Starting in Saarhu, it is a bit difficult to make a comeback.

Chapter 253 Beauty brings disaster (please subscribe for monthly tickets)

There are two ways to go from Delhi to Kabul.

One is to take the Pamir Plateau.

Since the Chinese Empire has occupied the entire Congling and is in an absolute overlooking state, they can only go to the edge of the Pamir Plateau.

The roads here are winding and extremely difficult to travel, making supply transportation very inconvenient, and it is easy to defend but difficult to attack.

Therefore, Shah Jahan's large army did not dare to choose this path.

His 100,000-strong army had no choice but to cross the Thar Desert and attack the Indus River plain in the south.

Although this route takes a lot of distance, it can penetrate directly into the Indus River Basin newly occupied by Li Zicheng and attack his grain production areas.

Shah Jahan thought it was pretty good.

Moreover, the plain area is more conducive to the deployment of one hundred thousand troops.

Although Li Zicheng inherited the position of Governor of Afghanistan, he quickly eliminated the old aristocratic forces that disobeyed him.

But the Mughal Empire is different from China. There is no complete national concept here. There are some "local kings" with tribes as the core everywhere.

They are typical "weeds on the wall". No matter who has a stronger fist, they will choose to succumb to the strong one.

But in fact it is still in a semi-independent state.

Li Zicheng was also very clear about the urinary nature of this group of people.

Sure enough, many tribes in the Indus Valley chose to join the more powerful Shah Jahan.

Shah Jahan's Mughal army also fought continuously and defeated Li Zicheng five times, successfully taking over a large area of ​​land in the Indus River Valley.

Li Zicheng was directly driven back to Afghanistan.

The western region of the Indus River is all mountainous. After entering these areas, Li Zicheng began to attack.

His troops began to break up into pieces and attack the Mughal army in the western mountains.

One would attack their reconnaissance troops, and the other would attack the food delivery team in the rear.

Although the losses may seem small each time, the accumulated losses are also considerable.

In half a month, Shah Jahan's troops had been "piecemeal" killed by Li Zicheng, with seven to eight thousand people killed.

What's even more annoying is that this damn mountainous area made it impossible for them to concentrate their superior forces to encircle and suppress Li Zicheng.

The angry Shah Jahan changed his previous cautious advance pattern and began to divide his troops and accelerate the advance.

Li Zicheng saw that the enemy had taken the bait, so he dropped thousands of troops to lure the enemy.

After a vigorous advance, the Mughal army finally entered the battlefield designed by Li Zicheng.

It is located in a valley 30 miles south of Kabul.

It was the only way for Shah Jahan to go north to Kabul.

The relatively wide valley reserved a certain amount of space for both sides, allowing them to form formations.

When Shah Jahan arrived with his army, Li Zicheng's troops were already ready.

He saw that the enemy troops had formed a square formation and were blocking his front.

At the front are the large shield soldiers holding shields. Behind the shield soldiers are the spearmen. Behind them are Dashun's last musketeers and archers.

Although there were 6 people accompanying this trip, the valley could only accommodate people at a time.

Even if he had more troops, he would not be able to take advantage of having more troops in a frontal battle.

When they meet on a narrow road, the brave will win. Now they can only invest more than 10,000 people at a time to rush forward.

Following Shah Jahan's order, a deep horn sounded!

The 10,000 Nepalese mercenaries took the lead in charging towards the opponent with spears in hand.

Although these mercenaries have ordinary equipment, they fight on the plateau all year round and are extremely brave.

It can be said that they were a trump card in the hands of Shah Jahan, and hiring them was not cheap.

Looking at these Nepalese people wearing simple equipment, Li Zicheng showed a trace of contempt in the corner of his eyes.

Courage is important, but their armor is so thin, how can they withstand their own firearms.

Li Zicheng knew that compared with these barbarians, his fire guns had an absolute advantage, so although his men and horses often used cold weapons, the fire guns were always carried on the horses.

Even though they have become "lost dogs" now, they still possess nearly a thousand muskets.

At the front of the team were more than a thousand of the strongest Nepali warriors.

Soon they rushed to a distance of more than a hundred steps. In their knowledge, bows and arrows could not hit them at this time.

Therefore, most people did not raise the round shield they carried with them to block bows and arrows.

As Li Zicheng's command flag slowly fell, the gunmen in the back row began to shoot.

"Bang, bang, bang"

As a burst of white smoke rose, more and more Nepalese warriors were knocked down by fire cannons.

They looked at the bloody holes on their bodies in surprise, and then fell to the ground, wailing in pain.

Cries of pain echoed in the river valley.

