Chapter 429: White Armor and White Poles

The eight thousand White Pole troops were split into two bodies, deploying in formation on the left and right flanks of the Ming army's arquebusiers.

The White Pole troops were organized by camp, each camp numbering one hundred men, and by regulation were divided into five camps designated "left, center, right, front, rear." Apart from the center camp, which was commanded by members of the Ma and Qin families, the remaining camps were led by trusted retainers of the two houses or by local chieftains.

Each of the five camps had one Platoon Leader, one banner chief, and one banner drummer. Recruitment into the camps was extremely strict—none who entered were less than the stoutest sons of the villages and stockades.

Originally, because of limited financial resources, Qin Liangyu's White Pole troops had numbered only five thousand, and the rest were soldiers with incomplete weapons and armor and somewhat inferior fighting ability.

In the first half of the tenth year of Chongzhen, Zhu Youjian funded them from the privy purse. Besides paying the existing soldiers their full monthly wages and grain on schedule, he also allocated enormous additional sums to let them recruit new troops.

With Qin Liangyu's prestige and immense personal charisma, combined with generous military pay and provisions and the large burial compensation for those killed in battle, these factors together drove the local Tujia young men to vie for enlistment. In the end, the White Pole troops were finally expanded to ten thousand men.

The White Pole troops were composed mainly of Tujia people from within the jurisdiction of the Shizhu Xuanfu, with a small number of brave men of Han and Miao origin mixed in.

The Tujia people grew up among the high mountains and great rivers where Sichuan, Chongqing, and Chu meet. In their struggles against the savage beasts of the wilds, the great unified dynasties of the Central Plains, and internal internecine slaughter, they forged strong bodies and brave hearts.

The Ma family, hereditary native chieftains of the Great Ming, had always regarded the White Pole troops under their command as the foundation of their survival, and subjected them to brutal military training on a daily basis.

Besides training in ordinary combat skills such as hook-sickle spear and crossbow techniques, close-quarters fighting, and battle formations, the White Pole troops also underwent extremely ferocious physical and courage training.

"One man fights a tiger, twenty men assist him. The rule is that the tiger must die; whoever lets the tiger escape is severely punished, and the same applies to hunting other beasts. Whoever captures one receives double reward as the one who struck first... When pursuing an enemy over cliffs and walls, they must by all means capture and kill him."

The battlefield discipline of the White Pole troops was even more stringent than their training.

In battle, those who bravely pressed forward received heavy rewards, while those who shrank back in fear or sought glory and bungled their duty were severely punished afterward.

The system of collective responsibility prevailed throughout the army, and since the soldiers were composed mainly of fathers and sons, brothers, and relatives, the White Pole troops invariably charged into battle like mad tigers, irresistible.

In the impression of many people in later generations, the White Pole troops were thought to be an army that, though brave and skilled in battle, was equipped with extremely simple weapons and armor. In reality, this is a tremendous error of perception.

In fact, the equipment of the White Pole troops was extremely fine, far surpassing the armaments of most Ming armies.

When two armies faced each other, soldiers daring to meet the enemy in close combat needed not only outstanding fighting skill and reckless courage, but also relied heavily on the protection of their armor.

The soldiers of the five camps who stood at the front of the White Pole formation each wore iron helmets lined with cotton wadding and heavy iron armor weighing over thirty jin.

This heavy armor was extremely effective against arrows. Unless struck in vital spots such as the face or neck, even the Qing army's sharp arrows could barely penetrate it from within thirty paces.

Last year, at Zhu Youjian's instruction, the Arsenal had specially forged an additional one thousand suits of heavy armor for the White Pole troops, in preparation for the great battle beyond the passes in the coming year.

The heavy-armored soldiers, already far exceeding the original five camps' numbers, formed a colossal human shield, protecting behind them the soldiers wearing ordinary armor.

The tactics adopted by the White Pole troops also differed from those of the Ming army. Because of their formation, their tactics were both simple and highly effective, with extremely formidable killing power against the enemy.

The White Pole formation generally arrayed twenty-four banners, each banner forming a squad of twenty-five men, composed with one banner head, then arranged in ranks of three, five, seven, and nine men, forming a wedge-shaped column, with the remaining soldiers arrayed behind.

