Chapter 654: Henan

Chongzhen was not unwilling to manage Shaanxi.

The situation at court was simply too bizarre — in every court debate, everyone spoke freely about eastern affairs, yet no one dared utter half a word about the northwest.

It was as if they had suddenly returned to those months after the defeat at Sarhu, when the entire civil and military bureaucracy fell silent as winter cicadas.

Only at this moment did people realize that the situation was actually far worse than Sarhu — far, far worse.

No matter how badly the military in Liaodong failed, the Liaoxi Corridor still protected them, so back then someone still dared to take the imperial sword into Liaoxi to restore order.

But now, if Chen Qiyu's massive mobile army corps were annihilated by Liu Chengzong in Guanzhong, what terrifying consequences would follow — and who could even enter Guanzhong to stabilize the situation?

No one.

The Ming army no longer had a proper corps left to send into Shaanxi for another round.

It was not that the Great Ming had no usable troops — the Great Ming not only had them, it had many.

The timing was just awkward: those who could move could not be sent to Shaanxi, and those who could be sent to Shaanxi were un-reorganized troops who, even if dispatched, would only serve as another dish on Liu Chengzong's table.

Because autumn had arrived, and winter was not far off.

Once the Liao Marshes froze, the Liaoxi Corridor would once again reach its annual season for battle.

At this critical juncture, the troops at Ji Garrison, Xuanfu, and Guanning could not be moved; Shandong and Liaodong were one body, even less movable.

As for Shanxi's troops, where they once only guarded the northern border, they now also had to deploy heavily along the Yellow River line... Of course, that was in the court's eyes — in reality, the Shanxi-Shaanxi border at this moment had a grand total of one Slave-Prevention Battalion stationed there.

The colonel of this Slave-Prevention Battalion was You Hongxun.

Earlier, Dorgon had led his troops west, making a show of launching a major campaign against the Monan Viceroyalty.

In the end, Yang Qi played him for a fool — first chasing rabbits in the Ordos, then, seeing that dragging on further would leave him riding a tiger, he fiercely assaulted Guihua City for a few days before lifting the siege and bolting toward Datong.

The Later Jin army first fought Wang Pu, the defender of Datong, in three engagements over two days, nearly shattering Wang Pu's forces. Only when Fu Renxi rushed to reinforce from Xuanfu and Hu Dawei of Shanxi joined the battlefield did the Jin forces withdraw elsewhere.

Wang Pu did not dare pursue.

For the Ming army, the battle reports looked ugly, but in truth it was acceptable.

Because Dorgon actually had a great many troops in hand — aside from the sick, wounded, trapped, and starving, he still had over seventeen thousand combat-ready soldiers inside and outside the border walls. They had merely scattered to plunder cattle and sheep from the countryside forts and stockades, which was what gave Wang Pu an opening to fight a battle.

Wang Pu commanded a five-thousand-strong Slave-Prevention Battalion under Xuanfu; Fu Renxi commanded a three-thousand-strong Raider Battalion; Hu Dawei had an understrength musket-and-cannon battalion of just over two thousand men.

Their three battalions combined amounted to only ten thousand men. If they pursued and fought a pitched battle, they would certainly be mauled.

The man who fought most brilliantly in this campaign was Hu Dawei — with a musket-and-cannon battalion, he found an opening to enter the fray, fought the Later Jin for a spell, scared off the enemy, and rescued Wang Pu and Fu Renxi, all with virtually no casualties to his own unit.

The most infuriating one was this You Hongxun, stationed in Shanxi.

His Slave-Prevention Battalion numbered three thousand men, the same situation as Wang Pu's.

Having learned the lesson of the Later Jin's incursion into Xuan-Da the previous year, the Ming court had specially formed two battalions dedicated to slave-prevention — one of five thousand men, one of three thousand — both recruited with generous pay, with all horses, rewards, and equipment provided on demand. They could be called the most elite corps stationed in the northern part of Shanxi's Xuan-Da region.

Wang Pu's five thousand men at least fought two battles — not brilliantly fought, but fought nonetheless.

Their disadvantage lay in the Later Jin army's superior maneuverability, always able to achieve local numerical superiority. Even when the Ming army had more men at the start of a battle, as the fighting went on, Later Jin reinforcements would arrive.

The problem was, when Later Jin reinforcements came, if the Ming army withdrew, it was flight; conversely, when Ming reinforcements came, the Later Jin army simply stopped fighting — they left when they wanted, withdrew when they wanted, holding the initiative at all times.

