Chapter 1066: Sixty Thousand Troops, Ambush on Three Sides (Seeking Subscriptions)

"Replying to the Commander, the Prince Regent—no, I mean that traitor Dodo—has already led the main army day and night toward Shengjing—no, toward Shenyang!"

How would that captive dare deceive Qin Mingtao? Of course he spilled everything like beans pouring out of a sack, telling it all in full detail.

"To Shenyang? Why?" Qin Mingtao did not know that the more than ten thousand cavalry under Huang Degong and Tian Yiqing were already swaggering about outside Shenyang.

It turned out that Oboi, the foremost Baturu of the Manchus, could not tell whether they were strong or weak, and only dared to hold the city tightly without venturing out, so the area outside Shenyang had become a playground where the "fifty thousand Ming troops" ran wild.

Of course, Oboi's avoidance of battle was not because of incompetence; it was precisely the caution appropriate to the weaker side in a war. The ten thousand vanguard-battalion cavalry under Oboi were mainly composed of old Manchus, and were the most important capital in the hands of the "thrice-risen" Great Qing state—as long as this army still existed, even if the Great Qing retreated to the Heilongjiang basin, it could still drag out its existence for a while longer.

If these ten thousand-odd vanguard-battalion cavalry were all lost on the outskirts of Shenyang, then the Great Qing would not even have the capital to drag on for a few more years!

So after leading his troops to Shenyang, Oboi became a turtle that pulled in its head, firmly refusing to come out of his shell, single-mindedly waiting for Dodo's main force to arrive.

And in contrast to Oboi's "timidity," Huang Degong and Tian Yiqing had grown bold beyond measure. After discovering that the Qing troops only dared to hold fast and did not dare to come out and fight, they simply continued their bluff and set up a main camp at Shalingdun east of Shenyang. At the same time, they scattered most of their cavalry into reinforced companies (reinforced with Kharchin Mongol cavalry), running wild all around Shenyang, seizing people and grain, and sometimes even capturing well-known traitors by name and publicly executing them!

As a result, the area around Shenyang was thrown into panic. Whether great or small traitors or ordinary Qing military dependents, none dared remain in the countryside, and all abandoned the wheat fields that had only been half harvested and fled east or north.

There were also some traitors and military dependents living farther south who did not dare flee north, and instead chose to flee south, probably thinking of crossing the Yalu River into Joseon to take temporary refuge—these people did not know that Joseon had already changed hands, and still thought it was Dorbo's territory!

And among those who chose to flee south, quite a few took the wrong road and ran straight into Dodo's main army advancing north, so many in Dodo's army also learned the news that the Ming main force had already invaded Shengjing Prefecture!

"Of course they are going to fight the government troops attacking Shenyang," the captive who was confessing so honestly could not help trembling when he spoke of the government troops who had invaded Shengjing Prefecture.

The government troops had already reached the walls of Shenyang to burn and kill—could the thrice-risen Great Qing still come to any good end? Whether the Great Qing lived or died mattered little to him, but his family also lived near Shenyang, and he did not know whether the government troops had killed them.

"Government troops..." Qin Mingtao nodded slightly. He knew the captive meant the ten thousand-odd cavalry led by Huang Degong.

Ten thousand-odd cavalry had actually put on the airs of a main force—Qin Mingtao thought to himself: the eastern barbarians are getting easier and easier to beat!

"Then what happened with you lot?" Qin Mingtao asked. "Why didn't you go to Shenyang?"

"Ah," the captive sighed, "we were originally going to Shenyang too, but just as we reached the Hala River we got an urgent report saying four or five thousand government troops had landed at the mouth of the Liao River and made a surprise attack on Liangfangkou Pass. So Meiren-i-janggin Tuhai was ordered to lead this slave's niru south to resist the government troops. Who would have thought..."

"How many of you are there?" Qin Mingtao pressed.

"How many there are this slave does not know; this slave is only a daidan janggin..." The captive stole a glance at Qin Mingtao, saw his face darkening, and hastily changed his words. "But this slave knows Tuhai brought eight jalan south with him."

Division Chief of Staff Li Shaowen put in a word: "Division Commander, at present one niru of the eastern barbarians has 250 men, one jalan including the jalan office has 1,300 men, so eight jalan should be just over ten thousand—exactly right!"

Ten thousand-odd—neither too many nor too few, just right for wiping out.

