Chapter 603: The Cannon Fodder on the Front Line Against the Ming

In the naval port of Dengzhou, four infantry battalions under Gao Jie, the Military Governor of Xuhai, were boarding ships. All four battalions were organized on the Maurice formation, with a full battalion numbering a little over five hundred men, so the four together came to more than two thousand. The officers and men of these four battalions had all been granted land in Xuzhou, and every man had a stake of his own. On top of that, Haizhou, which Gao Jie held, was fat with wealth, and the Princess of Yuntai (Lady Xing) was a shrewd manager; the year before, she had seized the chance of soaring grain prices in the southeast and made a killing.

With silver in his pocket, Gao Jie did not stint his officers and men. Not only did he pay their wages in full, he also ordered a batch of firelocks from Shanghai through the sand-ship guild, and sent up a memorial asking Zhu Cilang to dispatch a group of instructors to help put his army in order.

Gao Jie's army had many veterans, and they had battlefield experience. But because discipline was lax, training was slack, and equipment was poor, their fighting strength had always been a bit of a joke. In the past they had only been good enough to deal with roving bandits and, along the way, make trouble for the common folk.

But ever since Gao Jie and his wife Lady Xing became masters of Xuhai, the army's condition had greatly improved. With land grants and full pay, Gao Jie and Lady Xing had finally truly taken hold of the army — the land grants gave the officers and men homes and property, all under the control of the Gao couple! And full pay made the Gao couple the benefactors of the officers and men. With these two factors combined, the Gao couple's grip on the Gao family army reached an unprecedented strength, and naturally they could carry out sweeping reforms of discipline and step up training.

After this round of reorganization, the Gao family army had at last become a force that looked as though it could fight. Now it could cautiously go to the Liaodong Peninsula and attempt something big.

The dock was crowded with civil and military officials who had come to see them off, among them Wu Guoyong, who had just arrived in Dengzhou.

A few days before Wu Guoyong reached Dengzhou, news had come from Shandong of the recapture of Ziyang county town and a great victory over the Qing troops.

This was tremendous news!

Over the past two or three years, the Ming and Qing armies on the Yanzhou front in Shandong had been locked in a tug-of-war between Ziyang and Qufu. At one moment the Qing army built the Yishui great camp to threaten Qufu; at another the Ming army attacked the Yishui great camp to lift the threat to Qufu. Ziyang and Qufu, as the major strongholds of the two sides, were rarely attacked.

No one had expected that Ziyang, which the Qing army had held for two or three years, would be taken in a single assault by the Qufu trained army sent out by Shi Kefa!

This made Gao Jie, who had never gotten along with Shi Kefa, Huang Degong, and that crowd, lose a bit of face. So as soon as Wu Guoyong arrived in Dengzhou, Gao Jie put forward a plan for a cross-sea campaign against Liaodong.

Today was the day the four battalions under Gao Jie boarded ship to sail and attack Lüshun!

From Dengzhou to Lüshun was only a day's voyage, and since the islands between Lüshun and Dengzhou were all under the control of the Northern Fleet, the crossing itself carried little risk. The danger lay in what they would run into after landing.

"Ever since the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort at Lüshunkou fell, it has been a key coastal defense stronghold of the eastern barbarians, and they have even emplaced Hongyi cannon there. But that is no obstacle for our Northern Fleet."

The speaker was Shen Tingyang, Governor-General of the Northern Seas. Beside him stood a powerfully built man with pitch-black skin, coarse pores on his face, and a full beard, dressed in a shortened blue silk riding jacket, over which he wore a breastplate — a simple plate armor made by hammering two sheets of iron with a water-powered hammer over specially made molds, produced by the Lopez Arsenal opened by the Portuguese in Shanghai.

"Commander Gao," Shen Tingyang said, pointing at the armored man beside him. "This is Liu Xinyu, battalion commander of the Northern Fleet's vanguard battalion. He comes and goes constantly along every part of the Jinzhou Guard coast; he knows it like the back of his hand! This time he will lead the fleet to carry Commander Gao's troops to Lüshun."

The Northern Fleet's organization imitated the land army, with warship regiments, merchant ship regiments, shipbuilding regiments, and naval port regiments as regimental-level units. The main task of the warship regiment was to maintain northern sea power and to harass the coasts of Liaodong and western Liao.

The warship regiment had five naval combat battalions under it: the vanguard battalion, the central army battalion, the left wing battalion, the right wing battalion, and the rearguard battalion — in effect five "squadrons." Each of the five squadrons was equipped with two or three large centipede ships and a number of medium-sized sand ships of around two thousand liao burden; the former were mainly for naval combat, the latter mainly for carrying troops and supplies.

