Everyone was busy on this day, and Gao Pragmatic was no exception, but he was busy meeting the various officials and dignitaries who came to visit.
Yes, he did not go to the Cabinet or the Ministry of Revenue. After all, he was nominally returning to Beijing to report on his work, so when Baba went to work, it seemed like he was clinging to power. Such "active work" was not a compliment in Ming Dynasty.
As the largest force in the current imperial court, the Practical School is pragmatic and has long been the unspoken leader of the party. After returning to Beijing after more than half a year of expedition, he inevitably had to communicate with many people.
Some people have something to tell him, and some people have something to explain to them. Even if both parties have nothing to do, meeting each other is an unavoidable "ritual".
Although Gao Pangshi did not return to the cabinet to work, he had already begun to prepare deployments related to the war in the Western Regions. Yesterday, the news from Gansu arrived in Beijing, but only the emperor and a few people knew the details. Today, almost everyone in the court knows it.
Although Gao Pragmatic did not return to the cabinet office, in the Ming Dynasty, cabinet elders often influenced the military affairs of a certain place through unofficial means, such as sending private letters to major local officials or generals to make suggestions to them - called suggestions. , in fact, it is an order, and at the worst it should be called "guidance". [Note: This point was stated in Volume 1 of this book. ]
Since private letters can provide suggestions, it is natural not to mention face-to-face "suggestions". In response to the Gansu Kou border incident, Gao Pragmatic has also made arrangements.
First of all, in principle, the Kou border attack was unexpected by the imperial court, and the conditions for a large-scale counterattack were not yet met. Therefore, Gansu Province still needed to have the governors of the three sides and the governor of Gansu Province take charge of the defense work.
Secondly, the imperial court will mobilize material and financial resources to Gansu as soon as possible to support the local response to the border Mongolian troops, but it will not mobilize additional troops for large-scale support for the time being.
As for the issue of military strength, it will be decided by the three parties in Shaanxi. Whether it is recruiting the private army of local convicted generals, or temporarily raising private warriors to participate, the imperial court will support and recognize it - of course, the warriors who deserve rewards will be rewarded after the war, and those who should be disbanded will be disbanded immediately after the rewards are completed.
Once again, the performance of the Suzhou Guard in this battle seriously fell short of expectations. Shaanxi and Gansu provinces need to find out the reason as soon as possible. Is it because the Suzhou Guard itself is insufficient in strength and weapons, or is it because the Suzhou Guard generals embezzled military pay, resold military supplies, and neglected their duties? Or for some other reason, the governor of Shaanxi Province and Gansu Province must give an answer as soon as possible.
Finally, the five Ganzhou guards must stick to the Ganzhou defense line and are not allowed to retreat eastward. Anyone who disobeys the order will be punished by military law. However, the Ganzhou defense line does not necessarily have to stand still and wait for reinforcements. The governor of Gansu can contact Tumote in Qinghai as the left wing, and Tumote Shachixingtai Ji in the Achatu area as the right wing. The three parties can work together to defend Gansu.
Gao pragmatically issued these instructions through Song Yingchang, the Minister of War who came to visit. The last sentence of the three-way joint effort to defend Gansu deserves additional explanation, especially the right-wing Sha Chixing Taiji.
Shachixingtaiji is the seventh son of Anda Khan and the second son of Sanniangzi. The half-brother of Sha Chixing is Butashili, who had a very close relationship with Erdemutu.
In the original history, the third wife made a big fuss for the three brothers of Butashri. This has been introduced in the previous article, that is, the battle of Dabansheng, so I won’t go into details here. Just to say one thing, it can be seen from the Battle of Dabansheng that Sanniangzi attaches great importance to how many tribes and territories her son can obtain.
However, before the Battle of Fayuan broke out, there was almost a big incident between Butashri and Erdemutu. In the end, the third lady asked Qi Jiguang to bring Butashli to Gao Pragmatic after the war. In addition to giving gifts to apologize, In addition, Butashri was also asked to be a pragmatic disciple.
At that time, Gao Pragmatic felt very headache. Such a woman, whether she simply loves her son or has a strong desire for power by nature, makes Gao Pragmatic find it quite troublesome.
Touch her? Obviously inappropriate. She is a complete pro-Ming sect, so what's the point of touching her properly? All Mongolians may feel panic and uneasiness because of this - the Ming Dynasty even has to deal with such a thorough pro-Ming faction leader, so what is its attitude towards other people? Naturally, life and death are completely at one's will. Therefore, this is likely to cause a right-wing chaos, and even Ordos will not be spared, let alone the newly acquired Transkarkha.
