national surname chiming

Chapter 519 The Calamity of Galdan

(The new book has been opened, this one needs to be finished quickly, there will be at least [-] words today)

In the 15 years of Xiaokang, it was because Hooke invented something similar to the Newcomen steam engine, which triggered a series of upsurges in scientific research, culture and education, and system improvement in the Ming Dynasty.

The year ended in a rush of legislative and executive branch restructuring.

The Ming court, which had been resting for six or seven years with light tributes and the people, has become able to toss again, and has launched some three fires to promote the New Deal, sweeping away many long-standing disadvantages.

And other new laws that have already been implemented will naturally continue to advance in an orderly manner, so there is nothing to repeat.

After more than a year of system reform and hectic period, as time came to the summer of 1678, a border problem that had been dragged on by the Ming Dynasty for several years finally became serious.

That is Galdan, the leader of the Junggar tribe located in the northwest of Ming Dynasty. When Ming Dynasty was busy with internal affairs, he finally seized the window period of several years, swallowed up some surrounding forces, and gradually tended to dominate the northwest.

As for Daming, in fact, as early as three or five years ago, they heard about Galdan’s movements, but at that time the Ming court felt that Galdan was not yet a climate, and it was suitable to be stocked again, so that it would be easy to "drive away tigers and wolves" in the future.Including Zhu Shuren himself thought so, he also persuaded the emperor's son, and finally shelved it for the time being.

On the other hand, it was also because the national power of Ming Dynasty had not yet fully returned to its peak state at that time. After defeating the Spaniards in Burma, Yuehe and Luzon, they spent too much energy in order to further reform the land return and control the southern territory.

I am also afraid of indigestion if I expand too quickly, so I will bear it for the time being and digest more first.

Five years ago, the Ming Dynasty first heard about the threat of Galdan. In 1673, Galdan had just formed a mutual market with the Raksha Kingdom, and then the Northern Expedition broke through another "Heshuo Special Division" of Tatar Mongolia. "when.

The specific chronology is roughly as follows: In 1670, Galdan's elder brother, the former Junggar Khan and Senggetaiji who were relatively close to the Ming Dynasty, were assassinated.There was civil strife in the Junggar tribe, and it took Galdan a year to force himself to be called the Khan of the Junggar tribe in 1671, and began to take over the throne.

Of course, not everyone would accept him if he wanted to succeed to the throne, so from 1671 to 1672, it took more than a year of civil war in the Junggar tribe before the opposition was eliminated and the headquarters was unified.

But while he wiped out the rebels in the ministry, some of the rebels also escaped from Junggar and took refuge in another part of Western Tatar Mongolia, that is, the Heshuo Te tribe.

At that time, the Junggar Department was located near the "Junggar Basin" taught in the geography class of later generations, that is, the basins and grasslands around Ulumqi in later generations.

The territory of the Heshuote tribe is located in the northwest of the Junggar tribe, north of the Tianshan Mountains, which is the places of Altay and Karamay in later generations.It even extended westward to the territory of Kazakhs in later generations, all the way to the area around Lake Balkhash (from the Han Dynasty, Lake Balkhash was called "Yi Bohai" in Chinese, and it has always been the natural boundary of the Western Regions during the Han and Tang Dynasties. cut.)
In order to hunt down the traitors who escaped from the Junggar tribe, Galdan began to part ways with Heshuote in 1673, sometimes negotiating and sometimes fighting. Later, because he could not fight directly, Galdan made a major decision , became the first Khan who "opened his eyes to see the world" in Northwest China——

Galdan chose to do business with the Raksha State Alliance, and agreed to attack the Heshuote tribe from north to south with the Raksha State. He also promised that once Heshuote could be wiped out, he would share his land, population and livestock with the Raksha people.

At that time, the Raksha people were also planning to expand on the Central Asian grasslands north of the Tianshan Mountains, so they hit it off with Galdan and sold many new guns to Galdan, including the latest standard equipment for the Raksha Shooting Army. They even helped Kardan Erdan armed a camel artillery with small artillery on camels.

At the same time, other Tatars, such as the Heshuo Tebu, obviously lacked the vision of "opening their eyes to see the world".Originally, everyone was about the same in strength, and they all established the country by riding and shooting. Suddenly, the Junggar tribe had musket cavalry and camel artillery. How could the Heshuot people fight?
So in just three years, starting from 1674, Junggar reversed its previous decline towards Heshuote, and by 1676, it had flattened the Heshuote and some other tribes, and completely mastered the entire territory and land of later generations. All the way to the Kazakh part of Lake Balkhash.

Of course, when the news that the Heshuo Special Department was destroyed the year before last was finally transmitted back to Nanjing in the first half of the next year, Daming was not worried about it.

Because the important ministers of the Ming Dynasty generally felt that if Ming went to conquer the Northwest for no reason, it would definitely attract all the Tatars to fight against Ming, and the price Ming would pay would only be greater.

Now the Junggar tribe is willing to pull this hatred, first kill the other tribes terribly, and make the survivors of other tribes feel resentful, then when Daming fights over, these people will thank Daming for saving them, and they will be able to communicate with the eastern region. Mongolian tribes like Chahar and Horqin surrendered to Ming Dynasty and accepted the rule.

