Chapter 482: A City Given Away for Free

Liu Chengzong would never have dreamed that Zhou Qiang had actually recovered Hami passively.

The spark that ignited this war came after Liu Chengzong entered Jiayu Pass. Batur Khong Tayiji volunteered his Dzungar cavalry as the vanguard, leading them north across Heishan Pass, racing through Xingxing Gorge, and arriving directly beneath the walls of Hami, where he ordered the local feudal lords to prepare provisions and dig wells for the army.

The Oirats and Yarkand were neighbors separated by a single mountain range.

Compared to the Oirats, Yarkand's territory was vast; its oasis-dwelling people had a knack for generating wealth, its soldiers were veterans adept at civil war, and its master craftsmen forged sturdy armor and superior firearms.

But Yarkand was not a single independent state — it was a collection of independent states.

Their degree of disunity surpassed even that of the Oirats, and the Chagatai nobles were not particularly united among themselves.

So, to say nothing of tiny Hami, Batur Khong Tayiji did not even take the entire eastern part of Yarkand seriously. It had been the same when he marched south with the State Preceptor Khan: forty thousand Oirat allied troops had snaked their way from Barkol, terrifying the city of Hami, which had barely over ten thousand souls in total, into trembling submission. The nobles huddled inside the city, not daring to utter a word, and gave him whatever he demanded.

Although forty thousand had come and only ten thousand returned, Batur Khong Tayiji did not believe he had grown weaker. On the contrary, the Khong Tayiji, with his brother-in-law in tow, believed himself invincible under heaven.

Batur Khong Tayiji reasoned that his Dzungar tribe had mobilized over ten thousand troops when they set out. Now, returning to the Tianshan Mountains, although his own tribe had only a little over four thousand men left and the camel city was gone, his brother-in-law still had two full-strength battalions — that was seventy-two hundred troops.

By his reckoning, the Dzungar army heading back was even larger than when it had come, and its combat strength was even greater.

The problem was that the nobles of Hami did not know Liu Chengzu. When the Oirats had marched south, forty thousand allied troops had suddenly appeared at Barkol, just one mountain range away, giving them no time to react. Who would not have trembled in fear at the sight?

But the situation now was different. From Chalish to Turpan, who did not know that the Oirats had been defeated in Qinghai? How dare these battered remnants return and still act so brazenly?

Besides, the timing could not have been worse.

Earlier that very year, Abdullah Khan, the Khan of Eastern Yarkand, had passed away at the Chalish court, leaving the eastern throne vacant.

Yarkand's succession system still followed the old Mongol steppe tradition of lateral seniority within the clan. Specifically, it meant a younger brother succeeded an elder brother; if all brothers of a generation had died, the eldest among the next generation of nephews would inherit in turn.

It is only human nature to wish one's own country to be ruled by one's own son.

This succession method was a necessity born of the steppe. A tribal chieftain was a high-risk occupation — tribal feuds, blade wounds and arrow injuries, obesity and gout, high blood pressure and diabetes: one of these was bound to carry a man off.

To entrust succession to a youth or even a child, who would not even know where the pastures were when the season changed and would not recognize the other tribal chieftains, meant the entire tribe could simply vanish.

But the Chagatai Khanate had settled down. The nobles' life expectancy shot up dramatically, and this old tradition of lateral seniority within the clan lost its necessity. Yet the stark reality before them was that the brothers serving as crown princes believed in the necessity of tradition.

The previous Great Khan of Yarkand, named Mahmut, had broken this time-honored tradition. To pave the way for his son's succession, he appointed his twelfth younger brother, Abd ar-Rahim, as governor of Turpan and even sought out Khojas and emirs as external allies.

As a result, after Mahmut died in the thirty-seventh year of the Wanli reign, his son succeeded him that very year — and his twelfth younger brother, Abd ar-Rahim, colluded with the Oirats to raise troops in rebellion. This caused Yarkand to split into eastern and western halves, allowed the internal Khojas and feudal lords to grow powerful, and let real authority slip from the khan's court.

