The History of China - #280 Qing 20: Kangxi & Galdan At Jao Modo, Their Faces Black

Episode Date: November 28, 2024

Galdan Khan has slipped The Kangxi Emperor’s trap, but only by the skin of his teeth. Now having retreated deep into the heart of Central Asia, he’ll think himself safe. But the Dread Lord of Great Qing is not one to let a vendetta go so easily… Please support the show!: patreon.com/thehistoryofchina Time Period Covered 1691-1696 CE Major Historical Figures: Qing Dynasty: The Kangxi Emperor (Aisin-Gioro Xuanye) [r. 1654-1722] Jean-Francois Gerbillon, Puritan Missionary Tómas Pereira, Puritan Missionary Dzungar Mongols: Galdan, the Boshugtu Khan [r. 1679-1697] Lamist Tibetans: The Sixth Dalai Lama, Tsangyang Gyatso [1683- after 1706] sDe-pa Desi Sangye Gyampo [1653-1705] Major Sources Cited: Perdue, Denis. China Marches West: The Qing Conquest of Central Eurasia. Spence, Jonathan D. Emperor of China: Self-Portrait of K’ang-hsi. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. The French Revolution set Europe ablaze. It was an age of enlightenment and progress, but also of tyranny and oppression. It was an age of glory and an age of tragedy. One man stood above it all. This was the Age of Napoleon. I'm Everett Rummage, host of the Age of Napoleon podcast. Join me as I examine the life and times of one of the most fascinating and enigmatic

characters in modern history. Look for the Age of Napoleon wherever you find your podcasts. Hello and welcome to the History of China. Episode 280, Kangxi and Galdan at Jaomoto, their faces black. Open country, flat sand, sky beyond the river. Over a thousand hares daily trapped in the hunter's ring. Checking the borders. I'm going to stretch my limbs and keep on shooting the carved bow.

Now with my left hand, now with my right. Hunting in the Ordos, the hares were many. By the Kangxi Emperor, circa 1695. We last left off with the Kangxi Emperor furiously realizing that his sworn nemesis, Galdan Khan of the Jungars, has managed to evade his grasp and slip past even his own dread reach. Meanwhile, for his own part, Galdan is just barely hanging on, one swing ahead of the sword, and has been forced to the very edge of existence. I've been kind of picturing this in my head, this particular moment,

as parallel to the final scene at the end of The Empire Strikes Back. After Cloud City, the Carbonite, I'm Your Father, all that, they've managed to eke out and escape by the skin of their teeth, and are now standing aboard the Rebellion's last frigate, and they look down over the glowing disk of the galaxy. Down there. Which is to say they're out of it. Where do they even go from there?

What do you even possibly do? We all know, of course, that Star Wars ends happily. Han is thawed out. Luke hugs it out with Dad. And there's a firework show over Endor. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for the tale we're telling here today. Or to put it in a famous catchphrase from a different smash hit fictional series, if you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention. By the point of his flight back to Khobdo in 1691, Galdan must have surely known that any hope of the Russians siding with his Djungars against the Qing aggression was a fever dream.

Ever since the signing of the Treaty of Nerchinsk the year prior, the Russians had been fastidious in their adherence to the stipulations therein, foremost among which was that they absolutely should not help Galdan or his followers. Well, what about the Tibetans and Galdan's own longtime pal, the Dalai Lama? Unfortunately, this route of assistance had also been closed off. When the Dalai Lama had written to Kangxi pleading for an end to the violence and for peace to be achieved, Kangxi had reminded the Dalai Lama that, oh by the way, he totally suspected him of secretly allying with Galdan, and he had both eyes on him. Kangxi wrote to the Dalai Lama in November 1691, quote, You lie when you claim to be advising peace. You are now plotting with the Jilong Kuthuktu, who is part of Galdan's camp.

