The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 750 The Great Worry is Gone
The city of Bukhara seemed to have lost all reaction to the tragic scene at the mouth of the Zerafshan River Valley.

At this time, it is more like a city without an owner than the royal capital of the Bukhara Emirate.

The old Karluk man Taqi was very lucky. Perhaps God saw that his two sons had died and took pity on this old Karluk man who was almost forty years old.

Taqi followed a dozen of his neighbors over the mountains and across the rivers. Everyone else died, but he survived. He was even one of the very few among the 70,000 to 80,000 Karluk people who were able to escape back to Bukhara.

Now, Taqi didn't want to think about anything. He just wanted to go home quickly, take his old wife and two daughters to escape from Bukhara, find an oasis with few people, raise horses and sheep, let his daughters grow up safely, and never get involved in the mess between Allah and the Emir again.

However, when Tachi slipped through a gap into the city he was familiar with, a strange feeling came over him.

The thick layer of dry feces on the ground, formed by being trampled down, is still there, and the disgusting stench can still be smelled from time to time, but the streets are deserted and as quiet as a ghost town.

After finally meeting two women, Tachi was about to say hello when the women immediately cried out in fear and ran away, as if they had seen the Peach Blossom Stone Man.

No, it is more terrifying than seeing the Peach Blossom Stone Man. At least although the Peach Blossom Stone Man is ferocious, he generally does not kill women and only likes to take captives.

Old Taqi didn't think much about it. He walked quickly towards home. He had been away from home for more than half a year. He didn't know whether the food given by His Highness the Emir was enough for the three of them.

Familiar with the stinking ditch in front of the door and the familiar courtyard wall, a smile appeared on Tachi's face for the first time, "Nurya, oh, my warm little sun, baba is back!"

Nurya is the name of old Taqi's youngest daughter, which means shining and radiance in Karluk language. This ten-year-old little girl is the one that old Taqi is most worried about.

But after calling several times, no one came out. In the past, Nurya would have come out to greet him when she heard his voice.

Gently pushing open the tattered door, Old Tachi's heart sank to the bottom. His left hand, which was holding a few pieces of dried meat, trembled slightly because he was holding too much force.

There was no one at home, the floor was covered with dust, and a strong stench of corpse came. Old Tachi trembled and searched the room. After a while, he found his old wife on the bed.

My wife was lying naked on the bed and had already started to rot. Oh no, not completely naked.

Old Tachi suddenly let out a very sad wail. His wife, who was rotting on the bed, had an incomplete upper body and her lower body and thighs were missing a lot, as if someone had cut off her most plump flesh with a knife.

"Agiza, Agiza!" Tears blurred old Taqi's eyes. In his tearful eyes, the charming look of Agiza when they were newly married appeared in front of his eyes.

And now, she was like a lamb with all the good meat cut away.

Old Tachi suppressed his grief and examined it carefully. Although the wound was messy, the cut marks were very obvious. It was not a random hack, but a purposeful cut.

"Who is it? Who killed Ajiza?"

"Oh God, why are you so cruel to me? I didn't do anything wrong. I just wanted to live!"

Old Tachi could no longer hold it in. After frantically searching the cabin, he couldn't help but go out to the street and yell.

"Who killed Ajiza? And my daughters? Where are the sisters Nurya from the old Tachi family?"

The wind blew in the empty street, but no one answered Old Tachi. Only prying eyes could be heard from behind the dark doors and windows on both sides of the street.

After a while, footsteps were heard at the corner of the street, and several men with weapons appeared in front of Old Tachi.

"They were all killed and their bodies were dried. This was an order from the Persian Shah Shah. He wanted to kill all of us Qarlugs."

The man answered old Taqi's roar with an angry look. He was wearing a floral brocade robe that was often worn by the Emir royal family, and the turban on his head also proved this.

"So we have to resist, kill all the Persians in the city, take their heads, and surrender to the Taohuashi people. Only in this way can we have a way to survive." The visitor looked at Old Tachi with hope and kept encouraging him.

Old Tachi looked in disbelief at the nobleman in front of him who was originally high and mighty but was now polite to him. Suddenly, the bag of dried meat in his hand swept across Old Tachi's legs.

At that moment, the old Karluk man trembled in pain, and then began to vomit wildly, with snot and tears running down his face.

He understood, he understood. No wonder the mutton in the army not only did not have a strong smell, but also always felt weird. It turned out that...

