Chapter 822: Princess Jianning

The thirteen-year-old Ajige, eldest princess of the Great Qing with the title of Gulun Princess Jianning, though raised within the Qing palace, had inherited no small measure of athletic talent from her father Hong Taiji and her birth mother of the Mongol Qilei tribe. She was passionately fond of riding and could even shoot from horseback, and she had developed extremely well, tall and slender. Now dressed in a set of brightly colored Mongol women's clothing and riding a tall, handsome Tianzhu lop-eared horse, she moved amid the bridal escort and was indeed exceptionally striking.

Whether it was because she was about to marry the Emperor or because she had been given a fine horse the likes of which had never been seen even in the Great Qing court (it had been sent to her by Zhu Cilang when she crossed the Huai River), Princess Jianning appeared thoroughly cheerful the whole way, chatting and laughing with her escort, her paternal cousin Duke of the State Who Supports the Realm, Banburshan.

The thirty-six-year-old Aisin Gioro Banburshan was the son of Tabai, a son of Nurhaci born of a concubine. After his father's death he had inherited only the rank of General Who Upholds the State, third class, and had later climbed one rank every few years on military merit, reaching the position of Duke of the State Who Supports the Realm only two years earlier. At the time of Dorgon's death, he had been Sukesaha's deputy, serving in the vanguard camp in Beijing, and therefore had not taken part in the great battle of Jieshi Mountain.

Later, when the Plain White Banner troops within the passes were transferred away beyond the passes by Dodo, he and Sukesaha, because of Bumbutai's urging, had both remained in Beijing to continue training the new army, and had together become Inner Ministers of the Imperial Bodyguard (the Qing had six Inner Ministers in all), so this time he had been assigned the duty of escorting the bride.

He was not nearly as cheerful as his young cousin Ajige. At the start of the journey it had been fine enough — a thirty-six-year-old uncle and a beautiful thirteen-year-old young cousin chatting and laughing all the way, what was there to be unhappy about? Besides, Ajige had a lively disposition, with a touch of endearing naivety, and was quite likable.

But once Banburshan entered the territory of Xuzhou, that is, Ming territory, his mood immediately soured.

For the first thing he saw was the extremely solidly built Yellow River embankment — compared with the embankment in Guide Prefecture, the one in Xuzhou was like heaven and earth!

The former was impregnable as a wall of metal, while the latter was broken and crumbling.

Next Banburshan saw the completely renewed fortress of Xuzhou. This city, which only a few years earlier had been occupied by Heluohui's troops, now possessed the solidity of a metal bulwark! A large bastion fort built of brick, stone, and packed earth, its structure was highly complex, with outer walls and moat ditches all winding and twisting. Banburshan, who had never studied European geometry, grew dizzy just looking at it; had he been ordered to lead troops against it, he feared he would lose his way in the middle of the fighting.

But what most alarmed Banburshan was the gift Zhu Cilang had ordered delivered to Princess Ajige when they crossed the Huai into Jiangbei Province — a gelded Tianzhu lop-eared horse!

This horse's shoulder height was actually five chi three cun! Moreover, its chest was broad, its barrel round, its leg muscles well developed, and its saddle-back strong and powerful. Without any skill in judging horses, one could see at a glance that this was a rare fine steed!

And such rare fine horses were appearing before Banburshan's eyes in group after group!

Besides the Tianzhu lop-eared horse given to Ajige, there was also a company of cuirassier guards from the Xiaoling Guard who had come to serve as the honor escort, and every man among them rode a lop-eared horse with a shoulder height of five chi three cun.

The so-called fine Mongol steed beneath Banburshan himself, compared with theirs, was practically a donkey!

And that was not all — the Ming cavalry not only had horses, but also mules bred from donkeys and horses, with a configuration of one horse and one mule per man. In ordinary times they rode the mules on the march, to save the horses' strength.

"Inner Minister, ahead is the Chu River. Once across it, we are on the grounds of Laoshan Palace."

The speaker was Sun Fugui, division commander of the Xiaoling Guard New Army. The youth who had once followed Zhu Cilang in Beijing had now grown into a division commander of the Ming army, his official rank risen to Guard Commander, and he had also gained the noble title of Earl of Kenan Pingbei.

Emperor Zhu had not attached much importance to Princess Jianning. Last time, when Dong'e had been married off, he had gone in person to receive her. This time, he had merely dispatched Sun Fugui and Vice Minister of the Ministry of Rites Hou Fangyu to Huai'an to welcome her.

