Chapter 183: Bright Peak of the Church of the East

Outside the forbidden palace gates of Balasagun, what could be counted as the second wave of urging him to take the throne had already ended. Zhang Zhao did not show his face; he merely sent Zhang Zhong out to persuade the crowd to disperse.

Why were these people so insistent that Zhang Zhao become the Gurkhan of Balasagun? Yet when Satuq tried persuasion, then threats with troops, and finally open war, they would not accept him?

On this question, the little wildcat Guo Wan'er felt she had plenty to say. Handing Zhang Zhao a cup of sweet-and-sour grape juice, Guo Wan'er smilingly smoothed back her hair.

"If they urge you one more time, Erlang, you'll be ready to accept, won't you?"

Zhang Zhao nodded almost imperceptibly. That was indeed what he was thinking. Balasagun, to him, was something of a chicken rib.

But this chicken rib was one he had won himself, and he also had the intention of using the Church of the East to block the westward advance of the Religion of the Heavenly Square.

Though neither of the two was exactly easy to deal with — monotheistic faiths! Their proselytizing nature was extremely strong.

But of two evils choose the lesser. Compared with the Religion of the Heavenly Square, the Church of the East was still somewhat easier for Zhang Zhao to accept.

Because after several hundred years of development, especially during the Great Tang's heyday, in order to enter the Great Tang and spread its faith, the Church of the East had made considerable changes according to Chinese customs and characteristics, and its scriptures had also absorbed a great deal of Buddhist and Daoist thought.

Moreover, the descendants of the Guo family had actually infiltrated the Church of the East and further sinicized its scriptures on the foundation laid by their predecessors — this point delighted Zhang Zhao even more.

After all this handling, the Church of the East was undoubtedly more reassuring than the Religion of the Heavenly Square. In the future it could be made the representative of a perfect fusion of Eastern and Western culture, and could even be used to influence the Orthodox Church of Rome in return.

And could the Church of the East withstand the eastward expansion of the Religion of the Heavenly Square? Zhang Zhao thought it over carefully — it probably could.

Because Balasagun actually held an extremely important position within the Church of the East. This could be seen from the Church of the East temples spread all over Balasagun. Balasagun was to the Church of the East what Bright Peak was to the Ming Cult.

Historically, up until around 1300, the Church of the East was still the number-one religion of Balasagun, and by then it was already the period of the Chagatai Khanate.

Here the Church of the East had held out against the Qarakhanid Khanate and the Western Qarakhanid Khanate, which were dominated by the Religion of the Heavenly Square, and had also held out against the Buddhist-dominated Western Liao — fully proving that Balasagun had a deep foundation in the Church of the East.

Control Balasagun, sinicize the Church of the East, support the Church of the East, check the eastward advance of the Religion of the Heavenly Square, and then export it back toward Europe — that was what Zhang Zhao needed to use Balasagun to accomplish.

As for whether this territory needed to be tightly governed, he felt that was not so important. At worst, he could simply rebuild a Suyab Garrison later.

"But what I want to say is, Erlang, you can accept them, but before you accept, you should state your conditions!" While Zhang Zhao was deep in thought, Guo Wan'er continued softly, with rather the air of a female Zhuge Liang.

"My conditions?" Zhang Zhao was taken aback. Conditions should be raised, but surely there was no need to be in such a hurry?

"Your conditions, exactly. Doesn't Erlang think there's something a little abnormal about how urgently they're urging you to take the throne? Think about why you came to Balasagun in the first place," Guo Wan'er continued to prompt.

"You mean, they're urging me so urgently because they want to welsh on the debt, and even more because they want to lift me up and use me to deal with my uncle, the Great Sage Son of Heaven?"

Zhang Zhao suddenly saw the light. He had felt there was something about this urging that he had not thought through — so this was the key point.

The reason he had come to Balasagun was that Master Titexigu had sent men to travel a thousand li to meet Li Shengtian, and only then had Li Shengtian agreed to prepare supplies, dispatch troops, and send Zhang Zhao on a thousand-li relief expedition.

This mobilization — not even counting casualties and the risk of failure — had cost Khotan a huge sum merely to transport more than two thousand men over two thousand li.

Therefore, a mere expression of submission was absolutely not enough. Master Titexigu must have had other agreements with Li Shengtian.

