Chapter 374: Oirat

Just as Liu Chengzong's army, relying on the immense manpower of Lintao Prefecture's common folk, was overturning every city beyond Lanzhou, the forty-thousand-strong Oirat allied army led by the State Tutor Khan had also finally completed its long expedition and reached Golmud as hoped.

This was practically the Khoshut tribe's hegemonic status flaring one last time before death: Baatur Khong Tayiji and Mergen Daiching of the Dzungar tribe; Mergen Jinong and Gümü Ilden of the Torghut tribe; Sultan Tayiji and Sümür Tayiji of the Khoid tribe; Dalai Tayiji and Bo Ilden of the Dorbet tribe — all set aside their inter-tribal discord and led their forces on the campaign.

The Oirat tribes were not a monolithic grand alliance; they merely nominally obeyed the leadership of the Borjigin Khoshut tribe, while in reality each tribe acted on its own, often even coming to blows north and south of the Tianshan Mountains.

Only this time, with unprecedented unity, the tribes massed their armies and completed a four-thousand-li march over four months — not to subjugate any enemy, but solely to send off their own hegemon to seize limited living space in Qinghai.

At Golmud, the State Tutor Khan listened to a cavalry report from Ili and broke into a smile: the Russians to the north had sent envoys to Ili, yet could not meet a single Oirat noble of any standing.

His own envoys traveling to Xining with a humble attitude was not deliberate; in fact, another group of envoys, bearing the same attitude and the humble rites of vassals, had already set out on the road to seek the Later Jin's Hong Taiji.

This was not strategic deception — rather, the State Tutor Khan… was genuinely very weak.

Zooming in on the Oirat, this was an enormous alliance of nearly eight hundred thousand Mongols, possessing both the Mongols' martial valor and an extraordinary unity atypical of Mongol tradition — they were incomparably powerful.

Of course, their surroundings were equally fraught with peril: in the Tianshan region the Oirat controlled, to the west lay the Kazakh Khanate with which they warred year after year, to the east the Khalkha Mongols with whom they alternated between war and peace, to the south the sand-filled Eastern Chagatai Khanate, and to the north the insufferably troublesome Russian exploration parties.

Yet within this seemingly evenly matched environment, the reality was that the Khoshut tribe — whose Borjigin lineage qualified them to claim the title of Khan — lacked real strength; the true leader of the Oirat was the non-Borjigin Baatur Khong Tayiji of the Dzungar tribe.

The cold climate did not afflict only the Han and the Jurchen; across a far broader expanse, it tormented every person in every nation on the Eurasian continent, and the Oirat Mongols were no exception.

When the land grants people insufficient living space, no matter what wisdom they possess, all their actions ultimately lead to one process and two outcomes:

through war, gain more land, or fewer people.

The unity of the Oirat ought to hold an extraordinary place even in the history of the Mongols.

Although the westward-migrating Torghut tribe, or the now southward-campaigning Khoshut tribe, can both be said to have been squeezed out by the rising Dzungar tribe and thus forced to leave their homeland, in truth choosing to abandon their native soil was the final effort to avoid civil war and fratricidal strife.

Temüjin and Jamukha would not have made such a choice.

Borjigin Töröbaikhu's weakness lay, on one hand, in his own tribe possessing merely ten-thousand-odd elite soldiers, and on the other, in having no path of retreat.

He had already reached an agreement with the Dzungar Khong Tayiji: whatever this campaign yielded — land, people, wealth, livestock — would all belong to him, and in exchange, he would hand over the Oirat to the Khong Tayiji.

Just like the westward-migrating Torghut tribe, they would continue intermarrying and maintaining especially friendly relations.

The expedition's objective was crystal clear: to conquer the migrating Chahar and the Tümed settled in Qinghai, and to graze their herds across all of Qinghai and Ü-Tsang.

Because his surname and title enabled him to do such a thing.

