Chapter 800: One Trick Wins the World

Bai Congxin had won a complete victory on his side, and Hu Guang had not been idle either. Even before Bai Congxin's great army set out, Hu Guang had sent an envoy to Amir, governor of the Stone Country city in Samanid Persia, to extort grain.

Yes — extortion. The envoy, face to face with Amir, made no attempt to conceal his arrogance, demanding that Amir supply two hundred thousand shi of military grain, all while putting on the airs of a celestial empire and treating the whole of Samanid Persia as a vassal of Great Zhou.

Normally, given Bai Congxin's spreading reputation as a god of slaughter, if the demand had been for fifty to eighty thousand shi of grain, Amir might have gritted his teeth and paid up.

But a demand this unceremonious — barely short of a master ordering a slave — and for two hundred thousand shi at that, was something Amir would never grant.

Yet he did not dare do anything to the envoy either, because at that moment, it was as if the memories of his ancestors had suddenly taken hold of Amir.

He abruptly recalled that for over a thousand years, the favorite pastime of these peach-blossom-stone envoys had been to provoke some local king or city lord into killing them, thereby creating a pretext for the great army to come slaughter and plunder.

So Amir very "wisely" wined and dined the envoy, but said not a word about the grain, and sent him on his way.

Not long after, however, Amir heard that Bai Congxin had led his great army a thousand li on a distant campaign against the Krik tribe, and he immediately realized what was going on.

So it was not about provoking him into killing the envoy to create a pretext for attack, nor about extorting grain — it was about frightening him so that he would not dare move against them while they were away on campaign, was it?

This was even more galling than being extorted. Amir felt his intelligence had been profoundly insulted.

Furious, he calculated: if the Zhou men failed in their campaign against the Krik tribe, he would immediately raise fifty thousand troops and go beat the drowning dog. As for grain — not a single grain would he give.

Amir knew well where the greatest weakness of these Zhou men who had defeated Guo Guangyi lay: they had very little in the way of supplies.

The area around Talas and White Water City had originally been fairly prosperous, but after several years of warfare, with great armies of tens of thousands marching back and forth, the stored grain had been nearly exhausted.

Moreover, the Zhou men had come from afar and were complete outsiders. They would be lucky to tell east from west, let alone know which places in the region were rich and which herders and farmers could be squeezed for the most.

Thus, after Talas and White Water City had been taken, the nearby herders and farmers had mostly fled.

Around Talas and White Water City, which had originally held a population of some one hundred thirty or forty thousand, it was doubtful whether even twenty or thirty thousand remained.

And the Zhou men had suddenly arrived with over a hundred thousand — they would very soon be unable to feed themselves.

Amir believed that as long as he could hold the Stone Country city, he could simply starve the Zhou men into leaving, and perhaps even gain White Water City in the bargain.

So, ahem, this Stone Country city governor, feeling his intelligence insulted, in order to keep grain from being seized by Zhou raiding cavalry, issued a direct order: officials and iqta holders everywhere were to concentrate this year's collected grain as much as possible in walled towns.

As the ancients said, man proposes, Heaven disposes — that is exactly what this means.

As Amir had predicted, Hu Guang was certainly going to plunder the Stone Country city's grain — but the manner of the plundering was perhaps not quite what Amir imagined.

Amir imagined that with the Zhou men off campaigning against the Krik tribe, they could now only send out small numbers of raiding cavalry southward to plunder.

And with heavy snow about to fall, if he could just hold out for these ten or twenty days, he could ensure the Zhou men did not get a single grain, and starve them into leaving before the harsher depths of winter arrived.

Seen this way, concentrating grain in walled towns was certainly the safest course, because according to the excellent matching mechanism of the Transoxiana region, walled towns could generally hold out for a very long time.

But what he did not know was that Bai Congxin's thousand-li expedition could also be made with only thirty thousand elite cavalry — and those thirty thousand were enough to crush the Oghuz Yabghu state.

So Hu Guang, apart from the troops needed to garrison the various places, could still freely deploy thirteen thousand infantry and cavalry, all of them elite.

That being the case, Hu Guang had no need at all to send raiding cavalry into the countryside to seize grain. Relying on the Han people's formidable siegecraft, taking the towns one by one was actually the most convenient approach.

This was Heaven's arrangement: Hu Guang, in relatively unfavorable circumstances, had encountered a rich and generous giver of free kills.

The Stone Country city, that is, Tashkent — later the capital of Uzbekistan, and in Tang times the seat of the Dayuan Protectorate — was once called Tuoshigan or Tuozhi City, all transliterations of the same Turkic word meaning "Stone City."

The reason for the name is that Tashkent lies in a piedmont alluvial plain; it is the most important city in the Chirchiq River valley, formed by the Chirchiq, a major tributary of the Syr Darya, rushing down from the snow mountains.

When the Chirchiq River comes surging down, it brings and polishes great quantities of cobblestones, and the inhabitants of Tashkent polished these cobblestones and used them as the main building material for the city.

So in a sense, Tashkent and the Stone Country city mean the same thing. The reason the Great Tang called Tashkent the Stone Country is precisely that the place abounds in cobblestones, and the city was built mainly of cobblestones.

The Chirchiq River valley, where the Stone Country city lies, is also one of the wealthiest regions in Transoxiana. Annual precipitation here exceeds four hundred millimeters, and with the Chirchiq, the Syr Darya, and other rivers, there is simply no shortage of water.

Tang-era records more than once describe the Stone Country city as surrounded on all sides by gentle ridges, with broad groves of trees, millet and wheat, flowing waters, and dense population.

And in this valley, besides the Stone Country city itself, there are at least twenty or thirty prosperous towns of over five thousand people.