He is not advising peace. Galdan is now sneaking into our borders, plundering the Ujumuchin area. You Lamas are not passing on my edicts. You are greedy for profit, deceitful, and are concealing Galdan's activities. End quote. You are greedy for profit, deceitful, and are concealing Galdan's activities. End quote. Though he doesn't quite say it outright, it is more than evident that at this time the Kangxi Emperor was all but certain that the Dalai Lama had,

either directly or indirectly, but secretly, intervened in order to buy Galdan just enough time to slip the Qing imperial noose and make good his escape into the wilds. In any case, he knew that he didn't trust him. By the new year of 1692, Galdan reassessed his realistic options and decided that, actually, maybe just having one central demand was a bit more achievable than his previous three. This was, as was to be expected, the most important one to Galdan all along. That the seven Kalka Mongol tribes be released from their bonds to the Kangxi Emperor and the Qing Dynasty and be allowed to return to their homelands to resume their traditional ways of life. Simple enough, right? And quite simply, a total impossibility.

From Perdue, quote, This, of course, would have meant releasing them from the bonds of the banner system and making them vulnerable to Galdan's pressure. The emperor had to reject this request, end quote. When you've captured the opponent's piece in chess, after all, you don't return it to him later in the game, no matter how nicely he might ask. Instead, Kangxi replied with the usual soothing pablum, that he was all benevolent, all powerful, all kind. Have you noted how I'm currently feeding your Kalkas all by myself? All of them? Yeah, jot that down. But look, the thing is, I'm gonna need you to just not support Galdan or his Kakamei independence movement. Just don't even talk to the guy, okay?

He made no mention, it is worth noting, that he privately very much intended to 教滅 or exterminate Galdan and his Djungars. It wasn't until the following year, 1693, that the Depa, Desi Sangye Gyatso, essentially the Chancellor of Tibet directly below the Dalai Lama himself, revealed that, surprise, it had actually been him all along. You see, the fifth Dalai Lama had actually died more than a decade prior in 1682, but the Depa had just kind of, uh, not told anyone. There had been concerns about rivals taking advantage of a protracted interregnum, a palace to finish building, yada yada yada, the usual excuses, but the Depa had kept things running and smoothly for going on, uh, 15 years at this point,

and, well, he was getting old. In the years to follow, the identity of the sixth Dalai Lama would at last be revealed in the incarnation of the 13 or 14-year-old boy Cangyang Gyampo, but Gyatso would remain on in service as the regent until 1702, when full authority was at last turned over to the by then 22 or 23 year old ruler of Tibet. Anyways, that's neither here nor there. In this new, very slight role shift from puppet master to formal regent ruler, the Depa now responded to Kangxi's missive, agreeing with the Qing ruler in principle that Galdan's three requests ought to be denied. Oh, and also, by the way, can I please have one of those fancy Qing imperial seals of confirmation for my very own pretty-pretty-pleased

with a cherry on top? Kangxi granted the Depa his seal of office. Oh, thanks so much. Just one more thing. Would you please not take away Galdan and Tawang Rabdan's titles as Khans? They would just really mean so much. But to this, Kangxi rebuffed the Depa. As a Wai-Fan, or outer barbarian, he had absolutely no right to presume to instruct the reigning Son of Heaven on his decisions. Seemingly bolstered by this little huff and puff session of his, Kangxi at this point pressed even further. He now began insisting that nothing short of Galdan falling to his knees at the base of the imperial throne and unconditionally surrendering himself

and begging for forgiveness would be sufficient in the emperor's view. Even when Galdan, having seemingly been able to feel the white-hot glare of Kangxi's wrath from halfway across Asia, sent a message that he actually was now willing to apologize for whatever it was that he'd said that the emperor had found so offensive, but then he very weirdly also went on to say, oh, um, also, could I borrow, like, a hundred thousand bucks? Specifically, he asked for Ching to grant him 50 to 60 thousand tails. And just as a brief aside here, but as I pretty much always do, I went and tried to figure out just exactly what that amount of money really meant in a real-world way at the time. I mean, that's what we all want to know whenever we talk about money in the past, right? Was that, uh, a lot? It's a very difficult question to meaningfully answer,

