Chapter 170: Outflanking

On the flat, open fields near the official vegetable garden on the east bank of the Sheyan River in Suide Prefecture, more than thirty thousand roving bandits had drawn up in formation, preparing to do battle with the ten-odd thousand government troops who had crossed the Sheyan River and were pursuing them.

After Hong Chengchou had gathered his main forces at Yan'an Prefecture, he had advanced steadily along the line toward Suide and Mizhi, his target aimed squarely at the forces of the Dashing General Li Zicheng and others active in this area.

Sun Chuanting's departure secretly relieved Hong Chengchou.

He had been in northern Shaanxi with more than twenty thousand government troops for nearly a year now, and during this period, although he had clashed with the roving bandits on several occasions, they had basically all been small-scale skirmishes—there had been no full-scale battles involving tens of thousands of men, and the kills had been pitifully few.

The main reason was the terrain conditions of northern Shaanxi.

With its dense ravines and winding, narrow roads, northern Shaanxi offered few battlefields where a large army could deploy; moreover, the roving bandits were quite cunning—the moment they detected a large-scale concentration of government troops, they immediately turned and fled, and the fully equipped government troops often could not catch up.

The roving bandits were all native-born locals, intimately familiar with the terrain, and most wore no armor, making them even more agile at crossing mountains and ravines; after every defeat, they vanished without a trace amid the furious curses of the government troops.

The Liaodong cavalry had also achieved little in northern Shaanxi. There was no helping it—warhorses simply could not build up speed; just as they were about to reach a gallop, the bandits would scramble down into a ravine and escape, forcing the Liaodong troops to rein in and turn back.

Now the successive surrenders of Tuo Yangkun and Zhang Wenyao had removed a great boulder pressing on Hong Chengchou's heart.

These two forces had fought the government troops the most often and had gradually learned the government troops' tactics and secrets.

At first, both sides had also drawn up in formation and clashed head-on several times, but before the government troops, who held an absolute advantage in weapons and armor, both Tuo Yangkun and Zhang Wenyao had suffered no small losses.

After losing several thousand men, the bandits had begun adopting the strategy of running when they could not win, dragging the government troops around northern Shaanxi for nearly a year.

At court, dissatisfaction had gradually grown over Hong Chengchou commanding a large army yet never achieving a single merit; several censors had submitted memorials impeaching him, saying, "Holding the battle-axe in Shaanxi for years, he sat idly by while the bandits grew strong; he allowed the rebels to run rampant, storming cities and plundering the countryside, killing men like weeds."

Some censors with even harsher words insinuated that he was harboring bandits to enhance his own importance.

"Unable to advance and suppress them, yet also unable to contain the rebel tide, he let the roving bandits gallop back and forth at will, coming and going as if entering uninhabited land—this conduct constitutes dereliction of duty. We recommend that Your Majesty strip him of his title of Minister with the rank of Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent, and urge him to redeem himself through merit."

As for these impeachment memorials, Chongzhen naturally kept them without issuing a response. But Hong Chengchou's friends and relatives at court secretly wrote to him with their contents, urging him to achieve merit as quickly as possible to silence the court officials' attacks and restore his reputation at court.

Hong Chengchou was both furious and helpless about the matter.

Those censors who loved to flap their lips were forever inflating matters into grave accusations; without knowing the actual situation, they actually used the soft knife of "harboring bandits to enhance one's own importance"—a blade that kills without drawing blood—to harm him. Just how deep was the grudge?

Damn their mothers! If you've got the ability, come try it yourself!

Even amid his fury, Hong Chengchou secretly counted himself fortunate that His Majesty, having changed his formerly rash and suspicious temperament, had not uttered a single word of reproach toward him, nor urged him to annihilate the bandits by a fixed deadline—this showed that His Majesty still trusted him considerably.

But Hong Chengchou knew in his heart that this trust was not unlimited or everlasting; if he still could not produce some battle achievements, it was possible that the emperor, under pressure from the court ministers, would strip him of his post as Governor-General of the Five Provinces and send someone else to replace him.

