Chapter 1232: Anusha Khan, You've Been Given a Grand Funeral!

The brilliant stratagem that Mingzhu Lama presented to Sengge was actually a very old trick — it appears many times in Romance of the Three Kingdoms alone!

It is nothing more than scattering large quantities of valuables along the road to lure the pursuing troops into stopping to grab them, and while their ranks fall into disorder and become hard to command, hidden troops rise up on all sides and strike before you can react.

Even if Prince Alim and General Arif had never read Romance of the Three Kingdoms, they still knew that good things strewn all over a battlefield are not to be picked up casually — similar tactics had appeared in the endless wars of Transoxiana as well!

The problem was that the Uzbek warriors of the Khanate of Khiva were all half-mad with poverty!

The Khanate of Khiva had no good territory to speak of — only the Khwarezm oasis was somewhat prosperous, and later it also gained the Bukhara oasis. But the long struggle against the Khanate of Bukhara and the Turkmen tribes had caused the number of Khivan warriors to swell somewhat beyond reason. How could the Khwarezm oasis and the Bukhara oasis, with that little bit of land, possibly support fifty or sixty thousand Uzbek cavalry?

So Anusha Khan's great army had to rely on plunder to cover its expenses — otherwise he would never have brought his elite troops all the way to Samarkand to lend a hand to Aurangzeb. Aurangzeb was a good client: the silver rupees he paid were of full weight, and he was even willing to pay large sums in advance!

But however generous Aurangzeb was, the Uzbek cavalrymen at the bottom got almost nothing of it, so when they saw valuables scattered all over the ground, how could they possibly not pick them up?

If they did not pick them up now, and someone else snatched them later, would their efforts not have been for nothing?

So the army commanded by Prince Alim and General Arif fell into chaos the moment they saw the bundles thrown everywhere. Almost everyone stopped the pursuit, dismounted, and began picking up the valuables — and to grab a little more, they even started fighting among themselves.

The prince and the general leading the troops certainly knew something was wrong, but by then the battlefield was already in complete disorder.

"No one is to pick anything up — keep formation!"

"This is a trick of the infidels... you fools!"

"Damn it, there must be an ambush!"

"Reform ranks... prepare for battle!"

Alim and Arif shouted at the top of their lungs, but the Uzbek warriors, their eyes dazzled by the valuables covering the ground, were in no mood to listen. If Anusha Khan had been there, he might have been able to rely on his personal guards to restore order. But Prince Alim had few reliable personal guards in his hands, and he also lacked his father's towering authority.

So no matter how he bellowed, few men obeyed, and his army remained a tangled mess.

At that very moment, the Dzungar ambushers came charging out from all directions!

The place Sengge had chosen for the ambush lay in the northern part of the Samarkand oasis, near the bastion south of the Jizzakh Pass. The surrounding area had once been densely populated, and there were many abandoned villages where troops could be hidden. Moreover, because this region had long been firmly under Sengge's army's control, no Dzungar cavalry had come to burn the wheat.

Now the wheat fields were full of grain that had already over-ripened but had not yet been harvested, which made it easy to hide men and horses. Nearby there was also a modest stretch of woodland where six 6-jin cannons had been placed, and they began to thunder the moment the ambushers charged out.

Six 6-jin cannons would be nothing on a European battlefield, but here in Transoxiana they were terrifying. Because transport in Transoxiana was difficult, big pieces like the 6-jin cannon were not common; the main artillery firepower consisted of small-caliber camel guns, and the Uzbek cavalry from the Khwarezm oasis was no exception. So when the cannons roared, the already chaotic Uzbek cavalry grew even more panicked, and at the sight of the Dzungar cavalry surging out like a tide, many of the men who had grabbed treasure simply slipped away in the confusion — they had already struck it rich, so why not run while they could! Were they supposed to wait around for the Dzungars to come take their heads?

