Chapter 611: Leading Zhu Cilang by the Nose and Fighting!

In the first ten days of the tenth month of the fourth year of Shunzhi of the Great Qing, winter had barely begun when the Central Plains welcomed the year's first snow. The snowfall was exceptionally heavy, fully displaying to the people of this chaotic age the power of the Little Ice Age. With just this first snow, heaven and earth were already a vast expanse of white. A cold wind swept through, and goose-feather-sized snowflakes swirled and danced in every direction. The temperature plummeted far below freezing, and several rivers north of the Huai had already formed a thin layer of floating ice.

The households living on the Central Plains had long grown accustomed to this life of ice and snow the moment winter arrived, and after the autumn harvest they began preparing for the winter.

On the Central Plains territory firmly controlled by the Great Qing, the common folk who were not qualified to shave their heads and wear the money-rat-tail queue, though they lived beneath the iron hooves of the so-called Tartars, at least did not need to worry about dying of hunger and cold in the long, bitter winter.

Although the weather was now cold and dry, and grain yields per mu on the Central Plains were generally low, a grant of ten mu per mouth was still enough for a slightly diligent small farmer to wrest enough food from the barren soil to fill his belly.

And with a land rent of four sheng per mu, a household levy of one bolt of cloth (cotton or hemp) per family, and corvée labor of twenty days per adult male, how much easier it was compared to the days when the peasants toiled for landlords.

It had to be said, life without landlords and rich old misers was truly good.

So when the first snow of the fourth year of Shunzhi arrived, across the Central Plains territory under Qing rule, in those small but quite sturdy fortress-village settlements scattered everywhere, signs of life were gathering everywhere.

Of course, for these people who had survived wave after wave of chaos by luck and had not been forced to flee far from home, though having enough to eat and wear was no longer a problem, danger had not gone far away.

The flames of war still spread across the Central Plains. The originally dying Great Ming, after moving south, had unexpectedly revived and shown signs of resurgence, and now it had begun its northern expedition to the Central Plains, seeking to recover lost territory.

And Zhang Xianzhong, the bandit who had rampaged and plundered in all directions for years and killed countless people, had seemingly taken some wrong medicine: instead of staying put in Guanzhong as his Great Shun Western King, he had suddenly charged into the Central Plains and even seized Luoyang to declare himself emperor.

The small farmers of the Central Plains, who had thought the chaos might finally be coming to an end, could do nothing this winter except keep living, cherish each present day, and raise the walls of their fortress villages as high as possible, while preparing more arrowheads and wooden bows to defend their homes.

But those lords great and small who were qualified to keep a money-rat-tail queue did not have such good fortune, to be able to guard their own fortresses and ramparts and strive to keep this endless chaos outside their gates.

Because they had queues, every one of them was a lord of the Great Qing, and therefore could not become obedient subjects of the Great Ming—they had to fight to defend the Great Qing.

So starting from autumn, the old, weak, women, and children of the Great Qing's Plain Green Banner, carrying what little household wealth they had, began concentrating toward the castles where their respective niru commanders were stationed. Some niru units closer to the front lines even relocated further back to stronger fortresses.

As for the bannermen of the Great Qing's Plain Green Banner, apart from a small portion left to garrison the fortresses of the various niru and gūsa commanders, and another portion transferred to critical places like Shanxi and Northern Zhili, the remaining main force had gradually concentrated around the city of Zhengzhou, where the Qing Imperial Ama had taken up residence.

Concentrated at Zhengzhou were not only the Plain Green Banner's hundred-odd niru, numbering over fifty thousand, but also crack troops of the old Eight Banners that had marched from around Beijing—also more than a hundred niru. Not counting the booi bondservants accompanying them, the regular fighting men alone numbered no less than thirty or forty thousand.

Nearly ninety thousand elite troops of the Nine Banners had finally assembled around the Qing Imperial Ama Dorgon in this frozen, snow-swept winter!

"Long live the Imperial Ama, long live, long live for ten thousand years!"

Outside Zhengzhou, on the banks of the Yellow River where ice was already beginning to form, cavalry and infantry formed into square arrays by niru units covered a vast expanse, raising a thunderous cheer in unison. Standing atop the Yellow River embankment, the Qing Imperial Ama Dorgon finally revealed a satisfied smile.

