By taking off her queenly headdress, known as the boqta, she removed virtually the only piece of clothing that separated a man from a woman. The boqta ranks as one of the most ostentatious headdresses of history, but it had been highly treasured by noble Mongol women since the founding of the empire. The head structure of willow branches, covered with green felt, rose in a narrow column three to four feet high, gradually changing from a round base to a square top. A variety of decorative items such as peacock or mallard feathers adorned the top with a loose attachment that kept them upright but allowed them to flutter high above the woman’s head. The higher the rank, the more elaborate the boqta, and as queen, Manduhai would have worn a highly elaborate one. She would have worn her hair in a knot underneath a hood that helped to balance the boqta. The contraption struck many foreign visitors as odd, but the Mongol Empire had enjoyed such prestige that medieval women as far away as Europe imitated it with the hennin, a large cone-shaped headdress that sat toward the back of the head rather than rising straight up from it as among the Mongols. With no good source of peacock feathers, European noblewomen generally substituted gauzy streamers flowing in the wind at the top.
As in many martial cultures, the bow and arrow served not only as a major weapon in war but also as a major political and martial symbol. For the Mongols, hanging up the bow and arrow in the ger symbolized peace, and taking them down symbolized war. Even a young boy such as Dayan Khan could have easily taken down the bow and quiver of arrows and strapped them on to symbolically lead the army. By stressing that Manduhai did it, the chronicles show clearly that she personally commanded the army.
As described in the Altan Tobci, “Queen Manduhai the Good, like the great khans of former times, set out on campaign.”
She did not, however, leave the boy behind. He was the khan, and he would accompany her army whether he was yet capable or not. In the words of the Altan Tobci, she put the young khan “in a box and set out.” Other sources described the container as a leather case, a woven basket, or a wooden box strapped to a horse.
When moving from camp to camp, Mongol parents often put young children in a specially made box without a top that they tied to the side of a camel’s two humps. From this secure place the children could be easily moved and kept out of the way, and they could often be seen with their heads poking out of such boxes as they bounced along on the camel.
By age seven, however, Dayan Khan certainly should have been able to ride a horse with some degree of mastery. Children began riding at age three or four, and by age five, many of them, both boys and girls, were able to engage in grueling races of more than fifteen miles. Particularly since the boy now occupied the highest office in the Mongol world, it seems odd that he would not be riding a horse. At the same time, the chronicles mention that his box was carried by a horse, and not a camel; horses are not used as pack animals, so the choice of animal indicates an unusual situation.
The young khan possibly still suffered from the ailments of his earlier childhood, and perhaps he could not ride. Several times in his life he had accidents falling from a horse, and therefore Manduhai seemed to be taking no chance of having the young khan injured as she went off to battle. Because she led the troops in his name, his presence, in some form or other, was vital to the legitimacy and success of the campaign. For generations, the men who held the title of Great Khan had rarely ventured forth on a real military campaign, but Manduhai was showing that although he might be a crippled boy, he was still the khan and would go with her into battle. Her leadership and his bravery inspired others to follow her as well.
The Mongol armies at the time of Manduhai still utilized the left-right organization of Genghis Khan. Whether in camp or on the battlefield, the leader remained always at the center of the army, surrounded by several concentric circles of protectors. The main detachment then spread out as two large wings from the center. Even when moving across the countryside, the army moved in this spread-out formation rather than in the single-file formation of most batallions. In this way, the Mongol army was constantly in formation to move into battle.
In some armies, the commander rode at the front of the troops. But in the wing formation, with the commander in the center, the two wings moved out somewhat ahead of the leader. From this position at the rear, the commander could see the entire army and be in a much better position to make decisions and give orders. The commander could call for a large number of battle formations to be used in attack, and these could be changed frequently in a cascade of attacks that confused the enemy.
At the beginning of the Mongol Empire, uninformed opponents sometimes mocked even Genghis Khan as a coward for staying behind the front line in battle, but the effectiveness of the Mongol strategy proved itself not only in their consistent victories, but also in the rare loss of life of their commanders. Despite her untraditional approach to organizing her army, Manduhai knew better than to depart from this proven military formation. She took her position at the center of the army.
A herd of horses can move only as quickly as its smallest and youngest members can run. Horses can outrun most dangers, but wolves are swift, nimble, and wily. The wolf pack cannot threaten the strong stallion, who can attack with his hooves and severely injure or kill an adult wolf, but because there is only one such stallion, he poses little threat to the pack as a whole. To protect the vulnerable foals and colts, the females herd them into a tight circle that the mares then surround in a tight fortification, thereby forming a wall of hooves against the attackers. Thus fortified, the mares easily beat off with their hooves any wolf that may nip at them, but the horses remain rigidly in place until the wolves move on toward easier prey. The lone mature stallion circles around almost helplessly as a sentry, lunging ineffectively at the wolves that easily jump out of his range.
From thousands of years together on the steppe, the two animals know each other’s threats and each other’s defenses. The wolves stand little chance of breaking the mares’ defense, but sometimes they can lure out an overconfident and easily provoked young male that lacks the instinct or experience of the females. Such an untested male will strike out against a wolf that then lures him toward the rest of the wolves, which are hiding in ambush. They race out, attack the startled young male, and rip his flesh apart.
Manduhai already knew the lesson of the mares, but now she needed to learn from the wolf. She could already protect and guard, but Manduhai needed to learn to hunt, stalk, retreat, lure, attack, and win. She first sought to lure out her enemies from their protected stronghold and confront them in the place of her choosing.
Manduhai carefully selected the battle zone. She led her army toward the large open area west of the Khangai Mountains and east of the Altai. Whoever controlled this area, now mostly located in the modern Mongolian province of Zavkhan, had the best position for controlling the west. Because the area comprised the large open steppe, it was the best place in the west for horse herds. The numerous small rivers of the area drained the ice that melted from the mountains, and abundant meandering streams provided adequate moisture for what would otherwise be too dry a zone for extensive herding. The places without such moisture became sandy deserts, giving the large area a highly varied landscape, with patches of drifting sand dunes and verdant pastures adjacent to the many streams.
The combination of ample water and extensive grass made for fertile grazing in an otherwise arid west. Whoever controlled this central area would have the largest herds of horses in the area, and thereby food and transportation for the largest army. They would be able to dominate the entire area from central Mongolia to the Kazakh steppes. For these practical reasons, Qaidu Khan and his daughter Khutulun came to the same area for their major confrontation with the armies of their Mongol cousins in the Yuan Dynasty, and it was here that Qaidu Khan died.