Chapter 405: Great King Zhang's Other Mother

Zhang Zhao's plan to swear brotherhood with Yelu Deguang was no small matter.

It was not merely a matter between two men, but one that bore on the relations between two states — and Zhang Zhao was, on the face of it, still a subject of the Jin state.

So after their meeting at Shahukou, the two began sending envoys back and forth frequently, and within both the Khitan and the Guiyi Army, discussions got underway.

During these discussions, Zhang Zhao encamped northwest of the Hun River, and Yelu Deguang encamped southeast of it, each still maintaining considerable vigilance toward the other.

And throughout this period, the Guiyi Army kept displaying its strength to the Khitan, raising Zhang Zhao's standing and image in Khitan eyes.

Wu Da'er, bringing along his brother Wu Yuan'er, again went as envoy to the Khitan, and began a campaign of scattering money lavishly to win over the powerful.

At the same time, Cao Yanjing's side also began letting slip certain information to the Khitan.

The largest part of it concerned the enmity between Zhang Zhao and the Pugu family of the Gaochang Uyghurs, as well as his enmity with Saktu of the Kara-Khanids.

Yelu Deguang thus learned that Zhang Zhao's favored consort, Lady Cao, was the former queen of the Kara-Khanids, and that Saktu's daughter had been taken captive, and so on.

On the Guiyi Army's side there were also some murmurs, but none of them represented the mainstream.

For the people of this time did not hate the Khitan for swallowing up the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun — why, it would have been strange if they had not wanted to swallow them.

The overwhelming majority hated Shi Jingtang for selling out his country to win favor.

Especially after Yelu Deguang personally led sixty thousand troops to besiege Yunzhou for eight months without taking it — that thoroughly exposed the Khitan's pathetic ability at storming cities.

Had it not been for Shi Jingtang's shamelessness, how could Yelu Deguang ever have obtained the Sixteen Prefectures of Yan-Yun?

The people of Hebei and Hedong in particular hated Shi Jingtang to the bone.

After the two sides had faced off for ten days, Zhang Zhao on his own initiative released the several hundred prisoners of the Left Pishi Fengsheng Army captured by the Hun River.

The next day he also returned the armor and weapons they had lost by the Hun River.

Then, following Khitan custom, he permitted them to send several hundred men to the mass burial pits where the Khitan soldiers and horses were buried, to dig up the bodies, cremate them, and carry away the ashes.

This softened the Khitan attitude somewhat, while at the same time bringing back memories of their defeat, so that in the hearts of officers and men alike there grew an even stronger reluctance to fight the Guiyi Army.

It also made them understand that when Zhang Zhao had first marched east with his army, he had come with a purpose.

Zhang Zhao himself was now quite vexed. Yelu Deguang still would not make a decision, and it had already been more than a month since he had led his great army north from Xiazhou.

The troops' hearts were set on returning, the grain was nearly gone, and if no answer came within another half month, he would not be able to hold out any longer.

At last, two days after the ashes of the Khitan war dead had been returned, an envoy came from the Khitan, concerning the city of Yunzhou.

Yelu Deguang insisted that the soldiers and civilians of Yunzhou were already subjects of the Great Khitan state, and would not agree to Zhang Zhao's plan to take them away.

Zhang Zhao guessed that this must be an envoy sent by Shi Jingtang, who had made a long detour and arrived by way of Youzhou.

But even with Shi Jingtang's edict, Yelu Deguang still could not take Yunzhou.

Because although Wu Luan and the others had also begun to think of withdrawing, they would not open the gates without a guarantee of their safety.

Who did not know the Khitan's character?

From this, Zhang Zhao boldly guessed that Yelu Deguang appeared to be stating his position, but was in fact coming to seek Zhang Zhao's help.

Because if he wanted to end the present awkward situation, he needed someone the people of Yunzhou trusted to act as guarantor; only after their lives and safety were assured would the city of Yunzhou be handed over.

Zhang Zhao pondered for a long while. As for Yunzhou, he truly was powerless now — he could not hold it.

And Wu Luan and the others in Yunzhou had in fact already done more than well enough.

With several hundred dead and wounded, holding Yunzhou for eight months, by now everything edible in the city had probably been eaten; no one could fairly ask any more of them.

