Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 2446: Record of the Western Expedition (Thirteen) Three-party Response
In the deep winter of Moscow, candles flickered in the Duma Hall of the Kremlin, and the sable cloaks of one hundred boyar nobles made rustling sounds on the stone floor. The original Duma had only sixty seats. After the Battle of the Oka River, Dmitry I and Alexei, one openly and one secretly, became the noose that the Ming Dynasty put around Russia's neck. In order to make the noose have just the right strength, the Ming army under Erdemutu used black flintlock rifles to support Dmitry I in passing the "Duma Expansion of Powers Decree", which added forty seats to the Duma.

There is no doubt that most of these 40 newly added seats are in the hands of Alexei Stroganov. At this moment, the deputy speaker of the Duma and commander of the special military was wearing a traditional Russian costume, but the Kirin patch on his chest made a different footnote for this "tradition".

Under the dome of the Duma Hall, Alexei's eyes swept over the nobles with different expressions in the hall, and finally fell on the livid face of Prince Shuisky. The old duke, who was already not young, had already sensed that the atmosphere was not right the moment he entered the Duma Hall - the special forces holding long-handled axes and carrying Longqing II-style matchlock rifles on their backs had surrounded the Duma Hall with a sentry every three steps and a guard every five steps, looking like they were facing a great enemy.

Thinking back to when I left the mansion, I heard that the Ming army was going to march out of the city today, and the entire army of more than 8,000 cavalry was assembling - I'm afraid they are not going to leave the city, but are preparing for war in advance? They are really cautious!

The number of private soldiers of the nobles in Moscow is extremely limited. Each noble family has at most one or two hundred people, and the total number is probably no more than two or three thousand. There is no need for the Ming army to take action with such a small number of troops. The more than ten thousand special troops in the city should be able to easily suppress it... Duke Shuisky's face became more and more ugly. He subconsciously guessed that he might be in danger this time. The only question is, what went wrong that made Alexei discover the abnormality?
"My dear boyars," said Tsar Dmitry I, standing in the middle of the podium with a sullen face. The young man's voice was trembling deliberately, "I have summoned the Duma today to inform you of a matter of great importance concerning the survival of Russia."

As he spoke, his face was as gloomy as water as he unfolded a blood-stained secret letter, and his tone suddenly became fierce, "Last night, the special forces intercepted a Polish secret envoy in the suburbs of Moscow. He was carrying the secret alliance agreement between Duke Shuisky and Sigismund III!"

There was an uproar in the hall. Duke Shuisky slammed the table and stood up, his face extremely angry: "Your Majesty, this is clearly evidence forged by the Stroganov family! My Shuisky family is a branch of Rurik, how could we ally with a foreign enemy? My loyalty to Russia is as solid as rock--"

"Loyalty to Russia? Haha, it seems that in the eyes of Your Excellency the Duke, His Majesty the Tsar does not represent Russia?"

Erdemutu suddenly came out from behind the screen behind the Tsar, holding a disassembled Longqing Type II musket in his left and right hands. "Why did these firearm parts appear in your residence? According to the records of Jinghua Trading Company, they have never sold a complete musket to you."

He threw a pile of parts onto the tabletop of the rostrum and pointed to the blurred Chinese characters on the parts. "The barrel of each musket should have been engraved with the words 'Made in Beijing in a certain year and month', but now the serial numbers have been deliberately ground away - is this ironclad evidence of smuggled weapons?"

Shuisky's pupils shrank suddenly. He suddenly remembered the "gifts" he received half a month ago. The leader was a Polish businessman who claimed that the gifts were a greeting gift from Jan Zamoyski. At that time, he thought that this was the Lithuanian Hetman (Prime Minister) proving his sincerity in the alliance, but he didn't expect it to be a trap set by the Ming army.

Erdemutu continued, "What's even more ridiculous is that the smuggler didn't know that his actions had already been discovered by our Ming soldiers, who destroyed the gunpowder pools in advance. Therefore, even if they were assembled successfully, they would not be able to fire smoothly during combat, and would only fire duds. Your Excellency the Duke, you thought you had obtained a magic weapon, but in fact it was just a pile of scrap metal."

