A Javanese Prince Used Kublai Khan's Army to Win His Throne, Then Ambushed It

In early 1293, the Mongol commander Shi Bi finally got his men ashore on Java. They had sailed for months from China, rolled by storms so rough that, in the words of the History of Yuan, "the soldiers could not eat for many days," with ships wrecked and more than a hundred sick men left behind on an island along the way. They had come to punish a defiant king. They found him already dead.

The dead man was Kertanagara, king of the Javanese kingdom of Singhasari. Four years earlier, Kublai Khan, the Mongol emperor of China and grandson of Chingis Khan, had sent finely dressed envoys to demand that Kertanagara swear loyalty, pay tribute, and send royal hostages to China. Kertanagara defied the demands. According to some later stories, the envoys had their faces marked and their ears sliced off.

This is the story of how his son-in-law turned that insult into an empire. The dispossessed prince, Raden Wijaya, offered his submission to the very fleet sent to punish Java, used it to destroy his local enemy, and then drove it back into the sea. The trick gave birth to Majapahit, a major kingdom in the archipelago, and handed the aging Kublai the last defeat of his reign.

Kublai, in his 70s after failed invasions of Japan, Burma, and Vietnam, desperately needed a win. The History of Yuan says he ordered 20,000 soldiers, 1,000 ships, provisions for a year, and 40,000 bars of silver to sail for Java. The order was blunt, with Kublai telling his commanders to proclaim that Java had, in his words, "cut the face of the imperial envoy" and had to be punished.

But while the fleet was at sea, a vassal named Jayakatwang, the ruler of Kediri in central Java, rebelled. With most of Kertanagara's army away in Sumatra, Jayakatwang sent one loud army with white and red banners through the northern plains and a second, silent army without flags or noise through the southern ravines. Wijaya beat the northern force, then learned the capital had fallen and retreated to the northeast. The southern force had taken the capital while Kertanagara was drunk at a tantric rite, where drinking was a spiritual practice and royal duty. The king was killed.

Jayakatwang bought Wijaya off with a patch of wild rainforest, where Wijaya cleared teak, ebony, and tamarind and founded a settlement named for its bitter wood apples, Majapahit. It was there, with neither side able to win the civil war, that Wijaya sent messengers to Shi Bi with a map of the rivers and ports, an offer of submission, and a plea for help.

Shi Bi saw a clean solution. He would help Wijaya overthrow Jayakatwang and install him as a puppet who would pay tribute to China. The plan worked. Mongol troops attacked from the north and Wijaya's men from the east, and Jayakatwang, confused over which front to guard, was captured and imprisoned. A Persian history says Kublai put Wijaya on the throne with a ceremonial dress of honor in exchange for pearls and gold.

Then Wijaya broke the deal. He asked leave to go home to prepare a formal letter of submission, and Shi Bi let him go with two officers and 200 men. On the road, Wijaya killed his escorts and turned. His men burst from the forest with arrows and darts fired from blowguns, light tubes that shoot small poisoned projectiles, just as the Mongols were packing their ships to catch the seasonal winds before they shifted and stranded them for six months.

More than 3,000 Mongol soldiers died. Shi Bi, cut off from his main force, fought more than 100 miles back to the coast before making a 68 day voyage home. Kublai had him given 17 lashes, seized a third of his property, and ordered plans for a 100,000 man revenge invasion. It never sailed. Kublai died in February 1294 at age 78.

On the 15th day of Kartika, the eighth month of the Hindu calendar, Wijaya took the throne in his bitter little clearing in the forest.