In history, they had held out for seven months, and only after receiving Yelu Deguang's guarantee did they give up the city of Yunzhou.

In this timeline they had held on one month longer, and precisely because they had Zhang Zhao as an outside ally, they were unwilling to take the risk of trusting Yelu Deguang.

Zhang Zhao guessed that Yunzhou had very likely sent envoys to Yelu Deguang, making clear that they would trust only Zhang Zhao.

At this thought, Zhang Zhao spoke in a clear voice to Han Kuangye, who had come here as special envoy.

"Please return and report to His Majesty: the residents of Yunzhou may go or stay as they please. So long as His Majesty is willing to issue an edict treating them generously, those willing to leave their homes will always be a minority.

But those four thousand officers and men of the Datong Army, and the more than ten thousand family members of the Datong Army — I must take them away."

Han Kuangye raised his head slightly and glanced at Zhang Zhao. "May I ask, Great King, where you intend to settle these Datong Army officers and men?"

It seemed Yelu Deguang did not want Zhang Zhao to settle the Datong Army in Xiazhou, but Zhang Zhao decided to pay him no mind.

In this matter, if Yelu Deguang wanted to take Yunzhou without being laughed at by the whole world, then he would have to ask a great deal of Zhang Zhao — what standing did he have to come making conditions?

"Hexi, Longyou, Lingwu, Xia-Sui — every place lacks men, and any of them can take them!

Envoy, you had best return and tell His Majesty: wherever these people go, it will be better than their going to Hedong. Liu Taifu of Hedong is a man of outstanding ability!"

Han Kuangye's expression at once turned grave, for he understood Zhang Zhao's meaning.

Liu Zhiyuan of Hedong had always been firmly opposed to Shi Jingtang's serving the Khitan as a son serves a father, and Jinyang in Hedong lay just south of Yunzhou — far more convenient than the route from Xiazhou to Yunzhou.

More importantly, Liu Zhiyuan of Hedong was at that moment contending with the Khitan for the more than one hundred thousand men under Bai Chengfu, the former Deputy Commander of Yinshan under the Tang.

These tribes, predominantly Tuyuhun with a mixture of Turks, Tangut, Xi, and even Khitan, had always been an important component of the strength of the Yinshan region.

Now Bai Chengfu, unable to endure Khitan oppression, had migrated inward and settled in Daibei and other places.

But these hundred thousand or so were not all of them; within Khitan territory there were still tens of thousands to a hundred thousand more.

That is to say, once Bai Chengfu submitted to Liu Zhiyuan, Liu Zhiyuan could use Bai Chengfu and the others to continue luring the various peoples within Khitan territory to surrender.

So compared with Zhang Zhao, once Liu Zhiyuan controlled Bai Chengfu, the threat he posed was immeasurably greater than that of Zhang Zhao's Guiyi Army in Hexi.

If this Datong Army, which had fought the Khitan for eight months, were to withdraw south into Liu Zhiyuan's territory in Hedong, then the Yunzhou front would never know peace again.

Of course, Han Kuangye did not know the course of history as Zhang Zhao did; had he known it, he would not have been so alarmed.

For in history, after Liu Zhiyuan gained control of Bai Chengfu's forces, in order not to further provoke the Khitan and bring them south, he did not even dare take in these few thousand troops and more than ten thousand family members of the Datong Army, leaving them to struggle for survival in Hedong.

In the end, part of them followed Wu Luan and died in battle outside Beizhou, while the greater part had no choice but to return to Yunzhou.

And the Khitan, especially in the time of Xiao Chuo, greatly placated them, so that these heroes who had originally resisted the Khitan came to resent the court all the more, gave their hearts to the Khitan, and regarded the Central Kingdom as their enemy.

When the Northern Song launched its northern expeditions, especially the second one, Pan Mei and Yang Ye came north through Yanmen.

The Han people of Yunzhou and the various sinicized barbarians who had originally belonged to the Central Plains — specifically the descendants of this very Datong Army — resisted to the death, making the capture of Yunzhou far more difficult than originally planned.

But since he could not guess what Liu Zhiyuan would do, Han Kuangye could only fall silent, then hurry back to the Khitan main camp to report.

Because he agreed with what Zhang Zhao had said — even if these Datong Army men went to Xiazhou, that would be far better than letting Liu Zhiyuan get them.