Moreover, in order to make a show of strength to the northern Qing, he had let Sun Fugui bring along a battalion of cuirassier lancers — although Prince Condé did not advocate the Southern Ming investing in expensive traditional cavalry, Emperor Zhu had already spent a great deal of money establishing stud farms for breeding lop-eared horses and Arabian horses, and could not simply abandon them.

So Emperor Zhu had ordered the establishment of a shock cavalry force. Wall-style charges were out of the question — how could that be trained so easily? Instead, they charged in massed formation by platoon or company. And the numbers were not large: only one battalion of cuirassier lancers had been assigned to each of the Xiaoling Guard New Army division and the Army Guards division, no more than 1,000 in total. This time he had let Sun Fugui take 500 riders to Huai'an to put on a display. Princess Jianning was delighted at the sight (lop-eared horses were adorable), but Banburshan had the feeling that a great calamity was bearing down on him — so much so that he did not even hear Sun Fugui's call.

Seeing that Banburshan had drifted off, Hou Fangyu, riding to his left, raised his voice as well: "Escort Envoy, Laoshan Palace is here!"

"Here?" Banburshan started, and looked up ahead. About two li ahead was the river embankment, and he could also make out a wooden palisade standing on the opposite bank.

"Is that Laoshan Palace on the far bank?" Banburshan craned his neck and peered. "I don't see it!"

"Of course you can't see it. The palace buildings of Laoshan are still more than twenty li from here!" Hou Fangyu said with a smile. "We are now outside the Laoshan horse farm. Once across the Chu River, we are on the farm."

"A horse farm — is it the farm where the lop-eared horses are raised?" Princess Ajige's voice rang out like silver bells.

"It is," Hou Fangyu answered. "This farm is divided into three parts: one raises lop-eared horses, one raises Arabian horses, and one raises Percheron draft horses brought in from France."

"Why divide it into three parts?" Ajige asked. "Wouldn't it be fine to raise them together?"

"Princess," Banburshan said, "raising them together makes it easy for the breeds to mix. Fine horses depend on bloodlines. It is a great field of learning, and this slave does not understand much of it either."

Hou Fangyu said: "That is quite true. Horse-raising is indeed a great field of learning! We did not know much about it in the past either, and even after introducing the lop-eared horses we did not raise them very well. Fortunately, when the mission to Europe returned the year before last, they brought back some horse-raising officials from the Ottoman Empire, all of them experts, and all of them were retained. They are the ones now managing the Laoshan horse farm."

In fact, before the Song dynasty, China's native horse-raising techniques had not been poor. With Persian breeds introduced, fine horses could still be raised.

But later, for reasons of Confucian ethics and morality, close inbreeding was gradually prohibited, and breeding as such effectively ceased. Without breeding, horse-raising became a matter of "probability" — the proportion of fine horses in a herd was fixed at a certain small amount; the more horses there were, the more fine horses there naturally were. But to equip tens of thousands of cavalrymen with fine horses, without a base of several million horses, one could not even dream of it.

Therefore, without control of the great grasslands, one could not raise a powerful cavalry.

By this time the bridal escort had entered the grounds of the Laoshan horse farm, moving along a passageway marked off by two wooden palisades. Through the palisades one could see vast expanses of pasture and the horses turned out upon them — on one side all lop-eared horses, on the other all Arabian horses, all of them immature foals, watched over by dedicated keepers.

These young horses were all intensely curious. Seeing people passing by, they all crowded up to the palisade to watch the excitement. Ajige, finding them adorable, laughed merrily and spurred her horse forward, wanting to play with the foals.

"Your Highness," Sun Fugui said hastily at the sight, "it is getting late, and we must press on. Besides, from now on you will be living at Laoshan Palace, and you may come to the horse farm to amuse yourself often."

"Living at Laoshan Palace?" Ajige seemed somewhat displeased. "Why not inside the city of Nanjing? I have heard that Nanjing is fun."

Hou Fangyu smilingly took up the topic: "Your Highness, however bustling Nanjing may be, it is a city of commoners. You are an imperial consort — how exalted! Naturally you must reside within the deep palace. The palaces of Nanjing are two or three hundred years old; no matter how they are repaired and renovated, they remain what they are. How could they compare with the newly built Laoshan Palace? Moreover, Laoshan Palace is not merely a single set of palace buildings — it has palaces, hot springs, a market town, a hunting ground, a horse farm, and a fortress. One may say it has everything, and forms a world of its own."

(End of Chapter)