Chapter 1685: Three Kingdoms, and Three Kingdoms Again

"Join forces?" Fan Wencheng frowned slightly. Could the Hutudun Khan and the Tiancong Khan join forces? Was that possible?

The Hutudun Khan styled himself as the Great Yuan Khan, after all. He was of the direct and legitimate line of the Golden Family, and ought to be the overlord of all the Mongols. Yet the Mandate Old Khan and the Tiancong Khan had spent these years relentlessly poaching his followers — first they lured away the Khorchin tribe, then the five great camps of the Inner Khalkha, and now the Aohan and Naiman camps, two of the eight great camps of the Chahar tribe, forcing the Hutudun Khan to move his entire tribe westward!

If the poaching went on, there would be no Chahar tribe left at all!

The Hutudun Khan must hate the Mandate Khan and the Tiancong Khan, father and son, to the bone. How could he possibly join forces with the Tiancong Khan?

Seeing the doubt on Fan Wencheng's face, Fan Yongdou grinned. "Everyone knows the Hutudun Khan hates the Tiancong Khan. With my family's generations of friendship with the Chahar tribe, how could I not know it?"

Fan Yongdou's family had traded with the Tartars for seven generations, and their oldest customers were of course the Tumed and Chahar tribes. How many years had it been since the Jianzhou Jurchens rose to power? How deep could the Fan family's ties with them possibly be?

And this time, Fan Yongdou's instigation of an alliance between the Later Jin and the Chahar tribe was also meant to lend the Chahar tribe a hand. If the Great Ming defeated the Chahar tribe in the coming struggle, there would be no more annual market bounty of three to four hundred thousand taels of silver.

Without the market bounty, the Chahar tribe would have no purchasing power, and how then could the Fan family carry on its business?

So Fan Yongdou was hoping for the Great Ming to lose the war!

Fan Yongdou went on: "The Chahar tribe may hate the Great Jin, but they cannot defeat the Great Jin. And the Hutudun Khan cannot do without the Great Ming's market bounty either! Though he carries the title of overlord of the Mongols, no one outside the Chahar tribe pays him tribute. Even among the eight great camps of the Chahar tribe, how many actually render their full offerings? So the only source of wealth the Hutudun Khan can actually control is this bit of market bounty plus the border trade with the Great Ming.

If the Great Ming stops the market bounty and cuts off the border trade, then he will have to go to war with the Great Ming! Even if the Tiancong Khan has wronged him by killing his father and seizing his wife, he will still have to strike the Great Ming first, and only afterward seek revenge against the Great Jin.

And for the Great Jin to be willing to join forces with the Chahar tribe — that is something the Chahar tribe could only dream of. Even if the Hutudun Khan will not say so aloud, in practice he will carry out the joint attack on the Ming. Because with the Great Jin throwing its weight in, only then will he have a sure chance of victory, and only then can he ride on the Great Jin's thrashing of the Great Ming to extort a fat ransom!"

"Well said! Well said!" By this point Fan Wencheng was already applauding.

The joint strategy Fan Yongdou had laid out was indeed workable — and it was also exactly the kind of good news Hong Taiji could only wish for.

The present situation in western and southern Liaodong was making things rather uncomfortable for the Great Jin. After Hong Taiji ascended the throne, he first attacked Joseon — won at first, then withdrew, officially claiming a great epidemic had broken out in the army, when in truth it was because Mao Wenlong kept raiding his rear lines. To avoid a prolonged war, he had no choice but to settle for what he could get. Later Hong Taiji sent troops to attack Ningyuan and Jinzhou, and this time he suffered a solid, unambiguous defeat!

In particular, on the twenty-eighth day of the fifth month of the seventh year of Tianqi, two battles fought simultaneously — one beneath the walls of Ningyuan and one outside Jinzhou — both ended in defeat for the Later Jin army. In those two battles, the Hongyi cannons mounted on the walls of Ningyuan and Jinzhou displayed their power and inflicted considerable casualties on the Later Jin troops. On top of that, the Ming army fought from behind the city walls, which restricted the mobility of the Later Jin cavalry.

After those two battles, Hong Taiji had no choice but to end the Ning-Jin campaign, which had lasted twenty-four days, "returning in disgrace." Had he not subsequently run into that coward the Hutudun Khan, who abandoned the Liao River bend without a fight and handed Hong Taiji a great victory for free, it is doubtful whether this Later Jin khan could even have kept his face on the throne!

Still, the loss Hong Taiji suffered in the Ning-Jin campaign remained a thorn in his heart. Until he recovered his standing, his seat as khan would always be shaky!

And recovering his standing did not seem easy, because Jinzhou, Ningyuan, and Shanhai Pass were all impregnable strongholds. Especially now, with the Hongyi cannons in place, the Later Jin army did not even know how to assault a city anymore!

Jinzhou, Ningyuan, and Shanhai Pass were all tall, stout brick-walled cities. Ladders and undermining alone could not break into them; siege engines were needed to cover the assault troops. But those contraptions were all cumbersome and slow, and easy targets for the Hongyi cannons. The Hongyi cannon's shot weighed twelve pounds! A single hit could smash those wooden engines to splinters, and then all manner of fragments would fly everywhere — anyone struck or grazed was in a bad way.

