Chapter 901: Extra 5: Dry-Land Boating at Zhang Jun's Fort

Extra 5: Dry-Land Boating at Zhang Jun's Fort

Extra 5: Dry-Land Boating at Zhang Jun's Fort

The bleak horn calls echoed through the rolling, undulating valleys.

At the sound of the horns, countless warriors clad in Byzantine-style lamellar armor surged out from their hiding places, seizing the high ground and looking down upon the enemy army forming ranks on the plain in the distance.

This was the southern foothills of the middle section of the Kır'o Lu Mountains. A little over sixty li away lay the Byzantine Empire's most important city in Asia Minor, Metropol.

That city later became the capital of Turkey and was renamed Ankara.

Bardas Skleros slurped down a bowl of thick porridge with a bit of fish added and barely any salt, then with a sweep of his hand led the hundred-odd personal guards out of the stone fort.

Seeing Bardas Skleros emerge, the warriors let out a tidal wave of cheers.

When the great single-headed eagle banner symbolizing the Byzantine co-emperor and the purple lion banner symbolizing the supreme army commander appeared, the cheers grew even louder.

The sound waves even made the branches and leaves of the mountain trees tremble.

However, after Bardas Skleros ritualistically finished waving in acknowledgment, the smile on his face vanished in an instant.

He truly had not expected that these Easterners would judge the empire's situation so accurately and thoroughly.

They had not attacked Constantinople, which was magnificent and looked like the heart of the empire, but instead attacked the Asia Minor highlands, the domain of these military nobles, from three directions.

Clip-clop, clip-clop!

The crisp sound of horse hooves rang out, then suddenly swelled. It sounded like at least several hundred riders were approaching, and along with the hoofbeats came even greater cheers.

Bardas Skleros looked over in surprise, and saw in the distance large square banners trailing three long tricolor streamers hurrying toward them.

"A white cross, with red, yellow, and blue tricolor streamers at the tail — it's Bardas Phokas of the Phokas family! They've finally come!"

Someone cheered. Ever since Emperor Basil I had refused to recognize Bardas Skleros as co-emperor,

he had vigorously promoted and funded Bardas Phokas, head of the Phokas family — fellow Asia Minor military nobles who had produced Nikephoros II and John I — to counterbalance Bardas Skleros.

But no one had expected that at this most dangerous moment for the empire, Bardas Phokas, who had always been at odds with Bardas Skleros, would finally come.

"The Komnenos family has come too! They have not submitted to the devils from the East. They too have come to join this battle that is certain to be won."

Someone spotted another very conspicuous flame banner and likewise shouted out in loud cheers.

"Your Majesty, the Phokas family has arrived. I hope we are not late."

Bardas Skleros looked at Bardas Phokas in astonishment.

"What did you call me? Your Majesty?"

Bardas Phokas, with his head of golden hair, looked quite sunny and handsome. He nodded seriously.

"Yes, you are our Majesty — His Majesty Skleros I.

Basil and those fat-headed nobles in Constantinople cannot save our homeland, still less save the empire in crisis. Only you can!"

"Yes, Your Majesty! The Komnenos family and the Doukas family will all serve under your command to save this country. This is the wish of all of us," John Komnenos of the Komnenos family also said loudly.

"Didn't your Komnenos family submit to the devils from the East?" someone asked.

John Komnenos laughed heartily. "How could that be? That was only a lie to buy time.

The Komnenos family will always stand at Your Majesty's side, defending the honor of all the meritorious nobles of Asia Minor."

"Your Majesty, I have also brought an envoy from the Arabs. The famous general of the Fatimid Kingdom, General Jawhar al-Siqilli, has already set sail from Alexandria with his fleet — a full two or three hundred warships.

The Arab navy will join with the imperial navy to block the Black Sea fleet of the Eastern devils!"

"Excellent!" Bardas Skleros stood up excitedly and launched into an impassioned speech on the spot:

"To see so many families gathered here is truly wonderful!

This proves once again that we, the meritorious nobles of Asia Minor, are the backbone of the empire, and that we alone are the defenders of the true faith.

The civil officials of Constantinople know only how to squeeze every bit of wealth from the people while doing nothing.

Phokas, let us go together and defeat these devils from the East!

We will not only defeat them, but also take Damascus and take Baghdad.

When we return to Constantinople with these glorious battle achievements, those civil officials who have deceived the young Basil will all be severely punished.

