The Han culture is spreading strongly in Southeast Asia

Chapter 834 Liaoning and Shandong Divide Local Chickens

"It's like a locust swarm has swept through!" Seventeen-year-old Xiang Zheng smacked his lips and said with great emotion.

Despite it being winter, upon receiving the request from Liao King Mo Zhou, Crown Prince Da Laosen immediately dispatched more than 5,000 Anxi soldiers to the Caucasus region for support.

The Xiang family, father and son, who came from Xi'an, happened to be among the supporting troops.

Hearing his son speak so casually, the father and his son-in-law Liu Guangzu shook their heads slowly at the same time. This was not a locust plague, but a massacre.

The village of Western Armenians in front of them was engulfed in flames; all the shack-like houses built of stone, branches, thatch, and mud were burning.

Around many of the burning shacks, it was even clear that most of the tinder, such as branches, had been dragged over from a distance, with the intention of wiping them out completely.

The fire scorched the bloodstains on the ground, emitting a stench that made people want to vomit. The fire was the biggest in one of the shacks with the most blood in front of it. Xiang Zheng walked over with some curiosity.

Xiang Tai opened his mouth and stretched out his hand, as if he wanted to say something but stopped himself. His son-in-law, Liu Guangzu, smiled at his father-in-law and said, "Zhengwazi has grown up. There are some things he should see."

No sooner had he finished speaking than Xiang Tai's eldest son, Xiang Zheng, ran back, covering his mouth. The sour, foul-smelling vomit even gushed out from between his fingers. Seeing his father and brother-in-law, Xiang Zheng felt relieved and vomited even more violently.

"The room... the room was full of corpses, naked corpses, you couldn't tell if they were men, women, young or old anymore, ugh!" Xiang Zheng said intermittently, squatting on the ground, trying to suppress the churning in his stomach.

"Are these corpses almost charred, smelling like someone threw live pigs and sheep directly into a fire to roast? Some of them have charred skin, looking like roasted pig skin."

Oh, and if you look closely, you'll also notice that under this intense heat, the eyeballs are the first to burst, so their eyes are empty sockets emitting flames. There are also clumps of burning, dried dung on the ground; these are from…

"Ugh!" Xiang Zheng, who had just gotten a little better, immediately squatted down again and started vomiting violently after hearing this.

Liu Guangzu then went over, took out a gourd, poured some water for Xiang Zheng to wash the dirt off his hands, and pulled out a dirty towel for him to wipe his hands clean.

“Brother, this isn’t some locust swarm, it’s a genocide.” Liu Guangzu said calmly, but there was something else hidden in his eyes.

Both the Liu and Xiang families came from Kuizhou Prefecture in eastern Sichuan, which was the main territory of the thirteen families of eastern Sichuan in those days.

Fengjie, Daning (Wuxi), and Wushan in Kuizhou Prefecture, as well as Badong, Xingshan, and Guizhou (Zigui) in Yichang Prefecture, Hubei Province, were filled with the last blood of the Han people and also left behind the bloodline of many righteous armies.

After the establishment of the Great Yu Kingdom, all the Han Chinese descendants from the six counties of the Thirteen Families of Kuidong, regardless of whether they were the last to resist, were relocated from the depths of the mountains.

This area is part of the Dabashan Mountains and is basically the poorest part of Sichuan and Hubei provinces. The people here are happy to leave the mountains and live a better life.

The mountains of eastern Sichuan also forged their strong physique; they are highly adaptable and have considerable fighting ability.

The scale of this migration was enormous. Before the founding of the Great Yu Kingdom, the six counties had nearly four million people, but now there are only seven or eight hundred thousand. As a result of the excessive population loss, four counties, namely Daning, Wushan, and Badong, were directly abolished.

“In the past, when the Eastern barbarians invaded the Central Plains, many of our compatriots were brutally slaughtered by the Tartars just like they are now. What you are seeing now is what our ancestors experienced.”

Liu Guangzu felt this way because his family were descendants of the thirteen righteous armies of Kuidong.

"Brother, I understand!" After listening, Xiang Zheng quickly wiped his hands clean, then stood up. Facing the overwhelming stench, he no longer had that indifferent attitude.

Seeing his son's change in attitude, Xiang Tai nodded in satisfaction, then waved his hand and said to his son-in-law, "Guangzu, judging from the fire, the Ottomans shouldn't have gone far. If we follow their footprints, we'll definitely find them."

At this time, the army of the Great Yu should have marched to the land of Armenia in West Asia and begun preparations to fight against the Ottoman Turks.