but the Google search did its weird AI thing, and that told me, with the source of a Wikipedia article subsection that is bracket citation needed bracket, so keep that in mind, that the modern studies suggest that on purchasing power parity basis, one tail was worth 4,130 RMB as of the early Tong or of the 7th century, or about 570 US dollars. About half that, 2,065 RMB, or about $285 by the end of the Tang, or the late 9th century, and 660.8 RMB by the mid-Ming, so for us narratively now, the late 17th century, which is about $91. Modern prices for a 50-gram silver tail is listed at just 254 RMB, or $30-35 on eBay, and it is now the 21st century. So, we can see that the historical deflationary trend of silver continues apace.

All this to say, by the PPP-based pricing structure, we can figure that Galdon was asking for a cool $30-40 million. Throw in the usual historical uncertainty wibbledy-wobble, and you probably easily could be able to defend rounding it up to a nice easy $50 million. Not borrow, remember, just grant. Gimme. Mine. Not that this was really an especially unreasonable condition to surrender. After all, Galdan still needed to be able to feed his people enough that they didn't literally starve to death. Meanwhile, considerable though the sum certainly was, to the Kangxi Emperor, it was nothing. As a matter of material wealth, dirt beneath his toenail, beneath notice. But as I certainly hope I've sufficiently imparted by this point in the story,

it's never really been about the money for the Kangxi emperor. It's not strictly business. It is personal. The most powerful man in, at the very least, the entire hemisphere, straight up just does not like your face. But Kangxi is also subtle about this, because he's not just outright about this whole revenge kick, at least not out in the open. Instead, he insists that if peace between himself and Galdan is to have any chance of realistically happening,

it must be conducted honorably and in person, man to man. Galdan needs to submit to the throne in person and be granted imperial favor officially in kind, which totally sounds like an obvious trap, but that's because it is. And indeed, that's the whole point of the entire ritual exercise. The swearing of fealty and loyalty necessitates the vassal putting oneself and their valuables at the mercy, sometimes directly and physically, of the Lord receiving the oath. That's what makes it symbolically valuable. You have to knowingly accept that and then walk into it anyway. It's just that in this case, the it's too quiet, I've got a bad feeling about this factor turns out to be entirely justified. Kangxi's also been going down the rumor hole about Galdan, either credulously listening to

or maybe even dreaming up himself rather ludicrous accusations. Foremost among these was that Galdan was secretly amassing specifically Muslim supporters from across Xinjiang to act against the throne. How did he know this? Easy. Every time Galdan sent a messenger to the imperial palace, it was invariably some sort of Muslim from somewhere in Xinjiang or wherever close enough. And never mind all that cross-talk about that region just always having been filled with lots of Muslims and they being the natural intermediaries between the Dzungars and Qing leaders.

No, none of that. This was obviously a case of Galilun having secretly converted from a Buddhist so heartfelt and convicted in his beliefs that he was willing to go to war in order to defend the honor over the pride and place of the Dalai Lama at formal ritual functions, to Islam? For reasons? Perdue writes, Perhaps his curious delusion is explicable only by the conviction of the Qing Emperor

that he had co-opted all the other peoples in Central Asia, winning them over to submission or at least non-intervention. So, to run that back one more time, because I know it's a lot to parse, the Kangxi Emperor has convinced himself by 1695 that Galdan Khan has decided to abandon everyone and everything he's ever known, every tenet of faith and discipline he's ever believed in, all bonds of kinship and fellowship, as part of a vast conspiratorial ploy to bring the entire Islamic world to bear as allies in faith against the Qing Empire. And it sounds like the Kangxi Emperor is very much smoking his own supply of propagandistic fear-mongering because he's generating and fanning these rumors, but also believing and reacting to them. He's looking at a mirror in the dark and talking himself into seeing a ghost.