And you — the Phokas family shall take possession of Damascus, becoming the empire's viceroy, the ruler of Damascus."

Bardas Phokas was greatly excited. He quickly placed a hand over his chest and saluted Bardas Skleros.

"As you command, my Emperor. The Phokas family will follow you forever."

Fifteen li north of Metropol, Zhang Nengkun, Prince of Dunhuang and Crown Prince, heard the cheers and immediately raised a telescope to look toward the mountains.

"Tenth Uncle, come look! Those Western Qin people seem to be holding some kind of ceremony!"

Zhang Xiantai, Great King of Shu, who was leisurely eating a roasted lamb leg, did not even raise his head. "They're holding a coronation ceremony."

"Huh?" Zhang Nengkun looked at Zhang Xiantai strangely.

"How does Tenth Uncle know so clearly? Bardas Skleros is still thinking about his status as co-emperor."

"Because Bardas Phokas was sent over by me. He went precisely to prop Bardas Skleros up.

Prop him up high, then let him take a hard fall — best if he breaks his neck outright and dies on the spot!"

Zhang Nengkun was even more puzzled and astonished. "How did Tenth Uncle manage to make someone like Bardas Phokas obey orders?

That is no easy thing. Last time I spent a great deal of time and effort trying to win over the Komnenos family, but in the end I failed."

"Simple!" Zhang Xiantai set down the lamb leg, which was cleaner than if a dog had gnawed it, and said with a chuckle:

"I married Bardas Phokas's mother Anna and became his stepfather."

At these words, Zhang Nengkun stared at Zhang Xiantai in horror. He stammered, "Tenth Uncle, Bardas Phokas is already twenty-eight years old, so his mother..."

"Forty-four!" Zhang Xiantai blinked.

"But she is still a very full-bodied, mature beauty who knows well how to serve a man. In the bedchamber, no one knows how to enjoy herself better than she does.

Crown Prince, you really ought to try a woman as ripe as a peach yourself. Don't always treat teenage girls as treasures.

Here — in a moment I'll arrange a few for you."

"No! No! No!" Zhang Nengkun cried out the word "no" three times in utter terror.

To a teenager of fifteen or sixteen, a woman in her forties was already an old crone, and the Crown Prince simply could not accept it.

"Hahahaha!" Zhang Xiantai burst out laughing again, but this time he stopped teasing Zhang Nengkun and said in earnest:

"Crown Prince, the customs of the Far West and the Far West are not the same as those of the Central Lands. They lack a measure of the civilizing light of ethics, but they possess a greater measure of an inborn frankness.

In the Central Lands, if I were to marry Bardas Phokas's widowed mother, he would certainly do everything in his power to kill me, for that is the greatest insult one can inflict upon a man.

But in the Far West it is not so. If I marry his mother, it represents a covenant-like cooperation, and moreover an acknowledgment of the far-reaching renown of the Phokas family.

What could better prove this point than a monarch from the distant East who is also most willing to form a marriage alliance with the Phokas family?

Under such a father-son relationship, once I have captured Constantinople, I will, according to my promise, conquer Naples and even Rome on behalf of Bardas Phokas, and set him upon the throne of the King of Italy."

The term Italy appeared very early; at present it specifically referred to the Apennine Peninsula including Milan and Genoa, and was a geographical concept rather than a concept of a state.

But it seemed that very soon, it was about to become a concept of a state.

"Very well, Tenth Uncle has reminded me of the Xiongnu and the Turks of old; they seem to have had such practices as well." The young Crown Prince was greatly shaken.

Of course, it was not that Zhang Xiantai's maneuver exceeded the scope of his understanding, but rather that Zhang Xiantai, in his position, would still carry out such a maneuver — such heavy tastes were truly somewhat beyond his expectations.

"Haha, my dear nephew.

When you meet your Sixth Uncle, the Great King of Liao, you will understand what a great king who truly carries on the legacy of the Xiongnu and the Turks looks like." Zhang Xiantai laughed heartily.

Zhang Nengkun also grinned. An uncle who was willing to abandon the Lu vassal state (Lelang) for a place ten thousand li away, and who was called by the locals the Terror Khan and the Little Loving Father — to say that he was more like a Turk or a Xiongnu was certainly not wrong.

