Chapter 1747: Let's Go Find Yuan Chonghuan!

Beneath helmet after golden helmet were over a hundred young personal guards, brimming with pride and high spirits, who clustered around the equally exultant young Son of Heaven, Zhu Youjian, as he rode at the head of a southward whirlwind formed by more than ten thousand armored cavalry.

This whirlwind had already set the entire situation in East Asia and Northeast Asia in motion.

More than ten thousand ironclad household cavalry, placed in the East Asia and Northeast Asia of today, was absolutely a mighty force capable of altering the course of history and deciding the fate of the realm. Imperial power on the East Asian continent had always belonged to whoever had the strongest soldiers and the finest horses!

Yet the military might of the Great Ming dynasty had declined sharply ever since the Battle of Sarhu, and it was no longer the power with the strongest soldiers and finest horses on the East Asian and Northeast Asian continent.

Worse still, the military might of the Great Ming dynasty had long ceased to be the "emperor's private soldiers" belonging to a single family and surname; instead, it was scattered in the hands of a host of fierce generals along the Nine Frontiers and hereditary commanders of the southwest. And the elite of the Capital Camps, which in theory were directly subordinate to the Emperor and could be used to control the Nine Frontiers, hold the southwest in check from afar, and chastise any who refused allegiance, had long since grown too feeble to fight. And even this combat-incapable Capital Camp army was not wholly the Great Ming emperor's own, but a military force shared between the Emperor and the corrupt ennobled merit families.

The Son of Heaven, who by rights ought to be the one with the strongest soldiers and finest horses, had thus become a weak ruler with an empty title but no real strength with which to command the frontier generals of the four quarters.

Fortunately, the idea that loyalty to the sovereign equaled love of country had long since sunk deep into men's hearts, and under the Great Ming dynasty the great majority of frontier generals and hereditary officials who held elite troops were still loyal to the tablet of the Great Ming Son of Heaven. Therefore the Great Ming Son of Heaven, though he had long since lost most of his trusted military strength, still possessed the authority to command the four quarters of the realm.

But this authority was ultimately somewhat hollow, and those the Son of Heaven could command were only the weaker frontier generals and hereditary officials. The northern khans and eastern barbarians, who possessed real strength, and even some southwestern tusi strongmen, not only did not take the Great Ming Son of Heaven seriously, but had all conceived the ambition of replacing him or seizing some of the prefectures and counties the Son of Heaven possessed.

At the same time, a Great Ming Son of Heaven without powerful military strength to rely upon could not possibly carry out any effective reform to save the increasingly decadent feudal dynasty.

Truly effective reform is invariably accompanied by a redistribution of interests, and will also harm the interests of certain vested interest groups.

Moreover, in the present era, the area a weakened central dynasty could effectively control was limited. Therefore reform could only begin from the imperial heartland around the capital. Under such circumstances, if the emperor did not have a strong army in his hands, any reform, any new policy, was utterly illusory — and if things went badly, in the midst of reforming he might well catch a chill from falling into the water or suffer food poisoning.

So this young muddle-headed ruler Zhu Youjian, who in more than a year since ascending the throne had scarcely bothered with governance and devoted himself single-mindedly to military matters, actually possessed political skill that surpassed everyone's imagination and was rather out of keeping with his age.

And even more unexpectedly, this young Son of Heaven actually understood military affairs. In less than a year he had raised a force of more than 10,000 household ironclad cavalry, and had drilled these imperial household cavalry — a force not long established and of uneven quality — into something quite presentable. Moreover, he had led them westward with lightning speed, and in the two battles at the Yu River and Mount Baideng outside Datong dealt the long-famous Chahar tribe's Runaway Khan a crushing defeat. Then, exploiting the victory, he had "seized" the Chahar tribe's Princess of the Uriankhai as his wife, established an alliance and marriage ties with the Chahar tribe, and in one stroke secured the stability of the northwest and formed an anti-Later Jin alliance!

Yet however brilliantly the young Son of Heaven had performed in this past year, he had only been emperor for a little over a year, and his imperial household cavalry had been formed for an even shorter time and were not very numerous — only a mere ten thousand could be brought out to fight a battle.

This amount of force was enough to deal with the outwardly strong but inwardly hollow Khutugtu Khan, but now occupying the entrance to Mount Tianshou and preparing to dig up the ancestral graves of the old Zhu family was Hong Taiji, who had broken through the wall with fifty or sixty thousand Manchu and Mongol elite troops!

Did this young Son of Heaven still have confidence of victory?

