From Hovd Travel in Mongolia
King Galdan Boshogt
Galdan (1644-1697) was one of the greatest kings of the royal Zuungarian lineage. He was the grandson of Khara Khula, the charismatic leader who in 1606 organized the four Oirat tribes into the Oirat Confederation with the hopes of recreating the Oirat Empire that had flourished under Esen in the 15th century, and the son of Erdenebaatar, the man who transformed the Oirat Confederation into the very powerful-while-it-lasted Zuun- garian Kingdom and became the first Zuungarian King.
At this time in Mongolia's history, the country was divided between Khalkh Mongolia in the east (the Khalkh are the ethnic majority among Mongolian people), and the Zuungarian Mongols in the west (the Zuungars were a collection of smaller Mongolian tribes that united to rival the more numerous Khalkhs in the east). The word “Zuungaria” derives from the Mongolian words for “Left” (Zuun) and “Hand” (Gar).
Galdan was the youngest son of Erdenebaatar, and it is believed he may have been born near Erdeneburen soum in Hovd aimag. He was born to the Choros ethnic group, though today the ethnic group that Galdan belonged to is known to us as the Uuld. At the age of 7, Galdan was sent to Lhasa in Tibet to be educated as a lama under Lobsang Gyatso, the 5th Dalai Lama, where he would study for 20 years. Three years after his departure to Lhasa, his father Erdenebaatar died, and control of the Zuungarian Kingdom passed to Galdan's older brother Senge (Erdenebaatar's third son). Senge ruled for 16 years before being murdered by a half-brother named Tsetsen in 1670. Galdan renounced his status as a lama and returned to Zuungaria to avenge his brother's death. In 1671, at the age of 27, Galdan would begin his long and successful rule as a Zuungarian King.
Galdan went to work expanding the Zuungarian Empire; it would eventually encompass a substantial chunk of Inner Asia, including what is now western Mongolia, Xinjiang province in China, the Silk Road cities of Hami, Turpan, and Kashgar, the legendary cities of Bukhara and Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan, and the eastern part of present-day Kazakhstan. Although largely forgotten today, during Galdan's reign Zuungaria was a formidable adversary of both Czarist Russia and Qing-Dynasty China.
After establishing a military garrison on the site of present-day Hovd City in 1685 (this settlement is the reason many Mongolians point to Galdan as the founder of Hovd), Galdan turned his attention to Khalkh Mongolia. Galdan believed that a united Mongolian defense would stand a better chance of resisting the powerful Chinese Qing Dynasty than a Mongolia split down the middle, so in 1688 he sent his armies into Khalkh Mongolia to try and topple their leader Zanabazar and unite the Mongolian people under his rule. The Zuungars met little resistance from the disorganized Khalkhs, and first trashed the great monastery at Erdene Zuu, built on the site of the ancient Mongolian capital of Kharkhorum, and then his men demolished Saridgiin Khiid, the monastery established by Zanabazar himself and intended to be the center of Buddhism in Mongolia.
Following a series of military victories by the Zuungars in the Khangai mountains, Zanabazar and his followers fled from Khalkh Mongolia, and retreated southeastward into the Qing Dynasty-controlled province of Inner Mongolia. Having taken Khalkh Mongolia, Galdan continued the march into Qing territory and on July 26, 1690 his soldiers overran several Qing outposts in Inner Mongolia. Word reached Beijing that Galdan's force numbered 30,000 men, and the Qing officials had to wonder what Galdan's intentions were with such a large force inside Qing territory; some of the Emperor's advisors thought the Mongolian king inteneded to march all the way to Beijing. In truth, as many as 20,000 of Galdan's men had deserted on the march into Inner Mongolia, and the remainder were near starvation. Kangxi sent word to Galdan that he wanted to negotiate a peace treaty, but instead of following up this overture with a peaceful delegation, Kangxi sent two armies northward to crush Galdan and his men.
On September 3, 1690, at a place in Inner Mongolia called Ulaan Butong, Galdan found his forces under attack from two Qing armies. These armies were armed with cannons, a relatively new military innovation, and one which Galdan's forces could not match. At 2 o'clock in the afternoon the Qing armies commenced firing, and the Zuungarians lined up their camels as a barricade and retalliated with heavy musket fire. For three days the two sides clashed, but neither side was willing to yield; the battle only ended when the Qing General (a man named Fu-ch'uan) called in a high-ranking lama to negotiate a peace settlement with Galdan. An agreement was reached whereby Galdan agreed to return to Mongolia after swearing an oath that he would never again invade Qing territory.
