It is said that in 1717, the leader of the Dzungars, Tserry Alabutan, fought everywhere, conquered the Kazakh Khanate to the west, conquered the Yarkand Khanate to the south, defeated the Russians to the north, blocked the pace of polar bear expansion, and coveted Outer Mongolia to the east, establishing a powerful Dzungar Khanate. At this moment, the deluded Alabutan is dreaming of once again realizing the great cause of Genghis Khan and restoring the glory of the former Mongol Empire. #清朝史话 #
Tserry Alabutan
In this year, in the name of sending back the wife and son of Dzungar to Lazang Khan, he sent troops from Kashgar and secretly crossed the inaccessible Ali region and suddenly appeared in front of Lazang Khan. Because Lhazang Khan was caught off guard and did not have time to mobilize his troops, he was chased and beaten by the Mongol soldiers of Dzungar all the way to Lhasa and surrounded by the Potala Palace. In the end, he could not hold on, and when he broke through, he was killed by the Mongol soldiers of Dzungar, and Tibet fell into the hands of Dzungar.
The news reached Beijing, Kangxi was furious, for the Qing Dynasty, Tibet must not fall into the hands of the Dzungars, otherwise it will cause a chain reaction, and those Mongol princes who have already attached to the Qing Dynasty will have different intentions! He could not wait for a moment, and immediately sent troops from Sichuan, but he did not expect to be defeated by Dzungar and the whole army was destroyed. But no matter how much it cost, Kangxi had to retake Tibet, and in 1720, he sent one of the most famous figures in the Qing palace drama, the Fourteen Brothers Yinyu, to lead the Qing army and the Heshuo Mongol cavalry, and finally defeated the Mongol Dzungars and retaken Tibet.
Fourteen brothers in the film and television drama
However, this also reached the limit of the empire's ability, and Kangxi could not control the Western Mongols in Xinjiang and Central Asia, because although he had defeated the Mongol Dzungars several times before, they were all in Mongolia, relying on the help of other Mongol princes. Therefore, he is not yet capable of extending his hand to Xinjiang and Central Asia. Later, his son, the Yongzheng Emperor, also made several efforts, but all of them were lost and in vain, and they were wartime and peaceful. But when Qianlong succeeded to the throne, everything changed, so why did the Mongols suddenly stop working?
Qianlong
It turned out that it was because of his belief in Lamaism that the Mongols were crushed. You may be surprised, why did the Tibetan lamaism bring down the Mongols? To figure out this problem, we have to start from the beginning and listen to the editor in detail.
First of all, the Mongols were originally nomadic peoples, with no place to live, their actions were erratic, one in the east and the other in the west, and it was difficult to eliminate them, which was their biggest difference. This is also the place where the Central Plains Dynasties faced the most headaches in the face of the invasion of nomads, it was easy to defeat them and drive them away, and it was difficult to gather and annihilate them. Secondly, they believed in shamanism at that time, engaged in the worship of all things, and did not need to build any temples, wherever they went, they wanted to worship heaven and earth, kill a few sheep, slaughter a few cows, and light a bunch of fires, and then they could start jumping the gods.
Shamanic rituals
Therefore, there is nothing for the Mongols to worry about, and this is the source of their strength!
But when they believed in Tibetan Lamaism, they began to build temples, and it was very expensive to build temples, and they spent all their savings at once, and once they were repaired, they looked east and west, and they always felt that they could decorate it more beautifully. Therefore, the believers began to donate money continuously, and the more they cultivated, the more grand they were, the more luxurious they were, and the more reluctant they were to leave.
This has three serious consequences.
First, they became poor, because for the Mongols, nomadic life was only to ensure that they had food to eat, and to get rich, they had to plunder everywhere. Now once everyone goes out to fight, they are always worried about the temple they built, the windows are closed, whether the door is locked, whether there will be thieves, always rest assured, so they are more and more reluctant to go out, the opportunity to go out and loot is less, and natural money cannot be earned.
lamasery
Second, because of the temple, all the Mongols, many things in life, must often consult with lamas and ask for instructions from the gods, so the range of ordinary herders' nomadic herding has become smaller and smaller, which has led to serious degradation of their grasslands, so their livelihoods have become increasingly difficult, and the rate of population growth has naturally slowed down.
