Chapter 842: The Enemy Is Weak, Easily Crushed — Come Quickly

What Shunzhi meant was that the Great Mongol Nation had no way to retreat — not the Great Qing. Those are two different things!

If he had said the Great Qing had no way to retreat, those deliberative princes and ministers who favored holding would certainly have had something to say.

How could the Great Qing have no way to retreat? Wasn't Beijing itself a line of retreat? And now it was as solid as a wall of iron!

Moreover, inside Beijing there was still the Imperial City, which had recently been undergoing renovation as well, to be turned into a bastion fort. Inside the Imperial City there was also the Coal Hill fortress. The Forbidden City itself had no renovation plan, because once the Ming army had fought through both the Beijing bastion and the Imperial City fortress, the Great Qing warriors defending them would already have suffered such heavy losses that they would be insufficient to hold the Forbidden City any longer. So Suksaha, the Nine Gates Commandant in charge of Beijing's defense, had chosen Coal Hill — located inside the Imperial City, north of the Forbidden City — as the final refuge for the Great Qing's Shunzhi Emperor.

Coal Hill was tall, some thirteen or fourteen zhang, and its area was not large, so it did not require too many defenders. It also lay right next to the North Sea, making it convenient to draw water, so it could hold out for a long time.

So Suksaha had memorialized the Shunzhi Emperor for approval to begin construction of the Coal Hill fortress. This fortress was a multi-tiered fortification. Its lowest tier lay between Coal Hill and the North Sea, where a wall more than two hundred zhang long and over three zhang high was built. The wall's northeast and southeast corners rested exactly on Coal Hill; its west side leaned against the North Sea; its south side faced the Forbidden City; and its north side faced the northern wall of the Imperial City. The walls on three sides were all very thick, a full four zhang or more across, of rammed earth faced with brick, and the outward side was sloped. The west side of the wall was the second tier of the Coal Hill fortress, built against the slope of Coal Hill itself. Above the second tier was the third, above the third the fourth, above the fourth the fifth — five tiers of walls in all. Truly as solid as a wall of iron!

And Suksaha also planned to haul several Hongyi cannons up to the fifth tier of the Coal Hill fortress, to fire down from the heights!

What a fine line of retreat this was!

Enough to hold out until the reinforcements of the Imperial Uncle Dodo arrived. And if they truly could not be waited for, then —

But the Great Mongol Nation was different!

The Great Mongol Nation had no line of retreat. The enterprise begun by Genghis Khan had reached its most perilous hour!

Shunzhi glanced at his Interior Minister and commander of the Kheshig camp, Namusengge — he bore the surname Borjigin, a true descendant of the Golden Clan!

"The Great Khan speaks truly!" Namusengge of course knew what to say. "Our Great Mongol Nation has already lost Beijing once — we cannot lose it a second time! And the tens of thousands of heroes of the steppe who followed the Great Khan south are all waiting to avenge their ancestors! Now the chance has come — those southern barbarian rebels have delivered themselves to our door. What skill do they have? Nothing but mule-soldiers firing from ambush! Can that compare with the mounted archery of us Mongols? When the heroes of our steppe meet such treacherous ambush-firing villains, however many we meet, that many we kill!"

Those words were beautifully spoken! And they were satisfying to hear as well!

The problem was that the Mongols the Shunzhi Emperor had brought with him apparently could not beat the "black-gun soldiers" of the Great Ming's Shuofang Army on the Hetao grasslands, nor could they beat the Cossacks' "black-gun soldiers" on the steppe.

Moreover, neither the Shuofang Army nor the Cossacks were equipped with flintlocks — they had knocked the Mongol iron cavalry flat with matchlocks alone.

The Shunzhi Emperor nodded with satisfaction. "Well said! We Mongols cannot let the southern barbarians drive us out of Beijing a second time — no, out of Dadu, the Great Capital!

And as for the southern barbarians' mule-soldiers and their tricks, the mounted archery of our steppe heroes can completely overcome them. Besides, how many mule-soldiers can they have? Surely no more than ten thousand? We have brought fifty thousand Mongol iron cavalry into the Central Plains — five against one, we can trample them flat!"

"Great Khan," Sonin of course also knew the Mongols were unreliable, "we cannot rely solely on the heroes of the steppe. Our own elite troops must take the field too!"

He had already begun offering Shunzhi advice.

Right now the Brave Prince, the First Baturu of Manchuria, the First Baturu of the Pacific, and several other princes who could fight were all absent, so His Excellency Suo had no choice but to make do himself.