Therefore, Daming did not worry about letting the Junggar tribe play bad faces, let the Tatars kill each other, and sow hatred.

Daming has to worry, at least until the expansion of the Junggar tribe is almost complete, there is no expansion and there are no more enemies to offend.

At this time, he will offend Daming again, and Daming will fight back against the outside world with the same hatred, destroying the exhausted Junggar people who have just been fighting for many years, and reaping the favor of the survivors of other tribes.

Anyway, as long as Junggar is still expanding, fighting, and offending more people, Daming doesn't need to worry.

In the wave of warnings in 1676, Daming chose to hold back, and now more than two years have passed, the Junggar tribe finally wanted to die, and it would drive them crazy, and they provoked a few more enemies.

Moreover, during the two years of continuous battles, Galdan relied on Rakshasa muskets and camel cannons, and soon he was about to kill the hostile tribes who only used primitive cold weapons.The small tribes of Moxi Mongolia, such as the Duerbert tribe of the Tatars and the Huite tribe, were all wiped out.

This year, that is, in 1678, Galdan frantically started a new stage of expansion again: he remembered that among the enemies who competed with him six years ago, there was one named Zhuote Babatur, and Oqiertu behind him Khan fled to Qinghai after the defeat of the army, where he united with local forces to recuperate and try to make a comeback.

Galdan acted first, and after unifying the territory and East Kazakhstan, his troops turned south and began to enter the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau.He swept across the Yeerqiang Khanate at the junction of southern Xinjiang and Qinghai, and then turned to attack some small tribes bordering Qinghai and Tibet in Xinjiang, chasing and killing Oqiertu Khan.

The Yeerqiang Khanate that he destroyed was said to be the orthodox descendant of the "Chagatai Khanate" that was juxtaposed with the Yuan Dynasty, and one of the four major Khanates during Genghis Khan's time. Now it is also destroyed by the Junggar tribe.

As for the military information sent back from the Qinghai-Tibet border area, of course it was impossible to send it to Daming immediately, because Daming did not establish rule there.

During the Ming Dynasty, Qinghai had certain administrative power, but it was limited to the Hehuang area, that is, the upper reaches of the Yellow River and its tributary Huangshui. The actual rule in the west did not exceed Qinghai Lake.Further to the west, it is a nominal prison.

It took three months for the news of Galdan’s invasion of Qinghai-Tibet to spread to Xiningwei, which was actually controlled by the Ming Dynasty, in June of this year. The scope of "Uzang" is no longer directly under the jurisdiction of Daming officials)

After arriving at Xiningwei, the follow-up road was a bit faster. According to the normal urgent military situation of three or four hundred miles per day, it was sent back, and it took more than a month to arrive in Nanjing.

……

However, when the news of Galdan's invasion of Qinghai-Tibet came back, the timing was very bad, and the Ming court was unable to deal with him at all.

There is no other reason, but because of the 16 years of Xiaokang, a nationwide severe drought happened in Ming Dynasty, and I was too busy to take care of myself.

As mentioned earlier, in the 17th and 18th years of Kangxi in history, there was a nationwide severe drought, and it was a "severe drought in both the north and the south" for two consecutive years.Among them, in the 18th year of Kangxi, there was also a major earthquake in the Hebei area, which caused the Yellow River, which had a small amount of water, to burst its embankment, causing countless casualties and losses.

After all, even if the most blazing period of the Little Ice Age has passed, natural disasters will not occur for ten or eight years in a row.

Historically, in the early Kangxi period, basically every place experienced catastrophe in an average of [-]% of the years, and the remaining [-]% of the years could barely get by, or the weather was good, which was considered very good.

These changes in the natural environment and climate cannot be changed by Zhu Shuren's butterfly effect, so corresponding to today's Daming, the two years of Xiaokang in the 16th and 17th years also corresponded to the continuous disasters in the 78th year of Kangxi, which can be called Zhu Ciyu since he ascended the throne. worst year.

Considering that the ancients were more or less superstitious, even if the Ming Dynasty popularized mathematics and science education and promoted new learning, it was only the ninth year since the founding of Nanjing University.There is still a huge gap in mathematics and science talents across the country.

Under such circumstances, it would be good for the emperor not to condemn himself and not to take natural disasters on him, but how can he use troops abroad and be aggressive?

So, upon hearing that the Yarkant Khanate was destroyed and that some other tribal Khanates in the Uzbek region were invaded by Galdan, Daming could only bear with it.

In the end, after summing up, Gu Yanwu was only asked to send people from the vassal department to "mediate and negotiate". Ertu Khan’s attack surface has been expanded”, to persuade the Junggar people to take care of themselves.

Otherwise, as the co-lord of the world, Daming must stand up for the little brother who pays tribute to the vassal of Daming!Just like the Japanese pirates invaded North Korea 80 years ago, and Ming Dynasty stood up for North Korea!
On Daming's side, it was in August of this year that the news of Wu Sizang's accident was obtained, and the results of the discussion and the final dispatch of envoys were already in October.And considering the severe cold on the plateau in winter, it is impossible for the envoy to go to the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau in winter.

