Chapter 639: All You Can Eat

Tomsk City.

The city sits on the right bank of the Tom River, its geographic position critically important.

It lies eighty li from the confluence of the Tom and Ob Rivers, five thousand eight hundred li from Moscow, founded in the thirty-second year of the Great Ming Wanli reign — a sturdy fortress the Russians have been reinforcing for a full thirty years.

Though still a wooden stockade, it faces river cliffs on two sides, contains two connected east and west wooden forts, and outside those, one great wooden palisade, two smaller palisades, and two moats — easy to defend, hard to attack.

Every boat heading east from the Baraba Steppe to support the various outposts must pass through Tomsk, just as every shipment of furs and supplies sent west from the east to Tyumen must pass through Tomsk.

At this very moment, this sturdy fortress is under siege precisely because its position is so critical.

The instigator of this war was neither Liu Chengzu nor the Oirat Baatur Khong Tayiji.

Neither of those two would start a war to control land; they are more interested in looking inward, guiding the Oirat onto a proper path.

North of the entire Tianshan range, there is only one man with no interest in the Oirat but a singular passion for expanding territory — the Marshal's Office civil official: Zhou Riqiang.

Zhou Riqiang originally had great enthusiasm for civilizing the people, but after two years of tireless effort, the Tianshan Army was on the verge of being civilized into new Oirat instead.

Their numbers were too few — a few thousand Tianshan troops were but a drop in the ocean against the Oirat's million-strong population — and all of them were bachelors. As the two sides intermarried and lived together, few learned Han speech, while the Tianshan troops all became fluent in the Oirat dialect.

They were like the Portuguese leasing Macau — their influence on the mainland was extremely limited.

Zhou Riqiang's work had hit a dead end. It seemed that even if he waited until he turned into a grave mound, he would never turn the grand vision Liu Chengzong had painted into reality.

After all, at root, the Oirat were a vast tribal alliance facing an imminent existential crisis. They needed more pastureland — there was none to the north, and the fields the Tianshan Army had reclaimed were hardly fit for purpose. Only war with the Kazakh Khanate was the top priority.

For the vast majority of Oirat nobles, the titles the Khitan Khan could grant them were merely icing on the cake, far less meaningful than tangible trade.

So aside from that large-scale trade, it was hard to say they and Liu Chengzong truly formed a community of shared interests.

This deadlock lasted until last winter, when Chokur, who had brought the Nine Whites as tribute to Liu Chengzong, returned to the Tianshan — and change finally arrived.

Chokur was a problem among the Oirat.

He was originally a taiji of the Dzungar tribe, the younger brother of Baatur Khong Tayiji.

Many years ago, this man nearly single-handedly destroyed the entire Oirat.

At the time, a younger brother of theirs had died. Fighting over the inheritance, Chokur killed another younger brother, drawing his own father's fury and a military attack.

If the matter back then had stopped at that, Chokur could hardly be called a problem for the Oirat.

The issue was that their father was then the chieftain of the Dzungar and one of the two leaders of the Oirat alliance. He dispatched ten thousand troops to attack Chokur.

The Torgut and Dörbet tribes both joined the war. The two sides fought for years... Chokur not only survived but thrived.

Stripped of his taiji title and pastureland by his father, he led his last die-hard followers, withstood his father's offensives, forced the Torgut tribe to migrate west to the Volga River, and along the way crippled the last Küchüm Khan of the Sibir Khanate, allowing the Russian Cossacks to reap the spoils.

In the end, this upheaval concluded with Chokur, a wanderer, seizing control of the Altai Mountains region.

Baatur Khong Tayiji had always wanted to move him somewhere else.

After all, Chokur's prowess in battle was known to every Oirat. From the Altai Mountains to Lake Zaysan, every tribal chieftain, even those with more warriors than Chokur, refused to start a war with such a madman. People kept migrating south, throwing the northern Oirat pasture boundaries into chaos.