At which point, he decides to ball up his fist and smash the mirror. As of September 1695, the Kangxi Emperor had outlined a plan, a solution, perhaps, to the Galdan problem once and for all. He would entice the Mongol Khan into battle, trap him, and then annihilate him and his forces in one fell swoop. The Korchin prince, Belekitu, formerly suspected of colluding with Galdan, had captured some of Galdan's abandoned documents, including an invitation to a meeting. He would send an envoy to Galdan, telling him that ten Khorch-Chin banners wanted to submit to him and inviting him to advance east. At this point, the Kangxi Emperor vowed he

would personally lead an army thundering after him, so he cannot escape. We will definitely exterminate him. Even though he knew full well that Galdan had neither the intention nor even the ability to attack the Qing Empire at this point, Kangxi nevertheless committed to the utter destruction of his dogged nemesis. From Fort Sumter to the Battle of Gettysburg. From the Emancipation Proclamation to Appomattox Courthouse. From the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Compromise of 1877. From Abraham Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant and William Tecumseh Sherman. To Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.

The Civil War and Reconstruction was a pivotal era in American history. I'm Rich. And I'm Tracy. And we're the hosts of a podcast that takes a deep dive into that era, when a war was fought to save the Union and to free the slaves. And when the work to rebuild the nation after that war was over turned into a struggle to guarantee liberty and justice for all Americans. Look for The Civil War and Reconstruction wherever you find your podcasts. The key to the entire operation, as per the Kanshi Emperor's battle plans, lay in making absolutely sure that no matter what,

Galdan would not be able to make good yet another miraculous escape. That was absolutely essential, not only for the sense of overall morale, but just in terms of sheer expense. Transporting and maintaining this level of troop presence so far from the capital polity was a true logistical headache conducted at great and ever-mounting expense.

And so, it had better at least amount to something concrete and not be some embarrassing smoke show all over again like at Ulan Butong. From his own vantage point, Galdan had no intention of going back anywhere near Qing-controlled territory or anywhere within arms reach of Kangxi if he could at all help it. Despite enticements and lures baited by the Qing to draw him and his forces closer, the Jungars were resolved to wait out the depths of winter along the Kerala-Tula river basin. At this time, Qing spies reported back to Beijing that there were somewhere in the range of 5,000 to 6,000 Mongol warriors moving with Galdan personally. Yet they had, by all observable evidence, demobilized and showed no sign of aggressive or offensive movement towards Qing. Rather than taking this as a sign of Gaodong's lack of aggressive intent, however, of course, Kangxi used this opening to move in and supply a massive army.

The emperor's advisors strenuously advised him against such a rash and costly course of action, saying instead that they should bide their time and lure the Mongol prince in to a closer and more favorable location from which to strike. But Kangxi was hearing none of it. Cost and force mobility were non-factors. Galdan had humiliated him at Ulaanbaatar by slipping his net, and it would not happen a second time. And once again, he would be overseeing the campaign personally. At this, his advisors balked. Surely he did not mean to put himself at risk, and we cannot stress this enough, great, great cost, by venturing out to the steppelins with the soldiers. From Perdue, quote, Counselors urged the emperor not to risk the health of his jade body, but instead to rely on the valiant efforts of the troops.

They were, of course, concerned about the great costs of the campaign and the risk of instability at home while the emperor was away, end quote. Yet, Kangxi would not be swayed. It had only been because he was too ill to personally oversee the Battle of Ulaanbaatar that Galdan had managed to slip away, and he would be sure to make that a one-time mistake. Besides, his son and named heir could oversee the day-to-day managerial affairs of the capital while he was away. It was, you know, taken care of, man. In fact, the only one of Kangxi's officers who could be called an enthusiastic supporter of the emperor's campaign plan was the commander of

the Western Route Army named Fiyangu. And even he had to talk Kangxi into at least shifting things so that the army wasn't marching directly into the icy grip of Mongolian winter's howling maw, but waited until the following spring to set out. If they waited, he successfully argued, they would have time to fatten up their horses on grain over the winter and then catch Galdans starving frozen nags in early spring before they could nourish themselves on spring grass sprouts, making them all easy targets. And so it was that the three Qing armies would set out early the following spring. Fiangu leading 30,000 west route army troops, Sabsu leading 10,000 men of the east route army, and the Kangxi emperor himself commanding the Central Capital Army Force numbering 32,970 strong.

