Chapter 616: Beyond the Xuanfu Border

At the foot of the Barbarian Han Mountains.

This area belonged to Jining Circuit during the Yuan dynasty, and even today people still call it Jining.

Only now there are no market towns or walled cities — beyond the Great Wall of the Great Ming, all that remains here is a boundary line of the Marshal's Manor.

West of the Barbarian Han Mountains lies the Marshal's Manor's Cloud Central Garrison, also the seat of the Mobei Governor's Office and Guihua City; to the east lies Goose Gate Garrison, under the jurisdiction of Chao Tu Taiji.

This Goose Gate Garrison is, in fact, the former homeland of the Chahar.

The Goose Gate Garrison that Liu the Lion carved out has only a southern and a western border — no eastern or northern border.

The western border is Daihai Lake at the foot of the Barbarian Han Mountains east of Guihua City; the southern border is the Great Ming's Xuan–Da Great Wall.

Liu Chengzong's original intent was not to have Chao Tu Taiji come here and start a war with the Great Ming, so he specifically pointed out that the southern border was the Ming Great Wall.

As for the east and north, it was not that Liu Chengzong deliberately left the borders undrawn, but rather that he simply did not know where those borders lay — he had never been to Jining.

But Chao Tu Taiji was all too familiar with this place.

Deep in his subconscious, he believed this land should now be crawling with the Mongol tribes that had once betrayed the Chahar — at the sight of the Chahar dragon banner symbolizing the Northern Yuan, no one would stop to talk to him; they would either turn and flee, or throw themselves at him in a fight.

Chao Tu Taiji, the Regional Commander of Goose Gate Garrison, originally had very tangled feelings toward this land.

But once he arrived, he discovered — the things remained, but the people had changed.

Those tribes that betrayed the Great Khan had, for the most part, been utterly shattered in the war against Ligdan Khan. Mighty great tribes that once boasted thousands or even tens of thousands of able-bodied men were now reduced to small tribes with only a few thousand elderly and weak — some tribes could not even muster five hundred able-bodied men.

Their lords, on the other hand, had all become Mongol beile of the Later Jin and gone off to live in the east.

And those tribes that did not betray the Chahar Great Khan fared even worse — as their nobles fell in battle and perished, entire tribes vanished like smoke.

These past few years, the Later Jin has been stretched thin in its military campaigns. After Ligdan Khan resolved to migrate west, Hong Taiji dispatched flanking forces several times to campaign in the Mobei steppe, but in truth he dared not accept large numbers of surrendered Chahar troops.

The hearts of men always change more slowly than their circumstances.

Although the Northern Yuan collapsed as quickly as it did, before Ligdan Khan died in Qinghai, the Mobei Mongols still held a tremendous psychological advantage when they looked upon the Later Jin.

This was vastly different from the defeat of the Four Oirat Allied Armies at the hands of Liu Chengzong.

The Mobei Mongols, with the Chahar tribe at their core, never actually had the chance to fight a decisive battle against the Later Jin.

They had been fighting all along against the Khorchin, Jarud, Baarin, Naiman, Aohan, Kharachin, Tümed, and other tribes.

Standing from an outsider's perspective, Liu Chengzong would think that Ligdan Khan, threatened and pressed by the Later Jin, fled westward — only to fall straight into his own tiger's jaws.

But from Ligdan Khan's perspective, he had always wanted to test his strength against Hong Taiji, yet first he had to quell the internal rebellions. In the end, he found that quelling the internal rebellions had failed — a whole host of tribes were dragging him down, making it impossible to fight the Later Jin, so he could only migrate west.

For the Mongol nobles loyal to the Great Khan, this was even more the case — none of them thought the Later Jin was fearsome; they only thought the treacherous ministers and rebel scoundrels within the Northern Yuan were hateful.

With that mindset, the Chahar troops who were defeated and surrendered had only one fate.

In the second year of Chongzhen, Wunuge led the Eight Banners Mongol Left and Right Camps to attack the Chahar. Two thousand households surrendered. Fearing his own forces were too few to control the surrendered troops and that they might rebel and return to the Ming, he spared two Mongol nobles, slaughtered all the able-bodied men, and carried off eight thousand women and children as plunder.

