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

Chapter 262 Baghdad Meat Grinder (please subscribe for monthly tickets)

After all, the Safavid dynasty was also a powerful centralized dynasty. Although it was attacked by the two empires of China and the Ottoman Empire, its remaining troops in the country still numbered 100,000.

However, most of the troops were besieged in Baghdad by the Ottomans. Emperor Safi himself could only gather more than 3 troops in Abadan and Basra.

At this time, he knew very well that China and the Ottoman Empire must have formed an offensive and defensive alliance to carve up the Persian Empire.

Now that the power of the British East India Company has been expelled from the Persian Gulf by China, it is impossible for the Safavid dynasty to deal with two huge empires at the same time without foreign aid.

Safi must first find a way to stabilize one of them before he can defeat the other.

After China's main force conquered Isfahan, they did not pursue them fiercely, which gave Safi a glimmer of hope.

Of course, the Chinese people are not so kind.

Safi did not know that the partition of the Persian Empire between the two countries was bounded by Isfahan. He felt that the Chinese people probably wanted to sit on the mountain and watch the tigers fight, so as to reap the benefits.

So he sent an envoy to Isfahan to request a truce with the Chinese Empire.

This request was naturally rejected by Li Shizu. Why should he let the Persian Empire go if there was no benefit?
As for Safi's proposal to cede eastern Persia to the Chinese Empire, these territories are already meat in his mouth.

Why should Safi use something that already belongs to her to make a deal with herself?
At this time, the Persian envoy also knew very well that the Chinese people would not let them go unless they offered some practical benefits.

Finally, he proposed to use the treasures of the Persian Empire in exchange for China's withdrawal of troops.

Safi was in a hurry when he escaped from Isfahan, and it was naturally impossible to take away all the treasures in the treasury.

He hid a large amount of gold and jewelry in the secret room of the palace.

Originally, this wealth was the capital to restore the country, but now it can only be used to bribe the Chinese people.

This batch of gold jewelry was collected by Persian royal families throughout the ages, and it even included a large number of ancient Persian Darius gold coins.

Zheng Sen said excitedly: "I didn't expect that the legendary treasure of the King of Persia would actually fall into our hands. These ancient Persian gold coins have a history of two thousand years. The value of these gold and silverware far exceeds their own value. If you look at gold and silver alone, The value of this treasure is estimated at about 400 million Chinese silver coins; if it is regarded as a work of art, its value will be no less than 1000 million silver coins."

Li Shizu did not expect that Safi would leave such a large treasure. Now that Lu Xiangsheng is also in Isfahan, this news must not be hidden from the court.

This money must eventually be turned over to the national treasury.

It's a pity that his father-in-law, Shah Jahan, was a love-mad man and spent all the wealth of the Mughal Empire on building the Taj Mahal.

Otherwise, my money wouldn't be so tight.

There was an alliance between China and the Ottomans, so it was naturally impossible for Li Shizu to sign a "non-aggression treaty" with the Persians.

However, in line with the principle of collecting money to do things, he still promised verbally that he would not continue to attack the Persians westward.

After all, according to the signed covenant, it is indeed not suitable for the Chinese army to advance westward beyond Isfahan at this time, and the remaining Persian territory belongs to the Ottomans.

So this is not considered a breach of contract.

If Murad IV wanted to take over these territories, he still had to rely on the Ottomans themselves to conquer them.

On July 762, 7 AD, Caliph Mansur of the Arab Empire ordered the construction of Baghdad as the new capital of the Abbasid dynasty.

This new capital city located on the right bank of the Tigris River was called the "City of Peace".

It is a circular city with an inner and outer city built of bricks.

There is a deep trench in the outer city, and a forbidden city is built in the inner city, which is 30 meters high.

Each of the three city walls has four equidistant gates, and four streets radiate from the central area, like the spokes of a wheel, to all corners of the empire.

The three city walls are like three concentric circles, and their centers are the official palace of the Caliph.

One-third of the city walls in Baghdad are more than 24 meters high, which can be said to be an extremely strong city.

The Persians in Baghdad were equipped with a large number of Western artillery provided by the British East India Company. In addition to ordinary 18-pound guns, there were also 24-pound heavy cannons.

Although the Ottoman Star and Moon Corps were also equipped with a large number of artillery.

However, hundreds of advanced Western artillery pieces, coupled with Baghdad's tall city walls, made the Ottomans can only look at the city and sigh.

More than two months of fierce fighting caused considerable damage to the outer city of Baghdad, but the main body of the city wall was not destroyed.

The Persians just relied on muskets and artillery to beat the Ottoman Army of the Star and Moon out of temper.

