I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 503 Zhu Houzhao's Experience in the Western Regions

It can be said that they occupied all the strategic and rich areas in Central Asia.
In fact, the reason why Zhu Houzhao was so successful, so successful that he planned a second expedition, was because the Ming Dynasty's strategy of ruling the naturalized Mongols was extremely useful after taking over the Western Regions.

Grievances, public trials, and land reform, one thing after another, directly made the Mongols in the Western Regions turn their hearts to the Ming Dynasty.

The military force in the Western Regions was not very strong, so Zhu Houzhao led the Imperial Guards to penetrate the Western Regions without much effort.

But the most difficult problem in the Western Regions has never been how to penetrate the Western Regions, but how to effectively rule the Western Regions.
In the history of the Qing Dynasty, the Qing Dynasty and the Junggar Khanate in the Western Regions were entangled for three generations of emperors for hundreds of years...

In history, the Dzungar Khanate was a powerful country in Central Asia, and was even capable of threatening Beijing.

The Qing Dynasty defeated the Dzungar Khanate several times, and the main figures of the Dzungar Khanate surrendered obediently and became a vassal state of the Qing Dynasty.

However, the Dzungar Khanate always surrendered and rebelled again, and the Qing court was never able to establish stable rule over the Western Regions.

This process was repeated several times, and it lasted for nearly a hundred years.
Many of the ministers sent by the Qing court to the Western Regions were killed by the Junggars...

Qianlong could no longer tolerate the repeated actions of the Dzungar Khanate, so he sent Zhaohui to lead a large army to attack the Dzungar Khanate. This time, the Qing court completely gave up the plan to rule the Dzungar people and simply decided to keep the land but not the people!

Zhao Hui led the army to slaughter the Junggar people indiscriminately, even the elderly and children were not spared, and the entire Junggar Khanate was wiped out, turning it into a no-man's land. The once prosperous Central Asian power of Junggar was wiped out, and the only trace left in modern times is the geographical term Junggar Basin.
This shows how difficult it is to rule the Western Regions.

However, Zhu Houzhao's strategy of ruling the naturalized Mongols was extremely applicable to the Western Regions.
For the Western Regions, if they were defeated by the Ming Dynasty once, they would completely lose the chance to make a comeback.
In the past, the various forces that entered the Western Regions were able to defeat the Western Regions’ armies, but they were unable to quickly assimilate the Western Regions’ people. This gave the old forces in the Western Regions a chance to make a comeback. As long as they gathered their old subordinates, they could establish a new army to stir up trouble.
But the three links of grievances, public trials, and land reform were extraordinary. They directly destroyed the original ruling order in the Western Regions from the root, and then established a new order. Under this order, ordinary people shared the interests of the old rulers, which made them antagonistic in terms of interests, and deprived the old rulers of the soil for activities and speculation.
After these three attacks on the Western Regions, the rulers of the old forces had no ground to organize guerrilla warfare, let alone recruit any old troops.
Therefore, once they were defeated by the Ming army, the rulers of the old forces completely lost the chance to make a comeback, because the Ming used three attacks on their followers. Their followers were originally their supporters, but in a short time they became the people who least wanted them to come back.
How can we prevent those old rulers from coming back? We can only rely on the Ming Dynasty, get closer to the Ming Dynasty, and rely on the armed protection provided by the Ming Dynasty.

When facing the Guards, who are equipped with the most advanced weapons and the most powerful firepower of this era, the various forces in the Western Regions have little chance of winning on the front battlefield. The only option is to fail less miserably.
Therefore, Zhu Houzhao was always successful in the Western Regions.

It can even be said that Zhu Houzhao started a snowball in the Western Regions.
The Ming army had a maximum of 8 troops in the Western Regions, of which 6 were guards who were just undergoing normal rotations, and the remaining were naturalized troops.

Zhu Houzhao only requested for additional troops once in the past three years, and this time the additional troops were 10,000 naturalized soldiers.
Because these naturalized soldiers were also Mongolians, and they shared the same language and ethnicity as the Mongolians in the Western Regions, they could quickly establish a new order in the Western Regions and become nodes for the Ming Dynasty to rule the Western Regions.
Zhu Houzhao found these naturalized soldiers more and more useful the more he used them.
The smoother you roll the snowball, the bigger it will be. The bigger the snowball is, the harder it will be to stop.
A big reason why Zhu Houzhao launched the second Western Expedition was because he couldn't stop.
At this time, the Central Asian region had been ruled by the Mongolian grassland nobles for two hundred and fifty to sixty years, so it was very effective to use the naturalized army to use the three-company strategy against the tribes in this region.

Moreover, the Central Asian region at that time was a vast expanse of grassland, making it even more suitable for the naturalized troops to operate.
Therefore, Zhu Houzhao accidentally defeated the Kazakh Khanate and directly reached the right bank of the Caspian Sea, which is why the imperial edict stated, "And the area west of Guanmen (Jiayuguan), more than ten thousand miles, is all included in the territory."

When the forces around Central Asia saw that the Ming army was so powerful, they were terrified that whoever they attacked would die, and whoever they touched would die. They were afraid that one day Zhu Houzhao, the Heavenly Khan, would lead the Ming army to attack them, and it would be too late then.
Therefore, the countries around Central Asia also rushed to pay tribute to the Ming Dynasty, and expressed their respect to the Ming Dynasty in the most humble manner, fearing that it would be too late and the Ming army would be at the doorstep, and they would not know how they died by then.

This is why the edict states: "Now all the tribes in Mount Babur (Afghanistan) know to offer captives and serve as loyal subjects. They march in front of the enemy with edicts. They have never been connected to China before, but now they have all become subjects of the Ming Dynasty. Looking back at past records, this is truly an unprecedented event."

Faced with this situation, Zhu Houzhao still allowed many countries to submit to the Ming Dynasty, because the locations of those countries were not suitable for the Ming Dynasty to conquer.

After Zhu Houzhao's "big snowball" rolled to the shore of the Caspian Sea, Zhu Houzhao himself was quite satisfied, because this was a place that neither the Tang nor Han armies had set foot on.
Moreover, after reaching this place, the supply line was too long, and it was also very difficult to transport materials from the inland. Zhu Houzhao was more impulsive, but not stupid at all. He also understood that this was already the limit. The rest of the time was how to properly digest and rule this vast area.
So Zhu Houzhao readily decided to return to the capital. He only brought back 1 Guards Infantry and 2 Guards Cavalry. There were still 2 Guards Infantry, Guards Cavalry and Naturalized Cavalry, a total of garrisons in the Western Regions (in fact, the naturalized troops were no longer considered active military forces, and their role had become that of tribal leaders).

Zhu Houzhao had a great time in the Western Regions, but it caused trouble for Zhu Houxun, who was in charge of logistics in the capital.
The 20 million silver coins prepared at the beginning were spent in the first year of the Western Expedition. In the second year, another 20 million silver coins were spent. In the third year, an additional 26 million silver coins were spent.
The three-year Western Expedition cost more than 66 million silver coins.
(End of this chapter)