Chapter 212: Expansion Once More

Time flew by, and another New Year's Eve arrived. Once today passed, they would formally enter the year 934 of the historical calendar — the third year since Zhang Zhao had crossed over.

In the Central Plains, on the twenty-sixth day of the eleventh month, Li Siyuan, Mingzong of the Later Tang — the man who had slaughtered every blood descendant of his adoptive father Li Keyong — passed away. His death was kept secret for six days, and on the first day of the twelfth month, Li Siyuan's third son, Li Conghou, succeeded to the throne.

Therefore, after this New Year's Eve, the reign title for the coming year 934 would no longer be Changxing but Yingshun.

Of course, Yingshun would very soon change to Qingtai, because Li Conghou's sworn elder brother Li Congke would rise in revolt and smoothly overthrow him.

The amusing thing was that Li Siyuan was Li Keyong's adopted son, yet he rebelled against his sworn younger brother Li Cunxu and slaughtered all the blood descendants of his adoptive father.

Li Congke was likewise Li Siyuan's adopted son, and then he rebelled against his sworn younger brother Li Conghou, and also nearly slaughtered all the blood descendants of his adoptive father.

Er — perhaps he should be called a stepson instead, because Li Congke was a child his mother brought along when she remarried.

But however one put it, Li Keyong's line seemed to be under a curse. It appeared that taking too many adopted sons carried no small hidden peril.

Of course, Great King Zhang did not have that worry yet, because his adopted-son army had not been fully established — it numbered only a paltry twenty-some men.

All this was because Great King Zhang's standards were too high. In taking adopted sons to form his adopted-son army, he only recruited those with Han Chinese features who were also intelligent, so naturally the collection process was a bit slow.

However, unlike the big shots of the Central Plains, who took adopted sons purely for martial strength, Zhang Zhao took adopted sons to blossom in both the civil and martial arts.

Besides training in horsemanship, archery, martial skills, military treatises, and battle tactics, reading and literacy were the most basic requirements. For their education, Zhang Zhao personally compiled teaching materials — internal governance, foreign affairs, mathematics, and law all had to be studied.

Being an adopted son of Great King Zhang was absolutely no easy matter. The only one without Han features — Huang Yang'er, whom Zhang Zhao had adopted for his meritorious service in explosives — knew this suffering best. Sometimes he truly wished he could just go back to herding sheep.

On this New Year's Eve, besides keeping vigil through the night, there was one indispensable ritual: drinking Sichuan peppercorn wine.

It really was Sichuan peppercorn wine! Take a handful of fine Sichuan peppercorns, put them in wine, warm it, and drink. The taste — tsk tsk!

Gritting his teeth, Zhang Zhao drank two cups with everyone, then hurriedly flung his cup as far away as he could.

Which great genius invented warming wine with Sichuan peppercorns? Truly inspired!

Fortunately, the wine of this era was not high in alcohol and did not burn the throat much; otherwise it would have been numbing and spicy at once, like eating hotpot.

In the great hall, many people had been invited to the all-night New Year's Eve vigil banquet — all officers above the rank of Commandant from the various armies, the civil officials garrisoning and pacifying the various regions, and the entire Hanshan Capital Guard, over a hundred people in all.

They were called civil officials, but in reality they still carried themselves like military men. Once the wine flowed a little too freely, the atmosphere in the great hall immediately changed flavor.

This was no "high-class state banquet" of the Juer Khan and Deputy King of the Great Jin Kingdom — this was more like the gathering of the one hundred and eight heroes at Mount Liang in Water Margin.

Yang Shouli and the monk Zheng Tong of Huitong were dancing opposite each other, and before long a great crowd of drunken revelers surged up, until it turned into a chaotic frenzy of dancing demons.

Ma Yaozi and Man Xiong started fighting again. The two had always nursed some grudge against each other, and now, borrowing courage from the wine, they began wrestling right there in the banquet hall, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers who feared no drama and egged them on.

Zhang Zhao could only helplessly signal with his eyes to old Zhang Zhong beside him. Damn it — if no one intervened, the two were certain to fight themselves into a real fury.

Once such blockheads truly lost their tempers, they would most likely draw blades, which would be very detrimental to the internal unity of the Hanshan Capital Guard.

Clink! With a crisp sound, Zhang Zhong, strolling over with an air of nonchalance, tossed two gold ingots onto the low table with folding legs beside the two men, then began calling out to the people around him.

"Come now! Tonight I'll be the banker. But this wrestling is of little interest — mere brute strength. You lot are all men destined to become high officials and nobles; let us play something more refined. Let us compete in archery!"

"Right, right! Compete in archery! Wrestling is just the two of you competing; only an archery contest can display the valor of all you gentlemen!"

"Right! On New Year's Eve, before the Great King, how can we let you two blockheads monopolize the spotlight?"

The moment Zhang Zhong stepped in, the atmosphere changed. Although he had only arrived at Kesai City a few days ago, and although Zhang Zhong, strictly speaking, had no battle merits to speak of and not even an official rank or post.

Yet no one dared to slight him. Merely because the Great King had been raised by Zhang Zhong, few dared to make trouble in front of him.

Moreover, this was very likely done at the Great King's behest, so before long someone brought out bows, arrows, and archery targets.

Everyone's focus instantly shifted from the two men wrestling before a crowd to a grand archery competition.

The crowd, in high spirits, openly put forward twelve skilled archers, while the rest brought out gold and silver and began placing bets.

Before long, top-grade flowing-cloud Shu brocade — worth more than gold in Anxi and Transoxiana — appeared among the stakes, and the atmosphere grew even more heated, everyone staring at the brocade with gleaming eyes.

