Chapter 923: Oboisky (Please Subscribe)

"Khoshuud?" Zhu Cijiong had not expected Zhu Cilang to ask about the Khoshuud... Wasn't this train of thought a bit too jumpy? A moment ago they had still been discussing how to deal with the old territory of the Daning Regional Commission at the easternmost edge of Eastern Mongolia, and now suddenly they had run off to Tibet.

"Imperial Brother," Zhu Cijiong thought for a moment, "just make the Khoshuud an outer vassal. Gushri Khan has no great ambitions; he has always been fairly well-behaved, and he has no major conflicts with Wu Sangui either."

"Is that so?" Zhu Cilang frowned slightly. "But the Snowy Plateau is the soul of the Yellow Hat Mongols! Mongolia is vast beyond measure — from the Nen River pastures in the east, to Moghulistan in the west... it seems there is also a Torghut tribe that went off to some Volga River basin. They really ran far!

With territory that vast and tribes that numerous, for us to conquer them one by one is utterly impossible, yet we cannot simply ignore them either. Otherwise, if one or two great khans arise on the steppe and unite the tribes, our troubles will never end!

So we must keep their soul in our grip! And this soul of the Yellow Hat Mongols happens to be held tight in Gushri Khan's hand!"

The Mongols of this era could broadly be divided into Yellow Hat Mongols and Green Hat Mongols. The Green Hat Mongols were the Kazakhs, the Uzbeks, and the Yarkent Khanate, which was now locked in bitter fighting with both the Dzungars and Wu Sangui; the Mughal state that had run off to India could also barely be counted among them.

Apart from the Yarkent Khanate, which counted within the circle of the Celestial Empire, the rest of the Green Hat Mongols had no real entanglements with the Great Ming — and even the Yarkent Khanate would not challenge the Great Ming's position within the Celestial Empire's circle. For since the collapse of the Timurid Empire, the power of the Green Hat Mongols had been in rapid decline, and they no longer posed any threat to the Great Ming.

But the Yellow Hat Mongols were a different matter!

The Yellow Hat Mongols of this era were still extremely powerful: from the Volga in the west to Khorchin in the east, from Siberia in the north to the Great Wall in the south. At least ten million square kilometers of grassland and desert were all the domain of the Yellow Hat Mongols. Their population was over two million!

That may not seem like much, but their bow-drawing, armor-wearing warriors numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

And among the Yellow Hat Mongols there were always those who could not forget the story of Genghis Khan; historically, they would not truly settle down until the collapse of the Dzungar Khanate. So the Zhu Emperor had no way to cut the Yellow Hat Mongols out of the picture — over these past two hundred-plus years within the Celestial circle, apart from the few decades of the Manchu rise, the rest of the time it had been the Yellow Hat Mongols and the Great Ming contending for the position of overlord.

Looking further back, from the Han–Xiongnu wars onward, the steppe tribes had been locked in endless struggle with the Han Chinese dynasties. The two sides had loved and killed each other for two thousand years — how could you cut that apart?

And as for utterly smashing them... whether it could even be done was another matter, but even if it could, the Zhu Emperor would not do it. Because without the Yellow Hat Mongols occupying this steppe, the Green Hat Mongols and Russia would rush into the vacuum — wiping out two million nomads across more than ten million square kilometers is impossible! But if the Zhu Emperor spared no cost, he could still smash all the great myriarchies of the Eastern and Western Mongols and, for a period, drive them westward as far as possible. According to steppe tradition, they would then be absorbed by the Green Hat Mongols of Moghulistan; the Kazakh Khanate or the Uzbek Khanate might both grow stronger, and the worst-case scenario could be the resurrection of the Timurid Empire!

These Green Hat Mongols would not send fine young men off to be lamas serving the Buddha — they would let them breed freely, heh heh...

So the solution the Zhu Emperor put forward was one that was highly unsatisfactory and required long-term, sustained investment. First, establish internal garrison commands in Southern Mongolia — the four garrisons of Daning, Beiping, Anbei, and Shuofang — and in the west establish the two garrisons of Hexi and Anxi.

Then use these garrisons to compress the living space of the great Yellow Hat Mongol myriarchies.

Next, prop up several Yellow Hat Mongol vassal states and let them control even vaster territories — on one hand keeping each other in check, and on the other using them to hold off Russia and the Green Hat Mongols.

Finally, the Great Ming Empire must also gain control of the spiritual anchor of the Yellow Hat Mongols — that is, the Yellow Hat holy land on the Snowy Plateau.

