Chapter 413: Under a Heavy Reward, There Will Surely Be Brave Men

Under a heavy reward, there will surely be brave men!

If no brave men come forth, the reward is not enough!

To a petty warlord like Li Chengdong, who had three thousand private soldiers, silver and land meant little, and Gao Hongtu could not possibly hand them over in unlimited amounts anyway. But a whole prefecture at the foot of Mount Tai — that was a truly heavy reward.

With territory, a warlord could advance still further!

And Tai'an Prefecture, in the Shandong of this day, was a rather fine piece of territory. Part of the Mount Tai range lay within Tai'an's borders, and there were many quite prosperous valleys there. Even if Tai'an city itself fell, Li Chengdong could still lead his men into the valleys and go on lording it over his own domain.

Once he had Gao Hongtu's promise, this fellow Li Chengdong truly threw himself into it. He called together all his household retainers — some four hundred fifty or sixty men, every one of them a stout fellow who had fought and bled at Li Chengdong's side for years.

Li Chengdong first divided among them all the gold and silver he had brought out of Jinan, and then on top of the reward Gao Hongtu had offered he promised to double it — once Li Chengdong had his territory, every one of these four hundred-odd men would receive a fine estate of his own.

With such a heavy reward, the household retainers were of course all afire with courage, every man howling to get into the fight. And Gao Hongtu had also picked two thousand brave men from the more than twenty thousand Shandong militia and handed them all over to Li Chengdong.

These two thousand brave men were all equipped with saber-and-shield and long spears. They had no firearms and no bows; their only missile weapon was the javelins of the shield men. Half of them had been given armor; the rest had nothing but a single suit of cloth.

Li Chengdong organized them into ten "battalions" of two hundred men each, and chose several dozen of his own household retainers to lead and command them. The remaining nearly four hundred retainers all donned armor and mounted horses, to be used as shock cavalry.

The breakout was set for the next morning before dawn!

The Qing Green Standard troops, who had spent the whole day digging trenches and building ramparts, seemed utterly exhausted. They had all returned to camp and were sound asleep. And the trenches they had dug and the ramparts they had built were not yet finished. In front of the Ming army's breakout route there was only a shallow trench and a rampart less than two feet high. And it was all perfectly still, as if there were no guard at all.

Moreover, not a single Qing scout or roving rider was active between the two armies' lines — at least Li Chengdong and his men, who were to lead the assault, had spotted not one Qing cavalry patrol moving along the front between the two opposing forces.

Yet no one truly believed the Qing troops had all gone back to camp to sleep. These were the invincible soldiers of the Great Qing who had fought their way across the north! Even if they really were asleep, they slept with both ears pricked; at the slightest stir they would spring up and kill.

The fact that the battlefield was now so quiet could only mean one thing: there was an ambush!

"Governor, this quiet is not right — I fear there is an ambush!"

"Governor, do we break out or not?"

"If we do not break out now, it will be even harder later."

"Aye — at worst, we fight to the death!"

By the time Gao Hongtu appeared before his commanders fully armored, everyone could see something was wrong, yet none of them was willing to give up the breakout.

Because every day they delayed, the trenches and ramparts outside grew stronger! When it came to that, they would either starve to death or surrender to the Great Qing and become traitors.

But traitors had a hard time of it these days! The Green Standard troops on the Qing side had shed blood and sweat, and no one had seen them gain much for it. If one became a traitor and was then driven by the Eight Banners to fill in the great bastions at Qufu, Yidu, Laiyang, Dengzhou, Laizhou, and Crouching Tiger Mountain — that was certain death!

By now more than half of Shandong was like one vast construction site. The farmers, besides tilling their fields, did nothing but pile earth and stack sandbags!

Not only were the Shandong Governor's yamen, the militia yamen, the Governor-General's yamen, the Regional Commander's yamen, the Prince of Lu's palace, the naval yamen, the guard command yamen, the prefectural yamen, the county yamen, and a whole host of other official establishments all building, but the larger landlords and local strongmen were building fortresses too.

Some of these local magnates had not only ringed their own great stockades with earthen ramparts, but had even walled in their ancestral graves — they were all filial sons and worthy grandsons, after all; they could not fail to protect their ancestors!

So how many fortresses there now were in Shandong, even Gao Hongtu, the great Governor, could no longer make out — over a thousand, in any case!

