"Your Majesty, I hope you remember the last time your servant, Roy Gozelez, wrote in a letter to you."

"In February 1404, the Great Khan of the Timurid Khanate suddenly decided to send an army to the east to conquer the Ming Kingdom, a country composed of the Seris, whom the Turks and Mongols called the Khitans." (He chose a few Latin letters and spelled them into words that sounded roughly the same.)

"It was quite a sudden thing. Although I had heard that Timur was planning to conquer the Ming kingdom in the east since I came to Samarkand, it is said that the original plan was to send troops in March or April. I don't quite know exactly what happened, but the end result was that Timur launched an early crusade. ”

Timur used 200,000 of his 240,000 main army, leaving about 40,000 to defend Samarkand and other important places. In addition, he also recruited 300,000 herdsmen to accompany the army to the east, providing soldiers with food, cattle and sheep, transporting various supplies, and serving as cannon fodder during the siege. However, he later had a more suitable cannon fodder. I also recently heard that Timur had decided to continue recruiting herders from within the country. ”

"In May, Timur's army occupied the Alashan Pass. This is a necessary place to pass from the Western Chagatai Khanate to the Eastern Chagatai Khanate, and the geographical location is very dangerous. Timur then sent one of his generals, Salha, to quickly march into the army, to seize other strategic points before the Ming people reacted. ”

"But between the Alashankou and Hami, which was actually controlled by the Ming people, was the place of the Eastern Chagatai Khanate. I originally thought that the country's great khan Shami Chagan would lead troops to resist, but these Mongols seemed to be the same species as the Mongols I had heard of since I was a child and had ravaged Eastern Europe and West Asia. ”

"At about this time, Zhu Shangbing, the prince of the Ming State who was named the Prince of Qin, knew about Timur's arm's expedition to the east, sent people to his headquarters for help, and stepped up the defense of Hami City."

"Timur also knew that Zhu Shangbing would not be tied up in Hami City, nor would he flee eastward, so in addition to leaving a small number of troops to defend Urumqi City and besiege Turpan City, the total number of troops as high as nearly 500,000 marched eastward, and all arrived outside Hami City at the end of June and immediately began to attack the city."

"The resistance of the Ming army in the city was very fierce. There were originally 20,000 to 30,000 soldiers in the city, and 70,000 reinforcements arrived before the siege, so the regular army in the city was at least 90,000, plus the civilians who were bound to be drafted, Timur did not have much advantage in terms of strength, even if he had more siege materials than the garrison in the city. ”

"So when the siege had been going on for four days, Timur ordered the captured Seris to be driven out of the camp and to take them as the lead in the siege."

This barbaric approach played a role, but it still failed to conquer Hami City. And since then, the Ming army at the head of the city has no longer been soft in the face of such a situation, and can only play a role in consuming the strength and arrows of the Ming soldiers, but these unprotected Seris people have suffered heavy losses. Therefore, Timur later decided to stop this practice. ”

But the siege did not stop, but intensified. This was to capture the city of Hami before the arrival of the next group of Ming troops to rescue, so as to take the initiative in the war. Up to this day, the army of the Timurid Khanate had besieged the city for more than ten days, and while it suffered heavy losses of its own, it also inflicted heavy casualties on the Ming army at the head of the city. ”

"But maybe the turnaround has already come. Yesterday during the day, when I was observing the battle at Timur's side, although batch after batch of soldiers were killed, his expression relaxed, and he turned to me and said: 'The Ming army is almost exhausted in its fortifications, and tomorrow it will be able to break through the outer city of Hami; If you are lucky, you can even conquer the inner city at once, completely occupy this city, and capture Zhu Shangbing, the king of Qin. ’”

"So today I will take the telescopes that I have been able to obtain with me, what the Ming people call clairvoyance, and if Timur's soldiers succeed in conquering the inner city of Hami, I will continue to write this letter to Your Majesty when I return; If Timur's soldiers did not do it, then I will write about the course of the war in the next letter. ”

However, even if Timur's soldiers conquered the city of Hami, it did not mean that Timur had won the war. The Ming kingdom was a vast country, with a population larger than the population of all of Europe, far more than the population under Timur, and was now the richest country in the world, and probably the most powerful country in the world. Moreover, the power of the Ming Emperor is far greater than that of the monarch of any country I have ever heard of, and the defeat in Hami will not shake the rule of the emperor of this country. The chances of Timur continuing his crusade to victory seem to me small. ”

"This is not good for the kingdom. Whether Timur was defeated or stalemate in the east, it meant that the Timurid Khanate's energies were held back in the east, and the Ottomans, who occupied Asia Minor, could take the opportunity to regain their strength and regain their power with the kingdom in the Mediterranean. But I was powerless to stop all of this, and I could only pray to the Lord to bless the Kingdom. ”

"There's another guy named Fu An who's very interesting. This man, mentioned in the previous letter, was an envoy sent by the Ming to the city of Samarkand in 1395, detained by Timur, and this time accompanied by a large army to the Eastern Chagatai Khanate. ”

He was very worried about the defeat of his homeland by Timur, and every day he sighed and tried to persuade Timur to withdraw from the army. However, after Timur drove the captured Seris to attack the city, the persuasion stopped, and there were many fewer words. But as long as Timur allowed it, he would still go to watch the battle every day. ”

Incidentally, the Cyris of the East, as stated in the Travels of Marco Polo, still use hieroglyphic scripts, not alphabetic scripts. Probably only the Seris people in the world, as well as the people of the Seris's vassal states, still use this hieroglyph known as Chinese characters. It's a very difficult script to learn, and I started learning from Fu An about a year ago when I arrived in Samarkand, but now I can only write a few dozen words, and the language is stumbling. ”

"Your Majesty, it is less than six o'clock in the morning local time, it is already dawn, and Timur is about to send his soldiers to attack the city. So I'm going to put down my pen for a while and watch today's siege. ”

"May the Lord bless you, my majesty."