And compared to Wang Pu, Fu Renxi, and Hu Dawei, You Hongxun led his troops like a war correspondent.

When the Later Jin army reached Yingzhou, he was at Mayi; when the Later Jin army reached Mayi, he was at Shuozhou; when the Later Jin army was at Shuozhou, he ran off to Kelan Prefecture.

In truth, in this campaign that took place at the turn of summer and autumn in the eighth year of Chongzhen, the coordination displayed by the Ming court's official troops was extremely poor, far worse than the previous year.

Those who shone more brightly, in fact, were the militia and village braves of Datong Garrison.

The reason Dorgon's troops repeatedly assaulted forts and stockades without success was that Grand Coordinator Wu Sheng had long since distributed muskets, cannons, and gunpowder to the stockades and taught the common people to gather in the stockades when trouble came, defend them with firearms, and fire upon any eastern caitiffs they saw.

In Yingzhou, a dozen or so village braves even led troops in a night raid on a caitiff camp, throwing an entire Jin battalion into such confusion — not knowing the real strength — that they struck camp and fled that very night.

Many Jin soldiers were wounded or killed by firearms; every district's forts and stockades filed reports, though because they could not control the battlefield, many corpses were hauled away and burned by the Later Jin army.

Even so, over eighty stockades and villages still managed to recover more than a hundred corpses and capture ten Later Jin soldiers alive during the campaign.

In contrast, You Hongxun, supposedly an elite of the official army, dared not fight a single battle from start to finish — a disgrace beyond all measure.

The most absurd thing was that although this battalion never engaged the Later Jin army, it still suffered several hundred casualties.

While stationed in Shanxi, they contracted a camp epidemic; dispersed in their encampments, over three hundred men died.

At the campaign's end, however, the Later Jin army gained no advantage either, because Yang Qi emerged from Guihua City.

Dorgon had been guarding against Yang Qi all along — he sent only nine thousand men inside the border walls, leaving another eight thousand outside the walls to watch Yang Qi.

But the lands beyond Datong's border were Yang Qi's territory — more precisely, the homeland of Yang Qi's subordinate, the Shaktu Taiji; this was the old Chahar territory.

The Shaktu Taiji had grown up here; no one knew the terrain and topography of these grasslands better than he did.

From the moment Dorgon led his troops inside the border, Yang Qi and Wang Cheng'en had been stirring up all manner of commotion in the Manhan Mountains, making a show of preparing to attack, while the Shaktu Taiji took He Huchen on a long detour, racing back to his old home at Zhangbei to lie in wait.

Dorgon fought desperately inside the passes — he burned nearly two thousand corpses alone, seized over two hundred able-bodied men and women, and more than seven thousand cattle, sheep, horses, and mules.

In truth, he could have seized far more people, but on this western expedition, Dorgon too had been starved into developing Liu Chengzong Syndrome — the moment he saw a person, his mind automatically calculated grain, which was why he forbade the nobles under his command from plundering population.

Those two hundred-odd people were still taken by Hooge... pure willfulness, simply refusing to listen to his uncle.

Dorgon was so furious that he directly reassigned Hooge to take his troops west, joining the front line against Yang Qi, and sent the baggage train driving the cattle and sheep east first.

In the end, He Huchen slashed and seized, pursuing relentlessly, and snatched away most of the livestock. By the time Dorgon realized what was happening, the Shaktu Taiji had already taken He Huchen on a sightseeing tour north.

The enraged Dorgon had no other option but to turn back and hammer Yang Qi once more, driving him straight back into Guihua City before he himself fuming set out on the return journey.

A full circle, several battles fought — returning empty-handed.

So this winter, the Later Jin would certainly attack Liaoxi again.

They only had to wait for the Liao Marshes to freeze in winter, and the Liaoxi Corridor would once again reach its annual season for battle.

In the entire north, only the troops of Southern Zhili could be moved.

But the garrison troops of Southern Zhili were precisely the ones they dared not move.

Shaanxi was gone, Henan was in chaos, and the Wu Bridge Mutiny in Shandong had rotted the whole of Lu — these were all major fiscal provinces of the Great Ming.

The Great Ming's finances now depended entirely on Southern Zhili, which paid the most taxes and contributed the most grain, to hold things up.

Therefore, at the moment when Chen Qiyu's heavy troop group was trapped in Shaanxi, Chongzhen simply had no spare capacity to rebuild an army and rush to the rescue.