He was a descendant of the Borjigin line, the Khan of the Oirat, and at the same time the Grand State Tutor of the Yellow Hat sect in Tibet.

Throughout late March, the great nobles of the four Oirat tribes made merry among the Gobi and rivers of Golmud, absorbing scattered small Mongol bands in the area as scouts and gathering intelligence on the Qinghai Grand Marshal's headquarters.

On the fifth day of the fourth month of the sixth year of Chongzhen, the great nobles of the four tribes gathered at Golmud and convened a league council.

Inside a colossal portable felt tent, people trod upon enormous carpets from the Ottoman lands and assembled together, holding bowls of Ili fermented mare's milk.

In his prime, Baatur Khong Tayiji resembled a male lion, his head shaved all around with a single braid left in the center — the standard hairstyle of the Oirat — clad in a magnificently textured plain satin robe, a flintlock pistol tucked at his waist, seated arrogantly to the side of the tent.

Behind him stood Mongol guards clad in iron armor and adorned with sable ornaments, alongside Cossack captives who had surrendered during the northern wars.

Toying with several one-tael Lion Notes in his hand, he said to the tribal chieftains with an easy smile, "In the north we fought the Tsagan's lackeys around the salt lakes for over a decade; here we can find salt lakes with ease. The Great Khan is indeed wise."

The "Tsagan" he spoke of was the Tsar.

"Tsar" is a Russian transliteration of the Greek "Caesar," pronounced similarly to "Sha" or "Tsagan"; the "huang" (emperor) appended later is merely a later honorific for the head of the Russian Empire.

When the Mongols enslaved the Russians in the thirteenth century, the Russians likewise honored the Mongol Great Khan with the title of Tsar.

To the Dzungar tribe, the Russians were nothing novel — they had first made contact with them as early as the thirty-third year of Wanli.

Truth be told, for the Mongol tribes north of the Oirat, ever since the Wanli era began, their days had never been easy, accustomed as they were to paying tribute to both sides.

Living on the frozen tundra was hard enough to begin with; they were dutifully paying tribute to the Kazakh Khan when, out of nowhere, the Tümed's Altan Khan launched a distant campaign and thrashed the Kazakhs. The Mongol common folk, not even knowing where Altan Khan was, became his tribute subjects overnight.

After dutifully paying tribute for over a decade, the Oirat's Dzungar pushed north. Although Altan Khan was already dead, the accumulated awe of the Grassland Sacred Lion remained, and so they became dual tribute subjects of both the Dzungar and the Tümed.

In the blink of an eye, the Russians arrived, and they became triple tribute subjects of the Dzungar, the Tümed, and the Russians.

From the Dzungar tribe's perspective, these Cossack barbarians sent by the Russians were of terribly low quality — speaking human words to them was useless. While paying tribute to the Dzungar nobles, they simultaneously encroached upon the Dzungar's tribute tribes.

In that case, only the scimitar could do the talking.

Thus, in the thirty-fifth year of Wanli, five thousand Dzungar cavalry surrounded two hundred Russians, pitting bows and scimitars against wooden forts and cannons. The fighting was grueling. Two years later, the Russians dispatched envoys to the Dzungar tribe, and the Dzungar, just like the State Tutor Khan now, submitted as vassals to the Russian fort of Tara at the mouth of the Angara River.

Because they were being pincered by the Tümed and the Kazakhs.

The salt lake struggle the Khong Tayiji mentioned began in the thirty-eighth year of Wanli, when the Dzungar stormed Tara, cutting off the salt-producing region the Cossacks relied on for survival. The two sides alternated between war and peace, raiding and trading, around the salt lakes, continuing intermittently right up to this day.

In the process, the Dzungar tribe recognized the disparity in weaponry. Therefore, in the forty-eighth year of Wanli, the Dzungar tribe ordered the Tatar blacksmiths along the lower Ob River to replicate Russian firearms and armor for them. These tribal warriors, who clung to ancient nomadic traditions, were equipped with new armaments.

