Chapter 1276: How to Become a Loyal Martyr, Part Two

The twentieth year of Great Ming Hongxing, the twenty-third day of the first month.

The area from Dasan Pass to Heshangyuan.

"Victory! Victory! Long live the Great Ming!"

Across the battlefield rose a tremendous cheer like the roar of mountains and the surge of seas, soaring straight into the clouds and lifting the morale of every Ming soldier on the field to its utmost.

From Dasan Pass to Heshangyuan, dozens of hills and terraces of varying heights, together with a chain of forts and fieldworks built along the Dasan River, formed the Shun army's Dasan Pass defense line. For the past seven or eight years this line had stood unbreakable, serving as a magnet to draw in the main Ming forces, and at the same time as a wall of bronze and iron defending the Shun regime.

But the cost of maintaining this line was simply too great!

Li Dingguo's idea of opening military farms at the front had long since come to nothing. The grain produced by the farms was nowhere near enough to sustain the consumption of the various armies on the Shaanxi front — the number of Shun troops on the Shaanxi front was not fixed; at its height it could reach two hundred thousand, and at its lowest only fifty or sixty thousand.

And what decided whether there were more or fewer troops, apart from military need, was the rear's ability to supply grain — the roads into Sichuan are hard, harder than climbing to the blue sky!

To transport one dan of grain to the Shaanxi front, the amount eaten on the road by porters and animals, or lost for all sorts of reasons (including the fine fodder eaten by the animals), often ran as high as eight or nine dan. To maintain an army of one or two hundred thousand at the front for any length of time was simply unrealistic.

But relying on only fifty or sixty thousand men to hold the Guanzhong front and the Qiuchi Mountain–Qi Mountain front was likewise impossible. So Li Dingguo had no choice but to establish three more great camps at Jiezhou, Lüeyang, and Hanzhong. Each great camp could hold up to thirty thousand troops at its peak, making ninety thousand reserve troops in all.

When the Guanzhong and Qiuchi Mountain–Qi Mountain fronts were relatively quiet (usually in winter and spring), Li Dingguo would reduce the garrisons there and pull the main force back to Jiezhou, Lüeyang, and Hanzhong to be fed. When the front grew tense, he would move troops from Jiezhou, Lüeyang, and Hanzhong up to the forward positions.

If the fighting in Shaanxi became truly fierce, Li Dingguo would also bring up a great army from Chengdu, and then the troops at the front could reach more than two hundred thousand.

In the winter of the nineteenth year of Hongxing, although the situation on the Shaanxi front had already begun to grow tense, Li Dingguo still reduced the front-line troops according to plan. By the first month of the twentieth year, he had even withdrawn the garrisons in that area further.

By the time the Great Sword Mountain uprising broke out, the total Shun strength on the Guanzhong and Qiuchi Mountain–Qi Mountain fronts had fallen below forty thousand, and the troops deployed on the Dasan Pass defense line were fewer than twenty thousand. Even these twenty thousand began withdrawing on the twenty-first and twenty-second of the first month, and by the time the Ming army launched its attack on the twenty-third, fewer than six thousand remained holding the important strongpoints along the Shun forward line.

And these six thousand defenders had no intention of fighting to the death. They were all Li Dingguo's personal guards, every one of them mounted on Yunnan or Sichuan horses skilled at mountain travel, ready to ride off at any moment.

Still, a performance must be played out in full!

If the Shun Prince of Jin, Li Dingguo, was going to withdraw troops from the front, he had to leave an elite rearguard!

How could they possibly collapse at the first touch?

Yet when the thirty thousand picked troops commanded by Liu Sheng and Wu Guogui launched their general assault under the cover of 24-jin mortars, 12-jin long cannons, and other field guns of medium and small caliber, the speed with which the Shun troops under Li Dingguo collapsed still left this famous general, who had fought the Ming army on the Shaanxi front for nearly eight years, somewhat disappointed.

From Li Dingguo's vantage point on a height on the south bank of the Dasan River, where he sat astride his horse, the sun-and-moon banner of the Great Ming had already risen above the fort at Dasan Pass.

And the Shun troops who had just abandoned the pass and were fleeing toward the Dasan River presented a wretched sight of an army routed like a collapsing mountain. Across the not-so-broad battlefield, soldiers in blue uniforms were everywhere, some on horseback, some running at full speed, all rushing toward the Dasan River.

The studded explosive shells fired by the Ming 12-jin long cannons burst from time to time among the blue-clad crowd, throwing up columns of smoke of varying heights.

