Diaoyucheng: The Siege that Stalled an Empire 

Today we are going to talk about a fortress in southwest China’s Chongqing Municipality. With an area of just two and a half square kilometers, it may have saved the European and Arab civilizations due to its resistance against the Mongol Empire in China’s Southern Song Dynasty about 800 years ago.

In addition to being an occasion for family reunions, China’s Lunar Spring Festival is a vacation when people shop and travel. Many scenic spots and resorts across the country have welcomed record numbers of tourists following the lifting of travel restrictions related to the pandemic late last year. 

Chongqing Municipality in southwestern China, famed for its foggy mountains as well as an abundance of historic relics, received more than 1.24 million tourists during the recent week-long national holiday. According to the local tourism bureau, one of the most popular draws that received more than 10,000 tourists each day was Diaoyu Fortress – the site of an ancient battle where the course of China’s history, and arguably that of the world, was changed.

It all started in the year 1206 when a Mongol tribe leader consolidated nomadic tribes into a unified Mongolia and declared himself Genghis Khan, which is thought to mean “universal ruler”. Under his rule, the fearsome Mongol warriors raided their enemies on horseback, laid siege to large cities, and conducted ruthless slaughter in a prolonged campaign of terror and conquest.

The successors of Genghis Khan carried on his ambition. By the late 13th century, the Mongol Empire had turned into the world’s largest contiguous empire ever. At its peak, its territory covered at least 23 million square kilometers, extending from the White Sea in the north to the Indian Ocean in the south and from Anatolia and Eastern Europe in the west to Asia’s Pacific coast in the east.

When the Mongol warriors swept across Central Asia and into Europe in 1259, it seemed that nothing could stop them from conquering the world. But an unexpected newsflash from China put an abrupt stop to everything. Their supreme leader, Möngke Khan, had died in a battle near present-day Chongqing Municipality in southwest China. The news resulted in an overall military withdrawal that probably saved the European and Arab civilizations from Mongol assimilation.

Now, let’s rewind to the year 1234. The Mongols formed an alliance with China’s Southern Song Dynasty to bring down the Jurchen-ruled Jin Dynasty in northern China. After the Jin’s collapse, the alliance broke down immediately. The Mongols turned on their former ally and launched an all-out war against the Southern Song that would last for more than a third of a century.

In 1235, the Mongols attacked from both the east and west flanks, crippling the defense of the Southern Song. However, despite initial military successes, the Southern Song managed to retaliate and prevent the advance of the Mongols on the east flank by taking advantage of their adversary’s unfamiliarity with the water networks of the Huai River. The Mongols were forced to change strategy and concentrate their campaigns on the west flank in southwest China’s Sichuan Province.

Although the Southern Song was able to fend off the advance of the Mongol hordes under the command of general Meng Gong, the devastation inflicted by the ongoing war on Sichuan was appalling. The province, which used to be known as “heaven’s storehouse”, was gradually reduced to an economically ruined backwater. 

In 1243, general Yu Jie was appointed the commander of the Southern Song army in Sichuan. He decided to reform the defense system and build a network of fortresses with secure food storage facilities on mountain tops, so that they were not only formidable against any military offensive but were also able to support one another against invasion. The cornerstone of this new system of mountain fortresses was Diaoyucheng, or Diaoyu Fortress, located in the present-day Hechuan district of Chongqing Municipality.

The new defense system proved to be extremely effective, allowing the Southern Song to fight a protracted war until the 1250s, an accomplishment also aided by power struggles and instability within the Mongol ranks following the death of Genghis Khan.

The long-term standoff between the Mongols and Southern Song was broken in 1258. By then, Möngke Khan, the fourth Great Khan of the Mongol Empire who ruled from 1251 to 1259, had already conquered Asia and Eastern Europe. He decided to take personal command of Mongols’ principal force and launch a huge campaign against Southern Song. The plan was to first capture Sichuan and then march downstream along the Yangtze River to take the Southern Song capital in present-day Hangzhou of East China’s Zhejiang Province.

The Southern Song army was all but swept aside and, by the spring of 1259, the Mongols had seized most parts of Sichuan and reached the eastern approach to Hezhou, in present-day Hechuan, where the Diaoyu Fortress is located.