"Tenth Uncle, should we now take advantage of having Bardas Phokas as an inside agent and capture the fortress complex of Mount Kerr as quickly as possible?"

"No, Crown Prince, we still need to wait a while longer." Zhang Xiantai shook his head.

"Still wait?" Zhang Nengkun asked in puzzlement, then quickly caught on. "Is it to wait for Second Uncle and Sixth Uncle to send word of victory?"

"Correct. Once the main fleets of the Arabs and the Western Qin (Byzantines) have been utterly destroyed, without us even attacking, they will come down from the mountains themselves to seek a decisive battle."

In the southern Black Sea, a brutal naval battle was breaking out.

The western expedition army, which gathered the scheming, prestigious King of An, Zhang Xianyu, and the valiant royal twin stars, the King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, and the King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, would certainly not attack Constantinople directly.

Not only because Constantinople had high walls and thick ramparts with very comprehensive defenses, but also because within Constantinople, the young Basil I had many options.

For example, when Constantinople was besieged, he could choose to recognize Bardas Skleros as co-emperor.

Then Bardas Skleros, entrenched in Asia Minor with nearly a hundred thousand troops in hand, would certainly send troops to break the siege.

Even other powers, such as the Hungarians, the Italians, and even the kingdoms and duchies of the former Carolingian Empire, could all be hired with money and titles.

Finally, he could also have the Patriarch of the Eastern Church make religious compromises, in exchange for the support of the Western churches, including the lands of the former Carolingian Empire, and organize a crusade to march east.

At this time, the Orthodox Church and Christianity had not yet completely split, so all of these were possible.

And the sturdy Constantinople gave Basil I this room and time to maneuver.

But if the Zhou army attacked the Asia Minor plateau first, there would be no such concerns at all.

The Far West (European) part of the Byzantine Empire was not particularly rich in martial virtue, and the newly risen Basil I did not possess the keen battlefield instincts of a Bardas Skleros.

It was estimated that by the time the Zhou army had nearly annihilated the Asia Minor legions, the civil officials of Constantinople would still be loudly debating in the palace.

And to capture Constantinople, or rather to cut off the connection between the Far West and the Far West of Asia Minor, the navy was the most important means.

The Byzantine Empire had always been most proud of its navy equipped with Greek fire; as long as their navy was destroyed, all of this could be said to be over.

Therefore, starting two years ago, before the allied armies of the various Xia states launched the final Battle of Damascus.

Under the direct allocation of 4.4 million strings of cash from the Inner Court Secretariat of the central court, the various Xia states, led by the Regent Great Western King Zhang Xianyu, conscripted craftsmen and laborers on a massive scale and began building warships along the shores of the Caspian Sea.

And these were not the old-style tower ships, but new-style sailing gunboats with open decks and gun decks, centered on broadside bombardment tactics.

Although these gunboats, limited by the shipbuilding, metal-smelting, and even textile industries, could not employ large numbers of soft sails like the sailing warships of the seventeenth century in history, with thirty to eighty guns per ship.

They could still mount fifteen guns equivalent to four- to six-pounders, and in addition the open decks carried large Fuyuan crossbows and other bolt weapons, and could be driven by both oar and sail. Their combat power was absolutely far stronger than ordinary warships.

The third year of Xianyong, 988 CE, the third month.

One hundred sixty thousand Indian laborers and thirty thousand Khazar Jews were conscripted. Over six and a half months, nearly all of the two years' stored grain and funds of the entire Ningyuan Governorate (the Fergana Basin) were exhausted.

The engineers of the Great Zhou Tiangong Institute, headed by the great scientist Yan Su — Clearing Clerk of the Secretariat, Zhaowu Scholar, Acting Vice Minister of War, and Secretary of the Military Affairs Office of the All-Xia Republican Assembly — spent six and a half months using every means imaginable.

They transported the forty-seven large warships built in the Caspian Sea, along with their cannons, overland for one thousand one hundred li, and delivered them into the Black Sea.

The third year of Xianyong, 988 CE, the sixth month.

The Great Zhou navy and the Byzantine navy, which had been skirmishing with small boats for over a month, were finally about to fight a decisive battle.

Because the Great Zhou navy, through a great deal of preliminary work and the final two months of familiarization, had basically come to understand the hydrological conditions of the Black Sea, and possessed the conditions for a decisive battle.

The battle began at dawn.