There were exclamations in the hall. The Marquis of Tver's face changed several times, and finally he seemed to have made up his mind. He stood up suddenly, pointed at Shuisky and cursed: "Vasily, you have been inviting me to your house to discuss matters in the name of defending Russian traditions these days. I actually believed it and thought you were really working hard for Russian traditions. I didn't expect that you were just deceiving me and colluding with the Poles in private! They tried to puppet the Tsar last time, but they were discovered and defeated on the banks of the Oka River. Now they want to collude with scum like you to completely turn Russia into a vassal of Poland!"

"When have I ever lied to you!" Shuisky roared and drew his sword. He was about to scold Marquis Tver for changing his attitude and shirking responsibility, but he saw Alexei's special forces pouring in from outside the hall, with their muskets pointed at a group of conservative nobles. At this moment, he suddenly realized that from the moment he accepted the batch of firearms, he had fallen into the trap of the Ming army.

The young Tsar finally had a chance to show off his power. He slammed the table in excitement and said, "According to Russian law, anyone who collaborates with the enemy must be executed!"

Alexei interrupted immediately, "Your Majesty, the Shuisky family is a branch of Rurik after all, and they are the right-hand man of the Russian Tsardom. We cannot let the entire Shuisky family be disgraced because of one man's betrayal and surrender to the enemy..."

"Hmm... what you said makes sense," Dmitri I coughed dryly, "Considering the great contributions made by the Shuisky family to Russia, and Grand Duke Stroganov pleading for them today, I will make an exception and demote Vasily Ivanovich Shuisky to a commoner. His titles such as the Duke of Novgorod will be inherited by the best among his sons and nephews!"

Alexei stepped forward at the right time and acted as if he was deeply distressed: "Your Majesty is magnanimous, but in order to prevent other nobles from following suit, please order a thorough investigation of the nobles who have close contacts with Shuisky to uphold the law."

Upon hearing this, Marquis Tver, who was standing by, suddenly became nervous, his eyes flickering, as if he was sizing up some other conservative nobles, especially those who often went to Shuisky's mansion to meet.

"Cough," Erdemutu suddenly coughed heavily, attracting the attention of everyone, but strangely, he did not speak immediately.

Or maybe the young Tsar was used to being a puppet, so his mind worked quickly, and he quickly asked politely: "Your Highness, I am young and inexperienced, and I am hesitant about how to deal with it... You are a famous general of the Celestial Empire, a great hero who has traveled thousands of miles, I wonder if you have any foolproof plan to teach me?"

Erdemutu glanced at Alexei and said calmly, "Of course, we should investigate this matter, but we also need to distinguish clearly which people are in cahoots with Vasily and which people are deceived by Vasily. Your Majesty should distinguish these two types of people clearly, neither letting the bad guys go nor blaming the good guys... What do you think?"

"Yes, yes, that's right." Dmitri I nodded repeatedly, then glanced at Alexei, then looked at Erdemutu, and asked tentatively: "Then this matter...should we leave it to Grand Duke Stroganov?"

"Grand Duke Stroganov is loyal and capable, so he is naturally the best candidate. However..." Erdemutu smiled lightly, "Since this matter also involves the smuggling of arms of our Ming Dynasty, I can't just turn a blind eye to it. How about this, I will send someone to assist Grand Duke Stroganov in investigating this case. What do you think, Your Majesty?"

"Okay, okay, okay. If someone from His Royal Highness the Crown Prince can assist Grand Duke Stroganov, then I will be completely relieved." Although Dmitry I was a good observer, he was still young and his political level was not very high. He did not understand why Erdemutu suddenly jumped out to intervene for a while, but he knew very well that he had no capital to object, so he didn't care about anything and agreed first.

In fact, the reason why Erdemutu suddenly intervened was not complicated: his mission was to ensure that Russia was firmly in the hands of the Ming Dynasty, or to put it bluntly, in the hands of the Prime Minister. This meant that Russia could be weakened, but it could not cause internal chaos.

