The Ming army inflicted heavy losses on the Tatar Department and swept through the military prestige of the Mobei for 3,000 miles, which deeply shocked the Warat Department and the Uliangha Department.

With a series of moves by the Ming Dynasty, the geopolitical situation on the northern border of the Ming Dynasty has also begun to undergo drastic and far-reaching changes.

Outside the Sai, the Ming Dynasty established the jurisdiction of the Tatar tribes to move the difficult river guard, and in the southernmost part of the Hai R River set up the Hai Er Thousand Households, restored the old city of Yiji Nai, Zhen Fanwei and other guards and walled forts, with Kaiping Wei as the core, built a buffer zone in the south of the country, greatly expanded the strategic space of the Ming Dynasty, so that Beijing is no longer directly exposed to the Mongols' attack range.

At the same time, at the end of the second year of Yongle, the Warat tribes jointly sent envoys to Beijing to ask for the canonization of the Yongle Emperor.

The Ming court named Wara Mahamu, Taiping and Bald Polo as kings, and Mahamu as the golden purple Guanglu doctor and Shunning king; Taiping is the golden purple Guanglu doctor and the virtuous king; Treat Bald Polo as the Golden Purple Guanglu Doctor and the King of Anle.

Implicit here is Zhu Di's considerable political considerations, and many people may not know the difference between the Tatar and Warat tribes, thinking that they are both Mongols, but in fact, the origins of the two are completely different.

The word "Tatar" is not the self-name of these people who inherited the legal system of the Northern Yuan, but was given to each other by the Ming Dynasty in the official caliber, referring to "the Han Mongols and Mongols of Monan Mo who fled from Dadu with Emperor Shun of Yuan and migrated all the way north", for the Tatars themselves, they still call themselves Yuan people, and are regarded as Yuan orthodoxy because their Great Khan is a descendant of the Yuan family.

And the meaning of this wordplay of the Ming Dynasty is not difficult to guess, in order to clearly indicate that the Yuan Dynasty, which inherited the Mongol Empire, has perished, since this is the case, then these people have naturally become barbarians, become savages, and lose the orthodox legal appeal to the Central Plains.

In other words, the Tatars are actually composed of two parts, one is the Han Mongols and a small number of Han people who ran away with Emperor Yuan Shun, and the other part is the Mongols who graze in Monan and were absorbed by the Northern Yuan.

Before the 13th century, this tribal alliance originally lived in the vast forest area along the upper reaches of the Yenisei River, and during the Jin Dynasty, the people of the Hyela moved west to the area of the Delleger River (now the Mulun River), a tributary of the Selenga River, to the area of the Sishside River in the upper reaches of the Huakemu River.

In the second year of Genghis Khan's claim to be Khan, the Yiyi tribe took the initiative to submit to Genghis Khan, became an early shareholder of the Mongol Empire, and helped it to subdue more than ten eastern forest tribes, which was appreciated and rewarded by Genghis Khan.

In Jiang Xinghuo's previous life, when it came to the Qing Dynasty, the Warat tribe evolved into the Weitra Mongols, which is more famous, because the Oirat Mongols are composed of four major tribes, namely Dzungar, Dulbert, Heshute, and Turgot. These are all well-known historical terms.

However, it is now the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, and Warat is still entrenched in the west of the desert, and has no dealings with the Ming Dynasty, nor any grievances.

There is a grudge with the Ming Dynasty is the Northern Yuan that has a great lack of great virtue in the past, and the Tatar Department inherited the main body of the Northern Yuan, including its army, that is, the descendants of the Taishi Arutai, so the Ming Dynasty for these Mongolian tribal alliances, the most hateful and the most want to do, is the Tatar Department, if the Ming Dynasty does not concentrate on the Tatar Department first, then as long as Timur's expeditionary army arrives, the Tatar Department will definitely be dispatched, and more than 100,000 people who control the strings will go south to herd horses and approach the old capital.