What's more, with Sanniangzi's character, if Da Ming really shows signs of trying to touch her, who knows if she will fight back? It may be impossible to attack Daming, after all, she should be very afraid of Daming now.
However, Guihua City has always been held in her hands as Anda's inheritance, and Han Naji is still her current husband. What if she pretends not to know and waits for Han Naji to return to Guihua City? , what kind of tricks will be used to "deal with" Han Naji? How will this matter end?
From the perspective of the Ming Dynasty, the first step was to quickly confer Erdemutu as the new King of Shunyi. However, the problem was that Tumote's ruling structure had not changed, and the foundation of his rule was still the "Western Sentinel + Khan Court Elite" alliance. In other words, no matter how Han Naji was killed, Erdemutu had to continue to form an alliance with Sanniangzi if he wanted to secure his position.
So in this way, if Ming Dynasty did not want to see Tumut's internal division and rule out the possibility of sending troops to quell the rebellion on its own, then it could only go back and persuade Erdemutu to marry his stepmother Sanniangzi to maintain political stability.
This was definitely not possible. Although it was a Mongolian tradition, Gao Pragmatic found it difficult to accept it, so he had to keep Butashri by his side for a while.
This period of time was not too long, and in the end Gao Pragmatic did not officially accept Tashri as his disciple. Instead, he came up with a compromise plan and accepted him as a "named disciple" - nominally you can call me teacher, but I don’t preach and accept karma to solve doubts.
As for how to explain to Sanniangzi, this matter was easy to handle. Gao's pragmatic reason was that Butashri had other appointments and did not have time to stay by his side to slowly teach him: he arranged a new position for Butashri and asked him to Go with Bu Zhai and Ming'an to conquer the Sauron tribe.
Buzhai is Xicheng Baylor, one of Yehe's two Baylors. Ming'an is the leader of the Horqin tribe, while the Sauron tribe is further north of Horqin. In fact, it is what Ming people call the "savage Jurchen".
At that time, Gao pragmatically meant that the wild Jurchens would be conquered by the three parties, and the Ming Dynasty had no intention of getting involved in the ministry. After the conquest was completed, the tribe would be divided evenly among the three parties that sent troops.
Letting go of Ye He and Horqin first, the tribes Butashri got will belong to him from now on. This is the "legitimate benefit" that Gao Pragmatic arranged for Butashri.
Although Sanniangzi is not particularly satisfied, considering that the conflict between Butashili and Erdemutu before and after the Northern Expedition was indeed quite serious, if she forced her son to "reward according to his merits" in the Battle of Yuan, I am afraid that it would be Neither Han Naji nor his son would agree, especially Gao Pragmatic, who might not support it.
Therefore, it was better to settle for the next best thing than nothing, so I agreed. In the end, the three armies jointly attacked the Savage Jurchens and won. Although the battle was fought intermittently for more than two years because it was too cold there, they still won anyway.
In the end, Butashri was assigned about ten thousand savage Jurchens in their prime as his own tribe, and was then assigned to serve as a general under the Outer Khalkha tribe in Erdemutu, in charge of the expedition east of Outer Khalkha. — This time against the Buryats. Geographically, he is now in charge of the expedition to the eastern shore of Lake Baikal.
After Butashri was sent to the east of Lake Baikal, his second brother Shachixing and third brother Yi'er Jiangxun also needed to be arranged. Unexpectedly, something happened suddenly. Yier Jiangxun suddenly fell ill and died suddenly, so only Shachixing was left. .
Still under Gao Pragmatic's intervention, Shachixing was sent to the Achatu area to take charge. The main force of his tribe was the 3,000 people given to him by his mother, Zhongjin Hatun, who were the earliest elites of the Anda Khan court, while the remaining 7,000 people were captured by the Chahar and Outer Khalkha tribes. military. In this way, Sha Chixing only has about 10,000 troops.
The Achatu area is basically the Alxa League of Inner Mongolia in later generations. It is located in the westernmost part of the "Western Outpost" of Hannaji. It has a large area of 270,000 square kilometers, but the population is relatively small. The Alxa League in later generations will have less than 300,000 people. As for now...let's remove the zero.
Of course, although the population does not seem to be very large, because it is bounded by Ningxia and Ordos to the southeast, the Hexi Corridor to the south, and Hami to the west, the so-called location is critical, and the responsibilities it bears are still very heavy. Among them, Sha Chixing's most important responsibility is to "defend the border" - to prevent the Chahar tribe from fleeing to Yarkant.
Since he is guarding the border, according to the current master-slave relationship between the Ming Dynasty and Tumote, Sha Chixing must of course accept the arrangements of the three sides of Shaanxi, especially to form a dichotomy with Gansu, so he must also obey the arrangements of the governor of Gansu. This was the reason why Gao Pragmatic ordered the governor of Gansu to assign the Shachixing tribe as the right wing.
