Chapter 1464: Your Majesty the Tsar, Someone Has Come to Submit!

The grave illness and death of King Sengge of the Zunghar Kingdom, the ensuing round of covert and overt struggles over the Zunghar throne, the Kurultai laid out in the open, and the "Galdan Constitution" affair destined to be recorded in history — all of this took place within the single year from the autumn of 1671 to the autumn of 1672 by the Western calendar.

For the people of the Zunghar Kingdom, this chain of events could be called dramatic, and in the end it produced an outcome no one had expected — the Zunghar Kingdom had actually sprinted its way into a constitutional monarchy!

Whether or not this constitution was excessively progressive, or whether it would seriously weaken the power of the Zunghar court, it nonetheless left all the surrounding powers that had been hoping the Zunghars would fall into infighting after their king's death thoroughly disappointed!

Not only did the Zunghar Kingdom fail to stage the near-routine fratricidal bloodletting that follows a king's death in a steppe nomadic polity, but by absorbing the strength of the Khoshut tribe of Ü-Tsang and adjusting its relations with the Han people's Dai Kingdom, it had actually grown stronger and more cohesive.

Moreover, the decline in the authority of the Zunghar court did not weaken the expansionist drive of this newly emerging aristocratic-republican state that integrated farming and herding. (The Zunghar constitution at present was not a bourgeois constitution, but a typical aristocratic republic.)

It is not only empires that need to expand. An aristocratic-republican kingdom (republic) can sometimes possess an equally vigorous expansionist drive, because the ruling king needs a war to establish his authority, and the nobles below likewise need war to acquire land, wealth, and serfs!

After all, who is to blame that those Zunghars are good at nothing except fighting wars and robbing people?

Come to think of it, they are much like the Shun roving bandits who slipped off to Burma — both are pursuing a development path of "making is not as good as buying, and buying is not as good as seizing."

The Zunghars, however, are in a worse spot: they cannot plunder India, so if they want to rob anyone, they can only rob the Khanate of Khiva in the Khwarezm oasis, or the Kazakh alliances of the Middle Jüz and Little Jüz.

Around the Zunghar Kingdom, those are the only ones that look relatively easy to rob and still have a bit of fat on them.

Therefore, when word of the "Galdan Constitution" reached the Kazakh court of the Little Jüz and Khiva, the capital of the Khwarezm Khanate of Khiva, it immediately provoked tremendous panic.

These two states were truly in a miserable position now. Ever since the final years of the rule of Sengge's father, Batur Khong Tayiji, the Kazakhs had not known a single good day. First they were robbed by Batur Khong Tayiji, then robbed by his son King Sengge, and then along came a certain Zhu San Khong Tayiji — he did not rob much in the way of goods, but he robbed people!

Over the past few years, his eight Fujin Chiliarchs had been busy seizing Kazakh herders across the steppes of the Great Jüz and Middle Jüz, forcing them into hard labor as serfs and herd-slaves!

What was even more infuriating was that this Zhu San Khong Tayiji, even while seizing people, still wanted to do business with the Kazakhs and the Russians. He dispatched quite a number of Kazakhs who had submitted to him to the banks of the Ural River in the Little Jüz to seek out Tauke Khan (the Kazakh khan, and at the same time a vassal of Russia), whom the Russians had propped up, to request trade!

It was shamelessness to the extreme.

And this wicked, shameless Zhu San Khong Tayiji, after the Zunghar "Galdan Constitution," obtained from Galdan the Chu River Prefecture he had long dreamed of.

As the price for obtaining Chu River Prefecture, Zhu San Khong Tayiji finally abandoned his "Silk Road policy" and turned to banditry alongside Galdan.

Since trade was impossible, then let the robbing begin!

Thus the Dai Kingdom of Crown Prince Zhu San now stood together with the Zunghar and Khoshut states, sleeves rolled up, ready for a great plundering.

As for the Khanate of Khiva in the Khwarezm oasis, its fate was little better than the Kazakhs'. They had been ruined by Aurangzeb, losing tens of thousands of able-bodied men in the Battle of Samarkand and the Battle of Fergana.

For the Khanate of Khiva, with its limited population, losing tens of thousands of able-bodied men at one stroke was enough to leave it crippled for a long time.