And the Warat Department has been in their Moxi territory for hundreds of years without moving their nests, and if there is no particularly big geopolitical environment change, they will not come to fight the Ming Dynasty. The reason is very simple, now the Tatar Department can directly hit Beijing when it goes south, but the Warat Department goes south, facing them is Gansu and Ningxia, where the Ming Dynasty only has tens of thousands of people guarding the city and fortress, basically all military households, not only can not grab anything, but also easy to gnaw teeth to break down, it is completely a deal that outweighs the loss.

As for why Warat and Daming later fought the Battle of Tumubao along the "Datong-Xuanfu-Beijing" line, it was because Zhu Di beat the Tatars too hard, and the Tatars completely declined.

I have to mention one thing here, that is, in Jiang Xinghuo's previous life, after Zhu Di died, how did the successors Zhu Gaochi and Zhu Zhanji deal with external problems.

In addition to abandoning Annam, abandoning the Nanyang strategy such as the Old Port Propaganda Division, ignoring the Luchuan Propaganda of the Three Propaganda and Six Comforts, Si Renfa's invasion of Nandian, Tengchong and other places, which led to the expansion of the later Burmese Dynasty, and the abandonment of the strategic space in the northern part of Kaipingwei so that the nomads could directly hit Beijing, and other operations that caused brain hemorrhage, the tacit approval of the Tatar Department to occupy the southern foot of Yinshan Mountain also buried bitter results.

Arutai, the master of escape, is famous for his ability, Zhu Di failed to kill him in five northern expeditions, and later saw that the Warat Department was getting bigger, Zhu Di turned to support Arutai to fight against Warat, and Arutai was beaten too hard by Zhu Di to fight against Warat, so in the Xuande Dynasty, Arutai ran again.

Mobei can't stay, Monan can't stay either, Arutai directly ran to the blank space between the old land of Wara and the border of the Ming Dynasty, that is, the southern foot of Yinshan, for the southward movement of Arutai, Zhu Zhanji out of the consideration of "razing to control raze", acquiesced in the fact that the Tatar remnants occupied the southern Xinjiang of Yinshan, thus prompting the political boundary between the Ming Dynasty and Mongolia to be clear, and under the pressure of the Waspur Department and the Wuliang Ha Department, the Tatar remnants went west along the Daqing Mountain, Wula Mountain, and Wolf Mountain to the outside of Gansu, thus completely opening up the Yinshan Frontier. It will be transformed into a "Yinshan Corridor" where Mongolian ministries can travel smoothly.

However, the area vacated by the Tatars after the Arutairun was taken advantage of the situation by the Warat tribe to advance eastward, encroaching on most of the territory and population of the Tatar tribe, so there was an ambition to follow the southward movement of the Mongol Empire.

The fate of Mingbao Sect is a cause and effect of his father Zhu Zhanji.

To be honest, I didn't think it was like anything before, but now the more I look at the map of the Ming Dynasty, the more Jiang Xinghuo in Nanjing doesn't want Zhu Gaochi to be the emperor anyway.

Mobei, give up!

Mo Nan, give up!

Yin Shan, give up!

Annan, give up!

Nanyang, give up!

Luchuan, give up!

Is this something that people can do?

The actual control or restraint of these areas was obtained by the hard work of the Hongwu and Yongle dynasties for more than 50 years, and the Renxuan and two dynasties were only ten years old, and the great strategic contraction was all abandoned.

- The cub sells Ye Tian and is not distressed.

Fighting a war is paid by the gentry, and not fighting is to be able to rest with the people, theoretically, these things in the distant frontier seem to have nothing to do with the gentry in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, but for the Ming Dynasty and Huaxia, it is very related.

Losing these strategic spaces, just like a person's stomach without the protection of fat, in the past, when someone punched it, the fat could still cushion the top, but now it directly hits the beautiful and hard abdominal muscles, and if the abdominal muscles can't be blocked, then the internal organs will be directly injured.

Countless subsequent interracial invasions have proved that Da Ming's abdominal muscles are really not hard enough.

On the other hand, the later Ming Baozong, although he was vegetable and stupid, but the young man was vigorous or strong, or the head iron, the courage of the Baozong in foreign strategy was better than that of his father, and there was little mention of the battle of Baozong to conquer Luchuan in history, but it was this battle that stopped the southwest frontier for decades.

