Chapter 150: The Tartars Really Have Come!

The first year of the Shun dynasty's Yongchang era, the twenty-second day of the fourth month.

Inside Shanhai Pass.

"The Tartars are here! The Tartars are here!"

From the Shihé Shallows in the south to the Yipiànshí mountain pass in the north, the entire battlefield suddenly erupted in a tremendous, terrified cry that surged like a mountain avalanche and a roaring sea.

Along with that cry came a rhythmic "Wah! Wah! Wah!" shouted in unison, and a sudden gale that swept in from the sea to the south. No one could tell whether Heaven was making trouble for them, or whether the coastal region around Shanhai Pass simply had many hurricanes in summer.

In any case, this gale — which sent sand and stones flying and darkened the sky — rose up suddenly just as the Shun army and the Guanning Army on the Shihé Shallows battlefield were locked in a struggle too tangled to break apart, and it forcibly cut short an assault that Li Zicheng had painstakingly organized with three thousand cavalry.

Just as Li Zicheng, who had been directing his troops through bitter, bloody fighting for most of the day and had come to feel deeply how troublesome Wu Sangui's Guanning Army was, was considering whether to recall his troops and return to camp to rest — large formations of cavalry, with banners, uniforms, and hats all different from the Guanning Army's, suddenly appeared on the eastern side of the Shihé Shallows battlefield!

Then, riding the wind and joining the Guanning Army, which was accustomed to the coastal gales, they launched a charge!

Before the Manchu soldiers appeared, the Shun army and the Guanning Army had already been fighting for two days on the battlefield west of Shanhai Pass, and were utterly exhausted. In particular, from the early hours of this morning the two sides had been locked in a decisive battle, and it had been fought with extreme bitterness. Sixty thousand Shun troops, with Li Zicheng personally overseeing the line, had launched wave after wave of fierce assaults against a Guanning Army that had taken the field with fewer than thirty thousand men. The two sides fought back and forth across the fordable shallows on both banks of the Shi River, corpses piling up layer upon layer, blood flowing into the shallow Shi River until the water was nearly dyed red.

On the Shun army's side, the dead were not mere makeweight rabble, but the elite of the old camp to a man!

Because this time Li Zicheng had marched seven hundred li on a long-range expedition, and was pressed for time, wanting to seize the Guanning Army before the Manchus invaded. So he had not brought along the slow-moving, grain-wasting rabble, but had brought only his old-camp soldiers.

He intended to use the formidable fighting power of his old-camp soldiers to take the Guanning Army in one blow!

Before setting out, he had already studied the terrain of Shanhai Pass with his senior generals, and had discovered that Shanhai Pass's strength was only on its outer (eastern) side. The walls of the several pass fortresses facing inward (westward) were all built very thin, the moats were dug shallow, and no defensive works such as wall platforms or tiger traps had been constructed.

Even bombardment with easily portable light artillery could open several breaches, and taking the city after that presumably would not be too difficult.

But on the twenty-first day of the fourth month, when the two sides engaged in probing actions on both banks of the Shihé Shallows, Li Zicheng had already sensed that something was wrong.

The Guanning Army's fighting power was far stronger than he had imagined! He had originally assumed the Guanning Army was like most Ming armies — only a small number of household retainers could fight. But once they clashed, he discovered that the Guanning Army had a certain fighting capacity from top to bottom, and even ordinary soldiers were quite fierce. This showed that Wu Sangui and his household retainers had not gone south, but were right here at Shanhai Pass!

And what shocked Li Zicheng even more was that his own old-camp soldiers had actually grown weak! In the initial battle on the twenty-first, they had performed listlessly. Gone was the old spirit of every man vying to be first, every man fighting bravely.

By the night of the twenty-first, Li Zicheng himself had no choice but to summon his subordinate generals to boost their morale, and he also distributed a round of rewards to the soldiers who had fought. This lifted the army's morale somewhat, but only so much — before entering Beijing, Li Zicheng's old-camp soldiers had all believed that the Shun realm had a share for each of them, that they were founding heroes of the dynasty, and so they were full of drive, high in morale, and proactive in battle.

But now everyone was just selling their lives for money, muddling through when they could, and they were about the same as the elite troops among the Ming armies.

Having lost that sense of being masters of their own cause, the Shun old-camp soldiers' foundation was not all that formidable, and their numbers gave them no great advantage. So with the Guanning Army coming out of the city to fight the Shun army in the field, they had unexpectedly fallen into a bitter struggle.

Of course, although the Shun army could not summon much spirit, the Guanning Army likewise had no very high morale. After all, Beijing had fallen, and the Guanning Army's officers and men had just abandoned their homeland and become rootless soldiers. If not for the news that Li Zicheng was torturing and extorting money in Beijing making the Guanning Army's officers all feel the danger, and every one of them helping Wu Sangui spread word through the ranks of how vicious the roving bandits were and how they would slaughter the Guanning Army's families and so on, the Guanning Army's soldiers might well have collapsed from low morale.

And so, the two most powerful and most elite Han Chinese armed forces of the moment, neither with particularly high morale, launched into a cruel slaughter inside Shanhai Pass. As time passed, casualties on both sides grew heavier and heavier, strength was drained more and more, and both became exhausted armies.