Baatur Khong Tayiji, who controlled the alliance, had no way to deal with Chokur either, so he dispatched him to escort goods and meet Liu Chengzong.

This was indeed done with ill intent.

If Chokur acted like a bastard in Qinghai and Liu Chengzong killed him in a fit of rage, the Oirat would gain a moral advantage in negotiations with the Marshal's Office and lay the groundwork for a future betrayal once their wings were fully grown.

If Liu Chengzong took a liking to Chokur and kept him in Qinghai, that would be even better — let him fight for Liu Chengzong, which still counted as the Oirat contributing their share, while also sparing them the trouble of him returning to the Tianshan to cause havoc.

The Khong Tayiji respected Liu Chengzong deeply, but respect did not mean he would accept wholesale every agreement he had negotiated with Liu Chengzong while a captive in Qinghai.

After all, he was no longer a captive now. The balance between the two sides had shifted slightly. The Oirat could only accept terms beneficial to themselves.

As for the utilization and control stipulated in their agreement, which treated the Oirat as vassals and subjects... Baatur Khong Tayiji felt there was no need to rush for now.

If you don't ask, I'll pretend it doesn't exist.

If you do ask, I'll say I'm preparing to do it.

One word summed it up: stall.

After all, who knew if the situation might change again in the future?

The only thing was, Liu Chengzong seemed to like Chokur a little too much.

Chokur not only returned alive, but brought back one hundred Marshal's Office-made firelocks and even received the official title of Chokur Battalion Assistant Commander.

Such a title meant nothing to others, but to Chokur, it meant everything.

Upon his return, he switched allegiances, reported directly to Liu Chengzu, and even asked Zhou Riqiang to help him negotiate with the Khong Tayiji for a piece of garrison land.

Zhou Riqiang's civilizing mission had hit an impasse, and he was just worrying over it.

Suddenly discovering that the Grand Marshal, far away in Qinghai, could still win over a fine general and over a thousand armored troops, he was instantly invigorated.

He thought, what garrison land is needed? From the Altai Mountains to Lake Zaysan, that's it.

That stretch of land was truly unremarkable to others — mountains, hills, desert. There was plenty of plain, but the climate was poor: dry and hot in summer, bitterly cold in winter, with heavy snow and fierce winds that could blow sheep away.

But to Zhou Riqiang's Naval Office, it was a rare gem of feng shui.

Zhou Riqiang thought to himself, this path of cultural education is blocked. Clearly, civilizing a million people exceeds the ability of this former Ning Prefecture magistrate. But this old man still holds another official title — Ningyuan Colonel — which sounds like someone who knows a thing or two about fighting.

Zhou Riqiang assisted Chokur in completing the reorganization of one battalion.

This battalion had only two thousand seven hundred fighting men in total, every one of them skilled in archery and horsemanship. But because they were all mere warriors, useless at fishing and herding, and ate prodigiously, their living conditions were abysmal.

A dog-headed strategist is crucial to a mountain king's bid for supremacy.

Just as every problem Chokur encountered was child's play to Zhou Riqiang.

By Zhou Riqiang's second month in the Altai, every little wooden raft on every lake within Chokur's domain had been replaced by large pine fishing boats of Shandong lineage.

At the same time, they fired bricks and built houses, erecting fortified hamlets that the gales could not blow away. They also laid out irrigation canals, farmland plots, mines, and kilns, just waiting to recruit the tribute people from the north to begin farming and raising sheep — comprehensive development.

The unruly and untamable Chokur thus prostrated himself beneath Zhou Riqiang's official robes.

As long as this civil official was by his side, letting him work at it here for five or ten years — what would the Dzungar even count for?

Chokur even felt that, given time, he could conquer the entire Oirat in reverse from the Altai alone.

Of course, Zhou Riqiang would never support such a treasonous notion.

To Zhou Riqiang, Chokur was more of a tool in a Khan-cultivation project. He enticed him: "If you must wage war, would attacking Tyumen not be far better than slaughtering your own kin? When the General takes Tyumen, report it clearly to the Grand Marshal — seeking enfeoffment as the Sibir Khan would not be out of the question!"