Speaking of the present, at this time, the Warat Department was not only not unified, but also in a three-legged equilibrium state, ruled by Mahamu, Taiping and the three great feudal lords of Valat, so the Ming Dynasty wanted to canonize the three kings.

The Warat people were weak at this time, and had no contact with Timur, so they saw the Ming Dynasty sweeping through Mobei, and were bluffed for a while, and the Ming Dynasty was also happy that Warat could keep to himself, so he gave a very rich reward to the Warat people, and Warat was overjoyed for a while, and entered the tribute sequence of the Ming Dynasty.

And in the westernmost part, considering that the Ming Dynasty is likely to break out in the next one to two years, a war with the Timurid Khanate, so Zhu Di will be a special member of the Zhongyi Guard, that is, the descendant of the King of Anding, Tokhtok canonized as the King of Zhongshun, went to Hami to establish the Hami Guard, and recovered the local Vultures and Mongols, as the outpost intelligence station of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Di in addition to allocating a part of the soldiers and horses to accompany the guards, but also gave him a civil and military team, with the Vultures Maha as the commander, Gu Sicheng, Ha Ma Ma as the experience, Zhou An is a long history, and Liu Xing is a good person.

Hamiwei is located in the throat of the Western Regions, inhabited by Mongolian, Wuer, Kazakh and many other ethnic groups, the tribal leaders around Hamiwei are basically related to the Chagatai Khanate in blood, is the descendant of Genghis Khan's son Chagatai, and with the establishment of Hamiwei, the Ming Dynasty also established a number of guards, namely Chijin Mongolian Guard, Handong Wei, Handong Zuowei, Andingwei, Qu Xianwei, Arui Wei and so on, respectively, ruled by their tribal leaders.

Zhu Di didn't expect these people to be able to block Timur's troops, but it would be good if they could play a role in intelligence.

The first northern expedition hit the Tatar department in the middle, shocked the Warat department in the west, and the Uliangha department in the east naturally had feedback.

When the returning Ming army intentionally or unintentionally went around from the east, there was no natural danger to rely on, and the nomadic pasture was still given by the Ming Dynasty to the Wuliangha people said that as the loyal Duoyan Sanwei of the Ming Dynasty, the emperor's will is the direction we are heading.

Zhu Di didn't play with these people, in addition to rewards, he also asked for two things for the Wuliangha people.

The first thing is the new Nuer Gandu Division, and Duoyan Sanwei is under its management.

In the past Hongwu Dynasty, the Ming Dynasty had set up more than 130 guards in the vast area of the Songhua River, Heilongjiang River and Ussuri River basins in later generations through the policy of restraint.

These guards basically appointed tribal chiefs to serve as Ming officials to rule their tribes, similar to the Tusi in the south, and as these guards were set up more and more, the establishment of a unified and higher administrative body became an inevitable choice for the Ming Dynasty.

In the third year of Yongle, under the advice of the local chieftain of Nuergan, Khura Dongnu, who came to pay tribute, the Ming Dynasty decided to set up the Nuergan Command Department at the site of the Marshal's Mansion of the Yuan Dynasty's Eastern Expedition, that is, the Nuer Gandu Division, which was similar in nature to the Liaodong Division, mainly military and political, and managed civil affairs by the way, nominally subordinate to the Ministry of War, and actually reported directly to the emperor.

The Nurgandus's area of management extends from the Yuma River in the west, to the vast sea in the east, to the Mobei Snow Plains in the north (theoretically it can reach the Arctic Ocean directly, but further north it is uninhabited), and to the south to the Tumen River, which borders the Liaodong Dusi.

The second thing is to use the Jianzhou Jurchens as a reason for their rebelliousness, and issue a headhunting bounty to drive the Jurchen tribes to vendetta, and also move part of the Duoyan Sanwei to the east and join the headhunting sequence.

