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Chapter 899: Change Doesn’t Happen Overnight

While Shadi Hezhuo was busy amassing wealth, Hong Tao's army captured another ancient city, Pishan, which the locals called Guma. Among the 36 kingdoms in the Western Regions during the Han Dynasty, there was a kingdom called Pishan, whose capital was located here.

"Look at those city walls. Some of them are probably thousands of years old. They were good defensive fortifications back then, but now they can't even withstand a cannonball.

This is a bloody lesson. We must not rest on our ancestor's coffin and be complacent. We must keep moving forward. We can go slowly but we cannot stop. We must not take the words of our ancestors as eternal truths. "

According to the usual practice, the Eight Banners Army led Abash into the city to accept the surrender, clean up and appease the people, while the army was on high alert outside the city. The imperial carriage stopped at a small forest in the south of the city and prepared lunch with the dining car.

Taking advantage of the fact that all the officers were present, Hong Tao was going to give another lecture. A battle, a section of a city wall, a mountain range, or even a few white clouds would become teaching materials for His Majesty the Emperor. Most officers from the Hai Hu Division were used to it, and not only did they listen carefully, some even took out small notebooks to record their thoughts.

"Wang Chengen, take out all the yogurt. It can't be kept for long. Share it with everyone. There are also wine and dried fruits. I'm afraid we'll have these every day for the rest of the time. Eat as much as you want!"

The emperor was very pleased to see the audience so cooperative, but then Wang Chengen was in trouble. He was forced to move out all the food he had collected along the way, spread a few carpets in front of the carriage, sit in a circle, eat while chatting, and treat it as lunch.

"Who among you knows these trees?" What were they talking about? On the battlefield, the last thing they wanted to talk about was war. So Hong Tao chose a lighter topic and pointed to the nearby trees and asked.

"Looking at the leaves, it looks like a peach tree. It is planted on the slopes around Miyunwei and is harvested in June. The fruits are bigger than a fist, and some have sweet and crispy flesh, while others are very juicy." An officer immediately gave the answer, along with the place of origin and quality.

"These are not the peach trees commonly seen in the Central Plains. They should be called almonds, which were introduced from Persia. The flesh of the fruit cannot be eaten, but the pit is very large. The kernel can be used to extract oil or fried as a snack. See? This is the kernel. The locals call it almond, which may also be a transliteration of Persian.

You don't need to remember these, and I don't intend to ask you to plant trees. I just want to remind you that we have arrived in a completely different area from Ming Dynasty, with very different languages, food, and customs.

As a road leading to the west, the court not only had to open it up but also maintain it. But as you can see from the reality, the cost of large-scale garrisoning would be very high, and large-scale immigration would not be realistic in the short term, after all, the water source is limited.

Therefore, in the short term we must treat them differently. On the one hand, we must respect their customs and religious beliefs, and even cater to them deliberately in order to gain a sense of identity and maintain relative stability in the region.

On the other hand, we must severely crack down on hostile forces, and leave no one alive if we can kill them. But we must be careful not to be too obvious or too extreme, so as not to cause unnecessary hostility. "

The reason why Hong Tao compared almonds with peach trees was not to popularize botanical knowledge to the officers, but to remind them to pay attention to the characteristics of the occupied areas. They should strengthen discipline while fighting, and not cause trouble to the already difficult-to-control situation because of a little thing.

"Your Majesty, why don't you adopt martial law like Luzon and Annan, and then use Taoism and immigration to completely turn this place into the territory of the Ming Dynasty?"

Fortunately, Hong Tao thought of this in advance, otherwise there might be a problem. Although only one officer asked the question, many of them looked puzzled. The 33rd Army Guards came from the Annan Special Zone, where the policy implemented was assimilation, and it was very tough. The officers naturally thought that this was how it should be, and they didn't understand why it was completely different in another place. Could it be that the emperor was going to change his mind again?

"When doing things, we can't just pursue results, we also have to consider feasibility. At present, the empire has spread its wings a bit too large. Annan, Luzon, Inner Mongolia, Yunnan, Guizhou, Guangxi, and Sichuan are all facing the same problem and need a large number of local officials.

I am not a god, and I cannot spare so much manpower for the time being, so I must prioritize. In addition, the situation here is quite special, and the religious forces are very strong, so assimilation will be very difficult.

But the empire urgently needs to open up trade routes to the Western Regions, so the assimilation work must be slowed down for a few years. Once Luzon and Annan have achieved results, accumulated a lot of experience, and trained a large number of officials, it will not be too late to come back and solve the problem of the Western Regions."

Regarding policies, especially national affairs, the military has no right to interfere, and orders are carried out as they are given. However, Hong Tao prefers to let the executors understand some of the principles and intentions, so that they can use them more flexibly during the execution process.

In addition, these young officers are not just soldiers, they are just arranged to gain experience in the army first, and many of them will become local officials after five or ten years. Letting them understand more about the details of policy implementation can also be regarded as early professional training.

Hong Tao never gave up on the assimilation issue in the Western Regions, and even attached more importance to it. Compared with the Christians in Luzon and the Buddhists in Annan and Inner Mongolia, the Muslims here would be more pious and less likely to change.

Therefore, Hong Tao plans to proceed in several steps. He will not propose assimilation first, try not to cause resistance from local believers, and make more use of local people to participate in management, so as to restore stability as quickly as possible.

With relatively common trade routes, the next step is to encourage mainland merchants to move west in large numbers. They can not only bring goods and taxes, but also bring culture and living habits with them.

Then the locals will be faced with a difficult choice: should they continue to be poor but pious or accept change and become rich? As long as the local government is controlled and prevented from taking restrictive measures, some locals will definitely choose and try to change.

When the number of these people reaches a certain level, assimilation will have a foundation and foundation for implementation. By using more subtle means to give these people enough support, the cultural and religious confrontation will be downgraded from between the locals and the Ming Empire to the grassroots level.

At this time, the imperial court became the arbitrator between the two parties, and Hong Tao was quite good at blowing the whistle and making biased decisions.

As long as this state is maintained, and small-scale, multi-batch immigration is continuously carried out during this period, after five or ten years, when the base is large enough, the court can find any excuse to tear off the disguise, issue new decrees, increase the size of the garrison, and carry out large-scale immigration.

By then, it will be too late for anyone to resist. They will no longer have the advantage of time and place, nor will they have absolute support from the people.

(End of this chapter)