Chapter 705: The Great Ming, the Little Student

Learning the Senior Brother's Skills to Handle the Senior Brother. "We know this cannot be treated lightly, but what is there to be done?"

Dorgon sighed, and his anger at Oboi faded.

Oboi had lost a battle, so of course he deserved punishment, even death! But the problem was, if they killed him, who else could serve as the Great Qing's foremost Cossack? To be honest, if Oboi had easily thrashed the Cossacks, Dorgon might well have found some charge to have him executed — this Oboi harbored sinister intentions, sending matchlock muskets into the palace... that was inciting the little Emperor to rebellion!

Fortunately, the little Emperor now favored letters over arms and had no taste for matchlocks, so he had Sonin hand the weapons over to the banner commanders' offices of the two imperial banners. Dorgon was reassured about the little Emperor, but he bore a grudge against Oboi. If he had not been unable to find a better candidate, would Dorgon have let him live?

"Fourteenth Brother," Dodo said, "isn't that exactly why I came? I've brought that bastard Oboi's memorial of self-reproach. In it he sums up the reasons for his defeat and even proposes a solution."

"Is that so? What solution does he have?"

Dorgon thought to himself: if Oboi's solution is no good, then kill him!

Dodo said, "Oboi's solution is to learn the senior brother's skills to handle the senior brother!"

"'Senior brother'? What do you mean?" Dorgon did not understand. "What next, junior brother?"

"It means learning from the Cossacks... learn their strong points, then turn around and use them against the Cossacks."

Oboi was, after all, one of the finest of the second generation of Eight Banners men, and his thinking was completely different from that of the muddle-headed descendants who would come two hundred years later. Moreover, he truly understood war — he had risen to high office by fighting, unlike those later men who got ahead by relying on their ancestors or on flattery.

So after the Cossacks gave him a thorough beating, Oboi knew exactly where the gap lay!

"Tell me, how does he propose to learn?" Dorgon asked.

"He wants to learn their cavalry tactics," Dodo said. "The Cossacks don't shoot from horseback, and they don't fire guns while mounted. They charge with couched lances, and once they close in, they slash with sabers."

Earlier, Oboi had been undone by the Western European cavalry's pistol-and-caracole tactics! That style is not even very popular in Europe nowadays. The couched-lance formation charge is the most fashionable cavalry method in Europe — the Poles and the Swedes both fight that way.

The man who taught Oboi musket caracole tactics, Bruce, was a Dutch army officer. The Dutch army had won its empire with infantry and artillery; its cavalry was nothing special and basically just followed European trends.

"What about the horses?" Dorgon asked. "Without good horses, how can they charge?"

China's horse breeds had been in steady decline since the Song dynasty, and by the Ming and Qing, the market was essentially sustained by three breeds raised in semi-natural, semi-herded conditions: the Hequ, the Ili, and the Mongol. The Mongol horses currently equipping the Qing army in large numbers had poor explosive power, and their short-range sprinting ability was far inferior to the Cossacks' Don horses. A mounted charge depends on borrowing the horse's strength; if the horse runs slowly, the impact is weak.

"We can have the Khoshut tribe send Ili horses as tribute!" Dodo said. "Ili horses excel at short sprints... And besides that, we can reduce weight!"

"Reduce weight?" Dorgon frowned. "No armor?"

Dodo said, "Oboi's idea is to wear no armor and carry no bow and arrows — just one long matchlock musket, one saber, and one cavalry lance. That's enough."

This was a fairly radical reform, but absolutely necessary!

The Qing army had no light plate armor here; they could only wear heavy cotton armor or mail. If a man wore two or three layers of armor, that was several dozen catties of weight. Add a bow and two quivers of arrows, and sixty or seventy catties could be piled on!

The horses were already weak, and if the rider added another sixty catties, a one-hundred-fifty-catty man became two hundred and ten catties — how could he still charge?

"And don't pick big men either," Dodo added. "A man of one hundred twenty or thirty catties is enough... Besides mounted charges and saber work, they must also learn to use the matchlock musket expertly — charge on horseback, dismount and fire!"

"I see. Let me think it over," Dorgon said after a moment. "How about we try it first! Train two thousand — no, one thousand men to start! The men can be drawn from..."

"The soldiers can be recruited from the Barga and Daur peoples!" Dodo said. "The officers can be selected from the nine banners outside the Pass. The only problem is the horses... we need at least three thousand Ili horses: one thousand warhorses, two hundred stallions, and one thousand eight hundred mares."