So the angry Ottoman Sultan Murad IV ordered the "Urban Cannon" to be transferred from Istanbul.

In 1452, Urban supervised the construction of an unprecedented cannon in Adrianople.

The prosperous Ottoman Empire provided the engineer with all the raw materials he needed.

Workers dug huge, purpose-built casting pits, melted the bronze, and began pouring the unprecedented weapon in history.

When the mold was shattered, what appeared in front of everyone was a "terrible and extraordinary monster" Urban cannon.

The gun is 17 feet (5.2 meters) long and weighs 17 tons. The barrel is 8 inches (20 centimeters) thick and has a caliber of 30 inches (762 millimeters), enough to accommodate an adult. The granite shells used weigh 1500 pounds.

The "Urban Cannon" once helped the Ottomans break through the thick walls of Constantinople.

Now Murad IV hopes to rely on this giant cannon to blast open the walls of Baghdad.

However, after more than a hundred years of wind and frost, the Urban cannon has become rusty.

After a series of cleaning and maintenance, the giant cannon was re-ignited.

However, how to transport it to the front line in Baghdad is also a troublesome matter.

Thanks to the efforts of thousands of Ottoman workers, it took more than two months for the Urban cannon to finally arrive at the Baghdad front line.

His arrival also boosted the low morale of the Ottomans!
Soon those 1500-pound artillery shells were sent into Baghdad by the Ottomans.

With just one shell falling, a large section of Baghdad's towering city wall was destroyed.

At this time, the Ottomans could no longer hold back. Following Murad IV's order, tens of thousands of Ottoman soldiers poured into Baghdad like a tide.

"Bang, bang, bang"

At this time, the Persian defenders in the city continued to fire at the charging Ottomans.

Soon thousands of Ottoman soldiers were shot and fell to the ground.

Despite the huge losses, the Ottoman Empire has lost more than 20,000 people under the city of Baghdad in more than two months.

The murderous Murad IV shouted to his generals: "I don't need casualty figures, I just want to capture Baghdad!"

In addition to coercion, of course there are also incentives!
All the first soldiers to scale the walls of Baghdad or attack the city will receive a reward equivalent to 100 Chinese silver dollars.

The generals of the units they belong to will also be promoted to three levels in a row, and can even be knighted.

As the saying goes, "A brave man must be rewarded under a heavy reward," this trick works everywhere. At this time, both the ordinary Ottoman soldiers and the generals commanding the siege were rushing towards Baghdad like chicken blood.

After all, it is not a Chinese rifle that has completed the rear-loading modification.

Flintlock muskets that required front-loading pellet powder still had a long reload time.

This also meant that the firepower on the city could not be continuous.

In the end, the Ottomans finally reached the city walls, and they used several collapsed city walls as breakthrough points to attack Baghdad.

The Ottoman scimitar and the Persian spear were finally about to collide head-on.

At this time, Baghdad was drowned by the sound of fighting!
After the two sides entered into hand-to-hand combat, the sound of artillery disappeared, replaced by the shouts of soldiers and the sound of metal collisions caused by the collision of weapons!

Of course, there is also the sound of musket shooting from time to time.

At this time, Baghdad was like a flesh and blood mill. The city was filled with thick piles of corpses, and the wails of injured soldiers were everywhere.

This beautiful city turned into a hell on earth, and the drainage ditches of the city streets were even stained red with blood.

After suffering huge casualties, the Ottomans finally captured the outer and inner cities of Baghdad.

However, the Persians still occupy the core forbidden city of Baghdad.

They did not give up, because according to intelligence the Chinese had agreed to a peace between the two sides, and the Persian Empire finally no longer had to fight on two fronts.

The Persian Emperor Safi is leading an army of 3 people to support Baghdad.

His Majesty the Emperor personally led the expedition, which greatly enhanced the Persian soldiers' will to resist. Even though their situation was extremely dangerous, they still did not give up their resistance!
After several days and nights of bloody fighting, the Ottomans still had not completely conquered Baghdad.

But Safi's arrival did not scare the Turks, but gave them an inexplicable excitement.

On the one hand, the Sipaxi heavy armored cavalry for which they were famous finally had a place to play.

On the other hand, "capture the thief first, capture the king", as long as Safi is killed or captured, the Persian resistance will completely end.

Safi was not ignorant of the high risk of going north to support Baghdad, but at this time the two sides had entered the final decisive battle, and as the emperor of the Persian Empire, he had to set an example.

The imagination is beautiful, but the reality is cruel!
When tens of thousands of Ottoman Sipahi cavalry appeared in front of the Persians, the Persian emperor took the lead in escaping.

