Chapter 168: Brothers, Fear Not — the Tartars Are All Fake! (Part 11)

Duolong, the foremost warrior of the Manchus, was by no means a man of mere brute courage. He had studied the Romance of the Three Kingdoms thoroughly and was a tactician, and on the battlefield he was extremely sharp-witted.

As he led his men in the charge, he kept watching the movements of the Ming musketeers ahead. When he saw them form up quickly and load their pieces with great speed, he knew he could not press a head-on assault.

These musketeers were strange through and through. Not only could they hold their fire until the enemy was close, they could also fight hand-to-hand, and their skill in close combat seemed far from weak!

Even Wu Sangui's Guanning Army might not be better than them. They dared to fight and dared to risk their lives! Did the Guanning Army dare?

These musketeers were rather like the roving bandits he had met at Yipianshi — all of them stupid Nikans who did not know enough to fear the heavenly soldiers of the Eight Banners!

So Duolong immediately changed tactics. He would not press the charge; instead he switched to mounted archery.

The heavenly soldiers of the Eight Banners were masters of both bow and horse. They could charge, they could fight hand-to-hand, and they could also shoot from horseback like the Mongols — and their mounted archery was not inferior to the Mongols'.

So Duolong put away his lance on horseback (a cavalry lance could be slung on the back), switched to his horse bow, then tugged the reins and began to wheel around some forty or fifty paces in front of the Ming musketeer line, galloping off toward the right flank of the Ming formation.

Once the turn was complete, Duolong dropped the reins, controlled the horse with his legs alone, and at the same time drew a feathered arrow from his cowhide quiver, nocked a horn-tipped arrow (a lighter arrow used for long-range shooting), and loosed it. The arrowhead traced an arc through the air and dropped into the ranks of the Ming musketeers, striking its target dead center.

But the musketeer who had been hit by the arrow was not much affected and still stood there perfectly well.

This was because the musketeers under Hao Yaoqi all wore armor. Light arrows lacked the power to pierce armor and could hardly inflict casualties unless they struck a spot not covered by armor plates.

After Duolong turned and loosed his arrow, the Manchu cavalrymen following him also wheeled their horses and bent their bows, and several hundred feathered arrows flew out. Although the range was long and the shots were fired from horseback, the great majority still fell among the Ming musketeers' formation, immediately causing twenty or thirty casualties.

Clang!

When Hao Yaoqi saw the Eight Banners troops switch to mounted archery, he too struck the bronze gong. Nearly a thousand muskets (several hundred had not finished loading) fired at once, and instantly bullets flew and gunpowder smoke filled the air.

On the Eight Banners' side, casualties appeared at once as well. More than a dozen brave warriors were hit and fell from their horses, and about the same number of warhorses were struck by bullets and collapsed with pitiful neighs. The Eight Banners warriors riding them were thrown and battered black and blue, and several more warriors were trampled by nearby galloping horses — either killed horribly or gravely wounded!

The first exchange between muskets and mounted archery ended quickly. If one looked only at the casualty numbers, it was hard to tell who had won. But a "wound" from a musket ball and a "wound" from an arrowhead were entirely different things!

The former was a grave wound, with a very low chance of survival, and the victim would most likely die from inflammation and festering of the wound. The latter, as long as the arrowhead was removed and the wound cleaned properly, posed basically no danger; after a month or two of recovery, the man would again be a fine soldier of the Crown Prince.

Moreover, the time needed to train a musketeer was far shorter than the time needed to manufacture an Eight Banners warrior.

Even starting from a raw recruit, a few months to a year was enough to train a musketeer.

But manufacturing an Eight Banners warrior required at least twenty years!

If the Ming armies of history had been able to use the turtledove-foot musket and the Hongyi cannon correctly, the heavenly soldiers of the Eight Banners would never have had the chance to rule China.

Duolong, the foremost warrior of the Manchus, had not been hit, and he could still lead a band of Tartars produced around 1620 in galloping circles around the Ming army's great formation.

Hao Yaoqi's musketeers did not know how to form a hollow square, so their flanks had to be screened by pikemen, while their rear relied on the riverbank and the cavalry personally commanded by Wu Sanfu.

So Duolong soon charged up to the Ming army's right flank, where more than a thousand men of the Chinese-style Left Brigade under Qu Huajie were deployed.

Qu Huajie was an old subordinate of Wu Xiang and a native of the Ningyuan Guard. His ancestors had followed Xu Da on the northern expedition to the Yan region, and the family held a hereditary Chiliarch post. He himself had fought his way through the Guanning Army for nearly twenty years, but had not done particularly well; only at thirty-four or thirty-five had he obtained the rank of Battalion Commander. Clearly he was the sort whose legs went weak at the sight of Tartars.

