Chapter 1762: The Yan Mountains Are Our Qishan

A vast, sprawling column was making its way through the peaks and valleys of the boundless Yan Mountains.

The number of people in this column was so great it could not have been less than two hundred and fifty thousand! With so many people, of course they could not all be fighting men. Between the ranks of soldiers, great crowds of common folk were intermingled — supporting the old and leading the young, driving livestock, pushing little carts, braving the howling north wind, stumbling step by step toward the boundless mountains to the northeast.

Because the numbers were so great, the column stretched out extremely long. The vanguard had already entered the headwaters of the Liao River on the eastern slopes of Mameng Mountain, while the rearguard had only just crossed the Luan River.

The Later Jin Tiancong Great Khan, Hong Taiji, was himself with the rearguard of this column, personally leading eight thousand picked troops drawn from every banner to bring up the rear of his army, which was returning laden with spoils.

That was right — Hong Taiji was indeed returning laden with spoils!

Although his incursion past the wall had not yielded much profit — he had even suffered a small loss — his gains outside the Jizhen border wall had been quite substantial, even exceeding his original expectations!

Hong Taiji's greatest gain outside the Jizhen border wall was population — not population that nominally submitted to the Later Jin but was in practice hard to control, but population that could truly be incorporated into the Later Jin Eight Banners system (as bannermen or booi) and become the core followers of the Later Jin. And this time he had gained as many as two hundred thousand of them — one could truly say he was returning laden with spoils.

The Later Jin and the Northern Yuan had limited populations; even if they mustered every elite soldier in the realm, they would have difficulty scraping together two hundred thousand men. The Great Ming, by contrast, had a population of two hundred million, and raising two hundred thousand elite troops would seem to be no problem. But in reality, the population and land that the little Emperor Zhu Youjian could actually control were extremely limited — far from two hundred million, not even twenty million, at most a few million. And there were too many places to defend, so it was likewise very hard to mobilize an army of two hundred thousand for a single battlefield.

This war among the Great Ming, the Northern Yuan, and the Later Jin was in truth only a struggle between the Ming dynasty (not the entire Ming realm) on one side and the Mongol Chakhar tribe and the Later Jin Eight Banners tribes on the other. The overwhelming majority of the Ming's two hundred million people were simply not under the little Emperor Zhu Youjian's control. When he tried to levy a few million taels more of the Liaodong levy to raise troops, it had been enough to set off a great peasant uprising — how could he hope to drag hundreds of thousands or even a million able-bodied men out of those two hundred million commoners to serve in the army?

Zhu Youjian, who had spent decades learning from that rebellious son of his how to be an emperor, now understood this principle — no matter how good the numbers looked on paper, without actual population, land, and a steady "tax flow," it was all damn empty.

So in the year and more since he had taken the throne, he simply did not play at empty formalities with his subordinates. Since it was all empty anyway, he let the Grand Secretariat do as it pleased with it. As long as the annual revenue of the first year of Chongzhen could match that of the seventh year of Tianqi, as long as the officials' salaries and the military pay of the Nine Frontiers could be issued, and as long as the 1.2 million taels of "gold flower silver" could be delivered to the Inner Transport Treasury without the slightest discrepancy, Zhu Youjian was fully satisfied.

His main energy, then, was devoted to seizing tangible land and population. All his actions these days revolved around these two objectives!

And Zhu Youjian's opponent, the Great Jin Tiancong Khan Hong Taiji, naturally understood this principle even better. His Great Jin state did not lack land, but it was desperately short of population. Whether Eight Banners bannermen, booi slaves, or Han commoners, the total number was pitifully small — at the very most a little over one million, of whom the able-bodied males numbered only three or four hundred thousand. As for the most essential Manchu nobles and the Jurchen bannermen, their total was no more than sixty or seventy thousand.

Because the population was so small, and because there was war year after year, the Later Jin's vast territory simply could not be put to use. Since the founding of the state, there had been famine almost every year, and every year many Han commoners and booi aha starved to death. In the era of the old Khan of the Mandate of Heaven, in order to ease the suffering of grain shortage, the old Khan had even ordered the killing of Han commoners who had no grain! But the Han commoners were not only consumers — they were even more producers! When it came time to eat, he thought there were too many mouths and killed them; when it came time to plow and sow the next year, he found there were too few hands to do the work. As a result, less could be planted and more land lay fallow, and when harvest came, naturally even less grain was obtained, and famine arrived right on schedule.

But the people the old Khan had killed could not be brought back to life to farm for the Great Jin, so Hong Taiji, the new Tiancong Great Khan, could only go elsewhere and seize some people to bring back and farm the land.