After repeated correspondence, Zhu Di and Jiang Xinghuo finally determined the strategy that the Jurchen would be far more harmful than North Korea in the future, and that would be the case with a country like North Korea for another three hundred years, so the Jurchens, a strategic buffer zone originally used to prevent North Korea's westward advance, needed to be abandoned, first stirring up contradictions within the Jurchens and between the Jurchens and the Uliangha, and then gradually immigrating to Liaodong, expanding the actual control area of the Ming Dynasty, and pushing the actual control area eastward to at least the Yalu River.

According to this plan, the Ming Dynasty needed to emigrate at least 50,000 to more than 100,000 households to Liaodong to achieve actual control.

Of course, the current Ming Dynasty does not have this population condition, after the battle of Jingyan, the population of the north withered, and it is in urgent need of replenishment, even if it is an immigration, it is Henan, Shandong, and North Zhili are preferred, and it is not the turn of Liaodong.

But people have to look at the long term, if they can't do it now, it doesn't mean that they can't do it in the future, now there are fewer people and more land, and there will definitely be more people and less land in the future, so the territory must be occupied first, and things will be done slowly in the future.

The impact of the First Northern Expedition on the geopolitical situation in the North was enormous, like dropping a bomb in a stinky ditch that had stopped flowing.

The Hamiwei and Warat tribes in the west, the Tatar tribes in the middle, the Wuliang Habu and the Jurchens in the east, and even the Korean state, were all frightened by this battle and accelerated the pace of opening up trade, and Li Fangyuan was afraid that Zhu Di would destroy him with soldiers and horses.

At this time, the Ming Dynasty has gradually awakened to the concept of foreign expansion, and on the map, the border starts from Hamiwei in the west, reaches the east side of Nuer Gandu Division in the east, starts from Hewei in the north, and reaches the political envoy of Jiaozhi in the south.

There is no greater power than this.

At the same time, in the third year of Yongle, another large country in the world is eyeing Daming.

——————

"In the vast steppes of Central Asia, the Timurid Khanate was like a awakened lion, shaking its strong muscles, ready to challenge the Ming Empire in the East.

The army of Timur Khan, like a storm on the steppe, swept through the yellow sand and the spirit of war, marching towards the east.

At the head of the procession was a mighty cavalry, clad in iron armor and spear-wielding, with a thirst for war and glory in their eyes, the steppes trembling wherever their horses' hooves tread, and behind them were countless infantry and camel caravans, carrying heavy, dismantled siege equipment and forage, ready for a long expedition.

With the order of Timur Khan, the army rushed towards the border of the Ming Empire like a wild horse, they crossed the desolate Gobi Desert, crossed the steep mountains and snowfields, no matter what difficulties they encountered, they could not stop their progress, they had only one goal in mind, that is, the rich land in the east. ”

The Spanish envoy to Samarkand, Claviyo, put down his quill and was convinced that these records of his codex would become an important historical source for the future.

As the main writing instrument of the Western world in the history of thousands of years from the 6th century to the 19th century, the quill is the first choice of Westerners, because it is highly compatible with parchment and kraft paper, but Claviyo looks very uncomfortable looking at the brushes on the table, these brushes look much thicker than his own quill pens, and the light quill pens are not as good as these brushes in the writing process, if the writing object is ordinary paper.

"Fu, do Orientals really use wolf and rabbit quill pens?"

"It's called wolf hair, rabbit hair."

At Claviyo's side, a man dressed in a shabby but clean-washed Ming official robe replied earnestly.

Both sides use Persian.

Paradoxically, Claviyo's Persian is not good, and the man in the official robe of the Ming Dynasty speaks quite authentically.

In addition to various professions such as nobles, military officers, civil officials, soldiers, merchants, and people, Timur's expeditionary army also had a group of people, that is, diplomatic envoys.

Claviyo, whose full name was Ro Gozerez Claviyo, was a court minister, diplomatic envoy, traveler, and writer of the Kingdom of Castile in Spain, who had made a pilgrimage to Timur in Samarkand a few years earlier.

And next to him is called "Fu" Ming officials, the full name is called Fu An, the word Zhidao, Kaifeng Prefecture Taikang County, Hongwu Dynasty first county officials, successively served as the general of the Siyi Pavilion, Sheren, Honglu Temple prelude, Hongwu 27 years to serve in the military department, Hongwu 28 years to change the service to the matter, and then was sent to the Western Regions, to Samarkand to Timur to reward seals, coins and silks.