The Xiang family, father and son, were sent out to scout ahead of the main army; their mission was to capture a few Ottoman prisoners and bring them back.

“Father, why don’t we go directly to the next village? The Armenians’ cattle, sheep and other livestock and grain have all disappeared, and even their clothes have been stripped off. This proves that the Ottoman army needs these things, so they will definitely find a place to store them.”

Compared to his father-in-law Xiang Tai, his son-in-law Liu Guangzu is much younger, but he is already a qualified veteran.

Without the wealth and status that his nearly ten years of military service brought him, this young man, whose parents both tragically died during their migration, would not have been able to marry a genuine Han woman from his hometown in an environment like Anxi, a Han woman without any accent issues.

“You’re right, let’s go!” Xiang Tai naturally knew that he had only fought the Persians once and could not compare his experience with his son-in-law, so he immediately agreed.

The so-called Western Armenia is basically the land that is now located in western Türkiye, north of Iraq, and northwest of Iran.

Specifically, this includes most of Turkey's Kars, Öder, Van, Muş and Erzurum provinces.

It accounts for about a quarter of the area of ​​the Asian part of Türkiye.

However, although the territory is large, it is not good. The terrain is rugged, the climate is relatively dry, and transportation is inconvenient. Most of the valuable land is in some river valleys.

Of these river valleys and basins, the most valuable is the Erzinchan Basin.

The Erzinchan Basin has a topography somewhat resembling the Hanzhong Plain. It is a very standard basin with only a few access points, surrounded by steep mountains.

The Erzinchan Basin is located on the upper reaches of the Euphrates River, which flows through the entire basin. Numerous small rivers, like capillaries, originate from the surrounding high mountains and converge into the main river within the basin.

This means that the Erzinchan Basin, with an annual rainfall of 400-600 mm, which is located right on the Hu Huanyong Line, has no shortage of irrigation water, and therefore its agriculture is quite developed.

Before the Ottoman Empire's genocide in 1915, more than 700,000 of the more than two million Armenians lived here, more than a third of the total, demonstrating the importance of this region.

Given its importance, the Ottoman army coming from the west would certainly not let this place go.

Smoke and fire rose in the Erzinchan Basin as tens of thousands of Ottoman troops stormed in like wolves and tigers, wiping out the Western Armenians in one fell swoop.

Governor Yusuf Ziadin Pasha, who was in charge of the army, initially wanted to keep the troops in check, but things quickly spiraled out of control.

This is because there are reasons why the Ottoman Empire has become a sick and weak empire.

The biggest reason for this lies in the military system.

According to medieval tradition, the Ottoman Empire's army was mostly composed of slaves.

For example, Yusuf Ziadin himself, although he has the title of Pasha and may become the Grand Vizier in the future, is also a slave.

He was a Georgian infidel child captured by the Ottoman Empire from the Caucasus region.

After capturing these infidel children, the Ottoman Empire trained them to become qualified warriors and even politicians, making them fight for the Ottoman Empire.

This was possible in the Middle Ages, when society was much more closed off and the distinctions between religions and ethnic groups were not so clear.

More importantly, there was no Enlightenment ideology at that time, nor the national awakening brought about by the French Revolution guided by Enlightenment ideology. Therefore, a person's mentality could be changed with just a little brainwashing.

But now that these things are in place, the effectiveness of this method of brainwashing slaves has been greatly reduced, and it may even directly produce a group of traitors.

Furthermore, the wars of the previous one or two hundred years were wars fought by elite soldiers. A soldier fully armored with a musket and a warhorse could easily defeat ten militiamen.

Therefore, at that time, the Ottoman Empire only needed to support 30,000 to 50,000 Sultan's personal guards and 10,000 to 20,000 Mamluks to maintain the vast empire.

But now, it's time to line up and execute people, and these tens of thousands of people are simply not enough to sustain the war effort, so the Ottoman Empire has no choice but to expand its army.

However, expanding the army would not only seriously threaten the interests of the Sultan's personal guard and the Mamluks, but the Turks have historically had little tradition of military service and are not very good at fighting.

Meanwhile, in the past, the true ruling class of the Ottoman Empire consisted of the empire's nobles, the Sultan's guards, and the Mamluks.

Although the Turks were nominally first-class citizens of the empire and fared better than the conquered peoples, they were still at the bottom of the social hierarchy.

They hadn't enjoyed many of the empire's benefits, yet they were expected to risk their lives for it; one can imagine how much fighting power these people possessed.

