Chapter 886: How to Divide the World (Part 2)

The appearance of the ancient Uzboy riverbed genuinely opened many people's eyes, because reopening this river was not actually very difficult.

Historically, after Tsarist Russia took control of Central Asia in the late nineteenth century, it had wanted to reopen this waterway.

And the reason Tsarist Russia knew about it in the first place was that it had learned of it from the local people.

This proves that the ancient Uzboy riverbed is quite obvious — so obvious that the locals only needed their eyes to see that this ancient river course, dry for two or three thousand years, existed.

Since there was already a ready-made ancient riverbed, the only part requiring human intervention was a canal of a few dozen kilometers.

Historically, when Tsarist Russia attempted to restore the ancient Uzboy riverbed, it was facing enormous pressure from Europe, and its rule in Central Asia was not yet stable.

Most importantly, the Tsar did not pay much attention to this place, even leaving the task of governing the region to a group of adventurers and military officers.

By the Soviet period, the strategic value of the Uzboy River had dropped sharply, because the Soviets had a powerful Caspian fleet and also controlled the Caucasus, so they did not need to move supplies and troops from Central Asia to deter Iran.

So it was not that opening the ancient Uzboy riverbed was difficult, but that the Soviets no longer needed it.

But at this moment, Zhang Zhou very much needed this waterway as the main channel for transporting supplies and controlling the Khorasan region, so it would certainly be built.

As for the manpower and maintenance costs required — weren't there the natives of Transoxiana? And even in the worst case, if the natives of Transoxiana were gone, weren't there still the Indians? Just go and seize them.

As for the rest, such as whether the Aral Sea would become a dead sea or even disappear because of a sharp drop in inflow —

that did not matter either. After all, later generations had basically already finished off the Aral Sea.

Guo Zhou'er calculated carefully, then pointed in the direction of Baghdad. "Your Highness the Prince of An, perhaps we could send Mansur onto the throne of Baghdad."

Zhang Xianyu rubbed his chin, somewhat puzzled, but he did not speak. The Fifth Prince, Prince of Song Zhang Xianxi, who had been silent all along, spoke up.

"Baghdad is the capital of the Black-robed Caliphate. It is said to have a population of over four hundred thousand, and is a place of first-rate wealth.

Moreover, Baghdad is at least six thousand li from us. If we were to conquer it, who knows how much time it would take, how many supplies it would consume, how many brave warriors would die. How can it be lightly promised to Mansur?"

"If our Great Zhou, if our Han people had five million — no, even just three million people in Transoxiana, this Baghdad would not be given to Mansur.

But we do not have that now, and it will be very hard to have it in the future, because Great Zhou has too many good places.

Just the Central Plains alone, at today's crop yields, would need its population to at least more than double, to over one hundred and twenty million people, before natural out-migration would occur.

Besides that, Andong, Lelang, Korea, Penglai, and Chaori — all of these places attract commoners more than Transoxiana does.

Especially now that word is spreading everywhere that a gold mountain larger than the Iwami Silver Mine has been discovered in Purvavideha, everyone is staring red-eyed at the Eastern Continent, and even fewer people are willing to throw money westward.

Even if we can attract some people here, there are still India and far-western Europa as two directions that will siphon off population.

From this, it is clear that all of Transoxiana will certainly lack Han people for the next several decades.

So we cannot personally go down and fight a grinding, ugly war. Instead, we must maintain an image of lofty superiority and, relying on our powerful military force, act as heaven-sent troops who settle things with one decisive blow."

Guo Zhou'er was about to say more, but Zhang Xianyu interrupted her. "I understand now. The Commandery Lady means that we should stir up the people gathered around Mansur and have them follow us to attack the Black-robed Caliphate.

If we win, we give Baghdad to Mansur and let him establish a Persian kingdom on the territory of the Black-robed Caliphate.

The Persians already bear deep hatred toward the Arabs. Once they rule Arab lands, they will certainly draw a great deal of hatred from the Arabs, and our pressure will be reduced."

"Not only that!" Hu Guang spoke up. "After we have Mansur establish a Persian state in Baghdad, we can use that great achievement to make Mansur squeeze the Arabs and pay tribute to us.

If the Arabs resist, we first let Mansur's Persians bear the first wave of fury, and when he can no longer hold out, we march our army to Baghdad to relieve him.

If Mansur and his Persians dare to resist, we will directly arm the Arabs in secret and give him a hard time.

At the same time, after large numbers of Persians go to Arab lands, Persia proper and Khorasan will be emptied out, and we can slowly fill them up.

The future structure will be this: we remotely control the Persians to rule the Arabs. If the Arabs rise in revolt, we help the Persians suppress them; if the Persians harbor disloyal thoughts, we support the Arabs and show them what's what."

