I

Stepan Razin was no stranger to China, and he heard most of the information from the Turgut people.

This guy lived in the Torgut Ministry for two years and served as the permanent diplomatic representative of the Don Cossacks. He also stayed away from the Don River and worked as a bandit on the Volga River for several years, collecting protection fees from merchant ships passing along the way.

"Dear Khitan envoy, please convey my respect to the Khitan Emperor." Racine bent down and saluted, and he spoke Mongolian fluently.

Xie Yuan smiled and said: "Hello, brave rebel."

Racine asked curiously: "You are the Khitan envoy, and you must be from a noble family. Shouldn't the nobles hate rebels like me? Why do you call me a heroic insurrectionist?"

Xie Yuan suddenly looked serious, bowed to the east, then turned around and said: "Because His Majesty the Emperor of our country is also a heroic insurrectionist. He was a slave oppressed by the nobles, and he led more slaves and poor people to overthrow the brutal emperor. ’s rule. In China today, no poor person is oppressed anymore because the emperor treats everyone equally.”

"The Khitan Emperor was a slave before?" Racine was greatly surprised.

Xie Yuan nodded and said: "Yes, His Majesty, the Emperor of China, used to be a slave. Many Chinese officials were slaves and poor people. They followed His Majesty in the uprising and created a new dynasty. I heard that you want to ask March on Moscow and then ask the Tsar to improve his policies towards the poor. With all due respect, you are not going to succeed."

"Why is it impossible?" Racine asked.

Xie Yuan said: "Because the tsar and the nobles are one and the same, he will only speak for the nobles. Even if he agrees to you, he will definitely regret it and then mobilize an army to destroy you."

"I believe that His Majesty the Tsar is benevolent," said Racine.

Racine himself didn’t believe this nonsense.

He was simply comforting himself, for to the Cossacks the Tsar was invincible. Even if they rebelled, they could only move around and cause losses to Russia to force the tsar to change his decree.

Xie Yuan asked: "Are you literate?"

"I have been studying for several years." Racine's parents were wealthy Cossacks, but the family property was occupied by the nobles.

Xie Yuan took out a special Russian edition of "Datong Collection". With the efforts of Honglu Temple and missionaries, this book has been translated into many languages. He handed it to Racine and said: "This is a book written by His Majesty the Emperor himself, telling how to revolt and govern the country."

Racine took it and took a look and saw that the title of the book was "The Khitan Emperor Led the Poor Revolt and the Theory of Founding the Nation".

The Russian translation is more straightforward and eliminates traditional Chinese ideas.

The first chapter is the theory of personality, which explains that everyone is equal under the gods and no one should be born oppressed.

The second chapter is the Sanyuan chapter, which explains that the people are the masters of the country, and the monarch, nobles and officials only manage the country on behalf of the people.

The third chapter is about land equalization, which explains that land is given by gods and should not be monopolized by big landowners. All the big landowners obtained their land through bloody means. Only small landowners and homesteaders earned their income from reclaiming wasteland through hard work.

Chapter Four……

Racine led the rebel troops northward along the Volga River.

Sitting in the Cossack boat, Racine began to read the Russian version of the Datong Collection.

The first chapter gave him a strong shock and at the same time made him empathize, because this theory fit the Cossacks very well.

After reading the second chapter, Racine felt enlightened.

When Racine read the content of the third chapter, he suddenly wanted to cry. Cossacks were not born bandits. His ancestors were runaway slaves who fled to the Don River Basin and worked hard to cultivate land. They became rich purely through hard work. But the damn noble master came and occupied his family's property and business. He could only lead a group of people to become robbers.

Tsarist Russian aristocrats are constantly encroaching on the Don River Basin and constantly compressing the Cossacks' living space.

This book is just a small book and can be read in half a day.

At the end of the book is "A Brief Biography of the Khitan Emperor". It tells how miserable the Khitan emperor was since he was a child, being oppressed at all levels, and finally led the poor and slaves to rebel, and finally established a happy country where everyone is equal.

After Racine finished reading the book, his hands were trembling. He was inspired by the deeds of the Khitan emperor and felt that he could also overthrow the tsar and establish a country.

After docking and plundering a small town, Racine called in all the rebel leaders and also the leaders of the Bashkir uprising.

He took the Russian version of "Datong Collection" and said: "In the far east, there is a powerful country called Khitan. How powerful is Khitan? There are one million people in its capital, and it can easily defeat the tsar's army." But twenty years ago, the Khitan emperor was also very cruel, oppressing and exploiting the poor and slaves."

More than thirty rebel leaders gathered around Racine and listened.

Racine continued: "There was a Khitan serf who couldn't stand the abuse of his landlord, so he led the serfs and poor people to rebel. Their initial weapons were inferior to even ours. They could only use boards as shields and wood as spears. But They were very brave and defeated the emperor's army time and time again, and finally they overthrew the brutal Khitan emperor and established a country of their own."

"Are you telling a story?" asked Muhad, the leader of the Bashkir uprising.

Racine held up the "Collection of Datong" and said: "I am not telling a story, all this is true. The serf who led the uprising is the current Khitan Emperor. This is a book written by the Khitan Emperor himself. I will tell you now listen……"

Rahim walked up the steps: "Humans are created by..." He suddenly looked at Muhad, "Slavs were created by Jehovah. Bashkirs were created by Allah. No matter which god created them Human beings, under the gods, are all equal. You have to ask, the nobles are smarter and more literate, why are they equal to the poor? The Khitan Emperor said that personality is equal, and nobles and poor people only have personality The difference. And personality can be changed. If a person's morality and ability are not consistent with his status, then he is not worthy of having a noble personality..."