It was also during the salt lake wars that the Dzungar attacked westward against the Nogai tribe on the lower Volga, driving the Nogai further west and creating the living space for the Torghut tribe's later westward migration.

Thus, the Khoshut State Tutor Khan's southern campaign this time was in truth merely an old stratagem of the Dzungar; they were likewise to carve out a realm for the Khoshut tribe.

Having spoken, Baatur Khong Tayiji had the Cossack guard behind him pass the Lion Notes to the State Tutor Khan seated opposite him, and said, "This is what the small tribes here use to trade with the Grand Marshal of Xining — they actually don't use silver… These people are greedier than the Tsagan's lackeys. We cannot trade ten thousand horses for these useless little cloth scraps!"

The Dzungar Khong Tayiji had come not solely for war, but also for trade.

Although compared to their eastern Mongol cousins, the Oirat did not lack essential supplies like iron and grain, the provisions pressure of a long-distance expedition was still considerable and required some resupply.

However, beyond resupply, the massive camel and horse trains he brought on this expedition were mainly to trade for the Great Ming's Tongbao coins, silver, silk, and porcelain.

Whether merchants from the Khanate of Bukhara or the Ottoman Empire, none lacked warhorses, but all recognized silver, Tongbao coins, silk, and porcelain as currency.

The Khong Tayiji had no need for these things himself, but the Russians would soon be at war with him again, because on one hand, the Russian Grand Prince's envoy to the Oirat this time wished to discuss a prisoner exchange.

Obviously, exchanging prisoners made it convenient to resume hostilities, to avoid killing prisoners to vent anger when war broke out.

On the other hand, the Khanate of Khiva near the Aral Sea, hostile to the Dzungar who occupied the Silk Road, intended to act jointly with the Russians.

Maritime trade caused the overland Silk Road to decline, but "decline" is only from the perspective of the Central Plains dynasties themselves — after all, a state of the Central Plains' or the Ottoman Empire's magnitude can hardly imagine, under normal circumstances, what life is like for a small country.

Take, for instance, this Khanate of Khiva in Khwarazm: situated between the Central Plains and the Ottoman trade route, the route's severance left its economic level extremely low, resulting in a profound cultural destitution.

Their Great Khan, intending to compile a history for his dynasty, searched the entire khanate yet could not find a single person with the cultural attainment to undertake the task.

The Khong Tayiji's musket troops were devastatingly effective at bullying Mongol tribes, but against the Russians they fell somewhat short — after all, they were not that practiced.

A gun is just a tube, very easy to make, but guns were of little use against the Russians' earthen and wooden forts.

He needed cannons.

Cannons were not so easy to make, because cannons had to be cast from copper. He had also captured cast-iron cannons from the Russians, but he had no idea how those things were cast.

The Russian captives did not know either; their cast-iron cannons had also been purchased.

In this world, only a handful of nations could cast iron cannons — Russia, still using wooden farming tools, was not among them.

Khuntaiji would sell horses to the Great Ming for silver and silks, then use that silver and silks to buy a few camel cannons from the west. Next year, he would head back north and properly deal with Qiuming's fur traders and bandits.

But when you combined this "lion ticket" with the prices at the Kü'erwan market, Khuntaiji clapped his hands together: "Liu Chengzong must have calculated this carefully. Nine sheep for one blade — how is anyone else supposed to make a profit?"

These prices were clearly designed to cut out the middleman's margin. Infuriating.

The State Preceptor Khan sat to one side, just like any of the ordinary tribal nobles present, far less imposing than Khuntaiji.

It was much like the surname Borjigin itself — once, with strong soldiers and sturdy horses, they had conquered in all directions, making that surname the Golden Clan. But the Golden Clan itself was never the reason for the strong soldiers and sturdy horses.