"Your Majesty," he said after a moment's thought, "the southern army has clearly set itself to strike our relief force at Dezhou — we must not deliver ourselves to them! This slave's view is that we should give them a taste of their own medicine. Haven't their mule-soldiers come to Hejian Prefecture? Let us use the Mongol iron cavalry to pin down those mule-soldiers of the southern army, and then use them as bait to lure Shi Kefa's main force north. Once Shi Kefa moves north, we send the elite of the Vanguard Camp, the Firearms Camp, the Elite Cavalry Camp, and the Kheshig Camp around behind Shi Kefa to cut off his retreat. Just as the late emperor did against Hong Chengchou! Once Shi Kefa's retreat is cut, starvation alone will finish him!"

It had to be said — Sonin's ranking among the Baturu might not be much to look at, but he did have ability. In no time he had prepared for the Shunzhi Great Khan a campaign plan that looked quite reliable.

The question now was whether those Mongol warriors Shunzhi had brought along would be willing to do it.

"Great Khan, this slave has another proposal." The Great Qing's good slave Sun Zhixie spoke up. "The Great Khan's warriors need a bit of incentive! Fine as Jiangnan is, the warriors may not be willing to wait. Better to allow them to take a little forage in the southern part of Northern Zhili."

Shunzhi looked displeased at once. "The southern part of Northern Zhili is the Great Qing's own territory — and its people are loyal at heart! Let the Mongols plunder it?"

"It is only a little forage!" Sun Zhixie said with a smile. "How can that be called plunder? When the Great Khan's warriors take a little forage, how can that count as plunder?"

Not plunder? Shunzhi looked at the deliberative princes and ministers before him.

"Not plunder. The Great Khan's affairs — how can they be called plunder?"

"Right, right, that is not called plunder!"

"It is an honor for the Han commoners!"

"Exactly — they won't be able to offer it fast enough!"

"If not for the Great Khan's warriors protecting them, they would be enslaved by the southern barbarians!"

The cold wind gradually rose again, whipping up snow-dust across the whole plain, so that in the distance everything looked a hazy blur. The sky too slowly darkened; layers of black clouds piled up from the horizon, the color of lead, deeply oppressive.

Xia Wanchun reined in beside Vice Regional Commander Li Yuanyin and sniffed. "The weather in Northern Zhili is truly cold — ice and snow everywhere, every river and stream frozen solid. A bitter, frigid land indeed!"

Li Yuanyin was a native of Nanyang Prefecture in Henan. Taken captive by Li Chengdong as a boy, he had later been adopted as a foster son and had followed Li Chengdong campaigning north and south. He had been to any number of bitter, barren places — but none of them had been Northern Zhili.

Hearing the comment from Xia Wanchun, who came from the rich and warm Jiangnan water country, Li Yuanyin laughed. "This is Northern Zhili — in the old days it was at the foot of the Son of Heaven's throne, and counted as prosperous. Though it cannot match Southern Zhili, it is still one of the finest places under heaven."

"What? This counts as one of the finest?" Xia Wanchun's face was full of scorn. "So cold, hardly any rivers to be seen, barely a village anywhere — the bitter lands beyond the passes can't be much worse than this, surely?"

"Hahaha, you Jiangnan lads simply don't know what bitter cold is!" Li Yuanyin laughed heartily. "Now that you've joined the army, you'll go to many bitter, cold places in the future. Then you'll know how good it is to have been born in Jiangnan."

Jiangnan was good, of course! Jiangnan, together with the coastal regions of Fujian and Guangdong, was a fine place that enjoyed the dividends of the Age of Discovery!

A considerable portion of the silver produced in the Americas flowed into Jiangnan and the coastal regions of Fujian and Guangdong. Moreover, the tax-evasion system of the Ming dynasty's scholar class had, to a certain extent, promoted the great development of internal trade — the tax posts everywhere might as well not have existed! The cost of moving goods naturally fell! So Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong, feeding on the dividends of the Age of Discovery, conveniently absorbed the silver of the interior as well.

As for the reason, it was plain to see: the cost advantage and quality advantage brought by large-scale production. Because the overseas market provided the base, and because there was a relatively abundant supply of agricultural products, the handicraft industry of Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong completely outclassed the rest of China. And large-scale production plus fairly intense competition also made the quality of Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong handicraft goods surpass that of other regions.

Thus handicraft goods that were high in quality, low in price, and abundant in quantity were absorbing the silver of the entire world on behalf of Jiangnan, Fujian, and Guangdong, completing the accumulation of capital.

And the completion of capital accumulation in the southeast of the Great Ming, along with the series of policies promoting capitalist development that Zhu Cilang had adopted, was of course disadvantageous to the economic development and balance of other parts of China.

So it was hardly surprising that Xia Wanchun, born in Jiangnan, found the Great Ming's former first city of virtue desolate and bleak.

Crack! Crack! Crack!

Just as Li Yuanyin and Xia Wanchun were talking, a burst of gunfire suddenly rang out in the distance!