Chapter 1064: Doni, Your Sarhu Has Come!

On the banks of the Hala River, a tributary of the Liao River, there stood a small fortress called Hala Fort, sitting squarely astride the official road leading to Shengjing. The broad official road passed straight through the fortress, and on both sides stretched an endless sea of golden wheat that made one's heart race just to look at.

It was now the busy autumn harvest season, yet less than a quarter of the ripened wheat in the fields had been cut. It seemed most of this season's wheat would rot in the fields and serve as fertilizer. This was because most of the able-bodied laborers from the farms along both banks of the Liao River had followed Dodo off to war!

At this moment, above the low walls of Hala Fort, a tall white grand banner fluttered in the wind — this was the grand banner of Dodo, Prince Regent Yu of the Great Qing, and now the supreme symbol of power in this thrice-risen Great Qing state.

Inside the little fortress there was only a single street, and at this moment column after column of Qing infantry in white uniforms and white armor, along with bronze cannons hauled by mules and horses — either imported from Spain or copied at the Vladivostok arsenal — rumbled through Hala Fort. From officers down to common soldiers, every man marched drenched in sweat, yet none showed the slightest intention of stopping.

The white columns stretched from the edge of the great plain south of Hala Fort all the way to the edge of the plain north of the fortress, as if without end.

Across the entire great plain surrounding Hala Fort, it seemed as though only they remained. In the wheat fields, only a quarter harvested, not a single laboring farmer could be seen. No cooking smoke rose from the villages near the fortress. Dodo's great army seemed to be passing through a land abandoned by its people.

The Prince Regent Dodo himself, dressed in a white riding jacket with narrow sleeves, stood atop the walls of Hala Fort, raising a telescope to scan in all directions, his face growing darker and darker.

The reason his face darkened was that the bannerman commoners around Hala Fort — most of them actually Han Chinese farmers who had come from inside the Pass — had, a few days earlier, at the mere appearance of a small detachment of Ming cavalry, fled in droves toward Shengjing, abandoning even their wheat. Did they think they wouldn't need to eat once they reached Shengjing? What on earth were these people afraid of?

And why were the Ming cavalry driving away the commoners here? Weren't they the imperial court? Weren't they government troops? Driving away commoners like this — weren't they afraid of being impeached by the censors?

Oh, right — the censors no longer concerned themselves with such things.

Dodo remembered now: the censors nowadays only went after corrupt officials. But still, they couldn't just stand by and watch the Ming government troops torment the common people like this!

Just as Dodo was grieving over the collapse of Ming military discipline, a white-armored squad leader received the latest intelligence and dashed up the wall, reporting loudly to Dodo: "My Prince, the niru left to guard Liangfangkou Pass reports that two days ago, some two to three hundred large seagoing ships entered the mouth of the Liao River and carried out a landing operation less than thirty li from Liangfangkou Pass. At least ten thousand troops came ashore at the river mouth. Our forces, outnumbered, inflicted a certain number of casualties on the Ming troops — killing over a hundred and several tens — then voluntarily withdrew to Niuyayi to await reinforcements!"

"Nonsense!" Dodo could not help cursing when he heard the white-armored soldier's report. "Killed over a hundred and several tens? One niru of ours is only two hundred and fifty men — and they could kill over a hundred and several tens amid ten thousand Ming troops? Surely it wasn't them who got killed?"

"My Prince, wonderful news!"

No sooner had Dodo finished speaking than someone was already congratulating him. Dodo turned his head and saw it was Tuhai, who had just arrived from Dalinghe Fort.

The moment Tuhai and Ebilun reached Dalinghe Fort, they realized something was wrong. The Ming army had not pursued them at all! Nor was there any sign of them moving to outflank Jinzhou. That meant they were very likely heading for Shengjing!

This had become a serious matter!

Fifty thousand Ming troops driving straight for Shengjing! If by any chance they seized Shengjing, it would truly be the end. So Tuhai and Ebilun did not dare remain at Dalinghe Fort any longer, and immediately led their troops toward Shengjing. They had only just reached the Hala River when they encountered the seventy-thousand-strong army under Dodo's command.

Dodo turned and shot him a sideways glare. "What wonderful news? That we killed over a hundred Ming troops, or that over a hundred of ours got killed?"

"My Prince," Tuhai said, "the Ming troops landing at the Liao River mouth number at most a little over ten thousand, and they cannot have many cannons or cavalry. We have seventy-three thousand here — five times the enemy!"

