Late Yuan Dynasty: I am the true emperor

Chapter 101 Mongolian Surrender (Subscription Request)

After leaving Guo Zixing's house, Sun Deya went to find Pan Yuxing again. The boy readily agreed to join him in the rebellion.

After all, not everyone will be recruited by Lu Jin in advance, and not everyone is a relative of Lu Jin.

In the eyes of others, Lu Jin has already occupied such a "large" territory, but he only calls himself a marshal. How can you expect ambitious people like Sun Deya to be willing to work under him?
Let's look at the Yuan court. As long as a landlord organized an armed group and was willing to help the court suppress the rebels, he could be made a marshal. Among these marshals, Lu Jin was so inconspicuous.

If other rebel armies had the territory of Lu Jin and the military strength they had, even if you couldn't declare yourself emperor or king, you could at least give yourself a two-character title of king, right?
If Lu Jin proclaimed himself king and gave each of them the title of marshal, perhaps people like Sun Deya would come to join him.

But Lu Jin refused to claim the title of king! Then they could only go it alone. What a bullshit commander, not even a dog would be!

Compared with Sun Deya and others, Mr. Miao from Dingyuan County is much more pragmatic. Mr. Miao has money and connections, and is a force that cannot be underestimated.

This guy originally wanted to emulate Kang Maocai, recruit soldiers to help the court suppress rebels, and be rewarded by the court to become a high-ranking official based on his military merits, just like Kang Maocai, and become a envoy or a marshal or something.

After defeating the rebels and having our own armed forces, we can occupy some territories in the name of suppressing the rebels. Then we can just sit on the sidelines and watch.

He would quietly watch the general trend of the world. If the imperial court could not wipe out the Red Turbans, he would secede and become emperor if he had the chance. If he lost, he would just surrender. Maybe he could even become a noble for generations and achieve a class leap.

Normally, there is no such opportunity to make the leap to the dragon gate. You can only try it in times of chaos.

But if you ask him to recruit soldiers and fight Lu Jin next door, he would never dare to do so. Didn’t he see how miserably Kang Maocai died next door?

Moreover, if he went against Lu Jin, I'm afraid that as soon as the troops were gathered, Lu Jin would not even give him the chance to train them and would kill him.

So Tycoon Miao is waiting for an opportunity.

He knew that some people in Dingyuan were ready to rebel. When these people started the rebellion, he would kill them while they had not yet formed an army, had no territory, and had not yet established a firm foothold. He would then take the opportunity to occupy one or two cities. Then he could go to the court to report his achievements and ask for an official position.

Then he can guard his own territory and watch the fight between the rebels and the imperial court. If the imperial court wins, he will help the imperial court to suppress the rebels and maybe he can continue to be promoted. If the imperial court loses and the rebels are at the gates of the city, he will surrender the city and get a good position with his troops. In any case, neither side will lose out.

This is fucking pragmatism! In this respect, Tycoon Miao is much better than those idiots like Sun Deya.

It’s a pity that the plan is very good, but the plan cannot keep up with the changes.

Zhu Liangzu was already leading the main force of the Fifth Regiment to march towards Dingyuan. They could march thirty miles a day, so they should arrive in ten days. It was estimated that Dingyuan would be captured before Miao Daheng could complete the first step of his plan.
Want to sit back and watch? Or take advantage of the situation? That also requires luck, wisdom, and means!
In Luzhou, Wuwei County was completely captured, and Liao Yongan's Third Regiment rested in Wuwei. When Lu Jin replenished his troops and promoted him to commander-in-chief, he could attack Lujiang and Shucheng.

While Liao Yongan was resting, Han Qinglu, the surrendered general from Wuwei, and the Mongolian general Ai Yan were also sent over by boat to meet Lu Jin in person.

Han Qinglu is 27 years old this year and his son is 12 years old. Ai Yan, a Mongolian, is 37 years old and his son is 16 years old.

Like Bai Guangtai, Han Qinglu was a surrendered general. He was demoted by Lu Jin to a battalion commander of a thousand households and stayed behind for reorganization and awaiting assignment. However, his 12-year-old son was held hostage by Lu Jin.

As long as they are willing to surrender and their abilities are not too bad, Lu Jin will generally keep them and recruit them. After all, you have to "treat prisoners well". If you don't give them a chance to live, and a fight breaks out in the future, then they will know that surrendering will not end well, and they will have no choice but to hold on to the end.

