Esen Tayisi
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Esen Tayisi was a 15th century prince of the Oirat (also known as the Kalmyks), best-known for capturing the Zhengtong Emperor after the Battle of Tumu Fortress. In 1439, he succeeded his father, Toghon Tayisi, who had expanded Oirat territory substantially, with more Mongol tribes acknowledging his supremacy. Under Esen Tayisi's leadership, the Oirats conquered the rest of Mongolia, including the Jurchens and Tuvans (Uriankhais), and took over control of the Hami oasis on the Silk Road between the Gobi and the Takla Makan deserts.
Most of these activities irritated or threatened Ming Dynasty-ruled China. The Chinese had long pursued a "divide and rule" strategy in dealings with their northern neighbors, maintaining trade and tribute relationships with multiple leaders who they could then turn against one another by inciting jealousy or suggesting intrigue; a unified Mongolia under one ruler was much less susceptible to such tactics. Also, many of the tribes brought under Oirat dominion by conquest either had inhabited areas claimed by China already, or pushed south into Chinese territory seeking to escape Oirat subjugation. The Hami oasis, furthermore, had paid tribute to the emperor before Esen convinced its ruler that bounty should go to the Oirat instead. Moreover, throughout the 1440s, Esen increased both the frequency of tribute missions to China and the number of representatives sent on each mission, meaning that the Chinese were obliged to provide ever-more expensive hospitality to the Mongols irrespective of the actual trade or tribute being negotiated — and, according to surviving Chinese accounts, the Oirat demanded more and more lucrative tribute, and trade agreements further skewed in the Mongols' favor, as well.
One Chinese tactic for dealing with the situation, their old standby of provoking rivalry between Mongol leaders, failed completely, as they underestimated the degree of power Esen wielded and chose "rivals" too far below him in status for the strategy to be effective, including figurehead Khan Toghto Bukha. Their other main tactic, however — meeting each demand for increased tribute or trade value with a decrease — backfired. Some Chinese negotiators also made unauthorized promises, including, on more than one occasion, a marriage arrangement between a "Chinese princess" and Esen's son, which would then be disavowed by the imperial court, to Esen's natural aggravation.[1]
In retaliation for real and perceived slights, in 1449 Esen Tayisi led an Oirat invasion of northern China which culminated in the capture of the Zhengtong Emperor at Tumu. The large-scale, three-pronged invasion began in July 1449, with Khan Toghto Bukha leading the easternmost force, and Esen himself heading the troops that sacked the city of Datong (or Ta-t'ung) in August. Acting on extremely poor advice from one of his advisors, the emperor also chose to lead his own armies into battle, with disastrous consequences.
The campaign was a series of routs and massacres of Chinese forces at Oirat hands, even though the imperial troops in the region are estimated to have numbered as many as 500,000 and Esen Tayisi had brought only 20,000 cavalry, expecting mainly to engage in traditional Oirat border raiding. Datong lay north of the Great Wall of China, and thus beyond its protection. After the initial attack on Datong, Esen feinted back to the Mongolian steppes. The emperor and his hastily-raised army, by chasing the invaders west, met an ambush upon arriving at Datong. Oirat horsemen harried the Chinese retreat back towards the wall for four days, through terrific thunderstorms, until the imperial army reached Tumu Bao (often translated Tumu Fortress). But rather than having secured a defensible position, the Chinese were trapped against the north side of Tumu.
Most of the remaining soldiers, as well as all officers and courtiers of rank except the emperor himself, were slaughtered. Esen was still some distance away, near Xianfu. Once the captured emperor was brought to his camp, Esen at first attempted to ransom him back to the Chinese. Surprisingly it was rejected, by the new commander of Ming, Yu Qian, who state the emperor's live is not as important as the fate of the country.
At this point, according to some accounts, Esen was granted the title "Taisi" (possibly cognate or identical with "Dashi"/"Daishi," grand master, a term more prevalent in Japan today but known in China since at least the 5th century AD;[2] or with "Huang-Taizi," crown prince) either by the Emperor, or by the Emperor's brother who had been acting as regent since early on in the Oyirad campaign. As recounted in one Tibetan source, "'on the sixteenth day of the eighth month of the iron-male-horse year [1450, the Yingzong emperor] was taken prisoner by the Mongol minister A-san Thang-shri [= Esen Taishi]...' ...Chen correctly has it that thang-shri reflects Chinese taishi. For this title, see H. Serruys, 'The Office of Tayisi in Mongolia in the Fifteenth Century,'" [all brackets original, all ellipses ed.][3] a paper originally published in the Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 37 (1977): 353-80, [4] long out-of-print but available through Paragon Book Gallery here. Other sources denote "Tayisi" as a Kalmyk language word which can be translated as "grand marshall," indicating a military leader of high rank but below the level of a khan, which title Esen may have already held.