He could even guess who the emperor would send to take his place.

Sun Chuanting and Chen Qiyu were both excellent choices.

Chen Qiyu went without saying—he was his predecessor, with outstanding battle achievements, and had come within a hair's breadth of annihilating the bandits entirely; had he not stuck his tail up at the critical moment and, carried away by complacency, trusted the words of others, how would he, Hong Chengchou, ever have had the chance to be suddenly elevated to the high rank of a first-grade official?

Sun Chuanting, this rising star at court, had repeatedly rendered distinguished service since taking office in Shaanxi, and most recently had captured in one stroke the greatest scourge of the Great Ming—though luck played a part in it, it also fully demonstrated his outstanding personal ability.

Sun Chuanting, so close at hand, posed the greatest threat to Hong Chengchou.

When he learned that Sun Chuanting was to lead troops to northern Shaanxi, Hong Chengchou felt the pressure suddenly mount.

This was a very clear signal: His Majesty was expressing his dissatisfaction with him in this manner, and he had to produce some real ability.

Just at that moment, the surrenders of Tuo Yangkun and Zhang Wenyao filled Hong Chengchou with unexpected joy.

These two bands, the most powerful roving bandit forces in the northern Shaanxi area, had vanished into thin air in the blink of an eye, and the remaining seventy to eighty thousand bandits would be easier to deal with.

The Dashing General Li Zicheng? Though he had some reputation, he was after all merely a somewhat tougher opponent—Hong Chengchou had not yet deigned to take him seriously.

Although the roving bandits still outnumbered the government troops, they existed only in small scattered bands, with no powerful figure having united them.

He had been operating his army in northern Shaanxi for more than half a year—was Sun Chuanting coming to pick the peaches?

Although command of the army was his own, if the northern Shaanxi bandits were successfully annihilated, Sun Chuanting's name would not be absent from the merit roll, which would invisibly diminish Hong Chengchou's role in it.

His Majesty and the court ministers would think that it was precisely Sun Chuanting's arrival with his army that had enabled the swift extermination of the bandits.

Unexpectedly, Sun Chuanting had let the merit within reach slip away and actually found an excuse to leave; Hong Chengchou, without time to ponder the reasons, waved his banner and pressed his entire army toward northern Shaanxi.

He ordered the Liaodong guest troops divided into two wings: Wu Sangui would lead his own force of twenty-three hundred cavalry, plus the three thousand infantry of Zuo Guangxian, Vice Regional Commander of Yansui Town, from Anding in the north through Bailuo City and then eastward, driving the bandits toward the plains around Suide and Mizhi.

Zu Dale would lead his own two thousand cavalry plus the three thousand men of Ai Wannian, Vice Regional Commander of Gushan, along the Yanchuan-Qingjian line, with the same objective as Wu Sangui—driving the bandits toward more open, flatter ground.

He himself personally led the remaining forces of Zuo Liangyu, He Renlong, You Jie, Sun Shoufa and others, more than ten thousand men, advancing northeast from Ansai.

With the greatest hidden danger of Tuo Yangkun and others eliminated, and spurred on by Sun Chuanting's capture and execution of Gao Yingxiang, Hong Chengchou had grown impatient with skirmishing and Mobile Corps Commander tactics against the bandits; he planned to drive them to the open terrain around Suide and Mizhi, then surround and annihilate them in one stroke, seeking to win the entire campaign in a single battle, thoroughly restoring his damaged reputation so that he might be qualified to take his place at court.

Hong Chengchou's strategy indeed proved effective.

On the left wing, Wu Sangui and Zuo Guangxian's forces first annihilated, north of Anding county town, the two bands of more than three thousand bandits under the Great Heavenly King and the Sixth Company active in that area; after resting for a day, the two forces continued northward, and upon detecting the camps of the Third Company and Old Zhang Fei at Bailuo City, Wu Sangui first led his cavalry charging through their formation, and once the enemy was thrown into confusion, Zuo Guangxian personally led his infantry storming into their midst, cutting down the bandit chief Old Zhang Fei beneath his blade while the bandits scattered in all directions.

