Chapter 606: Dorgon Begs for Mercy

The city of Huai'an Prefecture, the temporary seat of the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming.

"Your Majesty, this subject spent many years among the eastern barbarians and knows their internal affairs like the back of his hand. The eastern barbarians' military system is one in which soldiers and civilians are one and the same. Their land reclamation, conscription of able-bodied men, tax collection, and labor service all take the niru as the basic unit. Roughly speaking, three hundred able-bodied men form one niru, five niru form one jalan, and five jalan form one gūsa — gūsa means 'banner.' At the very beginning there were only four banners, then they expanded to eight. After entering the Pass, they also organized the Han troops who had surrendered and attached themselves into two Green Banners, making ten banners in name. But in truth, only nine banners are actually controlled by the eastern barbarians' court, because Wu Sangui's Bordered Green Banner is a banner in name only.

Because Mongols and Han people joined the banners, the eastern barbarians' court also organized many niru made up of Mongols and Han people, and under the old Eight Banners it established gūsa ejen for the Eight Banner Mongol niru and gūsa ejen for the Eight Banner Han Army niru. However, the number of jalan under the Mongol gūsa and the Han Army gūsa is not uniform.

Thus the old Eight Banners came to have twenty-four gūsa ejen, three gūsa ejen per banner. At the beginning, the gūsa ejen and the banner-lord prince were one and the same thing, but as time went on they became two separate matters. The banner-lord prince is hereditary; ordinarily the prince who holds the most niru under a given banner becomes its banner lord. The gūsa ejen, by contrast, is appointed by the court, and is usually not one of the princes or dukes admitted to the eight ranks or the nine ranks.

As for the relationship between the gūsa ejen and the banner lord, that is not fixed either. When Hong Taiji held power, the gūsa ejen kept the banner-lord princes down. But now that Dorgon has seized great power in his capacity as a banner-lord prince, the banner lords and the princes and dukes who hold niru have greatly expanded their influence, and have all but become the masters of the gūsa ejen.

At the end of last year and the beginning of this year, Dorgon also began thinking of opening up land beyond the Pass, in the old homeland, as a fallback. So he added one gūsa beyond the Pass under each banner, and drew one niru from each jalan to send beyond the Pass, all under the command of each banner's gūsa beyond the Pass. The jalan remaining in the Guan-Ning region were thus left with only four niru each.

By the way, the newly established Plain Green Banner has only Han troops, no Mongols or Manchus, but it has three banner lords: Kong Youde, Geng Zhongming, and Shang Kexi. Under the three banner lords there are likewise four gūsa.

So the strength the eastern barbarians' court can now command is nine banners and thirty-six gūsa, roughly one hundred twenty or thirty jalan, and more than five hundred niru.

As for the current number of niru belonging to the nine banners and the number of men in each niru, that has all fallen into disorder. After all, the niru system combines soldiers and civilians, and there is no fixed number for the births, deaths, illnesses, and aging within each niru. Moreover, the niru are the private property of the banner-lord princes and the princes and dukes admitted to the nine ranks — now the nine banners — so there is no way to level out the peaks and fill the valleys. Therefore this subject can only give an approximate figure, somewhere between two hundred and five hundred men per niru. Taking the nine banners together, that comes to about one hundred seventy or eighty thousand fighting men. Of these, thirty thousand have now gone beyond the Pass, and the remaining one hundred forty or fifty thousand are inside the Pass. That is the maximum force Dorgon can mobilize.

Of these one hundred forty or fifty thousand men, at least forty or fifty thousand cannot be used except as a last resort. They must hold Beijing, watch Shanxi, and control the southern deserts of Mongolia — the Khalkha Mongols of the northern deserts have never given up their ambitions, and the Oirat Mongols of the western deserts grow stronger by the day, while Wu Sangui sits in Gansu and Shaanxi. So the southern deserts of Mongolia cannot be left ungarrisoned.

And if he must face our several hundred thousand troops and Zhang Xianzhong's with a mere hundred thousand men, how can Dorgon not feel hollow inside? It is only reasonable that he should come begging for mercy from us. Your Majesty, what do you say — shall we spare him now?"

The man speaking was the subject Zu Kefa, one of the four ministers. He had now arrived at Huai'an Prefecture, where Zhu Cilang had halted his progress, bearing Dorgon's personal letter begging for mercy.

When he reached Huai'an, the situation in what history calls the "Second Northern Expedition of the Southern Ming" was truly quite optimistic!

On the Liaodong front, the force under Gao Jie that had landed on the Jinzhou Peninsula was advancing smoothly. The fleet carrying the first landing force, totaling more than two thousand men, arrived without incident on the evening of the thirteenth day of the eighth month in the twentieth year of Chongzhen at a bay facing the Bohai Sea, ten li northwest of Laotie Mountain. The landing operation began at once. Under covering fire from three centipede ships, each armed with two 12-pounder Hongyi cannon, the landing went exceptionally smoothly and met with almost no resistance.

