Bible of the Time. …from the Big Bang to the present day…. Rem Word
and just food. Women and children become soldiers or simply murderers. The greatest city with a population of millions, reminiscent of a chessboard stretching beyond the horizon, Chang’an is turning into a heap of ruins. Look! All roads and shoulders are littered with corpses. This water in lakes and rivers retains its purple color for months. Don’t try to quench your thirst with it. According to census takers and tax collectors, 50 million China is losing 36 million of its inhabitants. Perhaps a significant part of them do not die, but move to other areas. However, the An Lushan uprising is considered the largest post-WWII armed conflict in history in terms of casualties.
During the Song dynasty, in the twelfth century, China was invaded by the Manchu Jurchen tribe. The Celestial Empire is entering a new round of assimilation. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, a 300,000-strong army of even more brutal invaders invades from the North. With each new campaign, the Mongols of Genghis Khan are advancing more and more south. Trying to fight back, the Chinese widely use multiply-charged crossbows, powder charges, missiles, and primitive artillery. Millions of people die in fire and smoke. The capital of the Celestial Empire Zhongda – modern Beijing surrenders in 1264. 16 years later, the whole of China falls under the hooves of Mongolian horses. The grandson of Genghis Khan, Kublai Khan, proclaims the creation of the Yuan dynasty in the Great Yuan State. At the same time, four Mongol ulus left the single rule of the Horde.
Mongol expeditions to Japan and Vietnam have not met with much success. In the first case, this happens due to irresistible external reasons – «divine wind». In the second, because of the desperate resistance of the Vietnamese. Ciao paper banknotes are being massively introduced. Paper innovation is not always a sign of progress. The Chinese economy is in a fever. Most of the Chinese become slaves, in the Mongolian dialect, arats (commoners). Craftsmen even lose their craft skills. Agriculture and trade are declining. The complex irrigation system ceases to function.
In the middle of the fourteenth century, the secret organization «White Lotus» organizes its people for a decisive struggle against the invaders. Having tasted the taste of their own blood, the Mongols leave to the north, to the familiar steppes. One of the leaders of the uprising comes to power – the son of a simple peasant Zhu Yuanzhang. This man founds no less, a new Ming dynasty. The era begun by the successful son of a farmer is marked by the flourishing of science, crafts and shipping. Authorities organize an ocean expedition led by Admiral Zheng He. The «Golden Fleet» consists of 40—60 Baochuan «treasure ships», 117 meters long, 48 wide, and 200 escort ships. The number of the expedition is 28 thousand people.
The huge Chinese fleet makes seven long-distance voyages. But the composition and views of the ruling dynasty suddenly change. Orders are coming from Beijing: burn all ships, destroy expedition reports. China is adopting a strictly isolationist policy.
Meanwhile, the Jurchens from South Manchuria recall their military past. Initially, they stop paying tribute to central China. Then the nomads unite with Inner Mongolia and organize massive raids on the metropolis. Moving south and west, in 1683 the former vassals seize the last stronghold of the resistance of the Celestial Empire – the island of Taiwan. Now China is named after the Manchu dynasty itself – Qing. The aliens are trying to prevent mixed marriages. But they do not oppose their culture to the local, and everything, as quickly as always before, turns into Chinese. By the early nineteenth century, the Qing population was 300 million.
Chinese goods are in great demand in Europe. However, the Chinese accept only silver, gold, Russian furs and Venetian glass as payment. This approach does not suit the British, who are importing a new popular product from India into the Celestial Empire – opium. Dried in the sun, the milky juice of unripe opium poppy capsules contains morphine, codeine, narcotine. By 1830, sales reach 1,500 tons per year. It’s a lot. 35% of the Qing population becomes drug addicts. The Chinese emperor prohibits this simple happiness. In response, the Yellow Empire is attacked by the main drug dealer – Great Britain. China loses this war, pays an indemnity and hands over the island of Hong Kong to the winners, formally on a 99-year lease.
In 1851, the Taiping rebellion took place. The Chinese Christian Hong Xiutsuan became the organizer of the large-scale riot. The main idea of this Chinese dreamer is the expulsion of the Manchus and, note, the founding of the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom. The million-strong Taiping army is distinguished by discipline, a humane attitude towards the population, and the absence of robberies. A community of 25 families is becoming the cell of society in the territories occupied by Chinese Christians. Hierarchies and estates are to be liquidated.
After twelve years of confrontation, marked by the emergence of more and more centers of the Civil War, the Second Opium War takes place. Everything is proceeding according to the same scenario, with the same sad result for China.
Taiping Heavenly Kingdom Banner
Hong Xiuquan, from the very beginning of the great Liberation campaign, departs from practical matters and indulges in meditation. Its commanders continue a fierce struggle, including among themselves. Considering Europeans as brothers in faith, the Taipings cannot understand why the British and French turned against their new relatives. The Heavenly Kingdom Army strictly prohibits smoking opium and, in addition, destroys everything associated with Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism. Things are getting worse. The besieged capital of the Taiping, Nanjing, disappears into the flames of a majestic conflagration. Hong Xiuquan commits suicide. His son, heir to the throne, ends his young life on the chopping block. The last detachments of the Kingdom of Heaven, after a desperate attempt to storm Beijing, perish almost in full force on August 16, 1868.
During the Taiping uprising, between 20 and 30 million people are separated from their precious lives. The Chinese authorities, to this day, are trying to limit the spread of Christianity. In 1900, during the uprising of the ihetuan (boxers), the adherents of traditional beliefs exterminated almost all the Christians in Beijing (Chinese), seeing them as accomplices of the Europeans. Be that as it may, with or without them, the Celestial Empire is occupied by the forces of Germany, Russia and Japan. The winners receive an indemnity of 450 million lans of silver (the bar weighs 31 grams) and open up conservative China to the world even more fully.
In 1908, the two-year-old Emperor Pu I. ascends the throne of the Yellow Empire. Three years later, the Wuchansk uprising breaks out. The war of all against all leads to the collapse of the Qing Empire and the proclamation of the Republic of China. Tibet and Mongolia are leaving China «in their own way».
Emperor Pu Yi (1906—1967)
Pu Yi, aka Xundi – «The Forsaken Emperor» – since 1932 has been the ruler of the puppet republic of Manzhou-go, formed by militaristic Japan for its own purposes. In 1945, Pu Yi surrendered to a Soviet airborne assault force near the city of Mukden. For some time, the humble monarch was kept in a Soviet prisoner of war camp near Khabarovsk. He is later allowed to return to China. Here Pu Yi is re-educated according to the system of the Red Emperor, Mao Zedong for nine years, and after that, for the amusement of the entire Communist Party of China, they are given relative freedom. The last emperor watering plants in the Beijing Botanical Garden. Then, like an ordinary archivist, he goes through the books in the National Library
Ancient Rome by Octavian Augustus
…Several decades before the beginning of our era. Two ambitious generals, Octavian Augustus and Mark Antony, divide Rome into Eastern and Western empires.
Gaius Julius Caesar Octavian Augustus (63 BC – 14 AD), adopted son of Caesar, successor who won the Civil War. The first real Roman emperor.
Mark falls under the spell of the heiress of the Egyptian dynasty of the Ptolemies, Cleopatra, who is not averse to becoming the queen of Rome itself. The