Mongol Siege of Zhongdu (1215): Genghis Khan Takes Beijing

The Mongol siege of Zhongdu was the campaign in which Genghis Khan’s armies blockaded and captured the capital of the Jurchen Jin dynasty, a city on the site of modern Beijing, between late 1214 and June 1215. After the Jin emperor abandoned the city for Kaifeng, starving defenders surrendered and Zhongdu was sacked and burned. Its fall ended Jin rule over most of northern China and gave the Mongols their first great Chinese city.

Background

Zhongdu, the “Central Capital”, became the main capital of the Jin dynasty in 1153, when Emperor Wanyan Liang moved the court from Manchuria to the former Liao city on the North China plain. It was one of the largest cities in East Asia, protected by walls with a circuit of roughly 18 kilometres and ringed by fortified towns.

The Jin state that ruled from Zhongdu had been founded in 1115 by the Jurchen, a forest and farming people from Manchuria. Within a dozen years they had destroyed the Khitan Liao dynasty and driven the Song dynasty out of northern China. By 1200 the Jin ruled a population of perhaps 40 to 50 million people, most of them Chinese, and their court had adopted many Chinese customs. The Jin army, however, depended heavily on Jurchen and Khitan horsemen whose loyalty and fighting edge had declined, and the empire also faced Yellow River floods, financial strain and a war with the Song in 1206–1208.

In 1211 Genghis Khan invaded the Jin empire and destroyed its field army at the Battle of Yehuling. In 1213 the Mongols returned, broke through the Juyong Pass and laid siege to Zhongdu, while three columns ravaged Hebei, Shandong and Shanxi. Inside the city, the general Hushahu murdered the emperor Wanyan Yongji and placed Xuanzong on the throne.

The first siege and the peace of 1214

The Mongols could not yet storm a city of Zhongdu’s size, and disease and hunger affected both sides. In the spring of 1214 Xuanzong agreed to terms. He gave Genghis Khan a Jin princess as a wife, together with large amounts of gold, silk and horses and several hundred young men and women, and the Mongols withdrew northwards.

A few months later, in the summer of 1214, Xuanzong moved his court south to Kaifeng, behind the Yellow River, leaving the crown prince and generals to hold Zhongdu. Genghis Khan regarded this as evidence of bad faith. At the same time Khitan troops in Jin service mutinied near the capital and appealed to the Mongols, giving him a reason and a means to return.

The final siege

Mongol forces, joined by Khitan and Chinese defectors, closed around Zhongdu from late 1214. Genghis Khan stayed at his camp to the north, leaving the operations to commanders such as Samuqa and the former Jin officer Shimo Ming’an. The crown prince was withdrawn to Kaifeng, and the city was left to the chief councillor Wanyan Chenghui and the general Moran Jinzhong.

Rather than storm the walls, the Mongols captured the surrounding towns and cut off supplies. Jin relief columns sent north with grain were intercepted and defeated in the spring of 1215. Food ran out; contemporary accounts report famine and even cannibalism inside the walls.

Wanyan Chenghui took his own life by poison, and Moran Jinzhong fled south to Kaifeng, where he was later executed. Leaderless, Zhongdu surrendered at the end of May or the beginning of June 1215.

The sack

The Mongols looted the city, carrying off the treasures of the Jin court, and much of Zhongdu burned. Later sources claim the fires lasted for a month, a detail that cannot be checked but reflects the scale of destruction. Many inhabitants were killed, though no reliable count exists.

The Mongols also took people they could use. Among the captured officials was Yelü Chucai, a learned Khitan aristocrat who later served Genghis Khan and Ögedei as an adviser and helped persuade the Mongols to tax northern China rather than depopulate it. Craftsmen, engineers and scholars were sent north into Mongol service.

Mongol siege warfare

Zhongdu showed both the limits and the growing skill of Mongol warfare. Steppe armies excelled in open country but had little experience of attacking great walled cities, and in 1213–1214 Genghis Khan’s forces had been unable to take Zhongdu by assault. The Mongols adapted quickly. They used captured or defecting Chinese and Khitan engineers to build siege engines such as traction trebuchets, and they drove captured peasants ahead of their troops to fill ditches and absorb the defenders’ missiles.

Above all, they relied on blockade. By taking or destroying the smaller towns around a capital and defeating every relief army, they could starve a great city without risking a storm. The same combination of foreign engineers, forced labour and patient blockade would later bring down Kaifeng, the cities of Central Asia and, under Kublai Khan, the Song strongholds of southern China.

Key people

• Genghis Khan: directed the war on Jin and authorised the final siege.
• Emperor Xuanzong of Jin (r. 1213–1224): made peace in 1214 and then abandoned Zhongdu for Kaifeng.
• Wanyan Chenghui: Jin chief councillor in Zhongdu, who took his own life before the surrender.
• Moran Jinzhong: Jin general who fled the city.
• Shimo Ming’an: Khitan officer who had defected to the Mongols in 1211 and commanded in the siege.

Consequences

The loss of Zhongdu left the Jin with little more than the lands south of the Yellow River. In 1217 Genghis Khan appointed his general Muqali to continue the war in northern China while he turned west to Central Asia. The Jin held out at Kaifeng until the Mongol siege of Kaifeng in 1232–1233, and the dynasty ended in 1234 when its last emperor died at Caizhou.

The Jin collapse in the north also changed relations with the Song dynasty in the south. Seeing its old enemy weakened, the Song court stopped paying the annual tribute owed under earlier treaties, and in 1217 the Jin went to war with the Song in an attempt to win compensation in the south. The war drained Jin resources still further. In the end the Song allied with the Mongols for the final campaign against Kaifeng, only to find themselves facing the Mongols directly across a shared frontier.

For the Mongols, Zhongdu became a base for governing northern China and a training ground in Chinese administration. Half a century later, in 1267, Kublai Khan began building a new capital, Dadu or Khanbaliq, just north-east of the ruins of Zhongdu. The Ming and Qing capital of Beijing grew from that city.

Timeline

• 1153: Zhongdu becomes the capital of the Jin dynasty.
• 1211, autumn: Mongols destroy the Jin field army at Yehuling.
• 1213: First siege of Zhongdu; Xuanzong is enthroned after a palace coup.
• 1214, spring: Peace treaty; the Mongols withdraw with tribute and a Jin princess.
• 1214, summer: Xuanzong moves the court to Kaifeng.
• 1214, late: The final siege begins.
• 1215, spring: Jin relief columns are defeated.
• 1215, late May or early June: Zhongdu surrenders and is sacked.
• 1234: The Jin dynasty ends.

Why it matters

The fall of Zhongdu was the first capture of a great Chinese capital by the Mongols. It broke Jin power in the north, drew skilled Chinese and Khitan administrators into Mongol service, and began the long history of the Beijing area as the seat of power for rulers of all China.