Chapter 624: Imperial Ama, You'd Better Count This Out Carefully

With several signal cannons booming, the stretch of woods where only a small number of Manchu cavalry from the two Yellow Banners had been keeping watch suddenly erupted like a pot boiling over.

Countless Qing cavalry suddenly surged out of the woods and swept toward Niujiazhuang like a tide, the thunder of hooves shaking the battlefield and making the very earth tremble. In less time than it takes a stick of incense to burn, the Qing vanguard had already charged to within two or three li south of Niujiazhuang. Li Yuanyin's two cavalry battalions were holding that position, and the moment the Qing ambushers appeared, they had already spotted them.

Faced with Qing troops too numerous to count, they could not retreat, because the bloody battle inside Niujiazhuang was still raging!

Huang Degong and Li Chengdong had both fought themselves into a daze and fallen into a serious delusion, believing their troops could quickly drive the Qing out of Niujiazhuang — as long as they could seize the village, they could hold out for a while relying on the favorable terrain.

And Niujiazhuang was no small place! Before the realm fell into chaos, it had been a large village of two or three thousand people, belonging to a huge Niu clan. Now it was utterly ruined — the Niu family members who had lived here were either dead, or had fled southeast as refugees, and some had joined the Qufu army — but the village's houses and walls still stood, enough to cram in eight or nine thousand men.

As long as they could hold this place, they would certainly be able to hold out until the two divisions led by Zhu Cilang arrived, and then they would win a complete victory!

Eager for victory, Huang Degong and Li Chengdong underestimated the number of Qing troops bursting from the woods, thinking there were only a few thousand, so they sent the cavalry on watch outside Niujiazhuang to delay the Qing soldiers who had suddenly appeared.

At the same time, the Qing troops commanded by Du Lei and Shang Ke'ai were far more tenacious than Huang Degong and Li Chengdong had imagined. Although they had lost half the village, and their dead, wounded, and missing exceeded a thousand, they still stubbornly held the remaining half, fighting the Ming army house by house and room by room. All of Niujiazhuang had become a flesh-and-blood mill, the soldiers of both armies fighting with everything they had and suffering grievous losses, lives being spent as if worthless, yet the battle remained deadlocked.

"My lord, the eastern barbarians' ambushers are too many — far more than a few thousand. The brothers simply cannot hold them back!"

Li Yuanyin's voice suddenly rang out, cutting off Huang Degong and Li Chengdong, who were in the middle of discussing how to muster their last strength for a fierce assault.

Li Chengdong turned his head and saw his adopted son covered in blood, standing there supported by two armored soldiers, his young face full of anxiety.

"My lord, Commander Huang, disaster! The eastern barbarians' ambushers are too many — boundless, endless — I fear there are twenty or thirty thousand of them! The brothers cannot hold them back, truly cannot hold them back."

"What? That many?" Li Chengdong drew a sharp breath.

Li Yuanyin's voice was nearly tearful. "My lord, break out now! If we don't break out now, it will be too late!"

As if to confirm that his words were true, Li Chengdong and Huang Degong both now noticed the sound of hoofbeats like rolling thunder, and battle cries like raging waves!

This was certainly not a commotion that a few thousand men could make!

"Hushan, what do we do?" Li Chengdong was momentarily at a loss.

Huang Degong's face was ashen. "We can only withdraw! Niujiazhuang cannot be taken in a short time, and there are twenty or thirty thousand Qing troops outside. If we don't pull out, it's a dead end."

"Agreed!" Li Chengdong nodded heavily. "I'll take the cavalry and cut a bloody path out. Brother Hushan, bring the infantry and follow!"

Huang Degong sighed heavily. "However many escape, that's how many we save!"

The two then exchanged a wordless glance and went separately to reorganize their troops and prepare to break out.

Li Chengdong's two cavalry battalions had already fought a battle outside Niujiazhuang and lost over half their strength, leaving fewer than four hundred riders. Huang Degong still had some scattered cavalry — household retainers and sworn men who had followed him for years — and now handed them all over to Li Chengdong. Together the two forces scraped up five hundred riders. Not daring to break north, they all charged out from the east side of the village.

Huang Degong, meanwhile, reorganized the infantry, leaving behind three or four hundred death-sworn men in the village to tie down the Qing troops, and also left behind all the artillery — eight 3-pounder guns all firing desperately to the north to draw the Qing's attention. Then Huang Degong personally led seven or eight thousand infantry pouring out of Niujiazhuang.

But Huang Degong had not gone far when several thousand cavalry of the two Yellow Banners came rushing over like a flood!

These several thousand cavalry were the reserve force directly commanded by Aisin Gioro Baiyintu, the Bordered Yellow Banner's Gushan Ejen and overall commander of the Qing rear wing (the ambush force).