This is also why, during the great chaos in Mobei, waves upon waves of ordinary Mongol soldiers fled toward the Ming — attaching themselves to border generals if they could, throwing in their lot with peasant army leaders if they could.

In this place called Goose Gate Garrison, basically none of the great Mongol tribes of the past remained — only a few petty nobles, attached to the Kharachin tribe, grazed their herds in the remote corners.

The best grazing lands near the Great Wall had been planted with grain by those Ming troops along the Ming border.

Last year had been a great victory for the Ming army, so the Ming troops had grown exceedingly bold — to hell with inside or outside the Great Wall, they planted grain on every patch of land that could be farmed, and raised sheep on every patch that could not.

Chao Tu Taiji did not dare make a sound.

Because the man farming the land and raising the sheep was named Fu Renxi, the current Deputy Regional Commander of Xuanfu, whose primary duty was overseeing the defenses of Zhangjiakou.

Last year, Fu Renxi had shone brilliantly in the campaign against the Later Jin and was promoted to Deputy Regional Commander of Xuanfu. Then, late last year, he deployed his troops to "confront" Yang Yao with great success, catching the eye of Supreme Commander Yang Sichang.

Yang Sichang is now the Supreme Commander of Xuan, Da, and Shanxi. To quell the rebellion, domestically he advocates opening mines and recruiting laborers to break up the rebel factions; externally, he pacifies Yang Yao to prevent unrest in Mobei... Fu Renxi is the one responsible for the latter.

In reality, though, because of Fu Renxi, Chao Tu Taiji hated the Great Ming with a grinding, itching hatred in his teeth.

Because Fu Renxi's troops were running all over the lands beyond Zhangjiakou — on one hand protecting the refugees recruited from Shanxi as they opened up farmland beyond the pass, on the other hand recruiting Mongols everywhere: the strong were enlisted as barbarian auxiliaries, and the scrawny were put to raising sheep for his army beyond the pass.

Nothing to be done about it — as a key link in Yang Yao's circular trade, Fu Renxi was simply too rich.

But to Chao Tu Taiji: Damn it all, those are my people!

Yet he dared not start a war with Fu Renxi — after all, Fu Renxi had him by the grain.

And in the northeast of Goose Gate Garrison, beyond the Miyun border, lay the Kharachin tribe, whom Chao Tu Taiji likewise could not afford to provoke.

Kharachin and Karacin are the same name — just two different translations in Ming dynasty official documents.

Right now is precisely the era when the Kharachin tribe — or more accurately, the Uriankhai clan — is at its most powerful.

The Kharachin tribe had known greatness before. In the era of Dayan Khan, Bolai became the lord of the Kharachin tribe and for a time earned the title "Among the Tatar tribes, Bolai is the strongest." He attacked the Oirats in the west and held the Uriankhai in thrall in the east — for a time, his prestige was unrivaled.

After the Jiajing period, the Kharachin tribe's grazing lands already stretched west to beyond the Xuanfu border and east to Kaiping, bordering the Uriankhai. Soon after, they also seized the territory of the Duoyan Guard.

However, during the Chongzhen era, Subudi, the chieftain of the Thirty-Six Houses of Duoyan, submitted to the Great Ming and obtained the official post of Commander of the Duoyan Guard, while also forming an alliance with the Later Jin, becoming one of the powerful feudal lords of the Kharachin tribe.

Later, he even attacked his own overlord — the low overcoming the high — seized control of the Kharachin tribe, and before his death, as a maternal relative, became the master of the Kharachin tribe.

After his death, his son Gürüschi Qibu sided with the Later Jin. With the Later Jin state's endorsement, he sat securely and firmly as the master of the Kharachin tribe.

And after Ligdan Khan swept into Qinghai like a hurricane, from beyond the Ningxia border north to Shanhai Pass, the Kharachin tribe was the mightiest king on this steppe.

The Tümed with only three thousand nine hundred warriors, the Ordos living at the mercy of the Ningxia Garrison — these descendants of Borjigin were clearly no match for the Uriankhai clan of the Kharachin tribe in terms of strength.

As for the Aohan, Naiman, Ongniud, Baarin, and the like — tribes that in earlier years still had to live under the Khan's court's shadow and later stabbed the Khagan in the back to submit to the Later Jin — Gürüschi Qibu held them in even less regard.

