Chapter 33 The reform of the Beiya
Li Yinglin's battle basically determined the pattern after that. Even the Second Civil War of the Purple Horde did not give the countries in the northeast more opportunities.
Half a month later, Taiwei Wang Fangzhong led reinforcements to arrive and wiped out the remaining enemies nearby. Wang Fangzhong gathered the captured Polish nobles and nomadic leaders. first praised the Rus in public, and then reprimanded the others. He said that these people were originally guilty of capital crimes, but the Great Khan took pity on talents and was willing to pardon those who surrendered, depending on who was willing.
The Polish aristocracy was very stubborn and resolutely unwilling to surrender. Those nomadic leaders immediately accepted, saying that they had long been devoted to the Khan's court, and they were only forced to participate because they were deceived and coerced by the traitor Boyan. They tried to prove that they had been trying to contact the Khan for a long time, but for various reasons, they were not fully successful.
Wang Fangzhong knew that this was all nonsense, but he didn't refute it on the spot, but kept bowing his head slightly to express his approval. In the end, Wang Taiwei generously said that the people's desire is obvious. This battle was not a challenge for us in Rome, but an opportunity to show its military might. Therefore, since the loyal ministers and brave generals have been identified, there is no need to dwell on these trivial things.
He announced that all those who had surrendered would follow him to meet the Great Khan and confer official positions and titles. As for the Poles, who are unwilling to surrender, they are also admirable warriors. They are not mutineers, they are just their own masters, so they will not be investigated, and they will all be put back.
The crowd praised him for his kindness. The Poles were not very impressed, and felt that the generosity of the infidels must have other plans, but the lieutenant did send the captured Polish nobles and knights out of the camp and let them go. Gradually, they also settled down and began to return the way they came.
However, as they approached a village called Katyn near Smolensk, the Polish contingent was suddenly attacked by the surrounding Rus'. Hundreds of Poles were almost all killed, and only two nobles were in good shape and escaped.
The surviving nobles fled back to Krakow, where they scolded the Rus' for insidious cruelty and demanded that the parliament give themselves a head.
At that time, Casimir III, the first generation of the ruler of Poland, had just died, because he had no male heirs, so he made a will, and after his death, he handed over the kingdom to his nephew, King Lajos of Hungary, so that he could have a strong adult monarch to command the two countries and fight against powerful foreign enemies.
Rajos was also a very capable man, but he was a newcomer and had to make concessions to the nobles.
The Hungarian army was at war with the Purple Horde in Transylvania, and Rajos was ready to take advantage of the instability within the Purple Horde to concentrate his forces to retake territory, drive the enemy out of the Carpathians, and rebuild the defensive line. But in order to take care of the Poles, he could only give priority to political needs, make military concessions, and transfer back the general reserves that he had intended to put into the south, and send them to the southeast, where he accompanied the Poles to beat the Rus'.
The combined Polish-Hungarian forces were in full swing and began to lay siege to Smolensk. Several nearby principalities formed a coalition to resist, only to be routed by the enemy. Desperate, Smolensk hurriedly appealed to the Purple Horde for help, but the Purple Horde reinforcements did not arrive in time, and the weakly defended city was conquered.
The Polish army burned and looted, almost completely destroying the city. The Purple Horde army only rescued a few hundred people who escaped, and the rest of the citizens below the Grand Duke were all killed by the Poles.
The destruction of Smolensk shocked the surrounding Rus', and many southern cities began to seek refuge in the Purple Horde. Wang Fangzhong took advantage of the situation to migrate the population, with veterans of the Southern Ya Army as the backbone, and expanded the military government model to the north of Crimea, on both sides of the Dnieper River. It was also at this time that Kiev invited the Purple Horde army to settle in, and since then it has become one of the three 10,000 garrisons after the reorganization of the Northern Ya Army.
The leaders of the nomadic tribes, when they arrived in Varna, were placed under house arrest. Under the auspices of Prime Minister Yelujian, the Purple Horde took advantage of its recent victory and began to reorganize the provinces between the Dnieper and the Volga. In the name of promotion and reward, the nobles of various ministries were gathered in the capital, the original tribes were dispersed, and the liuguan was sent to supervise them.
Farther away, Jelujian revoked his original surrender to the military state and the guard. He imitated the Han Dynasty system of county states and European customs, granting higher titles to chieftains, but depriving them of actual power. The tribal nobles formed a council, which was chaired by the minister sent by the Khan's court, and granted the nobles the legitimacy of governing the council, and at the same time organized them to manage the day-to-day affairs of the entire tribe.
Yelujian's reform of the various ministries of the Northern Government has been applied to the present. Today, as far as Kazan, the capital of Volga Bulgaria, there are ministers sent by the Purple Horde. Khan and Burke of the Horde have become a kind of honorary title, and even more than one person has it. The actual power was in the hands of the officials sent by the Khanate.
The officials often selected capable minor nobles, and even warlike ordinary herdsmen, to serve as their right-hand men, and through the Khan's court, they were knighted and let them join the noble council, gradually replacing the old nobles and controlling all aspects of the tribe.
Through this system of selection, which resembles inspection, tribal administration has become more formalized, and in relatively developed places such as Kazan and Batu Sarai, a fairly comprehensive local administrative structure has been formed. Although it is not as good as the "local" military government for the time being, it is also very good compared to before.
A few years after the end of the war, the Poles began to suspect the conflict, and some thought that the attack was very suspicious, and that the Purple Horde had instigated the Rus' to do it, otherwise the latter would have been too coincidental.
The purple horde resolutely denied it, and on the contrary suspected that it would not take the Taishi to die suddenly in battle, which was very strange, thinking that Poland and other countries had conspired with traitors in the army to kill him, and threatened to avenge the Taishi.
In the end, everyone failed to come to a conclusion.
Wang Fangzhong himself did not reveal more in his life. Even the Guo family didn't know what role he played at that time.
However, the Greeks in the capital city liked this kind of conspiracy story very much, and they also picked up the matter of the previous military admonition to the Empress Dowager Maria, and found that behind a series of things such as peace and troop transfer, it seemed that the same royal captain was in charge. Someone even wrote a play with him as the main character, which is still popular until now.