Chapter 187: The Situation (Part 2)

While the main Ming army on the Hunan battlefield stood locked in stalemate with the combined Manchu-Han Qing forces under Tunci, Sun Kewang dispatched another force to invade southern Sichuan, intending to seize the entire province.

At the same time, the Qing court sent the Prince of Pingxi, Wu Sangui, and the Dingxi General and Gusa Ejen Li Guohan, leading their troops from Hanzhong in Shaanxi into Sichuan.

After Wu Sangui and Li Guohan reached Baoning, Sichuan's provisional capital, they rested for several days and then pushed south, quickly advancing to Chengdu.

Lin Shitai, the Ming Regional Commander charged by Sun Kewang with defending Chengdu, surrendered without a fight in the face of the distant-coming Qing army, allowing the Qing to take Chengdu without losing a single soldier.

Lin Shitai had in his early years joined the Daxi Army led by Zhang Xianzhong. After Zhang Xianzhong died in battle, Lin Shitai felt the Daxi Army had no future, so he surrendered to the Qing Prince Ying, Ajige, who appointed him Regional Commander of Baoning.

Several years later, Lin Shitai heard that the remnants of the Daxi Army, under the leadership of Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo, had allied with the Ming to resist the Qing, so he turned against the Qing at Tongchuan and returned to the Ming.

Out of regard for their old ties, Sun Kewang ordered him to lead his own troops in garrisoning Chengdu.

After Lin Shitai surrendered to the Qing a second time, Wu Sangui deemed the man fickle and unreliable, and noted that when Lin had returned to the Ming, the Qing court had issued an explicit decree ordering his arrest.

He therefore ordered Lin Shitai beheaded and his head displayed publicly, and his trusted subordinates and troops, 1,650 men in all, were buried alive.

After the Qing army occupied Chengdu, Wu Sangui took command of the city, while Li Guohan led troops to capture Meizhou and Jiading, taking alive Long Mingyang, the former native official of the Shiping Subprefecture Xuanwei Office in Lin'an Prefecture, Yunnan, who was now a Ming Regional Commander.

Afterwards, Wu Sangui and Li Guohan assembled Meiren Janggin Ge Chaozhong, Bai Hanzhen, Tong Shisheng, Kuizhou Regional Commander Lu Guangzu, Left Route Regional Commander Chen De, Yongning Regional Commander Bai Yongfu, and others to attack Chongqing.

On the fifth day they captured Hezhou, then advanced on Chongqing by both water and land.

The Ming commander defending Chongqing, Lu Mingchen, had too few troops to resist the surging Qing forces coming from several directions, so on the fourteenth day he abandoned Chongqing.

In late April, Wu Sangui dispatched another Qing force led by Jiala Janggin Yang Zhengtai, Guo Yunlong, Right Route Regional Commander Nan Yikui, and Xuzhou Regional Commander Ma Huabao to attack Xuzhou.

The Ming defenders Wang Fuchen and Bai Wenxuan, knowing they could not prevail, withdrew on their own initiative to Yongning.

By this point, in addition to the Baoning area they had originally controlled, the Qing army had successively seized Chengdu, Chongqing, Xuzhou, Mahu, Qiongzhou, Yazhou, Jiading, Meizhou, and other prefectures and counties.

More than half of Sichuan had fallen into Qing hands, so much so that the Qing court believed all of Shu was gradually being pacified and that it should turn to managing the aftermath and exploiting this land of abundance, using Sichuan's resources to support its subsequent offensive against Yunnan and Guizhou.

Sun Kewang, locked in stalemate with the Qing army on the Hunan battlefield, learned that Sichuan was unstable and that the Qing had already occupied more than half of it.

Fearing that once the Qing army secured its foothold in Sichuan it would strike south into Guizhou, he dispatched the Prince of Funan, Liu Wenxiu, to lead forty to fifty thousand relief troops into Sichuan in three columns, launching a full counteroffensive from Jianchang, Xuyong, and Pengshui.

On the ninth day of the eighth month, the Ming army captured Xufu; the Qing troops holding the city were annihilated. Regional Commander Nan Yikui vanished without a trace, Regional Commander Ma Huabao fled back alone, and dozens of Jiala and Niru officers were killed.

At the same time, Sun Kewang's great general Bai Wenxuan also led his troops from Yongning in a counterattack against Chongqing.

Seeing the Ming army's strength, Wu Sangui and Li Guohan held an emergency conference with Sichuan Governor Li Guoying in Jiajiang County on the nineteenth day of the eighth month and decided to withdraw the entire army northward to ensure safety.