At the same time, due to religious belief, a large number of young men went to become lamas, and eating and praying to the Buddha all day long not only led to a decrease in their soldiers, but also consumed their will, turning them from a group of fierce and mighty Mongol warriors into a bunch of chattering Tang monks, all of whom were femaleized. At the same time, a large number of young men went to become lamas, which also led to late marriage and late childbearing, and the birth rate on the grassland was lower than that in the Central Plains, so that their population weakness was more obvious.
Third, and finally, most importantly, due to the large number of lama temples, a large number of markets were born around the temple, so merchants from all over the world came to bring goods and diseases. Qianlong just waited for this time, when he sent troops to attack, the Mongol Dzungars, broke out of large-scale smallpox, according to Wei Yuan and other Qing Dynasty records, 40% of the Mongols died of pox, that is, died of smallpox.
This would never have happened, because the Mongols were not afraid of infectious diseases, which was determined by their lifestyle, such as the Black Death, which killed 1/3 of the population of Europe, which originated in Mongolia. But the Mongols were unscathed, and they were not very worried about this, because if they followed the previous way of life and were nomadic on a large scale, as long as they did not send troops to fight, it was difficult for families to meet once a year, so even if there was an outbreak of infectious diseases, at most a family would be destroyed, and it would be difficult to infect the entire tribe.
But once there is a temple, things are different. Everyone came to the temple to worship every three to five, and when they were sick, they worshiped diligently, and then they walked around the surrounding markets, people next to each other, people crowded people, so that once the epidemic broke out, none of them could run away. The Mongolians' health level is already low, and they lack the corresponding crisis management capabilities, so once the disease breaks out, it will immediately cause large-scale deaths.
Therefore, when Qianlong attacked Dzungar and regained Xinjiang, the opponents he faced were simply vulnerable, and the fierce and belligerent Mongols faced by his father and grandfather were completely two kinds of people, because there were very few lama temples at that time, so most of the Mongols were still full of martial spirit and combative spirit.
The lama temple given the name of Qianlong
Therefore, what made the entire Mongolian nation withdraw from the stage of history was to repair temples. The Mongols, including those in Central Asia, suddenly lost their fighting power, and in fact, it was the same problem. So later Qianlong said that one temple is better than 100,000 soldiers, which is the truth. During his term of office alone, he took out his own private money and invested tens of millions of taels of silver to build lama temples in Mongolia, one more luxurious than the other.
By the way, not only the Mongols around China are no longer able to do it, but even on the volga river far away, the Mongolian Turks, who also believe in Lamaism, are no longer able to do it, and due to changes in lifestyle, their combat effectiveness is also plummeting, from the beginning it was very much relied on by the Russians, and gradually became looked down upon by them.
Turgut warriors
Naturally, their social status plummeted. During the Kangxi Dynasty, Peter the Great once held a grand banquet in the border cities of the two countries to entertain the Great Khan of the Mongolian Turks, and treated him with great courtesy. However, when it came to his grandson, Empress Ezecarina II actually ordered them to hand over 300 noble sons to Moscow as hostages, and began to force them to convert to orthodoxy, so they felt a little confused, and began to plot to return to Xinjiang.
There is little gossip, so how did Qianlong seize this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to sweep away the Dzungars in one fell swoop?
Later, when the Dzungar Khanate died, his son Kaldan Zero Tsering succeeded to the throne, and during his reign, the Dzungar Khanate reached an unprecedented territory. In addition to the entire xinjiang region, he occupied a large area of Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and southern Siberia, covering an area of up to 5 million square kilometers at one point.
Ten years after Qianlong, after the death of Kaldan Zero Ce, according to the customs in the steppe, a struggle between you and me began within the Mongolian Dzungars. Previously, when Alabutan had just died, the Yongzheng Emperor wanted to take the opportunity to retake Xinjiang and sent a large army, but it was defeated by his son Gardan Zero Ce and almost completely destroyed. This time, Qianlong got a better chance, and Gardan's son, daughter, and son-in-law got together, but because of the lesson of his father Yongzheng, Qianlong still did not dare to rush into action.
Until the arrival of a man, he was the great nobleman of the Dzungar Huit Ministry, Amir Sana, who supported another Dzungar nobleman, Dawazi, to ascend the throne during the civil war, but did not expect this guy, who turned his face faster than he took off his pants, and had just given Amir Sana a place, and it was not long before he had to take it back. And Amir Sana was not a good bird, he felt that Dawaci did not give enough places, so he wanted more places, and the two men did not agree, and immediately fought.