The Mughal Empire also had fire guns, but their fire guns were earthen guns with a range of only a few dozen steps. They were not very powerful and were far less effective than bows and arrows in actual combat.

In Shah Jahan's impression, only Westerners had these muskets, but he did not expect that Li Zicheng also had them.

At this time, Prime Minister Babak reminded: "Your Majesty, we actually have such firecrackers. You forgot that when we signed the treaty with China, the Chinese Empire gave us a batch of firecrackers."

Naturally, it was impossible for the European powers to sell good firecrackers to the Mughal Empire. Otherwise, how could these Europeans enslave the Mughal Empire? They just sold Shah Jahan some low-quality "guns" at high prices.

Therefore, Shah Jahan felt in his heart that these gifts from the Chinese were probably the same stuff, so he didn't take them seriously.

Fortunately, Prime Minister Babak sent someone to test-fire these muskets and found that they were incredibly powerful and had a long range.

So I took this batch of firecrackers and went on the expedition together!

At this time, the valley has also entered a stage of close combat.

Although these firecrackers have a long range, the reloading time is still relatively long, which also gives the Nepalese a chance.

Afterwards, the Dashun Army's bows and arrows became much easier for them to deal with.

These Nepalese raised their hand shields high to resist bows and arrows, and at the same time threw spears into Dashun's formation.

Soon the Dashun Army also suffered casualties.

The Nepalese also took advantage of this opportunity to rush to the front.

However, facing the steel shields and armor in the front row of the Dashun Army, they still retreated.

Dashun's team took the opportunity to press forward, hoping to catch up with the defeated troops and break through the Mughal defense line in one fell swoop.

"Bang, bang, bang"

Just then the Mughal gunmen opened fire.

The sudden sound of firecrackers startled Li Zicheng. If nothing else, the sound was too familiar.

It is the Rumi gun of the Chinese people.

At this time, Li Zicheng greeted Li Xianzhong's ancestors.

He was scolded, but he was unable to prevent his men from being knocked down by the fire blunderbuss.

Although the charging Nepalese suffered heavy casualties, the Mughal Empire also successfully stabilized its formation.

There was no one-sided situation that Li Zicheng hoped to see.

The Mughal Empire lost more than 12000 people in this battle, and Li Zicheng's men also lost nearly 4000. Although the casualties of the Mughal army were much greater, Shah Jahan had much more men and horses than Dashun. He could still shout: "I have three times as many men as Li Zicheng, the advantage is mine!"

Li Zicheng did not have many men and horses at hand and could not withstand such a war of attrition.

Fortunately, he had already made preparations.

Although Song Xiance had betrayed Li Zicheng, his trick "Water Flooding" was still inherited by Niu Jinxing.

The heavy rains in the past few days caused the water in the valley to surge, and he had already had a dam built upstream.

It was originally thought that the Mughal army could be defeated from the front, but it seemed that at this time the only option was to use water attacks.

After nightfall, Niu Jinxing sent people to break the dikes and release water.

As several dykes were dug, water flow gathered together, causing the previously stable river to suddenly become violent.

The raging river water overflowed the river bed and roared along the river valley towards the Mughal camp downstream!

Shah Jahan, who was still sleeping, was woken up by his men, who quickly covered him and moved him to higher ground.

Their original camp was washed away by the flood that overflowed the river, and the entire camp was in chaos.

What was even more unfortunate was that Li Zicheng led his army down the river and took advantage of the situation to kill them.

At this time, the Mughal army was leaderless, and each unit could only fight independently, unable to form effective resistance.

The shouts of death continued throughout the night, and the river valley was littered with Mughal corpses.

The Mughal Empire was completely defeated. In the end, Shah Jahan only led more than 3,000 people to flee to Multan.

The 30,000 allied troops he originally left in Multan quickly withdrew overnight when they saw the Mughal Empire's defeat.

In just one day's work, they were all made into pieces.

This disappointed Shah Jahan who was trying to reorganize his troops.

The tribes near Multan originally supported Li Zicheng, but only after the arrival of the Mughal army did they become attached to Shah Jahan again.

Now they are plotting to capture Shah Jahan and sacrifice him to Li Zicheng.

Fortunately, Prime Minister Babak discovered the gang's plot in time and escaped from Multan with Shah Jahan overnight, thus averting this tragedy.

They finally led the remaining defeated soldiers and fled back to the city of Delhi.

Shah Jahan returned to Delhi in shock.

But he soon found that he had lost control of the Mughal Empire.

The impact of his fiasco was too great.

Originally, the southern kingdoms were only secretly colluding with the British.

Now with his crushing defeat, these kingdoms are all openly independent.