He was chosen as an envoy for a large part because he had served in the Siyi Pavilion and was a diligent learner who mastered many foreign languages, including Persian, which is the most widely spoken language in Central Asia.

The establishment of the Siyi Pavilion was because of the tribute of the Siyi and the incomprehensibility of language and writing, so Zhu Yuanzhang ordered the Ministry of Rites to select 38 people including Jiang Li, the supervisor of the country, to be affiliated with the Hanlin Academy, to learn to translate books, translate the words made, and be allowed to be born after qualifying.

And the place where Ming officials and supervisors are taught Persian is the following Huiguan, and the teachers are all authentic people left by the Yuan Dynasty, so it is not surprising that Fu An's Persian words are correct and round.

And it was precisely because of the barrier-free communication between the two sides that Timur's attitude was beyond Fu An's expectations, and Timur was different from what he learned in Honglu Temple, he no longer treated the Ming Dynasty with respect, but detained Fu An with a rude attitude, and escorted Fu An and his delegation to visit the huge territory of the Timurid Khanate, in order to show off the breadth of his territory and the prosperity of the country, and after completing the visit that lasted several years, he forced Fu An to follow the army to the east.

At first, Fu An did not understand what Timur did in great contrast, because in the twenty-seventh year of Hongwu, when Timur Khanate came to Nanjing to pay tribute, his attitude was extremely deferential, not only paid tribute to 200 sweat and blood horses (these excellent war horses produced by the Ming Dynasty were quite sincere for the Ming Dynasty), but also the above table was even more humble, full of flattery to the Ming and Zhu Yuanzhang himself.

"Gong Wei Ming Emperor was ordered by the heavens to unify the four seas, benevolence and virtue, grace and support, and all countries admired. Xianzhi wants to rule the world peacefully, and the emperor is specially appointed to be the lord of billions of trillions. The light is vast, like a mirror in the sky, there is no distance or near, and the salt shines on it. The minister Timur was thousands of miles away, and he heard of the generosity of the saints, beyond all eternity. All businessmen who come to China will make the capitals and cities rich and majestic, such as out of the darkness, suddenly see the sun, how fortunate they are! He also undertook the letter of grace and soothed the labor, so that the stations and posts were connected, the roads were not strong, and the people from distant countries could get their help. Admiring the Sacred Heart, like a cup shining on the world, makes the minister's heart suddenly bright. The tribes in the vassal country, hearing the sound of Zde, dancing and wearing. There is no way to repay the favor, but to look up to the heavens to bless the holy longevity and blessings, just as the heavens and the earth are eternal and endless. ”

There are a lot of Fanbang countries that can be licked, but most of them have no culture, and they can lick such a heartfelt country that does not leave traces of horses, except for North Korea, the Timurid Khanate is the only one, so Zhu Yuanzhang is also very happy to send Fu An to the Timurid Khanate to reward Timur.

Unfortunately, what Zhu Yuanzhang didn't know was that the reason why Timur was so obedient and sent envoys to the Ming Dynasty so frequently was to prepare sufficient information for future expeditions.

Timur never fought unprepared battles, for this unprecedented scale of expeditions, in addition to constantly through marriage to win over the Western Regions and the Eastern Chagatai Khanate (don't lose Bali) nobles, but also patiently carried out intelligence collection, after more than ten years of continuous intelligence reconnaissance, Timur of the Western Regions and the Ming Dynasty terrain, the general deployment of troops has been well understood, and in the second year of Jianwen, when the Ming was busy fighting the civil war, Timur's grandson Iskandar launched a small-scale tentative war against the Western Regions, Captured Khotan and other places, and advanced all the way to the middle reaches of the Tarim River.

In this way, in the west of Khotan, how to march, how to get water, the Timurid Khanate has been thoroughly mastered, and for the east of Khotan, Timur is also very clear, he already has an extremely detailed military map, according to the best route he chooses, the cavalry of the Timurid Empire from Khotan, can follow the Hexi corridor all the way to Longxi, as long as he crosses the Longshan, then he can follow the Uighurs, Tubo stories, troops under the city of Xi'an, and occupy Guanzhong, which means that he has a stable foothold in the Ming Dynasty.