"This humble officer greets Commander Gao." The naval officer named Liu Xinyu performed a salute. "Today there is a rare southwesterly wind, and the sea is fairly calm — a fine time to set out. This humble officer has also prepared a three-thousand-liao centipede ship for the Commander; it is most comfortable."

Gao Jie helped Liu Xinyu up and said with a smile: "This lord has heard of the fame of Liu of the Northern Sand Ships. These past two years you have swept back and forth across the northern seas like the wind, invincible wherever you go, and you even make frequent trips to the coasts of Liaodong and western Liao."

Shen Tingyang stroked his beard and nodded slightly, inwardly rather pleased. Tartars and the like were truly not worthy of notice in the eyes of this Governor-General of the Northern Seas — the civil and military officials of the Great Ming on land all had something of a headache when facing the Tartars, but he, a governor-general of the sea, left the Tartars utterly helpless.

The coastlines of Liaodong, western Liao, and Joseon — his men could go wherever they wished and leave whenever they pleased!

The court was still racking its brains over how to land in Liaodong and western Liao, but here in the north the fleet had long been coming and going as it liked.

Wu Guoyong also smiled and flattered him: "With Governor-General Shen's fleet, landing near Lüshunkou presents no problem. Even if the Tartars have two or three Hongyi cannon, it will do them no good. How far can a Hongyi cannon shoot? Around the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort at Lüshunkou there are far too many places to land; they simply cannot defend them all.

As for the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort itself, there is no need for Commander Gao's men to attack it. That fort sits against the mountains and faces the sea, ringed by a circle of low hills. As long as Commander Gao's men can seize a few of them, this official will send artillerymen across the sea with twenty-four-pound mortars. They can set up the guns on the hills and, from the heights, use explosive shells to drive the eastern barbarians out of the Central-Left Guard fort.

Once the Central-Left Guard fort is in our hands, we can begin large-scale construction and turn the place into our base city in Liaodong."

The terrain of Lüshunkou was a natural fortress for an army equipped with modern firearms!

A ring of hilltops surrounded a small patch of flat ground and a little bay, with a peninsula called Tiger's Tail blocking the bay's entrance and leaving a channel less than one li wide — as long as gun emplacements were built on the hills around the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort and twenty-four-pound mortars installed there, one could fire explosive shells from the heights at any enemy attempting to attack. And a coastal battery built on Tiger's Tail could block enemies coming from the sea.

Even better, the bay at Lüshunkou faced southeast toward the Yellow Sea and turned its back to the northwest. In winter it was sheltered from the cold, making it an ice-free port all year round. Moreover, the area of Lüshunkou bay was far larger than the naval port of Dengzhou! For the warship fleet of the Northern Fleet, it was an ideal home port.

So since the previous year, Shen Tingyang had been planning to seize the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort and rebuild it into the new foundation of the northern seas.

But before he could act, Dorgon had sent a niru of Plain Green Banner troops to garrison the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort!

Thus the operation to take Lüshun had escalated into a medium-scale campaign.

As a fleet of several dozen Ming warships and transports, taking advantage of a southwesterly wind rare in autumn, made for Lüshunkou, Cao Mutan, the niru janggin of the Qing Plain Green Banner, was pacing restlessly inside the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort.

Yes — restless!

Because Cao Mutan knew that he and his brothers had been thrown by their superiors into this "front line of resistance against the Ming" at the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort to serve as cannon fodder.

Otherwise, why would he, who had been perfectly fine in Shandong, have followed the Prince of Pacifying the South's heir, Kong Tingxun, to Liaodong?

By order of the Imperial Ama Dorgon, the Plain Green Banner had drawn a total of forty niru, divided into eight jalan, stationed respectively at Jinzhou, Fuzhou, Gaizhou, Jinzhou, Ningyuan, Yizhou, Guangning, Haizhou, and other places.

They had not left their families inside the Pass and come out alone to resist the Ming; they had come with their entire households.

Right now, inside the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard fort lived the families of an entire niru — more than five hundred households, two or three thousand people in all!

The Prince of Pacifying the South's heir had also distributed manors to every household, the smallest being three hundred mu. Cao Mutan himself had been allotted five hundred mu, so here in Liaodong he too had a home and property. If the Ming army came and attacked, it would mean the ruin of his family and the destruction of his home!

(End of Chapter)