"Come with us. There aren't many Qarlugs left in the city. We must unite first. You must have come back from the battlefield. Bring your weapons and we will go to the Amir's Ark Palace to protect our own Emir!"

. . . .

As for Li Xianwen, he didn't care about Bukhara because he had many more important things to deal with.

The first is the Turkmen region in the south. Although Dayu cannot control these ethnic groups composed of tribes scattered in large and small oases in the Karakum Desert for the time being, it does not mean that it can be ignored.

Moreover, this place is currently considered the territory of the Persian Kingdom, and the people here are all subjects of the Persian King Agha Muhammad Shah. They are also participants in this war and must be attacked.

So, when the Battle of the Jinsha River (Zerafshan River) Valley just ended, Li Xianwen dispatched 20,000 cavalry to his second son Li Xingtai and asked him to rush south to attack Chalju, the most important logistics base of the Persians south of Bukhara.

Chalju is the later Turkmenabat, the second largest city in Turkmenistan. It can barely be regarded as the last essence of the water nourished by the Golden Sand River (Zerafshan River) and is the southern gate of Bukhara.

Historically, only by occupying this place can one firmly occupy the oasis plains of the Jinsha River Valley, including Samarkand.

The reason why the Bukhara people were directly controlled by the Persian King Agha Muhammad Shah this time was largely because the Bukhara army was basically wiped out in the Samarkand War, and was unable to defend Chalju and was captured by the Persian king, thus losing the room for bargaining.

After receiving the order, Li Xingtai led Hailancha, Yang Yuchun and other generals on a rapid march, covering 200 miles in one day and one night. When they arrived at Chalju, the Persians were still unaware of the defeat and were still preparing to transport food to the front line.

When the Persians saw that it was the Dayu cavalry coming, they didn't even have time to run away. There were only more than a thousand Persian infantry in the city, and they basically didn't resist and surrendered directly.

Afterwards, Li Xingtai learned an important piece of information from the captives: the nephew of Persian King Agha Muhammad Shah, Babayan, the Governor of Khorasan, was in Ashgabat, 600 kilometers away, so he decided to lead his troops in another raid.

Because Agha Muhammad Shah was an inhumane eunuch, his carefully trained nephew, Babayan, the governor of Khorasan, was actually the crown prince of the Qajar dynasty of Persia. Only by killing this man could the newly established Qajar dynasty fall into complete chaos.

Six hundred kilometers is neither far nor near, but considering that the route is basically desert, an oasis is needed. The supplies for an oasis are very limited, and the food and drinking water are impossible to supply 20,000 cavalrymen and tens of thousands of war horses.

So Li Xingtai, who always liked to be bold and extraordinary, brought his characteristics to the extreme. Li Xingtai decisively chose to draw 8,000 cavalry from the entire army to participate in this surprise attack.

Li Xingtai was very confident because these 8,000 cavalrymen were the best soldiers selected from the best soldiers. Whether it was the knights' combat capabilities or their war horses, weapons and other equipment, they were the best in Dayu and in the world.

Not to mention that Ashgabat was conquered by the Qajar dynasty only last year, and the garrison in the city was only a few thousand people. Even if there were 80,000 people, Li Xingtai believed that they would not be a match for his 8,000 elite cavalry.

So, Li Xingtai left Yang Yuchun to lead more than 10,000 people to guard Chalzhu, and he took Hailancha and others to rush thousands of miles to attack Ashgabat.

February 2, the eighth day of the first lunar month.

Li Xingtai once again completed the feat of running 590 kilometers in twelve days, an average of about 50 kilometers a day, crossing thousands of miles of vast ocean, like a divine soldier descending from the sky!
Moreover, he was very cunning. He marched quickly along the way, flying the flags of the Persian Qajar dynasty and the royal flag symbolizing the Persian King Agha Muhammad Shah. As a result, the officials of all ranks in the oases along the way did not care at all.

In fact, these people did not dare to ask, because the Qajar dynasty, or the armies of all countries in this era, were not good people.

If ordinary people see this, they must stay away from it, otherwise they might get into trouble, not to mention that it is war time.

The result was that no one reported it. When the flag appeared outside the city of Ashgabat, Babayan, the Persian king's good nephew, the Persian crown prince, and the new governor of Khorasan, immediately waited at the city gate for the return of his uncle the king.

Baba Yang thought he had won the battle, but unexpectedly it was Li Xingtai who came, and he was captured alive on the spot.

Li Xingtai had a small population, and Ashgabat was a large city with a population of over 100,000, so he showed no mercy, which was completely different from the Chalju period.

