Her husband, the Great Khan, who was still in his early twenties, lacked the necessary military and leadership experience, though he had succeeded against Beg-Arslan, and he had not shown the aptitude for command needed to control the vigorous and independent Mongol tribes. He had also shown no sign of wishing to oppose his wife or to contest her leadership. Instead, he remained doggedly faithful to her, just like the thousands of men who served under her command.
If the fall incapacitated Manduhai for even a few hours, one of her powerful or popular generals might step forward to replace her. At this moment, as she lay sprawled on the battlefield, her empire could easily be dismembered, or simply crumble. All an ambitious new commander need do, if he had the backing of even a small but dedicated band of warriors, was to grab one of her young sons, declare the child to be the new ruler, and exercise power as a self-declared regent.
At this moment, four of her closest warriors quickly raced around her like a protective wall. This maneuver came habitually to the warriors from years of training in both hunting and fighting. The protective wall that they formed on their hunts served to push the game ahead of them from an expansive area into a smaller, contained area where the hunters could more easily shoot it. In fighting, the same formation became a defensive maneuver when used to shield someone from the enemy like mares protecting their foals. Only once the protective wall had been put in place with the now stationary men did another jump from his horse to pull Manduhai up. Behind the human wall, the soldiers hoisted her onto another horse and escorted the injured queen, still surrounded by the now moving wall of men, from the field.
Not only did her men save Manduhai’s life, they preserved her rule without anyone making a treasonous move or showing any inclination other than following her and fighting for her. The loyalty of her men had been tested, and the effectiveness and power of her years of military training and leadership had proved itself.
The chroniclers who recorded the event carefully transcribed the name of each man who helped her in this moment of crisis, as well as a description of the yellow horse that took her to safety. More important than the names of the men, the chronicle also recorded the tribe and clan of each of them. Each man came from a different tribe, and none from Manduhai’s tribe or that of her husband. The chroniclers showed clearly that the queen not only had survived the fall, she had created a fast and strong loyalty among a wide range of steppe tribes. For the first time since the collapse of the empire of Genghis Khan, she had managed to unite the tribes into a single, reconstituted nation.
Manduhai’s loyal warriors fought on to victory that day, and one month later she delivered twin sons, whom she named Ochir Bolod and Alju Bolod. They, too, would one day share in the power accumulated on the battlefield by their mother, as she gave them vast stretches of land to command in the east. Each of the men who helped to protect and rescue her that day received recognition and titles for what they had done.
In Beijing’s Forbidden City on February 3, 1487, at the approximate age of fifty-seven, Lady Wan died. She had been the emperor’s sole comfort and the one true love of his life, and he was not able to survive the loss. Seven months later, on September 9, 1487, he followed her into death. He was thirty-nine years old.
The defeat of Ismayil, followed closely by the death of the Ming emperor, opened a new opportunity for improved relations and new trade between the Mongols and China. Manduhai Khatun and Dayan Khan sent a trade delegation to Beijing in 1488, and with it they sent a letter written in Mongolian in which Dayan Khan asserted clearly his identity as the Great Khan of the Yuan. Had it been written in Chinese, the Ming probably could not have tolerated the title claimed by Dayan Khan, but being written in Mongolian made it more tolerable, or at least more easily overlooked. With some complaining about the inelegance of the Mongolian writing, the Ming officials accepted it and permitted the trade.
The new diplomacy of that year showed some flexibility on both sides and an indication that the Mongolian and Chinese governments would tolerate each other. Without completely altering their official stances and ideology, the Mongols tacitly acknowledged that they no longer ruled China and had no plans to do so again, while the Chinese officials recognized that that they did not control the Mongols beyond the Great Wall. Future relations would still be marred by raids and skirmishes, but the two countries were beginning to move toward a mutually acceptable form of commercial and diplomatic relations.
Manduhai had finished the fighting part of her career, but she had not yet completed her mission. As Genghis Khan taught, “The good of anything is in finishing it.” He had accomplished far more than Manduhai, but the arrogant greed of his sons and grandsons had destroyed his lifetime of work. Manduhai concentrated the remainder of her life in protecting what she had accomplished and making certain that the nation could sustain itself after her departure. With the same assiduous devotion she had applied to the battlefield and the unification of the Mongol nation, Manduhai and Dayan Khan now set to the reorganization of the Mongol government and its protection in the future.
When Genghis Khan took over the leadership of his small Mongol tribe, he was installed as khan. After fighting to unite the tribes for two decades, he called the khuriltai of 1206 to reorganize the government and to be recognized as the ruler of all the tribes. In the same way, when Manduhai installed Batu Mongke as Dayan Khan when he was seven years old, they ruled only a very small group. After nearly three decades of struggle to unite the country and to raise a family, they were ready to formally install him as khan over the entire nation.
In 1206, most of Genghis Khan’s subjects had lived north of the Gobi, but by 1500, the majority of the Mongols lived south of the Gobi. The royal couple decided that the appropriate place to re-create the united Mongol nation would be in the south, which was also the land where Manduhai had grown up prior to being sent north to marry Manduul Khan. Genghis Khan’s death at the edge of the Ordos also made it a sacred place associated with his memory.
Manduhai and Dayan Khan came south to strengthen their hold on the area and possibly to move their capital there. Sometime in the previous fifty years, the collection of gers mounted on carts and known as the Shrine of Genghis Khan had been brought south of the Gobi for the first time since he had died nearly three hundred years earlier. The dual monarchs’ control of the shrine together with the sulde, the banner of Genghis Khan, illustrated to everyone that they had attained the blessings of both Genghis Khan and the Eternal Sky.
Dayan Khan had not been installed in front of the Genghis Khan shrine; Manduhai had used the Shrine of the First Queen instead. Now in the 1490s, at the height of their power, Manduhai and Dayan Khan wanted to reinstitute their Mongol nation in a manner similar to the way Genghis Khan had created it in 1206. Manduhai Khatun and Dayan Khan planned to reorganize the clans, install their sons in offices over them, and enthrone Dayan Khan for a second time, recognizing that he now ruled all the tribes.
The ceremony would not merely be a renewal of Dayan Khan’s office but, more important, a renewal of the Mongol nation. Since the episode of the Great Khan with the rabbit in 1399, the Mongol khans had not been the true rulers of the country. Now, nearly a century later, the power of the lineage of Genghis Khan was being restored.
In preparation, the monarchs brought gifts for the shrine, including new lamps and large incense holders. Cattle and sheep were assembled for sacrifice in sets of nine before the sulde of Genghis Khan. Horsemen dressed in all white, riding white horses, and horsemen dressed in all black riding black horses formed an honor guard. Drummers beat on giant kettle drums, and heralds sounded the deep-throated roar of their large, five-foot-long brass horns. Here the monarchs proclaimed the new nation amid solemn ceremonies, banquets, and the three essential Mongolian games of horse racing, archery, and wrestling.