In the palace hall, a meeting is about to begin.
Guo Kang was sitting in his seat, chatting with Li Xuanying next to him.
At the end of the hall is the throne of the Great Khan, but there is no one there now. On the consul's seat next to him, his adoptive father was sitting bored.
The consul was a simplified Roman official position, roughly equivalent to the head of the prime ministers. Of course, it was quite different from the Eastern Roman system.
The Eastern Roman Empire had a very complex official position system, and during its use for more than a thousand years, old official positions continued to change, and new official positions were constantly derived, dividing or replacing the functions of the old official positions. These new, old, real, and imaginary things are mixed together. Not only is it too difficult for Europeans to understand, but even Guo Kang finds it confusing.
In the later period, the official positions in Eastern Rome had been divided into two parts: casual officials who were purely honorary and officials with actual powers. The two adopted different granting methods and different systems. Under each official position, there are three categories: male, eunuch, and female. There are so many different categories that people feel that the Qin Dynasty is similar to the Song Dynasty. For those who are not very familiar with the official system, it is difficult to directly figure out who is doing what.
The Greek honorary title of the adoptive father should probably be called "higher authority". The word dignitary in Latin was originally "Augustus", which was the title of the head of the empire. But as early as the Komnenos dynasty, it had been delegated to aristocratic bureaucrats.
Even the Doge of Venice and the Sultan of Rome were given this title. It can only be said that two Romans cannot be written in one stroke. Three-eighths of Rome and Turkic Rome are the same Augustus of Rome.
Therefore, now that the Purple Horde is sending Roman emperors all over the world, it can be said that it has inherited a fine tradition, and the local Greeks have become accustomed to it.
Of course, the reason why Augustus is Augustus is that there was only one, or at most two, Augustus back then. When there are too many Augustus, Augustus will no longer be Augustus.
As the original titles continued to depreciate due to continued proliferation, the Greeks began to add prefixes to these titles. For example, this is how "higher authority" came into being. When the Purple Horde Khanate established its system, they directly moved it over and translated it into "Shangzhu Kingdom".
Of course, the Greeks stacked much more than that. Among the recipients of powerful titles, the first person is called the "chief powerful". Later, you may feel that this was not prominent enough, and later titles such as "the chief powerful person who is higher than all the powerful people" and even "the chief superior powerful person who is higher than all the powerful people" appeared.
The complexity of their titles is so many that even the purple tent cannot use them all. To this day, only the Shangzhu Kingdom level below Bai Saihan still uses it.
In the past few months, the Great Khan and several pillar states have been on the northwest front, marching into the hinterland of Hungary, cooperating with the French offensive in the west. Several others also went to various places as usual to conduct the annual selection of new recruits. Guo, who is responsible for staying behind, is currently the only Shangzhuguo in the capital, so he has to be responsible for all important meetings.
Outside the seats where the Great Khan, the Archon and others were seated, there were several circles of seats, clearly divided into several groups.
On the right hand side of the Great Khan are the powerful Nanya princes. The representatives of the four families, Guo, Li, Cao, and Shi, who took turns, sat in their respective seats in turn.
When Boyan Timur Khan entered the city for the first time, there were thirteen princes sitting here. The "Civil War" ended and only eleven families remained. After the "Anda War", as compensation for the local loyal forces, the remaining Nine Pillars decided to make greater concessions. In future regular meetings, only four representatives will be appointed, and the remaining positions will be given to those specifically responsible for affairs. officials, thus forming the current pattern.
Guo Kang is now in his seat.
He originally didn't want to participate, or at most he could just watch from the sidelines. After all, with his adoptive father around, there was no need for him to stand out. But before coming, the adoptive mother suddenly said that the other parents were not here, so the heir must be attending on their behalf. In this case, let your children go too.
The adoptive mother thought that anyway, he was stupid and never won an argument. On the contrary, it was Guo Kang who had clear ideas and persuasive speeches in several discussions. He was a good candidate. This time he just said a few words and just sat there as a decoration, so as not to make those sharp-tongued Greeks laugh. If you have anything to say, let your children speak.