The so-called Shiber Khan was none other than the Khan of Siberia.

When Zhou Riqiang said this, he had no idea that the Three Taiji of the Dzungar tribe standing before him was one of the chief architects behind the final extinction of the Siberian Khanate's bloodline.

It was the chaotic era of the Oirat back then. Küchüm Khan of the Siberian Khanate had killed the Cossack leader Yermak, succeeded in his revenge, and attempted to lead his people south of the Irtysh River to settle and graze.

But the steppe was never a land without a master. That place bordered the Oirat's Dzungar territory, and a war of conflict between natives and outsiders soon erupted. The Russians pursued from Tara City, the Dzungars blocked from Zaisan Lake — wherever they fled, they were attacked.

Two of Küchüm Khan's sons died in the war; his other two sons, eight wives, and eight daughters were all taken captive. In the end, he was left to flee alone to the Khanate of Bukhara, and the Siberian Khanate was thus extinguished.

Even now, Chökür still had many descendants of the Siberian Khanate's soldiers under his command.

Outsiders have always been more supportive of reform than locals, so it was they who became the die-hard vanguard pawns, dashing east and west after Chökür was stripped of his Taiji title and territory.

It was just that, compared to that Siberian Khan, Chökür valued the Marquis title from the Marshal's Manor far more.

Other nobles all valued the Khan title and Taiji status more, but he had been a Taiji originally — merely deposed. Even if his Taiji status were restored, he wouldn't think much of it. On the contrary, the Marshal's Manor's Marquis, which was equal in rank to a Khan, seemed far more noble in his eyes.

This was unique in all the Oirat.

At that time, Chökür was ready to go raid Tyumen right then.

Fortunately, Zhou Riqiang stopped him.

The "attack Tyumen" in their two minds was the same matter, but not the same concept.

For Chökür, the so-called attack on Tyumen meant striking once, looting once, and then going home.

But what Zhou Riqiang wanted was clearly not that — he wanted to garrison there permanently and turn that place into national territory.

Without the ability to establish lasting governance, carving out new frontiers was utterly meaningless to a civil official like him.

This could not be accomplished overnight. Tyumen was not impossible to take — the year before last, Khong Tayiji Batur had returned and immediately set Tyumen ablaze.

But burning it was useless; the next year, a wooden fort would sprout from the ground again.

To occupy, to defend, to seesaw back and forth — just like the Great Ming's three recoveries and three losses of Hami — what it came down to was resilience.

And as for resilience, Zhou Riqiang, as the head of the Marshal's Manor's Naval Office and an official of logistics background, knew very well that their resilience in this direction was certainly far worse than that of the Rus on the other side of the ice plains.

Based on this view, Zhou Riqiang preferred to direct Chökür to attack the city of Tomsk, which was closer to the Oirat.

In fact, even for Tomsk, he did not know if they could hold it until next year.

After all, this year and the next were critical for the Marshal's Manor's Tianshan Army — it was time for the first rotation of the garrison troops.

Three years had passed in the blink of an eye, and the Marshal's Manor had begun military operations to the east.

Even Zhou Riqiang, the most recent news he knew was that Liu Chengzong had deployed a Training Guard in Qinghai for troop rotation, but that unit, in order to deal with the Ming general Tu Shixian's threat to Hehuang, had been pulled by Dalai Taiji to Lanzhou for garrison duty.

If the new troops could not arrive on time, the Tianshan Army's morale would plummet, which also meant everything they had done here was wasted effort.

Conversely, if the rotating Training Guard reached the Tianshan in time, combined with Chökür's camp and the subjects of the northern Kirghiz tribe, the Marshal's Manor's direct troops in the Tianshan could briefly exceed ten thousand — enough to organize a city-taking, fort-conquering campaign before the first phase of the Tianshan Army withdrew.

For this goal, Zhou Riqiang had spent nearly a year.