The first thing the Dayu cavalry did when they rushed into the city was to kill all the thousands of Persian soldiers in the city. Then they began to loot and set fire. Under the personal arrangement of Li Xingtai, they built a Jingguan in the south of the city and engraved stones to record their achievements.

By the time the Dayu cavalry left three days later with more than 200,000 silver dollars worth of gold and silver treasures and hundreds of beautiful palace ladies from the Persian Qajar dynasty, the entire Ashgabat was already a sea of fire, with more than half of the people in the city dead or wounded, and the city was almost completely destroyed.

While Li Xingtai was raiding the Turkmen region, Mo Gongling personally led the Imperial Guards, the Yulin Left Guard and the Longxiang Right Guard, northwest to attack the Khiva Khanate, the last of the Three Khanates of Transoxiana. The Khiva Khanate was small to begin with, with a population of only 550,000, and its capital, Khiva (Khorezm), had a population of just over 40,000.

Moreover, the main force of the Khiva Khanate, 8,000 cavalry, had been basically lost in the Battle of Samarkand and the Battle of the Jinsha River Valley, so their desire to resist was of little use.

At this time, although the Great Khan of Khiva, Abul Ghazi Qaiip Khan, was a branch of the Golden Family, he was just a puppet, and the political power was in the hands of the Hongjila tribe.

This was a tribe from the Oghuz in the Tang Dynasty. When Dashilinya moved westward, he brought them to Khwarezm. It was the core tribe of the Western Liao Dynasty and spoke Khitan.

Later, during the reign of Genghis Khan, they were conquered again and participated in the Mongol westward expedition, and then followed the Mongols in Central Asia to green the land.

During this period, a tribe returned to the southern steppes of the desert in the late Ming Dynasty. After the defeat of Ligdan Khan, they joined the Qing Dynasty and are now part of the left wing of Khalkha.

In theory, such a tribe could be brought back. When Li Xianwen was in charge of building the Xia Dynasty in the Dayuan Basin (Fergana Basin), he secretly sent a White Lotus Sect monk from the left wing of the Khalkha to visit the city of Khiva (Khwarezm).

As a result, the Hongjila tribe completely refused to accept the conversion from Muslim religion to the White Lotus Sect, and even sent troops to support the Bukhara Khanate. So at this point, even though the Hongjila tribe had a close relationship with the Chinese nation, it could not save them.

On February 2, the chief of the Hongjila tribe sent people out of the city to surrender and expressed his willingness to convert to the White Lotus Sect. Mo Gongleng sneered and directly refused.

People should not wait until they are about to die before they are willing to believe.

On February 2, after Mogong Leng had besieged the city for more than ten days, he destroyed the city walls of Khiva. Thousands of Long March warriors and Japanese feudal soldiers rushed in and launched a brutal revenge on the city.

The guards used explosives to blow up the Safavid Great Mosque in the city into ruins. The mosque, which was rebuilt after the Mongols conquered Khwarezm, disappeared.

At the same time, all the leaders of the mystical sects and monks at all levels in the city were arrested and executed, and then doused with kerosene and burned to ashes.

Khiva Khan Abul Ghazi Ghayip was dragged out of the palace and executed in the square. The chiefs and leaders of the Hongjila tribe were also beheaded.

All the gold, silver and other valuables in the city were looted, and more than 40,000 residents were either killed or taken prisoner.

On February 2, Li Xingtai's victory report arrived, and Li Xianwen finally felt relieved. The army gathered together and marched towards Bukhara.

At this time, Bukhara had almost become a city of death.

Before the end of the Battle of Jinsha Valley, in order to support the war, almost all the food in the city was looted, and even that was not enough. Two-legged sheep had to be added to barely meet the needs of the front line.

Naturally, as the war continued, a terrible famine broke out in the city, and the epidemic that was still going on in the city led to an extremely high death rate.

Later, after the news of the Battle of the Jinsha Valley reached Bukhara, Bukhara Emir Haidar launched another coup. He gathered about a thousand people and raided the city where the officials of the Persian King Agha Muhammad Shah were brought from Persia to monitor him.

It was precisely this imminent military coup that caused the population in the city to move again, causing the epidemic to suddenly spread explosively at a very fast rate.

After hearing this, Li Xianwen immediately ordered the entire army to retreat twenty miles. Twenty miles away, the entire city of Bukhara was completely blockaded. No prisoners were taken, no food was given, and of course no medical care or medicine was provided.