Even Man Xiong and Ma Yaozi forgot their slight grudge and began breathing heavily.

Zhang Zhao gave a bitter smile. His subordinates could feast and drink through the New Year's vigil, but he could not, because he still had to make arrangements for these fellows.

This time he had absorbed Yusuf's defeated troops. He selected over eight thousand men from among them, plus more than three thousand Persian surrendered soldiers, and over three thousand men chosen from the various tribes of the Northern Mountains. Zhang Zhao had assembled a full thirty-thousand-strong army for himself.

The pressure was enormous! One had to understand that even at the height of the Great Tang, the Anxi Army could generally field only around thirty thousand men; any more and logistics and supply could not keep up.

But Zhang Zhao had no choice but to field this many men, because what he faced next was the full counterattack of Samanid Persia.

Whether or not it stood on the eve of decline, Samanid Persia was still a great power of Transoxiana with a population of over three to four million.

According to intelligence provided by the Persian surrendered general Rashid Saleman, Samanid Persia's military strength was divided into four regional armies.

The first was the palace guard of the Ark Citadel, directly controlled by Nasr II, numbering around five thousand men. This was the Emir's trusted personal force.

Next were the Ghulam guard forces stationed in five important cities — Bukhara, Samarkand, Herat, and others.

Among them, the Ghulams of Bukhara were commanded by Crown Prince Hamid, numbering around twenty thousand, while the other four cities together had around ten thousand.

The third regional army was the border defense force facing the Saffarid dynasty in the south. The Ghulam guards and the Ersaliya standing army combined numbered around thirty thousand.

Finally, there were the standing and semi-standing troops of the Khujand province, which Zhang Zhao had completely destroyed — around thirty-five thousand men. Adu Lal had led out over thirty thousand of them, and in the end only about three or four thousand fled back.

Zhang Zhao's scalp went numb upon hearing this. A country with fewer than four million people permanently maintaining an army of ninety to ninety-five thousand — the soldier-to-civilian ratio reached an astonishing more than one in forty.

What kind of reckless militarism was this? Damn it — given this era's productivity, a soldier-to-civilian ratio of one in eighty would already be considered terrifying. Not everyone could become the old Qin people of the Warring States.

He finally understood the greatest reason for Samanid Persia's decline: the entire country had been hijacked by a massive class of military aristocrats and officers.

Four million people supporting an army of over ninety thousand — most of the nation's strength was probably spent on feeding soldiers.

Even if many of them were half-soldier half-civilian, and even with cheaply hired holy warriors, it was still not something this country could bear.

If he had the time, Zhang Zhao could slowly wear them down like the Kara-Khanid Khanate in history, waiting until this giant of Transoxiana collapsed, then feast to his heart's content.

But he had no time, so he could only use the current favorable situation to decisively and swiftly tear away Samanid Persia's last disguise. The possessor of a ninety-thousand-strong army was not necessarily powerful.

Using the small to strike the great — thirty thousand men was the absolute minimum requirement.

The atmosphere in the great hall grew ever more heated. Man Xiong hit the bullseye four times out of five shots, pushing Ma Yaozi to the brink. If his score fell below that, he would not only lose face but also lose a large sum of silver.

But Zhang Zhao paid no attention to that. He wrote and sketched on draft paper, already beginning to work out the military reform plan for commanding these thirty thousand men.

First, the name "Hanshan Capital Guard" would be separated out from the Fengtian Army, because judging from this battle, Zhang Zhao still needed to personally lead troops in assault.

Moreover, of the sixty-some men remaining in the Hanshan Capital Guard, many were in fact not suited to be sent out as officers.

For men like Dunzhu, Man Xiong, and Song Zhongyi, letting them lead thirty or fifty men is fine, but giving them more than two hundred would be harming both others and themselves.

So Zhang Zhao prepared to strip the title of the Hanshan Du from the Fengtian Army and make it the name of his own personal guard.

Then he would place Fan Shun, Dunzhu, Man Xiong, Song Zhongyi, and the others into the personal guard as lower and middle-ranking officers, with a strength of three hundred men.

From now on, these three hundred men would be like Li Shimin's Xuanjia Iron Cavalry in history — the decisive force that follows their commander into the enemy's formation.

Those who could be sent out as officers, such as Yin Yaozi, Fan Quan, Yan Jin, and the others, would all be sent out to take official posts this time.

The newly recruited and surrendered sixteen thousand troops would all be controlled by men selected from the Hanshan Du and the Feihu Du and Tiema Du of the Baoda Camp.

These sixteen thousand men would form two armies, eight thousand in each.

The Persian surrendered troops mixed with light cavalry from the various North Mountain tribes, plus a portion of the former Kesai City infantry, would form the Left Army of Shunyi.

Zhang Zhao prepared to make Yan Jin the Troop Commander of the Left Army, with Fan Quan, Hu Guang, and the surrendered Persian general Rashid Saleman and others as his deputies.

For the Right Army of Shunyi, Yin Yaozi would be Troop Commander, with Ma Yaozi and Lu Sanlang as deputies.

It was still deep winter, and the season was unfavorable for war. The real fighting would likely not begin until the third or fourth month of next year. Once Khotan's grain and fodder began moving, they could march south.

Choosing spring was not only because the roads would be easier, but also because it could disrupt the Samanid Persians' spring planting. Even if the fighting went poorly, the Persians would not be able to farm in peace. Using attack as defense was the better way to hold the Fergana Basin.

"Great King! Secret report from Commandant Yan: on the road from Bukhara to Khujand, they intercepted an envoy from Bukhara — said to be a high official — and have already sent him over through the night!"

Just as Zhang Zhao was about to finish his military reorganization plan, Guo Tiance came hurrying over.

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