choke element

Chapter 979: Forced (Part )

When Guo Ning was a soldier in the northern Xinjiang, he and his companions were full of fear of the Mongols. The most important reason for this was that the Mongolian cavalry, with its super mobility, could move forward and backward within a range of thousands of miles, using time and space as their greatest help.

In order to cope with this advantage, Guo Ning put a lot of effort into the collection and transmission of military intelligence. The large number of garrisons, beacon towers and dense roads throughout the northern border consumed huge resources, which was also one of the links.

This has been what the Central Plains regime had to do when confronting the grassland regime since ancient times. This was the case during the Qin and Han dynasties, the Song and Jin dynasties, and the Great Zhou dynasty. However, the basic work of the Great Zhou dynasty was to support the rapid advance of its elite troops and to use its own strengths to challenge the enemy's strengths. This was different from the Qin, Han, Song, and Jin dynasties and was similar to the heyday of the Tang dynasty.

It was a very thoughtful thought, but when it came down to it, it turned out that there was no need to worry about intelligence. In recent years, Mongolian military intelligence did not come through garrisons and beacon towers at all, but directly came with caravans and overt and covert trade routes.

When Dinghai Army started, its main source of income was the fur and horse trade with the Southern Song Dynasty. Horses were fine, as they were a constant need in the south. In recent years, the weather in the south has been bad, and water often freezes in winter. The demand for furs, felts, and the like has also skyrocketed; the quantity is so huge that it far exceeds the scope of what the Northeast can provide.

It’s not that the Great Zhou had to make this money, but the Great Zhou itself was also the place where a large number of commodities from the Southern Song Dynasty were dumped, so it had to come up with enough goods to sell to balance the situation.

Therefore, the Zhou Dynasty had always been a middleman between the Southern Song Dynasty and the Mongolian grasslands. While maintaining military confrontation with Mongolia, it also always encouraged close economic exchanges.

The benefit of this is that for the sake of doing business, the Mongols themselves will bring all kinds of news. There is no need to specifically inquire, the distribution of the tents of the Mongolian tribes, the fatness of the livestock, the number and strength of the troops of each tribe, and the firmness or vacillation of the tribal leaders will all be transmitted to the officials in a timely manner. The situation on the grassland is completely secret to the Great Zhou.

There were also many corresponding troubles. The Mongols were loyal and stubborn. If there was any disturbance in the Great Zhou, there would always be people who would try their best to escape from the Great Zhou and report the situation to the tribal leaders who had ruled them for generations.

Of course, more people did not do so out of loyalty, but out of the most straightforward consideration of interests. For example, this time, many Mongols who made a living in the Great Zhou felt that since the Great Zhou was going to reduce its garrisons in the northern border, the Mongols would surely become great again. So many Mongols who had previously lived happily in the Han area suddenly missed the grassland scenery and yearned for iron hooves and long swords.

The residents of the grasslands have been like this for thousands of years. Following the wind is a necessary skill that has seeped deep into their blood. Even in Zhongdu City, there are people who suddenly want to escape. There are even more people like this along the thousands of miles of northern border.

In just two weeks, more than 300 Mongols fled from the various garrisons and transportation routes. In a newly established felt cloth workshop near Jinshan, Mongolian craftsmen who had just learned the craft of weaving felt cloth joined together and launched a near-riotous escape.

When Lu Wusi was questioned in Zhongdu, he immediately gave the reason of capturing the Mongols who knew the patterns of felt cloth, and this was not nonsense.

However, people in the Central Plains are inevitably a little behind in understanding the current situation on the grassland.

Guo Ning instructed his subordinates to let the Mongols of all origins escape back to the grassland because the more Mongols who escaped, the faster and wider the news of the imminent reduction of the garrison in the northern border of the Great Zhou would spread. This would affect the Mongols who were desperate on the grassland and make them form a fierce force to push the decision of the Golden Family and Genghis Khan. Xu Ding saw this plan and felt that it was an open conspiracy that the Mongols could not deal with.

The first half of this conspiracy went very smoothly. However, after the Mongols fled back to the grassland, the situation they faced was slightly different from what Guo Ning had expected, and the process of achieving the goal was a little more complicated than expected.

Most of the Mongolian tribes that were driven crazy by poverty no longer exist.

Previously, Beilegutai's troops had been defeated in a battle with the elite Zhou army and had to watch the Zhou army retreat safely, taking with them countless Han slaves who had fled from the depths of the grassland along the way.

Beilegutai was furious about this, but he also found a reason to explain his own failure. He immediately reported that the battle was caused by the internal instability of the Mongols, which gave the Han people an opportunity to attack from the north, and also because there were too many traitors who were close to the Han people in the various Mongolian tribes, so they dared not fight and could not win the battle.

This was of course an excuse, but when he led his troops to fight the Zhou army, nearly ten thousand households around the battlefield did not actively support them, and when the Zhou army retreated, many tribes in the eastern part of the grassland just watched from beginning to end. Not to mention chasing, no one even sent troops to harass them...

