Geldan was the most powerful social big brother among the Mongols in the late 17th century, he could play and blow, and he was born to be the material of the big brother. When He was young, Geldan returned home to inherit his ancestral inheritance and was able to single-handedly kill dozens of enemy troops; in his prime, he took Xinjiang, and also fought all over inner and outer Mongolia, with outstanding record of group fighting, and his combat ability was barely able to squeeze into the top ten of Mongolia's strong men. When He was a teenager, Geldan worshiped the Fifth Dalai Lama as a teacher, had the title of a living Buddha in Tibet, had the ability to have a lotus flower with a brilliant tongue, and his ability to brag about being frightening was no less than that of his brother Wei Xiaobao, and he could fool Kangxi's brother Fu Quan to play in, and he could even brag about the Kangxi monarchs and ministers.
His biggest cowhide was that he claimed to be familiar with Peter the Great and could easily borrow sixty thousand shotguns from Tsarist Russia. In the spring of 1696, Kangxi commanded a 100,000-strong army of three roads on the left, center, and right, on an expedition to Geldan. Gordan began a bragging show, claiming that he had only twenty thousand Mongol cavalry under his command, but his old Iron Peter the Great would send it
"Sixty thousand Russian shotguns will commit large-scale internal crimes." The distribution of the Qing army's three-way army was 34,000 people in the Middle Route Army led by Kangxi himself, and nearly 60,000 people on the left and right roads, which could have been easily Gerdan's men and horses, but if 60,000 Russian shotguns were added, it would constitute an overwhelming advantage over Kangxi's middle road, and Kangxi himself would have to take great risks. Suo Etu and the others did not dare to take risks and begged Kangxi to withdraw his troops.
This cowhide is blown very big, not to mention Peter the Great, even the European royal family group financing is difficult. First of all, let's look at the russian forces.
In the 1680s, Russia had a regular army of 144,600 men, as well as more than 50,000 Irregular troops such as Cossacks. The total strength of Tsarist Russia in Siberia and the Far East was only more than 6,000 people, and the Tsarist russia and the Manchu Qing PK could only dispatch hundreds of Cossacks like blind streams, and the Dzungar PK could only dispatch up to more than 3,000 people.
Gordan launched the Crusade in 1688, a year after peter the great overthrew his sister Princess Sophia, and before Peter the Great came to power, Gordan had no practical connection with him. In the same year that Geldan sent another army to Mongolia, Peter the Great sent 30,000 troops on an expedition to the Sea of Azov; at the time of the Great War gordan and Feyangu, Peter the Great was still fighting the Ottoman Empire on land and water. So when Gordan bragged, Tsarist Russia was really powerless.
Gordan also named the shotgun soldiers of Tsarist Russia, but at that time, Tsarist Russia was undergoing military reform, and Peter the Great could not make up the shotgun soldiers he wanted even by smashing pots and selling iron. The so-called shotguns are the shooting army of Tsarist Russia, and the heavy arquebus projectiles they use are more powerful than the shotguns of the Qing army, and have always been feared by the Qing army. In the 1680s, the total number of Russian shooting troops was only 51,000, and this group of people was a fan of Princess Sophia, and Peter the Great was not the same enemy.
In 1697, when Geldan committed suicide by poisoning, Peter the Great began to mull military reforms. In 1698, Peter the Great, who was frustrated by the Kangxi Dynasty, began to abolish the shooting army, mixing the remaining 20,000 shooting army with the newly formed 90,000 army, and using external officers to carry out military reforms. From 1698 to 1710, Tsarist Russia was carrying out military reforms while fighting sweden, and the Russian army participating in the Northern Alliance was only 40,000 people. It was not until 1710 that Tsarist Russia formed a new army of 42 infantry regiments and 62,000 men, when Gordan's graves were already green.
In the second half of the 17th century, the total strength of the entire European army was 1.3 million, and the Russian army was not the first. At that time, the real army of Europe was France, the French Army of louis XIV, which guaranteed a total strength of more than 300,000 troops (plus a navy of more than 50,000 people, the total strength was more than 400,000), more than the sum of all neighboring countries. After Louis XIV came to power, he could send up to 200,000 people to neighboring countries to seize territory at a time, and in the nine years that Gordan was plagued by Mongolia, Louis XIV happened to be fighting the 9-year war, and the total strength of the French army reached 440,000 people, accounting for one-third of the total number of European troops. The strength of Louis XIV caused unprecedented panic among the European royal families, who together gathered more than 300,000 troops against France. The Northern War in which Peter the Great and Charles XII were involved also mobilized more than 200,000 European troops (235,000 in the opening phase, and it was only after the 18th century that the Russians defeated Sweden). The remaining European armies, such as Austria, also had to draw troops to defend against the Invasion of the Ottoman Empire.
At the end of the 17th century, even the royal families of Europe could not really gather 60,000 troops to participate in the affairs of the East, and Gordan's cowhide was indeed blown too big. Kangxi did not know the situation in Europe, but he judged that Gordan was at the end of the road and continued to march despite opposition. Gordan did not frighten Kangxi and could only fight against Feyangu, only to kick himself on the iron plate and commit suicide by taking poison in 1697.