World War II was not the first conflict to touch western Yunnan. In Travels,Marco Polo describes an epic battle that took place there in 1277. According to Polo, the King of Mien, a medieval kingdom in central Burma, refused to pay tribute to Kublai Khan. The Great Khan sent ambassadors in 1271 and 1273, and on the latter occasion, the King of Mien murdered them. Years went by with no reprisals from the Khan, emboldening the King of Mien to invade the state of Kanngai, one of the Khan’s client states along the Irrawaddy River in North Burma. Polo describes the Burmese force as numbering 60,000 men and 2,000 elephants. The Mongols hastily raised a provincial army of 12,000 mounted archers to oppose the invasion. Polo describes the battle as taking place in the Plains of Vochan (Yung Chang). Yung Chang is modern Baoshan. However, most scholars do not believe the King of Mien’s forces crossed the Salween River and made it to the Baoshan Valley. According to Burmese sources, the battle probably took place in the Taping River Valley on the China-Burma border. It is possible that when Polo wrote “the Plains of Vochan,” he meant Vochan the prefecture, not the town specifically. He also names Nasruddin (Nasr al-Din), a Muslim from Bukhara (in modern Uzbekistan) as the leader of the Mongols. This was a mistake. The Mongols had a different captain, though Nasr al-Din took command in 1278, the year Marco Polo passed through, and led the Mongols on an expedition that captured Kaung sin, a Burmese stronghold near Bhamo.
When the Mien force arrived in the “Plains of Vochan,” they found the Mongols already arrayed in order of battle. According to Polo: “The horses of the Tartars took such fright at the sight of the elephants that they could not be got to face the foe, but always swerved and turned back; whilst all the time the king and his forces, and all his elephants, continued to advance upon them.” (205) The Mongol commander dismounted his men had them tie their horses in the forest nearby. On foot they shot volley after volley with their bows at the advancing elephants. A great number of the elephants were wounded or slain and turned tail. “Off they sped with such a noise and uproar that you would have trowed the world was coming to an end! And then too they plunged into the wood and rushed this way and that, dashing their castles against the trees, bursting their harness and smashing and destroying everything that was on them.”
With the elephants wreaking havoc in their own lines, Mongols (Polo uses the term “Tartars”) mounted their horses and charged, engaging the enemy with sword and mace. “Right fiercely did the two hosts rush together, and deadly were the blows exchanged. The king’s troops were far more in number than the Tartars, but they were not of such metal, nor so inured to war; otherwise the Tartars who were so few in number could never have stood against them. Then might you see swashing blows dealt and taken from sword and mace; then might you see knights and horses and men-at-arms go down; then might you see arms and hands and legs and heads hewn off: and besides the dead that fell, many a wounded man, that never rose again, for the sore press there was. The din and uproar were so great from this side and from that, that God might have thundered and no man would have heard it! Great was the medley, and dire and parlous was the fight that was fought on both sides; but the Tartars had the best of it.”
The Battle of Vochan had the effect of stopping the advance of the Mien forces and led to a series of exchanges that saw the King of Mien fall in 1284. His kingdom fragmented and the resulting states became tributaries to the Khan.