For over twenty years, because of the lingering issue of passing the throne to a son, western Yarkand had suffered repeated enthronements, coups, and rebellions. The Great Khan had changed several times, and the men of the khan's family were nearly all dead.

In contrast, the Eastern Khan Abd ar-Rahim had gone to great lengths to ease relations on all sides, and his domain had been very peaceful.

Now that the Eastern Khan Abd ar-Rahim was dead, there was no constraint of lateral seniority within the clan. The old man had been seventy-seven; all the brothers of his generation had long since been laid to rest. Even in the next generation, there was no one older than his sons.

There was just one small problem: the eldest son and heir, Abdullah Khan, was a long-time hostage. At the age of seven, he had followed his father on a western campaign that ended in defeat, and he had been detained as a hostage by the Kucha commander of Yarkand. He had yet to return.

The old man's remaining sons were all very restless at this moment. These brothers were all feudal lords with military power in their own hands, and their brotherly affection for their eldest brother was rather peculiar. Normally, brothers are naturally close, but in their family, not only were the brothers not close — they barely knew each other at all.

They had never met.

These brothers were all men in their thirties and forties. Except for the second eldest, none of them had ever laid eyes on their eldest brother in their lives. Even the second eldest, Aji, only knew from what others told him that he had met his eldest brother — after all, he had been too young to remember anything at the time.

Under these circumstances, the brothers put their heads together and thought: one khan in the east, one khan in the west — we're all one family, who doesn't know who? Our family may be useless at everything else, but when it comes to laying landmines for our own kin, we are second to none under heaven.

In the current situation, the western khan would certainly release their eldest brother to return and inherit the throne. This was an open conspiracy that required no thought at all.

First, it would cause them trouble. The Eastern Khan of Yarkand had survived for so many years not merely by his ability to stabilize the situation, but crucially by adhering to the ancient traditions and winning the people's hearts. If the eldest brother returned and could not inherit the throne, their legitimacy would be lost, and they would inevitably fall into civil war.

Second, even if the eldest brother succeeded smoothly, it would not be a bad thing for the west. At least this khan had grown up in the west and was unfamiliar with the east. Even as Great Khan, he would find it difficult to command the khanate like an arm wielding a finger.

As for the third point, the brothers were not close to their eldest brother to begin with. Once the eldest brother became Khan, when the time came to pass on the throne, would he pass it to his own son, or to these unfamiliar brothers?

The brothers in the east gathered together, turned the matter over and over in their minds, and finally came up with a plan to counter every move.

The eldest brother must succeed to the throne, and the brothers would give him their full support — but as for territory and tangible benefits, forget it. The brothers would first divide up the eastern khanate among themselves, each carving out their own pastures and fiefs. If in the future the eldest brother was unwilling to pass the throne to them, that was fine too: they would attack westward.

Take the whole of Yarkand. The eldest brother's son would become Great Khan, the second brother would become Eastern Khan… they could not think that far ahead about what came after. That could be dealt with later.

The one who received the Hami territory was the fifth among the brothers, named Babai, who had always had his own domain in Hami.

Although Hami was a small place with fewer than ten thousand people, it sat at the most critical stop on the Golden Road. All envoys and merchants coming from the west had to pass through here, and the smuggling operations of the Gansu Garrison also transported their goods here.

Although after the An Lushan Rebellion, the Central Plains lost its ability to protect the Western Regions, and centuries of warfare and climate change had caused the population of the Western Regions to plummet, the Silk Road had withered by the day, losing its once-glorious cultural exchange and commercial development.

But for the various states of the Western Regions, this Silk Road, reduced to an ordinary trade route, was still a golden road.

Subjectively, the rulers of Yarkand did not care about the Ming Emperor ten thousand li away; but objectively, every noble of Yarkand had to make the preservation of the Golden Road his personal duty.

