Dominate the Country

The cold wind from the east was still blowing, and the fields were empty, except for the village on the other side of the woods. The curling smoke indicated that it was time for lunch.

A few miles east of the village was a small river. But the river surface was completely sealed!

This is the winter on the Kazakh grassland, it is so cold.

The border patrol troops of the Chahar Khanate led by Badma Dorji have tried their best to recruit Khalkha Mongols, Buryat Mongols and people with strong body and cold resistance, but soldiers in the army still suffer from frostbite from time to time. Even though they are wearing very thick leather and cotton coats, they are wrapped up like a big stupid bear, but now they are still as cold as ice.

From a geographical dimension, the main tribes in their Chahar Khanate are Mongolian tribes in eastern Inner Mongolia. The dimension of their hometown is not further south than the Kazakh grassland, but in winter, they always feel that it is much colder here than the old Chahar.

Especially this year, Badma Dorji's border patrol troops have moved to the south of the Khanate and have already bordered the Kokand Khanate, but the damn weather is still so cold.

Time flies, and ten years have passed in the blink of an eye.

In the eighteenth year of Chengtian, three Kazakh Khanates and four Mongolian Khanates were officially established in the northwest territory. And now the Spring Festival of the twenty-ninth year of Chengtian is coming.

The seven newly born small Khanates have already established a foothold in their respective territories, and their children have multiplied for a generation.

But they strictly follow the instructions of Nanjing, and the conflicts with the three Khanates of Kokand, Bukhara and Khiva are getting more and more intense.

This year your sheep ran to my territory to eat grass, and tomorrow my horse came to your grassland to wander. First, there was a conflict between the people in the border area, and then it evolved into a remote shooting in the border area, and finally the "bandits" appeared, and it was not one or two days, but for two whole years.

From a dozen people at the beginning, it has evolved into a group of hundreds of people now. The soldiers and braves in it have quickly changed from the border defense troops of both sides to real "bandits".

The means of "plundering" have also evolved from the initial money-only to the current killing and robbing.

Now, the border patrol team led by Badma Dorji - a cavalry army wearing white cloaks and white fur cotton hats, is lurking in a frozen riverbed somewhere. In order to completely hide the whereabouts of the troops, all the people are crawling on the ice and the river bank, and even their war horses are pressed down by the soldiers, lying on their sides beside the soldiers, snorting one after another. Many war horses hate this posture and often lift their four hooves.

The teacher of the Chahar cavalry is Chen Han's National Defense Army cavalry. Some of their horses are Mongolian horses and Kazakh horses that they own, and the other part is good horses bought from China at a high price. Chen Han has been improving the war horse breed for 20 to 30 years, and there have been considerable results.

The Great Northwest is a place with vast land and sparse population. Horses are the main means of transportation here. There are many families with horses at home. Raising horses, cattle and sheep is the main source of income for the people here.

The Great Northwest is one of the two major ranches in China, and the seven small khanates are the seven small ranch owners of the large ranch in the northwest of China.

As the owners of the ranch, they certainly know that the quality of the horses they have is not very good. The military horses improved by Chen Ming have become the goal pursued by the seven khanates. Chen Ming also sold a batch to them. After all, he wants to strengthen their strength and consolidate their rule.

In recent years, Chen Han's support for the seven khanates can be said to be unsparing, from instructors to officer training, from long and short guns and artillery to war horses, software and hardware.

Although the trained army has only shown its skills on the exercise field and looks like a model, no one can tell its real combat effectiveness.

At the same time, the national strength of the Kokand Khanate has also increased to a certain extent in recent years, which is far more powerful than the Khiva Khanate and the Bukhara Khanate in the quagmire. Its Khan Ailimu hired a large number of Kyrgyz people, the main force of the original Junggar army, as mercenaries and artillery of Kokand to strengthen its military strength, and with the secret funding of the Russians, it successfully unified the Fergana region.

The several small forces supported by Chen Han can only be said to have slightly tripped up Kokand's pace, and none of them can be called a drag. The reason is that in addition to Ailimu's own talent, it is the secret support of the Russians.