So when the envoy finally arrived at Lanzhouwei, it was already the twelfth lunar month of winter.After the beginning of the spring of the next year, we continued to move westward, and only in the early summer of this year did we contact the people from the Junggar tribe.

The envoy of the Ming Dynasty put aside his harsh words, but fortunately, Galdan is not stupid at all, he also knows that he can't make too many enemies at the same time, so he just deceives the envoy, pretends to be a fool,
He stated that he would never invade the innocent small country in Uzbekistan, and that as long as he could hunt down and kill Ozirtu Khan himself and his family, he would stop and no longer resort to military expansion to harm innocent people.

For the time being, the envoy of the Ming Dynasty could not catch any other evidence of his crime. Seeing that Galdan was willing to pledge his promise in black and white, he had no choice but to believe him first, and returned to Nanjing to return to Nanjing with Galdan's letter of guarantee.

……

With Galdan's barbarian temperament, who completely talks about the law of the jungle and makes his fist hard,
His sworn promise to Daming was of course worthless in the end, it was like farting, even more dishonest than Sima Yi pointing out Luoshui farting.

So after the envoy of the Ming Dynasty left, he hunted down and killed Oziltu Khan himself before the end of the year in 1679, and killed all his famous and adult sons. The factions are completely unified and integrated.

However, because in the process of chasing and killing Oqiertu Khan, Oqiertuhan must have also attracted some small countries and tribes in Uzbekistan to join forces with him, or used the last large sum of money to buy the locals.

Therefore, when Oqiertu Khan dies, there will definitely be a new force, the New Khanate, which has grievances and conflicts with Galdan.It's like the spread of contamination.

Galdan is in the rising period of the country's prosperity, how can he stop at this point?
So of course he chose to continue to expand and occupy, continue to burn, kill, loot and conquer. In just one year, he completely took half of Qinghai in the west into his pocket.
They also went to the snowy area to infiltrate and conquer, and recruited and surrendered younger brothers, forcing at least a few tribes in the small Uzbek country to surrender to the Junggar instead of the Ming Dynasty.

……

At this point in the matter, Galdan's treachery, swearing and swearing like farting has been completely exposed.

It's just that in 1679, Daming happened to be the second year of "consecutive drought in the north and south", and there was an earthquake in Hebei. The situation was worse than the previous year, and Daming still couldn't spare.

The previous disaster in 16 in the 1678th year of Xiaokang, at any rate, could be overcome a little bit by relying on the water conservancy facilities of Ming Dynasty which were much stronger than that of Qing Dynasty in the same period of history.

Because there was a lot of rain in the previous year, the ponds and lakes dredged and irrigated in various places in the Ming Dynasty had abundant water storage, which could guarantee that at least half of the summer grain in 1678 could be harvested. It was only the autumn grain of that year, because the water storage was completely used up. There is no other way, and more than half of the income has been reduced, and some provinces have even lost their income.

Fortunately, Daming had a strong foundation before, and the people had surplus food, so there was no large-scale starvation problem.

But in 1679, because of the severe drought in the previous year, and the continuous drought, it was beyond the reach of water conservancy facilities. Some provinces in the north had no summer grain harvest, and the production in the south was severely reduced.Instead, relying on the rain that started to fall in the last autumn, and barely relying on replanting to rush to plant overwintering crops, we can have a bite to eat.

The most serious one is in Hebei, where more than 20 people were killed and drowned due to concurrent earthquakes and the rupture of the Yellow River. The collapse of the system made it impossible to organize effective opening and closing of warehouses for disaster relief, and more than [-] people died of starvation.

The entire territory of Hebei and the area near the Yellow River in northern Henan, more than 30 people died a year. This is the state that Ming Dynasty tried its best to save, accounting for more than 5.00% of the local population. (Kangxi in parallel time and space killed at least ten percent of the population of Hebei)
It can only be said that the productivity is too underdeveloped, and it is really impossible to resist continuous natural disasters.The Ming Dynasty has done a lot better than the Qing Dynasty in the same period, at least the minor disasters in previous years have been successfully dealt with.

The continuous disasters made Daming overwhelmed, and the imperial court had to issue an imperial edict to exempt the whole country from land taxes for two consecutive years.This is a huge pressure on the military ration expenditure of the imperial court to support soldiers.

It means that the imperial court has not confiscated a single free grain and rice in two years, and only relied on the old grain and the grain bought with the tax money to distribute rations to the army, corvee personnel, and officials.

Finally, in order to reduce the pressure, the army also had to cut the amount of training in half and reduce the number of patrols.

Ask the army to plant more drought-tolerant, short, flat, and fast vegetables with a short growth cycle and low water consumption to subsidize the ration needs.The imperial court's food reserves can only be used to give priority to ensuring the rations of officials and corvee population.

The nutritional level of the army has declined, and they have been carrying half food and half vegetables for two years, and their training has been a little lax.

(End of this chapter)