Chapter 593: A Classic Patchwork Monster

On the Xianyang tableland, the fires of war had yet to die down.

With Liu Chengzong leading the main army to the field, Gao Yingdeng routed Zu Kuan and Zhao Zhirui crushed Lei Shisheng; on the battlefield, only Yang Zhengfang's troops still struggled bitterly to hold on.

By now the overall outcome was clearly decided — every Ming cavalry unit on the field had been killed, shattered, or driven from the battlefield, leaving only six thousand infantry fighting in formation; isolated and outmatched, their defeat was only a matter of time.

Following Liu the Lion's order to call for surrender, Zhang Tianlin sounded the gongs to pull back his troops.

But no one expected that Zhang Tianlin's troops would be so hard to withdraw — because Yang Zhengfang would not let him.

His dismounted infantry fell back ten paces in layered formation, and Yang Zhengfang's Zhen'gan soldiers pressed forward ten paces, determined to stay glued to them no matter what.

Yang Zhengfang was nearly scared to death.

He was terrified.

Hearing the gongs of Zhang Tianlin's withdrawal, only one thought filled Yang Zhengfang's mind: You bastard, you've finally realized your heavy infantry can't beat mine and decided to use the cannons, haven't you?

Truth be told, although there was very little Yang Zhengfang could do in this battle, he had in fact already exhausted every ounce of his brainpower.

He came up through bandit suppression — the kind of truly outstanding commander produced by the Ming army's officer training system.

Commanders like him excelled at tactical direction: they could select and train troops, lead a thousand or more elite soldiers ranging freely through mountain forests, endure long marches, and excel at outflanking and encircling; against equal numbers they were the bravest in storming cities and seizing strongholds, and even against twice their number they could still give as good as they got.

But the battle on the Xianyang tableland, from first contact to now, had lasted less than four hours, and across the vast battlefield there was an overwhelming flood of intelligence about troop movements and the outcomes of engagements.

Every piece of intelligence that poured into his mind forced Yang Zhengfang to weigh it against his own situation, to think and judge from his own position — and then find himself utterly unable to make any change at all.

The chaotic, disordered information of the battlefield flooded the still-holding Yang Zhengfang's mind in such volume that his judgment as a commander sharply deteriorated.

Until Yang Zhengfang abandoned judgment entirely.

One moment this flank was lost, the next that flank was gone, the next someone over there had fled.

What the hell was he supposed to make of any of that!

Now Yang Zhengfang's mind was filled with nothing but fixed thinking: not afraid of infantry clashing head-on, not afraid of cavalry charging — only afraid of artillery bombarding from a distance, so bite down on him!

Absolutely must not let go!

Zhang Tianlin was staring in disbelief, thinking: Our Grand Marshal himself has arrived — are you blind to these damn fifteen thousand fresh reinforcements?

Every last one of them can fight better than me, and you still want to fight?

What's with this kid from Huguang, is he just thick?

While this was going on, the soldiers of the Tiger Guard Battalion had already used war carts and earth sacks to pile up an observation mound; atop it, Liu Chengzong looked down upon the Zhen'gan army's formation and saw Yang Zhengfang ordering his men to cling tightly to Zhang Tianlin's dismounted infantry.

The sight amused him.

He could easily grasp what Yang Zhengfang was thinking, because when heavy infantry clashed in melee, though the clanging and banging was spectacular, the casualty rate was actually very low.

Zhang Tianlin's battalion, moreover, had no heavy muskets or wall guns — they used the rapid-firing Lightning Musket, which shot three-mace bird-musket balls; the range was fairly long, but its lethality against heavy armor was extremely limited.

They could not, like Gao Yingdeng's heavy muskets firing canister, make it so that if a man had bad luck he might catch five or six lead balls at once and always end up with internal injuries.

When the Lightning Muskets fired, any Zhen'gan soldier hit was simply pulled back by his comrades, taken into the formation to shed his armor, and sat down on the ground to rest; someone else donned the gear and became a fully fresh heavy infantryman.

