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[In 1206, the Mongol Khanate was formally founded.
For the Mongols of that time, the state they most needed to attack was naturally the Jin, with whom they shared a blood feud.
And so, quite logically, Genghis Khan could hardly wait to personally lead troops against Western Xia.
Back when the Northern Song debated relocating the capital, someone had once offered a bit of wisdom:
defense lies in virtue, not in terrain.
As we all know, Kaifeng was eventually smashed open by the Jin with astonishing speed, and the Northern Song collapsed with unprecedented efficiency.
Western Xia, which had set itself up as an independent state, had it worse.
What is "terrain"? What is "virtue"?
Western Xia's territory sat right in the Hexi Corridor.
Put bluntly, the low-EQ way to describe that land is "connected in all directions."
The high-EQ version is "surrounded by enemies on every side."
In modern times, there's a place rather similar to it called Poland. People call it the crossroads of Central and Eastern Europe. Whether you're marching east or west, you basically have to pass through it, and if you don't crush it first, you're not getting anywhere.
Western Xia resembled Poland in another way too. When things were going well, it had no problem throwing its weight around with neighbors. So when misfortune came, nobody felt particularly inclined to help.
Across the open lands of the Hexi Corridor, with no real defensive choke points, Mongol cavalry rampaged freely, plundering at will, coming and going like the wind.
Within two years, Emperor Xiangzong of Xia couldn't take it anymore and wrote to the Jin emperor Wanyan Yongji asking for aid.
But the Jin had their own problems. First, they were dealing with the threat of the Kaixi Northern Expedition. Second, they had conflicts with both the Mongols and Western Xia and were perfectly happy to watch the two tear each other apart. Refusing help outright was already the polite option. If anything, they only regretted not being able to watch the fighting in person.
Xiangzong then tried writing to the Southern Song for help…
Oh, right. That wasn't happening.
The last time Song and Xia had even bordered each other was before Yue Fei died. After Yue Fei was framed and the Shaoxing Treaty ceded the Shang and Qin prefectures, Song and Xia no longer touched borders at all. There wasn't even a route left to ask for help.
With no one interfering, the Mongols simply pummeled Western Xia without mercy.
From 1206 to 1209, they launched three major campaigns. Most ended in heavily laden returns, and eventually Western Xia sued for peace, bringing the First Mongol–Xia War to a close.
Aside from tribute, the Mongols' most important demand was that Xia join them in attacking Jin. Everything still revolved around that old enemy.
But by this time, the Jin state was no longer the same Jin the Mongols remembered.
Right around the same period the Mongols forced Xia into submission, the Kaixi Northern Expedition between Song and Jin also reached its conclusion.
The war-hungry Mongols watched it closely, eager to gauge their future enemies.
What they saw was… enlightening.
Song and Jin jointly delivered a small but unforgettable demonstration of "Song-style shock."
When facing the Song offensive, the Jin first appointed Pusan Kui as commander in chief. He soon died of illness.
So they replaced him with Wanyan Zonghao. That one lasted half a year before also dying of illness.
Then they switched again to Wanyan Kuang.
The Mongols looked at this and basically went:
What on earth are you doing? Changing commanders three times in one campaign? That's textbook military taboo, do you understand that?
Then they turned to look at the Song side.
The Song were loudly proclaiming the Kaixi Northern Expedition…
yet promptly lost Zaoyang, Guanghua, Suizhou, De'an, Anlu, Yingcheng, Yunmeng, Hanchuan, Jing Mountain, and a string of other positions, looking like they might soon be driven straight back into Jiangnan.
At which point the Mongols were once again stunned.
"This isn't the Kaixi Northern Expedition," they concluded.
"If we use the Jin reign title, we should call it the Taihe Southern Campaign."
These impressions later ended up written into the History of Jin compiled under Mongol rule:
"When Zhangzong campaigned against Song, he replaced the commander three times, which the art of war forbids. Yet Song did not seize the advantage. Could it truly be said they had capable men?"
