United States or Suriname ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
From Honan Li marched on Kaifong, which he besieged for seven days; but he did not possess the necessary engines to attack a place of any strength, and Kaifong was reputed to be the strongest fortress in China. He was obliged to beat a hasty retreat, pursued by an army that the imperial authorities had hurriedly collected.
They succeeded in crossing the Yellow River under the eyes of the Kaifong garrison, and they then attacked Hwaiking, an important prefectural town, where they encountered a stout resistance. They besieged it for two months, and then had to give up the attempt. Forces were gathering from different directions, and it became necessary to baffle their opponents.
On the 12th of May an army, stated to consist of 200,000 men, but probably consisting of less than half that number of combatants, crossed the Yangtse and marched northwards. It would be uninteresting to name the many small places they captured on their way, but on 19th June they reached Kaifong, the capital of Honan, and once of China itself.
The Mongols advanced as far as the celebrated Tunkwan Pass, which connects Shensi and Honan, but when their general, Samuka, saw how formidable it was, and how strong were the Kin defenses and garrison, he declined to attack it, and, making a detour through very difficult country, he marched on Kaifong, where Utubu little expected him.
The efforts of the emperor to overthrow him proved futile, the imperial army being sent against him in four divisions, which he attacked and defeated in detail. The court had learned nothing from the failure of similar tactics in the war with Noorhachu. After this pronounced success Li laid siege to Kaifong, an important city which had once been the capital of China.
The great event of this war was the siege of Yenking on the site of which now stands the capital Pekin the defense of which had been intrusted to the Prince Imperial; but Utubu, more anxious for his son's safety than the interests of the state, ordered him to return to Kaifong.
The Mongols employed their most formidable engines, catapults hurling immense stones, and mortars ejecting explosives and combustibles, but twelve months elapsed before the walls were shattered and the courage and provisions of the defenders exhausted. Then Kaifong surrendered at discretion, and Subutai wished to massacre the whole of the population.
But in the end it proved fatal to the besieged, for the Hoangho, at all times capricious in its movements, and the source of as much trouble as benefit to the provinces it waters, rose suddenly to the dimensions of a flood, and overflowing its banks spread over the country. Many of Li's soldiers were drowned, and his camp was flooded, but the most serious loss befell the Imperialists in Kaifong.
They had thus transferred in a few weeks their advanced posts from the Yangtsekiang to the Hwangho, or Yellow River. The garrison of Kaifong made a resolute defence, and repulsed the Taepings, who at once abandoned the siege in accordance with their usual custom, and resumed their march.
The garrison and townspeople of Kaifong an immense city with walls thirty-six miles in circumference, and a population during the siege, it is said, of one million four hundred thousand families, or nearly seven million people offered a stubborn resistance to the Mongols, who intrusted the conduct of the attack to Subutai, the most daring of all their commanders.
Word Of The Day