Only the lion cannons accompanying the troops at the front posed any real threat to them.

Yang Zhengfang's tactical maneuvering of squads and larger units was also superb.

The troops at the front of his great formation continuously advanced and withdrew in layered succession.

When withdrawing, the rear ranks filled in first, then the front pulled back;

when advancing, the rear ranks moved forward first, then the front followed up.

The entire formation, across a jagged, interlocking front, maintained discipline and order with great method; throughout the engagement, whether under bombardment from the lion cannons or concentrated fire from the Lightning Muskets, no panic was ever visible.

The soldiers inside the formation had even used this time to dig a shallow trench with their helmets and pile up inner and outer square earth ramparts, to guard against trampling charges by the Marshal's cavalry and long-range cannon fire.

One could call it doing all that was humanly possible and leaving the rest to fate — a precaution taken before the storm.

A measure born of having no better measures, really.

Fighting this way, if Liu Chengzong had not come to reinforce, and Zhang Tianlin still had no cannons or rockets, it would have been fundamentally impossible to defeat this army before running out of provisions.

Because Liu Chengzong could see clearly: though they held the advantage everywhere else on the battlefield, on the front line actually engaging Yang Zhengfang, Zhang Tianlin's dismounted infantry were in fact getting slightly the worse of it in close combat.

That was only natural — they were cavalrymen who had dismounted; against ordinary infantry they could certainly dominate, but against heavy infantry, neither their armor nor their weapons were quite suited to the task.

Every trade has its specialty; Zhang Tianlin's main camp's strength was cavalry. Without rockets, all they could do was circle, surround, and drag it out, using time to win.

If it had been Gao Yingdeng's main camp instead, two volleys of heavy muskets might well have shattered them.

But Liu Chengzong was unwilling to send Gao Yingdeng in — he wanted to persuade Yang Zhengfang to surrender, as a vital asset for the coming defense of the Yellow River line in northern Shaanxi or for an advance into Huguang.

As he gave the order from the observation mound, Wei Qian'er's and Gao Yingdeng's two main camps, to the mighty beat of war drums, marched respectively toward Yang Zhengfang's eastern and western flanks.

The two camps advanced until they reached the rear and flanks of the Zhen'gan army, forming a triangle with Zhang Tianlin's main camp and surrounding Yang Zhengfang's Zhen'gan troops.

Now when Zhang Tianlin pulled back, Yang Zhengfang dared not pursue; if his formation lost cohesion even slightly, the two camps behind him would smash him to pieces.

In the time it took the two camps to move, a dozen or so Mongol cavalrymen under Xie Erhu came riding in from the northeast to report to the Great Khan traces of Ming troops beyond the battlefield perimeter.

Xie Erhu's forces were supposed to have stayed in Yaozhou, but with the main Ming strength on both the northern and southern battlefields already identified, too many horses had gathered around Yaozhou, so the Mongol cavalry had been sent out to graze.

Cavalrymen are bold and range widely, and for them the Xianyang tableland was currently very safe, so Xie Erhu had scattered two thousand riders across it, blanketing the tableland with his cavalry.

In groups of three or five they dared to roam a hundred li afield, serving as reconnaissance riders while scurrying everywhere in search of grass — their guiding principle being: if you can eat it, you've profited.

And the key point was that the grass here really was plentiful. Over in Yaozhou, though the mountains were rich with pasture, the flatlands were no good — the tableland was all farmland, and under military discipline the Mongol soldiers dared not trample the crops. The Xianyang tableland, by contrast, was covered in grave mounds.

The imperial tombs, each built larger than the last, could stuff their horses to bursting.

Mongol soldiers' discipline had never been good, mainly because in the past, north of the Great Wall, a single white-ice winter disaster turned herders into refugees; the nature of the vast majority of Mongol southward raids was in fact much the same as that of Han Chinese peasant armies.

