Chapter 1225: Let the Dzungars Come In and Fight! (Please Subscribe)

When Zhu Cilang was considering sending his younger brother Zhu Cixuan to India to test Princess Nisha on mathematics and philosophy, Princess Nisha was still in Samarkand in Central Asia, together with her father Aurangzeb!

During this period Aurangzeb was still playing the Great Emperor, and had even declared war on the Dzungar Kingdom — though the declaration of war against the Dzungars had hit a small snag, because the Dzungar Kingdom did not know India's customs: they had neither thrown away the slipper (they did not dare), nor killed the elephant. Instead, they "express-delivered" the slipper to Yingtian, and led the elephant to the lama temple inside the Stone Fort royal city to be raised.

When Shaista Khan went back and reported, Aurangzeb was also baffled — what did this mean? They had taken both the slipper and the elephant, so was this war or not? So he sent people to ask again, and it was not until the summer of 1665 was nearly over that the situation was finally clarified. It turned out the Dzungars had already been stripping the fields and strengthening their walls, preparing to meet the Timurid Empire's attack.

Upon learning this news, Aurangzeb finally breathed a huge sigh of relief.

What he feared least was the Dzungar Kingdom stripping the fields and strengthening its walls — although he also knew that the Dzungars' bastion forts were all very hard to attack, he had never intended to attack them at all!

Sengge defended his cities, and he, Aurangzeb, also defended his cities; you do not move, I do not move — how fine it would be for everyone to fight a sitting war!

So Aurangzeb did not march south to Termez, but instead continued training his army in Samarkand, and waited for the armies of Persia, the Turkmen, and the Khanate of Khiva to arrive.

According to the advance route worked out by Aurangzeb and the envoys of Persia, Khiva, Russia, the Turkmen, and the Kazakhs, the six-party allied army would be divided into a northern route and a southern route. The northern route would be the responsibility of the Russian-Kazakh allied army, and its targets of attack were the Middle Jüz and the Great Jüz.

The southern army was the four-party allied force of the Timurids, Persia, Khiva, and the Turkmen. It would first complete its assembly in the Samarkand oasis, and then after the autumn harvest would march out and push north toward the Syr Darya river valley.

The reason for choosing to march after the autumn harvest was, of course, to gather enough grain from the Samarkand oasis and the Khwarezm oasis to support an army of over a hundred thousand in waging war.

Because the important grain-producing areas of Transoxiana were in the hands of the Dzungar Kingdom, the first difficulty the anti-Dzungar coalition encountered was a shortage of grain.

Although the Khwarezm oasis held by the Khanate of Khiva was very large and could produce a good deal of grain, transporting grain from the Khwarezm oasis to the Samarkand oasis was not easy. It had to go first by the Amu Darya water route, and then overland.

In order to transport the grain smoothly, the shipwrights of the Khanate of Khiva had been busy building boats all summer, but even by early autumn they had not completed all the boats needed to move the grain.

When autumn arrived, Anusha Khan, the khan of the Khanate of Khiva, who had personally led troops to the Samarkand oasis, quarreled with Aurangzeb over the timing of the march. Anusha Khan hoped to advance as soon as possible; he believed that as long as the army could occupy the Fergana Basin (Sengge had not stripped the fields inside the basin), the grain shortage could be completely solved.

Aurangzeb, however, believed they should wait for the grain from the Khwarezm oasis to arrive, and then advance steadily and surely — that was the safer course.

But by September 10 of the Western calendar, the dispute between the two monarchs was brought to an end by news that neither of them had expected — the Dzungar Kingdom had marched!

According to the intelligence that came back, the Dzungars had launched a full-scale offensive this time, led personally by their king Sengge, and were heading straight for the Samarkand oasis!

Within the magnificent and majestic palace of Samarkand, the Great Emperor of the Timurid Empire sat upon a throne said to have once been sat upon by Timur himself, dressed in a pure white robe with a pure white turban wrapped around his head, his face expressionless, listening to the Timurid Empire's most valiant general, the heavily bearded Mirza Raja Jai Singh, report on the military situation at the front.

The Khan of the Khanate of Khiva, Anusha Khan, and his son Prince Alim, the Persian Empire's General Khalifa, Russia's envoy Lev Golovin, and several Turkmen tribal chiefs watched the scene before them, all frowning slightly.

The emperor of a great Islamic empire, and the general under him who could fight best was actually a Hindu!

