More than half a year has passed, and the earth-shattering waves set off by the defeat of the 150,000 troops of the Russian Empire under the city of Azov have gradually subsided, and although there has been no formal truce between the two sides, the large-scale fighting has ended, and now it is a tug-of-war on the scale of a lieutenant colonel.

On the crucial Ukrainian side, the Crimean Tatar cavalry was at first overwhelmed, chasing the fleeing Golitsyn group. They gave full play to the advantages of the steppe light cavalry, and constantly annihilated the Russian troops who fell behind one after another by outflanking and cutting sieges, until the nominal master of Eastern Ukraine, the Cossack getman Samoilovich, gathered tens of thousands of Cossacks who remained to come to the rescue, which slightly curbed the fierce offensive of the Tatars.

When Golitsyn, the first beautiful man in Moscow, who was in shock, inspected the assembled troops, he found that there were only about 30,000 people, and it is said that he was so sad that he "howled and cried" at that time. Fortunately, the left and right hurriedly comforted, saying that the Tatars were chasing too quickly, and the remaining 100,000 troops might not all be annihilated or captured by the other side, and there must be many scattered men and horses, and it was recommended to immediately send capable officers out to gather the defeated troops to Poltava in order to move forward. Golitsyn accepted his suggestion and immediately sent a number of noble officers with "a sense of honor and shame" to the Ukrainian steppes to collect the rout, lest they all be captured by the Tatars.

In addition, some cronies pointed out to Golitsyn that when the initial defeat under the city of Azov, the 150,000-strong army collapsed, and many troops did not retreat with Golitsyn to eastern Ukraine, but fled along the Don River to the upper reaches of the Don River. Although the Tatars also pursued in that direction, they were not necessarily completely annihilated, and there should still be a considerable number of men and horses that were relatively intact, so one should not be too pessimistic. Golitsyn listened to this and was a little worried, took out a pen and paper and wrote a letter to the officers of the troops who had withdrawn in the direction of the Don River, asking them to obtain supplies in the area, defend on the spot, and wait for the next order.

After doing all this, Golitsyn brewed his emotions again and wrote a earnest letter to Princess Sophia, who was far away in Moscow, intending to make some excuse for this fiasco. Of course, discussing with Princess Sophia how to downplay things is a more crucial matter. You know, the war in Ukraine may be over, but Moscow's "war" has just begun. Even with Princess Sophia's monstrous power, when facing such a fiasco, she was still terrified in her heart. The Russian nation has never been a tolerant nation, they are as ruthless as their enemies and their own people!

According to some unconfirmed information from Moscow, Princess Sophia originally wanted to make her concubine Golitsyn return from an expedition to the Crimea and then take advantage of the situation to be crowned empress herself, in order to replace her incompetent brother and puppet Tsar Ivan V. Sophia thought that Ivan V was still not obedient enough and often contradicted herself, so after being instigated by her cronies, she felt that it was more reliable to ascend the throne and become a female tsar.

And being a female tsar naturally requires capital. Although the current commander-in-chief of the shooting corps, Fyodor Shacrovet, is his loyal eagle dog, but to be honest, he was born as a peasant and did not have complete control over the grasp of the archery corps, and a large number of aristocratic officers in it have quite opinions about him. And this seems to be the main reason why Princess Sophia has not dared to cross the thunder pool over the years and depose Ivan V herself and directly ascend the throne as emperor.

So, you now understand what kind of pressure Princess Sophia will face when the news of the failure of Golitsyn's expedition returns to Moscow, it can be said that Golitsyn has made her miserable this time! But who is to blame for this? It was Sophia who didn't worry about others, and transferred the experienced veteran general Duke Romodanovsky, who had been guarding Ukraine for many years, back to Moscow, and let Golitsyn, a person who didn't understand bullshit, be the commander-in-chief and command an army of 150,000, this is not nonsense!

Golitsyn finally suggested that he be given another chance to organize an expedition. This time, he will certainly not underestimate the enemy, and will humbly listen to the opinions of the officers and generals who are old in the battle formation, and will no longer command indiscriminately. As long as he is given another 100,000 men and sufficient provisions, this time he will definitely find a way to turn the situation around and help the Russian Empire drink the Black Sea and Princess Sophia ascend the throne and become emperor! He believed that Princess Sophia would definitely try her best for the sake of her own future.

