Chapter 301: The Rise of the Third Prince Zhu

Chen Yongfu, who was garrisoning Taiyuan, had indeed been preparing to break out these past days. The reason he was abandoning Taiyuan was that Li Zicheng had once again miscalculated the hearts of men!

His "benevolent rule" in Shanxi had not bought the people's hearts he wanted; instead, it had raised up a powerful enemy for him — the Shanxi merchants!

Earlier, when the Ming troops at Datong colluded with the Qing army against the Shun, Shanxi merchants had been a factor in bringing it about. When the Qing army later invaded Taiyuan Prefecture and was able to obtain large quantities of supplies locally, the Shanxi merchants deserved no small credit. Later still, when Wu Sangui marched south on a raid against Luoyang, Shanxi merchants had provided grain and fodder along the way. And now the city of Taiyuan Prefecture, where Chen Yongfu was garrisoned, was likewise thrown into panic and alarm because of sabotage by the Shanxi merchants.

From late in the tenth month onward, all sorts of rumors had been circulating among Chen Yongfu's troops — that Li Zicheng had been defeated and killed, and the Shun dynasty had already perished; that the Great Qing and the Great Ming had reached a peace agreement, with the Yellow River as the boundary, dividing the realm between them; that traitors had appeared inside Taiyuan and the city would soon open its gates and surrender; and that the Qing army was building a dam upstream on the Fen River to store water and would soon flood Taiyuan.

Chen Yongfu was vexed and unsettled by these rumors, and indeed the Shun strongholds around Taiyuan were being eliminated one by one by the Qing army, until finally Taiyuan was left an isolated city.

An isolated city cannot be held in the end!

And once the eleventh month arrived, conditions inside Taiyuan grew even worse! A great granary in the city caught fire, burning up more than ten thousand shi of rice and flour. The loss itself was not great, but the people's hearts were thrown into panic, and the city's residents all rushed like mad to buy up grain.

What worried Chen Yongfu even more was that the Qing army outside the city seemed to have gained the strong support of the Shanxi gentry! From late in the tenth month onward, large numbers of laborers, under Qing army supervision, had begun digging a long trench outside Taiyuan.

Under these circumstances, to grimly hold Taiyuan would simply be throwing his troops away for nothing.

Moreover, because Wu Sangui's force of thirty thousand had departed, the Qing troops besieging Taiyuan numbered only thirty thousand. Although they were all elite Eight Banners soldiers, their numbers were ultimately too few to completely encircle a great city like Taiyuan. So the chances of a successful breakout had greatly increased.

By the fifth and sixth days of the twelfth month, the temperature around Taiyuan suddenly plunged, and the surface of the Fen River west of the city froze hard enough to gallop horses across.

Chen Yongfu seized without hesitation this opportunity — the river had just frozen, and the Qing army had not yet had time to adjust its encirclement — and together with Li Ruoxing and Han Wenquan led his troops in a breakout. After the breakout succeeded, the army split into two columns. Chen Yongfu led the main force southwest toward Jiaocheng, while Li Ruoxing and Han Wenquan led their troops west, into the great Lüliang Mountains.

The Qing army besieging the city likewise divided into three columns: one led personally by Dodo, pursuing Chen Yongfu as he fled southwest, and taking Fenzhou and Pingyang Prefecture along the way; one led by the Duoluo Beile Nikan, remaining to hold Taiyuan; and one led by Ajige, marching north to Daizhou, through Yanmen Pass to attack Datong Prefecture — according to Dorgon's plan, once Ajige reached Datong Prefecture, he would replace Hooge, who had fought long without success, as Regional Commander of the Qing forces on the Datong front.

In Dorgon's thinking, Hooge and Oboi were not incompetent men, and the elite troops of the Plain Blue Banner and the Bordered Yellow Banner were no pushovers. How could they truly have fought long without success? So Datong Prefecture was merely fruit about to ripen, and Ajige was going to pick the fruit. The Dai princely establishment, to put it plainly, was just the old Ming border army of Datong — how much fighting strength could it have?

But at this moment, Dorgon, Dodo, and Ajige none of them imagined that their struggle with the Ming Dai princely establishment had only just begun!

And the main battlefield of the struggle between the Great Qing dynasty and the Ming Dai princely establishment was not at Datong Prefecture at all, but in the great Lüliang Mountains.

On the eighth day of the twelfth month, amid wind and snow, more than a hundred palace guards in fur robes and sable hats, escorting the young Ming Dai Prince Zhu Cijiong and his party, strode out of the magnificent princely city. The thirteen-year-old Prince of Dai had grown considerably taller than when he had first arrived at Datong a few months before, and his frame had filled out somewhat. Wearing armor and a cloak, striding along, he truly had a touch of a famous general's bearing.

Wang Yongji and Jiang Xiang, leading a group of civil and military officials who were to remain and hold Datong Prefecture, stood solemnly by the roadside to greet him.