"Then spend the money!" Dorgon drew a breath. "Just give them ten thousand bolts of cloth! Once we give them cloth, they'll surely be willing to hand over their best horses!"

Dodo added, "Oboi also hopes to arm the Solon tribes along the Heilong River and the Jingqili River with matchlock muskets."

The so-called "Solon" is a collective term for the Daur, Evenki, Oroqen, and Barga peoples along the Heilong River and in the Outer Northeast. The Qing rulers' policy toward these tribes was to use them while guarding against them. On one hand, they recruited warriors from among the Solon to fill the Eight Banners and serve as cannon fodder; on the other, they controlled the flow of weapons and equipment into these frontier tribes.

So these tribes had nothing decent in their hands, and when they met Cossacks equipped with muskets and cannon, they could only wait to die!

Historically, when the Cossacks came killing, the Qing court's solution was to move these tribes inland. In effect, they abandoned the vast lands of the Outer Northeast and part of the Solon people who were unwilling to migrate.

That approach was actually the same path as the Ming dynasty's frontier retrenchment!

It was just that the Qing had better luck than the Ming. The Russians' home base was in Europe, too far from the Far East, so it was not until the early twentieth century that they had the spare strength to occupy the Northeast completely — and then they provoked Britain and Japan, triggering the Russo-Japanese War...

But now Dorgon had no more room to retrench!

Zhu Cilang was setting up cannons right behind him! Who knew how long the Great Qing could hold its territory in the Central Plains? If they could not hold their old homeland beyond the Pass, the whole people might well face annihilation.

Dorgon thought for a moment. "Then incorporate the Solon into ten banners, and give each banner an additional Solon banner unit beyond the Pass."

Just as Dorgon and Dodo were talking, a eunuch from the Chonghua Palace suddenly came to report that Fan Wencheng's son, Fan Chengmo, sought an audience.

"Let him come in," Dorgon said to Dodo. "Most likely there's progress on the shipbuilding."

Fan Wencheng had been in Joseon recently as an imperial commissioner, responsible for building warships for the Heilong River fleet, while also organizing a craftsmen's company under the Bordered Green Banner — which again required Joseon to provide men and money. What a heavy burden!

The Joseon people nowadays had it far harder than in history! All the Qing investment in developing the Northeast over the past few years had been squeezed out of Joseon, which had to supply the Mukden General's office with large quantities of grain, plow oxen, cloth, and padded clothing every year. Now Fan Wencheng had gone back demanding ships, matchlock muskets, and craftsmen... which had King Yi Jong of Joseon weeping daily and no longer thinking about building palaces. And that was not even the worst of it. The pro-Ming faction in Joseon, seeing signs of a Ming revival, had all grown excited, running about stirring up trouble and urging Yi Jong to rebel against the Great Qing. But how could Yi Jong dare oppose the Ama? He could only suppress the pro-Ming faction with all his might, even going so far as to poison his own son and exile his grandson in a fit of madness.

Yet the new Crown Prince Yi Jong had installed, Prince Bongrim Yi Ho, was himself a pro-Ming man. Historically, it was from his reign that the Joseon kingdom began using the sexagenary cycle and the king's regnal years for dating — the "two hundred and some years of Chongzhen" business appears only in private Joseon writings; the king himself would never have dared!

And the attitude of Yi Ho and the pro-Ming faction in the country naturally could not escape the eyes and ears of Fan Wencheng, the imperial commissioner of the suzerain state. But Fan Chengmo had not come to the palace today to report on their behalf — he had come to bring Dorgon good news!

More Western barbarians had come to help the Great Qing train troops and manage foreign affairs... This time it was an envoy from the Kingdom of Spain! He had also presented the Great Qing with one hundred new-style flintlock muskets "made in the Prefecture of Barcelona, Kingdom of Spain," along with a suit of gold armor "made in the Milan Dependency, Kingdom of Spain" for the Great Qing's Prince Regent and Retired Emperor.

In short, all of it was fine stuff!

In addition, there was now progress on the shipbuilding. Not that they had ordered a sample ship from the Ming coastal shipyards — rather, they had found a nearly rotten turtle ship in a Joseon naval shipyard, something called a "turtle ship," said to be impervious to bullets and cannon and immensely powerful, having once dealt a heavy blow to the Japanese pirate fleet during the Wanli years.