Chapter 385: Landing on Juehua Island!

Just as Dorgon made up his mind to abandon the plan of driving the tiger to devour the wolf and instead launch an offensive against Ming territory in Shandong and Henan, Zhu Cilang was not idle either — he struck first!

On the fourth day of the fourth month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, dozens of sand boats pierced the morning mist over the sea and, with a boom, grounded on the beach in the bay on the southern side of the "waist" of Juehua Island.

Before the lead sand boat had even come to a stop, two long gangplanks were lowered from its square bow. Then Ming soldiers in red cloth-faced iron armor and iron war hats, holding matchlock arquebuses with burning match cords, came shouting down the gangplanks. An officer with a pistol in one hand and a saber in the other came ashore with them as well.

At the same time, gangplanks were lowered from the other dozens of boats, and company after company of fully armed Ming troops surged like a tide onto the beachhead of Juehua Island in western Liaoning.

These Ming soldiers, officers and men alike, all wore tense expressions.

"Has anyone seen the Tartars?"

"No, no Tartars spotted."

"This is Tartar territory. Be careful."

"Quick, quick, form ranks! Arquebusiers in front, archers in the middle, sword-and-shield men on the flanks, pikemen in the rear!"

"The Tartars could appear at any moment. Form ranks, quickly!"

The officers had already reacted, shouting themselves hoarse as they directed their men to form four battalion squares on the beach of Juehua Island.

The troops landing on Juehua Island today were four battalions under the Dengzhou Brigade of the new Dengzhou-Lai Prefecture army. The Dengzhou Brigade was a guard-unit force, roughly a "third-line" unit among the newly raised armies. Yet the fighting strength of these "third-line" troops was by no means weak — in fact, they were considerably stronger than many "second-line" units, that is, the various division troops that had not yet been reorganized into "model regiments."

This was because the regiments of the division troops had all been slated for "model-ization" — that is, reorganization into European-style units employing Maurice-style tactics. This required equipping them with large numbers of arquebuses, articulated plate armor, and three-pounder regimental guns. It also required Maurice-style formation drill and the training of large numbers of officers and artillerymen.

This was a massive systems-engineering project, and without two or three years it simply could not be completed.

And the twelve regiments currently undergoing "model-ization" were not even finished yet! The remaining twenty-odd infantry regiments could only make do with pikes, saber-and-shield, and bows. Not only did they have no firearms, they did not even have many good bows. So the fighting strength of these units was highly unreliable — not even as good as the comparatively well-equipped guard units!

The guard units, after all, had the old foundation of the guard stations. The guard stations of Jiangnan were rotten to the core, but places like Shandong, Henan, and Fengyang had been in turmoil for quite a few years now. So their armaments had recovered somewhat, and many sons of guard-station families had joined the army bringing their own armor and weapons, which made their equipment comparatively good. And the Dengzhou Brigade was the best of the guard units — not only was it the earliest established, it had also been reinforced by Shen Tingyang and Su Guansheng. Now every battalion had an arquebus banner equipped with arquebuses produced by Shen Tingyang's Dengzhou Arsenal. Moreover, in last year's anticlimactic northern expedition, they had fought a battle against the troops of Liu Liangzuo and Xu Dingguo and won a complete victory!

But last time they had fought traitors; this time they were up against the Tartars!

So no one in the Dengzhou Brigade, from top to bottom, dared to let down their guard, and they quickly formed four squares by battalion.

"Good — the formations are finally set," said Yu Daren, the Mobile Corps Commander of the Dengzhou Brigade, letting out a long breath of relief. He turned to Zhang Huangyan, who held the concurrent posts of magistrate of Penglai and Juehua counties, and said, "Magistrate Zhang, you are a civil official — wait here on the ship for now. I will go ashore first."

Yu Daren and Zhang Huangyan were riding together on a centipede warship of the Northern Fleet. For today's landing, Shen Tingyang had spared no expense: all four centipede ships had sortied in full force and were now drawn up in a line on the sea less than two li from shore, great iron anchors dropped, the gunports in their bows opened, eight 12-pounder Hongyi cannons trained on the beach, just waiting for the Tartars to appear!