After Baiyintu led the ambushers out of the woods, he immediately split his force into three columns: one led by Tantai, the Plain Yellow Banner's Gushan Ejen, charging into Niujiazhuang to reinforce Du Lei; one commanded by Suksaha, circling north of Niujiazhuang to cut off the Ming army's retreat; and one he commanded himself, waiting in reserve south of Niujiazhuang.

When he discovered the Ming army breaking out from the east side of Niujiazhuang, Baiyintu immediately led his cavalry in pursuit. By this time most of the Ming troops were already in a state of panic, unable to hold formation, and one charge by the Qing cavalry threw them into complete chaos, scattering in all directions. Only one battalion personally commanded by Huang Degong still maintained a Maurice-style square, using pikes to screen the muskets, fighting as they moved. Not only was it not broken by the Qing charge, it even repelled repeated assaults by several Qing niru, killing and wounding over a hundred veteran Eight Banners soldiers in the process.

Seeing that this group of Ming troops was a hard nut to crack, Baiyintu was unwilling to spend the lives of the old Eight Banners' sons on them, so he let them go and turned to pursue the other scattered Ming soldiers instead — though in truth he could not pursue far, because Guishan still needed their reinforcement!

Dorgon knew he did not have much time — once the Ming army from Jinan Prefecture marched south and reached the battlefield, the Great Qing would truly be finished. So according to later statistics, the Ming army's losses at the Battle of Niujiazhuang were not especially severe. Over a thousand men withdrew from the battlefield in formed units with Huang Degong and Li Chengdong, and nearly four thousand more trickled back to their units within half a month after the battle. Although nearly half their strength was lost, the twelve Maurice-style infantry battalions all maintained their organizational structure, and as long as enough soldiers and equipment were added back in, they would quickly recover.

The Qing army's losses on the Niujiazhuang battlefield, by contrast, approached two thousand men — roughly one Qing Nine Banners soldier for every two and a half Ming soldiers.

Whether such an exchange ratio was worth it or not — Imperial Ama Dorgon had better sit down and count it out carefully on his fingers!

While the fierce fighting at Niujiazhuang was still not over, the generation's scholar-general Shi Kefa had already begun "battlefield damage control."

The reason he, Gao Hongtu, and Zuo Maodi had been able to hold out so long on the Shandong battlefield was precisely that their "battlefield damage control" skills were excellent.

They would never hot-bloodedly shed their last drop of blood!

The Shandong resistance against the Qing was a protracted war — if you died, how could you protract? Only by being defeated without dying could one fight and lose again and again, and only thus could one truly protract!

So when Shi Kefa and the others laid out their positions on Guishan, they had already made preparations to retreat. They sent over a thousand men, divided into several squads, carrying large numbers of banners, drums, and horns, to lie in ambush on Mati Mountain and Yunmeng Mountain about twenty li north of Guishan. At the same time, they held back a reserve force to serve as rearguard, and on Guishan they used great shields, carts, and grain sacks to build a small wagon fort.

But the most crucial thing was that Shi Kefa, Gao Hongtu, and the others timed the start of their flight extremely well, with no wishful thinking. The moment they saw the situation at Niujiazhuang take a drastic turn, they immediately abandoned their baggage and carts, split into several columns, and charged down Guishan, retreating north toward Yunmeng Mountain and Mati Mountain.

At this moment, Dorgon's great army was still spread across a front more than ten li wide. Its center was still locked in bitter fighting with the Ming troops on Guishan. The left wing had just completed its outflanking maneuver and was deploying on the right side of the Ming wagon fort. The Qing right wing, including the four or five thousand men positioned at Lizhuang, was all busy pursuing the defeated troops of Huang Degong and Li Chengdong.

And Dorgon's own main body had just set out from Baijia Village and was advancing forward.

But Dorgon was still unwilling to quit while he was ahead. In today's battle so far, he had not won enough, and his own losses had been considerable. If he did not seize this opportunity to pursue and kill, what capital would he have left to negotiate peace with the Zhu Emperor?

A burst of war drums resounded across the battlefield, and the Qing center and left wing — over forty thousand riders — began their pursuit in succession! Cavalry and mounted infantry in four-colored armor swept over the white fields like a tide, over a hundred thousand hooves hammering the earth like raindrops, until for a moment it seemed heaven and earth themselves were trembling.

The might of tens of thousands of charging cavalry reached its absolute peak at this moment, and the rearguard left behind by Shi Kefa was quickly swallowed up by the torrent of Qing cavalry.

After a fierce but brief rearguard action, the Guishan battlefield quickly became a one-sided rout.

But one-sided also meant that the main force of the Ming army was retreating rapidly.

(End of Chapter)