In any case the initial Chinese response was to refuse to negotiate a ransom, perhaps in part because the emperor's brother (a prince variously referred to as Zhu Qiyu, or by a later title, Ching-T'ai) was by then installed on the throne and not wholly eager to give up his new position. Nevertheless, the new commander, Yu Qian also believes ransoming the emperor may boost the mongols' morale and decline the Ming's. Esen actually waited to present this ransom demand, as well, not doing so until he could bring a more substantial force to the vicinity of Peking, and taking fully six weeks from the time of the emperor's capture to effect that deployment.
His ransom demand rebuffed -- whether because the Chinese were calling Esen's bluff, believing he would consider the emperor more valuable alive than dead even without the possibility of ransom, or because the acting emperor was content not to obtain his brother's freedom -- Esen began laying siege to the city. The disheartened Chinese in Beijing was under the command of the new commander Yu Qian who soon turned this unfavourable situation into a positive one. Not only did he use the walls of Beijing fairly well, since even elite horse archers can barely shoot the defenders in the high wall of beijing but he also deployed various scheme to destroy the Mongols morale. At one point, he command the force to pretend losing control of the city gate and lure a large force of Mongol riders inside the city. Once a portion of the Mongols were inside, the gate was shut and the Mongols were ambrushed. Esen's sworn brother was killed in the attack. Esen were soon forced to retreat under pressure of his troops and the reinforcements from elsewhere of China's arrival.
Since the Mongols relied on their trade-and-tribute relationship with China, Esen was then obligated to reopen negotiations from a much weakened position. His status worsened further when a Chinese negotiator, rather than maneuvering for the emperor's release, actually maneuvered him entirely out of captivity. While Sino-Mongol trade did not cease entirely during the Tumu Crisis, as the incident has come to be called, Esen had not only failed to win better terms than the prior arrangements, he was forced to accept less amenable terms in return for resumption of more normal relations with the Ming Empire.
Many among the Mongols believed Esen had been weaked too much by this diplomatic defeat snatched from the jaws of a military victory, and several attempts were made to depose him. Notably, figurehead khan Toghto Bukha led his own forces openly against Esen in 1451; but they were outnumbered by Oirat loyalists and the nominal Khan was caught and killed by eastern tribesmen as he attempted to retreat.
Esen Tayisi might have recovered the former stability of his rule around this time, by proving himself in battle against rivals like Bukha; relations and commercial activity with the Chinese had already resumed. Within eighteen months of his defeat of the titular Khan Toghto Bukha, however, in 1453, Esen had claimed the title Khan for himself. The Ming emperor was among the first to acknowledge the new title, but the reaction Esen's fellow Mongols, Oirat and otherwise, more often ranged from disapproving to enraged. Though Esen's line was related to the royal line descended from Temujin, it was unlikely that he would have been considered eligible for election as Khan, and in any case Esen ignored the usual selection process. (Rather than the title of khan falling automatically to the eldest eligible male of the line, as in primogeniture, Mongol leaders were traditionally chosen by means of the Khuriltai, an elective monarchy system, with the members of a lineage voting to choose the title's successor from among themselves.) This dissatisfaction soon escalated into open revolt against Esen's leadership.
Esen Tayisi was slain in 1454, the year following his assumption of the title of khan, by the son of a political opponent whom Esen had had killed. After his death, the Oirat no longer held sway over the areas of Mongolia which had come under their control only under his rule, and remained divided among themselves for many years.
[edit] References
Twitchett, Denis, Frederick W. Mote, & John K. Fairbank (eds.) (1998). The Cambridge History of China: Volume 8, the Ming Dynasty, Part 2, 1368-1644. Cambridge University Press. pp. 233–239. ISBN 0-521-24333-5. Google Print. Retrieved 2 November 2005.
Mancini, Robert David (publication year unknown). "Dharma Daishi, Great Teacher of Buddhism and the Martial Arts".
van der Kuijp, Leonard W.J. (1993). "Jambhala: an imperial envoy to Tibet during the late Yuan". The Journal of the American Oriental Society 113 (4), 538–?