Kangxi was livid that General Fu-ch'uan had allowed Galdan to return to Mongolia, the emperor felt that the word of a man like Galdan was worthless, and he would simply re-group and attack again. Fu-ch'uan was ordered to send scouts to make sure that Galdan's army had really returned to Mongolia, then once that was verified the General was recalled to Beijing, court-martialed, removed from the council of princes, and docked 3 years' salary.
The Emperor was not finished with Galdan yet. Knowing that Zanabazar and his fellow Khalkh rulers had sought refuge in his domain, Kangxi traveled northward to meet with them at the Inner Mongolian town of Doloonnuur. In the first days of June 1691, Zanabazar made an agreement with the Qing Emperor that would seal his people's fate for the next 220 years; in exchange for Qing military support to help remove Galdan and his Zuungarian Mongols from their Khalkh homeland, Zanabazar agreed to allow Khalkh Mongolia to become a province of the Qing Empire. Zanabazar's decision to voluntarily surrender his country and his people to Chinese authority (under which they would remain until 1911) is something many Mongolians have still not forgiven him for.
Upon his return to Mongolia, Galdan went to work trying to rebuild his army. While the King had been off battling the Khalkh Mongols and then the Qing, his nephew Tseveenravdan had seized the Zuungarian throne and claimed vast stretches of Zuungaria as his own. Galdan spent the next few years in western locales such as Hovd City and Ulaangom in present-day Uvs aimag, trying to rally military support from Tibet, Russia, and other Mongol people to build his army back to fighting strength. In 1695 Galdan settled in what is now Tuv aimag.
The Qing Emperor, armed with the knowledge that Khalkh Mongolia would become his if he could wrest it from Galdan sent three separate armies totalling 73,000 men in pursuit of the Zuungarian King. The Qing army crossed the Gobi Desert, and on June 12, 1696 they clashed with Galdan's army in Khalkh Mongolia at a site called Zuunmod (this may or may not be the same town of Zuunmod that is the present-day capital of Tuv aimag) near the Terelj River. Galdan and his 5,000 troops were surrounded by the overwhelming Qing force, and the cannon fire proved to be too much for Galdan and his men this time. Most of his troops and his wife Queen Anu (Anu was one of Mongolia's warrior queens, like Batmunkh's Queen Mandalkhai before her, she took to the battlefield and fought alongside the men) would perish in this battle. With only 40 or 50 troops remaining, Galdan managed to excape and fled into present-day Govi Altai aimag in western Mongolia. Holed up with about 300 soldiers, Galdan's meager force hardly posed a threat to the Emperor anymore, but Kangxi refused to leave the job undone. In the Spring of 1697 he dispatched two more armies to find Galdan, and personally accompanied one of the armies.
The saga came to an abrupt end on April 4, 1967 when Galdan suddenly died under cloudy circumstances. One well-known explanation of his death is that he drank poisoned vodka in order to avoid capture, though some say his years of studying as a Buddhist lama might have forbidden this; others, including Kangxi himself, believed he may have been poisoned by his advisors for refusing their advice to surrender. Deprived of the pleasure of being the one to bring his old enemy down, Kangxi demanded the ashes of Galdan's body, which had reportedly been cremated by his followers. According to Chinese accounts, Galdan's ashes were spread across a military parade ground in Beijing, though according to oral Mongolian traditions Galdan was buried when he died, in a place marked by a pile of stones (or "ovoo" in Mongolian) in Govi Altai aimag.
After his death in 1697 his nephew, the usurping Tseveenravdan (the son of Senge) would officially succeed him on the Zuungarian throne, and the Qing would make themselves a fixture in Khalkh Mongolia until 1911. The Zuungars would live in freedom for about another 60 years, but in 1757 it would be their turn to fall to the Qing. A statue honoring King Galdan Boshogt stands in the main square of Hovd city. He stands in his armor with his sword at his side. A quote of his that is most remembered is roughly translated as
"I will not give up any piece of my homeland, even if it is God who requests it."
This page would not have been possible without the information posted on Don Croner's website, enormous chunks of this page have been paraphrased from his work. Please visit his site for further reading, as it is an outstanding resource for information on Mongolian history, and he goes well beyond the details that I present here.