Most of the listeners were illiterate and had no idea of ​​personality.

But they understood something. Under the gods, everyone is equal. The people are the masters of the country, and the emperor, nobles and officials only manage the country on behalf of the people. The big landowners are all immoral, and only small landowners and yeoman farmers obtain land through hard work.

Since the big landowners are immoral, they should be overthrown and the land should be taken away and distributed to the poor!

Racine also made up his own imagination to tell how happy the Chinese people are. Beggars there can easily get alms. Farmers there only need to pay a small amount of taxes. The craftsmen there do not have to bear heavy labor... Everything makes the rebel leaders' eyes shine.

Just then, a small boat docked.

The person who came was the envoy of Andrei Onkovsky, the governor of Tsaritsyn. When he saw Razin, he said: "I have heard of your name. You have been plundering on the Volga River for many years. The governor asked me to You put a price on how much money you need to avoid heading towards Tsaritsyn (Volgograd).”

"Want to bribe me?" Razin sneered, "Go back and tell your governor that I was just passing through Tsaritsyn and I will fight all the way to Moscow. If he dares to intervene, I will surround Tsaritsyn! Get out!"

The rebels collected and made more boats along the way, and approached Tsaritsyn in a swagger. They even rowed past the city. The governor actually pretended not to see it.

Along the way, many poor people came to seek refuge. When they arrived at Tsaritsyn, the number of rebel troops exceeded 10,000, and many of them were not Slavs.

How could the hundreds of defenders in the castle dare to come out to fight?

After passing Tsaritsyn, they ran out of food and decided to divide their forces to plunder, with the Cossacks and Bashkirs each doing their own thing. Only when the large armies are separated can the food grabbed be enough to eat.

Racine led his army northwest along the tributary, heading towards Moscow.

The Bashkir rebels continued north along the Volga River to plunder Moscow towns along the river.

Racine officially launched the slogan of the uprising: everyone is equal, everyone has land, and all the boyars, big landowners and officials were killed.

Along the way, Racine was freeing serfs.

But instead of finding a base to develop with peace of mind, he became a rogue bandit like Li Zicheng. Countless serfs were willing to follow him because their lives had long been unbearable.

While looting Voronezh, Razin met a group of political prisoners. He said to these people: "I do not force you to join me, but anyone who follows me will become a free Cossack. I just want to Defeat those boyar nobles and landowners. As for the poor people, I treat them like brothers! By the way, you should all be literate, I have a book for you to read."

The Russian version of the Datong Collection was handed over and a political prisoner read it aloud.

Just after reading the second chapter, most of the political prisoners showed panic and fear on their faces. Because they were all nobles, they were exiled after failing in political struggles, and they had a natural fear of attacking local tyrants to allocate their land.

But soon someone was moved. They were already on the road to exile, and their family was already finished.

They have nothing, why are they afraid of a hammer?

Except for a few who decided to leave, most of the political prisoners showed their intentions and were willing to join Racine in the rebellion.

But these guys, including Racine, lacked a clear program of rebellion. They still have illusions about the Tsar. They just want to go to Moscow and force the Tsar to give them peace, and then they can get a piece of land to live on. This kind of thing happened often in Russia. Many Cossacks were imprisoned because the tsar was unable to suppress the rebellion.

However, it is absolutely impossible for Racine to be imprisoned.

Because the direct cause of this guy's uprising was that he robbed the official ship of the Russian Ministry of Finance! Following the official ship, there were also fleets of great nobles and wealthy merchants. This incident aroused the anger of the Moscow nobles.

After advancing more than a hundred miles to Moscow, Racine finally encountered the troops sent by the Tsar.

The shooting force that serves as the main force are all fake.

The real main force was the noble army and the Cossacks. The Cossacks also had many factions, and some of them were willing to be lackeys for the nobles.

A battle broke out between the two sides by the river. The government troops had better weapons, but the rebels had high morale. The rebels defeated the official army with only a few hundred casualties, and continued marching with great success.

But when he was still hundreds of miles away from Moscow, Racine became timid again.

He was still afraid of the Tsar and knew that Moscow could not be defeated. The group of political prisoners who had taken refuge in Racine also began to show weakness in speculation and encouraged Racine to change directions and plunder. As long as more towns can be destroyed and more big landowners are robbed, huge losses can be caused to Tsarist Russia, and the Tsar can also be forced to come to Zhaoan.

As a result, Racine changed the direction of his march and started fighting everywhere along the river. Moreover, he could not afford to feed so many soldiers by plundering, so when he met new serfs who had come to seek refuge, he sent them away with some money and food, and then robbed nobles and rich people everywhere.

The Tsar finally had time to muster more troops and sent tens of thousands of troops to suppress it.

Racine made a mistake again. He divided his army into ten and plundered in all directions. It would not only make it difficult for the tsar's army to pursue them, but also cause damage to a larger area, forcing the tsar to carry out imperial edicts.

I read that "Datong Collection" in vain...

However, as Racine's uprising swept across the country, the ideas in "Datong Collection" spread.

In particular, several political prisoners secretly copied some of them and carried them with them during their escape, thus preserving the seeds of revolutionary ideas.

While Racine was running around, the strong fortress was knocked down by the Turgut troops.

To be precise, it was not defeated, but the defenders rebelled themselves.

Racine also encountered many such situations. There were many fortified cities along the way. As soon as the rebels arrived, the city gates were opened wide, and the defenders directly joined the uprising team.