The military of the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) were the armed forces of the Yuan dynasty, a fragment of the Mongol Empire that Kublai Khan established as a Mongol-led dynasty of China. The forces of the Yuan were based on the troops that were loyal to Kublai after the Division of the Mongol Empire in 1260. Initially, this force was a Tamma, a frontier army drawn from all Mongol tribes for conquest of China, which had no central organisation but was rather a loose collection of local warlords and Mongol princely armies. However, the army was gradually reformed by Kublai Khan into a more systematic force.
Army Organisation
Unlike previous Chinese dynasties that strictly separated military and civilian power, the Yuan administration of military and civil affairs tended to overlap, due to the traditional Mongol favour for the military over civilian affairs. This practice was harshly criticised by the Han Chinese scholar-officials at the time. Military officers were allowed to pass on their positions to their sons or grandsons after death, retirement or sometimes even after a promotion. Due to their Mongol background and unlike the previous Chinese dynasties, the Yuan granted feudal fief appanages with accompanying serfs throughout North China to military leaders, whether Mongol, Middle Eastern/Central Asian or Han. The conflict between these military nobles with the Imperial government was a persistent feature until the end of the dynasty.
Coming from a fully militarised culture, the Mongol rulers of the Yuan dynasty attempted to replicate elements of their own military in Chinese society. This was to be accomplished by establishing hereditary military households under the Bureau of Military Affairs that would provide troops for recruitment. Military households were grouped into four segments: Mongolian, Tammachi, Han, and the "Newly Adhered", each with different privileges including grants of stipends, food or tax exemptions. The Tammachi were Mongols and other steppe tribes on the southern edge of Mongolia. Han consisted of the North China forces that joined the Mongols before the 1250s while the "Newly Adhered" consisted of the South China forces that joined during the 1270s. Possibly following the "Mouke" practice of the Jin dynasty, households were also organised into a decimal system (groups of thousand, groups of ten thousand) to provide the necessary manpower and equipment for the military units. This household organisation was first introduced by Chinggis.
There were also military artisan households which provided hereditary services for the production of military equipment such as weapons, armour, siege engines. These were under the command of the military registers. Specialist forces included an artillery army and a crossbow army.
Guards
Yuan Cavalry were mainly Mongols while infantry were mainly Chinese. For his own bodyguards Kublai retained the use of the traditional Mongol Keshig. The Keshig reported directly to the emperor.
Kublai created a new Imperial guard force, the suwei (宿衛), of which half were Han Chinese and the other half ethnically mixed. By the 1300s even the Keshig had become flooded with Han Chinese recruits. The suwei were initially 6,500 strong but by the end of the dynasty it had become 100,000 strong. They were divided into wei or guards, each recruited from a particular ethnicity. Most wei were Han Chinese, while a few were Mongols, Koreans, Tungusic peoples, and Central Asians/Middle Easterners including Kipchaks, Alans and even one unit of Russians. The Keshig was converted into an administrative organisation instead, as their military discipline declined by the late 13th century.
The guard forces were concentrated around the two capitals Daidu and Shangdu, and were responsible for the protection of the imperial family, the cultivation of military farms, construction and repairs in Daidu, and providing their own equipment, horses and feed — a heavy burden for guardsmen escorting the Khan to and from Shangdu. The control of guard garrisons became an important base of power for ambitious government ministers such as Bayan and Toqto'a to influence politics and act as kingmakers.
Yuan guard units also use crossbows.
Han Chinese and related forces
The Yuan dynasty created a "Han Army" () out of defected Jin troops and army of defected Southern Song troops called the "Newly Adhered Army" (). Apart from ethnic Han, Koreans, Khitans and Jurchens were also grouped under the Han Army.
Cherik soldiers were the earliest non-nomadic component in the Mongol military. The Mongols placed Jin defectors and Han Chinese conscripts into new armies formed by the Mongols as they invaded the Jin dynasty, and these forces played a critical role in the defeat of the Jin. For instance, Han Chinese defectors led by General Liu Bolin defended Tiancheng from the Jin in 1214 while Genghis Khan was returning north. In 1215, the Jin's Western Capital fell to Liu Bolin's army. The original Han cherik forces were created in 1216, with Liu Bolin as their leading officer. As Han troops continued defecting from the Jin to the Mongols the size of Han cherik forces swelled and they had to be partitioned between different units. In 1217-1218, Khitan commanders Chalaer, Yelu Tuhua and Uyar led three cherik armies in northern China under the Mongol viceroy Muqali in addition to his tamma armies. Han soldiers made up the majority of the Khitan Yelu Tuhua's army, while Juyin soldiers (Khitans, Tanguts, Ongguds and other vassal tribes) from Zhongdu made up Chalaer's army and Khitans made up Uyar's army. By Muqali's death in 1223, Han troops greatly outnumbered Mongol soldiers under his command.
