Emperor Ming Dynasty

Chapter 807 Russian Mission
Although Hara Hetao is small, there are four major river systems, Luan River, Chao River, Liao River, and Daling River nearby. The wetland grasslands with a radius of hundreds of miles are lush with water and grass, and everything grows.

When Song Liang arrived, he was quite pleasantly surprised by Chengde, but encountered obstacles when buying a store.

The city has not yet been built, and the shops have to wait for half a month.

As a result, he was free to wander around Chengde.

The large-scale Chengde City is naturally the first choice. The lamas recite Buddhist scriptures, and the sound of Sanskrit sounds in their ears, creating a special tranquility.

Donating incense sticks of one hundred silver dollars, he was welcomed by the temple.

How can there be such affluent herdsmen in Chengde, which is sparsely populated?
The host was an apprentice of the Grand Lama Chahar (apprentice of Ban Chan), who came from Han, and immediately ran over, and said gently:

"Chengde Temple is a temple built by the royal family. It cost tens of thousands of dollars in silver. It was just completed last month."

"The city is also rough. If the benefactor does not dislike it, he can temporarily live in this temple. There should be a lot of food."

Song Liang and the others naturally agreed, and of course he understood that this was their way of collecting incense.

Merchants are also believers, and they will naturally donate incense when they stay in the temple. As Chengde becomes more and more prosperous, it is a good idea to make friends with the merchants in advance.

After visiting the Lower Chengde Temple, I saw that it covers an area of ​​[-] mu, with more than [-] large and small courtyards, and more than ten temples. Although all the Buddha statues have not been affixed with gold bodies, they are carved extremely majestic.

Ten thousand silver dollars, I'm afraid it can't be repaired.

The presider led the way: "When the temple was built, nearly 3000 people were manpower, and it took several months to complete it. The temple was built first, and then the city was built."

It turned out that the herdsmen with a radius of hundreds of miles were all the sweat tents of the emperor, that is to say, including the slaves who were married by Mongolian concubines, and the herdsmen cut off from Chahar, the total number exceeded [-] tents.

With the completion of Chengde Temple and the proximity of Chengde to the capital, merchants traveling north to Chifeng will settle here and become a transit point.

Seeing this, the imperial court established the headquarters of Luo Khan in order to better control the sweat tent, so they built a city here as an outpost.

"The Mongolian tribes follow the emperor as Chuluo Khan, this place is the Khan Court, and the nearby tribes are Khan Tents. This is the most prosperous place in the world..."

The caravan went up and down to the courtyard to rest.

For the management of lamas, the imperial court has its own regulations.

The first class is naturally the level of Dharma kings. There are only two in the entire Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, Ban Chan and Da Lai.

The second class is Hutuktu, which is the mutual translation of Tibetan "Basiba" and Chinese "Holy One".

Now, there are only three of these people.

One, of course, is Jebtsundamba from Mobei, and the remaining two are apprentices of two great Dharma kings, who were left by the emperor to sit in Chahar and Suiyuan.

It can be said that the religion in Mongolia is controlled by the three of them.

The reincarnations of these five people are all under the control of the imperial court. If there are no court officials to witness, they will not be allowed to inherit.

The rest, of course, are the big temples all over the place, belonging to disciples and grandchildren.

As for the map of Monan, the two great lamas of Hutuktu were very knowledgeable and took several Han Chinese and Mongols as disciples respectively, and thus dispersed to gather faith in various places.

The reincarnations of these big temples are generally under the supervision of the lamas at the higher level, and continue according to their own regulations, and the imperial court does not care much about them.

Having been doing business in Mongolia for a long time, everyone understood that they would rather offend the nobles than offend the lama.

The next day, Song Liang was bored and wandered around the tribes near Chengde.

As the sweat camp, the Mongolian tribes in Chengde are very different.

First, all the tribes did not have a slave class.

All the slaves in the sweat tent were released as herdsmen. If the nobles wanted to serve them, they had to spend money to hire them.

As a result, slaves and poor people constituted a class of wage earners who gained most of their freedom.

With this strategy alone, the power of the nobles in Khan's tent was greatly reduced, and only wealth was preserved.

In Chahar, Suiyuan and other places, this is far from possible, and the imperial court does not have so much power to implement it.

But the sweat tent is different, the emperor can do whatever he wants.

In addition to the division of hundreds of households and thousands of households, there are even judges who roam among the tribes and are in charge of justice.

The point is, they still have grades, the seventh grade.