At the same time that both of them were fighting each other to the death, Tsarist Russia was not idle, sending a large number of spies and lobbyists on both sides, hoping to profit from it and take the opportunity to seize Xinjiang. In the end, Amir Sana was defeated, and after much deliberation in the face of the temptation of the Tsarist Russians, he decided to defect to the Qing Dynasty and asked Qianlong to help him send troops to help him regain control of Dzungar. Qianlong had been waiting for this opportunity for a long time, but he had another abacus in his mind. So he agreed, and immediately sent a large army of more than 50,000 eight banners, green battalions and Mongol cavalry to assist Amir Sana in attacking Dawazi.
Dawazi led more than 6,000 cavalry in an attempt to hold a key pass, but the Mongol soldiers at this time were really degraded. At that time, the Qing army guard Ayuxi led 25 soldiers to launch a night attack, and actually destroyed 6,000 people! If Genghis Khan knew about it in the Spirit of Heaven, I don't know how he would be heartbroken? Dawachi escaped in defeat, only to be captured by a local official in the city of Ush (near Aksu), dedicated to the Qing court, and sent to Beijing, where he was later pardoned by Qianlong and raised as a duke in Beijing.
Ayuxi
Amir Sana was so pleased that he thought he had succeeded. But then, Qianlong gave him a small accident, not only did not make him the Khan of Dzungar, but on the contrary, Qianlong wanted to split the Dzungar into several pieces and bring it into the direct administration of the Qing government like Inner and Outer Mongolia. Because the purpose of the Qing government is to solve the Mongolian problem once and for all, so that the Mongols will never have the opportunity to make a comeback.
So Amir Sana was furious, is there such a trick? He was determined to rebel, but he did not know that this was the pit that Qianlong had dug for him, and he was waiting for him to rebel, so that he could justifiably take the whole of Xinjiang. However, the Dingbei general Bandi, who carried out this policy on the front line, did not fully understand Qianlong's meaning and did not take into account Amir Sana, and was likely to launch a rebellion as a result, and must be highly vigilant and ready to suppress it at any time.
The Qing army conquered Dzungartu
As a result, he was too big, and only 500 soldiers were accompanied, and sure enough, as Qianlong expected, Amir Sana launched a rebellion, and as a result, Bandi was surrounded by tens of thousands of cavalry and committed suicide and martyrdom. The Qing army then arrived and defeated Amir Sana, who fled to Russia and later died of smallpox. However, some other nobles of the Dzungars were also unwilling to accept the direct rule of the Qing Dynasty, and launched several rebellions, which were finally easily crushed by the Qing army.
This also gave Qianlong the excuse to kill the ring, and in order to cut the grass and remove the roots, the massacre of the Dzungars by the Qing army inevitably began. Qianlong's holy will reads: "As soon as the army arrives, men, women, old and young, the jade is burned, and no one is left." The general on the front line wrote back to Qianlong: "Summoning the men to come out, slaughtering with sound." Qianlong was very satisfied after reading it, and it seemed that Qianlong was worthy of being a really cruel person! Although cruel, the unfulfilled long-cherished wishes of the grandfather and father were fulfilled in his hands after all!
As a result, of the hundreds of thousands of households in the Dzungars, except for 40% who died in smallpox, 20% who fled to Russia, 30% who died in wars and massacres, and only 10% of the survivors were relocated to Inner and Outer Mongolia. Since then, the Dzungars of Mongolia have disappeared into the long river of history. Although Qianlong's move was extremely cruel, the nomadic problem that had plagued the Central Plains Dynasty for thousands of years was completely over, and Xinjiang was included in the direct administration of the Central Plains for the first time. Of course, the cost is also tragic, and the large grasslands in northern Xinjiang have become no man's land for a long time.
Soon after, the Mongolian Turguts, who lived on the Volga River, suddenly appeared on the border of Xinjiang, and there were only 60,000 or 70,000 people left, and they asked the Qing government to take them in. The news startled Qing officials, how did they suddenly appear on the edge of Xinjiang?
Turgut returns to the east
It turned out that in 1771 (the thirty-fifth year of Qianlong), the leader of the Turks, Wobasi, could not stand the oppression of the Russians and decided to return to the east with his troops, and when they heard that the Qing army had defeated Dzungar, they wanted to return to occupy Xinjiang and make a comeback. Therefore, under the leadership of Wolbasi, the Turbats divided into three roads, drove the herds, carried heavy weights, and embarked on a arduous journey back to China.
