Chapter 396: Driving Off the Routed Troops

The State Preceptor Khan hadn't been idle — or rather, he hadn't wanted to be idle.

When the musket chariots charged into the battlefield, the State Preceptor Khan was not as horrified as his sixth son.

The Oirat lived between the Great Ming and the Ottoman Empire; nearly every prince and noble among them was widely traveled, yet generally also lacked much education.

The State Preceptor Khan, Turu Baihu, was one of the rare cultured men among the Oirat princes. He knew this was nothing new.

As far back as the Song dynasty, armies had already used this combination of war chariots and firearms; though the tubular firearms of that time lacked power, the overall concept was the same.

And this was no isolated case — the Russians just north of the Oirat also used this combination. The Russians even mounted firearms on dugout canoes and launched assaults from rivers.

A wagon fort dug in and waiting for reinforcements was a nuisance; most battles required besieging it until water and provisions ran out before victory was possible. But war chariots on the move were nothing to fear.

As long as you had enough cavalry, war chariots posed no threat.

Because while the musket chariot looked terrifying, had long range, and great power, its weakness was glaringly obvious — the carriage body was heavily armored, but that two-horsepower, eight-hoof engine lacked protection.

A few arrows shot in pursuit by cavalry, and its horsepower would first rise, then drop, until it stalled out completely.

So the State Preceptor Khan was not the least bit anxious. He wanted to encourage the enemy commander to make more moves; the more moves a man made, the more certain he was to make mistakes. Warfare, in his view, was all about seeing who made more mistakes.

But the southern camp being routed by these hundred-odd chariots baffled him utterly.

Men died and the formation wavered — that shouldn't have led to a rout.

Even if half the soldiers at the front were shot down by gunfire, the commander only needed to send a few squads from the rear to hold the line while pulling the wounded units back.

Such a simple matter — how could it have turned into a massive rout?

Though the rout had already occurred, the battle-hardened State Preceptor Khan still did not panic. The Khoshut tribe did not fear routs; it was his specialty.

In the State Preceptor Khan's long military career, whether friend or foe, he had witnessed routs and collapses more than once. For a veteran tempered by countless battles, victory and defeat were indeed commonplace matters for a soldier, nothing to be ashamed of admitting.

War has no rule guaranteeing victory, yet there are elusive patterns to be followed — because the cost of defeat is too great and the variables of victory too many, making experience difficult to distill.

Defeats each have their own causes, but victories, without question, are all achieved by infinitely approaching the patterns of war.

Never mind that the routed troops of the southern camp had enemy chariots pursuing behind them and enemy cavalry crashing into their flanks — even without these foes, a single shout in a moment of tension, or even one man breaking ranks on his own, could spiral into a rout.

For example, a single cannonball lands in the Marshal's headquarters formation, then someone yells that the Grand Marshal is dead — and these several thousand elite troops will flee in a swarming mass. Even if Liu Chengzong were alive and kicking, his voice could not stop them from scattering.

Under current technological conditions, such a rout is beyond human power to prevent. But when the era changes and technology advances, this problem becomes very easy to solve: just equip every company with a field radio. Someone says the Grand Marshal is dead, and Liu the Lion says on the radio, "Bullshit."

The men need not change at all, and the problem is solved in an instant.

As for the State Preceptor Khan, with the technology and wisdom he possessed, his solution to this problem was budgeting — budgeting in advance, before the battle began, for his own army's rout.

A rout was not to be feared; a routed force could still be rallied. What was to be feared was a complete dispersal.

After dispersal, an army scattered like loose sand would be divided, surrounded, and annihilated by the enemy, with no further chance to rally.

Therefore, long before the Khoshut army had even crossed the Yellow River westward to begin the campaign, he had already arranged where each unit should go if they lost contact and command.

Every Khoshut officer above the rank of Centurion knew their predetermined retreat direction: the eastern bank of the Yellow River.

Shattered forces would rally there and hold the Yellow River to form a second line of defense.

But as it happened, the five-hundred-odd Han cavalry under Ma Ke launched an attack amid the rout. Most infuriatingly, these men had just been to the south, and suddenly they were to the east, thrusting fiercely westward into the great routed column of Dorji's several thousand troops. In an instant, lances flew like lightning, cutting the battle line into several segments.

Turu Baihu could no longer sit still. He realized that as the southern camp was routed, that cavalry force's strategy was to drive the southern camp's five-thousand-odd routed troops westward away from the battlefield's southern flank.

The moment the enemy cavalry achieved this intent and the southern camp was expelled from the battlefield, that would be the beginning of his loss of battlefield initiative.

The term "initiative" did not yet exist at this time, but "seizing the advantage" meant the same thing. Seizing the advantage was not merely about gaining favorable terrain — it was about gaining the initiative.

This, too, was a kind of strategic momentum. Simply put, battlefield initiative encompassed three questions: When? Where? How?

Holding the initiative meant you could fight whenever you wanted, wherever you wanted, and however you wanted.

Losing the initiative, for the State Preceptor Khan, was no different from sitting still and waiting to die.