The Byzantine navy dispatched one hundred seventy warships, and the Green Banner Arabs dispatched eighty-one warships, for a total of two hundred fifty-two warships of various types, with over fifty-seven thousand soldiers and sailors in all.

At the start of the battle, the ruthless fleet commander, the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, ordered the Great Zhou navy to send out only one hundred thirty old-style warships.

By noon, although the officers and men of the Great Zhou navy fought heroically, they still could not withstand the Byzantine navy with its Greek fire, losing eighty-seven warships and over four thousand officers and men killed.

And although the Byzantine navy and the Green Banner Arab navy had won a great victory, their own losses were also considerable.

But the Byzantine naval commander, disregarding the advice of the famous Green Banner Arab admiral Jawhar al-Siqilli, insisted on pursuing the remaining Great Zhou fleet.

At that moment, a northwest wind suddenly sprang up. The new-style Great Zhou fleet, which had been waiting in torment, finally got its chance. They spread full sail and came howling in from the northwest, a direction the Byzantine navy had never expected.

Although there were only forty-four warships (three damaged and unable to fight), the Great Zhou gunboats, equipped with epoch-making cannons and drilled in even more epoch-making tactics, charged into the Byzantine navy and began a great slaughter.

Many Byzantine warships were struck by cannon fire before they could even spray Greek fire, and then the scorching projectiles ignited the stores of Greek fire, triggering violent sympathetic detonations and widespread fires.

After about two double-hours of battle, the Byzantine navy was almost completely annihilated. Only a small number of warships managed to escape to the Green Banner Arab fleet, which had not engaged, and attempted to flee back in panic through the Bosporus Strait.

As it happened, while the naval battle was being decided, the heir of the Liao fief, Zhang Nengqi, and the famous general of the Shu fief, Lu Ketu, led a coalition of thirty thousand men composed of Rus, Bulgarians, various Western Turkic tribes, Kipchaks, Cumans, and a small number of elite Han troops.

In two double-hours they raced over thirty li, captured the mouth of the Bosporus Strait, and then sank ships and used trebuchets and ballistae to seal off the strait's entrance.

The terrified Byzantine Emperor Basil I hastily dispatched six legions of the Constantinople palace guard to break the siege, but all were repelled.

Meanwhile the navy was bottled up at the strait's mouth, and the Great Zhou navy was also closing in from afar.

After three double-hours of desperate resistance, before the sun set in the west, the legendary Green Banner Arab admiral Jawhar al-Siqilli committed suicide in despair for his country. More than half of the warships sank, and only a very few escaped.

In truth, they had not lost in tactics or strategy; their command had made no great errors.

They lost because Zhang Zhou possessed national strength far surpassing the Byzantine Empire, and at the same time had a terrifying sovereign capable of driving every single person in the empire's territory — the last true god among men, and the prophet, sage, and Retired Emperor of the Great Zhou.

I, Sage Zhang, mobilized every ounce of manpower and material. To accomplish the dry-land portage of ships over more than a thousand li, the Indian laborers and the Judaic Khazar barbarians who were worked to death alone numbered as many as seventy thousand.

The Great Zhou used this resolve, unprecedented in the past and rarely matched by any who came after, to crush them.

In the seventh month, when word of the decisive naval battle arrived, Bardas Skleros, still holding out in the Kırşehir Mountains, could no longer sit still.

His rear route was now effectively cut off, and his territory in Asia Minor was being steadily eaten away; he could not hold on any longer.

By this time, he had already held an enthronement ceremony in the mountains several months earlier, and with the support of all the military nobility of Asia Minor, had unilaterally proclaimed himself co-emperor.

At the same time, he raised the banner of "purging the Emperor's entourage," claiming that Emperor Basil I in Constantinople had been deceived by the palace attendants and civil officials around him.

Under these circumstances, Bardas Skleros simply could not swallow his pride and propose, while the Dardanelles had not yet been blockaded, that they withdraw to Constantinople.

He hinted at this to Bardas Phokas and John Komnenos several times, but these men all played deaf and dumb.

So Bardas Skleros, having been pushed onto the stage, decided to take the initiative and strike out. He would use his eighty thousand troops to lift the siege of Metropol.

Do you think Bardas Skleros did not know that Zhang Xiantai was besieging the city to strike at his relief force?

He knew it all too well, and he was certain the others knew it too. That was precisely why he proposed going to lift the siege.