Logistical capability would absolutely be the metric by which it would succeed or fail, live or die. First and foremost on the docket would be the purchase and distribution of sufficient grain for the men. This is, of course, far more difficult than a simple math equation. Though grain does store and carry well, it is also quite bulky and heavy. There is only so much of it that any one man can reasonably be expected to carry himself, and it's by far less than what he will certainly require for any lengthy campaign afield. The army of Shanxi, for instance, was recorded as requiring 22,400 shi, or about 135 tons of supplies, for five months of campaigning. Or, that is to say, it cannot simply all be carried from here to there

by the soldiers themselves. It was a straightforward enough logistical question to solve, though. Simply put, the burden for supplying the expeditionary armies would be footed by the northern provinces nearest to the campaign, foremost that of the capital polity region, Zili, under the command of its governor-general, Yu Chenglong itself. Governor Yu had more than 6,000 carts specially constructed to meet the tremendous need of the military force afield in the frontier, yet even more, it was already known, would be required. Grain purchases would be vital for the campaign's ongoing sustainability. In fact, so important was this effort that in a move that I'm not sure I've ever seen carried out elsewhere, quote, men who worked in grain supply would receive But the poor northwestern provinces would have great difficulty supporting the army's needs. They grew only one crop per year, and they suffered frequent droughts. To offset this, the soldiers would carry with them silver coinage to purchase additional supplies.

Each soldier was allotted an amount, ranging from 20 tails per month for generals, which, referring back to our earlier math, would be about 13,216 RMB per month, or about $1,800 a month for the general. For the regular enlisted, 2 tails per month, or 1,320 RMB, which is $182, that is to say, about two bucks a meal. An entire secondary army of merchants, of course, followed up behind the fighting force, camping separately but close by and acting as the primary venue for this follow-up marketplace, at which the soldiery could purchase their own wares at market prices with their own wages. Mounts were the second greatest logistical concern for the Qing offensive,

and one of the only things that could not be reliably shipped from the imperial interior in any considerable numbers. Instead, as ever, the Chinese were forced to rely on access to horses from the Mongols themselves, even as they attempted to hunt down a number of them. The Kalkas were the obvious and go-to choice for the Qing imperial abacus tickers. From Purdue again, quote, They bought 1,000 at the major horse markets in Guihua and 2,000 from each of the six Ordos and ten Korak Chin banners. Other tribes supplied smaller numbers. Even feeding the horses in the capital over the winter proved to be difficult. Fengtian Prefecture, north of Beijing, made its contribution to the campaign by providing

300,000 bundles of grass for 8,000 horses. Yet, in spite of their necessity to the success of the campaign, the Mongols would prove to be, surprise, surprise, fickle allies, as ever. Stringent disciplinary measures had to be enforced against the Kalka troops and traders, lest steeds fairly bought and paid for by the Qing mysteriously find their way back into Kalka stables in the middle of the night, for instance. Two such rustlers were made an example of by having all eight of their arms and legs broken, and then their ears and necks sliced, not fatally, it seems, but to maim and scar. All of this public, of course. Even with such incidents of, uh, friction,

no force but the Mongols themselves would prove themselves up to the task to track, find, follow, and rapidly pursue other enemy Mongols. It's basically been the law of the steppe since forever. It's like the Freeman of Arrakis. If you're trying to find them, you're never gonna unless one of them helps you get there in the first place. Quote, Each chief had to supply troops, but they had to be the strongest, most experienced men, particularly from the prosperous elite families. It was equally important to avoid unrest among the Mongols, especially those who might fear that the army passing through their territory intended to punish them as well as Galdan.

