Battle of Xiangyang

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Battle of Xiangyang
Part of the Song-Yuan Wars
Date 1268 - 1273 Location Xiangfan, Hubei Result Yuan victory
Combatants
Song Dynasty	Yuan Dynasty
Commanders
Lü Wenhuan Li Tingzhi	Liu Zheng, Ashu, Shi Tianzhe, Guo Kan

The Mongol Invasions
Central Asia – Georgia and Armenia – Kalka River – Volga Bulgaria – Ryazan – Rus' – Sit River – Köse Dag – Legnica – Mohi – Baghdad – Ain Jalut – Korea – Japan (Bun'ei – Kōan) – Vietnam – Xiangyang – Ngasaunggyan – Yamen – Pagan – Bach Dang – Syria – Kulikovo – Vorskla – Ugra River

The Battle of Xiangyang (襄陽之戰) was a six-year battle between invading Mongol armies and Southern Song Chinese forces between AD 1268 and 1273. The battle ended with a Mongol victory who pushed further into the Song heartland.

Contents 1 Character of the battle 2 Role of the counterweight trebuchet 2.1 The design of the trebuchets deployed at Xiangyang 3 Cultural references 4 References 5 External links

[edit] Character of the battle

The battle consisted of skirmishes, ground assault, and the siege of the twin fortified cities of Fancheng and Xiangyang in modern-day Hubei, China. Lü Wenhuan, commander-in-chief of the Southern Song Dynasty, surrendered to Kublai Khan in 1273. The conventional use of Mongolian cavalry was restricted by the woody terrain and numerous military outposts of the Southern Song Dynasty. Chinese firearms and cannons were employed by the Mongols in the victorious siege of Fancheng after capturing the outposts and relieving Chinese forces from Sichuan and Yuezhou, which broke through the siege but was eventually defeated.. Especially effective proved the use of the counterweight trebuchet by the Mongols, which had been previously unknown in China.

The city was vital for the Mongol conquest of the Southern Song because of its location. The city guarded the waterways of Southern China because the Han River was a major tributary into the Yangtze River. Once the city fell, the Mongols obtained easy access into important Southern cities in China and the Southern Song collapsed shortly.

[edit] Role of the counterweight trebuchet

The use of the counterweight trebuchet by the Mongol invaders proved to be decisive in forcing the surrenders of Fancheng and Xiangyang in 1273. Within a few days after the Mongols took up the bombardment of Fancheng by the counterweight trebuchet in March 1273, the city had been ripe for attack and successfully assaulted. Shortly afterwards, the Chinese commander of Xiangyang, realising that the city could not withstand a similar attack, accepted the Mongol surrender terms.

The counterweight trebuchet was a relatively new type of ballistic siege engine which was much more powerful than the earlier traction trebuchets, which had existed in China for centuries. The origin of the counterweight trebuchet is obscure, but it appears to have been invented somewhere in the Mediterranean basin in the twelfth century. Many possible inventors have been hypothesized, including Emperor Alexios I Komnenos of Byzantium^[1] and the Muslim engineers of Saladin.^[2]

The counterweight trebuchet was introduced into China by the Mongols during the sieges of Fancheng and Xiangyang. Since the Mongols employed Muslim engineers for the designing of the counterweight trebuchets, they were designated in Chinese historiography as the "Muslim" trebuchet (hui-hui pao).

[edit] The design of the trebuchets deployed at Xiangyang

Regarding the exact nature of the trebuchets used by the Mongol armies, recent research by Paul E. Chevedden indicates that the hui-hui pao was actually a European design, a double-counterweight engine that as Cheveddens shows had been introduced to the Levant by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II (1210-1250) only shortly before.^[3] The Muslim historian Rashid al-Din (1247?–1318), in his universal history, refers to the Mongol trebuchets used at the Song cities as "Frankish" or "European" trebuchets ("manjaniq ifranji" or "manjaniq firanji"):

Before that there had not been any large Frankish catapult in Cathay [i.e. China], but Talib, a catapult-maker from this land, had gone to Baalbek and Damascus, and his sons Abubakr, Ibrahim, and Muhammad, and his employees made seven large catapults and set out to conquer the city [Sayan Fu or Hsiang-yang fu = modern Xiangfan].^[4]

The Chinese scholar Zheng Sixiao (1206–83) indicates that, "in the case of the largest ones, the wooden framework stood above a hole in the ground".^[5] Chevedden considers this to be clearly a description of the double-counterweight bricola, since, according to him, that was the only counterweight piece of artillery that had a framework capable of being mounted in a hole in the ground and was commonly set up in this fashion. Thus, the fall of the Song cities was testimony to the wide diffusion of military technology which the Mongol conquests brought along.

Another version is given by Marco Polo in his book Il Milione where he claims having been responsible for teaching the Mongols how to build and use catapults during the siege of Xiangyang. However, the names of the Muslim engineers were given by Muslim sources as Talib and his sons Abubakr, Ibrahim, and Muhammad,^[6] respectively by Chinese sources as Ala-ud-Din and Isma'il.^[7] Moreover, the siege had already ended before Marco Polo's arrival in China.^[8]

[edit] Cultural references

In the wuxia novel The Return of the Condor Heroes by Jinyong, a battle at Xiangyang is the climax of the story, with the protagonists such as Yang Guo and Guo Jing participating in the defense of the city.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Paul E. Chevedden, “Black Camels and Blazing Bolts: The Bolt-Projecting Trebuchet in the Mamluk Army
• Chinese Siege Warfare: Mechanical Artillery and Siege Weapons of Antiquity - An Illustrated History