This Hindu spoke a highly Persianized Urdu, which no one could understand except the civil and military officials Aurangzeb had brought from India, and the Persian Empire's Khalifa. But Aurangzeb had arranged interpreters for all the guests, so that they could understand the situation of the Dzungar army's southward advance.

"According to reconnaissance by the New Army cavalry, the Dzungar army set out from the guard city on the left bank of the Syr Darya, carrying large quantities of baggage and artillery, and has already crossed the Hungry Steppe and entered the oasis north of the Jizzakh Pass. Their numbers are very large, estimated at around 100,000.

Our army, meanwhile, has deployed south of the Jizzakh Pass, blocking the route the Dzungar army must take to advance south. The two armies now face each other across the Turkestan Mountains, and the front remains quiet for the time being."

The Turkestan Mountains are an east-west mountain range lying across the northern side of the Samarkand oasis, separating Samarkand from the Hungry Steppe. However, this range, five or six hundred li long, is not some impassable natural barrier; there are many passes along it. If they split their forces to hold every pass, the coalition troops concentrated at Samarkand would be scattered. And if they did not hold so many passes, the Dzungar cavalry would charge through them into the Samarkand oasis — the autumn harvest was imminent, and the fields of the Samarkand oasis were full of wheat about to ripen! If the Dzungars were allowed to ruin it, where would the more than one hundred thousand coalition troops concentrated at Samarkand, the two or three hundred thousand head of large livestock, the refugees numbering as many as a million, and the countless oasis inhabitants find food?

The Great Emperor Aurangzeb swept his sharp gaze around the great hall and took in the anxious expressions of the two Uzbeks, Anusha Khan and Prince Alim.

Among the coalition leaders gathered in the Samarkand palace, those two were the least able to keep their composure.

The Russians' and Kazakhs' battlefields were in Siberia and the Middle Jüz — they could not wait for the Dzungar main force to push deep into the Samarkand, Bukhara, and Khwarezm oases!

The Persians and Turkmen were not in much of a hurry either. The reason Abbas II had sent troops into Transoxiana was fear of a repeat of Hulegu's conquest. But after a period of observation, the Persians had discovered that the Dzungars were not traditional Mongols, but semi-settled, semi-nomadic Mongols, and they had also absorbed Western military technology transmitted from the Great Ming. Their military strength was similar to Persia's Ghulam New Army and Russia's Cossacks.

Although such an army was formidable, for the Persian Safavid dynasty, which possessed the Ghulam New Army, it did not constitute a particularly great threat.

So if things could not be fought out here at Samarkand, they could at worst retreat across the Black Desert.

And the Turkmen who had come from the oases south of the Black Desert cared only about Aurangzeb's silver rupees; if they had the chance, they also wanted to do some looting in the Samarkand oasis.

Aurangzeb was even less anxious — running out of grain and withdrawing the army was a fine way to step down! As long as he could lead a few hundred thousand people back to India from Samarkand, then unifying India would no longer be a dream!

"We should let the Dzungars come into the Samarkand oasis and fight them there!" Anusha Khan of the Khanate of Khiva indeed could not hold back; before Mirza Raja Jai Singh had even finished speaking, he shouted, "There are as many as 150,000 warriors concentrated at Samarkand now, while the enemy has at most 100,000. Our numerical superiority is obvious, so we should seek a decisive battle at once!

Moreover, we have the strong city of Samarkand at our backs to fall back on. Even if the decisive battle goes badly, we can retreat and hold the citadel, then send cavalry around to the Hungry Steppe to cut the Dzungars' grain route and force them to withdraw."

The Persian Empire's great general Khalifa also agreed with drawing the Dzungars into the Samarkand oasis, but he did not want a fight to the death; he wanted to fight a clever battle. He said: "I suggest drawing the Dzungars into the Samarkand oasis, then holding them in a standoff, and then sending the elite Red Head troops and Turkmen cavalry over the Turkestan Mountains by small paths to strike behind the Dzungars, and then attack from both sides and rout King Sengge's army in one blow!"

Aurangzeb looked again at Anusha Khan. The Khan of the Khanate of Khiva thought for a moment and said: "General Khalifa's plan is workable. But the flanking move through the Hungry Steppe does not require the Red Head troops; the Turkmen alone will suffice. Your Majesty Alamgir, what do you say?"

(End of Chapter)