There was nothing much to say about Han Qinglu's surrender, but Ai Yan, the Mongolian, was interesting. Seeing the father and son standing in the hall, Lu Jin asked curiously, "Are you Mongolian?"

"Yes." Ai Yan immediately replied in Chinese.

"Then why are you willing to surrender to me? Don't you know that I am rebelling against the Mongols?"

Ai Yan immediately said seriously, "Bo Yan is wrong."

"Huh??? What do you mean?" Lu Jin expressed his confusion.

Ai Yan immediately explained, "Bo Yan wants to restore the world under Emperor Taizu, but his approach is wrong."

After this guy explained it, Lu Jin finally understood it roughly.

Ai Yan's family was stranded in the Central Plains during the Battle of the Two Capitals. They belonged to the faction of Yan Temur, and later Bayan also belonged to the faction of Yan Temur.

After Yan Temur won the Battle of the Two Capitals, he died of excessive indulgence, and was later replaced by Bayan.

Boyan was a man with political ambitions. He wanted to restore the glory of the Yuan Dynasty during the reign of Kublai Khan. He proposed many political initiatives at the time, which could probably be understood as "making the Yuan Dynasty great again."

Kublai Khan's reign title was Zhiyuan, so Bayan even re-used the Zhiyuan reign title, which shows his political ambition.

Throughout Chinese history, this is the only case where the same reign title was used twice in the same dynasty.

But Kublai Khan valued the Han people very much at that time, but Bayan was an anti-Han maniac. He believed that the reason why the Yuan Dynasty had fallen into its current state was because it absorbed the Han culture, so he devoted himself to removing the influence of Hanization.

Ai Yan belongs to the same faction of reformers, or the pro-Han faction, while Boyan is a die-hard conservative.

The internal strife of the Mongols lasted from beginning to end. The struggle was very complicated, involving the throne, successor, governing philosophy and so on. If you really can't figure out what they were fighting for, you can roughly assume that it was a struggle between the pro-Han faction and the conservative faction.

The Mongols had a very awkward attitude towards Han culture, or rather, one could say they were conflicted, inferior, and fearful.

Before them, there were also ethnic minorities from the north who had ruled the Central Plains, such as the Xianbei and the Khitan, but in the end, these ethnic minorities were all assimilated by the Han people without exception.

The Mongols were afraid of this. They did not want to be assimilated, but at the same time they wanted to rule the Central Plains stably. However, to rule the Central Plains they had to integrate, so they fell into a vicious circle of "accepting assimilation" or "refusing to accept". Each faction had supporters, leading to endless infighting.

Bayan's original intention was to restore the prosperity of the Kublai Khan period, and Ai Yan agreed with this, but he could not agree with Bayan's anti-Han behavior.

This guy has been dissatisfied with Boyan for a long time, including the current Tuotuo. Ai Yan believes that it is these powerful ministers who have made the Yuan Dynasty what it is today.

Let's look at the floods, droughts and locust plagues in Huaixi in recent years. How was it dealt with during the reign of Kublai Khan? How much attention was paid to agriculture and water conservancy during the reign of Emperor Shizu? Did the current Bayan and Tuotuo ever take care of it?

So faced with the Red Turban Army rising up everywhere and the incompetent rule of the Yuan court's top leaders, Ai Yan, a pro-Han reformist, chose to surrender.

"I heard that the Marshal adopted a Mongolian as his adopted son, so I knew that the Marshal was not the kind of person who would either be a Han or a Mongolian. That's why I was willing to join the Marshal."

"Oh~" Lu Jin suddenly realized that there was a reason for this. Lu Jin leaned back in his chair, tapping the table with his fingers, thinking for a moment before speaking.

"I can take you in, but I can't let you serve in the military."

Ai Yan blinked and said nothing.

Lu Jin added, "Do you know Mongolian? If you do, you can stay and be my teacher. I want to learn Mongolian."

This time Ai Yan couldn't hold it in any longer, "Marshal, there's nothing to learn about Mongolian. It's useless even if you learn it."

Mongolian was created by Genghis Khan Temujin after he established the Mongol Empire. He asked someone to create the Mongolian language based on the Uighur language. The Uighurs used the Uighur language from the Western Regions, which in turn was derived from the Sogdian language from West Asia. Both are phonetic alphabetic scripts. It only took a short time for this version of Mongolian to be created.