Of course, achieving this series of objectives would actually be extremely difficult!

Never mind that the Zhu Emperor's two hundred thousand troops were massed around Beijing and had shattered the Great Qing, cowing the Manchus and the power-holders of southern Eastern Mongolia. He still lacked the ability to fully control the more than one million square kilometers of Southern Mongolia, and the four garrisons of Daning, Beiping, Anbei, and Shuofang — whether planned or already established — would need a long process to truly develop.

Because these four garrisons were hollow right now: they had only a few troops and no armed peasants. Zhu Cilang had no way to rely on a single imperial edict to make over a million Han peasants leave their homes for the bitter cold northern lands of the Little Ice Age to farm and herd... The four garrisons could at most hold seventy or eighty thousand soldiers, most of them infantry. How could that possibly control more than a million square kilometers of grassland and keep people out?

To achieve that goal, one would either have to build a Great Wall across the steppe, or send at least several hundred thousand to a million armed Han commoners onto the grassland to open up a thousand settlements.

But during the Little Ice Age, opening up farming outposts on the northern steppe was very difficult, and the cost was far too high. If a thousand outposts were spread out all at once, the Ming court would have to prepare to ship large quantities of grain onto the steppe to support the settled farmers.

In addition, the Ming court would need to issue other living subsidies to several hundred thousand or even a million settled farmers, and the current Ming certainly could not bear such expenditures — with that kind of money to burn on Southern Mongolia, you could throw it into the Pacific and still reach the Americas and take Australia!

Even if the Zhu Emperor threw caution to the wind and bore the enormous cost of developing the Southern Mongolian steppe, it would only amount to effectively controlling one-tenth of the Yellow Hat Mongols' living space.

So the Zhu Emperor could only prepare himself for a long-term wrangle with the Yellow Hat Mongols... and to wrangle with the Yellow Hat Mongols long-term, he absolutely had to control the Snowy Plateau!

Because that was the "papal court" of the Yellow Hat Mongols!

Hearing Zhu Cilang speak of the soul of the Mongols, Zhu Cijiong began to understand a little. He thought for a while: "Imperial Brother, as far as your younger brother knows, every Mongol banner that believes in the Yellow Hat faith sends men into Tibet to boil tea — in practice, it is giving alms of wealth to the great lamas of the Yellow Hat faith."

Zhu Cilang asked, "How much does one trip cost?"

"It doesn't cost much," Zhu Cijiong said. "Those Mongol banners are so poor — how much can they give the great lamas? Imperial Brother, are you thinking of sending men into Tibet to give money to the great lamas too?"

Zhu Cilang nodded, but before he could speak, the Chongzhen Retired Emperor beside him suddenly opened his mouth: "Going into Tibet to give money? That would be improper, would it not? Our Great Ming is a grand Celestial Dynasty — how can we take the initiative to send money to lamas? If those lamas want rewards from the Celestial Dynasty, they should first send envoys to court to offer tribute and request rewards!"

What Chongzhen said was quite right!

But the great lamas would not be so proactive, because the great lamas were neighbors of the Shun dynasty. If they took the initiative to curry favor with the Great Ming, what would Li Guo think?

And what the Zhu Emperor wanted was not that kind of lukewarm tributary relationship. His goal was to bring Tibet — the sacred, inviolable territory of the great motherland — under the direct control of the central government!

Tibet was far too important, so it could not exist as an outer vassal; at the very least it had to become an internal vassal garrison!

And this goal was necessarily in conflict with the aspirations of the Khoshuud Khanate, so before the Great Ming enfeoffed the Khoshuud Khanate, Gushri Khan would not permit the great lamas to offer tribute to the Ming court — Tibet was a dual polity. If the great lamas offered tribute to the Great Ming while Gushri Khan could not obtain equal status, then Gushri Khan's authority would be shaken.

"Imperial Father speaks wisely!" Zhu Cilang did not refute the Retired Emperor's words. "For Us to do it personally would indeed be improper... but Imperial Father could send men into Tibet to boil tea and give money to the great lamas."

"What? Us? But We do not believe in lamas!"

Zhu Cilang smiled: "It doesn't matter. We are not sending money to Tibet because we believe in the Yellow Hat faith; we are giving money to the Yellow Hat faith because it holds the soul of the Mongols. We have to spend money through the Yellow Hat faith to buy peace!" He turned his head and glanced at the Chongqing Prince, Zhu Cihuan. "Fifth Brother, now that Imperial Father is going to send men into Tibet to boil tea, shouldn't you make this trip on Imperial Father's behalf? Are you a filial son?"