The pitiful sight of an army collapsing like a landslide instantly unfolded around Prince Alim. Across the broad battlefield, Dzungar cavalry charged in company-sized groups everywhere. The Dzungar cannonballs kept falling among the tangled mass of Uzbek cavalry, and although they did not cause great losses, the tremendous noise and the bouncing, wildly flying shot still wore away the last of their will to fight. Like an anthill flooded with water, the Uzbek cavalrymen, at the sight of the Dzungar horsemen charging at them in swarms, fell back in rolling disorder.

Watching his great army disintegrate before his eyes, Prince Alim made yet another fatal mistake — he was unwilling to concede defeat cleanly and flee for his life along with everyone else. For he knew very well that he had lost a battle he should not have lost, and could not afford to lose!

A princess of the Timurid Empire would not marry a cowardly prince who fled the battlefield in panic, His Majesty Alamgir would not hand over the Samarkand oasis to a fool who could not fight, and his father would be enraged that he had thrown away several thousand Uzbek warriors for nothing... and his brothers would seize the chance of his fall from favor to take his life!

So as his subordinates scattered in flight all around him, Prince Alim actually summoned his courage, turned to his trusted general Ali beside him, and shouted: "Arif, follow me — we charge together and fight the Dzungars to the death! The True God will protect us! Arif... Arif?"

Arif had already fled! He had slipped away while his master stood there in a daze, and had taken more than half of Prince Alim's personal guards with him. Now only a few dozen slow-witted fellows remained beside this prince who, not long before, had stood at the peak of his life.

Alim thought of fleeing too, but it was already too late. The Dzungars had not attacked from a single direction; they had come at Alim from his front and both flanks simultaneously, and had also sent out flanking detachments. The prince hesitated for only a moment, and already he was surrounded. By then, even if he wanted to run, it was too late, and he had no choice but to grit his teeth and fight to the death.

Because he and his personal guards wore especially fine armor and rode especially tall warhorses, they stood out conspicuously on the battlefield, and quickly drew swarms of Dzungar cavalry charging at them.

Only at that moment did Prince Alim learn that the Dzungars could not only shoot from ambush, but could also launch massed charges!

They came in groups of over a hundred riders, every man gripping a lance, advancing like a wall when they charged, pressing forward without retreat. After one charge they did not stay to fight, but wheeled their horses and galloped away, reformed their ranks, and then charged again.

But for Prince Alim and his personal guards, a second charge was entirely unnecessary, because after taking the first massed charge of the Dzungar cavalry, Prince Alim had become a prince with no one left. He escaped death only by the speed of the Turkmen horse beneath him, galloping aimlessly across the chaotic battlefield. He fled for he knew not how long, when suddenly something struck him hard in the back. Then came a piercing, agonizing pain, accompanied by a suffocating sensation, and all the strength in his body vanished in an instant. He could no longer control his horse, and his body slumped limply over the saddle as his consciousness rapidly drained away.

Am I dying? Prince Alim thought at the last: Princess Nisa will surely weep for me — her tears will be my only reward...

"Wuuu..."

Princess Nisa really was weeping, wailing aloud, and before the Uzbek warriors she collapsed in tears into the arms of her father, Aurangzeb.

It was a heart-rending sight!

The Uzbek cavalrymen who five days earlier had run as fast as rabbits were now also shedding tears of grief. Together with the ten thousand Uzbeks who had remained to hold Samarkand, they gathered before the Great Timurid Mosque to hold a grand funeral for the valiantly fallen Prince Alim.

The Dzungars had found Prince Alim's body on the battlefield, and had sent captured Uzbeks to carry the body back to Samarkand. They also brought back a message from Sengge — King Sengge would advance on Bukhara and Khwarezm to raze the old nest of the Khanate of Khiva!

To comfort the hearts of the defeated Uzbek warriors who were about to lose their homeland, Aurangzeb and Princess Nisa held a grand funeral for the prince, and also prepared for every Uzbek warrior a full bag of silver rupees...