Chapter 461: This Generation of Manchus Is Truly Formidable! (Begging for Monthly Tickets)

Dorgon has arrived, and that makes the problem considerably more serious!

It is not that Dorgon is such a formidable fighter, but that he can exercise unified command over the more than one hundred thousand Qing troops on the Henan and Shandong fronts. Hooge and Dodo, by contrast, could only fight their own separate wars, each working his own patch. That was why Dodo was run ragged in Shandong, while Hooge, after pacifying most of Henan, crossed the Huai River.

If Dorgon had been in overall command from the start, the hundred thousand-plus Qing troops in the Central Plain would have been forged into a single fist. With over a hundred thousand men pressing forward together, even Zhu Cilang would not have dared stake his own capital on a fight!

Of course, before Hooge's death, the Plain Blue Banner, Plain Yellow Banner, and Bordered Yellow Banner troops on the Henan front would not necessarily have answered to Dorgon. It would not have been easy for him to wield them freely.

But now Hooge was dead — and, what was more, he had been run through with a treasured sword by the Ming's foremost ruthless man, Zhu Cilang. Although Zhu Cilang himself did not know anything about it, word had already spread across the north, and the Qing court had acknowledged it as well, so no one suspected that Dorgon had done away with Hooge.

As for Dorgon seizing the opportunity to swallow up the Plain Blue Banner, that was really nothing. Who could blame him, when Hooge's heir was only three years old? Besides, after absorbing the Plain Blue Banner, Dorgon's arrangement was that he, Ajige, and Dodo would each command one banner.

Dorgon, Ajige, and Dodo were all Nurhaci's sons by his principal wife. By blood, they had a stronger claim to be banner-lord princes than Jirgalang, lord of the Bordered Blue Banner, and they stood on the same level as the Great Beile Daishan.

Moreover, the three Dorgon brothers were all princes. They acted as regents and deliberated in council in their capacity as banner-lord princes, following the line of "government by the council of princes" rather than the line of monarchical centralization. This was in keeping with the interests of the various banner-lord princes and the princes and dukes of the eight ranks.

Besides, in the present military situation in Henan and Shandong, no one but a great figure like Dorgon could sort it out.

So within the Eight Banners, Dorgon's move to seize the Plain Blue Banner was generally accepted — as long as this Prince Regent could lead the Great Qing to a firm foothold in the Central Plain, everything else could be negotiated.

In Shangqiu city, before the great residence of the Hou family, the general's banner of the Generalissimo and the white banner with a golden dragon, emblem of the Plain White Banner lord, hung from two specially tall flagpoles, fluttering in the wind.

This private mansion, originally belonging to Hou Xun, was the finest and most luxurious residence in Shangqiu, the chief county seat of Guide Prefecture. When Huang Degong had garrisoned troops at Shangqiu, he had borrowed the place as his field headquarters. He had therefore erected a headquarters gate and set up several tall flagpoles.

And when Huang Degong withdrew, he had not set fire to this great mansion belonging to Grand Secretary Hou Xun, so Dorgon naturally set up his own Generalissimo headquarters there.

After establishing his Generalissimo headquarters, Dorgon did not hurry to send troops against Zhu Cilang, who was stationed at Fengyang. Instead, he set up a mourning hall in the Hou mansion, and summoned many Buddhist and Daoist monks to chant sutras and perform rites for the deliverance of Hooge, who had died miserably beneath Zhu Cilang's sword.

All Plain Blue Banner officers of company commander rank and above (including company commanders) were summoned to Shangqiu city, where together with Dorgon and with Dodo, recalled from the Qufu front, they wailed in mourning for Hooge.

Dorgon and Dodo did indeed have deep feeling for their eldest nephew Hooge, and they wept with a grief that shook heaven and moved the spirits!

When Nurhaci had died back then, the two brothers had been exactly this heartbroken.

When the Plain Blue Banner colonels and company commanders saw how grieved Dorgon and Dodo were, they sighed inwardly: blood truly is thicker than water! Prince Su had fought with the two of them for so many years while he lived, and now that he was dead, they still grieved so deeply.

When the weeping was done, the two brothers Dorgon and Dodo invited Bahana, the banner commander of the Plain Blue Banner, and Loto, the lieutenant colonel, and several colonels, and also Oboi, the banner commander of the Bordered Yellow Banner, and Mandahai, the Beise of the Plain Red Banner (Daishan's seventh son), who had not followed Hooge south — all of them together into the great hall of the headquarters, where they took their seats and began to talk.

