The Travels of Marco Polo Volume II Part 15

WHEREIN IS RELATED HOW THE KING OF MIEN AND BANGALA VOWED VENGEANCE AGAINST THE GREAT KAAN.

But I was forgetting to tell you of a famous battle that was fought in the kingdom of Vochan in the Province of Zardandan, and that ought not to be omitted from our Book. So we will relate all the particulars.

You see, in the year of Christ, 1272,[NOTE 1] the Great Kaan sent a large force into the kingdoms of Carajan and Vochan, to protect them from the ravages of ill-disposed people; and this was before he had sent any of his sons to rule the country, as he did afterwards when he made Sentemur king there, the son of a son of his who was deceased.

Now there was a certain king, called the king of Mien and of Bangala, who was a very puissant prince, with much territory and treasure and people; and he was not as yet subject to the Great Kaan, though it was not long after that the latter conquered him and took from him both the kingdoms that I have named.[NOTE 2] And it came to pa.s.s that when this king of Mien and Bangala heard that the host of the Great Kaan was at Vochan, he said to himself that it behoved him to go against them with so great a force as should insure his cutting off the whole of them, insomuch that the Great Kaan would be very sorry ever to send an army again thither [to his frontier].

So this king prepared a great force and munitions of war; and he had, let me tell you, 2000 great elephants, on each of which was set a tower of timber, well framed and strong, and carrying from twelve to sixteen well-armed fighting men.[NOTE 3] And besides these, he had of hors.e.m.e.n and of footmen good 60,000 men. In short, he equipped a fine force, as well befitted such a puissant prince. It was indeed a host capable of doing great things.

And what shall I tell you? When the king had completed these great preparations to fight the Tartars, he tarried not, but straightway marched against them. And after advancing without meeting with anything worth mentioning, they arrived within three days of the Great Kaan's host, which was then at Vochan in the territory of Zardandan, of which I have already spoken. So there the king pitched his camp, and halted to refresh his army.

NOTE 1.--This date is no doubt corrupt. (See note 3, ch. lii.)

NOTE 2.--MIEN is the name by which the kingdom of Burma or Ava was and is known to the Chinese. M. Garnier informs me that _Mien-Kwe_ or _Mien-tisong_ is the name always given in Yun-nan to that kingdom, whilst the Shans at Kiang Hung call the Burmese _Man_ (p.r.o.nounced like the English word).

The t.i.tle given to the sovereign in question of King of BENGAL, as well as of Mien, is very remarkable. We shall see reason hereafter to conceive that Polo did more or less confound Bengal with _Pegu_, which was subject to the Burmese monarchy up to the time of the Mongol invasion. But apart from any such misapprehension, there is not only evidence of rather close relations between Burma and Gangetic India in the ages immediately preceding that of our author, but also some ground for believing that he may be right in his representation, and that the King of Burma may have at this time arrogated the t.i.tle of "King of Bengal," which is attributed to him in the text.

Anaurahta, one of the most powerful kings in Burmese history (1017-1059), extended his conquests to the frontiers of India, and is stated to have set up images within that country. He also married an Indian princess, the daughter of the King of _Wethali_ (i. e, _Vaicali_ in Tirhut).

There is also in the _Burmese Chronicle_ a somewhat confused story regarding a succeeding king, Kyan-tsittha (A.D. 1064), who desired to marry his daughter to the son of the King of _Patteik-Kara_, a part of Bengal.[1] The marriage was objected to by the Burmese n.o.bles, but the princess was already with child by the Bengal prince; and their son eventually succeeded to the Burmese throne under the name of Alaungtsi-thu. When king, he travelled all over his dominions, and visited the images which Anaurahta had set up in India. He also maintained intercourse with the King of Patteik Kara and married his daughter.

Alaungtsi-thu is stated to have lived to the age of 101 years, and to have reigned 75. Even then his death was hastened by his son Narathu, who smothered him in the temple called Shwe-Ku ("Golden Cave"), at Pagan, and also put to death his Bengali step-mother. The father of the latter sent eight brave men, disguised as Brahmans, to avenge his daughter's death.