A clamor of mules and horses sounded — this was a batch of grain and fodder that Pei Yuan had risked sending men to escort down the Yellow River from Lingzhou.

Last year's autumn harvest and this year's spring planting in the four prefectures of Yin, Xia, You, and Sui had been delayed by nearly half. Guo Tiance had written five days ago that the four prefectures of Yin and Xia truly could not spare much grain.

So this batch of grain from Lingwu was very nearly the last supplies Zhang Zhao would receive.

There was no time to keep dragging things out with Yelu Deguang. If he did not want large-scale famine in Yin, Xia, You, and Sui this year, Zhang Zhao still needed to manage things properly.

Where was the time to keep standing off against the Khitan here at the Hun River?

In early May, Zhang Zhao sent Bai Congxin and Huang Yingda, each leading nine hundred elite cavalry up along the Hun River, breaking through at the shallows of the Cangtou River in the upper reaches.

They bypassed Wuzhou City — present-day Zuoyun County, Datong, in the People's Republic — and finally vanished into this high plateau.

Wuzhou City was less than a hundred li from Yunzhou. After Bai Congxin and Huang Yingda entered the area east of Wuzhou City, Yelu Deguang finally grew nervous and sent an envoy to Zhang Zhao's camp once more to begin discussing the time and place for the two sides to conclude an alliance.

Truly fucking cheap — if you don't push them, they never learn fear.

On the fifteenth of the fifth month, under the witness of the Datong Army representatives of Yunzhou and the eminent monk delegations accompanying the Khitan and Guiyi armies.

Zhang Zhao and Yelu Deguang, at Yuanyang Lake — that is, by the shore of Daihai Lake — laid out the three livestock of ox, sheep, and pig according to Central Plains custom, and also burned wood to sacrifice to Heaven according to Khitan custom.

The two men took each other's hands and swore brotherhood, vowing each to keep to his own east and west, and not to invade one another.

Zhang Zhao called Yelu Deguang his elder brother, and called Empress Dowager Yingtian, Shulu Ping, his aunt-mother empress dowager.

Every year, on the aunt-mother empress dowager's birthday, he should send envoys to offer congratulations, presenting as congratulatory gifts one thousand bolts of Khotan colored silk, two thousand bolts of Hexi white cotton cloth, one hundred jin each of Hexi white sugar and tea bricks, and fifty jin of rock sugar.

Yelu Deguang called Zhang Zhao his younger brother, and called Zhang Zhao's legal mother, the Fengtian Grand Princess of Khotan, his aunt.

On the Fengtian Grand Princess's birthday, the Khitan should send envoys to offer birthday congratulations, bestowing as congratulatory gifts twenty pieces of gold and silver ornaments, such as gold-flower silver spittoons, Makara-pattern gold-flower silver bowls, and gilt-silver crowns, along with other Khitan gold and silver wares,

and additionally bestowing top-grade eastern pearls, Khitan porcelain, ginseng, and deer antler.

These congratulatory gifts were not equal — the value of the Khitan return gifts was only about half that of the Guiyi Army's congratulatory gifts, but Zhang Zhao truly had no energy left to haggle with the Khitan over this.

These steppe peoples seemed to enjoy using congratulatory gifts to flaunt their status.

After swearing brotherhood, Yelu Deguang agreed to let Zhang Zhao take away the four thousand soldiers and fourteen thousand family members of the Datong Army of Yunzhou.

The two sides agreed that Lingzhou and Xiazhou belonged to the Guiyi Army's territory.

But the West Surrender Fortress, Central Surrender Fortress, East Surrender Fortress, and the territories including the Zhenwu Army and Tiande Army belonged to the Khitan.

This was equivalent to ceding to the Khitan the entire Hetao region except for the area where the Ningxia Plain lay — roughly the area from present-day Linhe District of Bayannur City to Hohhot.

But these regions had never been under Zhang Zhao's control at all; they had long been occupied by the Khitan, and it was not up to him to agree or disagree.

The Khitan simply wanted Zhang Zhao to formally acknowledge this and not come harassing them.

The mutual demand between the two sides was simply: you don't come seize my Hetao, and I won't go harass your Lingzhou.

One east, one west — each should go do what he needs to do.

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