"So, this is why Your Majesty ordered the slaughter of tens of thousands of Tatars who had lived in Tauris for generations?" Justinian asked later.
"Are you questioning my decision? Or do you think I made a mistake? And I didn't kill tens of thousands; the Tatar rebels I truly ordered to be explicitly cleansed were less than ten thousand." Manuel turned around, quite displeased, and retorted to Justinian.
"I wouldn't dare, Your Highness. I never thought that eradicating a few heretics was something to repent for. I was just thinking about how future generations would evaluate us, because with the guidance of a few influential people, the moral views of ordinary people can undergo drastic changes in just a single generation." Justinian bowed, filled with trepidation.
"They will understand me. My decision was made entirely out of helplessness, and moreover, it was a necessary sacrifice," Manuel responded with righteous indignation. "The actions of a monarch are, in the final analysis, very simple. My doing such a thing is ultimately for the country and its people." When Manuel, who had already led the Autocratic State to become a regional power in Anatolia, said this, his handsome face, now with a short beard, was full of determination, and he clenched his right fist, placing it on his left shoulder to show his resolve at the time.
But that was for later; let's turn the clock back now—
As mentioned before, although Manuel's actions this time seemed to target all Tatars indiscriminately, he actually intended to divide them. For example, tribes like Balin who actively defected to him could receive amnesty and even preferential treatment, while tribes that had been persuaded to join him early on could retain their original status. This strategy of playing one side against the other was truly twice as effective with half the effort.
The faction that was suppressed, or rather, brutally beaten, was now in a rather tragic state. For example, thanks to the diligent efforts of the Theodoro soldiers, three days later, the population of Bakhchysarai, once one of the most prosperous cities on the Tauris Peninsula, had plummeted by about seventy percent, and the city was filled with the corpses of muslims. If Manuel hadn't been so concerned about the city, listing various permissible and impermissible actions, the soldiers would have piled their hunted heads into a Jingguan.
Although Bakhchysarai escaped the grim fate of a Jingguan due to Manuel's special attention, other areas in Northern Crimea were not so fortunate. Under the encirclement of the Theodoro Army led by Posadas and the Lithuanian reinforcements, the last small remnants of Tatar rebels were completely wiped out. Their strongholds were razed to the ground, and the captured prisoners were all ordered to be executed by the bloodthirsty Posadas, with no one spared.
Afterward, he bid farewell to the Lithuanian army and pushed northward through North Tauris, forcibly implementing the orthodox cross with what could be described as barbaric military might onto the peninsula's grasslands, where the cross had not reached for eight hundred years. In this process, countless people were driven from their ancestral lands, and countless others lost their lives forever. Several Jingguan, made of Tatar bones, also rose on the peninsula, sights not seen for a long time.
Not only were the nomadic people, who were tacitly allowed to be treated this way, subjected to such violence, but in his excitement, Posadas even spared no few Tatar good citizens listed on the "whitelist." For example, one day in late April, when Posadas led his army to an undefended village northwest of Kerkimetis, he suddenly ordered the entire army to attack this village, which was on the "whitelist."
"But General, aren't they on the 'whitelist' by His Highness? How can we…" Posadas's adjutant was greatly alarmed and tried to dissuade him.
"We merely made a mistake," Posadas said with an unruffled expression. "His Highness won't blame us for such a small matter. At most, His Highness will scold us a few times, and then act as if nothing happened."
"But General, most of these people are women, children, and the elderly, unarmed. Is what we are doing in accordance with the Bible? How will later generations view us? This might even make us criminals of history." A military chaplain bravely stood before the towering Posadas and protested loudly.
"Why speak of propriety and righteousness to infidels? Even if they wear the skin of the old, weak, sick, and disabled, they are still enemies. As for how future generations will see it," Posadas snorted coldly, "we are doing this for future generations, and history will certainly give us a fair evaluation."
Seeing Posadas's unwavering resolve, no one else in the army came forward to stop him. Posadas, seeing this, immediately smirked and led them to charge into the village. About half a day later, it became a dead village, and a Jingguan, made of Tatars of different age groups, was piled up in the village.
Posadas's radical and tyrannical methods naturally aroused great indignation among many Tatars. Soon, Tatars who had previously laid down their weapons and submitted took up arms again in resistance, including many Christians who had already converted to orthodox. Although these rebellions, large and small, were suppressed thanks to the excellent tactics of the Theodoro Army and the active cooperation of Tatar tribes siding with Theodoro, this wave of continuous unrest quickly reached Manuel, who was stationed in Mangup. This immediately put him on alert; he did not want his Anatolia and his coronation to be disrupted by such rebellions.
To truly understand the current situation in North Tauris, in mid-May, Manuel led his trusted retainers and rode lightly to various towns in North Tauris for inspection. During this period, he was quite surprised to witness firsthand the various "masterpieces" Posadas had created in this land. This almost made him spit out a mouthful of old blood: he had indeed intended to use Posadas's bloodthirsty nature to further reduce the Tatar population of Tauris by making him a guide, but he truly had not expected Posadas to exceed his expectations completely. "Could he really be a genius?" Manuel began to ponder this question on his way to Kerkimetis.
It wasn't until he reached the village in Kerkimetis that Manuel's heart, which he thought had long adapted to all of this, was once again severely shaken: in the center of the village, there was a grotesque Jingguan made of the decaying corpses of over a thousand villagers, mostly Tatar heads stacked up, many of them women, children, and the elderly, and quite a few young adults, but all of them, without exception, formed the foundation of this spectacle.
Looking at the grotesque Jingguan of dismembered Tatar women, children, and the elderly piled up before him, Manuel felt a strong sense of discomfort in his stomach, and then he immediately vomited out the breakfast he had eaten that day. It wasn't until he drank the honey water he received from his attendant that his complexion returned to normal.
"Recall Posadas to me, suspend him from duty pending investigation, immediately, right now!" This was the first military order Manuel issued after his complexion recovered.
According to the research of later historians, the forced conversion movement launched by the Principality of Theodoro, later the Bosphorus Despotate, in 1432, whether intentionally or unintentionally by the then-ruling Manuel, resulted in several massacres of considerable scale. These massacres were later collectively referred to as the "Crimea Massacres." In this massacre, nearly 200,000 Tatars within the Principality, after experiencing slaughter, exile, expulsion, and enslavement, were ultimately reduced to just over 100,000. Of the original over 150,000 Tatars on the Tauris Peninsula, fewer than 50,000 continued to live on the peninsula where their ancestors had lived.