It was a coincidence that he came, and encountered a family property dispute.

Hundreds of families died of illness, leaving behind more than [-] mu of grassland, tens of thousands of cattle and sheep, and a lot of money.

In the open sky, the adjudicator sits on the top seat, and nearby hundreds and thousands of households sit to testify. The lamas in the temple are also witnessing.

Underneath is a family of hundreds of families.

"Master Judge, all the money should be inherited by me, and what my younger brother inherits doesn't count at all."

Among the three brothers competing under the stage, the eldest son claimed to inherit all the title and wealth, while the youngest son took out the rules of the young son in the grassland to keep the stove.

However, the second child proposed the principle of equal distribution.

What the three of them said was very reasonable.

The eldest son inheritance system is a law promulgated by the imperial court; the youngest son keeps the stove is the unspoken rule of the Mongolian people for many years; the equal distribution is another rule that has emerged since Dayan Khan.

Throughout the late Ming and early Qing Dynasties, the methods of inheriting property and titles in Mongolia were messy.

Later, after the reunification of the Manchu and Qing Dynasties, except for the eldest son inheriting the title land, the rest of the sons were all sent to temples to become lamas.

Perfectly solved the problem.

Song Liangrao stared at it with interest.

At this time, the judge took a sheep bone stick, hammered the tabletop, and said loudly: "According to the national law promulgated by Chuluo Khan, the successor to the title can only be inherited by the eldest son."

"But for the family property, the eldest son can only take half of it, and the rest will be shared equally among the sons."

"Then, can I, a bastard, share?" Suddenly, a young man raised his hand and shouted in the crowd, his face full of joy.

"Of course." The adjudicator affirmed: "When dividing up the property, the sons and daughters are all equal."

"I don't agree—" the youngest son yelled.

"This is the law of the Great Khan, and everyone must obey it."

The judge shook his head, and asked Baihu and Qianhu beside him, "Do you have any objections?"

"My lord judge is right, it makes sense."

"Amitabha!" The lama bowed his head and chanted, obviously agreeing.

Thus, a property division that was rare and ordinary but surprised the Mongols began like this.

The first is wives and concubines. They now have their own choices. Those who have sons can live with their sons, and those who have no sons can continue to live with the eldest son, or they can remarry.

Just like in the Han Dynasty, the dowry can only be regarded as one's own property, not the man's.

This completely subverts the values ​​​​of the grassland. After all, even women are property. How can property own its own property?
But there is no way, that's what Da Khan said.

Some are happy, some are worried.

There are two kinds of futures for the bastards, one is to join the army, join the army of the headquarters of the Khan Tent, and then be selected as the bodyguard department.

The other is to become a lama in a temple.

Song Liang was surprised.

Back at the monastery, I suddenly saw a group of five or six-year-old monks, accompanied by their parents, sent to the monastery to become a monk.

"Master, why is this?"

"It's nothing more than family property."

The host sighed, and muttered: "According to the rules of the court, as long as the children become monks, they don't need to inherit titles and property. In order to avoid the division of property, the nobles can only do this."

"Besides, if the heir is extinct, the lama can return to secular life and inherit the title."

Song Liang suddenly felt deeply moved.

I'm afraid that many of these little guys who were sent to the temple were forced by their elder brothers. Although they are brothers, who wants their property to shrink?
Besides, sending the extra son to the temple not only avoids fratricide, but also allows him to live comfortably and become a cultured lama. How good is that?
But temples naturally have a lot of benefits.

When the son came to the temple, he must donate incense money.

In fact, for the Lama Temple, the court's gifts are countless.

First of all, the lamas were exempted from corvee, and the temples even granted a large amount of grassland, exempting them from paying taxes.

At the same time, in the Khan Tent, nobles and lamas can be officials, either judges, or civil officials, military officers, and educated lamas are all cherished talents.

It is also the way to become an official that is lama, which is excellent for those nobles and herdsmen who have a low starting point.

A few days later, a foreign team arrived from the Suiyuan area.

Envoy of Rakshasa Kingdom.

In the huge Siberia, the Russians move very fast and have strongholds everywhere.

The attacks on Central Asia and Lake Baikal completely angered the Russians.

But whether it is the Oirat Mongolian tribes or the Manchu Qing, Russia, which is thousands of miles away, cannot be settled overnight.

What's more, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth of Dabobo in Pingdu Town is stronger than Russia in terms of population and national strength.

For Russia, the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth is stuck in its throat and has to be removed, but it cannot be beaten and can only be stalemate.

