Chapter 538: Father, Grandfather Has Passed Away

At the end of the Battle of Tangjia Mountain, while leading his troops in a charge through the Ming army's blockade line, he was struck in the heart by a lead bullet and died on the spot!

But this matter was not recorded in the official histories afterward. And at the time, at least no one on the Ming side knew of it. Wu Guoyong and Sun Fugui also had no idea they had accomplished such a great deed — killing Li Zicheng was worth a dukedom no matter how you counted it!

What a pity — no one knew... because Li Zicheng's corpse lay slumped over his horse's back, carried along with the tide-like cavalry of the Shun old camp as they broke through the blockade line of the Ming army's new army right division. The Ming troops were too few — only sixteen battalions, about eight thousand men in all — while the battle line they had to blockade was far too long. So gaps of twenty paces remained between the battalions. Once they contracted, the gaps grew even wider.

And behind the three Ming infantry battalions that took the brunt of the charge, there were only three cavalry companies. Facing more than ten thousand Shun cavalrymen gone mad, what could fewer than three hundred armored horsemen do? Though they too launched a charge, striking the fleeing Shun cavalry from the flank, in the end they could not stop that torrent of horsemen.

So on that day, most of the fifteen thousand-plus mounted elite of the Shun old camp who fled the Tangjia Mountain battlefield — some twelve thousand and several hundred men — all escaped. Among them was the fellow carrying Li Zicheng's great banner.

Therefore, what everyone on the battlefield saw was Li Zicheng fleeing with the cavalry, abandoning more than twenty thousand dumbfounded infantrymen!

And after Li Zicheng "led" the cavalry away, the battle to surround and attack the Shun infantry continued for some time. Because not all the Shun infantry were willing to surrender readily — some among them were "old camp warriors" who still could not forget the property they had held in Xiangyang and Nanyang! Others were the "thrice-serving ministers" Li Guoying, Lu Zuguang, and Xu Yong, along with their trusted personal guards. These men were not many, but they controlled a great number of infantry. And some of them also had horses; it was only that they held posts in the infantry and could not abandon their troops to flee, which was why they had not gone with Li Zicheng.

Now that they saw Li Zicheng break out, they gained a little more hope, thinking they too could break through. They also knew that going over to Zhu Cilang would bring no good fruit, because they had not only betrayed the Ming and followed Zuo Menggeng in defecting to the Shun, but had also, under pressure from Li Zicheng, escorted Zuo Menggeng's whole family to hang themselves — with such faithlessness and treachery, how could Zhu Cilang possibly spare them and give them office again?

So these men drove their troops in a hard charge forward. Breaking out was very difficult, but they did tie down Wu Guoyong, Sun Fugui, Zhang Yong, who had just charged down from Tangjia Mountain, and Yan Yingyuan, who had marched out of Gong'an County upon learning that reinforcements had arrived.

These several Ming forces now had no unified command — Wu Sanfu and Li Yan were both away from Zhu Cilang's side at the moment, and how could His Highness the Crown Prince command so many troops? So the fighting grew more and more chaotic, and the time dragged on a little longer. Only when the sun was setting in the west that day did it basically come to an end.

Most of the generals of Zuo family army origin — including Lu Zuguang, Li Guoying, Zhang Yingxiang, Xu Ensheng, Chang Deng, Xu Yong, Wu Xueli, Zhang Yingyuan, Xu Yuxian, and Ma Jiaolin — all became martyrs of the Shun!

In addition, more than twenty thousand men were taken prisoner, and several thousand Ming soldiers captured in earlier battles were rescued. More than a thousand Shun troops slipped through the net and caused trouble for quite a while across the territories of Jingzhou Prefecture and Yuezhou Prefecture before they were finally wiped out by His Highness the Crown Prince's troops.

A little chaos on Zhu Cilang's side was nothing to fear, but on the Shun side, chaos was now the thing they feared most... because their leader was gone!

After Tian Jianxiu, Gu Junen, and the others led their troops in a mad dash of fifty or sixty li, they finally joined forces with Liu Zongmin, who had earlier gone off to pursue the forces of Jin Shenghuan and Qiu Lei. After the two armies met, they still had about twenty-three thousand men.

Not a small number, and their fighting strength was not weak — at last they could catch their breath and discuss the matter of Li Zicheng's posthumous affairs.

If Li Zicheng had not been shot dead by a single bullet while breaking out, this Battle of Tangjia Mountain could have been counted as a strategic victory for the Shun army!