Because with good luck, they could engage in the great business of tribute missions; even with bad luck, they could still enter Ganzhou or even Lanzhou to do ordinary trade, a rolling stream of wealth sufficient to serve as the financial pillar of a state.

Apart from being too close to Suzhou and suffering extremely severe population loss, Hami was almost the wealthiest place of all in the outer northwest.

The extremely frequent trade between the two sides gave Babai a broader perspective. However, due to the long distances and the problems of multiple rounds of translation, Babai knew a great deal about events in the Gansu Garrison and Qinghai. No major event on this land could escape his notice.

But one could not ask him for the details of these major events. Once you asked for details, all the information Babai possessed was passed by word of mouth, hearsay, and had even undergone multiple rounds of far-fetched embellishment.

Between such information and the truth, there were often seven or eight Shen Weijing's worth of distortion.

For instance, Babai knew that a rebel army from the Great Ming had entered Qinghai, but he did not know the name of the rebel army's leader or the composition of its armed forces.

However, Babai did know that this rebel army's slogan was "Fight back to the Central Plains." Of course, after translation, the slogan Babai had grasped was: "Lead the troops to Han lands to plunder! We must plant our banner on the gates of Ganzhou!"

Babai knew that a Marshal's Office had appeared in Hehuang, but he did not understand the Marshal's Office's relationship with the Great Ming. The Grand Marshal of the Marshal's Office seemed to be called Liu Chengzong, a Han Chinese.

Babai knew there was a figure on the Heka Grasslands called the Simple Khan, but he did not know the Simple Khan's actual name. And not only did he not know it, but on top of that, Babai also knew that after a chaotic battle, the ultimate victor was called Daiching Khitan Khan.

Piecing together these fragmented pieces of intelligence and making them look coherent required formidable powers of deduction and creativity.

Babai's powers of deduction and creativity were both very strong, and he possessed a decisiveness few could match. After deep and careful consideration, he concluded that the storyline unfolding in Qinghai and Gansu was as follows:

A rebellion had broken out in the Ming heartland, and a rebel army had surged into Qinghai. Han people did not like to venture outward, so they were most likely rebelling Tatar troops.

In the clashes between these Tatar rebels and the various tribes of Khulochi, a leader called the Simple Khan had emerged, possibly a Mongol noble of the Tumed tribe, whose slogan was: "Lead the troops to Han lands to plunder!"

To counter the Simple Khan's growing power, the Great Ming's Lord of Ten Thousand Years, the Chongzhen Emperor, had carried out reforms in the northwest and established a Marshal's Office. The Grand Marshal was Liu Chengzong, a general loyal and devoted to the Han Emperor.

After Ligdan Khan and the State Preceptor Khan entered Qinghai, a war broke out pitting Liu Chengzong and the State Preceptor Khan against the Simple Khan and Ligdan Khan. In the end, all four sides were wounded. Ligdan Khan died, the State Preceptor Khan vanished, and Liu Chengzong's whereabouts were unknown. But the Simple Khan was still around, and a figure called Daiching Khitan Khan had been enthroned in the Qinghai region.

Compiling all this "reliable" intelligence together, Babai sat in his little tower in the small city of Hami, gazing out at the holes of the karez wells beyond the walls and the endless melon fields, and mused that there was only one truth: the rebel army was the ultimate victor.

The Simple Khan had defeated all his enemies, ascended to become Daiching Khitan Khan, and established the Dunta Ulus, commanding two hundred thousand bowstrings. Perfectly logical and reasonable.

Under these circumstances, Batur Khong Tayiji had come rushing through Xingxing Gorge with his battered remnants, in a great hurry, with over seven thousand Han troops "in pursuit" behind him.

Babai believed this was the Dzungars trading their allegiance to Daiching Khitan Khan for the freedom to return to the Tianshan Mountains, and that the Ming border general Liu Chengzong was in hot pursuit.