This was the result of the Great Zhou's financial offensive, and also the result of the Golden Family's orders to the remaining troops gradually becoming insincere after Genghis Khan's westward expedition. This scene was so ugly that it attracted the attention of Genghis Khan himself!
Three months after the war ended, Genghis Khan's envoy arrived and ordered the traitors to be severely punished and the cowards on the battlefield to be killed. The people responsible for the action were the Kangli people, the Boya people, and the high-nosed and deep-eyed Kipchak cavalry.

Two years ago, when a large group of Mongolian cavalry crossed the river and trampled hundreds of thousands of Khwarezmian cavalry into pieces, these foreigners trembled and thought they saw the end of the world. But when they obeyed Genghis Khan's orders and slaughtered people on the Mongolian Plateau, they straightened their backs again and suddenly understood why Genghis Khan became the most terrible conqueror.

Genghis Khan himself was never restricted by region or ethnicity. He established and defined the Yekh Mongol Ulus. What he needed were warriors, and his definition of the Mongols was just warriors who could fight or kill for him.

Those who cannot do so are not Mongols and should be killed without any pity.

Three years later, in the hot summer season, the purge of many unstable tribes in the eastern grasslands broke out again. Teams of cavalrymen who followed Genghis Khan from the Western Regions to the east were rampant on the grasslands. They were reinforced by a small number of Mongolian centurions and decurions, and cooperated with a small number of elite troops from Beilegutai's headquarters to kill people in the name of Genghis Khan.

In several Mongolian tribes, anyone taller than the wheel was completely exterminated, and those who survived were either incorporated into the direct management of the Golden Family or organized into death squads ready to be thrown into the battlefield at any time.

The purge lasted just one month before it was over.

It was not because the Kipchaks were soft-hearted, nor because the Mongols had lost their blood and bravery. It was because the population on the grassland was limited. Since Genghis Khan launched foreign wars, the number of able-bodied men in the pure-blooded indigenous tribes on the grassland had been continuously decreasing.

Many old men and women fought hard, tearing the enemy with their nails until their nails turned up, and biting the enemy with their teeth until their teeth broke. But no matter how hard they fought, they could not defeat the strong and mature warriors.

The Cuman cavalry soon had no more to kill, thus achieving their goal.

At this time, on the grassland controlled by the Golden Family, there was once again no wavering or weakness; the thoughts and actions of all people were only obedience to the Khan; everyone was once again united together by pure violence.
Many Mongols who fled back to the grassland from the Great Zhou saw such a scene soaked in blood again, and then found abandoned corpses in the deep grass, including the elderly, men, women, and children.

The massacres by the Mongolian army were always brutal, and almost every Mongolian had blood on his hands, which toughened their nerves. But what would they do when they saw that all the people in their own tribe were dead?
Isn't it the past when the stars revolved in the grasslands, the countries attacked each other, and the fighting and plundering continued? Haven't the tribes on the grasslands been united as one, vowing to conquer the distant mountains and the foreign lands with thousands of rivers? Why did the result of the conquest become like this?
Many Mongols met their fellow tribesmen along the way, and then returned in groups, and soon ran into the Cuman cavalry who were still suppressing everywhere.

When the two sides collided, the Mongols heard that their tribe had been destroyed. Even though it was just after midsummer and the autumn sun was still shining, they all felt cold all over, as if they were in an ice cave. On the contrary, the Cuman cavalry, on the contrary, were showing off their might and were full of murderous intent.

The two groups started shouting and cursing at each other, then threw dirt and stones at each other, and soon escalated to hand-to-hand combat, with arrows flying everywhere. The two groups were like wild beasts, biting, howling, and rolling over each other. In a blink of an eye, new corpses were bleeding, mixed with the black soil and slightly yellowed grass and trees. Many of the corpses had their eyes wide open, full of unwillingness and panic.

Only a very small number of people were alive. They knelt on the ground, bowing to the foreign race that had been conquered not long ago by their companions but had suddenly become the new nobles of the grassland.

The young Boyawu people Yueli Timur were standing proudly in front of these people.

After his father Tutuha died in a battle with the Zhou army, Yul Timur was recommended by Belgutai. He first inherited the remnants of his father's troops, and later took charge of a group of Cumans and became one of the newly appointed Cuman thousand households.

Young people are quick-witted and have a strong learning ability. Yueli Timur has already mastered Mongolian. He asked curiously, "Are you Mongolians or Han Chinese? Did you come from a Han Chinese country because you don't have a good life there?"

The surviving Mongols lowered their eyes, with strong resentment flashing in their eyes. But they concealed their resentment and said honestly: "The Han country is very rich and the people are gentle. We live very well there. The reason we returned to the grassland is to serve the Khan."

Yuli Timur's father, Tutuha, died in a battle with the Zhou army in the north at the beginning of the year. Yuli Timur had no good feelings towards the Han Chinese kingdom in the south. Upon hearing this, he immediately said "Puh" and cursed: "Who are you kidding! Those Han people are very vicious!"

After a while, he looked at the knights who gathered around him, and thought about how difficult it was to feed these wolves since he became a thousand households. He also thought about how vast this grassland was and how barren it was compared to his hometown.

He then asked: "Perhaps the army is vicious, but the people are gentle? ... You said their country is very rich, how rich is it?"

(End of this chapter)