"Of these eight jalan, how many are cavalry jalan?" Qin Mingtao asked again.

"They are all infantry jalan," the captive said. "The eastern barbarians don't have much cavalry now... only the ten thousand-odd of the Vanguard Battalion and the ten thousand-odd of the Elite Cavalry Battalion are mounted cavalry units. Also the forces of the amban janggin at Shanhai Pass, Haishenwai, Jinzhou, Uiju, Heilongjiang, Heishan, and other places are all provided with horses. As for the eight jalan under Tuhai, they are all made up of farmer-soldiers, so they have no horses."

The Manchu farmer-soldiers of the present were not the same as the Shun's fubing. Although the latter were also rooted in the land, Sichuan and Yunnan had many people, so they could live off land rent, and the Shun also strictly enforced the policy of "profit through one channel only," allowing the fubing to devote sufficient time and energy to practicing martial skills.

The Manchu farmer-soldiers, however, had no tenant farmers to exploit and had to till the land themselves. Moreover, they themselves were the objects of exploitation by the Manchu nobility—the Manchu farmer-soldiers had to pay rent and taxes even while serving, and their burdens were extremely heavy. Therefore they had little time to practice martial arts, especially horsemanship. Even if a household had horses, they were used for pulling carts and plowing fields, and they could not bear to ride them.

And Dodo had not required these farmer-soldiers to provide their own horses for service—the horses in these farmer-soldiers' households were all tools of production. Now that the able-bodied men who did the heavy labor had gone off to be soldiers, if the horses were taken away too, the farm work would be ruined.

Qin Mingtao nodded. "Once the other captives have been interrogated, if their confessions are consistent, we march!" He paused. "Except for the Sixth Regiment, all other officers and men are to rest immediately... We'll also go take a nap. Once we've slept enough and had a good meal, we'll go hunt down the eastern barbarians!

The enemy can't run away!"

In fact, the enemy had no intention of running!

Because the enemy did not know how well the Ming army's Young Guard Division officers and men could run... Except for a very small number of mid- and high-ranking officers who could march on horseback, most of this division's officers and combat soldiers were very young, and without exception had undergone many years of rigorous training, with first-rate physiques and excellent stamina.

But most of the ten thousand-odd men under Tuhai were middle-aged uncles past their prime. They could manage farm work, and under the organization of Manchu officers they could fight, but when it came to forced marches and physical endurance, they were far inferior to the Ming army's Young Guard troops.

However, Tuhai did not know how terrifying the enemy he faced was... Not that he was completely ignorant—he knew a little.

Because the unit under his subordinate jalan janggin Eshan had been utterly routed today by a Ming Young Guard force only half their number. Of the jalan's more than 1,200 men, six or seven hundred were gone, and those who ran back had all thrown away their armor and weapons, a complete disgrace.

"Eshan, this feigned defeat of yours is a bit too realistic, isn't it?"

In a temporary camp north of Liangfangkou Pass, Tuhai looked at the five or six hundred battered remnants sprawled every which way and could not help scolding Eshan.

"Feigned defeat? How was I feigning defeat? I was truly defeated—I nearly lost my life!" Eshan was an old Manchu of the Bordered Yellow Banner. After the battle of Deshengdian, he had abandoned his courtyard house in Beijing and fled to the northeast to follow Dodo and Dodo's son. He had crossed swords with the Ming army inside the Pass before, but the Ming troops he encountered today had overturned everything he knew.

"Too formidable..." Eshan shook his head repeatedly. "Only five hundred-odd men, and I thought I'd hit them hard first, then feign defeat when their main body came up. Who knew that as soon as we started exchanging musket fire it was hopeless... They would send out small squads to spread out, crouch low and creep through the wheat fields, then suddenly fire—every shot hit its mark!

In no time at all they'd shot down more than a hundred of my men! The rest were scared out of their wits... Taking advantage of our confusion, their main body closed in and fired, and in a short while threw us into complete chaos, and then they launched a charge. There was simply no holding them back!"

Tuhai drew a breath and said: "It seems this Ming force is their elite... But that's fine. His Highness has already prepared sixty thousand troops in ambush on three sides, just waiting for us to lure them over so we can annihilate them in one blow!"

He had barely finished speaking when a dense burst of gunfire rang out from the open fields to the south!

Tuhai's face darkened, and he said in a low voice: "They're here! Good that they're here... This is the ancestors' blessing. We can fight another Sarhu!"

(End of Chapter)