In the Line of Fire: Stories of the Southern Song

Black Tides, 1196-1203

Zenek K: Thanks for the compliments, now busy in country-strengthing.

mfigueras: Really I was just inactive and took some poetic license to say something more interesting than "a few years passed and nothing really happened." Though I did have a bad run of drought and pestilence events.

Lord G.Q. White: Fortunately, the Mongols remain just a little beyond my borders for the time being, a happy situation unlikely to continue much longer

Stnylan: Yes I do. I often miss that "Premature death of monarch" event from EU1 when stuck with a lemon, at least I wasn't playing the Golden Horde

Storey: Glad to see I've inspired someone , makes my day. I wish you well with the Song, they've got a good position until the Mongols start breathing down your neck.

Merrick: I may have to try this ally with the Mongols event, it'd probably be a lot easier than fighting them

Judge: The Mongols have certainly thrashed everyone so far and their graphics are indeed cool. I am still working with 0.3 at the moment but plan to download 0.3.3.3 when my Song game ends.

TheBee: Judge is right, China is Mahayana Buddhist (Buddhism is divided into Mahayana and Theravda sects in MES) and the Mongols are pagan.

BrotherAdso: Thanks for the kind words . I find the Song/Mongol period in East Asian histroy highly interesting myself, which was one of my reasons to do this AAR, to attept to save the cultured Song Empire from its unfortunate RL fate. Wish me luck, I have a feeling I'm going to need it.

The new Song Emperor of China, Ningzong, was quick to press the issue of the War with the Jin, for the writing was on the wall as far as the Jin were concerned—their state was coming apart at the seams. Faced with implacable enemies to the north and the south, the Jin were casting about, buffeted by hostile currents, as their northern holdings were torn from them by the voracious Mongols while the steely-determined Song continued to move the Song-Jin border ever northward in a concerted attempt to bring the Yellow River back under Chinese dominance. Ningzong spent his first months in office busily repairing the damage left over from Guangzong’s misrule. There was also the matter of alliances, the wounded Tibetans were highly unlikely to join the Song again, while the sock-puppet rulers of Annam continued to slavishly follow Lhasa’s directives. China felt not the least sorrow for the backstabbing Tibetans, but would miss the 20,000+ armies the Vietnamese had routinely offered for Song service in previous wars. Ningzong did not have to look far for new allies, as the Koreans, seeing the inevitable doom of the Jin and remorseless advance of the Mongols, put two and two together and proposed alliance with the Song Empire, an offer Ningzong was happy to accept.

With a new alliance in place, the war against the Jin was rejoined early in 1197, the faltering Jin had little to offer in opposition to the combined power of a 2-pronged attack from China and her Korean allies and less than a year later admitted yet another defeat, surrendering Ningxia and Shandong to China while Koryo received Liaotung. Celebrations over this victory were to prove sadly short-lived; for in the distant north, the hooves of Mongol horses could be heard ranging about in search of prey. The Mongol nation had selected as its new ruler a highly skilled and utterly ruthless military tactician by the name of Temujin, who had led them into battle with the Jin in a war in which Jin forces were crushed beyond repair, the northern half of the Jin Empire falling into Mongol hands. The Tibetans, who had foolishly allied themselves to the Jin, were penalized by the loss of Qadim Pendi and some 230 ducats in tribute. Elsewhere, Temujin and his warriors briefly snacked upon the Altai, relieving them of a province and forcing them to become Mongol vassals.

By now, the Chinese Foreign Office was beginning to panic, sending out reports that the Mongols had a nearly unbeatable army and would soon invade China, hoping to turn the Celestial Empire into a glorified horse pasture. Worse still was the discovery by Chinese spies that the fearless Temujin had not yet subdued all his internal opponents inside Mongolia. While Song spies began funneling financial backing to dissident elements within the Mongol realm, analysts in Hangzhou feared to make a fresh assessment of Mongol strength should Temujin succeed in uniting the Mongol nation behind him. According to one aged Confucian, a unified Mongolia would enjoy nightmarish strength that would require the full mobilization of all of China’s vast resources for the Song to withhold the coming onslaught. For the next several years the Foreign Office furiously pursued the cause of Mongol dissidents, yet the internal strength of the dread Temujin merely continued to grow as one enemy after another either relented and joined Temujin’s party or were extirpated by Temujin’s fiercely loyal war bands. The rest of the capital lived in a state of denial; surely the heavy-handed warrior would overplay his hand and bring ruin upon himself. Or the dissident elements in Mongol society would win a great moral victory and turn the tide. Perhaps a stray arrow would end Temujin’s dreams on one of his many fields of battle. But heaven would never allow the Chinese people to face those horrid hordes of the steppeland, would it?


East Asia at the dawn of the Thirteenth Century

Watching and Waiting, 1203-10

Sorry for the delay folks, between starting school back and my work over at the AGCEEP forum, it's been a hectic week.