The Qing commanders garrisoning Chongqing — Meiren Janggin Ge Chaozhong, Tong Shisheng, Bai Hanzhen, Bordered Red Banner Janggin Yin Decai, and Regional Commanders Bai Yongfu, Chen De, and Lu Guangzu — received Wu Sangui's withdrawal order on the twenty-fourth day of the eighth month and crossed the river northward on the twenty-fifth.

That same day, the Ming army retook Chongqing and immediately sent troops in pursuit of the Qing forces, surrounding them at Tingxi, one hundred twenty li from Chongqing, and attacking from all sides with firearms. On the twenty-eighth, the Qing army suffered a crushing defeat.

Meiren Janggin Bai Hanzhen was captured alive, and when Yongning Regional Commander Bai Yongfu fled to Baoning with his remnant troops, his forces were shattered and depleted; he managed to gather only a little over a hundred survivors.

In the ninth month, Wu Sangui also withdrew his troops to Mianzhou, then fell back further to Guangyuan.

As a result, the Qing's provisional capital in Sichuan, Baoning, was left with only the inspecting censor Hao Yu and Regional Commander Yan Ziming's force of a little over a hundred soldiers.

With the army collapsing in rout, Wu Sangui and Li Guohan were already considering abandoning Sichuan and withdrawing into Hanzhong in Shaanxi.

Governor Hao Yu, however, urged Wu Sangui and Li Guohan not to abandon Baoning, saying, "If we do not die at the hands of the rebels, we shall surely die by the law."

Sichuan Governor Li Guoying also held Wu Sangui back, pleading earnestly: "Your Highness commands a guest army and may return to Hanzhong; but the Governor is a minister charged with defending the land and must live or die with Baoning.

If Your Highness returns to Hanzhong, the Governor shall hasten back to Baoning by night to prepare the defenses." With that, he took leave of Wu Sangui and Li Guohan and led his several hundred camp soldiers back to Baoning.

Seeing this, Li Guohan hesitated, then said to Wu Sangui: "We led a great army to recover Sichuan and failed. If we abandon Baoning and lose the Governor, Your Highness knows well our dynasty's laws — what excuse could we offer the court then?"

Wu Sangui came to his senses upon hearing this and sent a swift rider to call Li Guoying back. He asked him: "I intend to go defend Baoning. Does the Governor have provisions?"

Li Guoying said: "Baoning's grain is not plentiful, but it is still enough to supply the troops for five months."

Seeing that Baoning had grain enough to hold out, and fearing the consequences of losing Baoning and the Governor, Wu Sangui led his troops back to Baoning together with Li Guohan.

After capturing Xuzhou and routing the Qing defenders of Chongqing, Liu Wenxiu had met no resistance along the way, which bred overconfidence.

When his troops reached the outskirts of Baoning, Liu Wenxiu decided to launch a full-scale assault on the city without sufficient assurance of success.

Wu Sangui and the others saw that there was no way out; only by fighting like cornered beasts with their backs to the wall could they snatch survival from desperation.

On the eighth day of the tenth month, the main Ming force assembled north of Baoning, and Liu Wenxiu climbed a hill northeast of the city to direct the assault.

Through reconnaissance, Wu Sangui learned that among the attacking Ming forces, Zhang Xianbi's unit was the weakest in combat effectiveness, and he decided to concentrate his strength on striking Zhang's troops first.

To deceive the Ming army, Li Guoying ordered his Green Standard troops to fight under the banners of the Eight Banners regulars.

At dawn on the eleventh day of the tenth month, Liu Wenxiu directed the great army to assault the city. Troops poured down from the hills, cannon fire shook the heavens, and the line stretched fifteen li from the riverbank in the south to Shagouzi in the north.

War elephants formed the front rank, followed by cannon, matchlock muskets, shields, curved blades, bows and arrows, and long spears, layered for over a li in depth, swarming toward the city.

At the hour of the dragon, Wu Sangui led his troops out through the gates and struck directly at Zhang Xianbi's force. Zhang's troops could not hold and scattered in flight, and the fleeing soldiers threw the units of Wang Fuchen and the others into chaos.

The Qing army seized the moment to press the attack with fierce courage. The Ming formation was already in disorder and could not hold its ground; by noon that day it had completely collapsed.

During the retreat, the pontoon bridge was cut, leaving large numbers of officers and men unable to cross the river; they were either overtaken and killed by the Qing or drowned.

The Ming General Who Exterminates the Tartars Wang Fuchen, Regional Commanders Yao Zhizhen, Zhang Xianzhen, Wang Jiye, Yang Chunpu, and others were successively captured and killed by the Qing.

The Ming lost more than half its troops, three war elephants, and over 2,300 horses and mules. Liu Wenxiu's golden seal as Prince of Funan was also seized by the Qing.

