Chapter 1745: Your Majesty, Our Losses Are Catastrophic!

"Duke of Chengguo, a great battle is at hand — we must steady the troops' morale!"

Zhang Fengyi, Right Vice Minister of the Ministry of War and concurrently Assistant Director of Capital Camp Military Affairs, was holding a steaming meat bun, eating it with grease running down his chin. When he heard that one or two thousand Jianzhou slave cavalry had arrived, he immediately and nervously reminded Zhu Chunchen.

Zhu Chunchen reacted at once too. He immediately raised his voice and loudly issued orders: "All Vice Regional Commanders and Assistant Regional Commanders, return to your posts at once. Take your household retainers and personal guards and keep watch over the soldiers below. Do not let them fall into disorder, and above all do not let them desert before battle. At a time like this, anyone who disrupts the troops' morale shall be beheaded! Furthermore, all of you must hold firm as well. No one is permitted to flee, or else it will be execution and confiscation of your household — no one will be able to save you! Everyone stay at your posts. I, your commander, will supervise the battle from the center. Our camp's fortifications are solid; the slave bandits cannot break through! We need only hold for three days, and the Jiliao grand army will arrive.

Enough — no more talk. Go and tell your men below. My military order: anyone who retreats a single step shall be executed without mercy!"

The Vice Regional Commanders and Assistant Regional Commanders who had been gathered with Zhu Chunchen eating breakfast all received their orders and departed. Zhu Chunchen and Zhang Fengyi then donned their armor together, left the main courtyard, mounted their warhorses, mustered their personal guards, and began patrolling the camp. The personal guards of the two men had long since raised the banners of the Governor-General of Military Affairs and the Assistant Director of Military Affairs, to steady the troops' morale.

At this moment, what was most feared was not actually how formidable the Later Jin army was. A few thousand men — even several times that number — could not bite through a fortified camp held by more than fifty thousand Capital Camp soldiers. As long as these fifty-some thousand Capital Camp troops did not fall into disorder themselves, today's battle could be held.

If they held, the Capital Camp's rotten accounts could be balanced. Once the accounts were balanced, there would be nothing to fear. So in this battle, Zhu Chunchen was confident he could lose eighty thousand troops!

The place where Zhu Chunchen's fifty-some thousand Capital Camp troops were encamped had the Wenyu River to the north, and to the south a flat, open plain stretching as far as the eye could see. The two-thousand-strong mounted force led by Dorgon and Dodo, relying on the cover of darkness, had already crept right under the nose of the Ming army's main camp before being discovered by the Ningyuan Earl's household retainers on sentry duty. The two sides engaged in a brief but fierce clash. A squad of the Ningyuan Earl's household retainers, numbering only a few dozen, repelled the hundred-odd Mongols Dorgon had sent forward as an advance force, then all withdrew back into the camp.

Because they wanted to put on a show of strength, Dorgon's men had brought along many skin drums and horns. At the moment when the sky was about to brighten but had not yet, they began beating drums and blowing horns. At the same time, Dorgon ordered the Kharchin Mongols following him to tie freshly cut branches still bearing leaves to their horses' tails and gallop back and forth across the open field, creating the false impression that a host of ten thousand soldiers had gathered.

Only after keeping up the commotion until the sky was fully bright did Dorgon concentrate over a thousand Mongol cavalry and more than five hundred cavalry of the Two White Banners and begin the first wave of his showy attack. Of course, Dorgon had no intention of winning any remarkable victory — he had come to feign defeat!

But he never imagined that this business of feigning defeat would actually have someone else trying to snatch it from him!

The Later Jin army's first wave of attacking troops had not even made contact with the Ming army, and Zhu Chunchen had already begun sending reports of defeat toward Beijing.

After finishing his patrol of the camp, and along the way casually executing several dozen unlucky wretches who had tried to desert, and having men carry their heads on long spears to the camp's east, south, and west gates (there was no north gate, because the Wenyu River lay to the north) to overawe the troops, Zhu Chunchen, together with Zhang Fengyi and also Liu Kongzhao, climbed a tall watchtower near the main camp's south gate and began surveying the front of the battlefield.

Seeing the formation of the Later Jin army's attack, Zhu Chunchen breathed a sigh of relief — there were not many of them, and they seemed to be mainly Mongols. Then there was nothing to fear. The northern caitiffs were far inferior to the eastern barbarians. Their bows were weak and could not shoot anyone dead, and they were not much inclined to close-quarters combat.

"Earl of Chengyi, quickly have someone write a memorial to the court. Say that we encountered a large force of the slave bandits by the Wenyu River — at least twenty thousand of them — and that they launched a night raid on our camp. Although our officers and men fought bravely and slew the caitiffs, the slave bandits were unfortunately too fierce and too numerous, and therefore our force has suffered heavy losses, with the dead and wounded lying in heaps. We are already locked in bitter fighting!"