Just like China intervened on the west coast of the Caspian Sea on one side and supported the seven khanates on the other side, the severely injured Russians are also fully supporting the three khanates of Kokand, Khiva and Bukhara for safety reasons, and they are most optimistic about Kokand among these three khanates.

If there were no China, after solving the three Kazakh accounts, the three khanates would have become Russia's next coveted target, but now everything has changed. Russia not only has no delusion about the three khanates, but also has to rely on the three khanates to hold the Chinese back.

As for why St. Petersburg was not worried about the surrender of the three khanates to China, just look at China's attitude towards the three khanates in recent years and you will know that these three khanates have been on the Emperor Chen's menu.

With Russia's strong help, the Khanate of Kokand benefited the most. At the same time, Alimu also launched a target to contain the seven khanates, and even China. The person who was launched by Alimu to compete with the seven khanates was Samsak, the eldest son of the Great Khoja Polonidu. Forty-three years ago, the Qing Dynasty put down the rebellion of the brothers of the Great Khoja Polonidu and the Little Khoja Khojizhan. Samsak fled to the Khanate of Kokand, the Khanate of Bukhara and other places, and has been committed to the restoration of family rule.

Samusak gave birth to three sons. The eldest son Yusufu was an Aom in Bukhara, the second son was Zhang Geer, and the youngest son Babu Ding died young.

In the history of the original time and space, Zhang Geer, with the support of the Kokand Khanate, caused great trouble to the Manchu Qing Dynasty. In this current era, Zhang Geer has also caused a lot of trouble for the Seven Khanates. Although he didn't have many troops in his hands, he didn't fight to the death with the regular army of the Seven Khanates.

As the commander of this cavalry unit, Badmadolzi himself was prostrate on the earth embankment by the river, keeping his eyes on the west.

The Military Intelligence Bureau sent out a lot of information about Zhang Geer, Samusak and his son, but there was very little exact information about Samusak's bandits. This time was a rare opportunity.

Although a small village can be seen in the snow-covered wilderness, almost no one can be seen. But Badma Dorji knew that the goal of his party was in this village.

The influence of the big and small Hezhuo families in the northwest cannot be underestimated. After all, the vitality of the Sufi sect is very strong - is he the leader of the Baishan sect? Even though Chen Han attacked it many times and took such a long time, the influence of the Baishan Sect could not be completely eradicated, and Samsak was highly praised in both the Kokand and Bukhara Khanates. Enjoy the status of 'saint'.

Therefore, in some places with a large number of indigenous residents, there are quite a few who serve as white-eyed wolves along the way for bandit soldiers.

Now this small village or even the whole village is full of bandits.

After the establishment of the Seven Khanates, although nomadism was the main way of life for the Mongols and Kazakhs, there were also settled villages, and their number increased rapidly in the past ten years.

The Mongols and Kazakhs are far less powerful than Chen Han in controlling the internal affairs. After all, aren't these seven small khanates all powerful hilltop forces? This inherently limits the Khan's control over the local area.

But in the past two years, small settled villages on the borders of the Seven Khanates have gradually become connected into a network. The Khan Court also distributed guns, gunpowder and even small cannons to enhance the defense of each village.

However, until the defense chain is completely formed, these measures can only restrict the bandits, but cannot completely isolate them. Even the existence of these bandits stimulated the birth of settled villages and towns to a certain extent.

The Seven Khanates' severe suppression strategy against the bandits was also a good opportunity for them to completely clean up the interior! You can also clean up those 'own people' who cheat on weekdays.

When the Seven Khanates were established, some people from Xinjiang also ran over. Although most of them are Mongolians, there are some of them.

The enemy on the opposite side was a mixed team of Kokand soldiers, Kirgiz cavalry and some Xinjiang natives, numbering about a hundred people. Everyone deserves a horse, maybe even more than one.

