Mongolia | Life & Death of the False Lama #4

How the people who became known as Kalmyks, originally nomads from Inner Asia, ended up in Europe as citizens of the Russian Empire, on the steppes straddling the Volga River north of the Caspian Sea, is a fascinating tale in itself. The saga of the Kalmyks is part of the larger story of the conflict between the Eastern Mongols of Chingis Khan and his Chingisid descendants and the Western, or Oirat, Mongols. The roots of this story go back to the thirteen century when a basic division took place between the Chingisid Mongols and the Mongols who became known as Oirats.

The Oirats were originally a forest people who dwelt in the taiga and mixed steppe-woodlands west of Lake Baikal, around Lake Khövsgöl to the south, and the basins of the upper tributaries of the Yenisei River still farther west. Their name might be based on the Mongolian word oi, which means “forest.” We first hear of the Oirats in the Yüan Chi, or History of the Yüan Dynasty, where they are called Wei-la or Wa-i-la. Other thirteenth century documents refer them as the Oira or Wan Oira. The Persian historian Rashid-al-Din (1247–1318) referred to the Oirats by name and said they lived in the basins of the eight rivers which combine to form the Yenisei River. These would include the Biy-Khem and Ka Kem in what is now the autonomous republic of Tuva, the Shishigt Gol and its Tributaries west of Lake Khövsgöl in Mongolia, and others. The Yüan Chi and Rashid-al-Din (please don't confuse him with Rashid al-Din Sinan, the notorious thirteenth-century head honcho of the Assassin Cult in Syria) both report further that in 1204 the Oirat joined with the Naiman, a tribe which lived in the northwest of current-day Mongolia, and fought against Chingis Khan. This venture failed and in 1208 they submitted to Chingis, under whose his banner they then served as auxiliaries in the great military campaigns of the Chingisid Mongols. Later, in 1260–64, they sided with the rebellion of Arika Buga against Chingis’s grandson and founder of the Yüan Dynasty Khubilai. After the defeat of Arika Buga they remained more or less subordinate to the Chingisids until after the fall of the Yüan Dynasty founded by Khubilai Khan and the expulsion of the Mongols from China in 1368.

The Chingisids, shorn of their Chinese empire, regrouped around their old capital of Kharkhorum on the Orkhon River. In 1372 and again in 1388, huge armies mustered by the Ming, who had replaced the Mongols as rulers of the Celestial Empire, crossed the Gobi Desert into Mongolia, hoping to stamp out any chance of a Chingisid revival. The 1388 invasion, consisting of over 100,000 Chinese troops, crushed the Mongols in a decisive battle south Lake Buir in current-day Dornod Aimag, after which the reigning khan, Töqüz Temür, was assassinated by a disgruntled relative. In 1399 an Oirat commander killed one of the successors to Töqüz Temür, an event which signaled the decline of the Chingisid Mongols and the ascension of the Oirats.

Yet for the Mongols as a whole the rise of the Oirats posed a problem. According to the unwritten laws of the steppe only a Chingisid, a descendant of Chingis Khan, could be anointed as Great Khan. This stricture was so inviolate that even the great Tamurlane, whose military exploits rivaled those of Chingis himself, never dared to take the title of Great Khan for himself but instead tried to legitimize his rule in the eyes of his followers by marrying the Chingisid princess Saray Mulk-khanum, the daughter of Khazan, the last ruler of the Chagatai Khanate founded by Chagatai, Chingis’s second son. Thus the Eastern Chingisid Mongols considered themselves to be the only legitimate rulers of the Mongolian people and viewed the Oirats as upstarts and usurpers who must forever remain their subordinates. Yet the Oirats would soon throw up great leaders who created empires which rivaled and surpassed the power of the Eastern Mongols. They would attack China itself and even dreamed of restoring the Yüan Dynasty which the Eastern Mongols had allowed to crumble away in their hands.

By 1434 the Oirat chieftain Toghan, after half a century of internecine Mongol warfare, had melded the four main tribes—the Torgut, Dörböt, Khoshot, and Choros, also known as the Four Confederate—into the first Oirat Empire. At its height in the mid-fifteenth century the Oirat realm stretched from Lake Baikal west to Lake Balkash in what is now Kazakhstan, and from Baikal south to the Great Wall of China. It included of much of current-day Mongolia, including the former capital of Kharkhorum, and in the west ruled over the Zungarian Basin, the slopes of the Tian Shan, and the oasis city of Hami in what is now Xinjiang. In the early 1440s Toghan’s son Esen assumed control of the Oirat Empire.

Although the ruler of a huge swatch of Inner Asia, as an Oirat he could not claim to be the Great Khan of all the Mongols. In an effort to legitimize his rule Esen married off his daughter to Toghto-Bukha, a descendant of Chingis Khan, who then assumed the more-or-less ceremonial title of khan, while Esen ruled as hegemon. Soon he would challenge the Ming dynasty itself.

The immediate source of conflict was over trade relations. The Oirats wanted free and open trade with China, while the Ming tended to consider commercial relations with the so-called barbarians of the steppe as beneath them. (One Ming emperor’s distain for the nomads to the north went so far as to issue an order that the Chinese characters for “barbarian” be written as small as possible in all official records. ) Also, according to one source, Esen was promised a Ming princess as a wife by the Ming emperor Yingzong. When the bride was not produced Esen used this as a pretext to invade China.