His behavior directly plunged the 30,000 Persian army into chaos.

They quickly collapsed under the impact of 10,000 Sipaxi cavalry, and 30,000 Persian troops were almost killed without leaving any armor intact.

Safi himself became a prisoner of the Ottomans.

Then this "Persian God of War" and "Ming Dynasty God of War" Zhu Qizhen did the same "calling the emperor".

Even their own emperor was captured by the Ottomans, and the remaining Persians lost the will to resist.

The remaining Persians in Baghdad finally laid down their weapons, and then Basra, Abadan and other cities in southwestern Persia also gave up resistance.

The Battle of Baghdad lasted more than 3 months, and the Ottomans killed more than people, of whom were the most elite Star and Moon Legion.

In order to appease his anger, Ottoman Sultan Murad IV actually massacred nearly 3 Persian surrender troops, including Safi himself, in Baghdad.

His move did not make the Persians completely surrender to the Ottomans, but instead triggered many uprisings in western Persia.

The Persians were unwilling to surrender to the brutal Ottomans. They either rose up and joined the uprising against the Ottomans; or they moved their families to the original Persian area controlled by eastern China.

The Intelligence Department took the opportunity to recruit many Persians as its own spies. Under the instigation of these Persian spies, more and more Persians stood up and took up arms to resist the brutal Ottomans.

This also made the Mesopotamia and western Persia very unstable, and Murad IV had to send a large army to encircle and suppress them.

The Persians soon gave up revolting in the big cities and instead headed into the remote mountains of Persia to escape the Ottomans.

As a result, the Ottomans had no energy to further compete with China for Persian territory.

The Ottomans were surprised to find that although they had captured important ports in the Persian Gulf such as Basra, Hormuz, the passage in and out of the Persian Gulf, had long been occupied by the Chinese.

In this way, they still have to pay taxes to the Chinese when entering and exiting the Persian Gulf.

However, Li Shizu did not want to fall out with the Ottoman Empire. Although the "Battle of Baghdad" caused heavy casualties to the Ottoman army, its national power was still at its peak.

Persia has always had a strong folk custom, and they will not surrender to foreign forces easily.

It will take a long time to digest most of Persia itself.

At this time, Wu Sangui led an army of 5 people and finally passed the arduous journey and arrived in Yili.

As the saying goes, "Without the skin, how will the hair be attached?"
Now that even the suzerain country of Persia has been brutally divided, how can the Bukhara Khanate, which is dependent on Persia, survive?

With strong soldiers and horses, Xiong Tingbi could finally make a difference.

In 1500, Shaybani led his troops from the north into the Transoxiana region, occupied Samarkand, overthrew the rule of Timur's descendants in Central Asia, and established the Shaybani dynasty.

In 1505, Shaybani captured Khwarezm. In 1507, he captured Herat and destroyed Timur's empire.

The dynasty was originally based in Samarkand, but moved its capital to Bukhara in 1561 and was called the Bukhara Khanate.

However, the rise of the Bukhara Khanate soon aroused the vigilance of surrounding forces.

The Safi Dynasty of Persia, the Mughal Empire and the Kazakh Khanate joined forces to teach this newly rising khanate a lesson.

Under the joint campaign of the three forces, the Bukhara Khanate directly lost a large area of ​​territory, and eventually had to become a satellite state of the Persians.

Although the power of the Bukhara Khanate has been greatly reduced, they still control Bukhara, Samarkand, Tashkent and other places in the river.

After the Khorasan region of Persia was occupied by China, the Bukhara Khanate began to be wary of the Chinese Empire.

The Chinese expanded too fast, so they deployed a large number of troops in Tashkent, adjacent to Khorasan.

There are various signs that the main force of the Chinese is attacking Persia in the south of the Khanate.

But the Bukhara Khanate never expected that China would send troops from the Ili Valley.

The 50,000-strong Chinese army led by Wu Sangui was overwhelming and captured Samarkand, a historical city in Central Asia.

Just as the Hara Khanate was marching eastward to fight Wu Sangui, Li Yan led his army north from Khorasan and headed straight into Tashkent, another important town.

The Bukhara Khanate knew that it would be difficult to fight against the Chinese Empire alone, so they decided to enlist their former enemy, the Kazakh Khanate, to send troops together.

Unexpectedly, the Kazakh Khanate's life at this time was not much better than theirs. A group of Cossack cavalry from afar appeared in their country.

So the two Khan kings discussed and decided to "direct the disaster southward" and use the Cossack cavalry to deal with the Chinese people and let them fight each other!

Thank you to all book friends for your support with monthly tickets, recommendation tickets, and follow-up subscriptions!
(End of this chapter)