Even though Niyaz Khan, son of Anusha Khan, emerged victorious from a brief civil war and succeeded in unifying the Khanate of Khiva, and even formed a five-state alliance with the neighboring Turkmens, Kazakhs, Russians, and Persians, he was still powerless to resist the mighty Zunghar state.

They had barely managed to hold out until Sengge died of illness, yet what awaited them was not the Zunghar civil war they had hoped for, but the "Galdan Constitution" and a triple alliance of the Zunghar, Khoshut, and Dai states.

These three — the Zunghar, Khoshut, and Dai — had all originally been vassal states of the Great Ming, but before the "Galdan Constitution" they had never truly united. In particular, Zhu Cijiong's Dai Kingdom had to a large extent been holding Sengge back.

But with the rise of Galdan, this "constitutional king," the Khoshut Kingdom no longer feared being annexed by the Zunghars (Anu Khatun came from the Khoshut court), and Crown Prince Zhu San had also obtained the territory he coveted.

The three Ming vassal states could finally unite as one.

Facing the surging tide of Great Ming Mongols about to descend upon them (Zhu Cijiong was of course no Mongol, but because he always sent Mongols to seize people, he too was mistaken for one), the Kazakh Tauke Khan, Khiva's Niyaz Khan, and the Russian Governor-General Marquis Golovin all knew that great trouble was coming.

So Tauke Khan sent his son Khalid, Niyaz Khan sent his son Haji, and Marquis Golovin personally departed Orenburg, Russia's great stronghold in the Little Jüz — the three of them went together to Moscow to seek help from His Majesty Tsar Alexei I.

Besides seeking help, there was of course also the matter of submitting and declaring themselves subjects.

In truth, Tauke Khan and Niyaz Khan had long since declared themselves subjects of the Tsar, but their previous submissions had been informal — merely a surface attitude, with no specific treaty stipulating the vassal obligations of the Kazakh and Khivan states. In practice, the two states had been playing at the edges, hoping to trade a worthless title for Russian support.

And Russia had been playing dumb as well, casually doling out a bit of aid and letting the Kazakh and Khivan states serve as cannon fodder, while itself steadily expanding in the Little Jüz region, building more than a dozen bastion forts large and small. Moreover, through the good offices of the Khanate of Khiva, it had opened a trade route to Persia — and this had utterly ruined Crown Prince Zhu San!

But this time, Tauke Khan and Niyaz Khan could no longer fool the Tsar. If they wanted the Tsar to send troops to save their lives, they would have to truly pledge loyalty to the Tsar!

And this year of 1672 was for Tsar Alexei I truly a year of harvest, a year of victory!

In the summer, His Majesty the Tsar had gained a healthy baby boy — his third son, named Pyotr Alexeyevich. That is, the future Peter the Great!

And in late autumn, as winter approached, word arrived almost simultaneously from Siberia and Central Asia that "Tartar states" had come to submit!

Foreign states coming to submit — that should be good news, right?

But why was Yakutsk Governor-General Alexander Stroganov kneeling in the audience hall of the Kremlin dressed in an ascetic monk's robe, looking for all the world like a man begging forgiveness for his crimes? Could it be that he had embezzled and taken bribes too much, and had been caught by Count Lev Naryshkin?

His Majesty the Tsar looked at the hapless Alexander Stroganov, then looked at his own brother-in-law Count Lev Naryshkin, and felt extremely puzzled — the purpose for which he had sent Count Lev Naryshkin to inspect Siberia was precisely to let him line his own pockets. When you encounter corrupt officials, you should extort them, not drag them all the way to Moscow!

How could officials in Siberia possibly not be corrupt? If you are not going to be corrupt, what are you doing in Siberia?

"Lev, why have you arrested Alexander Stroganov and brought him here?" the Tsar asked in a reproachful tone. "Exactly how much money did he embezzle?"

Count Lev Naryshkin hastily shook his head and said, "No, he did not embezzle much. And it was not I who arrested him. He came of his own accord to confess his crimes!"

"What crime has he committed?"

"He—" Count Lev Naryshkin frowned. This crime was a strange one. "He brought disgrace upon the state and forfeited its sovereignty. He accepted the surrender of China's Heilongjiang Governor-General Oboi and Anding Vice Governor-General Yue Le! Feeling his sins to be profound, he came to Moscow of his own accord to confess."

Alexander Stroganov, tears streaming down his face, said, "Your Majesty, my sins are profound."

(End of Chapter)