Chapter 1363: Opening One's Eyes to Seize the World

A huge globe had been carried into the Golden Throne Hall of the Five Splendors Palace and set before Li Jicheng, the Son of Heaven of the Shun, and the assembled civil and military officials of the court.

In their long struggle against the semi-feudal, semi-capitalist Great Ming dynasty, these men had all been tempered; their own quality and cultivation had advanced by leaps and bounds, and they had long since become roving bandits with their eyes open to the world!

Every one of them had a globe of this sort at home, though none of the globes in the ministers' households was as large as this one, and the terrain and the spheres of influence (territories) of the various states shown on those globes also differed somewhat from the one now set in the Golden Throne Hall of the Five Splendors Palace.

On this large globe, most of Sichuan province had already changed from the blue that originally symbolized the Shun dynasty to the red that symbolized the Great Ming dynasty. And the region of Ü-Tsang, which had originally been red, had now turned blue — for after Li Jicheng ascended the throne, he had immediately sent envoys to Chamdo in Ü-Tsang, delivering edicts of enfeoffment and a personal letter from Sun Kewang to Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu.

In the edicts sent to Ü-Tsang, Li Jicheng enfeoffed Li Dingguo as Military Governor of Dokham, Ai Nengqi as Military Governor of Ü-Tsang, and Liu Wenxiu as Military Governor of Ngari (the region of Guge and Ladakh), and he also required the three military governors to send tribute missions to Kunming and to take back the family members they had each left behind in Kunming — through this operation of exchanging tribute for hostages, Li Jicheng could shamelessly mark Ü-Tsang, Dokham, and Ngari as Shun territory, which counted as expanding the realm on the map.

Of course, Li Jicheng was not so foolish as to send the families of Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, Liu Wenxiu, and the core officers under their command all to Ü-Tsang at once. They had to be sent slowly, in batches and by stages. As long as the three military commands of Ü-Tsang, Dokham, and Ngari came to court year after year, they could take a few people back each year.

As for Sun Kewang's personal letter, it urged Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu to declare themselves subjects of both the Shun and the Great Ming at the same time — after all, the three of them were now so far away that the Emperor was beyond reach, and neither the Shun nor the Great Ming could attend to them; as long as they kowtowed more and stirred up less trouble, they could get by.

If they truly could not get by, they could go take a look on the other side of the Himalayas, where they should be able to find territory that could support one or two hundred thousand soldiers and their families. Wherever they went to seize it, it would have nothing to do with the Shun court.

Having finished the business of expanding the realm on the map, the next thing, of course, was to seriously consider the business of expanding the realm in reality.

The envoys of the Kingdom of France and the Kingdom of Holland were still in Kunming, waiting for Li Jicheng and the assembled lords of the Shun below him to come up with a definite plan.

That was why the terrain of the various states of India on this huge globe set in the Golden Throne Hall of the Five Splendors Palace had been drawn with particular care.

And the most carefully drawn of all were the Kingdom of Manipur and the Kingdom of Möng Dun Shun Kham (the Ahom Kingdom), which lay right against the western border of Burma!

These two small states lay roughly between Ü-Tsang, Burma, Chittagong, and Bengal. Before the Shun entered Burma, the Kingdom of Manipur had been a vassal of Burma, while the Kingdom of Möng Dun Shun Kham had been forced to declare itself a subject of the Timurid Empire.

After the Shun entered Burma and Li Jicheng invaded India, the situation had already changed: the Kingdom of Manipur and the Kingdom of Möng Dun Shun Kham had both regained their independence and become a buffer between the Shun and the Timurids.

And now, the Shun Emperor Li Jicheng, preparing for further aggression — oh, no, preparing to help the working people of India — had turned his caring gaze upon the Kingdom of Manipur and the Kingdom of Möng Dun Shun Kham!

Besides these two small states in the northeastern corner of India, the Coromandel Coast in the southeastern corner of India (where Fort St. George was located) and the Malabar Coast were also fine places that made Li Jicheng's mouth water — this stretch of coastline was about one thousand seven or eight hundred li long, and although it did not have many fine natural harbors, it was an important transshipment point for merchant ships west of Malacca. Moreover, the region abounded in spices, ebony, cotton cloth, precious stones, and other commodities.

Since ancient times, this region had been an East-West commercial center so rich it dripped with oil, comparable to Malacca!