Having got access to the royal presence through their sacred character, they slew King Narathu and then themselves. Hence King Narathu is known in the Burmese history as the _Kala-Kya Meng_ or "King slain by the Hindus."

He was building the great Temple at Pagan called _Dhammayangyi_, at the time of his death, which occurred about the year 1171. The great-grandson of this king was Narathihapade (presumably _Narasinha-pati_), the king reigning at the time of the Mongol invasion.

All these circ.u.mstances show tolerably close relations between Burma and Bengal, and also _that the dynasty then reigning in Burma was descended from a Bengal stock_. Sir Arthur Phayre, after noting these points, remarks: "From all these circ.u.mstances, and from the conquests attributed to Anaurahta, it is very probable that, after the conquest of Bengal by the Mahomedans in the 13th century, the kings of Burma would a.s.sume the t.i.tle of _Kings of Bengal_. This is nowhere expressly stated in the Burmese history, but the course of events renders it very probable. We know that the claim to Bengal was a.s.serted by the kings of Burma in long after years. In the Journal of the Marquis of Hastings, under the date of 6th September, 1818, is the following pa.s.sage: 'The king of Burma favoured us early this year with the obliging requisition that we should cede to him Moorshedabad and the provinces to the east of it, which he deigned to say were all natural dependencies of his throne.' And at the time of the disputes on the frontier of Arakan, in 1823-1824, which led to the war of the two following years, the Governor of Arakan made a similar demand. We may therefore reasonably conclude that at the close of the 13th century of the Christian era the kings of Pagan called themselves kings of Burma and of Bengala." (_MS. Note by Sir Arthur Phayre_; see also his paper in _J.A.S.B._ vol. x.x.xVII. part I.)

NOTE 3.--It is very difficult to know what to make of the repeated a.s.sertions of old writers as to the numbers of men carried by war-elephants, or, if we could admit those numbers, to conceive how the animal could have carried the enormous structure necessary to give them s.p.a.ce to use their weapons. The Third Book of Maccabees is the most astounding in this way, alleging that a single elephant carried 32 stout men, besides the Indian _Mahaut_. Bochart indeed supposes the number here to be a clerical error for 12, but this would even be extravagant. Friar Jorda.n.u.s is, no doubt, building on the Maccabees rather than on his own Oriental experience when he says that the elephant "carrieth easily more than 30 men." Philostratus, in his _Life of Apollonius_, speaks of 10 to 15; Ibn Batuta of about 20; and a great elephant sent by Timur to the Sultan of Egypt is said to have carried 20 drummers. Christopher Borri says that in Cochin China the elephant did ordinarily carry 13 or 14 persons, 6 on each side in two tiers of 3 each, and 2 behind. On the other hand, among the ancients, Strabo and Aelian speak of _three_ soldiers only in addition to the driver, and Livy, describing the Battle of Magnesia, of _four_.

These last are reasonable statements.

(_Bochart_, _Hierozoicon_, ed. 3rd, p. 266; _Jord._, p. 26; _Philost._ trad. par _A. Cha.s.saing_, liv. II. c. ii.; _Ibn Bat._ II. 223; _N. and E._ XIV. 510; _Cochin China_, etc., London, 1633, ed. 3; _Armandi, Hist.

Militaire des Elephants_, 259 seqq. 442.)

[1] Sir A. Phayre thinks this may have been _Vikrampur_, for some time the capital of Eastern Bengal before the Mahomedan conquest.

Vikrampur was some miles east of Dacca, and the dynasty in question was that called _Vaidya_. (See _La.s.sen_, III. 749.) _Patteik-Kara_ is apparently an attempt to represent some Hindi name such as _Patthargarh_, "The Stone-Fort."

CHAPTER LII.

OF THE BATTLE THAT WAS FOUGHT BY THE GREAT KAAN'S HOST AND HIS SENESCHAL, AGAINST THE KING OF MIEN.