For example, ceding some of Balasagun's wealthy lands as tribute to the Khotanese royal house, paying a large annual tribute every year, and so on.

For a suzerain, especially one who had helped Balasagun escape the fate of annihilation, this was reasonable recompense.

But what if the great general sent by the suzerain to lend a hand set himself up on the spot? Then would this money not be saved?

Although a portion of the profits would still have to be distributed to Zhang Zhao, Zhang Zhao was going to be khan in Balasagun. Could he, like Li Shengtian more than two thousand li away, who did not know when he might lose Balasagun anyway, just plunder it for all it was worth?

Even if he did plunder, he, Zhang Zhao, was a lone man with no family. Apart from the Khotan palace guards, his entire population under command was only about a thousand people. How much could he plunder?

Zhang Zhao also understood at the same time why these people refused to support Satuq as successor to Arslan Khan.

Apart from the matter of faith, Satuq, as the Great Khan of the Qarakhanid Khanate, if he truly gained control of Balasagun, how could he possibly trust these people who were not of his inner circle?

No one knew how many people he would transfer in from various places, or how much of Balasagun's wealth he would take away.

Zhang Zhao, by contrast, first of all had no conflict of faith with them, and second, he had few trusted followers under his command, so he could be accommodated without their having to give up too many interests.

And precisely because he had too few trusted followers, would he not have to rely heavily on these local power-holders to govern Balasagun?

And more importantly, Zhang Zhao had also displayed extremely high military command ability, and the armored soldiers under him could each fight a hundred men — he could fully serve as Balasagun's protector.

It had to be said, if Zhang Zhao did not have the intention of returning east, he and Balasagun would truly have been a match made in heaven!

His mother's — these old foxes just wanted to hoist this young tiger onto the throne, and then borrow the young tiger's divine might to play the fox borrowing the tiger's ferocity.

"Guo Wan'er, go find your third grand-uncle. I have matters to discuss with him!"

Zhang Zhao closed his eyes and thought for a while, then quickly made his decision. These Balasagun nobles and religious leaders wanted to save a bit of money — that was fine, he could accept it, because Zhang Zhao had always intended to return east.

And with Balasagun's population of only a little over two hundred thousand, even adding the population of Talas and other places, it was only close to four hundred thousand. On top of that, with war after war, you could not squeeze much oil out of it even with a hydraulic press.

But how this money-saving was to be done had to follow Zhang Zhao's thinking. It could not be whatever they said, that was how it would be.

Talas City. More than a hundred years earlier, in the tenth year of Tianbao (751), the Anxi Protector-General Gao Xianzhi led his army near here and fought a meeting engagement with the Abbasid Caliphate of the Black-Robed Tazi.

Twenty thousand Tang troops met with the betrayal of their vassal troops, the Karluks, and were defeated by a coalition army of the Tazi of roughly eighty to a hundred thousand. In the end, only a few thousand returned to Anxi.

If Zhang Zhao were here, he would no doubt have paid his respects to Commander Gao and then sighed with emotion, because this battle was one that later generations of both Chinese and Arabs paid considerable attention to.

But Yin Yaozi did not. Because at this time — or rather, a hundred and eighty years ago — the Battle of Talas could not be called insignificant, but at the very least it had no great influence.

In that battle, apart from the vassal troops, the true Anxi Army was at most only six or seven thousand men, and after the battle, it was said that three or four thousand returned to Anxi.

In total, only about two thousand men were lost. Adding the conscripted craftsmen, technical personnel, and other Han civilians, the loss was at most three thousand one or two hundred.

Compared with the conflicts between the Great Tang and the Tibetans in the Dafeichuan region, where tens of thousands of troops were routinely lost, what did this count for?

And from the fact that Feng Changqing recovered his strength just one year later and was still able to deal heavy blows to the Tibetans and Great Bolü, it was clear that the Anxi Tang army had lost a battle, but was far from being crippled.

The Black-Robed Tazi Abbasid Caliphate, on the other hand — although they had won the victory, their battle losses were not low. At the same time, the formidable fighting power of the Tang army's mounted heavy infantry had made the Tazi realize a problem.

That was, with the Tazi's national strength, it was impossible to cross over a thousand li to defeat a great empire of this kind. Moreover, the Anxi Army was only one part of the entire Great Tang.