After his narrow victory, Wu Sangui sighed to his aides: "In all my life I have never seen such a formidable foe; he lacked only a single move."

Liu Wenxiu led his remnant troops back to Guizhou. Sun Kewang was deeply displeased and ordered him stripped of his military command and sent back to Kunming to live in idleness. Zhang Xianbi was beaten to death with clubs.

During the Baoning campaign, because neither side could overcome the other, the Ming and Qing forces on the Hunan battlefield remained locked in prolonged stalemate.

In this period, Sun Kewang's forces firmly held the line of Chenzhou, Yuanzhou, and Wugang, while the Qing army held the Changde, Changsha, and Baoqing region.

In the ninth year of Shunzhi, Tunci led the remnants of the Manchu Eight Banners troops that Nikan had brought to Hunan back to the capital to rest and refit.

This move caused the newly appointed Viceroy of the Five Provinces, Hong Chengchou, to lament bitterly; with deep anxiety he sent several memorials in succession to the Qing court, requesting reinforcements, warning that otherwise the situation in Huguang could not be improved.

Hong Chengchou's complaints had their reasons. Shunzhi employed him to carry out the strategy of "using Han to control Han" that Dorgon had laid down, in order to avoid excessive losses among the Manchu Eight Banners on the southern battlefields.

Therefore, as soon as Hong Chengchou arrived in Wuchang, Shunzhi urgently ordered the Manchu Eight Banners troops in Hunan, led by Tunci, to withdraw entirely to Beijing, leaving the fighting in Huguang entirely to the Han Banners and the Green Standard.

However, the troops Hong Chengchou had designated for assembly in Hunan numbered only a little over ten thousand, and even combined with the Green Standard troops originally stationed in Huguang, Guangxi, and Sichuan, they absolutely could not match the Southern Ming armies commanded by Sun Kewang, Li Dingguo, and the others.

His actual combat-ready troops numbered fewer than twenty thousand. Once the Manchu troops, who had served as the backbone, withdrew, the Han troops and Green Standard were even more terrified.

Facing the tens of thousands of Southern Ming troops under Sun Kewang's command, they were all gripped by fear and dared not provoke hostilities lightly.

Had Sun Kewang not also been unable to launch an offensive in Hunan at that time, Hunan might well have fallen entirely into Ming hands because of the withdrawal of Tunci's Manchu troops.

Hong Chengchou knew that with the forces under his command alone, he could not only fail to defeat the Ming troops in western Hunan and Guizhou directly commanded by Sun Kewang and the Thirteen Families of eastern Kui, but he had no confidence whatsoever in holding the line of Yiling and Jingzhou in Hubei and Changde, Changsha, and Baoqing in Hunan.

As for Guangxi, most of which lay within his jurisdiction but remained under the control of the great Southern Ming general Li Dingguo, he was even more powerless.

Moreover, after years of war, Hunan was devastated. As the saying went, a great enemy stood before them while petty bandits roamed the countryside.

Manchu troops came and went in endless succession, adding the burden of welcoming and sending them off. Even the one or two refugees who could be recruited would scurry away like rats.

The common people did not come, and the officials wished to leave. Changsha, where Hong Chengchou had his headquarters, was a city of utter desolation as far as the eye could see.

Inside and outside Baoqing there were no people and no houses, and not even vegetables were bought or sold.

Faced with such a mess, Hong Chengchou on one hand struggled exhaustingly to organize the Green Standard and other Han troops to hold the territory, and on the other petitioned the court to send additional Manchu troops to assist in the fighting, urging the Qing court to order the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao, to move his headquarters quickly to Wuzhou in Guangxi.

His actual intent was to shift the responsibility for taking Guangxi and pinning down Li Dingguo's Ming forces onto the two Han princes in Guangdong.

After the Qing court received Hong Chengchou's memorial, it did not issue an edict ordering the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao, to move to Guangxi. But it also knew that the Han troops under Hong Chengchou's command alone could hardly compete with the Ming army.

So in the twelfth month of the tenth year of Shunzhi, Shunzhi appointed Gusa Ejen Chen Tai as Great General Who Pacifies the South and Suppresses Bandits, and sent him together with Gusa Ejen Lan Bai, Jixiha, and others leading Manchu Eight Banners troops to Hubei and Hunan to garrison and defend.

After Chen Tai was appointed Great General Who Pacifies the South and Suppresses Bandits, however, he did not lead his troops south immediately, but waited until Tunci's force had returned to Beijing before moving south. More than a year passed in this way.

In the fourth month of the twelfth year of Shunzhi, the advance Eight Banners troops under Gusa Ejen Jixiha and Lan Bai, dispatched by Chen Tai, only then entered Hunan.