And when the Captain of the Tartar host had certain news that the king aforesaid was coming against him with so great a force, he waxed uneasy, seeing that he had with him but 12,000 hors.e.m.e.n. Natheless he was a most valiant and able soldier, of great experience in arms and an excellent Captain; and his name was NESCRADIN.[NOTE 1] His troops too were very good, and he gave them very particular orders and cautions how to act, and took every measure for his own defence and that of his army. And why should I make a long story of it? The whole force of the Tartars, consisting of 12,000 well-mounted hors.e.m.e.n, advanced to receive the enemy in the Plain of Vochan, and there they waited to give them battle. And this they did through the good judgment of the excellent Captain who led them; for hard by that plain was a great wood, thick with trees. And so there in the plain the Tartars awaited their foe. Let us then leave discoursing of them a while; we shall come back to them presently; but meantime let us speak of the enemy.

After the King of Mien had halted long enough to refresh his troops, he resumed his march, and came to the Plain of Vochan, where the Tartars were already in order of battle. And when the king's army had arrived in the plain, and was within a mile of the enemy, he caused all the castles that were on the elephants to be ordered for battle, and the fighting-men to take up their posts on them, and he arrayed his horse and his foot with all skill, like a wise king as he was. And when he had completed all his arrangements he began to advance to engage the enemy. The Tartars, seeing the foe advance, showed no dismay, but came on likewise with good order and discipline to meet them. And when they were near and nought remained but to begin the fight, the horses of the Tartars took such fright at the sight of the elephants that they could not be got to face the foe, but always swerved and turned back; whilst all the time the king and his forces, and all his elephants, continued to advance upon them.[NOTE 2]

And when the Tartars perceived how the case stood, they were in great wrath, and wist not what to say or do; for well enough they saw that unless they could get their horses to advance, all would be lost. But their Captain acted like a wise leader who had considered everything beforehand.

He immediately gave orders that every man should dismount and tie his horse to the trees of the forest that stood hard by, and that then they should take to their bows, a weapon that they know how to handle better than any troops in the world. They did as he bade them, and plied their bows stoutly, shooting so many shafts at the advancing elephants that in a short s.p.a.ce they had wounded or slain the greater part of them as well as of the men they carried. The enemy also shot at the Tartars, but the Tartars had the better weapons, and were the better archers to boot.

And what shall I tell you? Understand that when the elephants felt the smart of those arrows that pelted them like rain, they turned tail and fled, and nothing on earth would have induced them to turn and face the Tartars. So off they sped with such a noise and uproar that you would have trowed the world was coming to an end! And then too they plunged into the wood and rushed this way and that, dashing their castles against the trees, bursting their harness and smashing and destroying everything that was on them.

So when the Tartars saw that the elephants had turned tail and could not be brought to face the fight again, they got to horse at once and charged the enemy. And then the battle began to rage furiously with sword and mace. Right fiercely did the two hosts rush together, and deadly were the blows exchanged. The king's troops were far more in number than the Tartars, but they were not of such metal, nor so inured to war; otherwise the Tartars who were so few in number could never have stood against them.

Then might you see swashing blows dealt and taken from sword and mace; then might you see knights and horses and men-at-arms go down; then might you see arms and hands and legs and heads hewn off: and besides the dead that fell, many a wounded man, that never rose again, for the sore press there was. The din and uproar were so great from this side and from that, that G.o.d might have thundered and no man would have heard it! Great was the medley, and dire and parlous was the fight that was fought on both sides; but the Tartars had the best of it.[NOTE 3]

In an ill hour indeed, for the king and his people, was that battle begun, so many of them were slain therein. And when they had continued fighting till midday the king's troops could stand against the Tartars no longer; but felt that they were defeated, and turned and fled. And when the Tartars saw them routed they gave chase, and hacked and slew so mercilessly that it was a piteous sight to see. But after pursuing a while they gave up, and returned to the wood to catch the elephants that had run away, and to manage this they had to cut down great trees to bar their pa.s.sage. Even then they would not have been able to take them without the help of the king's own men who had been taken, and who knew better how to deal with the beasts than the Tartars did. The elephant is an animal that hath more wit than any other; but in this way at last they were caught, more than 200 of them. And it was from this time forth that the Great Kaan began to keep numbers of elephants.

So thus it was that the king aforesaid was defeated by the sagacity and superior skill of the Tartars as you have heard.

