Chapter 1228: What? Princess Nisha Is Getting Married?! (Please Subscribe)

The 1,218th chapter of *Saving the Great Ming* — Not Sengge Khan, but Seng Guofan! Aurangzeb is now the Regional Commander of the allied army — he has the most troops, a full 80,000! He also has the most money; everyone, including Anusha Khan, General Khalifa, and Lev Golov, has received silver rupees. Having accepted his money, they naturally have to show him a little face now.

This great emperor of the Timurid Empire wore a face of iron and blood, but inside he was rapidly clicking away at his little abacus...... In coalition warfare, of course one must expend one's allies and preserve oneself.

So what Aurangzeb now had to calculate was whether it was more advantageous to keep the Persian Red Hat Army at his side, or to let them make the flanking maneuver together with the Turkmens.

The Persian Red Hat Army was a firearm cavalry force, equipped with matchlocks and camel guns, and also carrying several 6-pounder field guns imported from England, so they had a certain amount of strength. If they were sent to flank with the Turkmens, the probability of a successful flanking maneuver would be greater, but Aurangzeb's own position would become dangerous!

Although Aurangzeb did not intend to fight a decisive battle with Sengge, but rather to build a fortified camp below the walls of Samarkand and stand off against Sengge, the fighting power of the Dzungar army was very strong, and they also possessed an extremely strong ability to assault fortifications......

"General Khalifa," Aurangzeb said in fluent Persian to the famous general from Persia, "I hope that you and the Persian Red Hat Army will remain in Samarkand...... We shall fight side by side and deal a crushing blow to the invading Dzungars! To inspire the fighting spirit of the Red Hat Army and all the warriors taking part in the Samarkand campaign, I have already prepared 10 million rupees; all officers and men who render meritorious service will receive rich rewards!"

Ten million rupees!

This Aurangzeb had really thrown caution to the winds!

Once his rich rewards were announced, not only was Khalifa unwilling to leave Samarkand, even the several tribal chieftains of the Turkmens were somewhat displeased.

Seeing the looks on their faces, Aurangzeb promptly and generously scattered money, saying to the Turkmens: "The Turkmens making the flanking maneuver will also receive rich rewards — every Turkmen warrior who takes part in the battle will receive a reward of 50 rupees!"

The Turkmens had brought out 15,000 men this time; at 50 rupees per man, that was 750,000!

The common soldiers below could of course not receive that much; getting 10 rupees per man would already be quite good, so the several tribal chieftains were now all rich men!

After placating the Turkmens, Aurangzeb then ordered Shaysta Khan: "Send envoys north of the Jizzakh Pass and invite King Sengge to come south for a decisive battle! Tell him that we will withdraw our troops south of the Jizzakh Pass...... I, Alamgir of the Timurid Empire, will fight him to the death beneath the walls of Samarkand!"

The camp of Sengge's great army was made up of countless yurts, situated in the oasis north of the Jizzakh Pass, on an enormous scale. If one looked down from the Turkestan Mountains, one would surely be frightened out of one's wits by the astonishing sight of so many yurts gathered together.

With so many yurts, how many Mongols must be inside? Probably no fewer than 100,000...... 100,000 Mongol warriors! Back when Genghis Khan marched west, he probably had about this many men.

Now Genghis Khan's great army had returned, and moreover it had come back carrying muskets and bringing cannons — the Samarkand oasis was in for disaster now!

Sengge lived in a great golden-domed tent, similar in form to the tent Genghis Khan had lived in back then, but outside there was no nine-tailed white banner; instead there hung the great Ming's sun-and-moon-together flag and the Dzungar Kingdom's swastika flying-dragon flag — the dragon flag had been granted to the Dzungar Kingdom by the Ming court, symbolizing that the Dzungar king held the status of a Ming Prince. Sengge had also had the Buddhist swastika embroidered onto the dragon flag, turning it into the Dzungar Kingdom's swastika flying-dragon flag.

But unlike what the people in the city of Samarkand imagined, the Sengge living inside the golden-domed tent was not a rough, burly man wearing a filthy leather robe, with his head shaved in a ring and a braid left on each side of his head. Rather, he was a great Ming official in a python robe and black gauze cap, with his hair done up in a topknot, and moreover neatly groomed, the sort who looked refined and scholarly at a glance.