Even in the city of Delhi, the Sikhs, who were originally indifferent to the world, are beginning to make trouble.

Arjun, the fifth generation patriarch of Sikhism, began to call on Sikhs to oppose Shah Jahan in Delhi.

Nowadays, most of the high-ranking Mughals who supported Shah Jahan died in the rebellion, and he was unable to control the situation in Delhi at all.

Li Zicheng dominated the northwest of the empire, and those Europeans were trying to make the southern kingdoms independent, and now the Sikhs took the opportunity to cause chaos.

Faced with such internal and external troubles, Shah Jahan had no choice but to turn to the Chinese Empire for help.

Although the Chinese were also eyeing the Mughals, they only wanted the Mughals' land and money, not their own lives.

Several other forces want to kill themselves quickly!

Although he knew that he was seeking skin from a tiger, Shah Jahan had no better choice.

But how to persuade China to help itself put the Mughal Empire in trouble again.

The entire east coast of India has been ceded to China. Why can't the entire west coast of India be ceded to China?

The west coast of India is different from the east coast.

The cities of Bombay, Diu, and Goa on the west coast of India have long been captured by the Portuguese and British, and they have controlled them for hundreds of years.

In addition to building ports, they also built forts, bastions and other defense facilities. They would never give up easily.

In the end, they thought of the oldest method, getting married!

Shah Jahan's second wife Taj Mahal was a stunning beauty.

Ajman Banu, a woman from Persia, was beautiful, intelligent, and versatile. During the more than 20 years since Mahal married Shah Jahan, the two were inseparable, and they used their own lives to witness Shah Jahan's honor and disgrace.

Shah Jahan named her "Taj Mahal", which means "Crown of the Palace", which can be said to be the favor of three thousand people. It is a pity that beauties, both at home and abroad, have had a bad life since ancient times.

In 1622, Taj died after giving birth to her 14th child. She was only 38 years old when she died. When the news of his death came, Shah Jahan was so grief-stricken that his hair turned gray overnight.

Her last wish was to be laid to rest in a beautiful mausoleum.

Therefore, Shah Jahan, a grieving husband, personally designed and used the royal prerogatives, mobilized tens of thousands of workers, devoted all the efforts of the country, and spent countless money to build the mausoleum decorated with precious stones.

It is the famous Taj Mahal in later generations. Of course, this mausoleum was not yet completed at this time.

It was also the construction of the Taj Mahal that overwhelmed the finances of the Mughal Empire.

But "Taj Mahal" still left several beautiful princesses for Shah Jahan.

Among them, his favorite little princess Mahal is only 13 years old this year. She has perfectly inherited her mother's beauty and is also Shah Jahan's favorite.

Although he was reluctant to give up, in order for the Mughal Empire to continue and for the "Taj Mahal" to continue to be built, Shah Jahan had no choice but to sacrifice his youngest daughter at this time.

He believed that no man in the world could resist Mahal's appearance.

Soon Prime Minister Babak went to Calcutta to find Li Dingguo.

A matter as big as marriage was not something that he, the governor of Myanmar, could make the decision about.

So he sent people to escort them all the way to Ili, the capital of China in the Western Regions.

When Li Xianzhong saw Mahal, he was almost stunned.

This is a typical exotic beauty with fair skin and graceful figure.

Persian ancestry makes Mahal’s facial features more chiseled.

It can be said that she is the most beautiful woman Li Xianzhong has ever seen, more beautiful than Haziya and his other concubines when she was young.

At this time, several names such as "Daji" and "Bao Si" quickly flashed through his mind. This woman was definitely a "beauties are a disaster" level.

Fortunately, Li Xianzhong is no longer a young man, otherwise he would have fallen.

But Li Shizu, who was only fifteen years old and full of energy, did not have such determination.

He barely took his eyes off Mahal.

It wasn't until Li Xianzhong coughed a few times that he reluctantly looked at him.

Fortunately, his upbringing was very strict, otherwise this boy would have been kneeling on the ground begging for marriage.

My second son is so lucky. Fortunately, he is only the second prince.

If the person he proposes to is his eldest son, Li Xianzhong would never agree to such a "beautiful woman" entering the prince's east palace.

At this time, he suddenly began to understand why Li Longji wanted to snatch his daughter-in-law.

Maybe on the same morning hundreds of years ago, Li Longji couldn't control himself because he saw such a daughter-in-law?

In the end, Li Xianzhong agreed to the marriage.

The second prince of China, Li Shizu, officially married Mahal, the princess of the Mughal Empire.

Afterwards, Li Shizu led 2 Chinese main forces to Delhi to put down the domestic rebellion for his father-in-law!

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(End of this chapter)