So a cavalry force of a thousand riders was dispatched by the State Preceptor Khan, moving along the edge of the trench from east to southwest, attempting to help the pierced southern camp reverse its decline and drive off the Han cavalry.

But they had barely crossed halfway when a sudden volley of cannon fire erupted from their flank.

Those were the sixteen Lion Cannons that Liu the Lion had deployed at the southeastern corner of the chariot camp. If Ma Ke's opponent was the Khoshut southern camp, then Liu the Lion's target had always been the Khoshut eastern camp.

Because he knew that was where the command center and main strength of this vast enemy army lay.

Not that he had seen anything — the windblown dust on the battlefield obscured his vision, so that even with a telescope pressed to his eye he could not make out what was happening two li away. But the matter required little thought; it was essentially common sense.

The command center, in the vast majority of cases, would be tightly defended and conveniently positioned to communicate with the various formations across the battlefield, and therefore was usually at the center of the battle line.

Unorthodox commanders who defied convention did exist, but they were few.

These sixteen Lion Cannons, prepared well in advance, had each been loaded with canister shot according to his earlier orders, just waiting for the eastern camp's troops to rush to the south's aid.

They used canister rounds of eighty three-mace pellets, each full round weighing one and a half jin, requiring a double powder charge to raise the effective range to one hundred fifty paces.

And the relief force from the eastern camp was marching right along the very edge of their effective range.

As it happened, the Khoshut army had little understanding of artillery. The princes and nobles knew of cannons, but their knowledge of them was limited to having seen some tubes, or having laid eyes on captured Russian falconets.

Beyond that, the vast majority of them derived their understanding of artillery from this very battle... it didn't kill many, but its range was very long.

Thus these galloping cavalrymen believed one hundred fifty paces was a perfectly safe distance — muskets, rockets, and bows could do nothing to them at that range.

And artillery, they thought, could hardly aim at them before they galloped away.

They suffered, once again, from a lack of education.

In an instant, over twelve hundred small pellets tore through flame and smoke, hurtling across the battlefield and slamming into the flank of the galloping cavalry's great column, sending up a mist of blood. Immediately, men toppled and horses fell; the entire thousand-man unit was stalled by the cannon fire, jammed up at the battlefield's edge.

Frightened, wounded horses reared up and bolted wildly in all directions, shaking their great heads and crashing into one another, their hooves splaying wide to trample the fallen and wounded soldiers. The vigorous troops and keen soldiers who had been swaggering moments before now wailed like a field of desolation.

The sight made the State Preceptor Khan's eyes split with fury; he nearly crushed the already-cracked telescope in his grip.

He saw it with perfect clarity: a burst of smoke at the chariot camp's southeastern corner, and the pellets spewing from the flames blanketed his relief cavalry like a swarm of locusts. In just one strike, nearly half a hundred-man company of soldiers was gone, and the warhorses killed or wounded were beyond counting.

In the context of the entire battle, such losses were naturally insignificant, but this was in a single instant — half a company swept away by canister shot in a single instant — and it chilled the State Preceptor Khan to the bone.

Fortunately, after the initial panic of being shelled, the cavalry force instinctively withdrew beyond range, running as far from the chariot camp's formation as possible, until they had pulled back over a li to the south. Only then did they reform their ranks and resume their pursuit, chasing the dust cloud toward where Ma Ke's unit was charging.

The reason it was a dust cloud was that on the main battlefield, neither side's commanders could see Ma Ke anymore. He had led his troops in piercing the enemy's southern camp, and then both sides had chased and evaded each other until they had moved beyond the visible range of either army.

Just then, from the western side of Liu Chengzong's chariot camp came the warning blast of a signal cannon. Looking past the forest of spears and lances, Liu the Lion could tell from the waving banners to the west that an enemy force of one to three thousand was approaching him from that direction.

Immediately after, two more signal cannon blasts rang out — the enemy had already closed to within one li.

He had not yet pulled himself free from the joy of successfully ambushing with cannon when his heart suddenly leaped into his throat. For a moment, it was less worry about the enemy about to charge the formation than anxiety for the safety of Wei Qian'er and even Yang Yao's force to the west.

By all logic, the enemy should not have appeared from the west — at the very least, not this quickly.

But the enemy gave him no time to ponder. Moments later, Liu Chengzong, having swung onto his horse, could already see that mounted column, splitting into three streams in a vast, sweeping tide and charging straight at him.

To be honest, in that instant, Liu Chengzong found it very hard to tell whether the enemy intended a skirmish charge or a shock collision.

If a shock collision, the cavalry on both flanks looked set to close in and loose arrows in a skirmish charge; yet if a skirmish charge, the five or six hundred riders in the center were leveling long lances and forming over a dozen shock-collision formations.

But Liu the Lion could be certain of one thing: this Mongol horse force, roughly fifteen or sixteen hundred strong, had come in extreme haste. Beneath the vast, rolling dust cloud, those warhorses came on tossing their great heads and foaming at the mouth — clearly the situation had given them no chance to observe the battlefield.