All he could do was have Zhang Renxue move into Henan and try his best to wipe out Zhang Yichuan's rebel force.

So the question became — was Zhang Yichuan... easy to wipe out?

In Shaanxi, Sweeping King Zhang Yichuan was not a figure who could be put on the table.

Especially for Liu Chengzong's Marshal Manor, all the officers and men had seen the combat strength of the Sweeping King's division with their own eyes.

People even guessed that, never mind the main camp armed to the teeth, they wouldn't even need to send out the Han soldier camp — just the two Mongol camps alone could overrun all five of Zhang Yichuan's camps.

Even Zhang Yichuan himself did not feel he counted as any kind of remarkable figure.

After all, in terms of experience, battle record, ability, martial prowess, and strength, he could not even crack the top twenty in Shaanxi.

But that was Shaanxi.

The most terrifying province at present — the intensity of warfare in recent years had even surpassed the Liaodong front line, and the number of large-scale battles also exceeded Liaodong.

Zhang Yichuan called in Li Zicheng as a substitute attacker, broke through Wu Pass, and the moment he entered Henan, the feeling was immediately different.

"Hey, looks like I've actually got some moves!"

Of course he had some moves.

In terms of seniority, back in the third year of Chongzhen he already had several hundred men under him and was qualified to attend Wang Jiayin's Qingjian Assembly — though they didn't let us inside.

In terms of breadth of experience, at the Qingjian seating arrangement back then, the first Wang Jiayin, the second Wang Zuogua, the third Gao Yingxiang, the fourth Liu Chengzong — he knew them all.

Wang Jiayin was the elder brother; after Zuogua surrendered, he inherited all his legacy; Gao Yingxiang was the big brother he himself swore allegiance to; Liu Chengzong was his direct superior and the angel investor who funded the burning of the Fengyang Imperial Ancestral Mausoleum.

In terms of experience, as early as the fifth year of Chongzhen, he had already joined forces with Dashing General Li Zicheng, Chaos King Zhang Yingjin, World-in-Chaos King Guo Yingpin, and Scorpion Block Tuo Yangkun, emerging as a second-generation Shaanxi roving bandit leader in Shanxi.

They fought their way across Shanxi, advanced through the Taihang Mountains into the region north of the Yellow River, and conducted mobile operations in Wu'an of Zhangde Prefecture in Henan and Lintao Pass of Guangping Prefecture in Northern Zhili, battling Shizhu troops, Sichuan troops, Changping troops, Tongzhou troops, Baoding troops, and Daming troops, with casualties and kills roughly even on both sides.

Afterward, they slipped across Henan and cut all the way back to Shaanxi in one traverse.

What kind of elite troops and fierce generals under heaven had he not seen?

It was just that Zhang Yichuan was inside the collective of the Dashing Army's five camps, and relying solely on his own couple of moves was simply not enough to make his ability stand out.

After all, they were all civilian army leaders who had undergone several years of baptism by war — every single person had a couple of moves.

During that period in Guanzhong, the reason Zhang Yichuan's troops were relatively shabby was only because he had expanded madly, forming five camps, four of which were brand-new refugee camps, making him suddenly exceptionally weak.

What was more, he had also witnessed Liu Chengzong's regular army large-corps warfare in Guanzhong, which consequently made Zhang Yichuan's inner evaluation of himself plummet all the way down to his toes.

He doubted whether all these years he had actually been fighting wars, or had just been wantonly taking human lives.

This mood of doubt persisted until he entered Henan.

Li Zicheng breached Wu Pass and turned south toward Huguang; Zhang Yichuan led his troops into Nanyang Prefecture, and his first target was the Tang Prince Manor in Nanyang.

But standing in front of Nanyang was a small county seat — Neixiang.

This city was not easy to take by storm. As early as when Zhang Yichuan was still in the Dashing Army's five camps, they had once attacked Neixiang under Li Zicheng's leadership.

Because the Neixiang magistrate that year was Ai Yuchu, of the Ai family of Mizhi — the master Li Zicheng herded sheep for as a child.

When he was little, he rode the stone lion at the master's gate and was caught and beaten up by Ai Wannian.

Later, when he took out a loan, he borrowed from Ai Wannian's father, Ai Yingjia, and could not repay the interest, so the authorities caught him and beat him up again.

In Li Zicheng's entire life, only the Ai family had ever beaten him — and they had beaten him twice at that.

