Chapter Nineteen: The Warrior Nation (Part One)

In truth, the term "foster parents" was already a rather polite way of putting it.

Guo Kang never mentioned these matters to many people from start to finish. It was not that things regarding the "future" could not be spoken of; in fact, under the guise of divination or historical deduction, he had "spoiled" the plot for others many times. Yet, the results were consistently lackluster.

This world was, after all, different from his original homeland, so discrepancies were to be expected. If that were the only reason, he would not feel so helpless.

The greatest obstacle was that many things viewed as "problems" by later generations were not only not problems at the time but were, in fact, the optimal choices available. He had originally thought that by pointing out the hidden dangers that would emerge in the future, he could find a way to avoid them. However, in practice, he discovered that doing so might actually bring about even greater side effects.

Sometimes, it is true that one cannot see the wood for the trees, but in most cases, those who made the decisions back then had considered the situation just as much as he had. In fact, because they were deeply immersed in the circumstances and possessed far richer relevant experience, these people often considered things more meticulously than he did. His worries were not necessarily lost on them.

For instance, was the Khanate’s support for the Rus principalities ultimately correct?

From the perspective of later history, the Rus people eventually destroyed the Golden Horde. But at this moment, the Rus were the least of their threats.

At this time, Lithuania was in its prime, having repeatedly interfered in the affairs of the various Rus states and even openly challenging the Khanate’s court. Not long after the death of Jani Beg Khan, the Lithuanian army defeated the Golden Horde’s great army at the Blue Waters River, occupied Kiev, and drove the Mongols east of the Don River. Until Tokhtamysh was defeated, the first thing he thought of was Lithuania.

Refusing to support these Rus people and allowing them to maintain independence would be tantamount to fattening up the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. By then, the Khanate might well have completely collapsed long before the 15th century.

To the west of Lithuania lay Poland, an even tougher adversary. The Poles, too, repeatedly reached into the southern Russian regions. In 1352, while Jani Beg Khan was still alive and the Golden Horde had not yet begun its decline, Poland entered the region of later Ukraine, teamed up with Lithuania, and openly partitioned the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia, attempting to extend its territory to the Black Sea coast.

If they did not support Rus proxies, it would mean the Khanate had to rely on its own strength to wage long-term wars against these major powers along an expansive border, surrounded by unfriendly locals. Such a cost was clearly unbearable.

Ultimately, people from Guo Kang’s era could not help but view these countries through the lens of stereotypes. In his time, most people probably did not even know what Lithuania was. Those who occasionally paid attention to international affairs would only remember it for some inexplicable provocation, dismissing it as a bizarre, insignificant little country akin to a clown.

As for Poland, more people knew of it, but its most famous trope was being partitioned every few days, making it look like a weak and unfortunate soul.

The Rus, meanwhile, became the world’s largest country, bearing the title of the "fighting nation," which sounded formidable at the very mention of it.

Under these circumstances, supporting the Rus to counter Poland and Lithuania easily gave the impression of failing to prioritize correctly, as if it would be better to eliminate this potential rival early on.

However, at this time, Poland’s strength was among the top tier in the entire Christian world. And Lithuania was the largest power in Eastern Europe, occupying vast territories from the Black Sea to the Baltic, with an area that made one wonder who, between them and Moscow, was the true successor of later Russia.

In this context, it was very difficult for him to guarantee that his suggestions were truly appropriate.

Not to mention, there were concepts that people from different eras might never be able to comprehend. For instance, in this age, if he insisted on asking who the "fighting nation" was, everyone would assume he was talking about himself.

The Europeans had not yet come into contact with East Asian powers, but the Islamic world had been dealing with them for a long time.

During the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang, the Umayyad Caliphate was undergoing the second great expansion of the Arab world. This sparked concern among the various Central Asian states, who one after another requested the Tang Dynasty to intervene and deal with the Arab invaders. The Tang Dynasty, however, had little interest in this and offloaded the task to the Türgesh tribes, who had split from the Western Turkic Khaganate.

Subsequently, the Türgesh leader, Suluk, led his army south and fought the Arabs for over a decade. The Arab Empire lost nearly 200,000 troops, most of whom were veterans brought from the Arab heartland and Syria. The empire’s greatest province, Khorasan, was bled dry by the Türgesh. The Caliph was forced to recall troops from India, the Caucasus, and even Asia Minor to fill the bottomless pit in the East.

This severe military failure forced the cessation of expansion in other directions and dealt a blow to the empire’s prestige. The rapid depletion of its core forces directly shook the foundations of Umayyad rule. Not long after, unable to suppress the resistance of the Persians, the dynasty was overthrown by the more Persianized Abbasid Caliphate.

This result was so baffling that even the Arabs themselves found it incredible.

One must realize that at this time, 6,000 Arabs could conquer Northern India, and just over 7,000 could defeat the most powerful nation in Iberia. During the Western conquests, which took place simultaneously with the Eastern expeditions, tens of thousands of soldiers fought all the way from Tunisia to southern Gaul, conquering almost every region along the way until they were stopped by the Frankish Kingdom at the Battle of Poitiers. Moreover, these soldiers were mostly newly converted locals recruited on the spot, consuming very little of the core imperial strength. Even thirty years prior, in the decisive battle at the Yarmouk River against the Eastern Roman army personally led by Heraclius, only 25,000 soldiers had been deployed.

If the more than 100,000 veterans pointlessly sacrificed in the East had been deployed in the Western conquests, it is likely that the Catholic world would not have existed thereafter.

Yet the Türgesh were not even considered a true great power—later, when Suluk Khan fell out with the Tang Dynasty, it barely caused a ripple before he was crushed by them.

To the Arabs, this implied a very absurd reality.

In this world, only the people of the Central Plains cared, or were qualified to care, about the distinction between "tributary" and "territory." To other civilizations, this was merely a vassal of the Tang Dynasty who had beaten the Arab Empire into doubting its own existence.

This shock would undoubtedly have an impact on subsequent history.

Later, due to Gao Xianzhi’s reckless actions, the regular Tang army was defeated by the Abbasids at the Battle of Talas, with a record even worse than their own vassals. But even so, the Abbasid Caliphate still took the initiative to maintain friendly relations with the Tang Dynasty and had almost no interest in expanding or proselytizing to the East. The lesson from the previous dynasty was quite straightforward: "Why on earth would you go and provoke them?"