Then Timur could use Guanzhong as a base, first consolidate Shaanxi, Gansu, and Ningxia, and then wait for reinforcements from the rear to arrive, and after a year or two of stability, he left Tongguan to plot the Central Plains. And if the remnants of the Northern Yuan were willing to cooperate, then they could drive eastward along the Yellow River, cut off the Grand Canal, besiege Beijing with the Northern Yuan, and take Shanxi and Hebei into their pockets. This is a variant replica of Muhua Li's destruction of gold back then.

As for the Jianghuai Valley, Timur knew very well that his cavalry was not suitable for large-scale deployment there, and the Song Dynasty relied on the linkage of the three theaters of Sichuan-Shu-Jinghu-Lianghuai to resist the Mongols for decades without being destroyed.

However, considering the problem of supply and water sources, even if all the water sources have been marked in detail on the map, it is still not enough to support a large-scale expeditionary force to get water, so the first group of expeditionary forces led by Timur himself was 200,000 elite soldiers.

This was nothing at all for the expeditions of the Timurid Khanate.

You must know that the expedition to Ottoman Turkey was at the same distance as the expedition to the Ming Dynasty, and the Timurid Khanate used 500,000 troops to capture the Ottoman Turkish Sultan Bayezid in the Battle of Ankara.

The Delhi Sultanate of North India, which was closer to the south, and the Timurid Khanate dispatched a terrifying army of 800,000 troops, including the people and the servant armies of various countries.

"Can you tell me about this expedition?" Although Fu An was under house arrest and had not obtained news from the Ming Dynasty for many years, no matter how Timur coerced and enticed, Fu An did not give in, but took his few remaining envoys to listen to all kinds of news from the Timurid Khanate, trying to send it back to the Ming Dynasty.

"Fu, I often hear you mention the story of Su (Su Wu), I admire it, but although I have never been to the Ming Empire, it is an obvious fact that no one in this world is Timur's opponent."

Claviyo shrugged his shoulders and said helplessly to Fu An.

"Let's talk."

Fu An insisted.

Claviyo's blue eyes turned, and he said slyly: "Equivalent exchange, I am also very interested in the Eastern Ming Empire, I will record your news in the codex, this will be our family's priceless treasure, since Marco Polo, there are few Eastern customs that we know." ”

"Tell me what you know first."

"Well, you're really a person who doesn't want to suffer."

Claviyo pulled out a very sketchy map from his codex and gave Fu an account of the situation in the West.

"Fu, there is no unified big empire in our west, in fact, you may not imagine it when you say it, for us, the Ottoman Turkish Empire is already an invincible opponent. A few years earlier, the horrific cavalry of the Ottoman Turks had inflicted a heavy blow on the combined forces of the Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the French, which were considered to be the best armies of our time in the West, were made up of powerful knights from all over the world, and there were no peasants with pitchforks. ”

Fu An listened while looking at the map seriously.

The Holy Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, France, these countries can all be clearly found on the map, perhaps in the Ming Dynasty, which is the size of a political envoy, but for this kind of barbarian land, it is already a "big country".

"And where is your country?"

Claviyo held his forehead and nodded to the southwest corner of the map, Spain on the Iberian Peninsula.

"Oh."

After Fu An's soul crit blow, he concluded: "So the coalition of the three most powerful countries you have still can't defeat the Ottoman Turkish Empire, and the Ottoman Turkish Empire was defeated by the Timurid Khanate in a head-on decisive battle (Battle of Ankara), and the emperor was captured by Timur. ”

In fact, the thousand-year-old capital of Bursa, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, also fell, and a few Turks were able to cross the Dardanelles with the help of Greek seafarers and escape being slaughtered.

The irony is that this is what the West wants to do at this time.