And Li Jiantai, who was to escort the Prince of Dai to the Lüliang Mountains, stood respectfully outside the princely city gate together with several of his concubines dressed in military attire.

The Prince of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, spotted them at once and, surrounded by his study companion eunuch Zong Zhen, the captain of the palace guard Wang Jianwei, and the palace tutors Bi Keli, Chen Yongxi, and others, strode over and said warmly to Wang Yongji and Jiang Xiang: "The wind and snow are heavy; you two need not see me off any farther."

Then he said to Li Jiantai: "Master Li, you are advanced in years; take care not to catch cold. Do not stand long in this wind and snow — please board the carriage at once."

Seeing this young prince showing such concern for his subordinates, Wang Yongji, Jiang Xiang, and Li Jiantai were all deeply moved. None of the three had ever met Zhu Cilang, whose soul had been possessed by Zhu Yaofei, so they had no idea of Zhu Cilang's fearsomeness, and thus felt that this thirteen-year-old Prince of Dai had quite the makings of a wise ruler. He looked a bit stronger than his imperial father — at least he could run fast, fleeing on his own before the Tartars could besiege the city, and what was more, fleeing all the way into the Lüliang Mountains.

Jiang Xiang cupped his hands and said: "Your Highness must also dress warmly. It is cold here in Datong, and the twelfth month is the coldest time of all. Outside the city everything is ice and snow, and it will be even colder once you enter the mountains."

Wang Yongji said: "This journey is truly hard on Your Highness. In the end, it is we subjects who are incompetent, and allowed the Tartars to deceive us!

But we subjects will not make things easy for the Tartars either. With the strong walls of Datong, we can hold out for at least two years! I do not believe the Tartars can stay outside Datong that long!"

As a mighty city, Datong's defenses were far stronger than Beijing's! Even if the Qing army possessed large numbers of Hongyi cannons, breaching Datong's defenses would still be very difficult — Datong's main wall was four to five zhang thick, of rammed earth faced with brick, extremely solid, and even a fierce bombardment with Hongyi cannons would find it hard to bring down. And breaching one section of wall would not achieve a breakthrough, because on Datong's wall stood sixty-two magnificent gate towers, corner towers, and watchtowers, spaced at intervals, none too far apart. Troops posted on them could support one another with bows, firelocks, and Folangji cannons, creating interlocking fields of fire.

And these gate towers, corner towers, and watchtowers were far sturdier than the wall itself. The gate towers all had barbican structures; the corner towers and watchtowers were mostly built in protruding trapezoidal shapes, with narrow fronts and solid interiors, so that even if one were battered down, it would only form a steep ramp, very difficult to climb.

So Wang Yongji, Jiang Xiang, and the others all reckoned the Qing army would not storm Datong by force, but would instead adopt a protracted siege. In truth, it would simply be a contest of starvation between inside and outside the city!

If they merely held out in an isolated city, no matter how great the reserves inside Datong Prefecture, they would eventually run out. Fortunately, Luo Xiushen had begun preparing a retreat for the Prince of Dai months earlier. The princely fortress in the Lüliang Mountains had been completed, and the Zhenxi Guard and its subordinate battalions, forts, walled towns, and stockades were all essentially under control.

In addition, Hequ County, Xing County, Lan County, Ling County, Baode Subprefecture, and Kelan Subprefecture — four counties and two subprefectures in northwestern Shanxi — were all under the administration of officials dispatched by the Prince of Dai's establishment.

With this territory of one guard, two subprefectures, and four counties in the Lüliang mountain region echoing Datong Prefecture, Datong was no longer an isolated city. So Wang Yongji and Jiang Xiang were at this moment full of confidence, feeling they could fight a protracted war against the Qing army from Datong Prefecture.

The Prince of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, had already mounted his horse. The palace guards had also prepared a carriage for the elderly Li Jiantai. This turncoat official — who had surrendered to Li Zicheng, then spent one hundred fifty thousand taels of silver to buy a "home-return permit," and who had Shanxi merchant connections — ought by all reason to have been utterly untrustworthy. Yet ever since he had come over to the Prince of Dai's side, he had repented and reformed, contributing money and grain, and had also gathered many serviceable firelocks and gunpowder for the Prince's guards.

He had also helped Luo Xiushen build the princely fortress in the Lüliang Mountains, and had sent more than forty of his fifty concubines, along with a great crowd of sons and daughters, into the Lüliang Mountains.

From the look of it, he meant to live or die together with His Highness the Prince of Dai!

Once the Prince of Dai, Zhu Cijiong, was settled in the saddle, he turned his head to look at the officials who had come to see him off, and suddenly raised the horsewhip in his hand, pointing south: "We shall summon the heroes of the mountains and of Shaanxi from within the Lüliang Mountains, and contend with the eastern barbarians to the very end! We also ask you all to hold Datong firmly, and await the day when We lead a righteous host from all quarters to lift the siege of Datong!"

(End of Chapter)