Chapter 1075: Inviting the Prince to Die

Wrong! Wrong! We've gone the wrong way. Why are we heading north?

When Nikan saw Doni's great army moving north, he was so frantic he nearly toppled off the roof of the ruined temple.

This Doni is far too unreliable! Now is the moment when, on a narrow road, the brave prevail. Even fighting with everything you have, victory is far from certain — and you still try to flee before battle? Do you think you can get away? Do you think the Ming cavalry is weak? When the time comes and they pursue you tail-to-tail all the way to Shenyang, if three or four thousand of the thirty or forty thousand troops around you make it back, that will already be excellent!

Even counting the ten thousand-odd cavalry Oboi led back earlier, plus the troops left guarding Heilongjiang and Jianzhou, if the Great Qing can still field twenty thousand fighting men, that will be excellent!

That number is far smaller than the forces Imperial Grandfather had at the Battle of Sarhu back then. What is to be done?

Nikan was completely dazed. He did not even know how he had gotten down from the roof of that ruined temple. In any case, by the time his wandering soul returned, he was already sitting inside the temple, surrounded by a crowd of various captains living in constant dread, and standing before him was a new-Manchu Dardan captain who had just been released by the Ming army, stammering out the Ming army's terms for surrender.

"The gr-gr-great Ming heavenly troops said that as l-long as the Prince dies, everyone else need not die, and need not go to the America Prefecture either. They can go to Joseon."

So even a ruthless man like Qin Mingtao has moments of kindness! He actually showed mercy to this pack of Han traitors and eastern barbarians — no need to go to America, they can go to Joseon. What fine terms!

At this, every man's heart was stirred — except Nikan's.

He had read too little, and for a moment did not grasp what "dies" meant. He even asked, "Coax? Coax what? We are a grown man — do We still need coaxing?"

Indeed, so grown up now — coaxing won't fix it.

"My Prince, 'dies' is not 'coax.'" That "black man" Duncan was learned and knew what "dies" meant. "According to the Erya's explanation, 'dies' means death!"

"The Erya? Death?" Nikan leapt to his feet at once. This matter could not be agreed to!

Nikan roared: "What? On what grounds? On what grounds must We die? We are the cousin of those two girls Ajige and Dong'e — the Ming's imperial cousin-in-law!"

Clang.

A chorus of blades being drawn — every captain in the ruined temple had pulled his knife!

Nikan nodded heavily. "That's right! Let us fight our way out together!"

As he spoke, he too reached for his blade. He felt — the blade was gone!

He was still shouting, "My blade! Where is Our treasured blade?"

Duncan, standing behind him, answered: "My Prince, your treasured blade is right here!"

With that, he drove the sharp steel in his hand hard into Nikan's back. Nikan was not wearing armor, and so the steel blade ran him clean through.

At the end he was still unwilling to accept it. Head lowered, eyes bulging, he stared at the blade-tip protruding from his chest, still not understanding what had happened, when he heard someone shouting: "The Prince has taken his own life! The Prince would rather die than submit to the Ming — he has already taken his own life!"

Nikan's body had already gone limp, but his mind was still turning it over: "I took my own life? But when did I ever take a knife and stab myself in the back?"

The heavy snow was still drifting and swirling down, thicker and fiercer than the night before. The north wind carried goose-feather snow in gust after gust, lashing the face like a knife scraping across it.

Column after column of Qing troops advanced, churning through the blizzard. The snow on the official road grew ever thicker. The infantry marching in front had no fur boots sufficient to ward off the cold; after a night of walking through the snow, many had frostbitten toes and could not walk at all. They could only lean on their weapons and stagger forward, step by stumbling step. Some fell and could never get up again.

The cavalry behind were no better off. The Ming black cavalry and lance cavalry (the foreign-horse troops), plus four or five thousand young soldiers advancing on horses and mules (all of them able to ride horses and mules), were snapping at the heels of this Qing elite cavalry. One moment they fired from ambush, the next they launched a charge, steadily grinding down the enemy's numbers and morale. At first, some Manchu warriors thought themselves mighty and still dared to spur their horses, brandish their lances, and ride out to fight. But once the Ming black guns fired and the lance cavalry charged, they all became piles of mangled flesh. Only then did these Manchu warriors, peerless with bow and horse, discover that their skills had no place to be put to use at all.