Bai Congxin nodded. "This method is usable. And even if this strategy of supporting one faction against another among the Arabs and Persians fails, we will at least have taken Persia proper and Khorasan!"

Zhang Xianyu was also nodding, but at the same time, in his heart he understood what the greatest difficulty of the western expedition was.

It was that now the Han lands had high-yield grain, and after completely seizing Andong, Lelang, Korea, Chaori, and Penglai, the land's carrying capacity had greatly increased.

As Guo Zhou'er had said, in the Great Tang era, with six million registered households plus more than ten or twenty million hidden households, the whole country felt as if it were about to explode, and the fubing system had long since become impossible to carry out.

But Great Zhou was different now. Only when the national population reached around one hundred and twenty million would the population completely exceed carrying capacity, and that was a matter of at least forty or fifty years away.

So now, with the Central Plains population not being forced to emigrate, and with other places siphoning people off, the lands west of Anxi needed other methods to continuously attract population and get the wealthy classes of the Central Plains to pour money in this direction.

"Persia proper can at least be divided in two, with two feudatory kings stationed at Rayy (Tehran) and Spahan (Isfahan) to guard it.

Tokharistan can also be divided into two, one at Jiesu (Dushanbe) and one at Xiliuzhou (Kabul).

Finally, divide Khorasan once more, stationed at Mashhad."

Hearing Zhang Xianyu say this, Bai Congxin, Hu Guang, and the others all showed delighted expressions. It seemed Zhang Xianyu truly was capable, seeing at once the greatest predicament of the lands west of Anxi.

To break this predicament of Han people being unwilling to come west of Anxi, there was only one person who could do it — His Majesty the Emperor. Only if he took the lead in spending money and effort to move population would the meritorious officials and wealthy families of the realm follow suit.

"Five feudatory kings means five princes coming west, heh heh!" Li Congde, thinking of the look of headache on his cousin Zhang Zhao's face, could not help laughing out loud.

"Old Ten, you and Old Nine have the best relationship. Write to him and encourage him more, so that he makes up his mind early to take up his fief." Zhang Xianyu was also unable to suppress a smile, and turned to speak to the Tenth Prince, Zhang Xiantai.

The "Old Nine" Zhang Xianyu spoke of was the Ninth Prince Zhang Xianli, cousin of Li Cunhui, Prince of Xiping Commandery. His mother was Li Wenxiu, the childhood sweetheart cousin of our Sage Zhang.

Like the eldest Zhang Xiancun and the fifth Zhang Xianxi, compared to the other princes, he too was a heaven-blessed child born at Rome.

Zhang Xianli was only eighteen this year, but his cousin Li Cunhui had already taken a bunch of cousin-nephews and carved out a large feudatory state for him in India.

At the same time, under the pillow-talk influence of his mother Li Wenxiu, Consort Zhaoyuan, the Emperor had also allowed him to command Wenshu City (Kathmandu, Nepal), one of the seven border prefectures of Batang.

This was out of fear that he would get too hot in India, so that in summer he could go up to Wenshu City to escape the heat!

Zhang Xiantai blinked twice, then understood Zhang Xianyu's meaning. "Second Brother wants to buy some Indian black slaves from the Prince of Xiping Commandery?"

Zhang Xianyu nodded and said to the surrounding kings of the Huaxia people in Transoxiana, "Since we are going to push Mansur to Baghdad to be king, then certainly more than half of the Persians in Persia proper and Khorasan will follow him, and these places will be emptied out.

Of the Han people who come west of our Anxi, at least sixty or seventy percent are not willing to farm the land themselves and only want to be masters.

If we can buy several hundred thousand black slaves to farm the land for them and let them become great landlords, we can naturally attract more brave and ambitious men to come west."

When the crowd heard this, it seemed to make sense, and they all nodded one after another. Only Guo Zhou'er was stunned, because Zhang Xianyu's idea unexpectedly coincided with that of the Indian foreign monk Shili Fuluo.

"If Your Highness the Prince of An wishes to purchase large numbers of Indian black slaves to farm in Transoxiana and Khorasan, then it may be necessary to add a bit of other doctrine to the Six Dharma Sect."

Zhang Xianyu had actually thought about this problem too, because the doctrine of the Six Dharma Sect was about equality for all — everyone was a beloved child of the Supreme Heaven, and it encouraged the beloved children to fight for the Supreme Heaven. Internally, it emphasized that superiors should be benevolent, virtuous, and compassionate, while inferiors should be loyal, filial, righteous, and principled.

This kind of religion had explosive combat power and could unite people's hearts, but — but once several hundred thousand serfs joined in, it would undoubtedly be planting a time bomb for oneself.

"Has Master Shili Fuluo arrived?" Zhang Xianyu asked directly. He had actually considered this problem too, because someone had already made a probe into this issue.