The Son of Heaven is made by those with strong soldiers and sturdy horses — and the same goes for a Khan.

Or rather, in this era of worsening climate, it was the same for emperors, great khans, kings, and sultans the world over. As external living space shrank, people yearned to follow powerful heroes, not noble bloodlines.

Strong soldiers and sturdy horses are a man's backbone. The Khoshut, powerless to contend with the Dzungar for supremacy among the Oirat, spoke with far less authority. He merely glanced at the lion ticket and said: "Buy some grain from the Marshal's Manor. Strike Chakhar first, and see how he reacts."

Having garrisoned at Golmud for over ten days and compiled the Marshal's Manor intelligence reported by various small tribes, the State Preceptor Khan was fairly optimistic in his assessment of the situation.

He said: "The Tümed taijis of the Marshal's Manor have all gone to Ü-Tsang. Vast swaths of uncultivable land in Qinghai are exceptionally empty, with only a few relay stations. Once we annihilate Chakhar's Ligdan Khan, we can negotiate properly with the Marshal's Manor to divide up these grazing lands."

"Nothing to negotiate. Do you really intend to pay rent to the Han?"

Khuntaiji let out a short laugh and shook his head: "I hear the best land here is, first, by the sea, and second, at Guide. We'll wait for a chance to draw out their main force. The land here is vast, and we move fast — we'll annihilate them and seize some craftsmen to take back."

Baatur Khuntaiji knew the Han had excellent technology. For him, fighting only Chakhar's Ligdan Khan brought no benefit — it would merely be sewing a wedding dress for the Khoshut. Of course, it was a wedding dress he was happy to sew.

As long as the Oirat's State Preceptor Khan remained in Qinghai, once he himself returned to the Tianshan and united all four tribes, it wouldn't be long before he too could proclaim himself Khan.

Still, if he could carry off some Han craftsmen to make cannons for him, dealing with the Russians in the north would become far simpler.

"Buy? Wasn't Khalkha's Tsogt Taiji annihilated by him just like that?"

The State Preceptor Khan felt in his heart that going to war with the Han was pointless. His tribe did little farming, living mainly by herding, so they had little conflict with the Han. Chakhar's Ligdan Khan and the Tümed, on the other hand, were his primary enemies.

Now that most of the Tümed had already entered Ü-Tsang, that was the main battlefield as far as he was concerned.

The Dzungar, however, were different. In their trade with the Russians, they had exchanged furs for rye seeds that could be grown in the north, and many of the Dzungar's tributary subjects were now planting rye.

That was why the Dzungar instinctively saw the Han as enemies competing for living space.

"Buy what? I heard he only has a dozen or so cannons — fewer than what Qiuming's fur traders are carrying. How could he sell any to me?"

Baatur Khuntaiji shook his head. He had great confidence in the Dzungar tribe's fighting strength.

Among the ten thousand troops under his command, three thousand were musketeers, equipped with firearms of various models manufactured by Yarkand, the Ottoman Empire, Muscovy, England, the Netherlands, and Sweden.

The Ottoman muskets were purchased, the Yarkand muskets were swindled, and the firearms from all other nations were seized from Russian fur traders.

He also had nine cannons in total, of both bronze and iron, made by three methods — cast bronze, cast iron, and wrought iron — including breech-loading falconets and muzzle-loading smoothbores of various lengths and calibers. Some were captured, some purchased.

At least within the Mongol sphere, Baatur Khuntaiji believed that the only thing limiting the Dzungar at present was that their numbers were still too few. Given time, they would become the most powerful khanate among all the states founded by Mongols.

At last, scattered outriders came to report — they had finally found the enemy. Chakhar's Ligdan Khan was encamped at the foot of the Ulan Mountains and was moving toward Chaka Salt Lake.

People said there was a mountain fortress of the Marshal's Manor there.

Baatur Khuntaiji thought to himself: fighting a battle around a salt lake? I know all about that!