Because he never actually intended to lift the siege. He intended to use the act of going to lift the siege — the act of leaving the mountains with their strong fortresses — to frighten the officers below him into proposing on their own that they retreat to Constantinople.

That way, Bardas Skleros would still have a pretext to keep control of the army, would not bear much of the blame for losing Asia Minor, and once in Constantinople could still rely on the army to preserve his wealth, rank, and life.

In the end, what he never expected was that Bardas Phokas and John Komnenos, upon whom he had pinned his hopes, immediately raised both hands in approval, as if they were not the least bit afraid of coming down the mountain for a decisive battle.

At the same time, large numbers of junior officers and soldiers also favored striking out.

Because their families and lands were all in Asia Minor. If they retreated to Constantinople, they themselves would be safe, but their families would undoubtedly become slaves of the eastern devils. Therefore none of them favored retreat.

In utter helplessness, Bardas Skleros, roasted over the fire by everyone, led the main force of the Byzantine army — the Asia Minor corps of more than eighty thousand — down the mountain to strike out, carrying with him a foreboding of near-certain doom and deep resentment.

On the twenty-second of the seventh month, the two sides met in decisive battle twenty li northwest of the city of Metropol (Ankara).

The Byzantine army held the initiative and attacked from three directions. Zhang Xiantai led fifty thousand troops of the allied states, concealing more than twenty thousand elite soldiers who had come from the Central Plains so that the Byzantine army could not see their banners.

On the twenty-fourth of the seventh month, the Byzantine army attacked the Zhou army's left wing and successfully drove back the fifteen thousand troops of the Cao, Xu, and Qi vassal states stationed there, seizing control of the river on the left wing.

On the twenty-eighth of the seventh month, the Byzantine elite — four thousand infantry and cavalry of the Combat-Ready Corps personally established by Nikephoros I — once again defeated the six thousand men of the Zhongshan State Guard, composed mainly of Armenians, on the left wing.

This was a rout, a great victory. The Zhongshan vassal army lost more than two thousand men, and the Combat-Ready Corps even nearly captured the great silver-sun, gold-tasseled banner bestowed by the Great Zhou Emperor upon Guo Zhou'er, Queen of Zhongshan.

These two victories thoroughly boosted the morale of the Byzantine army and fully proved that the Byzantine Asia Minor corps, continually perfected by the two soldier-emperors Nikephoros II and John I, possessed formidable fighting strength.

At the very least, eleven years after the death of John I, the Asia Minor army still retained considerable combat power.

But immediately afterward, Bardas Skleros's fierce assault on the Zhou army's right flank with forty thousand main-force troops went very poorly.

Zhang Xiantai had played a trick. He placed the relatively weaker vassal armies of Wei, Jin, Zheng, Zhao, and other states in the center to screen the elite troops from the imperial court.

His own elite Shu vassal troops, together with the stronger An and Song vassal elite troops, totaling twenty-five thousand, held the right flank.

This was a head-on clash of strength. The two sides fought back and forth over three commanding heights on the right flank, the battle lasting from the twenty-eighth of the seventh month all the way to the sixth of the eighth month — a full ten days — and the Byzantine army still could not break the Zhou army.

At this point, Zhang Xiantai feigned a blunder and let Byzantine scouts discover the great banners of the Shu and An vassal armies in the central camp.

Bardas Skleros immediately had a sudden "realization": so the Zhou army's main force was on the right flank after all!

Consequently, over the next few days, apart from launching one fierce assault, the Byzantine army's other attacks were all thunder without rain.

Bardas Skleros secretly concentrated his main force toward the center.

This was a stretch of open plain, highly suited to large formations and cavalry operations. The troops stationed on the left and right wings guarded the center like two great pincers, ready at any moment to close in from both sides should the center be attacked.

But by now, Bardas Skleros believed he had already shattered the Zhou army's left wing, and that the right wing had been beaten so badly it hardly dared strike out on its own. The Zhou center, meanwhile, was made up of second-line troops in disguise — this was simply a heaven-sent opportunity.

The fifteenth of the eighth month, before dawn.

Bardas Skleros had long since learned that this was an important festival for the Zhou army, and from a distance had observed signs and sounds of celebration coming from most of the Zhou camps. He therefore decided to launch a general assault before dawn.

In the Zhou army's main camp, there were few lights, but by the faint moonlight slanting down, it was clear the great army had long since finished assembling.