The wind and snow were now too heavy. Arrows loosed into the wind lost all accuracy and could do nothing against armored foes. But the Ming flintlocks were barely affected by the storm — the gun cracked and the man fell dead, just the same.

And the Manchu warriors' mounted charges were checked by the Ming lance cavalry. It was not that their horsemanship was inferior to the enemy's, but that their warhorses were far too poor. The Manchu warriors' Mongol horses of course had their merits — they could endure hardship and toil. If they could hold out against the Ming army in this blizzard for another ten days or half a month, their Mongol horses might perhaps overcome the Arabian horses and lop-eared horses of the Ming lance cavalry.

But right now, those Arabian horses and lop-eared horses had not yet lost their strength, and could still charge and kill with full vigor!

As for the close combat in which the Manchu warriors were most confident, that too was now failing. Those young soldiers advancing on horseback were not only fierce and valiant, but skilled at coordination. They would fight as squads, combining their strength to kill one or several Manchu warriors. A warrior fighting alone might win, but facing ten bayonet-fixed flintlocks, most of them loaded, he truly lost his nerve. Close combat is not only a contest of martial skill, but also of nerve. Once nerve fails, no matter how great the martial art, it cannot be brought to bear. Besides, the Ming young soldiers were also skilled at close combat.

So the Manchu warriors suddenly discovered a fact that chilled them to the bone — even in cold-steel close combat, they were now far inferior to the Ming army.

Outshot at range, outmatched in mounted charges, and even beaten badly in cold-steel combat — apart from that finest stratagem among the Thirty-Six Stratagems, what other option did they have?

And so what had been an orderly withdrawal quickly turned into an uncontrollable rout. Driven in turns by the terrifying Ming black-gun troops, foreign-horse troops, and young soldiers, the old Manchu cavalry had no road of escape, and could only drive forward into the infantry ahead. Those infantrymen, their feet frostbitten, truly could not walk. They crowded together in great masses, blocking the official road solid.

And the wheat fields on either side of the official road, unharvested and now buried under the heavy snow, had all frozen to death. Yet they had not frozen into solid ice; they had all rotted into the soil, turning it muddy and impassable. The old Manchu cavalry all knew they must not let their horses' legs sink in, so they began lashing the infantry ahead with their whips. The formerly docile new-Manchu infantry would not stand for it now. Struck by the horsewhips, they angrily thrust back with their long spears, and the spear-points pierced the chests of quite a few old Manchu. These old Manchu had long been arrogant and overbearing — how could they let the new Manchu who had struck them go unpunished? And so old and new Manchu actually fell to fighting each other with weapons in the midst of the retreat.

Doni and Yolo had no choice but to steel themselves and step forward, soothing and suppressing by turns, barely managing to keep the troops moving.

But the pursuers behind were still there. Before long, the old-Manchu cavalry in the rear were again driven to desperation and began crashing into the infantry ahead, and once more there was chaos.

The pursuing Ming army, however, was clearly in no hurry to swallow up this Qing force that still had some fight left in it. What was the hurry? The battlefield was now over a hundred li from Liaoyang and still more than two hundred li from Shenyang. How satisfying it would be to harry them the whole way!

And when the great army fell back to the fort at Hala River, something even more terrifying happened. Among the Ming troops following on their heels, someone took an eighteen-foot long spear, hung upon it the head of the Great Qing's Respectful and Prudent Loyal Prince, and rode out to taunt them.

Now the Great Qing's veteran generals were withering away. Fierce men like Nikan were all but gone. With Nikan beheaded, every man in the Qing army at Hala River Fort was stricken with terror.

This time Doni could no longer be bothered with the more than ten thousand new-Manchu infantry who had fallen back to Hala River Fort. He no longer let his precious elite cavalry cover them, but fled for his life with the cavalry and the Manchu officers from among the new-Manchu infantry.

The pursuing Ming army, however, had no intention of letting them go. They harried them tail-to-tail the whole way, and only when they had driven Doni into the territory of Shenyang Prefecture did they have to call off the pursuit because the weather was too cold and Oboi had come out with troops to meet him.

And at this point, the Manchu soldiers who followed Doni back into the city of Shenyang — not counting the men Oboi had led out from within Shenyang — numbered fewer than four thousand.

(End of Chapter)