Chapter 120: Fierce Battle

The Plain White Banner commander Tan Tai led three banners totaling fifteen niru, plus a thousand booi bondservants, and after splitting off at Juyong Pass, headed east along the official road toward Huairou.

Tan Tai ordered one niru of his banner to trail at the very rear—one, to guard the thousand booi bondservants, and two, to guard against a surprise attack from Ming troops in the rear. He himself led his own banner's four niru as the vanguard, riding at the very front of the entire column, while the ten niru of the Bordered Blue Banner and the two Red Banners formed the center, with roughly three li between the front and rear.

Tan Tai was taciturn by nature, fierce and ferocious in battle, and had been a childhood playmate of Ajige. From the age of fifteen, he had followed Nurhaci on campaigns alongside Ajige, and had saved Ajige's life on several occasions, earning his deep trust.

After Ajige became banner master of the Plain White Banner, he promoted his close friend to meiren janggin, placing ten of the banner's twenty-five niru under his command—a clear sign of the trust he placed in Tan Tai.

The hour of Chen had passed, and the blazing sun scorched the earth. The army had marched thirty li eastward, and both soldiers and warhorses were feeling weary. The booi bondservants pushing carts and carrying loads at the rear complained bitterly, yet Tan Tai remained silent and continued leading the army forward. Speed is paramount in war—since the Prince had ordered him to split off and plunder, what was a little hardship? The sons of the Eight Banners were no soft eggs like those Ming troops who couldn't endure suffering.

The official road from Juyong Pass to Huairou was fairly wide, allowing three riders to ride abreast. The northern side of the road hugged the rolling mountains, while the southern side opened onto flat, open ground. The Qing scouts had already ridden thirty li ahead, and the wooded mountains to the north had also been thoroughly searched; only after confirming it was safe did they signal the rear to proceed without worry.

The army advanced another ten li or so, leaving only a few dozen li to Huairou.

The scouts had not sent word back for some time now. The instincts of years of campaigning warned Tan Tai that something was amiss.

The Qing scouts were all battle-hardened elites—fully a hundred riders had been sent out, including five White Bayara, each of them worth a hundred men.

It was no exaggeration to say that five White Bayara could hold their own against a hundred Ming cavalry—these were the banner's treasures. In the entire Plain White Banner's twenty-five niru, there were only a little over two hundred White Bayara. For this campaign, Ajige had brought out over a hundred White Bayara, and Tan Tai's force had more than ten.

According to Qing military regulations, scouts took turns riding forward and back, resting their horses while continuously reporting the situation ahead to the commanding general; any who slacked off could be executed on the spot. It was precisely this stern discipline that kept Qing morale high and their fighting strength formidable. By all normal reckoning, two waves of scouts should have returned by now, but not a single one had appeared—this had never happened before.

Could something have happened to the sentries with five White Bayara backing them? By all logic it should be impossible—but why had no scouts returned for so long?

Just then, the army happened to be passing a stretch of woodland. Tan Tai was about to send men forward to investigate when suddenly the hairs on his body stood on end—the feeling of being watched by a fierce beast. He immediately shouted at the top of his lungs: "Enemy! Forward!"

With that, he dug his heels hard into his horse's flanks, crouched low, and his warhorse shot forward.

Before the Qing troops could react to their commander's warning, countless arrows came whistling out of the dense woods on the northern side. The unprepared Qing cavalrymen, still mounted, were struck and tumbled from their horses one after another.

Though Tan Tai reacted with lightning speed, an arrow still struck his left ribs—fortunately stopped by his armor before it could sink deep into his flesh. But his horse also took several arrows, and after galloping forward a few paces, it let out a mournful cry and crashed to the ground. In the instant before his horse fell, Tan Tai pushed hard with both legs, quickly slipping his feet free of the stirrups, and rolled to the right. After hitting the ground he tumbled several more rolls, then crouched low and dove toward his fallen horse. Hiding behind it, he pulled his longbow from the saddle. He scooped up a few loose arrows scattered on the ground, crouched, nocked an arrow, drew, and loosed it into the woods.

After over a hundred Qing soldiers were struck and fell from their horses, the rest did not panic. At this moment, neither charging forward nor riding to the other side was the best choice—their horses had not yet built up speed, and mounted riders made bigger targets, easier to hit with arrows. Before the second wave of arrows from the woods arrived, all the Qing soldiers who had not been hit swiftly dismounted, taking cover behind their horses, either raising shields for protection or drawing their bows to return fire. All of this was accomplished within a few breaths—one had to admit the Qing troops were truly battle-hardened veterans.