The twenty-one year-old emperor Yingzong thirsted for military glory, and under the baleful influence of a court eunuch named Wang Zhen he unwisely decided to himself lead an army into battle and confront the Mongols before they could reach Beijing. On August 4 1449 the Ming army with Yingzong at its head left the capital and headed north. After sixteen days it became apparent that the badly organized and ill-equipped force was incapable of confronting the Oirats under Esen. A retreat was ordered, but on September 1 Esen cornered the Ming army at a place called Tumu, sixty some miles northwest of Beijing and twenty-five miles or so beyond the Great Wall in what is now Hubei Province. Most if not all of the army of 50,000 Chinese was annihilated, and most humiliatingly of all emperor Yingzong was taken prisoner. His advisor the eunuch Wang Zhen was cut down on the field of battle, according to one version of the story dispatched by disgruntled Chinese soldiers who realized too late they had been led like sheep to the slaughter.

A month or two later Esen was camped in the suburbs of Beijing. Although a master of steppe warfare he was unable to master the siege tactics necessary to overpower the walled and fortified capital. His royal hostage was of no help either. Yingzong’s younger brother Prince Cheng had assumed the vacant throne and taken the title of Jingtai Emperor. Esen had hoped to gain great concessions in return for the person of Yingzong but now the Ming court was in no hurry at all to get him back. After Ming reinforcements from other cities began converging on Beijing and the Mongol horses had eaten most of the available grass around the capital Esen decided to return to the more hospitable steppes of Mongolia. After a year Esen finally released Yingzong, but upon the latter’s return to Beijing he was placed under virtual house arrest in an out-of-the-way palace in the southeast corner of the Forbidden City and ignored, while his younger brother continued to rule. Yingzong did eventually retake his throne, but the details of these events are outside the scope of our narrative.

For a brief moment while the Oirats were camped outside Beijing it had appeared that Esen was about to retake the throne of China lost by the Chingisids in 1368 and install a new version of the Yüan Dynasty. Esen’s success was short-lived however. He had not been able to take Beijing, had not received the anticipated massive ransom for Yingzong, and in fact had very little to show in the way of plunder for his great victory on the battlefield at Tumu. Yet he had become so emboldened by his military feat that in 1453 he had his Chingisid son-in-law assassinated and he himself assumed the title of Great Khan of all the Mongols. As an Oirat he had no right to make such a claim; some considered him an usurper and in 1455 he himself was assassinated by disgruntled Mongols. The Oirat Empire depended on large part on the person of Esen, and with him gone it rapidly began to disintegrate.

The Eastern Mongols, who as descendants of Chingis Khan claimed to be the only legitimate rulers of Mongolia, were still in the throes of a long period of internal strife. Mandagul Khan, the twenty-seventh successor of Chingis Khan, was killed in a struggle with his great-nephew Bolkho, and after Bolkho himself was assassinated his five year-old son Dayan was place on the throne. Khan Mandagul’s widow Mandukhai took the little boy under her wing and acting as his de-facto regent assumed command herself of the Mongol armies. Later she took the extraordinary step of marrying Dayan, the son of the great-nephew of her deceased husband, thus making herself khatun, or queen of the Eastern Mongols. Under the leadership of Khatun Manduukhai —now a Much Revered and Venerated Figure in Mongolian history—the Eastern Mongols were able to subdue the then disorganized Oirats and by the 1490s reassert the supremacy of the Chingisids. ”It is to her that tradition gives credit for having overthrown Oirat supremacy and restored the hegemony to the eastern Mongols,” proclaims historian of the steppes René Grousset.

Dayan Khan’s grandson Altan Khan (r. 1543–83), who ruled the Tümed Mongols on the steppe north of the Ordos Desert, in what is now Inner Mongolia, continued the struggle against the Oirats, pushing them northward and westward of his domains. Meanwhile Dayan Khan’s son Geresenje had taken as his inheritance much of what is now the country of Mongolia. When he died these lands, inhabited by Khalkh Mongols, were parceled out to his descendants and eventually became Tüsheet, Zasagt, Setsen. and the Altan khanates.

By the 1550s the combined forces of the Eastern Mongols had driven the Oirats out of central Mongolia, recapturing the ancient Mongol capital of Kharkhorum in 1552. The Oirat retreated to the west of the Khangai Mountains, but continued pressure by Altan Khan of the Khalkh (please don’t confuse him with Altan Khan of the Tümed) at the beginning of the seventeenth century pushed them still farther west, beyond the Altai Mountains into the valleys of the Black Irtysh, Ili, and the Imil, in what is now Xinjiang in China, and onto the steppes of southern Siberia in what is now Russia.

But now, as if to counteract their diminishing influence, a charismatic new leader arose among the Oirat. This was Khara-Khula, who dreamed of recreating the Oirat Empire which had flourished under Esen in the fifteen century and even retaking the throne of China which had been so improvidently squandered by the Chingisid Mongols. Khara-Khula belonged to the Choros, one of the four tribes which had up the Oirat Confederation. He began his rise to power around 1600 and by In 1606, faced with rising power of the Khalkh Altan Khan to the east, the other three confederates—the Torgut, Dörböt, and Khoshot, accepted his leadership.

By 1608–1609 he and the Oirats confronted Altan Khan and halted the westward advance of the Khalkh. Skirmishes continued for the next decade, until in 1619 all-out war broke out between Khara-Khula and Altan Khan. At first Altan Khan prevailed, but the Oirats fought back and by 1725 had driven the Eastern Mongols out of the Zungarian Basin in what is now Xinjiang. This would remain a Oirat stronghold until they were completely defeated by forces of the Qing Dynasty in the 1750s.

While the other three confederates had accepted Khara-Khula’s leadership against Altan Khan they were not completely happy with the subordinate position they had assumed in the Oirat Confederation. Faced with both the rise of Khara-Khula, who threatened their independence, and the continuing incursions into their traditional grazing lands by the Eastern Mongols, some chose to leave Inner Asia altogether. Thus began the great migration westward of the people who would become known as Kalmyks. It was among these Kalmyks that Dambijantsan would emerge.