End quote. To assuage their fears and assure the Central Asians of his beneficent intent, Kangxi magnanimously bribed their high lords with increased trade missions, gifts of precious commodities, and the promise to forward onto them any unlucky Muslim merchants he might happen to sweep up while conducting operations against Galdan. Altogether, it would prove to be enough to buy their silence on the matter, which was really all the Emperor was looking for. The final key to the upcoming Battle of Jaomoto is one that we are going to begin coming back to

again and again with increasing frequency from here going forward, and that is military technological superiority. Not just here in China, of course, but the world over. From the 16th century onward, more and more international diplomacy is going to be conducted based on whether or not one side has significantly better weaponry than the other. This is a lot of what we study in history, and so this can seem like the status quo, but it is in fact historically unusual. If we look across time, through most of it, if we were to pair two comparable forces from the same time period against one another, you'd expect there to be a significant overlap or degree of technological parity. If the Roman legions ever somehow fought the armies of the Han dynasty, for instance, it's kind of a fun mental exercise because it comes down to tactics and maybes, and basically just who your favorite is.

Because it's a close-run question. In Modernity 2, we kind of see this flattened technological divide. As we see time and again, pretty much everyone has access to sufficient technology to do significant harm if sufficiently motivated. From drones to communications and intel to even munitions and stealth technology, the difference largely now comes down to a question of amount and budget than some civilizational gap between, say, the US Army and the Army of Mongolia. Or heck, you want a modern real-world example? Afghanistan, the undefeated graveyard of empires. So it really is just this strange little historical blip, this sort of temporary conjunction

of the spheres, in a sense, of parts of the world rapidly developing and employing specific military technologies that were suddenly generations ahead of what their neighbors or rivals had any access to, that can really account for a significant amount of the beginning stages of the Age of Empires as we know it. And while the impact of disease absolutely cannot be overstated when it comes to the colonization of the New World, that is to say, the Caribbean and the Americas, it cannot account for similar such outcomes across the old world of Afro-Eurasia, such as the opening of the slaver bays along the coasts of West Africa, the Japanese colonization of the Ainu, or indeed here in our own story the westward march by Qing China under the Kangxi Emperor, just to name a few. So this is a temporary power gap that is

opening up, this period where some armies have spears, javelins, and arrows, but the other side has rifles and cannons. Quote, addressing his troops, the emperor allocated cannon to each banner to ensure total Qing victory, saying, quote, Nothing is fiercer than gunpowder weaponry to win their victories. In fact, they had only extensively employed it in combat till now during the rebellion of the Three Feudatories, but there, the weapon had not proved decisive in any way, or apparently even made much of an account for itself at all, which does seem admittedly kind of strange. But this time was different.

Kangxi was going whole hog, and that meant a full deployment of the latest and greatest in military hardware. Quote, The army carried at least 235 large cannon weighing from 8,000 to 10,000 jin, or about 5,000 kilograms, and 104 lighter cannon weighing 100 to 800 jin. There were many varieties, including Western or Xi'an bronze cannon and Taiwan light cannon, end quote. So basically, he's taking a flotilla of naval cruisers worth of heavy weapons out into the middle of the Tibetan highlands to track down and kill this guy. How were they being transported? On camelback, of course. Nevertheless, the firepower was so heavy that it slowed the army's progress down to the point that General Fiangu nearly missed his scheduled rendezvous to stop Galdan from prematurely taking flight.