If the front-rank man fell, the next would step up in turn to preserve the integrity of the formation. If the man in front was defeated, the one in the second rank at the center would replace him, and likewise on both flanks.

Victory or defeat was decided within five ranks; if all were defeated, there was no hope of victory.

The banner chief and the commander of each banner both stood at the rear of their own banner or company formation. The banner soldiers were arrayed like a wedge, and the twenty-four banners together formed a single great wedge.

Even when arrayed in a great formation of tens of thousands of men, the wedge shape remained unchanged—only the unit changed from the individual man to the banner.

What the White Pole troops now deployed on the two flanks were six wedge formations of nearly seven hundred men each. In the European battlefields of the Middle Ages, this formation was called the "boar's head."

The famous Ming general Qi Jiguang of the Wanli era had drawn on the White Pole formation to create the renowned Mandarin Duck formation.

Sonorous bugle calls rang out across the sky. The great Qing formations of the two White Banners on the left flank and the two Blue Banners on the right began to move slowly toward the White Pole troops arrayed on the flanks.

Against the White Pole troops' six wedge formations, the ten thousand-odd men of the two White Banners on the left flank also divided into six divisions—the two central divisions each fielding fifteen hundred men, and the remaining four divisions eight hundred each.

Dorgon's intent was clear: to send heavy forces to break through the center by force, crush the White Pole troops to his front, then charge the flanks.

As the Qing army entered the range of the Folangji cannons, the eight cannons on the left flank that could reach the Qing troops fired in succession. Cannonballs screamed across the sky and smashed down upon the Qing army.

But this bombardment's killing effect was not as pronounced as before. All eight cannonballs struck the ground, bounced several times, and after inflicting casualties of over twenty Qing soldiers, ceased rolling.

The strictly disciplined massed Qing troops paid no heed to the screams of the wounded and continued advancing forward in silence.

Having long witnessed the power of Ming artillery, the Qing army adopted a relatively loose formation, intending to endure several rounds of Ming cannon fire, then launch their charge when they were twenty paces from the White Pole troops. By then, if the two sides were entangled together, the Ming cannons would lose their effectiveness.

The Ming gunners paid no attention to the damage effects at all, merely rapidly reloading the chambers one after another and continuing to fire.

After the Folangji cannons had fired three rounds, killing and wounding over a hundred Qing soldiers in total, the leading Qing troops had already entered charging distance.

At the shouts of the various niru commanders leading the divisions, the vanguards of the six divisions launched their charge.

To break through the White Pole formation in one all-out effort, Dorgon had also staked everything.

The picked troops of the six Qing divisions were each assigned twenty White Armor soldiers, for a total of one hundred twenty White Armor soldiers thrown into the battle—something unprecedented in the history of the Eight Banners.

In history, when Qing forces had several times entered Ming territory to plunder wealth, each banner had dispatched only around a hundred White Armor soldiers, and those hundred or so were not gathered together but scattered among the various small Qing detachments, seeking opportunities to fight the Ming army.

It was precisely because of these valiant and skilled White Armor soldiers that the Ming army suffered repeated major defeats.

One should know that the two White Banners had only some five hundred White Armor soldiers in total. Producing nearly half of them at once—these were the treasured pillars of the Eight Banners.

Each White Armor soldier wore three layers of armor: the innermost was cotton armor, the middle layer was mail, and the outermost was iron armor painted white.

The selection criteria for White Armor soldiers were extremely stringent—even more demanding than for the five camps of the White Pole troops.

A soldier of the Eight Banners had to have killed at least two hundred men in successive battles before he was qualified to wear this white armor symbolizing supreme glory.

And the first banner at the very front of the six White Pole formations consisted of the sharpest elite troops of the five camps. The armor these five-camp soldiers wore was in no way inferior to the three-layered armor of the White Armor soldiers.

In terms of fighting power, these two armies renowned throughout the world were nearly evenly matched—both were the fiercest of the fierce, the elite of the elite. What kind of result would the collision between the two produce?

Hear the next installment for the answer.