Southern Ming Rebel Army

Chapter 530: The Title of Honor

Meng Jun held a grand military parade to demonstrate his military might to the Mongolian tribes, and then held a banquet in the city to entertain the leaders of the various tribes.

At the banquet, Meng Jun promised to open border markets to the Mongolian tribes and provide them with tea, salt, sugar, cloth, and iron pots, but he required each leader to send his sons to the capital for study.

Then, he made three agreements with the Mongolian tribes. First, the Mongolian tribes would submit to the Qian Dynasty and use the Qian Dynasty's reign title. Official documents must be written in Chinese, and Daqian would station pacification envoys in each tribe.

Secondly, the Mongolian tribes continued to use the policies left by the Qing court, that is, the league and banner system. The tribes were reorganized into banners, and then the banners were organized into leagues and banners. Now each banner and league can be autonomous, but in the future, the officials of the banner and league need to be appointed by the Qian Dynasty. If the officials are not in harmony with the banners, as long as more than half of the banners oppose it, the Qian Dynasty needs to re-appoint them.

Third, the pastures of each tribe will remain unchanged for the time being, but private fighting between tribes is strictly prohibited, and any military mobilization must obey the command of the Qian Dynasty.

This was acceptable to the tribes south of the desert, because these tribes had just worked with the Qian Dynasty to annihilate the Khorchin tribe and had made a great profit. Everyone wanted to have a good rest and had no interest in fighting at all.

But it was different for the tribes in Mobei. They did not send many people to help the Qian Dynasty, and they did not get any benefit from the Korchin pastures. Instead, the Qian Dynasty used hostages and the alliance flag system, which restricted them tightly. Therefore, these tribes had no interest in the Qian Dynasty.

At this time, Meng Jun somewhat exaggerated the threat of Rakshasa. Of course, the main reason was that Meng Jun had not yet found out exactly how many troops Rakshasa had in the Far East. But according to Meng Jun's estimation, Rakshasa should have a military force of at least three to four thousand people.

The tribes in the southern part of the desert were not very clear about Rakshasa, but the tribes in the northern part of the desert had some understanding of it and knew that it was a target that was not to be trifled with.

After three rounds of drinking, the leaders of various tribes had already started toasting with the generals of the Qian army, and the atmosphere of the banquet gradually became heated. The leaders of various tribes expressed their willingness to submit to the Qian Dynasty and be loyal to the emperor.

A tribal leader walked to the center of the banquet, knelt down in front of Meng Jun, beat his chest with his fist, and said, "I, Chagu, swear to be loyal to you until death. From now on, if Your Majesty tells me to go east, I will never go west!"

At one moment, many tribal leaders left their seats and expressed their loyalty to Meng Jun.

Meng Jun, with a smile on his face, asked his men to help the leaders of each tribe up. At this moment, something happened to the leader of the Naiman tribe, Chagu.

Cha Gu struggled to walk in front of Meng Jun, knelt down and said, "Your Majesty, your prestige is evident to Changshengtian, so please allow us to give you a royal title!"

The leaders were stunned at first, but they quickly reacted and nodded in agreement. Then they unanimously agreed to give Meng Jun the title of Tengerit Gugechi Khan.

Meng Jun was a little confused about the meaning of this title. At this time, Gulbuha came over and whispered, "Your Majesty, this means Heavenly Khan when translated!"

Meng Jun was shocked. Isn't this the title of Emperor Taizong of Tang?

But Meng Jun quickly realized that this was a great thing. In the future, he would be both the emperor of the Central Plains and the Khan of the entire grassland. This was an important title that would allow him to directly intervene in grassland affairs.

So Meng Jun accepted the title of Great Khan of Tengrit Gugechi as all the leaders knelt down and bowed to him.

In the next few days, Meng Jun invited many leaders one after another and gave them many rewards. For a while, all the leaders were moved to tears of gratitude.