NOTE 1.--_Nescradin_ for Nesradin, as we had _Bascra_ for Basra.

This NaSRUDDIN was apparently an officer of whom Rashiduddin speaks, and whom he calls governor (or perhaps commander) in Karajang. He describes him as having succeeded in that command to his father the Sayad Ajil of Bokhara, one of the best of Kublai's chief Ministers. Nasr-uddin retained his position in Yun-nan till his death, which Rashid, writing about 1300, says occurred five or six years before. His son Bayan, who also bore the grandfather's t.i.tle of Sayad Ajil, was Minister of Finance under Kublai's successor; and another son, Hala, is also mentioned as one of the governors of the province of Fu-chau. (See _Cathay_, pp. 265, 268, and _D'Ohsson_, II. 507-508.)

Nasr-uddin (_Nasulating_) is also frequently mentioned as employed on this frontier by the Chinese authorities whom Pauthier cites.

[Na-su-la-ding [Nasr-uddin] was the eldest of the five sons of the Mohammedan Sai-dien-ch'i shan-sze-ding, Sayad Ajil, a native of Bokhara, who died in Yun-nan, where he had been governor when Kublai, in the reign of Mangu, entered the country. Nasr-uddin "has a separate biography in ch.

cxxv of the _Yuen-shi_. He was governor of the province of Yun-nan, and distinguished himself in the war against the southern tribes of _Kiao-chi_ (Cochin-China) and _Mien_ (Burma). He died in 1292, the father of twelve sons, the names of five of which are given in the biography, viz.

_Bo-yen-ch'a-rh_ [Bayan], who held a high office, Omar, Djafar, Hussein, and Saadi." (_Bretschneider, Med. Res._ I. 270-271). Mr. E.H. Parker writes in the _China Review_, February-March, 1901, pp. 196-197, that the Mongol history states that amongst the reforms of Nasr-uddin's father in Yun-nan, was the introduction of coffins for the dead, instead of burning them.--H.C.]

[NOTE 2.--In his battle near Sardis, Cyrus "collected together all the camels that had come in the train of his army to carry the provisions and the baggage, and taking off their loads, he mounted riders upon them accoutred as hors.e.m.e.n. These he commanded to advance in front of his other troops against the Lydian horse.... The reason why Cyrus opposed his camels to the enemy's horse was, because the horse has a natural dread of the camel, and cannot abide either the sight or the smell of that animal.... The two armies then joined battle, and immediately the Lydian warhorses, seeing and smelling the camels, turned round and galloped off."

(_Herodotus_, Bk. I. i. p. 220, _Rawlinson's_ ed.)--H.C.]

NOTE 3.--We are indebted to Pauthier for very interesting ill.u.s.trations of this narrative from the Chinese Annalists (p. 410 seqq.). These latter fix the date to the year 1277, and it is probable that the 1272 or MCCLXXII of the Texts was a clerical error for MCCLXXVII. The Annalists describe the people of Mien as irritated at calls upon them to submit to the Mongols (whose power they probably did not appreciate, as their descendants did not appreciate the British power in 1824), and as crossing the frontier of Yung-ch'ang to establish fortified posts. The force of Mien, they say, amounted to 50,000 men, with 800 elephants and 10,000 horses, whilst the Mongol Chief had but _seven hundred_ men. "When the elephants felt the arrows (of the Mongols) they turned tail and fled with the platforms on their backs into a place that was set thickly with sharp bamboo-stakes, and these their riders laid hold of to p.r.i.c.k them with."

This threw the Burmese army into confusion; they fled, and were pursued with great slaughter.

The Chinese author does not mention Nasr-uddin in connection with this battle. He names as the chief of the Mongol force _Huthukh_ (Kutuka?), commandant of Ta-li fu. Nasr-uddin is mentioned as advancing, a few months later (about December, 1277), with nearly 4000 men to Kiangtheu (which appears to have been on the Irawadi, somewhere near Bhamo, and is perhaps the Kaungtaung of the Burmese), but effecting little (p. 415).