Diaoyu, in Chinese, means fishing. The fortress sits on top of a mountain surrounded by water on three sides, forming a natural military advantage – easy to defend, but hard to attack. Its name comes from a legend. It is said that, once upon a time, people sought refuge on the mountain during a heavy flood. Upon seeing the flood victims suffering from starvation, a benevolent titan came down from heaven and fished from a mountain rock to feed them. The mountain was thereafter named Diaoyu Mountain to honor the titan’s good deed.

When Möngke Khan and his Mongol warriors stood in front of the gate of Diaoyu Fortress, they would not have expected that this single fortress, a mere 2.5 square kilometers in size, would stand stoically in the face of their aggression for a staggering 36 years, until 1279. The local army was greatly outnumbered by the Mongols – there were some 4,000 Southern Song soldiers stationed in the garrison, led by commander Wang Jian, whereas the Mongol horde numbered more than 20 times that.

Möngke Khan sent his right-hand man, general Wang Dechen, to lead the vanguard of the attack. The Mongols tried to force their way in through the fortress gate. When this tactic proved ineffective, they began conducting night raids on minor defensive structures around the perimeter. Although these raids initially took the defenders by surprise, the Mongols were still not able to breach the fortress.

The Mongols’ assault was also greatly hindered by continual rain and the outbreak of an epidemic in the spring and summer of 1259. In June, Wang Dechen was fatally wounded by a stone projectile during a night raid when strong winds broke the ladders the Mongols had erected to scale the fortress wall. 

It’s said that the soldiers inside the fortress hung out hundreds of pieces of cake and two big fish on the wall, each weighing as much as 15 kilograms, to shake the morale of the Mongols and demonstrate that the Southern Song had plenty of food in store so they would not be starved into submission.

In July, Möngke Khan, just like his most trusted general, was fatally injured by a stone launched from a mangonel, a type of medieval catapult, as he stood on a watchtower attempting to observe military maneuvers within the fortress. With his last breath he ordered the Mongols to slaughter everyone, soldiers and civilians alike, on the day they seized the fortress.

Möngke Khan’s death had far-reaching consequences. Upon learning of his death, the Mongol princes withdrew from their various military fronts and returned to strengthen their power base and contend for rule of the empire. It not only gave the Southern Song a respite from continuous war and prolonged its existence for another 20 years, but also forced the immediate withdrawal of Mongol troops from Syria and East Asia and prevented the Mongols from expanding their empire into Africa.

As American historian Leften Stavros Stavrianos pointed out in his book A Global History, “Möngke Khan’s death brought disruption of the united Mongolian ruling circle... The failure of his army saved the Islamic world, marking the beginning of the decline of the Mongol Empire.”

Möngke Khan’s younger brother Kublai was named as his successor in 1260, but, with an ongoing civil war, it was several years before political stability returned to the homeland of the Mongol empire. Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty in 1271 and set up its capital in present-day Beijing.

Diaoyu Fortress remained in the hands of the Southern Song, although the Mongols made attempts to take it every year. By 1279, the fortress had suffered two consecutive years of unrelenting drought and, his hand forced by ensuing famine, General Wang Li surrendered on the condition that no civilians would be harmed. The Mongols honored their promise and Diaoyu Fortress became the only instance throughout the Mongols’ relentless expansion where victory did not result in a massacre of the vanquished.

However, that doesn’t mean it was a completely bloodless victory for the Mongols. On the day they finally marched into the fortress, the 32 military officers commanding the Southern Song army unsheathed their swords and committed suicide, and it would be another two months of constant fighting before the final collapse of the Southern Song Dynasty.

The defense of Diaoyu Fortress stands as a legendary achievement in the annals of military history, not only for preserving the Southern Song Dynasty for nearly two decades, but also for alleviating wars in Europe and Asia and preventing many more from starting in Africa. 

Heavily outnumbered and fending off nearly continuous attack for 36 years is a miraculous achievement that not only remains unmatched in ancient or modern warfare, but also is one that we can all be grateful for today.

Well, that’s the end of our podcast. Our theme music is by the famous film score composer Roc Chen. We want to thank our writer Lü Weitao, translator Yang Guang, and copy editor James McCarthy. And thank you for listening. We hope you enjoyed it, and if you did, please tell a friend so they, too, can understand The Context.