Even in the bitter cold of deep winter, he had herding soldiers wrapped in fur coats board sleds and penetrate deep into the frozen rivers, finding the confluence of the Tom and Ob Rivers, mapping out the Russian supply lines thoroughly. Only then did he persuade Chökür to launch the siege against the city of Tomsk.

Soon, under his coordinated deployment, a mixed corps with a strength approaching four thousand was organized. This summer, it split into three routes and multiple columns, striking northward.

The first route was the two thousand seven hundred camp soldiers led by Chökür, divided into vanguard, main body, and rearguard, striking north along the foothills of the Altai Mountains.

The second route was Ochirtu Khan — this man was purely dragged onto the war chariot by Chökür.

He was the eldest son of the Khoshut tribe's Gushri Khan's elder brother, relatively young. After Gushri Khan led his people into Qinghai, Ochirtu Khan remained in the Khoshut's old lands on the northern slopes of the Tianshan, near Tarbagatai, very close to the Altai Mountains, and had been constantly avoiding Chökür's edge.

This time, when Chökür launched his northern expedition and sent men to invite Ochirtu Khan, the Khan very nimbly brought fifty armored cavalry and two hundred herding cavalry to lend support.

This Khoshut Khan's entire tribe had barely a thousand men who could be called warriors. Back when Liu Chengzu arrived in the Tianshan and paraded his army formation in Urumqi, three thousand armored soldiers had scared the man's heart and liver trembling.

Sending two hundred and fifty was already quite generous.

Chökür didn't care how many troops Ochirtu Khan sent either; the main reason for bringing this man was to borrow the Borjigin bloodline to call upon the Kirghiz people, who nomadized between the Ob and Yenisei Rivers, to send troops.

The effect was excellent. Four Kirghiz ulus contributed eight hundred men, guiding them along the way through the winding marshlands, making their advance both concealed and swift.

The final route was the Tianshan Army. Liu Chengzu did not dispatch too many troops for the campaign, sending only the artillery unit under Company Commander Wang Jinzhong, carrying four crouching-tiger cannons, twenty flying-rocket mortars, thirty heavy muskets, and fifty fire arrows to support the battle.

More ordnance was personally escorted by Liu Chengzu, transported by land to the northern foothills of the Altai Mountains, then loaded onto boats and taken north via the Ob River. But this route required a secure environment along the way, so it lagged behind and could only arrive after the siege had begun.

Taking advantage of this time gap, the small Russian outposts along the upper Ob River all received word first that Tomsk was under siege and immediately mustered Cossack squads and hunter squads to head north in support.

Only after they had left did the few civil officials left guarding the wooden stockades see, on the Ob River, boat after boat of paddle-wheel warships flying red-background dragon flags, chanting Mongol work songs as they came from south to north.

As those strange ships with large wheels approached the forts, before the defenders could even fire a warning shot, they roared and launched landing boats, also hurling out a swath of explosives trailing long flames, which shrieked as they smashed into the wooden stockade camp, exploding and sending lead balls flying everywhere amid dense smoke.

Then the landing boats rowed to the shore. Squads of infantry in red cloth-faced armor charged in separate columns. Those in front set up heavy muskets and fired at the stockade watchtowers in sequence; those behind carried small wooden crates as they rushed to the stockade gate, extremely orderly.

Amidst a booming explosion, the infantry filed in and stormed into the single-story wooden fort, capturing or killing the remaining civil officials and soldiers.

The entire process took no more than the time it takes a stick of incense to burn — smooth as flowing water. The tax officials left guarding those small forts still had their ears ringing with the sharp wail of the fire arrows; by the time they came to their senses, they were already tightly bound and tossed into the stifling, cramped ship cabins, listening to Mongol sailors chant work songs and watching Mongol marines tread the wheels.

That was the sixteenth day of the seventh month of the eighth year of Chongzhen. For the first time, the Russian expeditionary teams realized just how overwhelmingly saturating the firepower of a fully gunpowder-self-sufficient army could be in a conflict.