That was why, after taking the throne, he had disregarded the famine in his own country and launched wars year after year, without pause attacking Joseon, striking Ningyuan and Jinzhou, sweeping the Liao River bend, sending troops against the Kharchin Mongols, and mounting the incursion past the wall. The main purpose of these several wars was either to seize people or to make it easier to seize people.

But seizing people was not easy either! The Dingmao campaign against Joseon had not penetrated the densely populated regions of Kaesong and Hanseong, and because of the interference of Mao Wenlong's forces and the speed with which the Joseon people fled (Amin had massacred the city when he attacked Anju, which so terrified Pyongyang that it became an empty city), very few people had been captured.

And the battle of Ningyuan and Jinzhou had ended in defeat, so no people had been seized there either.

The campaign against the Mongols had, for the time being, seized some population from the hands of the Dolot tribe, one of the eight great camps of the Chakhar, but the total was only a little over ten thousand, and they were mostly herders who did not know much about farming.

As for the operation against the Kharchin Mongols, its original purpose had not been to seize people, but to win over and control the various Kharchin tribes in order to secure a route by which to bypass the passes and enter the interior.

And by bypassing the passes and striking into the Ming dynasty's heartland, he could originally have seized great quantities of population, grain, and wealth, thereby greatly easing the Later Jin's shortage of people, grain, and goods.

But the Great Ming had suddenly produced a little emperor whose valor surpassed the whole army. Although he had only tested his blade in three places — Changping, the Ji Canal, and Tangzhi Mountain — he had still made Hong Taiji sense danger.

The Later Jin lacked people! This also meant Hong Taiji had to use the Eight Banners army left by the old Khan of the Mandate of Heaven with great care — that army was the greatest reliance of Hong Taiji and the Later Jin state!

If the Eight Banners troops suffered a loss of vitality in battle with the little emperor of the Southern Court, then the Later Jin's realm would begin to totter. And the throne of Hong Taiji, the khan "chosen by the multitude," would likely totter even more violently!

Therefore, with all three probing engagements ending without victory, Hong Taiji simply did not have the nerve to commit to a decisive battle.

This great military strategist, who had thoroughly read the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, now felt his situation was much like that of Zhuge Liang, who made six expeditions from Qishan. The Eight Banners troops could fight, but the Later Jin's national strength was limited — he could not afford to expend it!

Fortunately, however, that little Emperor Zhu Youjian was too fierce and violent, unwilling to bestow favor and win over the various Kharchin tribes. He had even let the Uriankhai Grand Princess command several thousand Mongol iron cavalry to carry out a great slaughter among the Kharchin Mongol tribes who were unwilling to join the Doyan Tumen and the Uriankhai Tumen. As a result, great numbers of Kharchin Mongols living near the Xuanfu border wall and on the Bashang grasslands had all retreated to the east bank of the Luan River.

These Mongols, along with the Kharchin Mongols who had originally lived in the Luan River valley and the Kharchin Mongols near the Jizhen border wall, had now for the most part been gathered up by Hong Taiji — because their tribes had been scattered and their homelands lost, Hong Taiji was able to absorb them into the Eight Banners system.

"Second Beile, Third Beile — " Hong Taiji, already mounted on the east bank of the Luan River, summoned Amin and Manggūltai to his side.

"Great Khan, you called for me?"

"Great Khan, what are your orders?"

These two deliberative Grand Beiles had both brought their own banners' elite troops to serve with Hong Taiji in the rearguard, and were now riding beside him.

Hong Taiji gazed at the two pontoon bridges over the Luan River that had just been set alight and let out a soft breath. "In former days Zhuge Liang made six expeditions from Qishan, and our Great Jin will likewise enter and leave the Yan Mountains several times in the future. The Yan Mountains are our Qishan. But We cannot be Zhuge Liang — We must surpass Zhuge Liang! In former days Zhuge Liang, after five expeditions from Qishan had failed, thought of using military-agricultural colonies to deal with Cao Wei. It was a pity Heaven did not grant him more years, and he died of illness at Wuzhang Plain. But We shall establish military-agricultural colonies on Our very first expedition from the Yan Mountains. Only by establishing colonies can our Great Jin contend with the Southern Court for the gateway region of the Yan Mountains. And the heavy task of establishing colonies in the Yan Mountains, We entrust to you two. Second Beile, We allot you one hundred thousand Kharchin Mongols — go and establish colonies at Mameng Mountain. Third Beile, you shall also take one hundred thousand Kharchin Mongols and establish colonies in the Daling River valley. One of you will block the northeast of the Yan Mountains, the other the due east — opening up land on one hand, and on the other winning over the surrounding Mongol tribes and making them serve Our purposes. After the autumn harvest next year, We shall lead the great army once more to contend for the Yan Mountains a second time!"

(End of Chapter)