The Crown Prince and Prince of Dunhuang, Zhang Nengkun, wore gilded lamellar armor, held an exquisitely ornamented infantry lance, and at his waist hung a long hengdao saber that drew every eye.

This set of equipment was the most mysterious part of the miraculous rise of the Zhang Zhou.

This was the very first set of modern armor and weapons that Sage Zhang had possessed, now legendary as divine arms bestowed by Heaven upon Sage Zhang to turn the tide and restore the Central Plains.

"No words are needed. You all know what this battle represents. Under Heaven, there can be only one Emperor — and that is His Majesty the Great Emperor in the Divine Land of the Central Plains!

Now, on every side, all who have presumptuously proclaimed themselves emperor have bowed their heads. Only the Western Qin Empire still calls itself an empire. If this can be endured, what cannot be endured!

Let me join with you all to capture Basil alive, loop a rope around his neck, and drag him to the divine capital Luoyang to present him to the Supreme Divine Emperor!"

At the beginning of the chen hour (7 a. m.).

Forty-three thousand Byzantine troops suddenly launched their assault, but the swift breakthrough of the Zhou camp they had hoped for never materialized.

Instead, they met fierce resistance from three thousand Jianghuai crossbowmen and two thousand elite archers from Chaori and Joseon.

These archers and crossbowmen, designated the Tabai Army, were supremely elite — every one of them a warrior of immense strength.

Under their concentrated fire, the Byzantine troops suffered terrible casualties. The three leading legions, twenty thousand men, lost more than five thousand within a single hour and were nearly wiped out on the spot.

Only now did Bardas Skleros realize something was wrong, but it was already too late. In the distance, hoofbeats thundered like rolling thunder — the Zhou army's steppe light cavalry from both wings had already swept in.

Three thousand elite cavalry of the center, drawn from the old Fourth Command of the Mountain-Shaking Capital, also began their counterattack.

The battle raged until the end of the wei hour (3 p. m.).

The Byzantine legions, battered and parched with thirst, collapsed one after another. Bardas Skleros could only retreat with more than ten thousand men of his rear force under the cover of his trusted followers.

The Combat-Ready Corps, the finest of the vanguard, shone with its last brilliance in the rout. At the crucial pass leading into the Kırşehir Mountains, they mounted a desperate holding action.

The three thousand men of the Combat-Ready Corps were almost entirely annihilated, but relying on the perilous pass, they held off the Zhou pursuit force for a full five days, preserving the last vitality of the Byzantine army.

On the twentieth of the eighth month, the Zhou army's assault on the Byzantine fortress complex in the Kırşehir Mountains met with setbacks. Large-scale rebellions also broke out across Asia Minor, threatening the supply routes.

Seeing that the time was still not ripe, Zhang Xiantai — who had turtled up for more than twenty years — once again unleashed his Great Art of Turtle Breathing.

The Zhou army abandoned the direct assault on the mountains. After turning back to capture Metropol, they immediately dispatched troops to pacify the rebellions across the region and tightly blockaded all goods entering or leaving the Kırşehir Mountains.

Bardas Skleros held out bitterly until the fifteenth of the ninth month. He had recruited another ten or twenty thousand new soldiers, and with the more than thirty thousand who had fled back, he again had close to fifty thousand men — but supplies were desperately short.

This time, Bardas Skleros could no longer care about saving face. He personally led his army and began retreating toward the Dardanelles Strait.

But by now, the Liao fief heir Zhang Nengqi and Luktu had long since sealed off the entire Dardanelles Strait, and the Great Zhou navy also controlled the Sea of Marmara.

Bardas Skleros came to attack with forty to fifty thousand beaten remnants and new recruits. Although the Zhou troops guarding the fortresses around the Dardanelles numbered only a little over six thousand due to supply difficulties, they still did not let Bardas Skleros advance a single step.

It dragged on until the end of October, when the weather suddenly turned cold. Bardas Skleros had no choice but to lead his tens of thousands of utterly demoralized remnant troops back into the Koroglu Mountains to hold out.

More than half scattered or deserted along the way.

Before they even returned to their old stronghold, infighting broke out in the army.

The capitulation faction, led by Bardas Phokas, murdered the war faction's Doukas family and the other Asia Minor noble retainers.

After cutting away Bardas Skleros's right and left hands, they surrounded Bardas Skleros in a small village called Seyi.