Because the area around the capital was so open, one could see very far with nothing blocking the view. The Bordered Blue and two Red Banner troops in the rear spotted that something was wrong up ahead and immediately spurred their horses forward under their commanders' leadership.

Beneath the walls of Changping, the Qing shield carts were gradually closing on the Ming musketeer formation. The gunners on the city walls were busily resetting the cannons, then had to clean the bores, load the powder, and haul the shot. The red barbarian cannon was immensely powerful, but the interval between shots was far too long. After the first shot, the recoil was so great that the cannon was knocked far from its original position, requiring a dozen or more men working together to reset it—a process that took several hundred breaths (roughly three minutes).

When they were still a hundred-odd paces from the Ming square formation, a command rang out, and the booi bondservants let out a shout and pushed the shield carts forward at a sprint. If they could charge just a few dozen more paces, the archers following behind would reach their firing positions. The Qing's heavy arrows could pierce armor at fifty paces—once the arrows blanketed the Ming lines, sustained casualties would throw the musketeer formation into chaos, and the heavy infantry behind would immediately charge in to cut and kill, then push outward to both flanks, opening a lane for the cavalry behind to strike the front.

Over a hundred booi bondservants in the front ranks pushed several dozen shield carts forward with all their might. Just as they charged to within seventy paces of the Ming formation, a series of explosions thundered out. Dust filled the air, smoke billowed everywhere, shield carts toppled, and severed limbs flew wildly.

It turned out Sun Yingyuan had long since had men bury a large field of landmines here, intending to give the Eight Banners cavalry a surprise during their charge. He never expected the Qing to send the shield carts out first—and so it was those Han booi bondservants who got the bad luck.

The several dozen shield carts in the front ranks and the booi bondservants pushing them suffered heavy casualties. Every landmine was packed with sharp objects like porcelain shards and iron fragments that sprayed outward when the mine's casing burst. Within a dozen paces of the blast centers, no one survived. Several hundred booi bondservants were either killed outright by the blasts or struck by the projectiles and collapsed, their screams and wails echoing across the entire battlefield. Of the Qing's hundred-odd shield carts, after two strikes only sixty or seventy remained usable.

Abatai in the rear formation watched as his force had been thwarted twice before even making contact with the enemy. This suffocating frustration was maddening, and it kindled a blazing rage in his heart—this feeling of being beaten while helpless was something he had never experienced. He had come to plunder, not to be beaten!

He bellowed orders for the remaining shield carts to keep charging, with the archers following close behind. Once they got within sixty paces, how could the Ming troops withstand sustained fire from heavy arrows? As for the lives of the booi bondservants, he cared not at all—a pack of Han dogs, dead was dead; alive they only wasted grain. Wherever the Eight Banners army marched, there were as many two-legged sheep Han as one could want.

Xiteku stepped forward and beheaded several men in succession, and under the pressure of twin terrors, the booi bondservants screamed desperately as they pushed their carts around the corpses and wounded ahead and charged forward. On one hand, refusing to charge meant being cut down on the spot; on the other, charging through might just let them live. They could only gamble.

After another series of explosions, the few dozen surviving shield carts finally advanced to about fifty paces from the Ming lines, and no more mines detonated. At the sound of a horn, the remaining booi bondservants turned and fled to the sides and rear as if they had heard heavenly music. As long as the shield carts stayed there, the Qing archers could use them for cover to loose their bows—the booi bondservants' task was complete.

Over a thousand Qing archers surged forward. Another twenty paces and they would reach the shield carts, and then they could make the dumbly standing Ming troops taste the power of the Eight Banners' heavy arrows. As for the power of Ming muskets, the Qing had learned that lesson many times. Short range, abysmal accuracy, and when the Ming saw the Qing charging, they fired their muskets in panic without heeding any command. Smoothbore muskets of this era only had real killing power when fired in volleys; a single shot hitting an enemy across the field was harder than winning the lottery.

At that very moment, a shrill, piercing trumpet blast rang out, and amid a crackling sound like popping beans, the Ming muskets fired.

The Qing archers secretly rejoiced—the Ming were up to their old tricks, firing their muskets from such a distance. Once this volley was spent, before they could reload, the archers would be in position and loose several flights of arrows. Then the Ming would collapse, the armored infantry would follow up and assault, the Ming would fall into complete chaos, and one cavalry charge would send the whole Ming army fleeing in rout. This was the usual script.