Therefore, the Ottoman army was always accompanied by the Sultan's personal guard and repeated small-scale rebellions by the Mamluks, as well as the problem of a large number of ragtag soldiers who could not even operate muskets properly after the expansion of the army.

These lowly soldiers received no pay, and the Ottoman Empire wouldn't even provide them with food and drink along the way. Under such circumstances, how could you expect them to maintain military discipline and refrain from looting?

Haha, even a god couldn't do that. Therefore, after entering the Erzinchan Basin, facing the wealthy Western Armenians, the army quickly broke free from Yusuf Ziadin Pasha's control.

These impoverished Turks, forcibly conscripted, along with even poorer Greeks, Egyptians, and Romanians from various regions, vented all their madness and cruelty on the Western Armenians, who were of even lower status than themselves.

It started as a small-scale requisition of grain and laborers, but it quickly escalated into looting and rape, and eventually turned into a massacre of Western Armenians.

In this frenzy, not only were ordinary people in West Armenia attacked, but even local nobles who had been granted titles by the Caliph were also subjected to constant attacks.

. . . .

Guided by a dozen or so West Asians, the Xiang father and son gradually reached the edge of the Erzinchan Basin. Unsurprisingly, they found a place called Tayeri, which was actually a town.

Cries and laughter rang out simultaneously in this place; the laughter came from the Ottoman army, while the cries came from the locals.

The men were thrown into the army as laborers, the women into the army as prostitutes, and their food and livestock ended up in the stomachs of the Ottoman army.

Hearing the pitiful cries and laughter and the hellish scene, Xiang Tai was basically certain that this was where the Ottoman vanguard army was stationed.

He could hardly believe his luck; he had come to capture prisoners, but instead he had caught the movements of the main Ottoman army.

Pfft!
Just when Xiang Tai was finding it hard to believe his luck, an even greater achievement fell from the sky and landed squarely on his head.

"Please, Lord of the Celestial Empire, save us! All of us are willing to pledge our allegiance to Elder John and be his servants forever!"

Yes, some people are already saying that King Mozhou of Liao is the legendary Elder John who came from the East.

The Armenian blond who knelt directly before Xiang Tai, a nobody who resembled a militia company commander, without any psychological burden, was no nobody at all.

He was the youngest son of Bei Yi of the Erzinchan Basin. Bei Yi was not a name, but a kind of title, somewhat similar to the third-rank Shunzhi Prince title conferred by the Great Yu on the Eastern Ocean and the southern and northern deserts.

"Hahaha, this is Heaven's will for the Xiang and Liu families to be rich and powerful!" After dismissing Erzin Janbey's youngest son, Xiang Tai couldn't help but burst into laughter.

"That's right. The Ottomans and the Russians want to attack us from the north and south. Now, with the cooperation of these Western Armenians, we can work together from the inside and outside to deal with the Ottomans first, and then the Russians will be no threat."

Liu Guangzu was also very excited. He felt that the opportunity to get rich, which he had been pursuing for most of his life, was finally in front of him.

At this time, although the Ottoman Empire was secretly contacting the Rus' Empire, intending to launch a pincer attack from the north and south, both of these countries were relatively crude, corrupt, and lacked strong operational capabilities.

Not to mention that the Russo-Turkish War has already been fought six times, and the two sides have long been sworn enemies with no mutual trust whatsoever. The difficulty of cooperation is unimaginable.

Moreover, it was close to the Lunar New Year, and the temperature in Western Armenia, which is near the Middle Eastern desert region, is normally higher than that north of the Caucasus.

Therefore, even after the Ottoman army had entered Western Armenia, the Russian army did not move at all, because they could not cross the Caucasus Mountains in winter.

This is indeed a good opportunity. The Great Yu can completely wipe out the Ottoman army first, and then without support, even if the Russian commander-in-chief, Count Gudovic, had a hundred times the courage, he would not dare to take the initiative to attack.

“Father, I will go back with this son of Bei Yi to thoroughly understand the situation in the basin, and then have Zhengwazi go back to report to the Commander-in-Chief and ask him to send troops here immediately.”

The greater the risk, the greater the reward, so Liu Guangzu went all in.

End of March 1804.

Under the leadership of Gui Han, the Southern Route Army of the Great Yu, with 8,000 elite troops and the cooperation of the Western Armenians, arrived at the easternmost part of Western Armenia, near the Erzinchan Basin, at an extremely fast speed.

Traveling hundreds of kilometers like this felt like operating in my own country.

