Guide to Traveling through the Northern Song Dynasty.

Chapter 1250 Epilogue . The Twelve-Temperature Equal Temperament Will Lead to the Destruction of a Nation

(This chapter is the last one to describe the situation in the West. I will definitely finish the book before the end of the year.)
In the third month of the lunar calendar, the semi-annual edition of international news reported the latest news from the Kingdom of Dayuan.

Around the fall of last year, the Kingdom of Dayuan officially occupied Sistan, the junction of Iran, Afghanistan and Pakistan, with an area of ​​about 18 square kilometers.

Sistan literally means "land of the Sakas".

Around the second century BC, the Yuezhi people living in the Hexi Corridor were driven to the Ili River basin by the Xiongnu.

The Saka people living in the Ili River Valley were driven westward and southward by the Yuezhi people.

One of the Saka people fled to the Sistan region and massacred and assimilated the indigenous people there.

Although the land in Sistan is barren, it is relatively fertile and rich compared to the surrounding mountains and deserts. After all, it is a river valley basin.

At the same time, it is also located at the land node connecting Persia and India!
The Daming Weekly only reported a brief situation.

The Dayuan Kingdom naturally would not admit that they massacred more than 20,000 people there, including 3,000 clergymen.

Many so-called Hu Ji were sold to the Ming Anxi Province. The earliest batch had been sold from Gaochang to Lanzhou.

The imperial court has been cracking down on human trafficking, but it has continued despite repeated bans.

Domestic and foreign caravans divided the Hu Ji into small pieces, claiming that they were their maids, and transported them eastward along with normal goods.

……

The Daming Xunbao did not report on the Ayyubid dynasty.

The Sultan of this country was less than 20 years old. After occupying the Syrian region, he appointed a Mamluk general as the governor of Syria.

At the same time, the governors of Jerusalem and Aleppo were all of Mamluk descent.

The three Mamluk governors all revealed their wolfish ambitions.

In name they still obeyed the Sultan's orders, but in reality they became warlords, levying heavy taxes and expanding outward.

The surrounding nobles who symbolically surrendered to the Ayyubid dynasty could not tolerate the brutality of the Mamluks, and actually supported a puppet caliph in Baghdad and suddenly announced the reconstruction of the Abbasid dynasty.

In fact, it is not called reconstruction, the legal system of the Abbasid Dynasty has never been broken.

So, the desert believers started fighting among themselves!
The young Sultan of the Ayyubid dynasty quickly sent envoys to try to appease and reprimand the disobedient governors.

The three Mamluk governors joined forces and marched eastward to Baghdad, defeated the Caliph's hastily assembled army, and carried out large-scale massacres and looting in the city of Baghdad.

The Sultan, who was far away in Egypt, felt that the governors on the front line had lost control, and ordered them to return to their respective territories immediately and hand over the looted goods.

The three governors were furious and led their troops to Egypt to "clear out the corrupt officials".

The Sultan hastily summoned a large army to quell the rebellion, and the main force of his guards were all Mamluks!

The leader of the Janissary Guards rebelled and killed the king, proclaimed himself Sultan, and announced the establishment of the Mamluk Dynasty.

He pardoned the crimes of the three governors, granted the Baghdad region to the Governor of Syria, transferred the Governor of Aleppo to the Governor of Syria, and made the Governor of Jerusalem concurrently the Governor of Aleppo.

Then, these Mamluk rulers crazily massacred the Persian nobles in their jurisdiction.

They had to be killed, as they were all slaves from the grassland. Only by eliminating the original nobles could the rule be consolidated.

……

The fall of the Ayyubid Dynasty and the establishment of the Mamluk Dynasty immediately gave the Dayuan Kingdom an opportunity.

Despite having fought two major wars in a row, Dayuan suddenly launched an attack this spring, launching a full-scale offensive towards the Persian region from three directions: Khorasan, Sistan, and Gorgan.

At this moment, Dayuan had already occupied the line of Rayi (Tehran), Isfahan, and Shiraz.