According to reconnaissance, this bandit army does not have heavy weapons, and no matter how light the cavalry artillery is, it is impossible to drag them out in this environment. Therefore, these people only have muskets in their hands, and not even one per person. Many of them also carry swords, guns, bows and arrows. And it can be known from the intelligence that the morale of these people is not very high. The intelligence description uses two words to describe the appearance of this army-the clothes are 'ragged' and the temperament is 'lazy'. With such a unified team, it is obvious that the soldiers have no fighting spirit and their fighting spirit is very low. Badma Dorzi is confident that he will fight a beautiful ambush here and annihilate these stubborn bandits.

But this requires the enemy to walk out of the village obediently. On the other side of the village, to the north is the mountain forest. Badma Dorji dared to swear on his ancestors that as soon as he showed up with his troops, those gangsters would definitely scurry back into the mountains like mice. Even those mountains and forests are not suitable for horses to run around.

He had to wait for them to walk out of the village and into the wilderness before he could give full play to the tactical advantages of the cavalry and defeat the enemy in one fell swoop.

And the wilderness in front of us is indeed a good battlefield.

——It was originally a pasture, but now of course nothing will grow in winter. The extremely low temperature freezes the ground very hard, which is just perfect for a cavalry assault.

Time passed little by little. Waiting is the most painful thing. Badmadolzi glanced at his pocket watch again, feeling very anxious. Of course, while he was furious inside, he was also worried about the army behind the woods. It was a squadron of troops, without horses, and Badmadolzi did not know whether they were in place now.

As the captain of the border patrol, Badma Dorzi was very worried.

Because the latter's actions are directly related to whether he can annihilate all the bandit soldiers in this battle, they are in the dark.

The smoke from the village had disappeared for some time, and the sound of people neighing and horses crowing faintly came with the wind, and finally there was movement. Bandit soldiers will not stay in one place for too long, unless it is in the mountains.

"Send the order! Everyone moves their hands and feet, checks the condition of the horses, and checks the weapons. The charge horn is not sounding, and no one is allowed to jump out of the river. Everyone lie down for me. Wait until these stubborn bandits approach!"

Badmadolzi's orders were fully implemented. The cavalry were already ready for battle. Before riding their horses and rushing over to kill them, they had to act as infantry again and launch a sudden fire attack on the stubborn bandits to disperse them.

After all, no one wants to die. No matter how bad the bandit soldiers are, there are still hundreds of them.

After waiting for more than half an hour, the stubborn bandits slowly drove out of the village. It seemed that there were more people than expected. Although there were less than 300 people, it was definitely more than 200.

"Be careful!" Before the enemy came close, Badma Dorzi shouted, and the correspondent quickly conveyed his order. Everyone lay down on the foot of the river embankment, leaving only a few observation posts on the top. Carefully poke out half of your head.

"One thousand meters!"

"Eight hundred meters!"

"Five hundred meters!"

The observation post used instruments to measure the distance between the enemy and the river bed. As the distance got closer and closer, the sound became quieter and quieter, while the soldiers adjusted their muskets according to the reported distance.

Badma Dorji set the firing distance at two hundred meters, and there was a burst of gunfire, and then the cavalry attacked.

Every regular cavalry member of the Chahar Khanate border guard is equipped with a pistol. There is no need to worry about winning or losing this battle, it just depends on how quickly and neatly you fight.

"Two hundred meters!"

Badma Dorzi stretched out half of his head and glanced at the oncoming enemy team: "Hit!"

"Pah! Pah!..."

The crisp sounds of musket fire intertwined together, turning this peaceful snowfield into a killing field in just an instant. The stubborn bandits who entered the range of the fire suddenly lay down and howled miserably.

The team at the front was hit hard, and the team at the back reacted immediately. However, instead of rushing to help their comrades, they turned around and ran in the direction they came from. But there is no way to escape!

This battle is just an appetizer for the Chahar cavalry. In the past, they could not catch the bandit soldiers, but they could not defeat the bandit soldiers.

Badma Dorji got a big advantage because Zhang Geer died. The bandits who were ambushed turned out to be led by Zhang Geer himself.

And Zhang Geer, a guy who could still leave a mark in the original Chinese history, died silently on the Kazakh prairie in winter as a leader of horse bandits. Until his death, his name had not reached Chen Ming's ears even once.