As a great cloud of smoke rose before the Ming musket formation, the hundred-odd Qing archers charging in front suddenly snapped backward as if struck by a heavy hammer, toppling stiffly to the ground like trees felled by a giant axe. Of the eight hundred musket balls loosed, many were stopped by the shield carts, but most flew over them and struck home. With a hit rate of around twenty percent in the first volley, the Qing suffered over a hundred archer casualties.

After firing, the first rank of musketeers crouched down on the spot to clear the view for the ranks behind, then used ramrods to clean the powder residue from their barrels and began preparing for their second shot.

The Qing archers, stunned though they were, still accelerated their charge. Those hit by the muskets were just unlucky bastards—it wasn't as if men hadn't been killed by muskets before. Only this time, the unlucky ones seemed to be rather numerous.

Before the smoke before the Ming formation had even cleared, the second volley of muskets rang out.

Since the first volley had shattered nearly all the shields mounted on the shield carts, the second volley flew through without obstruction. Blood mist rose among the Qing archers. Within sixty paces, cotton armor offered no defense whatsoever against musket balls. The high-speed spinning lead shot tore through the Qing's cotton armor and bored into their bodies, and because the soft lead could not pass through and exit, it tumbled and churned inside the flesh until its kinetic energy was fully spent. By then, the victim's internal organs had been churned to pulp.

At this moment, the cannons on the city wall were finally ready, waiting for Sun Yingyuan's order to fire.

By the time the Ming's first round of four ranks of muskets had finished firing, no Qing soldier remained standing within seventy paces of the formation.

This round of over three thousand musket balls had caused nearly six hundred Qing archer casualties—for a force of a thousand men, this was a devastating blow.

Abatai called off the charge just in time. Though the Ming's first rank had not finished reloading, the two pike square formations had already advanced forward, ready at any moment to engage in close combat with any Qing troops who followed. Looking at the Ming pikes over a zhang long, their sharp tips glinting coldly, Abatai abandoned any notion of seizing the moment to attack.

When the first volley of muskets rang out, Yangguri's Han Banner troops had already broken through nearly forty paces of the cheval de frise barrier—only twenty-odd paces remained before the obstacles would be completely cleared.

When the Ming's hundred grenadiers arrived, Yangguri paid them no mind. He found it strange—so few Ming troops coming to reinforce, and unarmed at that. Were they coming to fight hand-to-hand?

As the grenadiers blew their fire-starting tubes alight and touched them to the fuses of the thundering heaven thunder, the Qing soldiers kept hacking away at the obstacles. The Ming archers, who posed the greatest threat to them, had already withdrawn to one side, exhausted. As for the hundred Ming troops approaching, most Qing soldiers merely glanced at them from the corner of their eyes and dismissed them. Were they going to hit people with those black iron lumps? Getting hit would certainly hurt, but unless it struck the head, it wouldn't be fatal—that was what every Qing soldier thought.

A hundred black iron lumps flew over, striking some Qing soldiers before landing on the ground. One thundering heaven thunder was hurled by a powerfully built Ming soldier right to Yangguri's side.

The Qing soldiers who had been hit gritted their teeth against the pain and paid it no heed, continuing to work at breaking the obstacles with all their might. One Qing soldier, stung by the impact, saw the smoking iron lump at his feet and, in a fit of irritation, kicked it away.

First came a thunderous "BOOM," then explosion after explosion in rapid succession. Nearly all the thundering heaven thunders that had landed detonated, sending iron nails and porcelain shards flying in every direction. The Qing soldiers' screams of agony were drowned out by the blasts. Those struck directly had their heads and torsos shattered, and for a moment countless limbs and organs flew through the air. When the smoke and dust finally settled, the ground was a scene of utter carnage—Qing corpses and wounded everywhere, everyone at the blast centers with faces blackened, blood and brains and colorful loops of intestines strewn all around.

The Qing soldiers outside the blast radius were stunned senseless by this sudden strike. Many of those nearby had their ears deafened by the tremendous sound waves. Everyone stood frozen in place, because nearly none of them had ever seen this kind of explosion. Many soldiers of this Han Banner company looked up at the sky, believing it was thunderbolts sent down from heaven.

Suddenly someone in the Qing ranks shouted: "The Imperial Son-in-law is dead!"

That shout jolted everyone on the field awake, and the remaining Qing soldiers fell into panic.

Severed limbs and broken arms were everywhere—who could possibly have come through unscathed? Where were they supposed to find the Imperial Son-in-law's corpse?

As the explosions and musket fire ceased, the Qing's retreat horn sounded. The Qing soldiers before the formation turned and fled this charnel ground as if pardoned from execution.