Therefore, after the Battle of Talas, the Tazi not only did not advance eastward, but from 752 onward sent envoys to Chang'an again and again.

In 753 alone, they sent four batches of envoys in a single year. Considering the distance between the two sides, it was likely that one batch of envoys had not yet returned before the next batch set out.

And contrary to our imagination that the Religion of the Heavenly Square advanced eastward continuously after the Battle of Talas and then spread throughout all the lands north and south of the Tianshan, the spread of the Religion of the Heavenly Square throughout Transoxiana and Anxi really had very little to do with the Tazi.

The spread of the Religion of the Heavenly Square began with the Persians, who pushed it a short stretch eastward after the Great Tang lost Anxi following the An-Shi Rebellion.

The later true "meritorious figure" was Bughra Khan Satuq, the man Zhang Zhao defeated at Poluzhou. This man's mazar (tomb) still stands in Kashgar to this day.

And what ultimately cut off the ten-thousand-li Buddhist realm and the Church of the East in the Western Regions was actually the Islamization of the Mongol Chagatai Khanate.

Under the Mongols' forceful imposition, in Balasagun, Kucha, Gaochang, and other places where Buddhism flourished, temples were destroyed and monks were slaughtered.

Bet you didn't see that coming! In the end, the ones who finished greening the lands north and south of the Tianshan were neither Arabs nor Persians, but the Mongols we always picture as Buddhist throat-singers. This world is full of such wonders!

The clamorous rabble of soldiers passed by, and all around still drifted the smoke and fire that symbolized plunder and slaughter. The dihqans of Talas, great and small, knelt on the ground, wanting to weep but having no tears left.

Because those who plundered them were not the followers of the Three Teachings from Balasagun, but holy warriors who believed in the Heavenly Square faith.

There was truly nowhere to go to seek justice. When Ali Du Lafu led his army eastward, he had already squeezed them dry once; when the defeated soldiers came back, they directly looted them all over again.

The flames of fury ignited in everyone's hearts. They had only converted a few years to a decade or so ago, and their faith had never been very firm to begin with. After being plundered twice in succession, that little spark of faith was instantly scattered to pieces by harsh reality.

Yin Yaozi was so busy that even eating meant nothing more than gnawing on flatbread. There were simply too many matters to handle.

First, he had to placate the followers of the Three Teachings who had not converted. They had contributed greatly the last time Titixigu brought men to attack Talas, and their losses had been the heaviest; they had survived only by fleeing into the mountains.

Now that Balasagun had struck back, it was truly a matter of repaying enmity and settling grudges. If Yin Yaozi did not pacify them properly, an even more violent religious bloodbath was right before his eyes.

The second task was to transport the great quantity of "seized" spoils back to Balasagun — gold and silver, mules and horses, cattle and sheep, donkeys, cloth, cattle and sheep hides, and ox sinew for making bows. All of these were treasures.

Finally, besides Talas itself, there were seven or eight cities great and small — including White Water Hu City, more than two hundred li east of Talas — that still needed governance arrangements.

At the same time, releasing the Persian holy warriors was no easy matter either. Moreover, they had to carry back the fearsome name of the Gur Khan and frighten the Persian Samanid state into continuously stockpiling supplies at Tashkent — that demand was even higher.

After five days, everyone else was fine, but Yin Yaozi had grown thin all over.

Zhang Zhao had few civil officials under him. The only one capable of handling internal administration was Zhu Qingquan, who had been sent to the Khotan royal city to recruit those literate sons of Tang. Leading this motley crew of misfits nearly worried Yin Yaozi to death.

"Commandant Yan, take this letter back to the Commandery Duke. Tell him that I still need to remain in Talas for at least half a month before this place can be pacified.

And you must tell the Commandery Duke that he must select someone from Balasagun as soon as possible to hold Talas, otherwise this place will still be in danger."

Yin Yaozi handed the letter for Zhang Zhao to Yan Jin. He did not intend to return together with Yan Jin and the others; if he left now, all the work of these past days would have been for nothing.

Yan Jin glanced at Yin Yaozi with sympathy. If the Commandery Duke were truly willing to become a Gur Khan here, it would actually be easy — he would simply enfeoff all the brothers and things would naturally settle down. But if he did not intend to rule this place long-term, then the difficulty was great.

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view them.