[I have published in the _Rev. Ext. Orient_, II. 72-88, from the British Museum _Add. MS._ 16913, the translation by Mgr. Visdelou, of Chinese doc.u.ments relating to the Kingdom of Mien and the wars of Kublai; the battle won by _Hu-tu_, commandant of Ta-li, was fought during the 3rd month of the 14th year (1277). (Cf. Pauthier, supra.)--H.C.]

These affairs of the battle in the Yung-ch'ang territory, and the advance of Nasr-uddin to the Irawadi are, as Polo clearly implies in the beginning of ch. li., quite distinct from the invasion and conquest of Mien some years later, of which he speaks in ch. liv. They are not mentioned in the Burmese Annals at all.

Sir Arthur Phayre is inclined to reject altogether the story of the battle near Yung-ch'ang in consequence of this absence from the _Burmese Chronicle_, and of its inconsistency with the purely defensive character which that record a.s.signs to the action of the Burmese Government in regard to China at this time. With the strongest respect for my friend's opinion I feel it impossible to a.s.sent to this. We have not only the concurrent testimony of Marco and of the Chinese Official Annals of the Mongol Dynasty to the facts of the Burmese provocation and of the engagement within the Yung-ch'ang or Vochan territory, but we have in the Chinese narrative a consistent chronology and tolerably full detail of the relations between the two countries.

[Baber writes (p. 173): "Biot has it that Yung-ch'ang was first established by the Mings, long subsequent to the time of Marco's visit, but the name was well known much earlier. The mention by Marco of the Plain of Vochan (Unciam would be a perfect reading), as if it were a plain _par excellence_, is strikingly consistent with the position of the city on the verge of the largest plain west of Yunnan-fu. Hereabouts was fought the great battle between the 'valiant soldier and the excellent captain Nescradin,' with his 12,000 well-mounted Tartars, against the King of Burmah and a large army, whose strength lay in 2000 elephants, on each of which was set a tower of timber full of well-armed fighting men.

"There is no reason to suppose this 'dire and parlous fight' to be mythical, apart from the consistency of annals adduced by Colonel Yule; the local details of the narrative, particularly the prominent importance of the wood as an element of the Tartar success, are convincing. It seems to have been the first occasion on which the Mongols engaged a large body of elephants, and this, no doubt, made the victory memorable.

"Marco informs us that 'from this time forth the Great Khan began to keep numbers of elephants.' It is obvious that cavalry could not manoeuvre in a mora.s.s such as fronts the city. Let us refer to the account of the battle.

"'The Great Khan's host was at Yung-ch'ang, from which they advanced into the plain, and there waited to give battle. This they did through the good judgment of the captain, for hard by that plain was a great wood thick with trees.' The general's purpose was more probably to occupy the dry undulating slopes near the south end of the valley. An advance of about five miles would have brought him to that position. The statement that 'the King's army arrived in the plain, and was within a mile of the enemy,' would then accord perfectly with the conditions of the ground. The Burmese would have found themselves at about that distance from their foes as soon as they were fairly in the plain.

"The trees 'hard by the plain,' to which the Tartars tied their horses, and in which the elephants were entangled, were in all probability in the corner below the 'rolling hills' marked in the chart. Very few trees remain, but in any case the grove would long ago have been cut down by the Chinese, as everywhere on inhabited plains. A short distance up the hill, however, groves of exceptionally fine trees are pa.s.sed. The army, as it seems to us, must have entered the plain from its southernmost point. The route by which we departed on our way to Burmah would be very embarra.s.sing, though perhaps not utterly impossible, for so great a number of elephants."--H.C.]

Between 1277 and the end of the century the Chinese Annals record three campaigns or expeditions against MIEN; viz. (1) that which Marco has related in this chapter; (2) that which he relates in ch. liv.; and (3) one undertaken in 1300 at the request of the son of the legitimate Burmese King, who had been put to death by an usurper. The Burmese Annals mention only the two latest, but, concerning both the date and the main circ.u.mstances of these two, Chinese and Burmese Annals are in almost entire agreement. Surely then it can scarcely be doubted that the Chinese authority is amply trustworthy for the _first_ campaign also, respecting which the Burmese book is silent; even were the former not corroborated by the independent authority of Marco.