Chapter 860: What? The Great Qing Is Gone! — Part 2

His despair was not without reason, for it was caused by the special terrain of Tianjin Guard. The city of Tianjin Guard leaned against the Wei River to the north and faced the Grand Canal to the west, and west of the canal there was also a triangular lake. Thus both the north and the west were easy to blockade. Originally there had also been a northern city of Tianjin Guard standing opposite the main city of Tianjin Guard, but when the Qing built the fortress of Tianjin Guard, they felt there was no way to bring the northern city into the main city's defensive system, so they had the northern city leveled, leaving only the main city to be rebuilt as a bastion fort.

In this way the Tianjin bastion became easy to defend, but at the same time it also became easy to surround.

Before the Grand Canal, the Wei River, and the triangular lake thawed, breaking out had still been relatively easy, but the Shunzhi Emperor had already been frightened out of his wits and no longer dared to leave the city of Tianjin Guard. So he could only sit and wait while the Ming army, on the west bank of the canal, on the north bank of the Wei River, and at the exit of the narrow passage between the triangular lake and the canal, built a string of forts and watchtowers, and also erected several wooden palisades, which could be considered as having completely blocked off the Shunzhi Emperor's road to survival to the north and west.

And on the southeastern two sides of the city of Tianjin Guard, the Ming army dug a long siege trench around the city and also built forts to blockade the Wei River and the Grand Canal. Whether by land or by water, everything was locked up tight.

And Shunzhi, besieged within the fortress of Tianjin Guard, longed all the more for that Imperial Ama who could shelter him from wind and rain!

But the Imperial Ama was dead and could not come back to life — what was the Shunzhi Emperor to do!

"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, how have you considered it?"

Shunzhi, whose head was full of Dorgon's voice and smiling face, suddenly heard the noisy voice of a detestable turncoat subject, and only then realized that he had been so absorbed in thinking of Ama that his mind had wandered.

At this moment he was receiving Zu Kefa, the envoy of Princess Jianning.

As soon as Shunzhi raised his head, he saw that hateful smiling face of Zu Kefa.

"Consider what?" Shunzhi had not yet recovered for a moment, and asked offhandedly.

"Of course it is considering surrender..." Zu Kefa said with a smile. "Your Majesty, rest assured, you and our Great Ming's Emperor are relatives — you are the Imperial Uncle! Once you go to Nanjing, there will be endless glory, splendor, and wealth to enjoy. Our Emperor is prepared to enfeoff you as Prince Gong — and this is a prince of a different surname! Wu Sangui is only a Duke of Liang, and Zheng Zhilong is only a Duke of Quan — neither has a title as high as yours. How wonderful!"

"Wonderful my ass!" The moment Shunzhi looked at Zu Kefa, his anger surged up from nowhere. "We are the Emperor of the Great Qing — how could We possibly go and be a prince under him? Our Great Qing still has several hundred thousand brave troops and tens of thousands of li of territory. We are only temporarily at a disadvantage now, and in the future We will certainly be able to turn the situation around!"

"Your Majesty, you really should think it over carefully..."

Zu Kefa still wanted to persuade him with kind words, but Shunzhi no longer wished to listen, and only shouted loudly: "Guards, guards! Beat this turncoat out with clubs for Us!"

"Don't, don't..." Zu Kefa was a turncoat who would not suffer a loss right before his eyes, and without waiting for the clubs to come at him, he scrambled and crawled away on his own.

Now only a few Grand Secretaries and Inner Ministers closest to the Shunzhi Emperor remained by his side to keep him company.

The Shunzhi Emperor looked at them, all with dejected expressions, looking as though the Great Qing was finished, and could not help roaring again: "Get out, all of you get out for Us!"

Since the Emperor said get out, the ministers who had lost their resolve did not stay either, and all scattered in a hubbub, leaving only one person standing there without moving. Shunzhi glanced over — it was Sun Zhixie, the "one-time subject" who had served both the Ming and Qing courts. Although he had served two masters, he had been dismissed once by the Chongzhen Emperor without even receiving compensation, so the sovereign-subject relationship naturally reset to zero, and when he joined the Great Qing again he became a "one-time subject"...

"Sun Zhixie," Shunzhi assumed that "One-Time Subject Sun" did not understand Manchu, so he switched to Chinese and said to him, "You get out too!"

"Your Majesty, may this slave get out a little later?" Sun Zhixie asked.

"A little later? You are..."

"This slave still has a plan to offer. May I roll out after offering the plan?"

"You have a plan to offer?" Shunzhi thought to himself: We thought you only knew how to flatter Sonin — so you actually know how to offer plans too!