People from various regions who had suffered greatly at the hands of the Turks enthusiastically joined the army, volunteering as guides and auxiliary soldiers to help the Great Yu army advance.

All the outposts and small units sent out by the Ottoman army were wiped out one by one by the Da Yu, guided by the locals.

It wasn't until the Dayu army was about to launch its attack that Yusuf Ziadin, the commander of the Ottoman army, who had lost sight in one eye due to a javelin wound and was known as the Blind Yusuf, sensed something was amiss.

Because he hadn't received any news from the army outside the basin for a long time, the Pasha immediately contacted the fortress located in the east of the basin and was relieved to find nothing unusual.

He began to feign summoning all the West Asian vassals in the Erzinchan Basin, telling them that once the last batch of supplies was gathered, the Pasha would control the army.

These nobles immediately began to complain, but in reality, they had already reached a tacit agreement to deliberately lull Yusuf Ziadin Pasha into a false sense of security.

Seeing that they showed no signs of anything amiss, Yusuf Ziadin Pasha felt even more reassured. He offered some words of comfort, but after forcibly distributing the grain and fodder he had handed over, he completely let his guard down.

3 month 7 day.

With the support of the Western Minnians in the Erzinchan Basin, the 8,000-strong army of the Dayu army crossed the narrow paths and suddenly entered the basin from the towering mountains on the north and south sides. Then, they split into four groups to launch a surprise attack on the Ottoman army inside the basin.

Yusuf Ziadin Pasha was caught completely off guard and lost control of more than 40,000 Ottoman troops in the basin in less than half a day.

On March 11, Gui Han personally led 4,000 troops and more than 10,000 Armenian militiamen to attack Erzinchan.

The Ottoman army collapsed almost immediately, offering little resistance. The once high-ranking killers became rats to be hunted down by the Western Armenians.

The only place that offered any resistance was against the 5,000-strong new Ottoman army brought by Yusuf Ziadin Pasha.

However, they did not resist for long and surrendered under the onslaught of dozens of cannons and rifled guns from the Dayu army.

Yusuf Ziadin Pasha was no exception. He knelt on the ground and surrendered to Guihan, offering not to burn military supplies as a bargaining chip. In return, he was spared from being hacked to pieces by the angry West Asians and his life was saved.

From then on, it was very easy, with almost no difficulty. The only hardship was the end of the surprise attack that involved crossing mountains and valleys.

The Ottoman Empire's 50,000-strong army was completely annihilated in less than ten days.

When the news reached Tbilisi, King Mozhou of Liao was overjoyed.

Eight thousand against fifty thousand, and annihilated in less than ten days, which made him witness once again the fighting power of the Great Yu army, as well as the incompetence of the Ottomans, one of his greatest future enemies.

"What does Your Highness think we should do now?" Lin Zexu was still testing Mo Zhouzhao.

He was already considering staying in the Caucasus region for three to five years, because the situation there was complex and it was easy to achieve something there.

Mo Zhouzhao thought for a moment, then said to Lin Zexu, "The ethnic and religious issues within our Liaodong region are complex, and the 200,000 Han immigrants have not yet arrived."

The reason they seem to be doing so well now is because they are still in the close cooperation phase.

After this intimate phase, there will definitely be a time when problems erupt. That will be the time to test us, to test whether I, a Han Chinese, can stand firm here and truly become their king.

Moreover, my original plan was to occupy only the Caucasus and the southern coast of the Caspian Sea, but now Western Armenia has suddenly been added to the territory. This depends on my father's decision, not on my own.

Therefore, it is unwise to rashly engage in a life-or-death struggle with the Ottoman Empire over this territory!

Mo Zhouzhan remained remarkably calm. After pacing back and forth a few times with his hands behind his back, he slowly said, "Now is not the time to divide up the Ottoman Empire. We should wait until the Tsarist Rus' Empire is subdued and the Rus's vassal state in Hungary reaches an agreement with me."

Mo Zhouzhan's appetite grew, and he even wanted to divide the Ottoman Empire with his cousin, Mo Gongze, the heir of the Lu family.

"For now, let's talk about giving them back the superficial governance, letting the Ottoman Caliph pay for it, swindling a sum of money first, and then concentrating our efforts on defeating the Russians."

Mo Zhouzhan revealed his ruthless yet never greedy side, which made Lin Zexu momentarily dazed, because his first impression of Emperor Mo Zibu was that he was able to control his desires very well.

"Your Majesty, I, Lin Zexu, request to join Your Majesty's staff so that China may secure this crucial location and do my part!"

(End of this chapter)