Although the Shun army's paper losses also reached more than twenty thousand, most of those were newly attached troops or followers of the old camp soldiers. Moreover, Liu Zongmin had also captured over ten thousand prisoners while pursuing Jin Shenghuan and Qiu Lei; these men could be absorbed into the Shun army. After the coming and going, the net loss was only a little over ten thousand.

As for the Shun army's finest core, it was by and large preserved — that was the advantage of having four legs, and it was also what Li Zicheng had relied upon in daring to venture deep behind enemy lines!

Oh, and as for the earlier "burning the boats and breaking the cauldrons" business — that was just for show, and incidentally to leave a fine name in the histories.

Because the Jiangnan part of Jingzhou Prefecture, on its eastern side, was also flat open country. Although there were quite a few rivers, they still could not block the passage of Li Zicheng's great army.

Moreover, as long as Li Zicheng's strategic objective in advancing east — namely, drawing Wu Guoyong's forces eastward to reinforce — was achieved, then the western part of Jingzhou Prefecture would be entirely under the control of Li Guo's and Li Laiheng's forces!

And in order to transport supplies into Sichuan, Li Zicheng had also ordered Li Guo to gather as many boats on the Yangtze as possible. So on the river at Yiling Prefecture west of Huya Mountain, several hundred wooden boats were now concentrated.

Li Zicheng's great army only needed to seize the barely defended Yidu County, and they could cross the river back to the great camp at Huya Mountain, then leisurely enter Sichuan.

On Zhu Cilang's side, although his paper losses were about the same as Li Zicheng's, and the losses were not from his own core forces, on the Jingzhou Prefecture battlefield Zhu Cilang's core forces were few in number. Not counting the newly formed and not yet very reliable Guards Division, there was only Wu Guoyong's one division plus Sun Fugui's one regiment.

It was simply impossible for him to control the vast territory of Jingzhou Prefecture with these few men while simultaneously driving out Li Zicheng's army — in fact, the Shun was not Zhu Cilang's only enemy in northern Huguang. The local gentry and landlords of Huguang were also enemies of Zhu Cilang, the great chief of the Northern Prefecture Army.

So Zhu Cilang could not count on the Huguang gentry to help restore Ming rule over Jingzhou Prefecture, Chengtian Prefecture, Xiangyang Prefecture, De'an Prefecture, Hanyang Prefecture, and the rest... which was why the troops of the three northern warlords Jin Shenghuan, Zhang Yong, and Qiu Lei were extremely useful to Zhu Cilang.

At the very least, they were far more useful than the Hunan militia armies of He Tengjiao and Chang Yanling, and their fighting strength was not even on the same level.

And now, Wu Guoyong's right division, having rushed back and forth covering several hundred li in a short time, was utterly exhausted; without ten days to half a month of rest and recovery it simply would not do. Jin Shenghuan's, Zhang Yong's, and Qiu Lei's three forces had also suffered heavy losses and likewise needed replenishment and reorganization.

So in the short term, Zhu Cilang was also powerless to launch a new offensive in the western part of Jingzhou Prefecture. And if Li Zicheng had not died, he would have been the strategic victor.

Inside a Daoist temple called the Nine Palaces Temple, tightly guarded by the imperial guard regiment, Tian Jianxiu, Liu Zongmin, Gu Junen, and several other high Shun ministers who had followed Li Zicheng were gathered around Li Zicheng — who had now been promoted to "the late emperor" — their eyes red, sighing and lamenting.

"How did he end up as the late emperor, just like that?" Liu Zongmin looked at Li Zicheng, lying on a table, his face deathly pale, not moving at all, and could not help shedding a few more tears. "He suffered his whole life, finally managed to become emperor, and before he could even enjoy it — without even a son — he went and passed away... What are we supposed to do now? Who's going to be the new emperor?"

The new emperor... that question was truly a sensitive one!

Tian Jianxiu and Gu Junen exchanged a glance. Gu Junen said tentatively, "Although the late emperor had no son, he did have a nephew."

"You mean the Marquis of Bo?" Liu Zongmin's brow furrowed slightly, as if he were pondering something, which made the hearts of both Tian Jianxiu and Gu Junen rise into their throats.

Liu Zongmin had always been the number-two figure in Li Zicheng's faction. He had better not be entertaining thoughts of seeking advancement at a time like this... The Shun dynasty was already half dead; if it split apart again now, it would be thoroughly finished.