Apart from fighting, her adoptive father almost obeyed her advice, so she brought him over regardless of Guo Kang's hesitation.
Seeing him appear, Li Xuanying, who also represented his father, came over happily, and the other two also greeted him.
Opposite these people, there were several representatives of the nobles of Bei Ya - Ye Xian Sarai Wan Hu Tuo Tuo Bu Hua, who was stationed in Crimea and was responsible for managing the tribes in the lower reaches of the Dnieper River; Timur Sarai Wan Hu George, stationed in the former homeland of Belgozalai, manages the tribes in the lower reaches of the Volga River; Yeligosalai Wanhu Yeluxin, stationed in Kiev, manages the hinterland of the steppe in the upper reaches of the Dnieper River.
The Beiya guards were one of the two most important military forces of the Khanate. However, with the expansion of the Khanate, the shortcomings of this grassland army became more and more obvious.
When Tuotuo, the third generation of Zizhang Khan, was in power, the strength of the Beiya guards tended to be at its peak. The auxiliary minister Buhua Taishi first commanded the troops of the Kipchak Second Guard and the Burial Guard, and successively defeated the Lithuanian army near Kiev and Smolensk, and then defeated the intervention of the White Horde near the Don River. military. But after the war, the conflicts within the Khan's court became even greater due to the imbalance of forces among the parties.
Although they won in the end, Grand Master Fu Xianhua believed that the grassland army's shortcomings were too obvious and needed to be reformed. He hoped to break up the original tribe, reorganize it, select elite soldiers, and organize a new army.
The Grand Master sent envoys to inspect the pastures of various tribes. The envoys carried the Khan's banner and carried black iron pots on their backs, spreading propaganda among the tribes and recruiting herdsmen who were good at fighting. Those who sign up will be assessed on site, and those warriors who are qualified in equestrianism, riding, shooting, and fighting will be awarded an iron pot for every ten people and take them back with them.
The recruited warriors are trained together in battalions. Each battalion had eighty iron pots, so this operation was also called the "Eighty Pots" reform.
Under the auspices of Taishi Yeshanbuhua, the Khanate also restored the ancient Greek city of Chesonis in Crimea and used it as a stronghold to farm around it. Two years after the first batch of soldiers were trained, the Grand Master sent people to various ministries to bring in their relatives and place them in the grasslands of northern Crimea to graze, and set up fixed institutions to manage each grassland. In this way, these grassland elites broke away from their original tribes and joined new organizations.
Originally, the guards of Beiya had to rely on the troops recruited from various departments, but these nobles and chiefs were not always reliable. It was common for them to find excuses not to come and to wait and see on the battlefield. If possible, everyone wants to preserve the strength of their own tribe, let others bear the losses, and divide the spoils themselves.
The combat effectiveness of each tribe is also uneven. The core tribe is generally okay, but the other peripheral tribes are often difficult to describe. But the Khanate couldn't intervene directly and could only make do with it. An authoritative commander can also drive them to fight. It is not uncommon for a commander with a weak foundation and a low reputation to be robbed by these "friendly forces" and then escape.
As a veteran commander of the grassland army, Grand Master himself is the most aware of these shortcomings.
Now, after re-recruitment and rectification, the situation is much better. The discipline of Beiya's new army is much better than that of the previous nomadic army. It can carry out orders better and its combat quality has also improved a lot.
However, this blatant poaching behavior naturally aroused widespread dissatisfaction among the prairie nobles.
After several recruitments, the news spread throughout the grassland. Even the rabbits under the Khan King's tent in the golden tent coveted the iron pot in the purple tent and ran away one after another.
Let's not spend his whole life fighting for the grand master. He is very famous in all the grassland tribes. While he is still there, no one dares to mess around. However, later, the Grand Master was killed in battle with the Polish-Hungarian coalition forces. The news spread to the grasslands and immediately triggered a rebellion.
The former nobles of Beiya colluded with the Slavic princes, and attracted Lithuania, White House and Poland to launch a massive attack. The Khan was forced to end the war in the south, make peace with the Ottomans, delay his plan to take over Constantinople again, and move all the way north.