If not for the sudden entry of the Manchu soldiers led by Dorgon, the Shun army, which had the advantage in numbers and also held the advantage of timing, should ultimately have won.

But as it happened, around the hour of wei on the twenty-second day of the fourth month, Dorgon's twenty thousand picked elite troops, chosen from the hundred-thousand-strong Eight Banners host, passed through the Xiluo Fortress of Shanhai Pass and appeared in the center of the Shihé Shallows battlefield.

Dorgon had been observing the battle from atop the Xiluo Fortress since that morning, and had seen very clearly that Li Zicheng's forces were not as numerous as the rumors claimed. Moreover, the formation he had laid out was too wide, stretching from the northern mountains all the way to the sea. It simply could not withstand a fierce charge by the Eight Banners' iron cavalry!

As long as enough cavalry were committed to break through the Shun army's center in one blow, they could be split in two.

When the sudden gale stopped, Li Zicheng, who was directing the battle from high ground at Hongwadian, happened to see the four-colored Eight Banners iron cavalry surging toward the Shihé Shallows like a flood, charging from the east bank to the west bank, and shattering the Shun army at the center of the formation as easily as breaking dry branches. Then one part of them attacked the Shun army's camp fortifications on the west bank of the Shihé Shallows and began fierce fighting with the Shun troops defending the camp. The other part headed straight for Hongwadian.

Li Zicheng stared in stunned disbelief. Suddenly a rider came galloping up and reported to him: "The Tartar soldiers have come! The Marquis of Ru (referring to Liu Zongmin) begs His Majesty to withdraw at once!"

Song Xiance, standing nearby, also said in alarm: "I never expected the Tartars would really come. Shanhai Pass can no longer be held. I beg Your Majesty to leave immediately!"

Li Zicheng was not willing to abandon his brothers on the battlefield and flee by himself. Gritting his teeth, he said to a general of the imperial guard: "Ride at full speed to the Marquis of Ru and Liu Fangliang with my order: the army is to fight while retreating!"

But the personal general bearing the order had only just left when the Eight Banners' vanguard charged up to the front of Li Zicheng's imperial guard formation, and were desperately held off by the imperial guard soldiers led by Li Shuangxi.

By this time, on the west bank of the Shi River, the Shun army had already been cut into many pieces by the Eight Banners soldiers and the Guanning Army. Chaotic fighting had broken out everywhere, and the camp fortifications had also been breached. But when the Shun army was driven to the brink by the Eight Banners soldiers, they displayed a fighting power that astonished Dorgon.

They were clearly an exhausted force, and had not shown anything remarkable when fighting the Guanning Army earlier, yet now they actually withstood the charge of the Eight Banners' iron cavalry. Fighting desperately to the death in every sector, they unexpectedly fought the Eight Banners soldiers to a standstill, and inflicted no small casualties on the Eight Banners as well.

Had it been any Ming army Dorgon was familiar with — even the Guanning Army — they would have collapsed long ago after being reduced to such a state!

"These roving bandits are not weak!" Dorgon, directing the battle from atop the Xiluo Fortress, muttered to himself. "Could it be they were holding back when they fought the Guanning Army earlier?"

Hong Chengchou, standing beside Dorgon, was also somewhat stunned. In his impression, the roving bandits should have been very weak. Even if they had grown considerably stronger by now, they should have crumbled at the first touch of the Eight Banners' heavenly soldiers!

Yet now they had not crumbled! Hong Chengchou thought to himself: Fortunately, Li Zicheng had only brought sixty or seventy thousand men. If he had really brought two hundred thousand such bandits, this battle at Shanhai Pass would truly have ended with both the bandits and the Tartars badly mauled.

Moreover, the Ming's Army-Pacifying Crown Prince, Zhu Cilang, had reportedly defeated twenty thousand such bandits at Tianjin Garrison. How had that traitorous son — who imprisoned his father and killed his brother — managed it?

While Hong Chengchou was lost in wild thoughts, Dorgon was already issuing orders: "Send word to Dodo, Tantai, and Oboi: have them lead out the main forces of the Two White Banners and the Two Yellow Banners! Today we have the numbers. Even if we have to pile men on, we will bury Li Zicheng!"

"Zha!"

As the main forces of the Two White Banners and Two Yellow Banners entered the battlefield through the Xiluo Fortress of Shanhai Pass, the situation on the field grew even more unfavorable for the numerically inferior Shun army. But under the command of Liu Zongmin and Liu Fangliang, the Shun army's resistance remained tenacious, and they grimly dragged the fighting on until nightfall, then withdrew westward under cover of darkness.

Because the withdrawal was made under cover of night, and because Dorgon was unwilling to pursue a desperate enemy too fiercely and inflict excessive losses on the Eight Banners soldiers, he sent only Wu Sangui with more than ten thousand Guanning Army cavalry to follow in their wake.

So Li Zicheng had not lost all his old capital beneath Shanhai Pass! In fact, he still had a chance to turn the situation around!

(End of Chapter)