The Chirchiq River valley and both banks of the Yaxartes, which fall under the jurisdiction of the Stone Country city governor, hold more than five hundred thousand inhabitants, a mix of farming and herding, with abundant grain and a hardy, fierce populace.

Historically, half of Samanid Persia's strong armies came from around the Stone Country city, and half from the Persian heartland.

This is also why the Stone Country city governor, with only a little over five hundred thousand people, dared to challenge the Emir of Bukhara.

That said, this "hardy and fierce populace" is measured by Transoxiana standards. Never mind moving them to the Central Plains — even on the Mobei steppe, they would be thoroughly unimpressive.

Hu Guang's deliberately arrogant envoy and extortion demand were not at all what Amir thought — a feint to cover the army's campaign against the Krik tribe. In fact, Hu Guang was covering his next surprise attack.

On the twenty-fifth of the ninth month, just as Bai Congxin was about to launch his decisive battle, Hu Guang suddenly led ten thousand infantry and cavalry south.

Yao Yuanfu personally led a thousand elite cavalry as the vanguard, racing one hundred eighty li in a single day and night, wiping out the sentry posts Amir had placed along the route and cutting off the Stone Country city's contact with the outside world.

It was not until Hu Guang's main army reached a point twenty-some li outside the Stone Country city that Amir learned the Zhou army had actually come south.

And had it not been for the quick wits of Amir's great general Mahmud, Yao Yuanfu would very nearly have taken the Stone Country city outright.

Governor Amir still did not realize the gravity of the situation. Seeing only Hu Guang's ten thousand infantry and cavalry outside, he actually lit beacon fires atop the Stone Country city walls at once, summoning the iqta knights of the surrounding countryside to bring their retinue cavalry to the city to "rescue the sovereign."

On Hu Guang's side, he had been somewhat worried about the grain problem, but after taking a small town of a few thousand people, he immediately captured more than forty thousand shi of grain — it nearly made Hu Guang's eyes pop out of his head.

Seeing that breaking one small town yielded tens of thousands of shi of grain, and seeing the convenient water transport and complete irrigation systems around the Stone Country city, he began to think the place was rich enough to compare with Shu or the Huai River region.

With grain in hand, his mind was at ease. Hu Guang took out the map and studied it carefully, which only strengthened his resolve to take the Stone Country city.

Because the Stone Country city sat exactly between Juzhanti, at the far southwestern end of Ningyuan, and White Water City. Taking the Stone Country city would open the route from White Water City to Juzhanti.

In that way, from Suyab to Talas to White Water City to the Stone Country city to Juzhanti to Kesh to Shule and back to Suyab, a complete closed loop could be formed.

Holding the Ningyuan Basin, the Stone Country city valley, and the Suyab River valley — three valleys and basins rich in produce and dense in population — would be enough in the future to utterly smash Samanid Persia and the Arabs behind Samanid Persia.

On the first day of the tenth month, just as Hu Guang was growing impatient, Stone Country city governor Amir finally assembled his "rescue the sovereign" army — a full fifty thousand infantry and cavalry.

They took the initiative, crossed the Chirchiq River, and attacked a small town Hu Guang had just taken.

The tactics were the same old routine, basically identical to how Bai Congxin had smashed the Yabghu state's great army.

Hu Guang hid three thousand elite cavalry inside the town, commanded by Yao Yuanfu, while he personally led the main force in defending the town, which was built on a hillock and surrounded only by wooden palisades and stretches of low earthen wall.

Amir personally directed fifty thousand troops in an assault from all sides, but clearly, though the Zhou troops were fewer, their fighting strength was far greater. The two sides battled around the small town for several days, and the Stone Country city troops several times nearly broke into the town, but each time were driven out.

The fighting continued until the seventh day of the tenth month, by which time both sides were exhausted, men and horses alike. Hu Guang seized the moment and ordered Yao Yuanfu to lead three thousand elite cavalry in a sudden strike at maozheng — six in the morning.

At that time, the Stone Country city troops were cooking breakfast and, after several days of hard fighting, were utterly exhausted, so they failed to organize any effective defense. Yao Yuanfu's single charge pierced straight through to the Stone Country city army's command tent.

Although Governor Amir, under the protection of his personal armored guards, narrowly escaped across the Chirchiq River, Yao Yuanfu cut down the great banner Amir had planted before his tent, and Hu Guang inside the town seized the chance to sally forth.

The Stone Country city army suffered a crushing defeat, with over twenty thousand casualties, most of them swept away by the icy river waters while crossing the Chirchiq.

On the eleventh day of the tenth month, Hu Guang arrived beneath the walls of Shiguo City and attempted to storm it.

But the city's foundation was built of stacked stone and was extremely sturdy, and the rammed yellow earth above it bore a strong Central Plains style.

Only after seizing some people and questioning them did he learn that after the defeat at Talas, the Arabs had taken Tang army prisoners and used the Central Plains method of rammed earth to build and reinforce this city.

Hu Guang was speechless. He observed the surroundings for a long while. The foundation was stacked stone, and the walls were rammed earth over a zhang thick. The only way to break the city would probably be to blast open the gate with gunpowder.

But right now he had only ten thousand men. Inside the city there were probably still more than twenty thousand soldiers and twenty or thirty thousand able-bodied men. Even if he blasted open the gate and fought his way in, he would not get much loot, and that Amir would certainly find a way to flee. Better to come back next year.

Sure enough, a few days later, heavy snow drifted down and the weather turned abruptly bitter cold. Hu Guang then took the opportunity to pretend he could not crack the hard bone that was Shiguo City, and withdrew back to Baishui City with the tens of thousands of people and more than a hundred thousand shi of grain he had plundered.

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