But the soldiers of the Marshal's Mansion's Mongol Brigade were different — their mode of production had changed, and the contrast between the Marshal's Mansion's Mongol Battalion and the Herding Garrison Battalion was starkly evident.

Although the Mongol Battalion and the Herding Garrison Battalion drew from the same pool of soldiers, the Herding Garrison Battalion, which still followed the old tradition of half-herding, half-soldiering, had noticeably poor discipline when they took horses out on campaign; whereas the Mongol Battalion soldiers, having become professional fighting men, quickly attained discipline on par with the Marshal's Mansion's other field battalions.

In fact, because their families worked production in the Herding Garrison, some of their companies even had better discipline than the Han soldiers of the field battalions.

These Mongol cavalrymen kept riding in every few days to report this and that to the central army's Tiger Guard Battalion — none of it meaningful intelligence.

They'd report that there were quite a few common folk watching the excitement, that a market had even sprung up, with small peddlers carrying their wares on shoulder poles, but they were afraid of the Tartar soldiers and would drop everything and flee the moment they drew near, leaving behind some liangpi that was actually quite tasty — they recommended the Great Khan add it to the army rations.

Or they'd say that over at Sanyuan the local gentry had organized a militia and tried to sally out of the city, only to be chased back in by us, though they had some long-barreled cannons that were pretty formidable; there were no Ming troops around, and the Great Khan's horses were eating their fill on the emperor's grave mounds.

Anyway, it was just to show their face — to say, Great Khan, we worked too!

Liu Shizi on the earthen hill was thoroughly at ease.

Truly at ease — though he himself felt such a mood had no place on a battlefield, this campaign was just a bit too easy for him.

He even had someone bring over a folding chair, and had Zhao Zhirui, who was escorting surrendered troops and captives to the central army, climb the earthen hill to recount the course of the battle for him.

He himself took charcoal and recorded the lessons of this campaign.

Come to think of it, this should be the fourth large-scale pitched battle he had commanded.

Among these four pitched battles, the weakest opponent was the Oirat coalition — whether in troop quality, arms and equipment, commander talent and capability, or formation-fighting ability, the Ming army was far stronger than the Oirat.

But the hardest battle to fight was also the one against the Oirat coalition, the Heka Grasslands campaign.

Because although the Oirat army's strength was average, the Heka Grasslands offered room for armies to maneuver and redeploy, and the Oirat coalition had the State Tutor Khan directing from the center.

Of course, it was not that the Oirat coalition's command was particularly brilliant — after all, the Oirat had not only the State Tutor Khan but also Batur Khong Tayiji — but in the end, there was command.

At that time, Liu Chengzong's experience in commanding large corps was extremely lacking, and he could only rely on the quality of his junior officers and soldiers to win.

This situation improved greatly by the Gansu campaign; although Gansu's special status gave Yang Jiamo rare command authority, Gansu's terrain, in turn, left no room to maneuver.

Liu Chengzong was still able, relying on his gradually growing command experience, to beat the Gansu Ming army to a complete rout.

These experiences, in the present Xianyang Plateau campaign, gave Liu Chengzong a feeling of ease — as effortless as breathing.

Because in this campaign, the Ming army had no command at all.

Or rather, it had no forward general commander.

Only when they truly crossed swords did he discover that this Ming army, which had rushed over from Huguang, though numerous in troops, had absolutely no coordinated command.

To be precise, in Liu Shizi's eyes, what he was fighting was not a single army.

Although his troop deployments before reaching the battlefield had all been aimed at a single Ming army, once the battle was truly fought and the outcome was largely decided, he stepped onto the battlefield and could easily see that the Ming army was fighting entirely on its own, with no command center.

Four Ming army camps could be divided into three forces that were not subordinate to one another.

On the surface, there were the Viceroy and the Grand Coordinator — whether Chen Qiyu and Lian Guoshi in the city of Xi'an Prefecture, or Lu Xiangsheng, who was preparing supplies on the Shangluo Circuit — all were campaign commanders of this vast military force.

But when the fighting started in earnest, not one of these few was on the battlefield.