There was a fire in the rear, but we couldn't ignore it.

Today, Russia is militaristic and has financial difficulties. The mink trade in Siberia is an important financial pillar, and there must be no mistakes.

So the reckless Russians had to activate the diplomatic mode, find an enemy of the enemy, and continue their journey to Siberia.

At this time, the East, which represents wealth, comes into view.

Coupled with the agitation of the Hanseatic League, Hanseatic merchants, Russian merchants and nobles, officials, formed a large-scale team, along the stronghold of Central Siberia, all the way east.

In fact, after many years in Lake Baikal, the Russians learned the news from the Mongolian tribes of Khalkha, and to the south of them is the legendary Eastern Ming Dynasty.

After arriving in Bratsk, it was only a few hundred miles away from Lake Baikal, but the route showed that it was blocked, and a group of Tungusians occupied their stronghold.

The tens of thousands of Tunguskas, their team of thousands of people, is absolutely invincible, not to mention that they have artillery and guns.

From this, the team continued to go south, crossing Lake Baikal and passing through Khalkha Mongolia.

Fortunately, this team of 3000 people, nearly 2000 of them are Cossack cavalry, with muskets on their waists, after the Khalkhas attacked several times, they had to give up.

This group of people even plundered just like you to supplement their own consumption.

Passing through his own jurisdiction and robbing, Xietu Khan was furious, so he could only confront each other for a while, and when he learned that they were allies of the Ming people (who deceived them), he was considered a step down, so he let them pass.

Even in order to do business, Shetu Khan asked his own people to join in, and the team expanded to 5000 people.

If you can't fight again and again, it's not worthwhile to stand in a stalemate, so you can only join them.

Ivanov took a sip of spirits, wrapped his woolen coat tightly, looked at the weather getting warmer, and sighed:
"My God, this damn weather, it's only August and people are freezing to death."

"I heard that it's safer there." The Hanseman beside him was wrapped in a wolf fur coat and muttered, "I've been walking for a few months, and I wonder if I've come to hell."

"Hahaha, my friend, the road to gold is not that simple."

The pretending official stepped forward and said, "If it weren't for the map and strongholds of the empire, we would have lost our way and starved to death in Siberia."

At the end of August, when the first snowflakes fell on the grassland, this team of 5000 people arrived in Jiuyuan City, Suiyuan.

The square city wall, the exaggerated moat, and the continuous stream of soldiers and horses made the team leader heave a sigh of relief.

Shetu Khan's guide hurried to communicate, which eased the situation.

Obviously, people didn't really believe the previous rumors.

After laying down their weapons, a handful of dozens of people entered the city.

"My God, this is a bustling city, no less than Moscow."

The clean and spacious streets, countless shops, and densely packed houses, and more importantly, there are many ditches, which are impressive.

This kind of architecture is very different from Mongolia, Russia, and even the West, which makes them extremely excited.

This is the country of silk - Daming.

As the governor of Suiyuan, Zhang Guowei saw this group of tribute groups of Xietuhan.

That's right, in the previous report, they claimed to be Shetu Khan's tribute team.

I also know that the three tribes of Khalkha and the Xietuhan tribe have tens of thousands of herdsmen, which is a very powerful faction for Suiyuan.

Although they belonged to them, how could the words of the Mongols be taken seriously?
So, you can't be too cautious.

"What? Rakshasa country?"

Zhang Guowei was dumbfounded when he learned that this team included not only Xietuhan's mission, but also the Raksha country's team.

He had never heard of this bird country.

Xietu Khan's envoy said: "The Raksha Kingdom is a vassal state of the Golden Horde, one of the four Mongolian Khanates."

"I see." Zhang Guowei twirled his beard with a bit of joy on his face.

Isn't it a strong recognition of Ming Dynasty that a small foreign country came to pay tribute all the way?
"Let them get ready and go to Beijing after a few days."

A letter was rushed four hundred miles away, and arrived at Yuquan Mountain five days later.

"Raksha Kingdom?" The cabinet ministers were dumbfounded.

Not only that, but they didn't know much about the Golden Horde, so they could only ask to see the emperor.

Facing the Raksha Kingdom that came all the way, Zhu Yixi was a little confused when he heard about it.

This is more than a thousand miles. In the era without the Siberian Railway, traveling tens of thousands of miles is simply a life-threatening effort!

"Why are the Russians here?"

Zhu Yixi muttered, and then ordered: "Let them come over!"

(End of this chapter)