When Li Cunhui and his son reached India, they had already tried to bring the Six Dharma Sect into India.

Then, then they conquered several million Indians, but the Six Dharma Sect's missionary monks were beaten to a pulp by the Brahmin clergy.

In the end, the Han warriors who had followed Li Cunhui to India all felt that the Six Dharma Sect was fine to believe in among Han people, but there was no need to spread it further.

When it comes to running colonies, the Brahmin religion is the most professional in all the world.

After Guo Zhou'er nodded, Zhang Xianyu prepared to receive Shili Fuluo after the banquet, then send him back to India to consult with the Six Dharma Sect elders around Li Cunhui and come up with a plan.

Hmm, this sort of casually altering doctrine — in any other religion, that would be heresy, a line-of-struggle issue worth fighting to the death over. But in the Six Dharma Sect, adapting to local conditions was no great matter.

"Lady Guo has rendered great and meritorious service. What plans do you have for the future? Surely you won't keep following Mansur all the way to Baghdad, will you?" Zhang Xianyu asked with a chuckle.

Now the problem of the Grand Duchy of Dinghai had been solved by Zhang Xianyu, and with the Grand Duchy of Dinghai gone, the problem of the Zheng fief was also solved. Mansur also had a crown from the Great Dynasty, conferring on him the title King of Persia, to wear.

As for Li Congde, the Jin fief's strength was modest and its demands simpler. Now that the pressure from the Zheng fief and Samanid Persia was gone, as long as tens of thousands more Wu slaves came to farm the land, together with the people Li Congde had brought from Khotan, he could live comfortably in Kangju City (Samarkand).

Then the only one left, whose problem had not yet been solved, was Guo Zhou'er.

After bowing to Zhang Xianyu, Guo Zhou'er pointed to a stretch of land west of the Western Sea on the map and said: "Here there is a small country called Bagratia, with a population of two hundred thousand. It once came to Anxi City (Bukhara) to offer tribute.

All around it are dozens of small states, each with ten thousand to several hundred thousand people. Among them there is also a Persian remnant state, the Shirvanshah realm, which has considerable contact with my slaves.

If the Sage grants permission, your slave is willing to take a host of one hundred thousand, with fifteen thousand armored soldiers, and go conquer it."

The place Guo Zhou'er was pointing at was precisely where the three later Caucasus countries would be. Bagratia, in full, was the Armenian Bagratuni dynasty, and its territory roughly corresponded to later Armenia.

The Shirvanshah realm had originally belonged to the Abbasid Caliphate of the Black Banner, and was ruled by a governor sent out by the Black Banner.

But about a hundred years ago, it likely absorbed a large number of Persian remnants and rapidly Persianized. At present it claims descent from the Sassanid Persians.

This country lay in the eastern part of later Azerbaijan, near the Caspian Sea. Baku — that place so extraordinarily rich in oil and gas, capable of supplying Europe with vast amounts of natural gas — was within the Shirvanshah realm.

Besides these two countries, there was also a fairly strong Rawadid state founded by Kurds, and indeed a dozen or more kingdoms and duchies of various sizes remained. The situation was extremely chaotic.

As for why Guo Zhou'er wanted to go there, one must mention a very shrewd family in this Armenian Bagratuni kingdom.

That was the Mamikonian family — famous in later times on both the Chinese and Armenian internet, absurdly claimed to be descendants of Ma Chao.

And this nonsense was not one-sided Chinese nonsense; it was the Armenians themselves who started the nonsense first.

They had already begun this nonsense in Armenian poetry as early as the third or fourth century AD, so that by the tenth century, where Zhang Xianyu lived, this rumor was already completely believed by the Armenians.

In actual fact, the ancestors of the Mamikonian family probably lived in the Tokhara region, and they belonged to the Parthian Empire.

Or there is a certain possibility that their ancestors were Scythians who had once lived in the Western Regions under Western Han rule.

When the Parthian Empire collapsed, they came to Armenia. Perhaps to challenge the noble status of the ruling Arsacid dynasty of Armenia, whose rulers were descended from a cadet branch of the Parthian royal house, they began to claim they were princes from China.

The story was absurd. The Mamikonian family claimed their ancestor was a chancellor of China, who was then killed by the emperor.

Not only that — after the emperor killed this chancellor, he married the chancellor's widow and made her empress. When the chancellor's two sons grew up, they raised troops to avenge their father, then were defeated and forced to migrate westward.

One hearing is enough to tell it's nonsense. Such a thing could never possibly have happened in Chinese history — unless the cuckolded warrior Duke Zhuang of Qi had risen up and killed Cui Zhu, then perhaps there might be a sliver of possibility.