Listening to Zhu Chunchen spouting nonsense here, Zhang Fengyi felt his cheeks burning. He thought to himself: In the past I've heard of people falsely reporting battle achievements, turning defeats into victories. But here you are, before the fighting has even started, and already the dead and wounded are lying in heaps!

"Duke," the Earl of Chengyi asked, "how many losses should we report?"

"Eighty thousand..." The moment the words left Zhu Chunchen's mouth, he felt he had been a bit hasty, and amended himself: "Then let's report eight thousand for now!"

Good heavens — before the fighting had even begun, eight thousand were already lost. Dorgon across the way was truly unlucky. He had come to lure the enemy, but Zhu Chunchen had turned him into the "counterparty" for cooking the books! And there was nothing he could do about it — this matter did not require his signature of confirmation!

Facing an enemy like this, he would never in his lifetime be able to complete his mission of luring the enemy!

And on the capital-region battlefield in late September of the first year of Chongzhen, Zhu Chunchen was not the only one who needed to cook the books. Zhang Weixian, Regional Commander of Changping, and his son Zhang Zhiji, on this very morning, were also busy reporting losses to Zhu Youjian!

The losses were catastrophic!

He had genuinely lost a battle, near the entrance to Tianshou Mountain.

He could not simply hold a fortress the way Shi Kefa did. He had to defend the tombs of the thirteen former emperors of the Great Ming!

Although Changping city protected half of the entrance to Tianshou Mountain, there was still the other half of the gap!

So Zhang Weixian had no choice but to send his son Zhang Zhiji with fifteen thousand Xuanfu troops to camp outside Changping city and block the entrance to Tianshou Mountain.

But unexpectedly, Hong Taiji sent troops over several mountain ridges, and they made a detour to the Dingling tomb near the entrance to Tianshou Mountain and set a fire. This frightened Zhang Zhiji badly, and he hurriedly led his troops back to the rescue. Hong Taiji seized the opportunity to launch a fierce assault, driving the more than ten thousand Ming troops at the entrance to Tianshou Mountain all into Changping city.

Now the entrance to Tianshou Mountain was shared by the Ming army and the Later Jin army. Hong Taiji could go tomb-robbing whenever he pleased.

Having lost the battle, Zhang Weixian had no choice but to write a memorial to Zhu Youjian asking for punishment. But while asking for punishment, he did not forget to balance the accounts. In the battle at the mouth of Tianshou Mountain, Zhang Zhiji had lost fewer than three thousand men, but the reported losses came to twenty-three thousand!

Truly catastrophic losses, with corpses strewn across the field!

"Your Majesty, it is a memorial from the Regional Commander of Changping." Chen Bingzheng, brush-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, unfolded a memorial that had just been delivered by Changping's night scouts to the Ming emperor's temporary residence in Yanqing city. He glanced at it and could not help drawing a sharp breath.

Zhu Youjian, who had been marching for days on end, was eating his dinner — a large bowl of noodles with stewed meat, and eating it with great relish! While eating, he asked with a smile: "What is it? How much did the Duke of Yingguo report in padded accounts?"

"Twenty-three thousand," Chen Bingzheng said. "Including killed in action, captured, and deserters, plus a small number of seriously wounded!"

This Zhang Weixian was experienced after all. He knew he could not report everyone as killed in action, and also could not report too many seriously wounded.

"Heh heh," Zhu Youjian laughed. "Good, good. There are still thirty thousand more to 'die' and to 'run.' Has the memorial from the Duke of Chengguo arrived yet? He'll have to make more of his men 'die' and more of them 'run.' Nothing less than a hundred thousand or eighty thousand will do!"

At this rate, Hong Taiji and Dorgon would truly gain enormous face. The two of them together had at least "eliminated" over a hundred thousand men of the Great Ming — even more impressive than the Battle of Sarhu.

"Your Majesty, are you really letting them balance the accounts?" Qian Qianyi, a Hanlin Academy scholar who had also accompanied Zhu Youjian to Yanqing and had just finished his noodles, wiped his mouth and asked.

"If We don't let them balance the accounts, won't they be frantic with Us?" Zhu Youjian smiled. "We must let them feel that We will not be utterly ruthless! The Capital Camp audits are not the first of their kind, but after a few years things always go back to the old ways. So those people are not afraid of audits, nor are they afraid of temporarily balancing the accounts."

Before Zhu Youjian, many Ming emperors had reorganized the Capital Camps, but no matter how they reorganized, in the end it was always the same. In Zhu Youjian's previous life, he too had let Li Banghua reorganize the Capital Camps, but it was still the same old story.

So he also knew that this matter would not succeed so easily. Still, he had to give the Capital Camp nobles the chance to balance their own accounts.

Because there were still many people who needed to balance accounts. Zhu Youjian had to give them the chance, otherwise he would make too many enemies, and at present he did not have that much authority.

Zhu Youjian pondered for a while, and his expression had already turned grave. "Pass the order to the cavalry before the tent: begin resting now. In three days, we march out to kill Hong Taiji!"

(End of Chapter)