In Christendom, Ottoman Turkey has three major rivals, namely Hungary, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire, among them, the most confidant is the Kingdom of Hungary, the king of the Kingdom of Hungary Sigismund in order to deal with the threat of Ottoman Turkey, lobbying the entire Christian world, and planning the last "Crusades" in the history of Christianity, at this time, the Hundred Years' War between Britain and France temporarily stopped, and there was no war within the Holy Roman Empire, So Sigismund's plea was widely responded to in the various feudal states of Europe, and the elite of the knightly class in Europe gathered for the last time to launch an expedition. Their goal was Ottoman Turkey, to drive them out of the Balkans once and for all.

Unfortunately, the claim of "God's protection" ended in a defeat with heavy casualties, and Bayezid defeated 100,000 European crusaders in the Balkans and captured more than 10,000 knights, but soon the emperor of the Ottoman Turkish Empire, known as the "King of Light", fell to Timur's army.

"As you heard."

Kraviyo humorously pointed to the heavens and said, "Even God feared Timur. ”

This time it was Claviyo's turn to ask.

"Then Fu, why do you think Timur started a war against the Ming Dynasty?"

Kraviyo was somewhat incomprehensible: "The Ottoman Turkish Empire was not an opponent of Timur, the Mamluks were not an opponent of Timur, Baghdad, Damascus, Delhi. These famous cities were slaughtered by Timur, he could have continued to the west, to achieve the unfinished great business of the Mongols, to the westernmost part of the sea, our countries are powerless to resist, why did he suddenly withdraw his troops back to Samarkand, and prepare for this huge expedition? ”

From the perspective of Westerners, it is difficult for them to understand Timur's behavior of seeking the near and far, because in terms of benefits and convenience, it seems to make no sense at all.

But it is not difficult for Orientals to understand, because this also involves "legal system".

Fu An was silent for a moment and replied, "He wants to be the second Genghis Khan and become the Great Khan of all Mongolia." ”

"Genghis Khan? I know, it's a name that can't be avoided. ”

"The Great Mongol Empire established by Genghis Khan and his descendants was divided into four khanates, before Timur, the Ögedai Khanate was destroyed, and the remaining three khanates, namely the Chagatai Khanate, the Ilkhanate, and the Golden Horde, were all subjugated to Timur's feet at this time, according to what you said, even the Egyptian Mamluk cavalry, which defeated the Mongol army hundreds of years ago, could only flee in disarray in front of Timur. Then you look at the world, what is missing when Timur re-formed the second Great Mongol Empire? ”

"Dayuan! The Great Yuan that Marco Polo has arrived! ”

"I think this is Timur's answer, and now there is no more Dayuan, some of them you should have seen in the Ming Dynasty, and the city of Samarkand is full of three circles of signs arranged in an inverted zigzag, according to the locals, this symbolizes that Timur Khan has conquered three-quarters of the known world."

In fact, Fu An's observation of Timur showed that this conjecture was not wrong.

During the expedition, Timur heard the news of Zhu Yuanzhang's death and Zhu Yunwen's succession.

Subsequently, Timur heard that "Zhu Di, King of Yan", the fourth son of Zhu Yuanzhang and the most talented feudal lord with the greatest war talent, who was highly valued in Timur's intelligence, led his border army mixed with Mongols and Han Chinese, and began his rebellion against the new emperor.

Later, on almost the same day as the Battle of Ankara, Zhu Di's rebels broke through the capital of the Ming Dynasty, Zhu Yunwen disappeared, and the news spread to West Asia, and Timur immediately decided to let go of his defeated Ottoman Turkish Empire and the Mamluk dynasty of Egypt, and return to Samarkand to prepare for his expedition against the Ming Dynasty.

Not only did the Ottoman Turkish Empire not dare to pursue, but the Mamluk dynasty, which occupied Egypt and Syria and was a standard military aristocracy, abolished the legitimate dynasty and sent their own generals to the throne of Cairo in what was about the Egyptian version of "checking as the Son of Heaven", but without "a glass of wine to release the military power".

And the reason why Timur was so magnanimous was because he believed that only by conquering Mongolia and the Ming Dynasty could he rightfully become the Great Khan of all Mongolia and become the second Genghis Khan.

