Genghis did flood the plain of the Xi Xia and was forced to retreat before the rising waters. Although it must have been embarrassing, the destruction of the crops brought the king to the negotiating table and eventually won a vassal for the Mongol people. It would not have been Genghis's first encounter with the idea of paying tribute. Mongol tribes were known to negotiate in this way, though never on this scale. It is interesting to consider what Genghis must have made of the riches of the Xi Xia and, later, the emperor's own city. He had no use for personal possessions beyond those he could carry on his horse. Tribute would have impressed the tribes and signaled his dominance, but otherwise had very little practical use.
The outcome for the Xi Xia might have been different if Prince Wei of the Chin empire had answered the call for aid. His message (in translation) was: "It is to our advantage when our enemies attack one another. Wherein lies the danger to us?"
When Genghis went round the Great Wall of China, he did so only by accident. His path to Yenking through Xi Xia lands neatly circumvented the wall. However, it is important to understand that the wall was a solid obstacle only in the mountains around Yenking-later known as Peking, then Beijing today. In other places, the wall was broken, or no more than a rampart of earth with an occasional guard post. In later centuries, the wall was joined into one continuous barrier to invasion.
It is worth noting that the Western pronunciation of Chinese place-names is always an approximation, using an alien alphabet to create the same sound. Thus, Xi Xia is sometimes rendered as Tsi-Tsia, or Hsi-Hsia, and Chin is sometimes written as Jin or even Kin. Sung is written as Song in some texts. I have managed to find twenty-one spellings of Genghis, from the exotic Gentchiscan and Tchen-Kis to the more prosaic Jingis, Chinggis, Jengiz, and Gengis. The Mongolian word ordo or ordu means camp or general headquarters. From this we derive the word horde. Some dictionaries give the word shaman as a word of Mongolian origin, and the Gurkhas of Nepal could well derive their name from Gurkhan, or khan of khans.
Genghis had four legitimate sons. As with all Mongol names, there are differences in spelling, much as the word Shakespeare is occasionally written as Shaksper, or Boadicea as Boudicca. Jochi is sometimes seen as Juji, Chagatai as Jagatai, Ogedai as Ogdai. His last son was Tolui, sometimes written as Tule.
As well as the Xi Xia princess, Genghis often accepted wives from his beaten enemies. One of his later decrees made all Mongol children legitimate, though the ruling did not seem to affect the right to inherit among his own sons.
Walled cities were always a problem for Genghis. At the time of his attack on Yenking, that city was surrounded by fortress villages containing granaries and an arsenal. There were moats around the city walls and the walls themselves were almost fifty feet thick at the base, rising as high. The city had thirteen well-constructed gates and what is still the longest canal in the world, stretching more than a thousand miles south and east to Hangzhou. Most of the world's capital cities have their beginnings on the shores of a great river. Beijing was built around three great lakes-Beihei to the north, Zhonghai (or Songhai) in the center, and Nanhai to the south. It may well be the oldest continuously occupied human settlement, as evidence of inhabitants has been found from nearly half a million years ago-Peking Man, as he is sometimes known.
At the time of Genghis's attack through the pass of the Badger's Mouth, Yenking had undergone a period of growth that resulted in walls five miles in circumference and a population of a quarter of a million households, or approximately a million people. It is possible to imagine as many as half a million more who would not show up on any official count. Even then, the famous "Forbidden City" within the walls and the emperor's Summer Palace (destroyed by British and French soldiers in 1860) had not yet been built. Today, the city has a population of approximately fifteen million people, and it is possible to drive through the pass that was once host to one of the bloodiest battles in history. That too is a known date: 1211 A.D. Genghis had been leader of his people for five years at that point. He was in the prime of his physical strength and fought with his men. It is unlikely that he was much older than forty, but he may have been as young as thirty, as I have written here.
The battle of Badger's Mouth pass is regarded as one of Genghis's greatest victories. Vastly outnumbered and unable to maneuver, he sent men to flank the enemy, climbing mountains the Chin thought were impassable. The Chin cavalry were routed back into their own lines by the Mongol horse, and even ten years later, skeletons littered the ground around that place for thirty miles. With the usual problems of anglicized pronunciation, the pass is known in earlier works as Yuhung, which roughly translates as "Badger."
Having lost the battle, General Zhi Zhong did indeed return and slay the young emperor, appointing another while he ruled as regent.
The city of Yenking was made to be impregnable and there were almost a thousand guard towers on the walls. Each one was defended by enormous crossbows that could fire a huge arrow two-thirds of a mile. In addition, they had trebuchet catapults capable of firing heavy loads for hundreds of yards over the walls. They had gunpowder and were just beginning to use it in war, though at this time it would have formed part of the defenses. Their catapults could have launched clay pots filled with distilled oil-petrol. Assaulting such a city fortress would have broken the back of the Mongol army, so they chose to devastate the country around it and starve Yenking to surrender.
It took four years and the inhabitants of Yenking were reduced to eating their own dead by the time they opened the gates and surrendered in 1215. Genghis accepted the surrender along with tribute of unimaginable value. He then traveled back to the grasslands of his youth, as he did throughout his life. With the siege ended, the emperor fled south. Though he did not turn back himself, Genghis sent an army to the city to take vengeance. Parts of Yenking burned for a month.
Despite his hatred of the Chin, Genghis would not be the one who would see them occupied and subdued at last. That would fall to his sons and grandson Kubla. At the peak of his success, he left China and went west. It is true that the Islamic rulers refused to recognize his authority, but Genghis was too much of a visionary to react without thought. It is an odd fact, usually glossed over in the histories, that he left China when it was ready to fall at his feet. Perhaps it is simply because he was distracted from his hatred by the challenge of the Shah of Khwarazm, Ala-ud-dun-Mohammed. Genghis was not a man to let any challenge go unanswered. In fact, he seemed to revel in them.
He understood the idea of nations and laws, slowly developing his own code, called the Yasa.
"If the great, the military leaders and the leaders of the many descendants of the ruler who will be born in the future, should not adhere strictly to the Yasa, then the power of the state will be shattered and come to an end. No matter how they seek Genghis Khan, they will not find him," he declared.
In this, we see the visionary who could dream nations out of scattered tribes and understand what it entailed to rule across such a vast land.
The system of white tent, red tent, black tent, was used by Genghis as I have described. It was propaganda of a sort, designed to have cities fall quickly from fear. With grazing always an issue for the Mongol herds, prolonged sieges were to be avoided if possible. It suited neither their temperaments nor Genghis's style of warfare, where speed and mobility were central factors. In a similar way, driving enemies toward a city to strain their resources is ruthless common sense. In some ways, Genghis was the ultimate pragmatist, but one feature of Mongol warfare is worth mentioning: revenge. The line "We have lost many good men" was often used to justify an all-out attack after a setback.