"My prince, in the battle at Qingliu Creek, Prince Su truly did his utmost. The defeat came because the Nikan have grown stronger! The tricks that worked for us a hundred times before are useless now. In the past, when our Eight Banner troops fought the Ming army, we pushed up shield carts, brought plenty of arrows, added some matchlocks, and at most a few Hongyi cannon, and victory was certain. But this time it did not work. The Nikan have several dozen great general cannon that can be hauled about the field, and their power is considerable — at one or two hundred paces they can smash our shield carts to pieces. And these great general cannon fire remarkably fast: in the time it takes to burn one stick of incense they can get off seven or eight shots. They fire not only iron balls, stone balls, and lead balls, but also grapeshot — one blast sweeps a whole area!"

The man holding forth was Oboi, Hooge's foremost confidant!

He was the first important person Dorgon had seen after arriving at Shangqiu, and Dorgon had called on him in person — at the time Oboi was recovering from wounds, and because his patron was gone, no one in Shangqiu would give him the time of day; he was thoroughly down on his luck.

Dorgon, however, came bearing gifts and took the initiative to visit. It moved Oboi to tears of gratitude!

So now Oboi was doing his utmost to analyze for Dorgon the battle of Qingliu Creek — he had personally lived through that battle, so of course he knew where the Qing army had lost, and where the Ming army had grown strong.

The Manchus of Oboi's generation were not the pampered Eight Banner lords of the Opium War two hundred years later. The Manchus of Oboi's generation could not only fight, they were also highly capable learners, and they would use their heads to find solutions to problems.

"Great general cannon, and they fire very fast." Dorgon frowned slightly, already picturing several dozen thousand-jin cannon racing across the battlefield. "These are probably not great general cannon at all, are they?"

Dodo put in, "I've encountered great general cannon in Shandong too, and they weren't anything so formidable!"

Oboi nodded. "The Prince Regent and Prince Yu are right. Those horse-drawn cannon may be a new type, but they are truly formidable!"

Dorgon said, "They may have been bought from the Western barbarians!"

Arjin, the elite guard banner colonel of the Plain Blue Banner, added, "Besides these horse-drawn cannon, the Nikan's armor has also become tougher! Blades cannot cut through it, and arrows cannot pierce it. We must re-equip our warriors with axes, hammers, and wolf-tooth clubs — swords are no longer enough."

"That is easily done!" Dorgon said. "The armor the Nikan used to wear was so poor that we grew accustomed to using swords."

Dodo added, "Fourteenth Brother, the Nikan's earth forts are also hard to deal with! Those ramparts piled up from earth stuffed into sacks can actually withstand Hongyi cannon! At first I thought it was the Sage Confucius protecting them, but later I had men follow the same recipe and tested it several times — still could not knock them down. Truly strange!

Besides, the Nikan's four-cornered and eight-cornered forts are also formidable. On the projecting corner platforms they can mount great general cannon. When the cannon on two corner platforms and one curtain wall all fire at once, the men below have nowhere to hide, and pushing up shield carts is useless too, because the cannon can hit them from the flank. Truly formidable!"

Dodo was likewise a clever Tartar, good at learning, and he had already learned to build bastion forts with sandbags!

"Furthermore," Dodo paused, "the little Zhu crown prince has delegated authority to Shi Kefa, Gao Hongtu, and Zuo Maodi in Shandong, letting them raise their own local militia. All three have already raised militia forces of tens of thousands, and these militia fight better than the regular southern troops we met in previous incursions! Combined with their method of advancing step by step and building corner forts, they are extremely hard to deal with."

Dorgon smiled. "That is because the southern troops we met in the past were all worthless. Now the southern court has gained a strong ruler, and the men below naturally begin to work in earnest — so they are no longer easy to beat."

He paused. "But it is still too late. Now the greater part of the Central Region belongs to our Great Qing. As long as we put our hearts into ordering and developing it, no matter how great his talents, he can do nothing to us!

As for the old saying that whoever gains the Central Plain gains the realm, we need not dwell on it. As long as Zhu Cilang lives, we should give up any thought of unifying the realm. The best policy is to manage our own territory well."

"Fourteenth Brother," Dodo said with a frown, "how are we to develop the Central Region? Several of the prefectures we hold in Shandong are nearly empty of people now, with fields lying waste everywhere. How long will it take to develop them?"

(End of Chapter)