger force arrived and, by cutting off the supply of food to the border Mongols, quickly starved them out by early 1469. Bayan Mongke managed to escape back north into the Gobi and on home, but the Ming forces captured the local Mongol leader and hailed the feat as another great victory over the barbarians.
The records of this time remain silent on what happened at the Mongol court during the absence of Bayan Mongke. Yet events would soon unfold to show that Manduhai, unseen and unheard, had been making her own alliances. As the aging khan weakened and the young khan dashed about on the Chinese frontier, Manduhai solidified her position, made a few allies, and prepared as best she could for the uncertain fate ahead. For her, everything up until then had been a training period in which she watched, learned, and waited. Soon she would have the opportunity to test her skills.
For the moment, she had two rivals, both about her same age and at the start of their careers. Her immediate rival for power at court and within Mongolia was Bayan Mongke. In the longer term, however, she and the Ming emperor, using intermediaries and proxies, would become involved in an indirect but lifelong struggle for control over the borderlands, while living lives that would have uncanny, and probably not coincidental, similarities.
9
The Falling Prince and the Rising Queen
SEXUAL POLITICS DESTROYED THE COURT OF MANDUUL KHAN. The Tibetan chronicle states that the horrendous charges and countercharges about the incidents were too dreadful to repeat, but of course the author teases the reader with a hazy sketch of events displayed to tantalize more than inform. The Mongolian chroniclers more eagerly described specific details of some events while obscuring others, depending on the genealogical connections and political allegiances of the writer. Each chronicler had some personal connection to the people in the story and often wanted to protect a particular person’s reputation while placing the blame firmly on another.
Sex is always political, and in politics every relationship is potentially sexual, or at least is open to accusations of being so. Usually the sex remains just a little hidden in the domain of speculation, gossip, and rumor, but in the breakup of Manduul Khan’s court, almost every person was accused of an inappropriate relationship with someone, or several people, in the group.
Bayan Mongke came to court for sexual purposes, at least some of which were clearly stated. He had already proved his ability to father a son, and now he would be expected to do so again to carry forth the Borijin clan. As the heir, the young prince Bolkhu Jinong would also marry the wives of the old khan when he died. This custom reached far back into steppe history and set them clearly apart from their Chinese and Muslim neighbors, who disapproved highly of this practice. As a Confucian scholar wrote of them, “They marry by succession their stepmothers, the wives of their deceased younger paternal uncles, and the wives of their deceased elder brothers.” He further described the Mongols as facing the ridicule of future generations, stating that only through “civilization and law” could the Mongols abolish these incestuous, barbaric traditions.
By installing Bayan Mongke and giving him the title Bolkhu Jinong, Manduul made this expectation clear. As the khan bragged about the nephew when presenting him, “He will be a fruitful branch from the noble Borijin family tree.” The khan used a metaphor understood by every Mongol. He compared the young prince to the fermented mare’s milk saved at the end of the horse milking season for next year’s fermentation. Manduul Khan called his nephew the khorongo for the Borijin lineage.
According to Mongol tradition, the heir would wait until the father died before taking one of his wives. Yet sometimes among the tribes from Siberia to Tibet, when one man failed to father a son, another member of his lineage, or bone, might help to do so. In Tibet, such relations had official standing for two or more brothers married to the same wife, but in Mongolia, such marriages had no historical validity. Still, any child born of a married woman became the child of her husband. Genghis Khan made this rule clear in acknowledging his wife’s first-born child as his own son, despite his wife’s capture and brief marriage to another man. As Genghis Khan declared, if he himself claimed to be the father, what right did any other person have to dispute it?
Ahmad Ibn Arabshah, an Arab writer who lived and traveled extensively in the Mongol world at the opening of the fifteenth century, carefully observed and recorded the habits and customs of the Mongols. He noted two aspects of their conjugal life that surprised him. Women retained control and all rights over their dowry after marriage, and women commonly had sexual relations with other men in their husband’s family, though they would never do so with any man outside of it. This also seemed in keeping with Genghis Khan’s dictum separating family issues from communal issues, whereby he decreed that affairs of the ger should be settled in the ger and affairs of the steppe on the steppe.
The European historian Edward Gibbon, who evidenced little respect for any of the steppe tribes, described the Mongol homes and their habits with ostentatious contempt. “The houses of the Tartars are no more than small tents, of an oval form, which afford a cold and dirty habitation for the promiscuous youth of both sexes.”
The sexual and political dynamics of Manduul’s court produced much confused commentary and speculation. Initially the senior khan seemed infatuated with his young heir and refused to see anything wrong in what he did. Bayan Mongke seemed eager to please the khan and keep his support. As a child whose survival often depended on ingratiating himself to more powerful people around him, Bayan Mongke understood the importance of this role.
Bayan Mongke may have been inexperienced in warfare and international diplomacy with the Chinese court, but he understood the dynamics of the Mongol court. His hold on power in the short term derived from pleasing his uncle, but in the long term it depended on the favor of Manduhai or Yeke Qabar-tu, since as the heir he had to marry one of them, preferably the senior wife, to become khan after his uncle died. It behooved him to cultivate favor with one of them now, but it was a dangerous path in controlling precisely how far the relationship should go while the old khan still lived.