After Kublai Khan established the Yuan Dynasty, as the number of ethnic groups in the country increased, he asked Phags-pa, the imperial teacher of the Xuanzhengyuan, to create another set of characters, called Phags-pa script, to be used to unify the writing of official documents. This set of characters took even less time to create.

These two languages ​​have only been around for a hundred years, so they don’t have much background. What is background? It’s books and ideas.

What Ai Yan means is, if you have learned Mongolian but there are no Mongolian books to read, then what is the point of learning it?

Although Boyan was an anti-Han lunatic, he could only learn knowledge from Han books and write in Chinese characters, because there were no books to learn in Mongolian.

This is the inferiority and embarrassment of ancient ethnic minorities when facing the Han people. They can create their own characters, but they don’t have the foundation. It’s useless to create a set of characters without books; in the end you still have to rely on others.

"Hahahaha." Lu Jin laughed immediately after hearing that. "Don't worry about whether what I learn is useful or not. Just tell me whether you are willing to stay and teach me."

In fact, he mainly wanted to learn Mongolian so that he could communicate better with the Mongolian slaves, understand their psychological dynamics, and then carry out propaganda to them. How can you defeat your enemies if you don’t understand them?

"What about my son?"

"He can stay in the army and become a cavalry platoon leader." Lu Jin immediately promised.

"Okay, I agree. Thank you, Marshal, for taking me in." Ai Yan immediately led his son to kneel on one knee and bowed.

"Stand up, can you tell me what Ai Yan means in Chinese?" Lu Jin immediately began to ask this cheap teacher.

"Ai Yan means expedition, it can also be called the Long March." Ai Yan said immediately.

“???” Lu Jin had a head full of question marks and a look of astonishment.

Ai Yan immediately explained, "We Mongolians are used to naming children based on the blessings and expectations of our elders, important events that happened in the family when the child was born, and the age of the grandfather when the child was born.

"My father was away at war when I was born, so I got this name."

"What about your son? What's his name?" Lu Jin pointed at the young man next to him.

"My son's name is Nomonhan."

"?!!!"

Lu Jin felt as if he had seen a ghost. No, it was as if he had seen a ghost being run over.
"Nomonhan means humility when translated into Chinese." Seeing Lu Jin's surprise again, Ai Yan explained again.

At this time, Lu Jin finally stood up and looked at the father and son. "Then I will change your names to Chinese names, are you willing?"
"Yes, please give me a name, Marshal."

"Well, since you can realize the mistakes of Bao Yuan and are willing to turn over a new leaf and join me in the army, I will name you Lu Congdao and your son Lu Qianhou. I hope you can be humble and honest."

"Thank you for the name, Marshal!"

The father and son thanked him again.

"Get up, settle down first, and then go to work."

"Yes."

Watching the father and son leave, Li Shanchang came out and asked, "Marshal, are you going to buy horse bones for a huge sum of money? In preparation for the future surrender of the Tartars?"

Lu Jin nodded, "That's a little bit, but not entirely."

Mongolian generals could indeed be persuaded to surrender. Historically, when the Ming Dynasty launched the Northern Expedition, the Mongolian garrison commander of Taiyuan in Shanxi surrendered directly, allowing the Ming army to capture the important city of Taiyuan without bloodshed.

Selling horse bones for thousands of gold coins and recruiting Mongolian generals was only one aspect. In fact, he wanted to train more talents, so that the grassland could be peaceful and stable for a long time.

Seeing that Lu Jin looked thoughtful, Li Shanchang spoke again.

"General, many scholars have come these days, but we have limited cities now. How should we arrange official positions?"

"how many people?"

"There are more than 50 people, most of them are from Luzhou and Liangxian, and there are also a few from Lu'an."

Lu Jin thought for a moment before saying, "Qin Li and your Li family have both contributed to the surrender of the city, and Bao family also made great contributions to my defeat of Kang Maocai. They can naturally be granted official positions, but if other people are directly granted official positions, I am afraid that someone will say that I am unfair in rewarding and punishing.

"How about this, call the scholars from Chao County, Heyang, Hanshan, and Wuwei, and hold an examination together, and recruit the best candidates based on their examination results. This way, there will be no complaints."

Li Shanchang's eyes lit up when he heard this, "Imperial Examination?"

Lu Jin glanced at him and corrected him, "What imperial examination? Don't talk nonsense. How can we hold an imperial examination in such a small place?"

The house almost caught fire, the pot burned dry, and the house smelled like burnt food (bad luck)
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(End of this chapter)