But his combat experience was extremely rich, so he had already seen that Duolong and his men were "fake Tartars" — they must be Tartar Han troops. Otherwise how could they be so weak? Cavalry beaten to a pulp by musketeers — how could they possibly be real Tartars?

So when he saw the foremost warrior of the Manchus come howling in with his cavalry, Qu Huajie — who was fat, big, dark, and coarse, much like a great bear — was not flustered in the least, and even burst out laughing.

"They're fake Tartars! Don't be afraid, brothers — the ones coming are all fake Tartars! They're all the dogs of those three mine-bandits! All ball-less cowards!"

The backbone of the brigade he commanded was made up of Guanning Army cavalry brought by Wu Guoyong, men who had fought the Qing troops for years. They naturally knew that Tartars came in true and false varieties. Among them, the true Manchu Tartars were the fiercest, the Mongol Tartars were far inferior, and the traitorous Han fake Tartars were weaker still — not comparable to the elite of the Guanning Army at all.

And the Tartars before them had actually been thrashed by musketeers of roving-bandit origin, so what Fat Qu said was right: they were obviously fake Tartars!

Since they were fake Tartars, what was there to fear?

"The Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, lives again!"

At once an officer began shouting loudly.

"Ten thousand victories! Ten thousand victories! Ten thousand victories!"

Immediately after, the soldiers responded in unison.

As the slogans rang out, killing intent soared along with them. More than a thousand pikemen, sword-and-shield men, and archers, every one of them radiating ferocious killing intent, gave the foremost warrior of the Manchus a start.

Were these people really Nikans? How could they not fear Manchu warriors? Could it be that the Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor of the Ming, had not returned alone, but had brought the iron armies and mighty hosts of the early Ming back with him?

Though his heart pounded and his flesh crawled, the Manchu warriors still steeled themselves to keep up the mounted archery — they were the foremost warriors of the Manchus, after all; they could not let Nikans frighten them off!

But the Manchu warriors' mounted archery could gain no advantage against Fat Qu either. The cavalrymen from Ningyuan under Fat Qu were all elite troops "versed in three weapons" — warriors who had mastered the lance, the sword and shield, and the bow at the same time. Now, seeing the fake Tartars using mounted archery, they immediately adjusted: the sword-and-shield men moved to the front, while some of the pikemen who carried bows threw down their lances, took out their bows, and shot together with the archers.

As long as foot archers truly knew how to shoot, foot archery was actually not at a disadvantage against mounted archery. The two sides' arrow storms came and went, each felling twenty or thirty men, and in the exchange ratio Fat Qu's side did not suffer at all!

They really were fake Tartars!

The Nikans here are not normal.

Just as the foremost warrior of the Manchus led his cavalry up to the bank of the Wei River, several earth-shaking roars suddenly burst out beside his ears.

Boom-boom-boom-boom—

Immediately after came a burst of shrill neighing — the cries of wounded or terrified warhorses!

Hongyi cannons! And they were firing so accurately.

Duolong looked in the direction of the roaring and understood at once what had happened — ahead, two large ships with their bows pointed toward him were grounded on the mudflats of the Wei River. Those two large ships must be carrying Hongyi cannons!

"Withdraw! Withdraw!" Duolong knew he had lost this round. Even before the cannon fire, he had lost several dozen men, and he had no idea how many warriors the enemy's cannons had just knocked down — probably no fewer than ten, he feared.

This round was lost, and he had to fall back and regroup.

"The Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, lives again! Ten thousand victories! Ten thousand victories!"

At the sight of the Tartar cavalry retreating, cheers rose before the Ming lines like a tidal wave. Then the entire great formation began to advance slowly.

Seeing this, Geng Zhongming and his Han troops of the Plain Yellow Banner were nearly frightened to death. They knew that the men Duolong led were real Tartars! Two charges had cost more than four hundred dead and wounded! The battlefield was strewn with fallen Tartar soldiers and horses, while the Ming army's losses were negligible — such an exchange ratio had not been seen since the rise of Nurhaci!

What did this mean? It meant that "the Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, lives again" was very likely true!

It must be that the fatuous ruler Chongzhen was such a wretch that he angered Zhu Yuanzhang into reincarnating himself as the Ming Crown Prince.

These traitors of the Plain Yellow Banner had never been much good to begin with; they needed real Manchus to stiffen their ranks before they had the nerve to charge into battle. Now that the real Manchus lay dead all over the ground, what courage did they have left? Every one of them stood there trembling.

Just then, the west gate of Dagukou Fort was suddenly thrown open, and a large body of Ming troops was seen marching out in formation, every man eager for action!

Tartar heads were worth money! If the real ones could not be killed, could the fake ones not be finished off? The ones outside Dagukou Fort now were not Tartars at all — they were plainly silver, estates in Jiangnan, and official caps!

(End of Chapter)