Before the Mongolian tribes left, Meng Jun asked them to find a place with beautiful scenery and build a temporary palace in preparation for the future visit of Meng the Khan to inspect the grassland.

The leaders of the various tribes patted their chests and indicated that there was no problem.

After the leaders left, the most important thing Meng Jun came to Liaodong for was perfectly resolved. Now in Liaodong, the only things left to be pacified were the city of Hetuala and the handling of Lee Hao of Korea.

Jirgalang's wish could only be a luxury, as Meng Jun flatly rejected the Jianzhou Jurchens' request to remain in their hometown.

With the breakdown of negotiations, the two sides could only continue to fight on the battlefield. However, by now, there was no need for such a large army to continue to stay in Liaodong. The subsequent wars with the Qing court would only be small-scale. It was only necessary to send a general to garrison Fushun and continue to attack the Qing court until he could no longer hold on.

Lee Ho of Joseon now visits Meng Jun every day. Every time they meet, he cries about how difficult Joseon's life is. He also says that the Celestial Empire wants to attack the Qing Dynasty, and he will bring his troops to help the Celestial Empire no matter how difficult it is. Finally, he talks about how his righteous army suffered casualties under the city of Shenyang. In short, he just wants to go back, and he wants the Celestial Empire to provide some supplies to help him.

As for Lee Hao of Joseon, Meng Jun was also a little conflicted. To completely control him was actually very simple. After what Bolo had done, Lee Hao's ruling power had completely collapsed. If Lee Hao went back now, he wouldn't even be able to gather the six officials. If the Qian Dynasty announced its submission now, then Lee Hao would not dare to say a word.

But nowadays, that place is so poor that even a rat would go in empty-handed. If the Qian Dynasty really controls North Korea at this stage, it would be an extremely unprofitable thing.

And most importantly, if the Qian Dynasty, as the most loyal younger brother of the Central Plains Dynasty, was swallowed up, how would the other countries in the future view the Qian Dynasty, especially the Mongolian tribes? Would they think that the Qian Dynasty was too ambitious and not behaving like a great country, and thus become wary of the Qian Dynasty?

Therefore, after much deliberation, Meng Jun finally agreed to Li Hao's request to return to China. However, regarding the funding, Meng Jun stated that the Central Plains had just been stabilized and it was the time to rebuild everything. In addition, the Liaodong War had just ended and the national treasury was empty.

Upon hearing this, Li Hao knew that Meng Jun was telling the truth, so he had no choice but to bow and say goodbye.

Now, with the remnants of the Qing army retreating to Hetuala, many Jurchen tribes have successively surrendered to the Qian army, such as the Haixi Jurchens and some wild Jurchen tribes, all of which have expressed their submission to the Qian Dynasty.

At this point, if it were an ordinary dynasty, it would have been time to let the horses go to the mountains and put the weapons into storage, but Meng Jun was not satisfied with the traditional controlled rule.

Since Meng Jun was in Liaodong, he would re-establish the Nurgandusi to substantially implement the rule of the Qian Dynasty. In the future, after defeating the Russians, he could even re-establish the old system of the Yuan Dynasty, the Liaoyang Province, and the Lingbei Province.

As some wild Jurchens surrendered, more and more news about the Russians appeared on Meng Jun's desk.

Meng Jun originally thought that the Rakshasa had three to four thousand or four to five thousand people, but the news from those tribes was that the Rakshasa had never sent out more than a thousand troops. This made Meng Jun a little confused. With just this number of people, it was not worth it for him to mobilize a large army.

Just as Meng Jun was preparing to return to the capital, news arrived that the Luosha people had sent out a large army, marching south from the upper reaches of the Longjiang River, and wiped out several Jurchen tribes along the way. Some tribes hedged their bets and expressed their submission to the Luosha people, but secretly leaked the news to the Qian army.

The news that came in said that the Russians' target was Shengjing City, the former capital of the Qing Dynasty.