Ja Lama The Life and Death of Dambijantsan by Don Croner (2010)

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garians from Khalkh Mongolia Zanabazar and his Khalkh followers were
free to return to their homelands. The Zungarian state was by no means
crushed however. His nephew Tsevan Ravdan (r. 1697 1627) quickly
seized the reins of the Zungarian realm and rallied the Oirats of the
Zungarian Basin to this banner. This new Zungarian state stretched from
Hami in the east, on the current-day boundary of Xinjiang and Gansu, to
the Seven Rivers Region in the west, including the old realms of Uighu-
ristan, Kashgaria and the Ili Basin. Like so many Inner Asian chieftains
before him, Tsevan Ravdan set up his headquarters in the Ili River Valley,
probably near Kulja.
The aging Kangxi emperor was for the moment content to consolidate
his gains among the eastern Mongols in Khalkh Mongolia, the current-
day country of Mongolia, and did not immediately take up the struggle
against the Zungarians in the west. But his ultimate goal was to extermi-
nate (jiaome) the Zungarians, to wipe out the evil so as to have eternal
peace. 16 In 1715 a Qing army move beyond the western garrison city of
Jiaguyuan, at the westernmost extension of the Great Wall, and occupied
Hami, then ruled by a Moslem beg. Moving on from Hami, the Qing
generals hoped to set up a garrison at Barkol, on the northside of the
Tian Shan, which could be used as a springboard for further advances
into the Zungarian Basin. They also advanced along the southern flanks
of the Tian Shan, and by 1718 they had occupied Turpan, where the ru-
ins of the Han and Tang dynasty cities of Gaochang and Jiaohe could be
seen, reminders of former Chinese occupation of the area (major tourist
attractions, they can still be seen there today). The now emboldened gen-
erals envisioned marching on Ravdan s headquarters in the Ili Basin far to
the west, but for the time being were content to seize in Urumqi, a city
just north of a major pass through the Tian Shan and now the current-
The Legend of Amarsanaa 61
day capital of Xinjiang Province. And they were soon forced to abandon
Urumqi and retreat back eastward.
This first attempt to wipe out the Zungarians and add their domains
to the Qing Empire ended with the Kangxi emperor s death in 1722. His
son and successor, the Yongzheng emperor, was at first more interesting
in consolidating his shaky hold on the throne than engaging in risky mili-
tary adventures in far-off Zungaria. In 1724 he signed a peace treaty with
Tsevan Ravdan which temporarily halted hostilities, and Tsevan Ravdan s
own death in 1727 resulted in another stalemate. His successor, Galdan
Tsering (r. 1727 1745) soon fell out with the Yongzheng emperor. All oth-
er Mongols had submitted to the Qing, Yongzheng pointed out to Galdan
Tsering s envoys, only the Zungarians refused to submit. His own father
had defeated Galdan Bolshigt but had failed to bring the Zungarians to
heel. As historian Frank Perdue points out, the Qing goal of universal
peace among humans led the Qing to endorse elimination of those hu-
mans who obstinately refused to knuckle under to the view. Humans who
chose to resist the Qing terms remained human, but they had to pay the
costs of their choice: righteous extermination (zhengjiao), designed to re-
turn the world to a rational order. 17
In the summer of 1729 two expeditionary forces, the West Route Army
with 26,500 men and North Route army set out from Bejing with the
ultimate goal of converging on the Zungarian headquarter in the Ili Val-
ley.18 Not until 1731 did the West Route Army retake Urumqi, still 400
miles short of the Ili Valley. Meanwhile the North Route Army had pro-
ceeded to Khovd, in current-day Khovd Aimag in Mongolia, where they
began construction of a fortress. In July of 1731 the Qing army numbered
some 20,000 soldiers marched from Khovd westward towards the Zun-
garian Basin and the Ili River Valley beyond. The Zungarians had been
tracking their advance, however, and prepared a surprise. At Kh�t�n
Lake, in current-day Bayan-Olgii Aimag, the Qing army was ambushed
and nearly annihilated; only 2,000 survivors made it back to Khovd. The
Qing general in charge of this debacle, Furdan, was then ordered to start
construction of what was to be a huge fortress at Khovd. Intended to
measure some 4.3 miles in circumference, with walls 16.5 feet high, the
fortress was to eventually house a garrison of 16,000 men.19 Eventually
this ambitious plan was abandoned, but a more modest fortress was es-
tablished at Khovd. The reader should be alerted that in 1912, after the
Qing Dynasty collapsed, Dambijantsan would play the leading role in
Ja Lama: The Life and Death of Dambijantsan
62
dislodging the Qing holdouts here and demolishing the fortress.
Meanwhile the Western Route Army had been driven out of Urumqi
by the Zungarians and driven the whole way back to Barkol. The news
of this defeat coupling with the disaster at Kh�lon Lake thoroughly de-
moralized the not-too-stable-to-begin-with Yongzheng. He sued for
peace and sent ministers to the Zungarians to negotiate a boundary be-
tween their two realms. Galdan Tsering wanted the border drawn along
the western end the Khangai Mountains, which would have put most of
modern-day western Mongolia, including Khovd, where the still extant
ruins of the Khovd fortress are located, in the Zungarian sphere. Yong-
zheng favored the Mongol-Altai and Gov-Altai Mountains as the border,
very roughly the current-day boundary between Mongolia and China.
No agreement was reached, but Galdan Tsering dispatched a mission to
Beijing for further discussions on this, trade relations, and other matters.
Yongzheng, however, transmigrated before any further settlement could
be reached. He alone had spent upward to 60 mllion taels of silver (2,280
tons) in his campaigns against the Zungarians and had failed to subdue
or eliminate them. It would be left to his successor, the Qianlong emperor,
to finally extinquish the Zungarian state and virtually exterminate the
Zungarian people.
For the next fifteen years or so an uneasy peace reigned between the Qing
and Zungarians. In 1739 a formal truce was signed and formal trade rela-
tions agreed upon. Commerce soon thrived, with Inner Asian Moslems
acting as middlemen in caravan traffic which revitalized the ancient Silk
Road routes. But the lull in tensions did not lessen the basic antagonism
between the two cultures was not, as Frank Perdue points out,
Peace with the Zunghars did not genuinely soften Qing altitudes. The
Qing regarded these barbarians as greedy, violent, and untrustworthy. The
Qing believed, however, that the emperor s grace would soften them to
they would accommodate to imperial dominion. Barbarians by nature had
insatiable desire and shameless greed but by controlling their actions and
cherishing them, the Qing could tame them. Tying the Zungar elites to
the interior with trading link would make them less inclined to attack the
frontier.20
Galdan Tsering transmigrated in 1745. The ensuing succession struggles
shattered whatever unity the Zungarians enjoyed among themselves and [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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