On the twenty-third day of the tenth month, with the north wind howling, Bardas Skleros came down with a high fever. In the army, which lacked firewood, they could not even boil a bowl of wheat porridge.

In despair, the army chaplain strangled this representative of the Byzantine Empire's Asia Minor noble retainers with a straw rope and surrendered to Bardas Phokas and the others outside.

With this, the Byzantine Empire's core military force, the Asia Minor legions, was completely annihilated.

The fourth year of Xianyong of the Great Zhou, 989 CE, the fourth month.

The Zhou army, with Crown Prince Zhang Nengkun as commander-in-chief, assembled the armies of the twelve kingdoms of the various Xia states and thirty thousand main-force troops from the imperial court, totaling one hundred sixty thousand men, and besieged Constantinople from two directions: Bulgaria and Asia Minor.

In the sixth month, the Great Zhou navy once again used its new-model warships to defeat the navies coming from the Green Fatimids and from the direction of Italy and Gaul.

Immediately afterward, the army defeated forty thousand Western Crusaders five li south of Constantinople — men Vasily I had summoned at the cost of abandoning certain religious tenets of the Eastern Church — capturing and killing more than twenty thousand, so that the nations of the West no longer dared look east.

In the seventh month, the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, personally led forty thousand cavalry and defeated Vasily I's last hope.

The thirty thousand Hungarian cavalry led by Grand Prince Istvan I of Hungary — the Magyars, known as the Shield of Catholicism — suffered devastating casualties and could no longer look after themselves.

With this, Constantinople fell into complete desperation.

The fifth year of Xianyong, 990 CE, the fifth month.

The cannons Zhang Nengkun had brought from the Central Plains, traveling ten thousand li, finally played their proper role. Under the sustained bombardment of these cannons, each weighing over five thousand jin, the outer fortresses of Constantinople fell one after another.

On the fifteenth day of the fifth month, Zhou artillery combined with tunnel blasting successfully collapsed Constantinople's strongest western wall, and the great army poured in.

On the seventeenth day of the fifth month, the street fighting ended. The Byzantine Emperor Vasily I, along with his empress, concubines, children, and more than four hundred other court noblewomen, became spoils of war.

The Patriarch and others in the suburbs of Constantinople announced their acceptance of the narrative of the Five Sages of Revelation, acknowledging that the Supreme Heaven's Sage Zhang was the last sage of revelation in the world, and that Jesus's status was lowered from Son of God to a sage of the mortal world.

The Zhou army carried out a sack of Constantinople. The entire city's treasures, artworks, and cultural books were packed up and shipped away, and more than sixty thousand people became slaves and were taken east.

The twenty-fifth day of the fifth month.

The Crown Prince and Prince of Dunhuang, Zhang Nengkun, wore the golden armor of Zhang the Supreme Heaven and held the infantry lance of Zhang the Supreme Heaven.

On behalf of his grandfather, he invested the Great King of Shu, Zhang Xiantai, as the Brave, Wise, and Brilliant Dharma King Who Guards the Nation of the Far West, with his capital at Constantinople.

He was to rule the former territory of the Byzantine Empire, as well as Croatia, Romania, Moldavia, and Crimea, plus the Aleppo region of Syria.

He invested the Great King of Liao, Zhang Xianjiong, as the Firm, Brilliant, Heroic, and Decisive Dharma King Who Pacifies the Frontiers of the Far West, with his capital at Kiev, ruling the entire Far West region — that is, the later Three Maos plus half of Poland.

This was the last thing Zhang Zhao could do: use the twin measures of religion and military force to help them suppress the local regions. As for what would come after, that was a matter for his descendants.

On the sixteenth day of the eighth month, after the Mid-Autumn Festival reunion, the Crown Prince and Prince of Dunhuang, together with the twelve kings of the various Xia states who had gathered in Constantinople, led the army back.

Vasily I, the last emperor of Byzantium, and a thousand others were all taken along as captives.

The Great King of Shu and Brave, Wise, and Brilliant Dharma King Who Guards the Nation of the Far West, Zhang Xiantai, kowtowed toward the east, wishing his father Sage Zhang a boundless lifespan from afar, and then renamed Constantinople.

On the grounds that the Zhang clan's kings of the various Xia states had gathered here in joy, he changed Constantinople to

Zhangjunbao!

(End of Chapter)

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