Machiavellian: I hope as well that the Mongol AI will not disappoint, remains to be seen, however.

mfigueras: my reputation is tarnished, I'm afraid, but only the Mongols worry me, and they're bigger badboys anyway.

Zenek K: Yes, the Koreans might not hold up too well, and a 2-front war will be interesting, will it work for me or against me?

jwolf: I plan to at least go down in a suitable blaze of glory.

BrotherAdso: The Mongols are tech 2, which isn't a big advantage in EU terms over tech 1, but I am working on improving it.

stnylan: The struggle with the Mongols will be the main thread to this AAR, no fear.

As the years wore on in the troubled realm of Song China, the Mongol threat came to occupy more and more of China's day-to-day activity. The effort at backing up Mongol dissidents was stepped up, but to no avail, as Temujin defeated his last opponents of any significance in 1206, after which he took the title "Jingiz Khan" whose ocean-grabbing connotations panicked the inner circle of the Song court.

Strangely, in the years immediately following 1206, Jingiz Khan did absolutley nothing to live up to his title. Optimists at the court felt that the Khan had become a man of peace and was soon to enter a Buddhist monastary. Pessimists believed he was merely waiting to get his army properly trained and reinforced before setting out. Chinese opinion on the whole continued to retain a bubbly note of hope that was curiously amiss, perhaps because no one was willing to admit their dread of the mysterious menance from Mongolia.

One interesting group of fanatical Buddhists, convinced that the Mongols had been sent from on high to punish the Emperor for his worldliness, revolted against the Emperor's rule in the province of Ningxia, but the army proved loyal to the Emperor and the revolters were rounded up and executed. And yet the Mongols reamined quiet. The Emperor made the best preparations he could, changing to domestic policies to ensure the better training of troops and recruiting a larger force. Eventuially a theory developed that Jingiz was playing a waiting game, for in some ways waiting and watching the suspiciously quiet frontier was more agonizing than an actual Mongol invasion would have been. And so as the clock ticks ominously on, the Chinese sourt continues to focus its attention at the remotest borders, fearfully anticipating the coming of an unknown horror.

The Mongol Invasion, 1210-20

Storey: Yikes! I hope I have better luck!

Zenek K: I'm afraid they're coming now...

Stnylan: The Mongols certainly had a nice big army to fight with, I guess that was what they were doing

Again, a late update, Grad School's a lot of work.

For a few more golden years of peace, the Song waited and watched as the Mongols did nothing. Finally, in 1215, came the long-dreaded news, the Mongols had invaded China's Korean allies. Though some advised the Emperor to abandon the Koreans to their fate, the Emepror's sense of honor would not allow him such a path, and he answered Jingiz's act of aggression with his own declaration of war upon the Mongols. The first years of the war went well for the Song, Mongol forces were concentrated at the northern Korean front, allowing the Song armies to advance across the relatively undefended lands of Mongol Xinjiang. A daring expedition managed to capture the Mongol fortress at Xinjiang before heading north across a mysterious land known as "the TI" to arrive in Mongolia proper, quickly occupying the province of Tanu Ola. From that undefended city, the expedition headed west, taking another defenseless Mongol town before meeting a large Mongol force commanded by Juchi, one of the Mongol's most feared generals. Outnumbered and in hostile terrain, the expedition of heroes was never heard from again.

Unfortunately, the bad news was just beginning, as Juchi had arrived as point-man for a Mongol invasion across the Chinese lines at Xinjiang, the occupied Mongol cities were quickly recaptured and over 35,000 Mongols, divided into several armies, iniated sieges of China's border provinces. the whole of the Chinese army, some 70,000 men stong, was dispatched to the Xinjiang front, where a series of battles extending across the years 1217-19 resulted in the expulsion of all Mongol forces from Chinese lands. Though the successful resistance was accounted a great triumph of Chinese arms, in had come at a horrible cost, as Chinese forces had suffered many more casualties than the Mongol armies they had driven back, and China's military strength was now dangerous depleted.

Bad news was also forthcoming on the northern front, where Koryo withdrew from the war for the price of Jehol and Liaotung and the Chinese province of Liaoning had come under Mongol occupation. With no land connection to Liaoning and a large Mongol force stationed nearby, Chinese strategists were at a loss as to how the province could be recovered, especially as all available soldiers were stationed at the western front. The Emperor was now busily occupied trying to gain peace with Jingiz Khan, who proved as difficult at he negotiating table as he was formidable in battle. Though the Emperor offered Liaoning and large sums of cash (which he considered a generous offer), Jingiz refused to bite. And so 1220 finds the Song in desperate straits, Liaoning has fallen, the western armies and rebuilding rapidly, but no one is sure if they can hold off a second Mongol advance across the steppe. Once more waiting has become the dominant activity in the Chinese court.