However, Alexei Stroganov was obviously trying to add insult to injury and attack the Marquis of Tver who had jumped out of the car in an emergency. But by doing so, he would only cause more people to oppose and become hostile to the Ming Dynasty who stood behind Alexei - obviously, this was not a move that was beneficial to the Ming Dynasty.

Alexei's behavior was essentially a case of taking advantage of the power of another, or even killing someone with a borrowed knife. He knew that he had the support of the Ming Dynasty. As long as he killed the conservative nobles, the positions cleared would inevitably be filled by his people, and the people who would ultimately bear the hatred would not only be him, but also the Ming Dynasty. This meant that even if he caused a big mess, the Ming Dynasty would have to cover for him. However, this was not in the interests of the Ming Dynasty.

Firstly, although the Ming Dynasty was powerful, the two countries were thousands of miles apart after all, and the Ming Dynasty's projection capabilities were limited. It was already a great achievement for the Prime Minister to mobilize a town of troops to rush to Russia so quickly. If Russia really became a place of war, the Ming Dynasty would have to spend millions just to quell the rebellion, which would be too uneconomical.

Secondly, the conservatives in Russia can be suppressed, but they cannot be beaten to the point of collapse. Otherwise, he will have to worry about how to suppress Alexei. There are only eternal interests in the world, but no eternal allies or puppets. Alexei wants to use the knife of the Ming Dynasty to kill the conservatives, but he doesn't ask who has the final say on this knife... What a joke.

At this moment, a messenger stumbled into the hall, knelt on one knee and presented an urgent message: "Report! The envoy of King Carl IX of Sweden has arrived outside Moscow, carrying a letter of credence requesting to see His Majesty the Tsar and His Royal Highness the Crown Prince!"

Erdemutu and Alexei looked at each other and were secretly happy - although they had their own ulterior motives just now, at least they were in complete agreement on this matter.

As early as half a month ago, Erdemutu had asked the Tsar to send a secret envoy to Sweden, using "jointly curbing Polish expansion" as bait and promising to allow Swedish merchants to trade freely on Russia's northwestern border after the war (at this time Russia had not yet obtained a stable outlet to the Baltic Sea, so if Sweden could freely purchase Russian specialties, it could transport them to various places through the Baltic Sea to make huge profits).

Charles IX was worried that he could not find an opportunity to take revenge on Sigismund III, and now there was the temptation of interests, so he immediately decided to send a special envoy to form an alliance.

Meanwhile, in the meeting hall of the Warsaw Royal Palace, Sigismund III was irritably pulling off his feathered hat and throwing it on a long table covered with maps. Although the Sejm finally approved the plan to send troops, the military budget was cut in half, on the grounds that "the Lithuanian nobles believed that the benefits of the war were unequal."

This was not the most annoying thing. After all, as the King of Poland, he was almost numb to such things. At the same time, he also had his own corresponding ways to fight for it back. What was really annoying was the delay in collecting military expenses, especially in Lithuania. Even though Jan Zamoyski, as the Hetman of Lithuania, ordered local nobles to collect the funds as soon as possible, the local nobles were careless and did not take it seriously. As a result, when Poland had collected all the funds, Lithuania had only completed a little over 30% of the reserved amount.

"Your Majesty," Yan Zamoysky's tired voice came from behind, "Shuisky's secret letter has arrived. He said that the Ming army has stepped up its vigilance in Moscow and Kazan, and the original plan needs to be postponed."

The king turned around abruptly, anger flashing in his eyes. "Postpone? The Polish army has already assembled west of Smolensk, and they only have enough food and fodder to last for two months after the war begins! Tell him that if he delays any further, Poland's ally will become the Swedes. By then, Sweden will take northern Russia, Poland and Lithuania will take central and southern Russia, and he will have no choice but to go to Siberia to dig snow and eat ice!"

Zamoyski sighed and whispered, "Your Majesty, the Swedes recently sent envoys to Russia, and the two sides have frequent exchanges. I'm afraid..."