Oh well, it seems that before the second expedition to the Crimea, Golitsyn still needs to clean up the mess on the Ukrainian side, and this will undoubtedly fall on Samoilovich. This Eastern Ukrainian Cossack chief, who had sworn allegiance to the Tsar, was undoubtedly a man of great skill. He was not only brave in battle, but also highly tactical, and managed Eastern Ukraine well, and once had the ambition to annex Western Ukraine and re-establish the Ukrainian Cossack Hetmanate.

However, Ukraine is in the midst of four wars, with the Crimean Khanate and the Ottomans to the south, the Russian Empire to the north, and the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to the west. Each of these countries had the idea of occupying the treasure of Ukraine, so the Ukrainian Cossacks kept struggling, but in the end they only did useless work. Since the death of Khmelnitsky, the Cossack hetates were divided into two halves and could no longer be united.

Samoilovich is not without chances. At that time, he was nominally attached to the Russian Tsar, and he once beat the Cossacks of Western Ukraine, and the people defected one after another, and the old opponent Doroshenko admitted defeat. It's just that the window period given to Samoilovich was too short, he didn't seize the opportunity to unify Ukraine, he encountered the Ottomans entering the country, and finally had no choice but to take refuge in the Russians, and the great cause of Ukrainian reunification was shattered.

Of the 150,000 troops led by Golitsyn to besiege the Azov fortress, 50,000 were Cossacks from eastern Ukraine. Originally, it was commanded by Samoilovich himself, but he was a little unwilling in his heart, and finally decided to let his henchmen lead the troops to accompany the Russian army to the south, and as a result, he suffered the largest defeat in history. Fortunately, the Cossacks were clever enough and fast enough to leave the Russian infantry far behind and run back to Eastern Ukraine one step ahead, so the losses were not serious.

After the crushing defeat of Azov, a large number of Crimean Tatar cavalry broke through into Ukraine. They did not conquer cities, but focused only on capturing prisoners and plundering the countryside, so Samoilovich seized the opportunity to regroup his troops and withstand the most ferocious first waves of the Tatar offensive. But Rao so, a large area of southern eastern Ukraine still fell, and the people became slaves to the Tatars. Samoilovich's only plan now is to rely on the advantage of fighting on the inside line, with the help of some remnants of the Russian army, to defeat the Tatars who have been plundered, and hold several key nodes to delay the change.

Crimean Tatars, there has never been any logistical concept of fighting a war. If the time is short, it is better to say, but if the time drags on, I am afraid that the logistics will not be able to supply. This time, if you count from the beginning of the war, they have been fighting abroad for almost a year, and there are still a large number of infantry who are very logistical and can hold on to it until now, and the logistics system has been improved. Now that the Tatar cavalry had dulled their blades, Samoilovich was confident that he would be able to hold on and wait for an opportunity to counterattack, as they had been accustomed to for decades.

While the Crimean Tatars were plundering the territory of Ukraine, the people from the east bank who had gone to the Don River valley to find the Mongols of the Turkut tribe had also returned to the Azov fortress one after another.

Returning with Lieutenant Colonel Mao Jun and others, there were some Mongolian herdsmen from the Dulbert Department, probably more than a thousand tents. Under the repeated persuasion of the people on the east coast, Ayuqi Khan finally felt that this seemed to be a good opportunity to get rid of the pressure of the tsar, so he asked the department of Dulbert to send some shepherds to follow the people on the east bank to the west to see how the situation was.

On the way to the west, they encountered obstruction and interception by the Cossacks who were spying on them, but the easterners stepped forward and repelled a small number of Cossack cavalry with skillful techniques and tactics, which greatly shocked Dulbert's troops. They didn't know that there were muskets in the world with such a long range and such accuracy, and the soldiers could actually shoot calmly in the face of cavalry onslaught, and finally defeat the Cossacks that they found difficult to entangle.

These performances of the people on the east coast undoubtedly greatly strengthened their position in the eyes of the Mongols. After all, in the Great Plain of South Russia, everything still speaks with your fists, and if you have a hard fist, you can get more pasture and breed more cattle and sheep. If your fists are not strong enough, then you can only be bullied. The Oirat Mongols, who migrated westward, were able to live as nomads along the Volga River for three generations, relying on their own strength of more than 70,000 accounts. Otherwise, do you think that the tsar did not want to rule them directly, but simply sent Cossacks to spy on the periphery? Russians are not good men and women! In the last hundred years, there have been fewer Turkized Tatar tribes along the Volga and the Caspian Sea that have been Turkicized by the tsarist government?