Dodo was taken aback. That was true! Troops landing from the sea generally did not carry many warhorses or cannons — unless there was an intact port available, warhorses and cannons were extremely difficult to load and unload.

And weren't cavalry and artillery precisely the Ming army's advantages? At this thought, Dodo felt somewhat deflated again. Bow and horse ought to have been the specialty of the steppe peoples. The Manchus, though not a steppe tribe, were no weaklings on horseback either, and with the Khorchin grasslands supplying fine horses, they should absolutely have held the upper hand against Ming cavalry.

But the Ming dynasty had, through overseas trade, introduced large numbers of Indian lop-eared horses and Arabian horses. Compared with those great ocean horses, the fine Mongol mounts ridden by the Manchu warriors were little better than small donkeys. Though the "little donkeys" had their own advantages — hardy, enduring, and abundant — good for long-distance raids that wore down the enemy's horseflesh.

Yet the Ming army had also come up with black-gun mule soldiers, using nimble tactics both mounted and dismounted to deal with the Qing army's roving scouts and pickets, putting the Qing at an extreme disadvantage in the attrition war of light cavalry — there weren't many old Manchus left, so how could they compete in attrition against a Ming army of nearly limitless numbers?

At the same time, after large numbers of new Manchus — actually Han Chinese farmers — joined the Qing army, the Qing forces had become an army built primarily around Spanish infantry squares. Their mobility had dropped sharply, and they had essentially lost the ability to carry out long-distance raids with large formations.

Tuhai saw Dodo's brows furrow again and assumed he was worried about Shengjing, so he continued to persuade him: "With Oboi leading ten thousand men of the vanguard battalion to reinforce Shengjing, Shengjing will not fall no matter what. The problem now is that the fertile land around Shengjing may be ravaged by the Ming troops. Our soldiers are all sustained by their land. If the area around Shengjing is laid waste, they will become as impoverished as the Liaodong garrison troops who once lost Shenyang, Liaoyang, Guangning, and the other places!"

An army rooted in the land fears nothing more than losing its income from the land!

Do not assume that once land is distributed, soldiers will fight desperately, howling to defend their land. A soldier after land distribution is a self-financing business entity!

If the land cannot turn a profit, and the soldier must bear the expenses of military service himself, he will soon die of poverty.

Historically, the prosperity of the Liaodong Ming army during the Li Chengliang period was actually because Li Chengliang, during his tenure as Regional Commander, happened to coincide with the Zhang Juzheng reforms, and so was able to seize the opportunity to carry out land surveys and military colonization. As Xiong Tingbi stated in his "Memorial on Restoring Military Colonies": the more than one hundred thousand cavalry and infantry soldiers of Liaodong received no annual stipends, and relied entirely on the harvests of the military colonies for their upkeep.

In other words, before losing Liaoyang, Shenyang, and Guangning, the Ming army in Liaodong did not need the court to spend money supporting them — they could sustain themselves on the military colonies.

And after losing the benefits of the Liaodong military farms, given the Ming dynasty's tax-collecting capacity at the time, it was fundamentally impossible to scrape together enough from across the realm to make up for the economic losses of the Liaodong garrison. The additional Liaodong levy and the crowding-out of military funds for the other frontier garrisons by Liaodong military expenditures became a crushing burden that helped bring down the Ming dynasty.

Now, the same situation was about to befall Dodo's side!

"My Prince," Tuhai said, "fifty thousand Ming troops can perfectly well live off the land around Shengjing. As long as they seize enough grain, then dig deep trenches and build high ramparts, they can drag out the fighting around Shengjing indefinitely, prevent our people from farming, and turn the fertile land along both banks of the Liao River into wasteland. Within a year or two at most, we will be destitute!

The only plan now is to seize the opportunity and fight a Sarhu of our own. First ignore the main Ming force pressing toward Shengjing, and instead concentrate our forces to annihilate this Ming column at the Liao River mouth. Then wait for the chance to strike the enemy advancing from the Xiaoling River toward Jinzhou, and then turn back and fight a decisive battle against the enemy coming from Lüshun. As long as all these enemy columns are defeated, the Ming main force approaching Shengjing will feel isolated and will withdraw."

Dodo nodded heavily. "Right! This battle shall be my Sarhu. If I win it, I shall be the founding emperor. If I do not win... we will become the Liaodong garrison of old!"

Tuhai said, "My Prince, this subject has a plan that will surely help Your Highness utterly destroy the enemy that has landed!"

(End of Chapter)