"What plan do you have?"

Sun Zhixie said: "This slave feels that Your Majesty cannot now go and become the Prince Gong of the Great Ming."

"Is that all?" Shunzhi was not particularly disappointed, because he had never expected anything from "One-Time Subject Sun" in the first place.

Sun Zhixie continued: "There is more... This slave feels that Your Majesty can, can declare yourself a subject of the Great Ming, and then acknowledge the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming as Imperial Ama."

"Wh-what did you say?" Shunzhi's small eyes instantly went wide.

Sun Zhixie said to Shunzhi with a smile: "These past few days this slave has been reading the histories, and discovered that during the Five Dynasties there was once a child-emperor..."

"Y-you actually dare to ask Us to imitate Shi Jingtang? We are an enlightened monarch — how can We become the child-emperor of the Ming emperor?"

Sun Zhixie said with a solemn expression: "Your Majesty is an enlightened monarch, and enlightened monarchs can all bend and stretch... Moreover, our Great Qing's entry into the pass was truly a stroke of luck. How many people does our Great Qing have? And how many people does their Great Ming have?

And nowadays it is no longer a time when one can take the realm by bow and horse alone. Nowadays war is fought with cannons and firelocks. This slave has heard that the Great Ming now has four great ironworks — Nanjing Iron, Shanghai Shen Steel, Fujian An Steel, and Guangdong Fo Iron — producing firelocks by the hundreds of thousands every year, and there are also many small workshops, so the total output is probably no less than two or three hundred thousand pieces! And how many guns can our dynasty make in a year? At most a few thousand. Fighting one against a hundred, how can the war be sustained?

Furthermore, this slave also concurrently manages the Ministry of Revenue... Once the war started, the old reserves in the Ministry of Revenue have been flowing out like water, and in just a few months they are nearly at the bottom. And how far has the fighting even gotten? The war has no end in sight! Once our money and grain are all exhausted, then everything will be finished."

The Shunzhi Emperor, after Sun Zhixie's explanation, was already somewhat moved.

After all, it was just acknowledging one more Imperial Ama — he already had two Amas, so he did not mind having one more...

"But will Zhu Cilang agree?" Shunzhi said in a voice so low it was barely audible.

"It should not be a problem," Sun Zhixie said. "Your Majesty is still the Great Khan of the Mongols! The Zhu Emperor may be able to seize the territory south of the Great Wall, but north of the Great Wall is not so easy to take! Moreover, to the north there is still Russia, beyond the pass there is still the Imperial Uncle... and overseas there is still the country of Hispania. In the past, the Ming founder expelled the Mongols and restored the Chinese realm — how divinely brave and heroic was he? Yet even he could not exterminate the Northern Yuan. Surely the Hongxing Emperor would not think himself superior to the Great Ming founder?"

That seemed to make some sense!

Shunzhi said: "Allow Us to think it over carefully."

He was just about to dismiss Sun Zhixie and be alone to calm down and consider whether to acknowledge another Ama or something, when Sonin, who had only just left a short while ago, came bustling back in high spirits.

"Your Majesty, we are saved! We are saved!"

The Shunzhi Emperor was startled — he had not yet agreed to acknowledge an Ama, so how was he suddenly saved?

"The southern army outside the city is withdrawing!" Sonin said loudly. "It must be the Imperial Uncle bringing troops to rescue Your Majesty... Your Majesty, the Imperial Uncle is a good uncle!"

Truly a good uncle!

When the Shunzhi Emperor heard this news, he was so moved that tears streamed down his face.

While Shunzhi was shedding tears, Dodo, the good uncle of the Great Qing, was once again hesitating. Because his army had only just crossed the Yudai River when it was discovered by the Ming army's black-gun mule soldiers!

At this moment Dodo was riding along the main road toward Tianjin, and from the distance came wave after wave of gunfire — this should be his vanguard battalion cavalry exchanging fire with the Ming army's black-gun soldiers.

Dodo had fifty thousand fighting troops with him, and with the baggage troops and civilian laborers added, there were seventy or eighty thousand people in all. Such an enormous army naturally moved with great noise and commotion, and without a very large cavalry advantage, it was impossible to move covertly.

So he now knew that he had already been discovered by his opponent... His current position was still more than one hundred fifty li from Tianjin Guard, and under normal circumstances it would take another three days of marching to reach the battlefield.

With these three days, Shi Kefa would be able to calmly assemble his forces, choose a prearranged battlefield, and construct fortifications... And his own army was primarily infantry, so it could not move very fast at all.

But now the arrow was already on the bowstring — he could not just run back beyond the pass without fighting a single battle, could he? That would be far too humiliating!