Wolbassier had planned to wait for the Volga To freeze before setting off, but the plan was for the Russians to detect, so he decided to act ahead of time. Because the river had not yet frozen, more than 10,000 families on the west bank of the Volga River could not return to the east, and later became the Kalmyks of Russia, establishing the Kalmyk Republic in the Russian Federation. Empress Catherine II of Russia, upon learning of the news, immediately sent Cossack cavalry in pursuit and instructed the Kazakhs along the way to send troops to block the attack.
Along the way, the Turks annihilated the Russian garrison, as well as reinforcements, destroyed Russian fortresses, crossed the frozen Ural River, and entered the snow-covered Kazakh steppe, leaving the pursuing Russians far behind. Marching to the Ochen Gorge (in present-day Kazakhstan) was the only way to return to the east, but the Kazakh cavalry had seized the pass, and Wolbasid made a strategy, attacked himself head-on, sent another team to encircle the rear, and finally annihilated the other side.
Although they were victorious in successive battles, the Turks also suffered heavy losses, and in the Kazakh steppe, they were attacked by the Kazakhs, and more than 9,000 Turks were killed in the fierce battle. In addition to the battle losses, smallpox also followed them like shadows, constantly killing their people, and there were fewer and fewer people.
As they crossed the Kazakh steppe, bypassed the southern tip of Lake Balkhash, and entered the Kazakh territory that was then part of China, the Ili general Iltu ordered the Kazakhs not to allow Wolbasi to pass because he did not know their intentions. In desperation, Wolbasi turned to Shalabok, and was attacked by the Kyrgyz people, and had to go north to the Gobi, all the way to the extremely difficult.
When they finally reached the edge of Xinjiang, which already belonged to China, less than half of them were still alive, and they were no longer able to attack Xinjiang, but could only linger around the border. The Qing dynasty general Ili, Illetu, was very nervous about this, believing that nomads came from afar and usually had bad intentions. After several days of consultation with the tribal leaders and lamas, Wolbasi had no choice but to come and surrender, and offered the jade seal of the eight years of Yongle in the Ming Dynasty to show his sincerity.
Within the Qing Dynasty, in order to accept them, a fierce debate took place. Everyone knows that the Turks originally planned to occupy Xinjiang, but it was only because of the losses in the battle along the way, plus the complete loss of combat effectiveness of smallpox, and there was no way to go, that they had to change their course and propose to surrender. However, after much thought, Qianlong thought that he was already capable of ruling over the Mongol tribes and was not afraid of any challenge. In order to show his ability and show his heavenly might to the Mongol tribes, Qianlong finally made a decision, accepted the submission of the Turks, and placed them in northern Xinjiang.
The Qianlong Emperor ordered Shu hede, the prime minister stationed in Ush, to go to Ili to appease the Turgut ministry. At the same time, the imperial court allocated 200,000 taels of silver and grain, cattle and sheep, cotton cloth, etc. to help the turks. In September of the thirty-sixth year of Qianlong (1771), Wobaxi went to the Rehe Mountain Resort to meet the Qianlong Emperor and was named "Old Turkhu Tezoriktu Khan".
Portrait of Wolbach
In order to commemorate this great return to the East and to show the Qing Dynasty's ability to control all the Mongol tribes, Qianlong ordered that two stone tablets be erected at the temple of the Chengde Putuo Sect, and in manchu, Han, Mongolian, and Tibetan characters, he wrote the "Record of all the Returns of Turbat" and "The Chronicle of the Youyi Turbat Ministry". This incident was later made into a movie and TV series, called "The Legend of the Hero of Donggui".
Qianlong also reached the highest realm of Chinese emperors, not only ruling the Central Plains, but also bringing the traditional Chinese nomads and their main territories under the jurisdiction of the Qing Dynasty, becoming the co-lord of the grasslands and the Central Plains, and contributing to a great integration of the Chinese nation. And most importantly, since then, the nomadic people have never rebelled on a large scale, which is a feat of unprecedented people!
But the bane was planted unconsciously. In quelling the Dzungar rebellion, the Qing army released the two "Hezhuo" who had been imprisoned by the Dzungars, and it was reasonable to say that this was a favor to them, but what they did not expect was that they would take revenge, and soon after, they instigated the rebellion in southern Xinjiang.