Because of this, when the Mongols attacked Jin two years after forcing Xia's submission, the Jin defeat at the Battle of Yehuling came as no surprise.
The Battle of Yehuling, or more precisely the Yehuling–Huihe Fort campaign, began with Jin forces collapsing in the narrow passes of Yehuling. They retreated to the more open Huihe Fort, only to be annihilated again by Mongol forces.
Later Mongol historians bragged that Jin had fielded 300,000 troops.
That number was purely nominal.
By then the Jin already had the proud tradition of maintaining ghost soldiers on payroll. Realistically, those "300,000" might have been closer to 100,000 at most.
On this point, the modern historian Li Zefen, while compiling A Comprehensive History of World Warfare, drew on both his professional expertise and his own military experience to comment on the first major Mongol–Song confrontation.
At the time, Jin forces changed commanders mid-battle, suffered from phantom troop numbers at the front, and inflated currency issuance in the rear…
In short, a very familiar recipe.
So in Professor Li's view, the explanation for this critical Jin defeat was simple:
At Yehuling, Jin elites fought Mongol elites and lost.
They retreated to Huihe Fort, relying on defensive works, and were smashed again.
That led directly to total collapse.]
[Server Chat Log]
WarOnWifi: Low-EQ phrasing: Taihe Southern Campaign
High-EQ phrasing: Kaixi Northern Expedition
Extremely high-EQ phrasing: The Mongols were seriously impressed.
IronAFK: That Taihe Southern Campaign label reminds me of a line from General Chen:
"The Vietnamese and the French were a wonderfully matched pair of opponents."
Swap in Southern Song and Jin, and it fits just as well.
One side delayed an ambush because of rain.
The other delayed its march because of rain.
When they finally met, all you can say is they were evenly matched. "Wonderful" really is the only word for it.
PatchKnight: Honestly, it feels like if even one of Song, Liao, or Jin had been functioning properly, maybe they wouldn't have ended up raising something as terrifying as the Scourge of God.
HeroNeedsCoffee: You say the Mongols were weak? They crushed everything from Khwarazm to Poland like it was a casual stroll.
You say they were strong? Genghis Khan himself died here in Western Xia.
TooOldForPvP: Two Jin commanders in a row dying of illness? No wonder the dynasty looked doomed.
CritButMissed: Great Jin and Great Song really were like uncle and nephew. At Yehuling, Jin held both terrain and numbers yet got punched straight through. Later, when the Mongols weren't sure they could take Yanjing, they extorted concessions and withdrew.
And Jin Xuanzong panicked so badly he copied Zhao Gou's Southern Flight and moved the capital south to Kaifeng, handing Hebei over for free.
LagSlayer: Speaking of that, it does make Ming look impressive.
"The Son of Heaven guards the frontier." That at least has some great-power dignity to it.
MetaKnight: After contact with the Mongols, Western Xia really did resemble Poland.
Grab it by the throat and it rolls its eyes. Let go, and it immediately starts bragging again.]
Inside a small residence in Luoyang, Liu Bei suddenly asked a question that seemed completely unrelated.
"In the West… has there never been someone like our Gao Emperor or the First Emperor?"
In truth, he had wanted to ask this for a long time.
The later generations didn't speak much about the West, but whenever it appeared on the screen, what one saw around the Mediterranean were dozens of scattered states of varying size.
The only one easy to remember was Rome.
But even Rome had merely built its power around the Mediterranean. As those later commentators said, it turned the sea into its own bathtub.
From fleeting glimpses of maps spanning Tang to Song and Yuan, Liu Bei had noticed that even the Eastern Roman Empire was left with barely half that bathtub.
And north of the Mediterranean, the land was still fragmented beyond counting. Calling it a forest of states wouldn't be an exaggeration.
Thinking back on how later generations described Rome, Liu Bei arrived at a guess that felt almost inevitable.
"It can't be… that the Rome of our time is actually the largest-territory state the West has seen in two thousand years?"
The others immediately felt that might actually be true.
At least from what the screen had shown, none of the western states seemed to surpass the Rome of their present year, Jian'an Nineteen.