While Zhu Cilang was busy directing his armies to seize cities and territory in Shandong and Liaodong, and making a show of force in western Liaoning, Dorgon had not been idle.

These days, besides slowly assembling his feudal army, he had been drilling the troops in new-style tactics.

When Zhu Cilang launched his second northern expedition, Dorgon's side was in the midst of a military reform—this generation of Tartars was truly the most capable of learning and progressing! From Hong Taiji onward, down to Dorgon, they had evolved from a fledgling state barely stronger than a tribal confederation into a half-bureaucratic, half-feudal great empire with fairly rigorous institutions.

So when they encountered the "modernized Ming army" that had absorbed the latest achievements of Western military science, they naturally began making targeted improvements.

There were two directions of improvement: first, strengthening firepower; second, strengthening mobility.

The Qing army of before, though reputed to be "unrivaled in bow and horse," was in reality only mounted infantry, and its mobility was not particularly strong. Moreover, although the Qing army valued artillery and had even hauled Hongyi cannons onto the field of battle, its field firepower was still on the weak side for the current era.

It was only because their opponents were even weaker that they achieved the effect of invincible heavenly troops.

And this "invincible heavenly troops" was far from the strongest state the "Nine Banner crack troops" could reach!

The strongest state of the "Nine Banner crack troops," in Dorgon's conception, was a combination of cavalry, mounted infantry, and lightened field artillery.

And after the ninety thousand troops of the Great Qing's Nine Banners had slowly gathered at Zhengzhou, Dorgon did not rush to set out on campaign, but unhurriedly reviewed and drilled this army outside Zhengzhou.

By the first ten days of the tenth month, Dorgon had even organized a mobility exercise involving one hundred thousand men (including booi bondservants), running two circuits around Zhengzhou and achieving a "high speed" of seventy-five li per day—for an army of one hundred thousand, hauling forty-eight 3-pounder bronze cannons and forty-eight one-jin "Great General" cannons, along with a large baggage train, covering seventy-five li a day was really not slow.

And after several days of marching, the great army returning to its encampment outside Zhengzhou was still well-fed and full of spirit, looking ready to enter battle at any moment.

"Congratulations, Imperial Ama, felicitations, Imperial Ama! With such crack troops, Imperial Ama will surely win victory at the first battle and smash the Southern Ming!"

The soldiers' cheers had not yet fully died down when Nikan, the Prince of Jingjin, who stood beside Dorgon, raised his thumb and began praising him.

"Imperial Ama is truly divine in the use of troops, and even more divine in training them! In just a few days, he has produced such an invincible crack force!"

Bolo, the Prince of Duanzhong—third son of Abatai, who had died of illness the previous year—joined Nikan in the flattery, his honest-looking face filled with an expression of boundless admiration.

"With Imperial Ama here, our Great Qing will sooner or later unify all under heaven! The crack troops Imperial Ama has trained are simply heavenly soldiers!"

Daishan's heir Mandahai was not to be outdone, and also began flattering the Imperial Ama along with the others—oh, not flattery, but words from the bottom of their hearts.

Listening to the heartfelt words of Nikan, Bolo, and Mandahai, Dorgon's mood greatly improved. He turned to the three of them and said: "The little emperor of the Zhu family just has a thicker purse. When it comes to directing troops in battle, he is far behind. If his Hard-Struggle New Army had stayed south of the Huai, We truly would have had no way to deal with them. But he just had to court death and personally lead his army north. War in the north relies on cavalry. In the past, we mounted to charge the enemy lines and dismounted to fight hand-to-hand, and with the hard skills of mounted and foot archery, we swept all directions. Now we've added horse-drawn artillery—we can handle that just as well!"

"Imperial Ama," said Nikan, who had already played with the "horse-drawn artillery" and was eager to try, "give this first battle to your subject! Give me ten thousand crack troops and twelve small Hongyi cannons, and I guarantee I can lift the siege of Liaocheng."

"Hahaha," Dorgon laughed heartily. "Our four-legged cavalry needs to go lift the siege of Liaocheng? That would be letting the little Zhu emperor lead us by the nose. We won't do that. We will lead Zhu Cilang by the nose and fight!"

(End of Chapter)