Chen Tai's own army reached Jianli County in Hubei, where the river had flooded and the dikes had burst, making it impossible to advance. He died of illness while still with the army, never reaching Hunan.

After the Eight Banners troops under Gusa Ejen Jixiha and Lan Bai arrived in Hunan, Sun Kewang, knowing that cutting down enemy generals and seizing banners was not his strength, decided to reinstate the Prince of Funan, Liu Wenxiu, who had been stripped of his command after the Baoning campaign.

But Liu Wenxiu had grown increasingly despondent since his defeat at Baoning and the loss of his command. While living in retirement in Kunming, he had even thought of withdrawing to the mountains to study the Dao.

Sun Kewang summoned him to Hunan several times, but he did not come. Only under Sun Kewang's insistence did Liu Wenxiu finally accept the post of "Grand Commander of the Punitive Expedition."

In the spring of the ninth year of Yongli (the false twelfth year of Shunzhi), Liu Wenxiu led the great generals Lu Mingchen, Feng Shuangli, and others with sixty thousand horse and foot soldiers and more than forty elephants, embarking on the campaign eastward against Huguang.

In the fourth month, Liu Wenxiu's force assembled at Chenzhou in Hunan, planning first to capture Changde, cut the passage west of Dongting Lake between Hubei and Hunan, then recover Changsha, Hengyang, and Yuezhou, and after success, strike north at Wuchang.

According to Liu Wenxiu's deployment, the Ming attack on Changde would advance by both water and land. Liu Wenxiu sent Lu Mingchen with a force to advance by boat down the Yuan River, while he himself led the army overland.

The Ming troops set out just as the waters were rising. Lu Mingchen's force sailed downriver in more than a hundred boats and captured Taoyuan County on the seventeenth day of the fourth month, taking alive the Qing County Magistrate Li Rong.

But the main force personally led by Liu Wenxiu was delayed for days by continuous rain, surging streams, and muddy roads, making progress extremely difficult.

The horse and foot soldiers were bogged down for dozens of days, utterly unable to coordinate with the waterborne force under Lu Mingchen.

After Hong Chengchou and Chen Tai received word that Liu Wenxiu's great army had entered Hunan, they quickly devised countermeasures.

In addition to drawing troops from Hengzhou and elsewhere back to defend the provincial capital Changsha, on the tenth day of the fifth month they dispatched the Manchu Eight Banners troops from Jingzhou to rush to Changde to strengthen its defenses.

On the night of the twenty-third day of the fifth month, Lu Mingchen's force reached the walls of Changde and was ambushed by superior Qing forces.

Without support from the Ming land forces, the fierce fighting continued until the next day, when Lu Mingchen was struck by an arrow, fell into the water, and died for his country. The Ming waterborne force was almost entirely annihilated.

After the battle, the Qing army strengthened its defenses facing Chenzhou. Liu Wenxiu's plan of a pincer attack by water and land had failed, and Lu Mingchen's death in battle severely damaged morale.

Liu Wenxiu had no choice but to abandon the plan to take Changde and lead his army back to Guizhou. Sun Kewang was deeply dissatisfied with Liu Wenxiu's actions and once again stripped him of his command, sending him back to Kunming in Yunnan to live in idleness.

Sun Kewang had appointed Liu Wenxiu as Grand Commander of the Punitive Expedition with the original intent that in the eighth year of Yongli he would lead troops from Hunan out to the Yangtze and join forces with Zhang Mingzhen and others to seize Jiangnan.

At that time, Tunci's Qing force had withdrawn north and Chen Tai's force had not yet moved south — it was precisely the perfect moment to smash the Han troops that Viceroy Hong Chengchou had scraped together and advance on Jiangnan.

But because Sun Kewang was scheming to usurp the throne and replace the Ming with himself, Liu Wenxiu, who had always opposed this, was unwilling to act according to Sun Kewang's strategy, lest Sun Kewang use the success to carry out his usurpation.

As a result, his refusal to move caused Sun Kewang's entire plan to join forces with Zhang Mingzhen from east and west in Jiangnan to be shelved.

After the Changde campaign, Liu Wenxiu returned without achievement, and Chen Tai subsequently died of illness.

Although the Ming army was defeated at Changde, the Qing army also gained no Southern Ming territory, and the two sides essentially remained locked in stalemate with Sun Kewang's Ming forces in western Hunan.

After several months of stalemate, however, the spies the Qing army had sent into Ming-controlled territory brought back shocking news — Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo had fallen out.

Li Dingguo had led his troops through the defensive line Sun Kewang had set at Tianzhou in Guangxi and was heading straight for Guizhou. The move was clearly aimed at Yongli!