That many fortresses certainly would not be left for the Tartars to storm, and the Han troops were not willing to be spent that way either! Was that not exactly the Green Standard's job?

So going over to the enemy and becoming a traitor was truly more dangerous than fighting the Tartars to the death.

Now, fighting to the death meant nine chances in ten of dying; surrendering meant ten in ten — with all those grave-burying bastions across Shandong, could you escape them?

And even if Shandong were finished, there was still South Zhili!

"Break out!" Gao Hongtu gritted his teeth. "Is it not just twenty li? Run fast, and it is only an hour or two!"

His army did not need to run all the way to Jinan, because twenty li away there was a Tuhe "ren"-series fort, an earthen bastion.

Once Gao Hongtu's troops reached it, they could draw a long breath.

And twenty li east of the Tuhe "ren"-series fort there was yet another bastion. That made one stop every twenty li; after a few stops they would be back at the city of Jinan.

Moreover, these bastions were different from the earthen enclosure Gao Hongtu was now holding — they could permanently garrison elite troops.

That meant that if Dodo followed them the whole way, he would have to keep splitting off troops to besiege every fortress. By the time he reached Jinan city, would he have any men left?

So Gao Hongtu only needed to run two or three stops, and he would escape to safety.

"Regional Commander Li, it is up to you now!" Gao Hongtu looked at Li Chengdong with a solemn face. "This old man's word is worth a thousand gold, ten thousand gold — Tai'an Prefecture shall surely be yours!"

"Right!" Li Chengdong nodded heavily. "I'll fight them to the death!"

He was now fully armored, wearing a long coat of mail, and in his hand he held a wine gourd. He gulped down several mouthfuls of liquor, then clasped his fists to the officers around him: "I go on ahead. If my head falls, twenty years from now I'll be a stout fellow again!"

With that he swung into the saddle and rode off toward the east side of the "earthen enclosure" without looking back.

A great breach had already been hacked open in the earthen enclosure. The ten battalions of saber-and-shield men and spearmen, one battalion after another, had finished forming up. They too had drunk a little wine, and were only waiting to attack.

"Attack!" Li Chengdong wasted no words. With a wave of his hand he gave the order, then shouted a slogan at the top of his lungs: "Kill the Tartars and divide the land!"

"Kill the Tartars! Divide the land! Kill, kill, kill!"

More than two thousand men surged out in waves, shouting "kill," all of them half-crazed and half-drunk. They could not hold any proper formation; they simply lowered their heads and charged!

What was supposed to have been a surprise attack now made such a din that the ambushers opposite, yawning and drowsy, were startled.

Ambushers there certainly were!

Dodo was a great military strategist, after all. When he had his men dig the encirclement trenches, he had already calculated that Gao Hongtu would surely break out. And a Ming army's breakout was usually organized very badly — the perfect moment to destroy them.

So the ambush had long been prepared. Dodo too was fully armored, and under the protection of his bayara warriors he was crouching in a wood southeast of the "earthen enclosure." Near him were several thousand more Eight Banners elite troops, fully armed and armored, dismounted and awaiting orders.

Now, hearing the shouts shake the sky, Dodo suddenly thought of something, and his face changed at once.

"What are they howling? Not 'Confucius protect us,' is it?"

A first-class baturu of the Bordered White Banner beside him had very sharp ears and understood Chinese. He answered at once: "Reporting to Your Highness, these nikan are shouting 'Kill the Tartars, divide the land.'"

Dodo was stunned: "What? What? Divide the land too... what is that supposed to mean?"

"Your Highness," the first-class baturu of the Bordered White Banner asked, "let this slave take men and charge them, and teach those nikan a lesson."

"No need!" Dodo shook his head. "Their morale is at its peak. We cannot use our Eight Banners warriors to block them head-on. Stick to the original plan — let the nikan block the front, and our men strike them from behind."

"Your Highness is wise!"

"Your Highness is wise" was something Wu Weihua, the Qing's Marquis of Obedience, could not say just now. Because he was the very nikan Dodo had sent to block the front!

Nor was it a hard blocking action. He was to lead his three thousand Green Standard troops lying in ambush in a trench running parallel to the Tuhe River, waiting for the Ming army's shock troops to charge out, then suddenly strike from the flank.

But what he had never imagined was that after crouching in that trench for most of the night, waiting until he was drowsy, what finally came at him was a horde of mad Ming soldiers the likes of which he had never seen!

(End of Chapter)