It was just like the Ming court's command and dispatch when facing Later Jin army raids in Liaodong: in the vast majority of cases, the Ming army had only an overall campaign commander, but no forward general commander.

On the battlefield, there were only the Liaodong Camp's commanders Zu Kuan, Zu Dale, and Zu Chengyong; the commanders of the Zhengan troops and Mao Gourd troops, Yang Zhengfang; and the Huguang army's commander, Lei Shisheng.

From Zhao Zhirui's account, Liu Chengzong mentally estimated the normal combat strength of these three forces. The force composed of Zhengan troops and Mao Gourd troops was no worse than Gansu's Three Small Camps; Zu Kuan's Liaodong cavalry was also not weaker than Zhang Tianlin's Banner Camp before it received rockets and troop reinforcements.

In courage, they could even rank in a tier of their own under heaven.

As for Lei Shisheng's Huguang Camp, it was completely caught in a sleepwalking state when attacked — Liu Shizi found it hard to judge their combat strength.

But even if their combat strength were that of second-line guard-and-battalion banner troops, had these three forces been handed to a single commander, they absolutely would not have let him win so easily.

This battle was simply too classic for him.

It began with the river crossing.

Zu Kuan did not lead his cavalry to protect the infantry's flanks; the Liaodong Camp did indeed need to eat, so they went off to do what was most needed — plundering.

Yang Zhengfang also did not move in coordination with Zu Kuan; instead, after crossing the river, he felt his army lacked protection and dug trenches on the spot to preserve his own combat strength.

Lei Shisheng marched at the rear, and by the time he reached the battlefield, Yang Zhengfang was already under attack. To avoid the possibility of being intercepted, he did not swiftly reinforce Yang Zhengfang, but instead crossed the river from the Xingping direction to preserve his own forces.

Everyone was doing what they were best at, choosing the most conservative tactics.

Suddenly attacked, slow to realize — the three Regional Commanders had all made attempts at coordinated operations in their actions.

But such attempts relied entirely on telepathy for communication; each one longed for others to coordinate with him, but would not himself coordinate with others.

Because there was no commander above them — there was neither command nor anyone to take the blame. Any aggressive tactic would bring losses upon oneself and invite disaster.

And then, because they did not coordinate at the start and pursued the tactics they were best at and most conservative, after truly engaging the enemy they were forced to use the costliest, most aggressive tactics in an attempt to reverse the deteriorating battle situation.

Zu Kuan returned from plundering to find Yang Zhengfang under attack, and promptly launched the most valiant cavalry charge against enemy reinforcements over ten times his own number.

Yang Zhengfang, meanwhile, bit down fiercely on the enemy force that possessed heavy cannons, engaging in the heavy-infantry melee he was best at. Lei Shisheng crossed the river, saw the retreating 'Zu Kuan,' and immediately formed ranks in an attempt to provide him protection.

Good soldiers, good generals — but the moment it comes to a pitched battle, they fall apart.

Liu Chengzong felt this was simply the objective reality the Ming army faced.

The court required local armies in peacetime to invest little, draw little pay; in wartime to commit few troops, consume little grain, and win quickly.

As a result, everywhere formed elite units centered on a thousand-odd soldiers — whether infantry or cavalry, all could achieve a command system of rapid maneuver, rapid deployment, rapid commitment to battle, and rapid victory.

But once the enemy was so strong that a single elite unit could no longer win, and the court needed to organize a pitched battle, it would concentrate all kinds of elite forces from everywhere, forming a stitched-together monstrosity with three heads and six arms.

The stitched-together monster was very strong, but its three heads each had their own ideas; each head was only familiar with its own two hands, and used the tactics best suited to itself to fight the enemy — striking out, it was a case of two fists being no match for four hands.

Too classic!

Liu Chengzong slowly shook his head on the earthen hill, wrote the two characters for 'command' in his notes, and sighed: "So this is the Ming army — the Ming army of the Chongzhen reign."