Then they were a little bit unable to fight, and most of their logistical supplies relied on looting on the spot, which led to constant resistance movements in the newly occupied areas. In the rear of Dayuan, there were also some sporadic domestic uprisings due to the forced conscription of civilians and food.

The emerging Mamluk dynasty and the Dayuan Kingdom that invaded Persia faced each other with their troops divided by the Zagros Mountains.

Neither side dared to take the initiative to attack, because they were all invaders and had no support from the local nobles and people. If they started a war without authorization, they would have to fight and suppress the uprising at the same time.

Negotiations are already underway, and both sides are inclined to reach a ceasefire with the Zagros Mountains as the boundary, and then sort out their internal problems.

……

It was at this time that the Byzantines took the opportunity to attack the Sultanate of Rum.

Trying to combine Eastern Rome and Green Rome into one!

The Eastern Roman army's firearms were more powerful, and the Green Roman army obviously couldn't withstand it, so it quickly asked the Venetians for help.

At this time, the Republic of Venice was nominally under the rule of the Holy Roman Empire, but in reality it was under the command of the Kingdom of Sicily. However, they were not on the same page with Sicily and always had 100% autonomy.

Moreover, Venice occupied a large number of Byzantine islands in an attempt to seize more Greek coastal lands.

Take revenge by the way.

Because in the past hundred years, Byzantium had torn up trade treaties twice and expelled and massacred tens of thousands of Venetians.

The Venetian navy had just set out when the Han navy also arrived.

The Han Empire occupied the gold mines in West Africa, but the domestic resources were not abundant, so it had always been engaged in maritime trade with Europeans.

In the process of trade, Venetian merchants and navy were the biggest enemies of the Han Dynasty's trading fleet.

As a result, it soon evolved into a four-nation war.

The Eastern Roman Empire and the Green Roman Empire fought a land battle.

The Han Empire and Venice fought a naval battle.

The Han Empire's large ships and cannons were no match for the Venetian Navy, and it was defeated and retreated all the way back to the Venetian Lagoon.

The lagoon has complex terrain and waterways, and is filled with hidden stakes.

The Han navy did not dare to enter rashly and instead used catapults to launch incendiary bombs.

In the city of Venice, which was made entirely of wooden buildings, a large area outside the lagoon was burned down, leaving only the Doge's Palace and a few churches (these buildings were made of stone) spared.

Then, the Han navy plundered along the coast, looted everything and set fire to the city. The coastal areas of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro and Albania in later generations were all Venice's territory at that time. The Doge of Venice had no choice but to ask the Holy Roman Emperor and the King of Sicily for help.

The two said they could do nothing to help.

Immediately afterwards, the Doge of Venice asked the Pope for help, and reported that the Han Empire was promoting Nestorianism, which was more heretical than Eastern Orthodoxy.

The Pope actually agreed to help. First, the Papal State declared war on the Han Dynasty, and then launched the Crusades against the Han Dynasty.

The Emperor of the Holy Roman Empire pretended not to know. How could he have the time to respond to the holy war? A bunch of princes in the country were ready to make a move.

The King of Sicily agreed on the surface, but he was slow in gathering his troops and was reluctant to declare war on the Han Dynasty - Sicily's navy had been defeated by Venice decades ago.

Several other commercial republics in Italy were also slow to gather their navies because they were all mortal enemies of Venice!
The King of France was very enthusiastic. He quickly gathered the Crusaders and marched westward, trying to take the opportunity to expand toward Spain.

The Pope's actions soon brought retaliation from the Han Dynasty, and the Han Dynasty's navy headed straight for Rome.

Goal: Capture Rome, capture the Pope alive, loot, and burn the city!

……

Luoyang, the imperial city.

A piano was delivered to the outside of Donghuamen by a freight carriage.

The guards carefully searched for contraband and allowed the person to pass when they found no hidden weapons.

However, there were still a few guards who kept an eye on the carriage the entire time, and the driver was also replaced by someone from the palace.