If the whole of it could be seized, there would never again be any worry about lacking money to spend.

However, although the profits in this region were great, the thieves who coveted it — no, the good men — all wanted to go help the Indians there, and the Shun, with its limited strength, truly did not dare to eat this fat morsel alone.

"Let me tell you all something," Li Jicheng said, his gaze sweeping around the hall. Seeing that everyone's morale was still somewhat low, he decided to first announce a bit of encouraging good news. "Yesterday I met with the envoy of the Kingdom of France, Fouquet, and the envoy of the Kingdom of Holland, Bruce, and spoke of joining together to go to the land of India to rob the rich and aid the poor. Do you all know what robbing the rich and aiding the poor means?"

"We know, we know! Before I followed the Old His Majesty to fight the Zhu family, that was my trade!"

"My family has done this for three generations — couldn't be more familiar with it!"

"Back in the day, when I followed the Old His Majesty across the realm, I did plenty of good deeds robbing the rich and aiding the poor!"

"Your Majesty, we've all been getting restless these days. When can we set out for the land of India to rob the rich and aid the poor?"

"Right! My hands and heart have been itching for a long time!"

The ministers of the Shun were all good men! The moment they heard of robbing the rich and aiding the poor, they immediately perked up, every one of them rubbing their hands and rolling up their sleeves, unable to wait to go help the poor of India.

Seeing his subordinates' morale rise, Li Jicheng's mood improved considerably as well. He said with a smile, "Don't be in a hurry, everyone. Going to India to rob the rich and aid the poor isn't a matter for us alone. There are plenty of strong states under heaven! It's not just us Shun and the remnant Ming in the north — the Kingdom of France, the Kingdom of Holland, the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of Spain, and the Kingdom of Portugal in the west are all damn well not to be trifled with!

Even within India there's the Timurid state, which has some weight. If we alone faced the Timurid state, victory and defeat would still be uncertain! So we must form alliances and build coalitions, pulling in a few more parties to go rob the rich and aid the poor in India together."

The military strength of the Timurid Empire of India was roughly comparable to that of the present Shun state. Although the territory, population, and the gold, silver, and treasure that Aurangzeb squeezed out each year were all beyond what the Shun state could match, territory, population, and wealth did not necessarily translate into military strength. Otherwise the Great Ming would not have suffered the Disaster of Jiashen, and the Timurid Empire would not have declined after Aurangzeb's death.

In this era, military strength sometimes depended on the number and quality of the "state people," and sometimes on the quality of the core military aristocracy and the state's fiscal strength. States whose strength was determined by their "state people" tended to be those with a strong feudal character, and both the Shun and the Timurids were of this type.

The military strength of these two states basically did not depend on the common people, but on the "state people" — on the Shun side, these were the military-farm households!

After losing most of Sichuan and the forces of Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, Liu Wenxiu, and the others, the military-farm households still under the control of the Shun court still numbered as many as three or four hundred thousand!

As for the "state people" of the Timurid Empire, their core was the Muslim believers who had followed emperors such as Babur and Akbar into India in the early years, plus the Brahmin warriors represented by the Rajputs who had submitted to the Timurid Empire, plus the several hundred thousand outsider households that Aurangzeb had brought back from Central Asia. Their numbers were somewhat greater than the Shun military-farm households, but not overwhelmingly so. Moreover, most of the "old Muslims" among them had long since become utterly corrupt, reduced to tax farmers who could no longer fight for the empire.

Thus the military strength of the Shun and the Timurids was in fact six of one and half a dozen of the other. However, because the Timurid territory was too rich and fertile, it easily attracted thieves, which put it at a strategic disadvantage. The Shun's territory, by contrast, was mostly barren mountain valleys that even the Shun's mortal enemy, the Zhu Emperor, had little interest in, and therefore it held the strategic initiative.

"Your Majesty," said Liu Zongmin, the Prince of Han, "the homelands of the Western states of France, Holland, Portugal, and England are all far distant from us; a round trip takes more than a year. When will we ever be able to negotiate an alliance with them? Besides, we have almost no experience dealing with Westerners, and none of us can even speak their languages. How are we to negotiate?"

The old group is exploding again. Welcome, everyone, to join the new group for this book. Group number: 635667889

(End of Chapter)