As for the left-wing Qinghai Tumute Fire Luo Chibu, this is even more complicated. Huo Luochi had many roles in the Northwest Rebellion that broke out before the Battle of Yuan Dynasty. To put it simply, Huo Luochi was persuaded by Burihatu to participate in the rebellion and support Kuaibai.
At that time, the two brothers Huo Luochi and Zhulitu were deceived by Gao's pragmatic strategy. In the decisive battle, Li Rusong's formation killed Zhulitu, and Huo Luochi was defeated and fled.
Afterwards, because Gao Pingshi was recalled by the court, Wei Xuezeng took his place and continued the attack. Huo Luochi fled while gathering the defeated troops. After escaping back to his old place in Qinghai, he concentrated his strength again, but was defeated by Zheng Luo who was ordered to regain Qinghai.
Although Huo Luochi was defeated this time, because he had learned the lesson from the previous time, the losses were not huge, and he still had a fortune of 30,000 people. However, Huo Luo was so frightened now that he no longer dared to confront Daming, so he sent people one after another to ask for surrender.
After studying and judging, Zheng Luo believed that the rest of Huo Luochi had lost the courage and strength to oppose the Ming Dynasty. At this time, Yin Erduqi and others also threatened Huo Luochi and warned him not to do stupid things again, so the Ming court finally accepted it. His request for surrender ordered him to guard the remaining Tumut territory in Qinghai - as for the surrounding areas of Xining that were recovered by the Ming Dynasty during the war, he would naturally not be given.
In this way, Huo Luochi lost his younger brother and 20,000 Buqu in the rebellion, and returned to the Ming Dynasty - or under the rule of Tumut.
However, this defeat affected Huo Luochi's prestige in Qinghai. In the following years, several tribes emerged in Qinghai to resist his rule. As a result, he had to send troops to quell the rebellion. Therefore, the overall strength of Qinghai Tumote continued to show. The trend is downward. I don’t know if he can still produce an army of 30,000 people - there is a high probability that he can’t. Maybe he can still have the strength of more than 20,000 people.
Due to the location of Tumut in Qinghai, the rule of Huo Luochi was nominally under the jurisdiction of Tumut. However, since Qinghai and the headquarters of Tumut were separated by the Hexi Corridor of the Ming Dynasty, naturally he was actually semi-independent.
There are advantages and disadvantages to semi-independence. The good thing is that the Tumut Headquarters usually doesn't care what they do in Qinghai. The bad thing is that it is difficult to ask for support from the Tumut Headquarters in Qinghai when something happens. In fact, not only do people in Qinghai resist from time to time, We also have to face the invasion of some Tibetan tribes in the snowy area.
As a result, his total force of more than 20,000 people was already insufficient, and now he was ordered to serve as Gansu's left wing... Even if he did not dare not to send troops, the power he could muster would be limited.
Gao Pragmatic estimates that he can probably provide only ten thousand Mongolian cavalry, and he should not be willing to fight tough battles. Most of them can only be responsible for tasks such as containment and harassment.
Of course, no matter what, sending troops is better than not sending troops, and it is better than being persuaded by Burihatu to fight back again. In this way, there will be 10,000 Mongolian cavalry available on the left and right wings, which will be more or less useful for Gansu's current guard situation.
Song Yingchang very much agreed with Gao Pragmatic's arrangement, and he knew that there was another key point in it, which was that the orders directed at Sha Chixing and Huo Luochi would be most effective only if Gao Pragmatic issued them.
This is not to say that the orders issued by other Ming officials are useless, but that Sha Chixing and Huo Luochi may not be so concerned about other people's orders. They may even engage in covert and covert violations, shirk the blame, etc., which is completely inadequate. strange.
But Gao Pragmatic's order was different. No one in right-wing Mongolia dared to ignore it, not even Hannaji and Zhongjin Hatun. After so many years of infiltration, coupled with his high reputation in Mongolia for being pragmatic, his orders may now be far more effective among right-wing Mongolians than the emperor's imperial edict.
Song Yingchang quickly implemented the order. At the same time, Gao Pragmatic also personally revised books and gave them "suggestions" to relevant people. Therefore, a society ruled by men is different from a society ruled by law. In this era, even if Gao Pragmatic resigns immediately and goes home, many people still dare not listen to his words.
The next day after returning to Beijing, he spent the next day busy like this. Gao Pingshi, who finally planned to take a rest, was just about to go back to the bedroom from the study when he suddenly found that the light was still on in Gao Yuan's room, and he couldn't help but be curious.
After pondering for a moment, he walked over.
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