"This official will go ashore with you!" Although Zhang Huangyan was a civil official, he was now fully armed — wearing an arrow-proof jacket, an arrow case slung at his side, a Kaiyuan bow on his back, and one hand resting on a treasured sword. It was just that his build was somewhat thin and his face too pale; at a glance he looked like a scholar playing at bandit.

"Very well, let us go ashore together!" Seeing that his spirits were high, Yu Daren did not stop him. After all, Juehua Island was just a lonely little island, and there probably would not be a large Tartar force on it.

Centipede warships could not be used to storm the beach. They had to keep watch near the shore, guarding against a Qing navy that might or might not exist, and if necessary they would use their bow cannons to support the fighting on the beachhead — so they had to remain mobile.

Therefore Yu Daren and Zhang Huangyan had to ride a sampan onto the beach. Yu Daren's four battalion commanders had already run over to report.

"Mobile Corps Commander, we have sent out scouts and posted guards in all directions, but so far no Tartars have been found."

The lead battalion commander had just gotten these words out when a sharp whistle sounded in the distance — someone was firing a signal arrow into the air!

Yu Daren immediately tensed up. He raised a hand to stop the reporting battalion commander, then pricked up his ears and listened for a while. No second signal arrow came, and only then did he let out a long breath of relief and say to Zhang Huangyan, "It should be commoners. Magistrate Zhang, do you want to see them?"

"Naturally I must see them!" said Zhang Huangyan. "This official is the magistrate of Juehua County. The commoners here are the people under this official's governance!"

Yu Daren nodded, then ordered one of his battalion commanders to take his men, advance in formation, and escort him and Zhang Huangyan to meet the masses of Juehua Island.

The place where the masses were found was a run-down village. The terrain of Juehua Island was peculiar, somewhat like a dumbbell — large at both the eastern and western ends and narrow in the middle, which formed two natural bays on the north and south sides of the island.

Yu Daren and Zhang Huangyan had landed today in the bay on the southern side of the island.

Furthermore, the two large ends of Juehua Island were covered with hills and woods. Only at the northeastern corner of the island's eastern end was there some flat land, along with a bay sheltered from the wind. In earlier days, when the Ming had not yet abandoned Ningyuan, that bay had been bustling. Grain and pay destined for Ningyuan were all transshipped there. For that reason, docks, warehouses, and a government office had been built. If the Tartars had stationed troops on the island, they would most likely be there.

The narrow middle part of the island, by contrast, was all farmland and villages, and near the bay on the northern side there was also a small fishing village. But the first settlement Yu Daren and Zhang Huangyan reached after coming ashore was a farmstead hidden in the woods, surrounded by wheat fields that had just been sown.

More than a hundred men and women had been dragged out of the village and gathered at the threshing ground by the village entrance, staring in terror at the Ming officers and soldiers who had appeared from who knew where!

They were all commoners who had moved from Ningyuan after the Juehua Island massacre in the sixth year of Tianqi. They had lived on the island in constant fear for over a decade. Every winter, as soon as the sea froze over, they spent their days in dread, terrified that the eastern barbarians' troops would suddenly come killing — and it was only last winter that they had finally begun to live in peace. For by then the whole territory of Ningyuan was Qing land, so they were naturally Qing subjects — and obedient subjects at that.

Every man on the island had obediently shaved his forehead and braided his hair, and no one had any thought of resisting Qing rule — the price of resistance was too heavy, far more than these humble commoners could bear. All they wanted was to live out their lives peacefully on Juehua Island.

And the Qing dynasty, it seemed, had not paid them much mind, these people of an outlying island. Apart from making the men among them shave their heads and hand over a little grain and seafood, they had not made things too difficult for them. Truly, the imperial grace was boundless!

In the words of later generations, they had now settled securely into slavery and could be peaceful, obedient subjects for generations to come.

But just when they thought they were "secure," something they had never expected happened.

From who knew where came a group of Ming soldiers who looked very wrong indeed — fierce as demons, yet they did not loot, did not rape women, and did not look as though they meant to "borrow" the heads of men with queues to claim merit. They merely told everyone to come to the threshing ground at the village entrance to hear a fully armed magistrate speak.

(End of Chapter)