Otherwise, who on earth... would use a horse column to charge a wagon fort head-on?

Because these men had not only failed to notice that the Han army formation here was a wagon fort — they had not even seen the uneven ring of trenches a hundred paces beyond the battle line.

It even made one wonder: what had these people come here for?

They surged forward in a vast tide, but some ten-odd paces from the trench the front ranks began slowing down almost in unison. The rear ranks, having no idea what was happening, kept charging ahead. In an instant, the front stopped and the rear piled into them, shoving the front ranks — who had just used every ounce of strength to rein in their horses — straight into the trench.

Men and horses tumbled in chaos.

Yet the enemy's will to charge was utterly unyielding. The moment they saw fallen comrades and horses filling the trench level, the horse column behind trampled straight across without the slightest hesitation.

Liu the Lion was stupefied. In four years of leading troops and campaigning across the northwest and southwest, he had considered himself widely experienced, but he had never seen an enemy so recklessly headlong!

"What... what the hell are these bastards?"

Boom!

A Lion cannon loaded with grapeshot roared first from the northwest of the wagon fort. A dozen-odd riders toppled on the spot, yet it could not halt the cavalry's momentum. Another Lion cannon followed right after, equally to no avail.

Then over a hundred wall guns fired in rotating volleys. The alternating, unceasing crack of gunfire was like strings of giant firecrackers igniting before the formation — bang, bang, unending. Massive lead balls pierced men and punched through horses. More heavy muskets followed close behind, firing in volleys to block the enemy.

The charge of the front ranks seemed to be checked, but only for a moment. The rear ranks surged forward again, wave after wave, giving the Marshal's Headquarters soldiers no time to reload.

For a time, arrows poured down like a plague of locusts. The two horse units on the flanks, already battered by lead balls, formed ring formations and loosed arrows as they charged. In the center, two or three hundred riders charged to within a few dozen paces of the wagon line before realizing they faced linked war wagons. Only then did they halt their charge, scattering across the middle of the battlefield with a look of utter bewilderment.

After just a moment, they resolutely dismounted, blindfolded their horses, and drove the horses to charge the wagon line.

He Huchen, holding the western flank, was wound to the breaking point. He drew the battle sword at his waist and shouted for the soldiers to steady the line and brace for the collision.

He Zan even took up a long saber and led a squad to stand behind the spearmen, ready at any moment to cross the wagon line and launch a counter-charge.

The next moment, horse and wagon collided. Over a dozen warhorses galloped headlong into the center of the western wagon line and were impaled on numerous long spears. Four or five linked carts were knocked apart by the inertia; sandbags flew high into the air, scattering sky-filling yellow sand as they crashed to the ground.

Some of the dismounted Mongol soldiers drew bows from behind the wagons, while more took up short weapons and poured through the gaps into the position, engaging the Marshal's Headquarters Han troops in close combat.

Only then did Liu Chengzong understand why these enemies, "fearing not death," fought like madmen. From horseback, he raised an arm and pointed into the distance, where an even thicker cloud of dust was rising.

Beneath that dust cloud was a great encirclement by a frontier-army horse column — fast horses, light sabers, soft bows, long arrows.

Amid the formation flew a great red banner bearing the character Liu. At its very center, over a thousand cavalry led by Zuo Guangxian formed a wedge formation. Wei Qian'er's horse column was slightly behind, spreading out in dozens of small assault squads to form a vast crescent-moon formation, galloping toward the rear of this enemy force.

Seeing those streaming great banners, Liu Chengzong understood. Every doubt was resolved.

These men, madly smashing against the rear of his formation, were an enemy force encircled, pursued, and blocked with no road of escape... Their only chance of survival was to punch through his battle line and link up with their main army.

"No!"

The moment Liu Chengzong thought this, he overturned his own judgment.

This scattered, hastily rallied remnant force, routed once already, could not possibly punch through his formation. But the heaven-shaking, earth-moving roar of battle would not be missed by anyone on the field. The enemy main force to the east would absolutely not sit idle.

If it were him, even without seeing the situation in the west, he would launch a simultaneous assault from three sides. A sudden, ferocious attack with multiple times the troops — that was the path to victory.

At this thought, he frowned and said to those beside him: "Signal flags, blow horns. Tell the east and north faces to prepare for assault and ready themselves to meet the enemy!"

Battle flags swayed, martial music sounded in unison. Amid the sky-filling, rising and falling blare of horns, the wagon-fort defenders braced for action. Row after row of soldiers propped loaded firearms atop the war wagons; forests of spears and lances shifted back and forth behind the wagons.

At the same moment, the enemy, like summoned storm clouds, sent two horse columns circling toward the west and south amid overtones and drum-horns. This time they had learned their lesson and dared not approach within five hundred paces of the wagon fort.

The enemy main force on the northeast face also rapidly assembled into infantry and cavalry formations and began pressing toward the wagon fort with resolute strides.

－－－－－－Author's Note－－－－－－

Good evening!