So when Li Zicheng attacked this city, he was very fired up.

But back then they had been unable to take the city, because Ai Yuchu was also born of a border general's family — Ai Mu and Ai Wannian in his clan were both generals, and he himself was a scholar, so his military strategy and tactics were not poor either.

As early as when the peasant army crossed the Yellow River in force from Shanxi into Henan, Ai Yuchu had ordered men to bury old-style fuse landmines called "Rolling Earth Dragons" outside the city, with all the fuses inside the city. When Li Zicheng arrived, they ignited the mines from within the city and blew up a great many people.

But now was different from the past.

Neixiang no longer had Ai Yuchu.

Ridiculous as it was to say, Ai Yuchu had not been promoted and transferred away for his merit in defending the city, but had been thrown into the Nanyang Prefecture prison by the Tang Prince, Zhu Yujian.

The reason was that the Tang Prince had submitted a memorial to the Chongzhen Emperor, saying that according to ancestral regulations, in a prince's fief, local officials must pay their respects morning and evening, and now people like Ai Yuchu never came to pay respects.

It was enough to make the Chongzhen Emperor die of rage.

Wasn't this just making trouble out of nothing?

This fellow had only been released in the fifth year of Chongzhen to inherit his title, and ever since becoming Tang Prince he had done nothing but stir up trouble endlessly, his edge fully exposed, always wanting to meddle in state affairs with his status as an imperial prince.

One moment he was quarreling with his own court officials over the issue of imperial clan appointment exchanges, the next he was denouncing people for not paying respects, then he was demanding the court send additional guards — his presence was higher than all the other princes combined.

He had clearly been locked up in the Fengcheng Bureau by his grandfather the old Tang Prince until he went stupid — the whole man was a lunatic.

What prince under heaven looked forward to local officials paying him morning and evening respects? Did he really take himself for a king?

Taking a chicken feather as a warrant!

The Chongzhen Emperor was almost at his limit with the Tang Prince. He thought to himself, I exhaust my mind and spirit every day, the border defense lines keep shrinking and shrinking, the army suffers defeat after defeat, I'm so poor I could pawn my pants and nothing gets done properly, and the fact that it hasn't all collapsed yet is already thanks to heaven and earth.

And you, my unlucky relative, keep rubbing salt in my eyes every day. The moment you inherited the title, you built a tall tower in the manor to feast guests, and you even called it the damn Gaoming Tower — so you're the only brilliant one, is that it?

Given the chance, I absolutely must deal with this jumping-up-and-down, insufferable relative!

But there was no chance yet. Ancestral regulations were regulations — no one said they could be ignored, but once they were brought up in a memorial, they had to be handled according to the regulations.

So he could only order Ai Yuchu arrested and brought before the judicial office for trial, and incidentally have the Ministry of Rites issue a notice reiterating the statutes to local officials, telling people that this rule did indeed exist, and they should be more careful.

And so Neixiang County was effortlessly taken by Zhang Yichuan. His main force had barely reached the city walls when the vanguard general, Sky-Conquering Tiger, had already led troops onto the battlements.

Afterward, they opened the granaries and distributed grain, swept through the forts and stockades in every direction, fighting Tang Prince manor guards and local garrison troops all along the way, and met not a single worthy opponent.

Zhang Yichuan discovered that once he left Shaanxi, his self-assessment in war had returned.

So the defeats in Shaanxi — the problem had not been with us after all, but with that whole bunch of people fighting bitterly in Shaanxi.

Once out of Shaanxi, I am Liu Chengzong's Henan branch Liu — the whole person radiates invincibility.

Tang County, Dengzhou, Nanyang Garrison — count them one by one, whoever comes, dies!

It was not until he reached the walls of Nanyang and besieged the prefectural city that Zhang Yichuan encountered the biggest problem since entering Henan — plague.

In places like Hongnong and Lushi in Henan Prefecture, refugees and routed soldiers fled into Nanyang Prefecture, causing his troop strength to suddenly balloon to twenty thousand, but the plague that followed also swept across the countryside.

Left with no choice, Zhang Yichuan abandoned Nanyang, turned north, and led his troops through Ruzhou to attack Luoyang, where the Fu Prince Manor was located.

His army was like a legion of the dead marching through the mountains of western Yu — at the front, they took in anyone who came, recruiting soldiers and buying horses; at the rear, they shed men at a frantic pace, collapsing and dying one after another.