The pursuing Ming troops also appeared on the smoke-shrouded battlefield, formed into red squares, like moving fortresses grinding forward, trampling every enemy in their path beneath their feet.

Li Dingguo's eldest son, Li Puxing, had been ordered to hold Dasan Pass. Now he too was being chased by these red-coated soldiers and had waded across to the south bank of the Dasan River. He found Li Dingguo's royal standard bearing the character "Jin," then rode straight up the high slope, and only when he reached Li Dingguo did he tumble from the saddle and drop to one knee.

"Father King, withdraw quickly. The men cannot hold!"

Li Dingguo's face darkened, and he looked extremely displeased.

"Defeated far too quickly! In less than half a day, you could not hold? If it had been the black-coated troops, that would be one thing, but I clearly saw that the attackers were all red-coated troops!"

By "black-coated troops" he meant the Ming army's Imperial Guard. The Imperial Guard excelled at night fighting, so they all wore black — the color of night-walking clothes, after all!

In addition, the Ming army's black cavalry also wore black, because they likewise had to carry out missions at night.

The other units of the Ming army's land forces all wore red.

After fighting so many years on the Shaanxi front, Li Dingguo had learned that compared with the black-clad Imperial Guard, the ordinary red-clad Ming troops were inferior by far more than a little!

Li Puxing shook his head and said, "Father King, the red-coated troops your son encountered today were also different from before. Some of them were equipped with flintlock muskets, and there were far fewer pikemen, and they were mixed in with the musketeers. At the same time they had also formed sword-and-shield squads, so their close-combat ability was much stronger!

What was even more hateful was that they could also throw a kind of exploding javelin! Our brothers had never seen such a weapon and did not know how to defend against it, so they had no choice but to flee."

Wu Sangui, too, knew how to improve his tactics!

After fighting the Shun army for so many years, he had of course discovered that pikemen were of little use in mountain warfare. Nine times out of ten they just stood by watching.

And musketeers, even with bayonets fixed, could not beat sword-and-shield men! Especially since the Shun army's sword-and-shield men were also extremely skilled at throwing javelins.

So starting last year, Wu Sangui had reformed his own army and those of Shang Kexi and Kong Tingxun, reducing the pikes, increasing the sword-and-shield men, and also tying grenades to the javelins of the sword-and-shield men.

This was equivalent to merging the sword-and-shield men and the grenadiers into one!

Facing for the first time these sword-and-shield troops who could throw bombs, the already panic-stricken Shun troops lost all will to fight. After putting up a token resistance, they simply collapsed at the first touch.

Li Dingguo snorted. "Mere petty tricks!" He glanced again at his own defeated troops flooding across the Dasan River, gritted his teeth, and gave the order: "Withdraw. Let us see who dares to pursue!"

Li Puxing let out a breath. Whoever might pursue, he himself did not want to remain one moment longer on the south bank of the Dasan River — and moreover, he never wanted to come back!

Eight years of campaigning, all a dream!

"Father Marshal, this Li Dingguo is nothing much after all!"

At that same moment, on Erli Pass, Wu Yinglin, who had just led a regiment of picked troops to take Dasan Pass, had already come running over in high spirits to report his success to his father.

Wu Sangui gave a cold laugh. "Nothing much, and yet he blocked me for so many years. Today, though he was defeated at my hands, it was no fault of his generalship. It was simply that the roving bandits' national strength was exhausted — drained dry by our Great Ming! In this battle, we did not win on the battlefield; we won on national strength."

"Father, shall we send troops in pursuit?" Wu Yinglin had not had his fill of fighting, and seemed to want to seize the credit from Shang Kexi and Kong Tingxun.

Wu Sangui waved a hand and laughed. "Let Shang Kexi and Kong Tingxun go. Do we, father and son, lack this bit of merit?"

"Father," Wu Yinglin said, "with our aunt looking after us, of course we do not lack merit. But what about the brothers below? Once the Sichuan campaign is over, will the court still have use for them? If we earn more merit now, they can also get more rewards in the future."

This time Wu Sangui also felt his son's words made sense, so he said, "Then let Shang Kexi and Kong Tingxun go first in pursuit. We will bring our troops and follow. Li Dingguo is crafty in his use of troops and surely still has a countermove in reserve. When the time comes, we will break his countermove — that too will be a great merit!"

Wu Yinglin clasped his fist in salute and said to Wu Sangui, "Father, then your son will go now to put the troops in order and prepare for pursuit!"

(End of Chapter)