This situation shows that the Mamikonian family's claim of Chinese origin was pure boasting, because they did not understand China.

But the rumor was not entirely inconsistent — for example, the surname and the imperial title, and how they came west, they all described vividly and in great detail.

So this family either had been great merchants on the Silk Road, or truly had gone from the Western Regions to the Parthian Empire.

They had a tiny bit of understanding of China, but it was limited to catching wind and shadows and a small amount of hearsay.

However, although this legend seems absurd now, at the time it fit the situation in Armenia very well. They had just emerged from tribal society, after all — such things happening was not at all strange.

Moreover, they quickly obtained noble status and position. The Han dynasty was universally acknowledged by the Parthians as a great empire, so a fallen prince from the Han Empire naturally had very noble blood.

What was this like? A bit like certain periods in the later Republic.

If you said you were from Henan — hey! Fellow townsman, no good, that won't do!

If you said you were from Holland — fellow townsman, good, good! Have you eaten?

If you hadn't eaten, they would even eagerly bring you a bowl of our Eindhoven spicy soup.

And so the Mamikonian family began to cut a swath through Armenia on the strength of their title as descendants of Chinese princes, enjoying glory for a full five hundred years and more.

Then, retribution came!

They had originally survived in the cracks by staying close to the Byzantine Empire, but this changed-flavor Eastern Rome had grown somewhat crazed in the last one or two hundred years, and didn't much consider the feelings of its underlings.

So the Mamikonian family, having lost their patron, began to decline in Armenia.

Especially after Armenia was occupied by the Abbasid Caliphate of the Black Banner, two great uprisings both ended in failure.

This caused the Mamikonian family to suffer devastating damage to their vitality, and they were gradually eaten away through continuous intermarriage by the Bagratuni family, which was close to the Abbasids.

The young men of the family who were unwilling to accept this had probably been brainwashed by their ancestors' boasting — they actually truly believed they were descendants of Chinese princes.

When they heard that Samanid Persia in Transoxiana was ruled by a Chinese queen (referring to Guo Zhou'er), and that she had fought a great war against the Buyid family that controlled the Abbasid Caliphate, they traveled ten thousand li to Transoxiana to seek help.

It happened that at this time, the Shirvanshah realm, which claimed descent from the Sassanid Persians, was under enormous threat from the Khazar Khaganate, and also chose to come to Anxi City to seek help.

This led to a steady stream of people coming to Anxi City in recent years to pay tribute, and the main force of these tribute-bearers was the people of these two countries.

When Zhang Xianyu heard Guo Zhou'er finish, he was stunned speechless. He truly had not imagined that in this remote backwater tens of thousands of li away, such a thing could happen.

But when Guo Zhou'er finished speaking, her heart was extremely uneasy.

She thought Zhang Xianyu would not understand her choice, but Sage Zhang would certainly understand. And once he understood, there was an extremely high probability he would not let her go.

What was Guo Zhou'er thinking about? Her own future life, of course!

She was only thirty years old this year, and had served nine years as regent of the Samanid realm. She had enjoyed all the glory and wealth there was to enjoy, but in the end there was one problem she dared not cross the line on.

In recent years, apart from the necessary civil officials, everyone she came into contact with was eunuchs and palace attendants, to the point that a great number of positions within the Samanid realm were occupied by eunuchs.

That was why she had chosen this bunch of small countries in the Caucasus Mountains. Having insiders to make conquest easy was all pretense — isolation and remoteness were the real reasons.

Only in this way could she appear less in the public eye, and become a true queen.

But Guo Zhou'er thought Zhang Xianyu did not know. In fact, Zhang Xianyu did know, because when he had come west, Zhang Zhao had given him verbal instructions.

Zhang Zhao told Zhang Xianyu that if in these ten-odd years Guo Zhou'er's original heart had not changed — if she knew where she was from, knew to protect the interests of the Han people, and understood whom she relied upon — then she could be released to go out and become a true queen.

However, Zhang Xianyu smiled darkly in his heart. Since Guo Zhou'er had herself proposed to go conquer the small countries west of the Western Sea,

then this reward would not be given now. It would be given after she completed her mission.

Guo Zhou'er of course had no idea that Zhang Zhao could be so meticulous and magnanimous. The moment Zhang Xianyu finished reading the revised oral edict, tears streamed down her face.

She was utterly won over by Zhang Zhao's bearing. Right there, before the Great King of the Xia among the Hezhong Zhuxia in the room, she faced east and prostrated herself three times upon the ground in the grand rite.

Nine kowtows, until her forehead was bruised black and dripping blood, while she cried out:

"Your servant kowtows in thanks for the Sage's gracious gift. For the great cause of the Sage's Zhou, the Xia sovereign, and the Yi people, I would die ten thousand deaths without flinching!"

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