"Then we must speed up!" Sigismund III grabbed the scepter on the table, "Pass the order, the Winged Cavalry will set out three days in advance, and must capture Nizhny Novgorod before the spring, and cut off the northern food supply route of the Ming army in Smolensk! At the same time, let Shuisky start immediately, cut off Kazan's connection and launch a surprise attack on Moscow, and finally encircle the Ming army and the special command army on the front line with us! Only in this way can he survive, otherwise, let alone becoming the Tsar, he can't even save his life!"

Zamoyski started coughing violently. He had recently contracted acute pneumonia and his health had deteriorated rapidly. He had decided to hand over the frontline military affairs to another famous Polish general, Stanislaw Żółkiewski. But now it seemed that his life might be coming to an end. (Note: In real history, he died in 1605.)
However, although the furious Sigismund III stared at him, he did not say a word in the end. Instead, Zamoyski coughed for a while and apologized weakly: "I'm sorry, Your Majesty, I'll do it right away."

In the snow-covered Stockholm Palace, Karl IX stared at the secret letter in his hand, his fingers repeatedly rubbing the clause of "jointly dividing the Polish territory of Livonia". Outside the window, the cold wind from the Baltic Sea whistled past, making the cross on the spire of the palace make a harsh sound.

"Your Majesty," the young favorite Axel Oxenscherna said cautiously, "Although an alliance with the Ming Dynasty can certainly contain Poland, we know very little about the Tatars in the East. I am afraid we must be careful about whether we are inviting wolves into the house."

Charles IX suddenly sneered: "The Poles want to take our Estonia, and Sigismund III wants the Swedes to return to the shackles of Catholicism! In comparison, the Ming mainland is thousands of miles away. It is good enough to be able to control Russia. Can they come to Sweden to commit violence? What's more, at least now they need us to contain Poland."

He picked up the quill pen and signed his name on the covenant. "Tell Prince Erdemutu that the Swedish dragoons will cross the Neva River immediately after the spring and attack the Polish flank."

Axel Oxenstierna, who would become the Prime Minister of Sweden at the age of 29 in a few years, looked at the high-spirited King, sighed secretly, and replied with a serious face: "Yes, my Majesty."

The snow in Moscow finally stopped. Erdemutu stood on the top of the Kremlin, looking at the snow mist raised by the Swedish envoy's convoy in the distance. Alexei hurried over and whispered, "Shuisky has confessed, but there were some unexpected things in our original plan... I thought his private army would collapse on the spot because they were leaderless, but unexpectedly his nephew Mikhail stabilized these people and even confronted the special forces I sent to recruit them."

"Oh, there is such a thing?" Erdemutu frowned slightly, "Forming a confrontation... In other words, this Mikhail did not take the initiative to attack your troops?" He touched his chin, "I guess he must have put forward some conditions, tell me."

"Count Mikhail said," Alexei did not dare to mention the scandal that the special forces he sent out had the advantage in numbers but were repelled by the enemy in two probing attacks. He could only hide this part and reported, "If the Tsar is willing to give him the title of Duke of Nizhny Novgorod, he will lead the Shuisky family to fight against the Poles for Russia."

"Okay." Erdemutu said without hesitation, "But I don't want him to go to the Smolensk front with us. Tell him to go with the Swedes to attack Livonia."

Alexei hesitated for a moment and asked, "Your Highness, do you really believe in the Swedes? After all, they are heretics."

"Faith is just a fig leaf for interests. We in the Ming Dynasty never engage in such nonsense." Erdemutu turned and walked towards the commander's tent. "Besides, Russia, Poland, and Sweden, you three parties all think each other is a heretic. What's the point of talking about trust? Just talk about interests."

Alexei was speechless. His Royal Highness was right. Russia believed in the Orthodox Church, Poland believed in the Catholic Church, and Sweden believed in the Protestant Calvinism. Everyone was a heretic. In this case, it was superfluous to talk about trust based on faith. Why not just honestly decide your behavior based on your own interests?
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