After the successful landing, four battalions of Gao's army struck straight for Tieshan Town. After occupying Tieshan Town, they used two battalions to seize Jiguan Mountain and Tiger Tail — the peninsula at the entrance to Lüshun. Then, under cover of the three centipede ships, these two battalions crossed the water from Tiger Tail in small wooden boats and occupied Gold Mountain, which faces Tiger Tail across the water, thereby gaining complete control of the entrance to Lüshun.

After Gold Mountain, Tiger Tail, and Tieshan Town had fallen one after another, Gao Jie drew off two more battalions and, under cover of the centipede ships that had entered Lüshun, launched an attack on White Jade Mountain east of the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard city. The attacking force had little trouble. Relying on their sharp matchlock muskets, they beat back the troops under Cao Mutan, who had steeled himself to come out of the city and give battle, and took more than a hundred "Tartar heads."

After White Jade Mountain was taken, the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard city became a turtle in a jar. They had only to wait for the Northern Ocean Fleet to bring up the large-caliber mortars and follow-up troops, and the city could be taken in one blow.

And while Gao Jie's force of more than two thousand men besieged the Qing Green Banner troops in the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard city, Kong Tingxun on Little Black Mountain did not dare sally forth at all. Instead he concentrated the troops and households of the four niru under Little Black Mountain that could still move onto Little Black Mountain itself, putting on the appearance of defending the mountain to the death — which in practice meant abandoning the one niru holding the Jinzhou Central-Left Guard city.

On the Shandong front, the situation was also unexpectedly excellent.

The first to rise was the Qufu militia under Shi Kefa. After they took Ziyang County without shedding a drop of blood, Huang Degong, who had already advanced to Xuzhou, also began to move. His force of more than ten thousand men marched out of Pei County and advanced along the Grand Canal toward the city of Jining Prefecture. The Qufu militia army also came out in full force, closing on Jining from the east. The two armies joined forces beneath the walls of Jining on the afternoon of the eleventh day of the eighth month.

The Qing troops defending the city were one jalan of the Plain Green Banner, with four niru under it — Shang Kexi's men. They had originally been dispersed around Jining Prefecture, Ziyang County, Yutai County, and Jiaxiang County to farm the land. When the Ming army's six northern garrisons began large-scale preparations for war, they knew something was wrong, and they too began abandoning their strongpoints in Ziyang County, Yutai County, Jiaxiang County, and elsewhere, pulling back into Jining Prefecture, where the jalan commander's yamen was located. They made every effort to stockpile grain, fodder, and supplies and to repair the city walls. After the Qufu militia moved out, they also sent their families to Liaocheng, the most critical Qing strongpoint in Shandong Province. Liaocheng was the seat of the Qing Governor of Shandong's yamen, and at the same time the site of the princely residence of Kong Youde, the Prince Who Pacifies the South, and also the seat of the yamen of the Left Wing gūsa ejen of the Plain Green Banner.

After sending away their families, the Plain Green Banner troops inside Jining had no choice but to defend the city to the death.

But under the fierce assault of the two armies of Huang Degong and Shi Kefa, totaling twenty-four or twenty-five thousand men, the Plain Green Banner garrison inside Jining — fewer than two thousand men, since four full Plain Green Banner niru would be two thousand, but some had escorted the families to Liaocheng — simply could not hold out. The Plain Green Banner was built on the foundation of the Green Standard, and its fighting strength was far inferior to the old Eight Banners. Moreover, Jining's walls had undergone "anti-cannon reconstruction": they had been lowered, and sandbags had been piled into a slope. That could withstand Hongyi cannon, but it was not conducive to resisting a human-wave assault. If the Plain Green Banner troops had been equipped with large numbers of matchlock muskets, turtledove-foot muskets, and cannon, they might have made up for the defect of walls that were easy to climb.

But the Plain Green Banner troops defending Jining happened to have very few muskets and cannon. As a result, under the onslaught of the Qufu Iron Men, who charged shouting the slogan "Confucius protects us, no blade or bullet can harm us," Jining fell after five days, and the more than one thousand Plain Green Banner troops inside the city all became loyal martyrs of the Great Qing!

A few days after the news of the great victory at Jining and more than a thousand "Tartar heads" were delivered to Huai'an, Zu Kefa arrived bearing Dorgon's "letter begging for mercy."

In the letter, Dorgon not only agreed to issue a self-condemning edict admitting his errors, but also proposed that the middle reaches of the Yellow River and the northern border of Xuzhou Prefecture, together with the Si River within Yanzhou Prefecture, the border between Yanzhou Prefecture and Qingzhou Prefecture, and the border between Haizhou and Qingzhou Prefecture, should together form the dividing line between the northern Qing and the southern Ming.

At the same time, in the letter begging for mercy, Dorgon proposed exchanging the Qing army's withdrawal from Shaanxi and Gansu for the Ming army's withdrawal from the Lüliang Mountains. In other words, Dorgon would allow Wu Sangui in Shaanxi and Gansu to go over to the Great Ming!

(End of Chapter)