To Hami, this was an opportunity.

Publicly, it would eliminate the Yarkand Khanate's northern rival, Batur Khong Tayiji; privately, it would let him absorb the Dzungar cavalry to strengthen his own military power and vent some pent-up anger; internally, it would allow him to contribute greater strength to the Eastern Khan's coming western campaign; externally, it would let him do a favor for the Great Ming border general Liu Chengzong, opening trade for even greater gains.

This was an enormous gamble — he had his eyes fixed on those four-thousand-odd Dzungar cavalrymen under Batur Khong Tayiji.

To be honest, one look at Batur Khong Tayiji's troops told you they were a defeated army — but a relatively elite defeated army among nomadic forces. Their armor was battered beyond recognition, yet they were still wearing armor; their imposing camels were gone, but they still had at least a thousand warhorses.

What's more, they were still driving yak carts. Even after losing a battle, they still looked fairly well-off.

If he didn't give them a beating for this, Babai would be failing his own Borjigin bloodline!

Without a moment's hesitation, he first ordered his subordinates to conscript men throughout Hami, pulling out everyone who could fight, then sent word to his second brother Aji in Turpan, exchanging the intelligence he had gathered and his proposed solution.

As soon as this letter reached Aji's hands, all of Turpan began to mobilize.

This had nothing to do with anyone else's analysis — all the intelligence came from Babai. Turpan was four thousand li from He-Huang, about the same distance as Xining to Beijing, practically blind to the situation. Whatever Babai said, that was the truth, and when others heard it, they found it quite reasonable.

However, Aji mobilized Turpan's forces not to support Babai's attack on Batur Khong Tayiji — the distance was too great for him to provide support. If Babai couldn't defeat the Khong Tayiji, by the time the mobilization was complete, his fifth brother's bones would already be cold.

Aji mobilized his forces mainly as a precaution against Gansu. He sent word to Babai: "In recent years, the Han lands have grown frighteningly poor, and their people have become more and more shameless. We must prepare for both outcomes."

The preparation, naturally, was for the scenario where their efforts brought no reward — Babai would have to abandon Hami first and flee west, while simultaneously sending men to lodge complaints and demand justice from Gansu officials and the central court.

During the complaint process, if the Gansu government troops pursued relentlessly, the forces mobilized by Second Brother Aji could be put to use, covering his retreat.

Everything was in place. Babai had six hundred standing troops under his command, and he also conscripted every man in Hami who could fight, scraping together over three thousand men. Outside the city, they prepared wine and meat. He had his great general Bu Yan Temür lead the army in a grand procession toward northeastern Hami, setting an ambush in the mountains, waiting only for Batur Khong Tayiji to arrive and enjoy the feast.

What he never expected was that Babai had underestimated Batur Khong Tayiji's respect for his brother-in-law.

The man had come to Hami city to request supplies precisely so that his Oirat son-in-law, Liu Chengzu, could have a good meal on the road. Fine grape wine and freshly slaughtered cattle and sheep were laid out before them — yet the eight hundred riders of the Dzungar advance guard did not move a muscle.

From the city wall, Babai watched as the Dzungar army swelled in number. All four-thousand-odd men assembled, and still they did not move. Then… he saw the Han army approaching under their banners. Han soldiers called out from below the wall, inviting the lord of Hami city to come down, eat meat, and drink wine first.

Three calls went unanswered. The Han soldiers below said nothing more and directly began preparing to assault the city.

The Hami troops waiting in the mountains for the attack signal were in an awkward spot. Babai had no other options — inside the city, only the elderly over sixty-six, children under six, and women remained. He could only steel himself and descend from the city. Meeting the commanding general, he had his interpreter tentatively call out: "General Liu?"

Liu Chengzu nodded in acknowledgment. Babai's heart sank — his decisiveness kicked in, and he surrendered on the spot.