Inside the great tent where he lived, there was also a row of bookshelves, filled with all kinds of thread-bound volumes — Sengge was now a man of learning, and could already read *Romance of the Three Kingdoms* from beginning to end; although there were still quite a few characters he did not recognize, it did not affect his reading. So he was now a scholar-general, and had also had people find many thread-bound books to place in his great tent — this was not for show, for whenever he had free time he really would study learning.

When the envoy sent by Aurangzeb arrived at the Dzungar army's great camp at the Jizzakh Pass, Sengge was sitting behind his writing desk, holding a thread-bound book called *The Plum in the Golden Vase* and reading it carefully; from his absorbed expression one could tell he was a man of learning.

Mingzhu Lama came hurrying in with Aurangzeb's letter of challenge, and seeing Sengge studying *The Plum in the Golden Vase*, he leaned forward with a smile and said: "Great King, is that book any good?"

Sengge was reading with great relish, and when Mingzhu asked, he answered offhandedly: "Not bad, not bad...... Are there more good books like this? This king would like to read a few more."

"There are, there are...... This subject recently received a book called *The *** as a gift from a friend; it was written by the Jiangnan literary giant Li Yu, and has quite a bit of flavor. I shall present it to Your Highness for your appraisal in a while."

"Good, good," Sengge chuckled, "bring it to me at once!"

At that moment Mingzhu happened to be holding out Aurangzeb's letter of challenge, and Sengge took it and glanced at it: "Why is it in Persian? How does this Jiangnan literary giant write books in Persian?"

"Great King, this is not *The ***; it is the letter of challenge that Aurangzeb sent."

"What? Another letter of challenge?" Sengge frowned deeply. "He came all the way from India, hasn't fought a single battle, and sends letter after letter of challenge — isn't he tired of the trouble?"

Mingzhu laughed: "Great King, perhaps that Aurangzeb thinks he has literary talent, and writes more so that people will know of it."

"Oh," Sengge nodded, "and what does he want this time?"

"He says he will move away the troops blocking the southern mouth of the Jizzakh Pass and let us go south to Samarkand for a decisive battle."

"What?" Sengge was startled. "He's really letting us go south?"

"Really!" Mingzhu laughed. "Great King, this saves us a great deal of trouble!"

Sengge laughed heartily: "It does indeed save us trouble! But we are not afraid of trouble either...... We can go south, but we will not fight a decisive battle with them! We have fewer men and they have more; we cannot afford to die, and they cannot be killed off completely, so we should do less of this lining up and fighting head-on."

"Your Highness is wise!" Mingzhu flattered.

"Stop flattering," Sengge laughed. "First go and urge Sanbao Lama to finish repairing the fortress at the northern mouth of Jizzakh quickly!

Once the fortress is finished, we will go south to the southern mouth of Jizzakh and build another fortress! When both fortresses are done, we will go outside Samarkand and build a third fortress...... Once the fortress below Samarkand is finished, victory will be in our grasp!"

That's right — this was Sengge's tactic: build fortresses right up to the walls of Samarkand!

Then use the fortresses and the garrisons inside them to pin down the allied forces inside and below Samarkand, while the Dzungar cavalry struck out in all directions, burning the wheat fields in the Samarkand oasis that were about to be harvested, and then cutting the communications between Samarkand and the Amu Darya, so that grain from Khwarezm could not reach Samarkand.

After doing all this, Sengge would be able to quietly await the arrival of victory beneath the walls of Samarkand!

The people inside Samarkand thought that a "Sengge Khan" had come, but none of them imagined that what had come was a steady, methodical "Seng Guofan."

On the third day after receiving Aurangzeb's letter of challenge, the northern fortress at the Jizzakh Pass, supervised by Sanbao Lama, was completed. Leaving behind 3,000 garrison troops, and then dismissing half of the civilian laborers, he then led his main force of about 30,000 men and 15,000 Fergana civilian laborers responsible for transporting army provisions and doing hard labor, grandly marching through the valley that had long been firmly controlled by the Dzungar army, entering the northeastern corner of the rich Samarkand oasis, and beginning to build a second fortress at the foot of the Turkestan Mountains and by the banks of the Sanzar River.

The prelude to the Samarkand campaign, far longer than Aurangzeb, Anusha Khan, and the others had imagined, thus began!