The Western Army soldiers were guarding the periphery, and would only accept anyone who could come out of Bukhara and walk the twenty miles to the front of the military camp.

Because only those who can walk out of a radius of twenty miles during the epidemic can be barely rescued, which at least proves that they are basically not infected.

In the city, Bukhara Emir Haidar looked out in despair. Today, there was heavy fog, and the river was rarely filled with such mist, as if foreshadowing the future of the Bukhara people, an invisible future.

Now there is no way to survive outside, plague is rampant in the city, food is in short supply, and death hangs over everyone, including Emir.

"The Peach Blossom Stone People are going to kill us all. They will never forgive us." Haidar looked at his subjects around him, his tone filled with extreme grievance and unwillingness.

"Why? We weren't the ones who were preaching. Our family has never supported those religious groups, nor has it been willing to accept those Khojas. Why can't you give us a way out?"

No one could answer Emir Haidar's words, but a pair of hateful eyes stared at the distraught Haidar.

"You were the ones who invited the Persians here, and you were the ones who encouraged them to preach everywhere. Emirs and Dayimams, none of them are good people."

Old Tachi muttered as he untied a small cloth bag containing three large pieces of black bacon, which he had saved with great effort while in the army.

He originally wanted to wait until the war was over and then give it to little Nurya personally. At that time, little Nurya would definitely be very happy to eat the meat.

But who knows, this meat...

With tears in his eyes, Old Taqi seemed to see the innocent face of little Nurya on these pieces of meat, and he seemed to hear little Nurya's silver bell-like laughter in his ears.

"This is Nurya's flesh, this is Nurya's flesh, my little sun, she is only ten years old."

After mumbling a few more words, the usually honest old Tachi took out a pistol from his arms, which he had seized from a young officer of the Red Army.

For the first time, Old Tachi loaded the unfamiliar pistol with ammunition so quickly.

"It was you who ate my little Nurya, and it was you who brought the demons like the Peach Blossom Stone Men and the Persians to Bukhara!"

"You killed my whole family, my wife, my son, my little Nourya!"

With a roar, old Tachi rushed forward and aimed his pistol at the Emir, whom he once admired so much.

'boom! ’

With a loud bang, a huge bloody hole was punched out on the left temple of Haidar Emir. He looked at old Tachi in disbelief, his eyes quickly dimmed, and after shaking his body twice, Haidar Emir fell headfirst and directly off the city wall.

The surrounding Qarlug people were also stunned. No one even came to kill the regicide Lao Tachi. They scattered in panic shouting.

Old Tachi looked outside the city and fell headfirst from the city wall.

February 1797, 2. This was the 2th day of the first lunar month in the nd year of the Guangzhong reign of the Great Yu Dynasty (formerly the nd year of the Jiaqing reign of the Qing Dynasty).

With the end of the Jinsha River Valley battle, the Northwest War that lasted for eight years, and even as long as twelve years from the time Li Xianwen entered Lanzhou, was finally declared over.

In the conquest of Dayuan, the Battle of Samarkand, the Battle of Jinsha Valley, the destruction of the Khanate of Khiva and the final surprise attack on Turkmenistan, the three Khanates of Transoxiana lost a total of more than 170,000 troops, and the Qajar Empire of Persia lost more than 60,000 people. A total of 240,000 people died on the battlefield alone.

For the Central Asian region, which had a total population of only 4.8 million, the death of 170,000 troops was an absolutely devastating blow.

In addition to the killings that followed the war, the entire Hezhong region lost at least 1.5 million people in eight years.

And of these 1.5 million people, at least 1.3 million are men.

Therefore, even if all the old men and boys are counted now, there are only 900,000 males left among the Karluk people in Central Asia, and the number of adult males should not exceed 500,000.

It can be said that their entire clan has basically been wiped out.

And even so, at least half of the remaining 900,000 men would die, and only a few hundred thousand truly honest ones would stay and become serfs of the vassal states in Hezhong.

At this point, the most important stage of Mo Zibu's goal of cleaning up the river and eradicating the poisonous soil of the Muslim mystical sect was achieved.

The efficiency of conquering with swords and spears is indeed incomparable to that of education.

Of course, the cost of education is much lower, and it does not require the deaths of more than 30,000 civilians. The more than 4,000 deaths are mainly due to illness and some soldiers died in battle.

There was no need for eight years of 60 million in war funds and 40 million in reconstruction funds, a total of 140 million silver dollars, a price that made Prime Minister Luo Fangbai so anxious that his head went bald.

(End of this chapter)