Because they were all vassals of the Later Jin, whereas at this very moment, the Kharachin were allies of the Later Jin.

Fortunately, the vast, surging charge of a hundred thousand cavalry from Mobei beyond Guihua City last year had indeed left a deep impression on Gürüschi Qibu.

Only this gave Chao Tu Taiji, along with the surviving elders and remnants of the Northern Yuan newly arrived here, enough time to stabilize their internal affairs.

The Mobei Governor's Office did not fear the Kharachin, but Chao Tu Taiji did.

Yang Yao was gallivanting around the steppe all day with Bai Wenxuan's bunch of Han troops, neglecting proper duties. Chao Tu Taiji had only three thousand-man squads of Mongol cavalry under his command — it was utterly impossible for him to fight the Kharachin to the death.

Still... truth be told, the time of peace would not last much longer.

After all, Mobei belonged to them, but it also belonged to the two hundred-odd Mongol hereditary marquisates left behind by the Three Khans of Mobei. These men were like madmen — without so much as a word of warning, an army of twenty thousand swept into the Kharachin in a grand, surging tide.

Chao Tu Taiji was utterly dumbfounded. Over twenty thousand cavalry surged right before his eyes, a dark, teeming mass charging toward the Kharachin tribe.

And then, in an exceedingly short time, they plundered the Kharachin clean and came back — carrying other men's wives in their arms, leading other men's sons by the hand, driving other men's cattle and sheep, and bearing other men's household goods on their backs.

Shaktu Taiji was so frantic he was about to jump up.

"You motherfuckers are hogging it all for yourselves!"

The Mongol soul blazed fiercely within them. Somehow, a battalion of Mongol cavalry under Yanmen Town's command spontaneously organized, intending to pull a fast one on their allies.

Of course, this probably had nothing to do with the Mongol soul.

Because on the other side of the Great Wall, a raider battalion under the Xuanfu Regional Vice Commander had also spontaneously organized, mustering outside Zhangjiakou, intending to cross the border and pull a fast one on the northern caitiffs.

But very soon, both Shaktu Taiji and Fu Renxi were forced to calm down.

Dorgon had arrived.

Bringing nearly twenty thousand troops, sweeping in mightily all the way from Shenyang.

As Nurhaci's fourteenth son, Dorgon was only twenty-three this year, even a year younger than his elder brother Hong Taiji's son Hooge.

Despite his youth, Dorgon's political standing had always been high. As early as age eight, he was the Later Jin lord with the most niru aside from his adult elder brothers, and also the ninth prince in the Eight Prince Council.

As everyone knows, the Eight Prince Council had nine people.

Eight-year-old Dorgon and his six-year-old younger brother Dodo shared one slot — combined age fourteen, which in ancient times counted as an adult.

By now, as the master of the Bordered White Banner, Dorgon was one of the most powerful lords in the Later Jin.

To be honest, the situation of this western expedition was very thorny for Dorgon.

If he hadn't received a special mission from the Tiancong Khan, Dorgon would actually have been quite happy to see his ally Kharachin plundered clean.

After all, Dorgon had followed Hong Taiji to war since childhood, and was his most favored younger bro— most favored power-struggle tool. He actually embodied the strengths of two great men of Jianzhou.

He resembled Nurhaci, and also closely resembled Hong Taiji.

And Hong Taiji... to be honest, in ability and temperament, he didn't resemble Nurhaci at all — it was like the Khiyad clan producing a Temüjin.

In Dorgon's knowledge system, war — war was winning to eliminate external threats, losing to eliminate internal strife.

Looking at it with the long-term perspective his old father taught him, stretching the timeline to five or ten years, what fucking Later Jin allies existed in this world? It was all just fooling idiots.

A strong state has no allies — either it's not truly strong, or they're not true allies.

Jianzhou's alliances, every single one, had been swallowed up.

Kharachin was the fucking next one.

But here came the problem.

What had Dorgon brought his troops here to do?

He had come to recruit Mongol banner troops, to establish for Manchuria an image of winning hearts and minds in the Southern Desert, in order to stabilize the domestic situation and sweep away the gloom of every household in mourning, Shenyang City reduced to barely over a thousand households, and fewer than ten thousand households outside the city.

Yes, Yang Qi indeed didn't dare fight him.