The expedition set off from Beijing on March 26, 1696, during the night's Sigeung, or Fourth Watch, which is to say, between 3 and 5 a.m. This, the central army of Kangxi himself, was the last to depart, having been preceded two days before by Sun Sike's 10,000-man force out of Ningxia, and four days before by Fi-yangu's west army out of Guihua. The total journey was planned in four initial stages, covering the first 150 kilometers from the capital to Dushe-kou. There, they would resupply and pick up additional mounts before setting out traveling 60 li per day, or about 19 miles, in 60 parts, so altogether almost 2,000 kilometers, or about 1,250 miles in two months, just to get there. All through this grueling northwestward trek, strict military march discipline was imposed on the soldiers.

Quote, Troops had to rise between 3 and 5 a.m. They were not allowed to light fires, to cook breakfast, in order that they might break camp early. Negligent officers who failed to get the soldiers moving early were punished. End quote.

The primary concern in all of this was in ensuring enough provisions. Not so much for the men, but definitely for the horses. Each relay station along the way would be capable of providing the army with up to 40 relief horses to swap out for tired ones, but even so, managing their literal horsepower was going to be the crucial detail of the Qing. Though he'd been talked out of marching over the winter, Kangxi nevertheless insisted that his army set out so

early in the spring that most of the rivers and ponds that might otherwise have served to both water and help feed the horses were instead still frozen over and useless. Instead, each stop knew wells had to be dug out of the frozen soil by the soldiers themselves. And as anyone who's ever dealt with them knows, horses are very delicate, sensitive creatures. If they're not very well taken care of, in some ways pampered, things can and do very suddenly and dramatically go wrong. From Perdue, quote, Horses could easily die from overexertion. Sweating heavily on the march and suddenly stopping to rest could exhaust them.

Then they had to be galloped to warm them up. They could not be given water until their sweat had dried. The troops had to be careful to avoid poisoned wells and grasses. End quote. I mean, these things need an instruction manual. Trailing along behind the main fighting force, of course, was the baggage and supply train and its thousands upon thousands of attendants. And at its head, yes, even ahead of the grain carts, the emperor himself and his retinue, resplendent in their campaign marching dress.

Still, even as they had begun to grow nervous when reports came in that Yuchanglong had been having continual problems with the supply train under his command, and it had been slowed down by continual heavy rains in the area bogging down the supply carts in mud and killing many cattle. Soldiers were dispatched to assist, and they eventually worked out a solution based on building an entire road thatched out of willow branches and mud clay to allow the supply train to rapidly cross sandy plains and dunes along the way. There was noted relief from the command tent when word of its arrival and the resupply was finally received. And the really interesting little side bit of this is that the nature of this campaign is the Qing army getting further and further away from its own territory, sort of like an amoeba reaching out a tendril as far as it can to catch prey. But the traders and soldiers making their way further and further out across Gansu along

with the army over the Gobi into Xinjiang and to the edges of the Taklamakan Desert, well, they're going to want to get back. Actually, so has everyone come to think of it. And so all along the way at these little way stations or small forts that are called magazine posts, they're apparently considered safe enough that at each of these, they leave behind a portion of the provisions they'd been carrying with them for use on the return journey. And I don't know if it was staffed or guarded, or if it was just kind of an honor system with magic markers, you know, Jung's lunch, don't touch. But apparently that's how they solved their return journey supply question. So this is usually not how exactly I would leave something,

usually just not on a cliffhanger like this. But I once again found that I needed to make an episode split. And this, the buildup and the prelude to Jaumoto, was the most sensible place to do so. So that is where we will leave it off, the two titans ready to tussle in Tibet. And so I will get the second half of this, which had been meant to be a single show,

polished and out the door as soon as possible. But until then, thanks for listening. 400 years ago, a trio of tiny kingdoms were perched on some damp islands off the coast of Europe. Within three short centuries, these islands would become the centre of an empire which ruled a quarter of the globe and on which the sun never set. I'm Samuel Hume, a historian of the British Empire, and my podcast Pax Britannica follows the people and events that built that empire into a global superpower. Learn the history of the British Empire by listening to Pax Britannica everywhere you find your podcasts, or go to pod.link slash pax.