[Lightscreen]
[Sixty thousand against twenty thousand. No need to talk about "the advantage is mine."
Yet Khwarazm still suffered a crushing defeat. They could not even withstand the Mongols' first assault.
If not for Ala ad-Din Muhammad II's eldest son, Jalal al-Din, arriving in time with reinforcements, Muhammad himself might have been captured.
The Mongol commander Jochi worried that Khwarazm might still have additional forces, and Western Liao had not yet been fully destroyed. After breaking the Khwarazm battle line, he therefore chose to burn the camp and withdraw back to Temujin's main force.
Two years later, Western Liao fell. Seeing such a fat prize lying before him, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II could not resist taking a bite. He annexed a large portion of Western Liao's former territory, creating a direct conflict of interests with the Mongols.
Temujin, who had unified the steppe and took pride in ruthless decisiveness, was not the sort of man who would let Khwarazm jump around unchecked.
After destroying Western Liao, Temujin even wrote to Ala ad-Din Muhammad II in an unusually earnest tone:
"I know your strength and the vastness of your lands, so I am willing to speak with you properly. I regard you as I would a beloved son."
One suspects Temujin may have been reading the Three Kingdoms before writing that letter and misunderstood the famous line about sons and heroes, producing a real-world version of it.
Whether Ala ad-Din Muhammad II found that flattering or insulting, no one knows. Not long afterward, Khwarazm was swept into the dustbin of history by the Mongols.
Soon after sending the letter, Temujin invaded Khwarazm under the banner of avenging the murdered trade caravan and envoys.
Were there Mongol spies among the merchants who were killed? Most likely. The timing of the Mongol invasion was almost unnervingly precise.
In just five years, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II had expanded his realm enormously. That expansion brought enormous administrative strain. Meanwhile his mother, Empress Dowager Terken, constantly interfered in state affairs. Because she disliked her eldest grandson Jalal al-Din, she pressured her son to strip him of the position of heir and replace him with a younger grandson who pleased her more.
Given another five years, Ala ad-Din Muhammad II might have had time to stabilize his new territories and balance the conflicts within his own family. But the Mongols were not inclined to grant him that time.
In 1219, the Mongols formally went to war with Khwarazm. Muhammad chose to defend along the Syr Darya, but Mongol forces quickly broke through. With generals dying one after another and no way to reverse the situation, Muhammad fled west. He eventually escaped to an unnamed island in the Caspian Sea, where he died of illness.
At that point, the Mongol armies split into two forces.
Jalal al-Din resisted stubbornly and retreated south, drawing Temujin himself into pursuit. The chase eventually carried the Mongols into India.
Meanwhile Subutai and Jebe were ordered to pursue Muhammad. They never found him. Instead they crossed the Caucasus, struck into the Kipchak lands, defeated the coalition of Rus princes near Kiev, and only then withdrew their troops.
By 1225, when Genghis Khan returned to the Mongolian steppe after the First Western Campaign, he judged that the time had come to destroy Jin.
With Mongol forces already having captured Yanjing and entered Hebei, Temujin used the excuse that the Jin emperor had violated agreements and fled south on his own authority, and launched another war to annihilate Jin.]
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"This… why is the world so vast?"
Zhu Yuanzhang stared as the extremely detailed map kept shrinking.
The Yangtze and Yellow Rivers became faint lines. The territory of Ming itself shrank to two palm-sized patches at the eastern edge of the map.
Then just a few strokes extended westward, with simple shifts of color, and the Mongol western campaigns unfolded before him.
From the northern steppe the lines stretched westward into Western Liao. The label vanished, its territory turning the same color as the Mongols.
More lines split off and pointed toward Khwarazm. After fierce clashes around the city called Samarkand, the Mongol routes split again.
One force went south, chasing the name Jalal al-Din.
Another drove west, passed the great Caspian lake, campaigned even farther beyond, and finally looped back.
Empress Ma, however, seemed less surprised. If anything, understanding dawned in her eyes.
"So the records about the Yuan are true after all. Their reach extended far beyond ten thousand li."
Zhu Yuanzhang still could not hide his astonishment.
"But those records never said the lands in all directions were this enormous."
"I told you before to read more, Chongba," Empress Ma said calmly. "You aimed to restore China, yes, but the Yuan lasted a full century. There were lessons there worth studying."
Her expression hardened slightly.
"Yet every time you read those Yuan histories, you skimmed them. Otherwise you would not be this surprised now."
The Ming emperor immediately raised his hands in surrender.
"It's not that I couldn't read them. Those Yuan names are just impossible to remember. And they say there were brother states in the far west… if that were true, why didn't any of them come to help when the Yuan fell? It didn't sound believable…"
Seeing the faint smile on his wife's face, he could only wave his hand again in defeat.
"Fine. If it's true, that just proves even the Yuan couldn't govern such a vast territory. For me, thinking about it is useless anyway."
Empress Ma felt a trace of helplessness.
Her husband had risen from poverty to rule the empire, something she had always been proud of.
Yet perhaps because he had suffered so much in his youth, he showed two opposite tendencies.
On one hand, in governing the state he spared no effort, even abolishing the office of chancellor and taking all affairs upon himself without regard for exhaustion.
On the other, he was stubborn about anything whose benefits were not immediately visible.
"Then aren't you worried, Chongba, that a hundred years from now another northern people like the Mongols might come from the west and bring disaster to the Central Plains?"
"They'd have to pass Beiping and Guanzhong first."
Zhu Yuanzhang spoke with complete confidence.
"Didn't that young fellow just say it himself? Even when Genghis Khan came in person with three armies, he still couldn't break the fortress at Beiping."
"But didn't that person also mention gunpowder?"
Empress Ma remembered clearly.
"Gunpowder… I recall the army calls the material used in firearms 'fire powder.' Since ancient times it's also been called medicinal powder. Perhaps it refers to the same thing."
"Think about it, Chongba. If the power of those 'Great General' cannons were increased tenfold, would Beiping still be safe?"
Firearms were not rare in the Ming army. Empress Ma knew her husband valued them greatly. The military even classified them by size and power, giving them names like Great General, Second General, Gate-Breaker General, and so on.
"But can the Great General really become ten times stronger? The armorers told me they're already extremely hard to produce. Out of ten castings, one success is lucky. How could they improve further?"
Zhu Yuanzhang remained cautious and doubtful.
Empress Ma did not grow annoyed. Her reasoning remained orderly.
"When King Wu overthrew Zhou at Muye with war chariots, did he imagine that Han and Tang armies would one day charge in full armored cavalry?"
"When Li Jing launched his night raid through snow, did he imagine that today we would have firearms that ordinary soldiers could learn to use in a matter of weeks, capable of defeating elite troops?"
"These changes in weapons are things you yourself once spoke of to me."
"So why do you now believe that nothing stronger than firearms will appear in the future?"
Hearing his own past reflections used against him, Zhu Yuanzhang found himself without an answer.
"And besides…"
Empress Ma leaned forward slightly, studying the map with care.
"Guanzhong and Hebei have their natural passes."
"But what if the raiders come by sea?"