In 1232, Ogedei Khan granted permission for field commanders to organize Han decimal-based units from Chinese warlord forces. By 1241, the number of military households constituted 1 out of 7 households in North China, and formed an important element of the Mongol army. While most were peasant militia, some were capable of serving as cavalry forces equal to the Mongols, having been drawn from experienced frontier veterans or former Jin dynasty cavalrymen. Prior to the reforms of 1235, the Mongols named the initial Han defectors, led by individual officers who had defected, as the "Black Army" (heijun 黑軍). Under the arrangement of Ogedei Khan, the Han officer Shi Tianze, Han officer Liu Ni and the Khitan officer Xiao Chala, all three of whom had defected to the Mongols from the Jin army, were given command of three tumed consisting of a total of 36 units, each comprising 1,000 Han Chinese soldiers. By 1234, there were at least three additional tumed under the command of Chang Jung, Yen Shi and Chung Jou. Another new infantry-based "New Army" (xinjun 新軍) was created after the Mongols conscripted 95,000 additional Han soldiers after the 1236 and 1241 censuses, taken after the fall of the Jin. The Mongols deployed Han cherik forces to fight against Li Tan's revolt in 1262 — who was himself a respected commander under Mongke Khan. The New Army and Black Army had hereditary officer posts like the Mongol army itself, but Kublai became distrustful of Han generals after Li Tan's rebellion and limited the number of command positions held by each Han family. Before Kublai, the early Mongol Empire had been accepting of autonomous Chinese warlord forces as a key element in the Mongol armies, but during the Yuan dynasty, due to considerable Mongol fears of Chinese insurrection, these hereditary commanders were increasingly restricted.
After the Mongols absorbed the Newly Adhered Army into the Yuan military (albeit with different status and privileges than the earlier-formed Hanjun), the Newly Adhered forces were placed under the command of Mongol or Central Asian officers and sent to fight Kublai's various campaigns throughout Asia. The necessary troop numbers for Kublai Khan's campaigns could only be filled by relying on these vast numbers of Southern Chinese soldiers that submitted in the 1270s, especially for naval expeditions which were composed entirely of Han Chinese and Koreans. Southern Song Chinese troops who defected to the Mongols were granted Korean women as wives, whom the Mongols had earlier taken during their invasion of Korea as war booty. Kublai also granted oxen, clothing and land to the many Song Chinese troops who defected to the Mongols. As prizes for battlefield victories, the Yuan had lands sectioned off as appanages and handed to Chinese military officers who had defected to the Mongol side. The Yuan awarded juntun, a type of military farmland, to Song Chinese soldiers who defected to the Mongols.
South China's army garrisons reported to individual provincial governments instead of the Bureau of Military Affairs in the capital, to prevent the concentration of authority in any one commander. Local militia generally wore uniforms of yellow or dark blue-green colour. Due to the low status of military professions in China, and exploitation by corrupt administrators, desertion was a massive problem after the death of Kublai Khan.
Mongol, other steppe or Central Asian forces
The Mongolian army was under direct command of the Emperor, while Tammachi were under semi-independent Mongol lords. Five Tammachi clans, the touxia, seem to have served the Yuan as allied forces under their own chiefs. Mongol forces were divided into toumans of 10,000 under a wanhu, divided into minghans of 1,000 under a qianhu, but in practice toumans ranged from 3,000 to 7,000 in strength.
The Tammachi were organised into Tamma, meaning to govern or control, which were meant to be rapid deployment forces stationed in nomadic steppeland but could be quickly mobilised to fight emerging threats. The Tamma were established in Inner Mongolia in 1217/1218 under their first commander Muqali. The Tamma also had attached units of advance scouts known as alginchi, of which there were initially 1,000 such units, stationed in the newly conquered North China. With the establishment of the Chinese-style Yuan government, the main Tamma became less important while the alginchi units continued to be a part of the occupation forces. Alginchi were still maintained as the Yuan's crucial mobile cavalry force while the rest of the Mongol forces deep in China were increasingly cut off from their horse supply. Despite government seizure of horses, horse supplies were insufficient to meet the demand for horses and even Mongols were sometimes compelled to serve as infantrymen. The Tammachi also included Muslim units from Central Asia, especially the Uyghurs who were given special privileges for being among the earliest to join Genghis Khan. Many of these were stationed in Yunnan to suppress local resistance and campaign against Burma and Vietnam, leading to a Muslim influx there.
Mongols, now living in China, had immense difficulty meeting their military service obligations, as they needed to make a living as farmers and had no pastures to rear horses, having to purchase them at their own expense. By the 1300s many Mongol men could not even foot the cost for travel to enlist in the army. The Yuan army also contained a force known as the Tongshi Jun, which were Mongols who had fought against the Mongols for the Song dynasty.
South China tribal forces