In this battle, more than three thousand bandits were killed in total, with the scattered fugitives beyond counting.

Riding the momentum of two great victories, Wu Sangui and Zuo Guangxian turned eastward; the bandits ahead of them lost their courage at the mere news, and most fled toward Suide to throw in with the bandits there.

On the right wing, Zu Dale and Ai Wannian also achieved considerable results, annihilating the two bandit bands of Golden Wing Roc and Ascending Heavenly Dragon in the Qingjian area, killing more than two thousand, while the remaining bandits also fled north toward Suide.

Only Hong Chengchou's central column encountered little resistance along the way, because the line from Ansai to Suide was vast wasteland with no county towns, and thus few bandits had established themselves there.

Hong Chengchou was not afraid of the bandits fleeing east into Shanxi; the bandits would either be defeated or continue fleeing north—the possibility of going to Shanxi basically did not exist.

Why?

Because of the natural barrier of the Yellow River.

At this time, the Yellow River's surface was extremely wide, and the current was swift; without large boats in northern Shaanxi, the only way to cross the Yellow River was by sheepskin raft.

Those sheepskin rafts could carry at most four or five people each, and they also required an experienced boatman to operate.

Not to mention that boatmen and rafts were hard to find—even if several dozen rafts were found, what use would they be?

Several dozen skin rafts could transport at most no more than two hundred people per trip, and a round trip took most of a day, with a high probability of capsizing in between; to ferry tens of thousands of bandits across would take no less than a month—would the government troops just stand by and watch you cross the river?

Driven by the government troops on both flanks, the roving bandits gradually gathered around Suide and Mizhi, and the later-renowned Li Zicheng was leading his forces in activity in this very area.

Wubu, on the west bank of the Yellow River, was a military fort abandoned for many years; after years of wind and rain, parts of the brick-facing outer walls had fallen away and collapsed, revealing the thick yellow earth within.

In the shabby great hall inside the fort, the Dashing General Li Zicheng was discussing with several trusted subordinates how to respond to the government troops' offensive.

Around thirty years of age, with a high nose, large eyes, and prominent cheekbones, Li Zicheng was tall and powerfully built—though lean, he looked strong and vigorous.

He was of mixed Han and barbarian blood; it was said his ancestors included the Tangut Li Jiqian. His features were quite stern and extraordinary, possessing a peculiar charm—set in a later age, he would be the very picture of a distinguished older man.

Tian Jianxiu, somewhat older, spoke up: "Hongji, these past days the righteous soldiers fleeing to join us have been increasing day by day, and our grain can plainly sustain us for only so long. There's no grain left to be taken from the surrounding areas. If we run out of food, who will still follow us? You've got to come up with a plan!"

Gao Yigong said impatiently: "I say, Old Tian, the government troops are about to reach our doorstep—how can we still bother with damn grain? We'd best think of a way to beat back the government troops first!"

Yuan Zongdi spoke unhurriedly: "I reckon the government troops came on fierce this time. We'd best pull back north first and lie low until the storm passes. Meeting them head-on isn't worth it! Hongji, what do you think?"

Before Li Zicheng could speak, Liu Zongmin, who was wiping down his two long sabers with cotton cloth off to the side, gave a cold snort: "We've been rebelling for years—how many times have we fought the government troops? They're not heavenly soldiers descended from the sky. We've got close to twenty thousand men now, with several thousand elite veterans in the main camp. Why should we fear that old bastard Hong? If he comes, we fight him!"

Li Zicheng praised loudly: "Jiexuan, those words carry real spirit! We've crossed swords with the government troops for years and beaten them countless times! That old bastard Hong has been in northern Shaanxi for a year now, and what's he managed to do to us? Several rebel bands have already been routed, so this is the perfect chance for us to absorb more men. If we fight the government troops again and win, our band becomes the strongest of the rebel forces in northern Shaanxi! Once our numbers grow, we won't stay in Shaanxi—we'll head for the Central Plains and turn heaven and earth upside down!"