Mongol Invasion of Java

The Mongol Invasion of Java was launched by the Yuan dynasty under Kublai Khan from January to August 1293, sending a fleet of five hundred to a thousand ships carrying some twenty to thirty thousand soldiers to punish the Javanese kingdom of Kediri for an earlier insult to a Yuan envoy. The expedition initially succeeded in defeating Kediri with the help of Raden Wijaya, a prince of the rival Singhasari lineage, but Raden Wijaya then turned on his Yuan allies, ambushing their forces on May 26 and forcing them to retreat in disarray to their ships before the seasonal monsoon winds needed for the voyage home could pass. The Yuan withdrawal left Raden Wijaya free to found the new kingdom of Majapahit, which rapidly became the dominant power in the Indonesian archipelago; the campaign also proved to be the last major overseas expedition Kublai Khan launched, and it introduced Chinese gunpowder weapons and shipbuilding methods that Javanese shipwrights went on to adapt into their own hybrid jong vessels.