A group of six or seven thousand men from both sides drove a large herd of cattle, sheep and horses for two months before they arrived slowly on the shores of Marmara. Here, Dulbert's ministry left a part of the men to see how the North Caucasus, which had been blown up by the East Coasters, was doing and whether it was suitable for their grazing life. The result is quite satisfying! The Mongols found that the precipitation was quite abundant, probably because of its proximity to the sea, much better than in the lower reaches of the Volga, where they were staying. Ayuqi Khan had been anxious about the continued drought in his nomadic lands for the last two years, and had long planned to find new backup pastures with abundant water and grass, but their original plan was to go east, east of the Caspian Sea, but it was not easy for the brave Uzbeks and Kazakhs there, and there might be Cossack interceptions along the way. This time, the people from the east coast took the initiative to come to the door, and gave a lot of gold, silver and property, to be honest, Ayuqi Khan was quite satisfied in his heart, so after bargaining with the people on the east coast several times, and won a lot of favorable conditions, he finally sent more than 1,000 accounts of the Dulbert department to follow Mao Jun's Black Sea detachment to the west, go there to step on the point, and see how the situation is.

Their only fear was whether they would make a comeback after the Russians failed in their southern expedition and Eastern Ukraine and the Don Valley were thrown into a mess. They were not afraid of the Russians, Tatars and other nationalities scattered in the North Caucasus, they had more than 70,000 tents, and when they were desperate, all the adult men went into battle, and they could pull out 100,000 cavalry. With such a overwhelming force, who can resist it in the North Caucasus?

After Mao Jun learned this, he took the initiative to comfort them, saying that everything was fine. He believes that after the defeat of Russia, the whole of South Russia was shaken, the local control was greatly reduced, and various forces began to move on the wind, intending to shake off the shackles imposed on them by the Russian Empire and obtain a freer living space, and it was actually difficult for the tsar to completely calm the situation here in the short term. Not to mention, the Crimean Khanate has spread its influence so deep that it will bear the brunt of the Crimean Tatars' full thrust in the future, even if the main force of the Russian army moves south again.

"In the North Caucasus and the Don Valley, the Russians already ruled unsecurely, and now that we are here, we will completely disrupt the order here, how can the tsar remedy it? You see, those Cossacks, after learning of the defeat of Golitsyn's 150,000-strong army, also began to secretly plunder the place, causing the Russian towns in the Don valley to make chickens and dogs jump. With such a bunch of chickens and dogs, what are you afraid of? These are the original words of Lieutenant Colonel Mao Jun when he comforted the Oirat Mongols.

He also cited the Crimean Khanate as an example, saying that the descendants of these Batu have always maintained a fairly strong level for a hundred years, and the country's population has expanded from a few hundred thousand to more than one million now, and the land area is also very vast, and it has become an armed force that no one can ignore on the northern shore of the Black Sea. And if the Tatars could do it, the Oirat Mongols could do it too! They have more than 70,000 accounts and a population of hundreds of thousands, and if they were to establish a state in the North Caucasus, as long as the people on the east coast regularly provide supplies and weapons, then it may not be possible to create another Crimean Khanate!

I have to say that Mao Jun's words are still very tempting. Although the people of Ayuchi Khan were still an independent force in the Volga Valley, a large number of Russians had emigrated from the surrounding area for decades, and the number of Cossacks who monitored them was increasing day by day, and the general living environment was actually deteriorating. In the future, once there are changes in the country, with the relatively thick national strength of the Russians, it is only a matter of time before they are controlled.

The accompanying Durbot seemed to have been brainwashed by Mao Jun's theories, and subconsciously felt that this made sense. And it just so happens that the environment of the North Caucasus is also good, relying on the sea, the climate is warm and humid, and the local tribes are not successful, so it is not difficult to conquer at all. The most important thing is that the people on the east coast promised to give them a large number of weapons and armor to increase their strength, and this sincerity is even more sufficient, so they began to slowly lean towards the argument of moving to this side.

The efforts of Mao Jun and others for nearly a year seem to have finally achieved some preliminary results, which can be called gratifying.