Looking at the vast territory of the Timurid Khanate, it seems that none of this is impossible.

At least, Timur's conditions are much stronger than Genghis Khan's.

And the reason why the decision to expedition to the Ming Dynasty was made was precisely related to the result of the Battle of Jingjing.

Timur has a considerable degree of understanding of the Ming Dynasty after more than ten years of intelligence collection, and he himself even speaks some Chinese, from the results of Zhu Di's victory in the Battle of Jingyan, Timur came to his judgment, Zhu Di only occupies a corner of Beiping, and the number of his border troops is not amazing, to fight against the Ming center should not have any hope of victory, but in the end the war dragged on for a long time and even Zhu Di turned the tables successfully, which itself shows that after Zhu Yuanzhang's purges in his later years, The Ming army had lost the amazing combat effectiveness it had shown against the Yuan Dynasty, and after the Battle of Jingjing, the Ming army was bound to lose both.

In terms of the size and combat effectiveness of the standing army, Timur believed that he already had a considerable advantage, and this advantage combined with detailed intelligence and careful planning would give him all the necessary foundation for the expedition to the Ming Dynasty.

Fu An then asked Claviyo a question that didn't seem that important.

"What do you know about Bayezid, the emperor of the Ottoman Turkish Empire? He should be your main enemy. ”

"Frankly, although this emperor was in the same army as a prisoner, I don't know much about him, because the word 'we' is not accurate, it is too general, the Kingdom of Spain is not very closely connected with France, even the Holy Roman Empire and the Byzantine Empire, and because of the distance between the countries, the Ottoman Turkish Empire is hardly any real threat to the Kingdom of Spain."

After a pause, Kraviyo continued: "My knowledge of the details of the battle of Ankara, as well as my knowledge of Bayezid, first came from a trip from Spain to the Timurid Khanate, when we came down the Euphrates River from the Caucasus to the city of Sivas. Beneath the snow-capped mountains, with green pastures, this is a beautiful city, where there are many Armenians and Georgians, many of them Christians, and in a place that serves as both a post station and a church, they told me about the battle of Ankara, and the Ottoman Turks fought quite stubbornly. ”

"Is Christianity so widespread?" Fu An showed considerable curiosity about this religion, which was different from Buddhism and Taoism.

"Of course."

Claviyo thought for a moment and said, "Didn't Tianzhu's Buddhism also spread across mountains and seas to China?" But from the city of Sivas and further southeast, to Tabriz, southeast of the foothills of the Caucasus, there are only a small number of Christians, which is the easternmost point of the current spread of Christianity. ”

Claviyo showed a complicated expression: "Fu, do you know? In the heart of Tabriz, with its bones of the rebels massacred by Timur, beautiful flower beds and clean aqueducts, it was a twisted capital that came to Termez, with its well-tended rose gardens, historic Central Asian wines, and cotton fields bathed in the sun, and Samarkand, which was truly the center of the world, where Turks, Persians, Syrians, Armenians, Greeks, and Indians all gathered. And then it was the day we met. ”

Fu An didn't really want to recall, in short, he had not been summoned by Timur for a long time, he was insulted, and learned the latest news of the Ming Dynasty - Zhu Di, the king of Yan, had ascended the throne through rebellion.

Sitting on a throne covered with silk and bedding, wearing a white felt hat decorated with precious stones, Timur openly declared that Zhu Di was the "Pig Khan" in front of the Mamluk ambassadors from Egypt, the Golden Horde envoys from the north to the south, the envoys of the Delhi Sultanate from the north from India, and the representatives of the subject states or local lords who were canonized by Timur.

Here, for the first time, Claviyo heard Timur recount his early experiences, including how he started as a declining royal family, plundered caravans with hundreds of cavalry, and was disabled in battle.

Obviously, Fu An did not get the information he wanted.

"If you want to know about this person who is with you"

"Shame on Jingkang."

"Yes, the Ottoman Turkish Emperor, who is about the same shame as your Jingkang, perhaps you can apply to Timur's grandson, and he will be happy to show you about their achievements, and the emperor will be imprisoned in the circus."

(End of chapter)