So fighting beneath the walls was extremely unfavorable for the Later Jin troops. Their shield carts or any other siege engines had only to take a single twelve-pound ball, and everyone around would be flattened — dead or wounded!

Fortresses like Jinzhou, Ningyuan, and Shanhai Pass could not be taken in a single rush either. Fighting back and forth for dozens of rounds and still getting inside would count as a great success. If every round the Hongyi cannons smashed ten shield carts or other engines and brought down over a hundred men, then over dozens of rounds, the Hongyi cannons alone would have brought down several thousand. Add the losses from scaling the walls, and ten thousand men would be gone.

How could Hong Taiji endure such casualties? If men died at that rate, by the time Hong Taiji reached the walls of Beijing, would he not be riding alone?

So as for recovering his standing in western Liaodong, Hong Taiji simply had no idea how to go about it.

And as for Lüshun at the southern tip of Liaodong — though it was not so strongly fortified (the South Pass canal had not yet been dug), its symbolic significance was not very great. Moreover, the Later Jin did not have the spare capacity to garrison Lüshun — the terrain of the Jinzhou Peninsula was far too favorable to a Ming army that held command of the sea.

If Later Jin troops went in, a small force would be insufficient to hold the place and could easily be surrounded by Ming troops landing behind them. A large force would have nothing to eat — hauling provisions from Liaoyang was too long a road! The Later Jin did not have that kind of strength.

Furthermore, Lüshun could never become an offensive base for the Later Jin; it could only be a defensive burden. Deploying troops at Lüshun, however many or few, would be detrimental to the war against the Ming.

For this reason, the Later Jin had twice occupied Lüshun before but never deployed heavy troops there, and after Mao Wenlong seized it back both times, they had not sent troops to retake it.

But if the Great Ming and the Chahar tribe were to start fighting, that would be a fine opportunity for Hong Taiji to recover his standing.

Still, Hong Taiji would have to time his move well. If he moved too early, the Great Ming and the Chahar tribe would join forces against him!

If he moved too late, the Great Ming and the Chahar tribe would already have finished their fight!

Fan Wencheng narrowed his eyes and said thoughtfully: "The Great Ming, the Great Jin, and the Chahar tribe of today are a Romance of the Three Kingdoms all over again! In the end, who wins the realm will depend on whose hand is the more skillful!"

"Yunlong, do you know why We have dismissed you from the post of Regional Commander of Xuanfu?"

The Forbidden City, the Hall of Literary Splendor.

At that same moment, Zhu Youjian was receiving a stout man in his forties, built like an iron tower, dressed in a python robe and wearing a black gauze cap.

The man had a dark face, a wild, unkempt beard, and small eyes that gleamed with a fierce light.

The man's surname was Hei, and his given name was Yunlong. He was the former Regional Commander of Xuanfu Garrison, and before that had served as Regional Commander of Shanhai Pass; he had also earned a share of the credit for the great victory at Ningyuan and Jinzhou. Because he had worked hard to curry favor with Wei Zhongxian, in the seventh month of the seventh year of Tianqi he had been promoted to Regional Commander of Xuanfu Garrison.

And because his ties to Wei Zhongxian were too close, he had been branded a backbone of the eunuch faction and a suspected member of the traitor clique, and was buried under a pile of impeachment memorials.

Hearing Zhu Youjian's question, Hei Yunlong dropped to his knees with a thud and said in a buzzing, muffled voice: "Your Majesty, though this subject did curry favor with the traitor Wei, this subject's loyalty is to the Great Ming and to Your Majesty. This subject—"

"We know you are a loyal subject!" Zhu Youjian waved a hand, cutting Hei Yunlong off, and said with a smile, "Otherwise We would not have summoned you to the capital. Let Us be plain with you: We have called you to the capital because you are a man of Datong, and you have long held office in Xuanfu, Datong, and Jizhou. You know the terrain well, and you have had no small dealings with the Mongols beyond the passes. That is why We summoned you to the capital — We wish to make you Commander of the Personal Army Before the Imperial Banner. Are you willing?"

It turned out that Zhu Youjian was already making preparations to lead the campaign in person!

To lead a campaign in person, he needed great generals at his side to help with command, but the military officers around Zhu Youjian — including Wu Xiang, Cao Wenzhao, Sun Yingyuan, Zhou Yuji, and Huang Degong — had none of them reached the rank of Regional Commander of a border garrison. Though they could be promoted by special exception, Zhu Youjian still hoped to have a qualified veteran general to guide them.

And in his previous life he had known Hei Yunlong quite well, and knew the man was a loyal subject tested through long years, so he had brought him to his side.

What? Commander of the Personal Army Before the Imperial Banner? Hei Yunlong of course knew that the Personal Army Before the Imperial Banner was the Son of Heaven's household retainers, but he did not know that he himself was a feudal loyalist tested through long years!

The commander of the Son of Heaven's household retainers ought to be someone who was the Son of Heaven's trusted confidant! Hei Yunlong thought to himself: So I am now the Son of Heaven's trusted confidant? The Son of Heaven truly sees all — he knows that old Hei is utterly devoted to the Great Ming. With such a wise sovereign on the throne, why should the Great Ming not be restored?

(End of Chapter)