The piano was pulled all the way to the side hall of the Chuigong Hall.

The little emperor, who had just finished his homework and was playing, pulled Empress Dowager Ye over to watch curiously.

Queen Mother Ye asked: "Is this the treasure you want to present?"

Zhu Tangxi said, "Sister-in-law, this thing is called a piano. It was made by the Prince Consort and Mr. Yang Linzhi, and I also made some suggestions for it."

Queen Mother Ye teased, "So it's called a piano. I thought it was called a princess piano."

Zhu Tangxi lowered his head and smiled.

Empress Dowager Ye said, "Play a song for a while."

Yang Linzhi was tuning the piano and sat down after working for a while.

All in all, he only practiced the piano for a month and a half, which would make him only a beginner in later generations.

But he personally selected and installed all the keys, strings, bridge, soundboard and other parts of this piano. He was so familiar with the piano that more than a month of practice was enough.

"Dong dong dong dong..."

Yang Linzhi pressed a few keys at random and played an octave from beginning to end, allowing Empress Dowager Ye to experience the tone of the piano.

Finally, "Für Alice" was officially played.

Empress Dowager Ye, Tao Jinfeng and others, including the palace maids, attendants and secretaries present, first reacted to the piano music and found it very fresh.

A completely different style from current music!

New things often make people feel surprised.

Queen Mother Ye even closed her eyes and savored the moving melody.

After the piece was played, Empress Dowager Ye nodded in approval and said, "This zither has a unique flavor. What's the name of the piece?"

Xie Yan replied: "To Tangxi."

Tao Jinfeng couldn't help but burst out laughing.

Empress Dowager Ye was also smiling silently, thinking that this young scholar Xie was really good at coaxing women. The princess was probably already dizzy with him.

The attendant picked up his pen and, with the help of dog food, wrote another piece of writing in the style of the Spring and Autumn Period.

Queen Mother Ye walked to the piano and curiously pressed a few keys: "Are you just here to present the musical instrument?"

Yang Linzhi had already stepped aside, bowed and said, "This zither is made according to the twelve-tone equal temperament, which is different from the temperaments of ancient times. I dare not conceal anything about the important matters of ritual and music."

At this time, Empress Dowager Ye and others finally became serious in their expressions.

Even the attendant sat upright.

"Can a piano be made according to traditional musical scales?" asked Empress Dowager Ye.

Yang Linzhi said: "Of course you can."

Tao Jinfeng understood music and reminded him, "The saint is tolerant. There are very subtle differences between the gong tone of the traditional lü and the gong tone of the twelve-tone equal temperament. Other tones are also different."

Empress Dowager Ye remained silent.

Gong is the ruler. Shang is the minister. Jiao is the people. Zheng is the work. Yu is the object.

When the palace is in disorder, the country will be desolate, and the ruler will be arrogant. When the Shang is in disorder, the country will be corrupt, and the ministers will be bad. When the Jiao is in disorder, the country will be worried, and the people will be resentful. When the Zheng is in disorder, the country will be sad, and the work will be hard. When the Yu is in disorder, the country will be in danger, and the money will be scarce. All five are in disorder, and they will bully each other. This is called slowness.

If this continues, the country will be destroyed soon!
The five notes of Gong, Shang, Jiao, Zheng and Yu each have their own deep meanings. Chaos is not allowed, otherwise the country will be destroyed, as recorded in the Book of Rites.

The twelve-tone equal temperament divides the lü into pitches through mathematics, which messes up these five tones.

To put it more seriously, it is a sign of the country's demise.

Empress Dowager Ye asked, "Which one is more natural and harmonious?"

Yang Linzhi replied: "Traditional lü."

Empress Dowager Ye asked again: "What are the benefits of the twelve-tone equal temperament?"

Yang Linzhi replied: "It is easier to change the key and can produce richer and more varied music."

Empress Dowager Ye hesitated for a long time before she said, "You can leave first."

(End of this chapter)