THE KHAN'S MARCH TO WAR

In the late 13th century, the ruler of the vast Mongol Empire set his sights east in search of new lands to conquer

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In 1259, after the Mongol Emperor Möngke died, his ferocious brother Kublai Khan became ruler of all the Mongols. Over the next decade, Kublai intensified the conquest of China, setting up a capital at Yanjing (modern Beijing). By the time the Korean kingdom of Koryo fell, Kublai’s empire sprawled all the way west through Central Europe, to Syria. Despite being drained by years of war, Korea’s capitulation gave the Mongols access to what historian Stephen Turnbull calls the peninsula’s “considerable naval tradition”. As Kublai continued to assault the Southern Song, the last Chinese power left standing, he set his sights further east, to the Japanese archipelago across the Tsushima Strait.

Japan was long known regionally to be an abundant source of precious metals. By the 13th century, its reputation for immeasurable stores of gold was so widespread that the Portuguese traveller Marco Polo regurgitated rumours that: “The king’s palace is roofed with pure gold… and the floors are paved in gold two fingers thick.” It was also home to some of the Far East’s mightiest warriors: the noble samurai, the nation’s ruling class to whom warfare was a way of life. They would make a fine Mongol vassal.