This could be seen from Shaktu Taiji at Yanmen Town.

As soon as Shaktu Taiji heard that the Later Jin had mobilized twenty thousand troops, emptying their nest to sweep across the Southern Desert, the battalion of Mongol soldiers who had spontaneously armed themselves immediately spread the order to flee everywhere.

People rolled up their belongings and fur-bearing livestock, taking everything they could carry and burning everything they couldn't, fleeing westward toward Yunzhong Commandery in a vast cloud of dust.

The south was the same. As soon as Fu Renxi saw such a massive refugee movement outside the border, he immediately ordered the border troops to sweep everything movable outside the border back inside, and burn whatever couldn't be moved.

Fu Renxi, south of the Great Wall, could see it all very clearly: it was Liu Chengzong's Southern Desert Command that had first sent over twenty thousand Mongol cavalry swarming east to fight and plunder.

Who they fought, our Regional Commander Fu didn't know, but they'd certainly looted plenty — livestock, goods, women and children, cattle and horses, all hauled back in bundles big and small.

Such a fine affair — and no one invited me.

Then Dorgon brought his great army, following the scent, and here they were.

Clearly, the Later Jin army had been drawn here by this Marshal's Office bunch. So, reasonably speaking, grievances should be settled with those who caused them — they shouldn't come looking for us.

But warfare in these times had a huge entrepreneurial character, revolving around profit to be made and grain to be eaten.

Never mind the question of who would win or lose if the Marshal's Office and the Later Jin army fought outside Zhangjiakou.

Emotionally, Fu Renxi of course hoped that Marshal Army Commander Yang Qi would win. He even wanted to lead his troops as reinforcements to help Yang Qi hold the field.

But objectively, both these sides were fucking not of our kind, and each was poorer than the other.

Dorgon led a bunch of Manchu paupers with no logistics. They looked mighty and imposing, but in reality they didn't have a single sheep. Fu Renxi had no idea how these people had raced all the way from Shenyang.

As for Yang Qi, he was a few Han leading a bunch of Mongol looters. Although they'd just pulled a big job and didn't have to worry about food in the short term,

they were still looters.

In the Great Ming, being born of a different ethnicity wasn't a crime — you could even become a high official or famed general.

But looters were definitely criminals in the Great Ming and ought to be in jail. Besides, in times like these there wasn't even prison food to eat — executing them on the spot was better than waiting for a chosen day.

Behind Fu Renxi stood the Great Ming border wall, and beyond that wall were the Great Ming commoners of Shanxi, plagued by plague, famine, and bandits.

And he was a Great Ming border general, four generations guarding the frontier, every generation loyal unto death.

This matter allowed not the slightest error. Once he crossed the border and was defeated, whether Dorgon's Later Jin army broke through the wall or Yang Qi's Mongol soldiers vaulted the wall to plunder, the consequences would be irreversible.

So Fu Renxi, to be safe, before Dorgon reached the Xuanfu border, sent troops charging into Yanmen Town and burned it again.

The order he gave his soldiers was: set fire to everything Shaktu Taiji hadn't had time to burn or had missed.

And the wells the Mongol soldiers had dug this year — poison them, shit in them, cut hair into them, then fill them with earth and stones. Also bury some steel-wheel landmines by the riverbank.

In this business, Fu Renxi was even more enthusiastic than Shaktu Taiji.

He knew that beyond the border was a battlefield. No matter who won this fight between Yang Qi and Dorgon, since they'd come, they'd both covet the Great Ming commoners' property inside the wall.

So Fu Renxi figured, since it's a battlefield, scorched earth it is. Not my turf anyway — why stand on ceremony?

I'm such good friends with Grand Marshal Liu — filling in a few of his little wells, what's the big deal?

Dorgon was about to puke.

He had come bearing the mission of creating hearts and minds in the Southern Desert.

But after leaving Kharachin territory, forget hearts — all the way to outside Zhangjiakou, he hadn't seen a single person.

Only black smoke billowing into the sky, and when they finally dug out a well, a mouthful of filthy water full of chopped hair.

Proclaiming the parting gift left for him by the former Northern Yuan prince, now Marshal's Office noble, Shaktu.

"No need to trouble yourself on my account. I've burned them all. Please, do as you will."