Hou Shilu, who led 2,000 Xuanfu cavalry (partly household retainers, plus some elite troops selected from frontier military households and Mongols who had fled in from beyond the passes) and followed Zhu Youjian through Juyong Pass, was very uneasy. But he could not stop this young Son of Heaven whose head seemed somewhat overheated — after all, the Son of Heaven was young and full of spirit, and did not know how fearsome the slave rebels were!

"Bang, bang, bang—"

Just as the great column of ironclad cavalry led by the young Son of Heaven emerged from the southern fortress of Juyong Pass and was about to gallop out of the Juyong Pass gorge into the open plain, the crisp crack of gunfire suddenly came from beyond the gorge.

It was the "black-gun mounted scouts" of the headquarters cavalry, who had gone out of the gorge ahead of the main force, engaging the Later Jin army's white-armored soldiers!

Hou Shilu did not know how formidable the "black-gun soldiers" were, so he spurred his horse up beside Zhu Youjian and said loudly to the young emperor: "Your Majesty, fighting is still going on beyond the gorge. Why don't we hold back for a while — wait until the outcome ahead is decided before we go out?"

Zhu Youjian simply waved his hand from horseback and said with a smile: "The outcome is already decided. Our firelock cavalry has won! However fierce the slave rebels' white-armored soldiers may be, one shot puts them down!"

Zhu Youjian's firelock cavalry had been modeled on the rebel son's black-gun cavalry — in fact they were night scouts equipped with Rumi muskets, specially used against the Later Jin state's white-armored soldiers. Their numbers were not very great either, about fifteen or sixteen hundred in all, and not every man was equipped with a Rumi musket. After all, the number of Rumi muskets Zhu Youjian had been able to gather was not large — only five or six hundred. His young personal soldiers were already equipped with 100 of them, leaving a little over 400, which were distributed among the eight most core regiments of the headquarters army, each regiment receiving a little over 50, all assigned to two cavalry companies directly controlled by the regiment's Assistant Regional Commander.

In other words, Zhu Youjian had in hand a total of 16 night-scout companies equipped with a certain number of Rumi muskets, and all of them had now been sent out, company by company, to engage the white-armored soldiers and Mongol cavalry the slave rebels had placed outside the gorge valley.

Without the Rumi muskets and the corresponding black-gun tactics, these 1,600-odd night-scout cavalry would probably have suffered badly against four or five hundred white-armored soldiers.

But with the black guns — the Rumi muskets — it was a different story!

No matter how high one's martial skill, one still fears the black gun!

What was more, this was the first time Hong Taiji's white-armored soldiers had ever encountered black guns, so they were absolutely certain to be stunned!

When had they ever encountered black guns that shot so accurately, so far, and so insidiously? And what was more, the black guns were used in coordination with mounted archery and spear charges!

For white-armored soldiers who conquered the realm through individual valor, this was absolutely the most ruthless enemy they had ever met.

Zhu Youjian said to Hou Shilu: "This time Hong Taiji failed to block the gorge exit — that is a great miscalculation! Once the white-armored soldiers and Mongols he placed outside the gorge are driven off by us, he will lose control of the plain beyond the gorge — and we can seize the moment to break out! Once we break out, the sky is high and the earth is wide, and we may go wherever we please!"

While Zhu Youjian was speaking with Hou Shilu, he had already spurred his horse out of the gorge mouth. The vast plain lay before his eyes, and Hong Taiji's main camp was fifteen li east of the gorge, positioned exactly to block the entrance to Mount Tianshou while also besieging the city of Changping.

Zhu Youjian spurred his horse up to high ground and raised a telescope to gaze out over the plain beyond the gorge and Mount Tianshou. Hou Shilu followed him up and said to Zhu Youjian: "Your Majesty, the slave rebels are numerous — we, we have only a little over ten thousand men. There is no assurance of victory!"

Zhu Youjian turned his head and glanced at him, then said with a smile: "There is assurance. The assurance is Yuan Chonghuan!"

"Yuan Chonghuan? Isn't he at—"

Zhu Youjian put away the telescope and said with a smile: "We are going to find him. We have 12,000 ironclad cavalry, and he has more than 50,000 elite troops of Ji-Liao! Once our two armies join, We will have an army of over sixty thousand — why should We fear Hong Taiji?"

What? Hou Shilu was greatly shocked. Zhu Youjian had brought 12,000 ironclad cavalry out not to deal with Hong Taiji, who was digging up his family's ancestral graves, but to seize Yuan Chonghuan's military authority!

At this moment the great column of ironclad cavalry had already emerged from the gorge mouth, and without pausing, continued southward!

Zhu Youjian said to Hou Shilu: "Come — while Hong Taiji has not yet reacted, let us circle around and go find Yuan Chonghuan!"

(End of Chapter)