Chapter 711: The Chongde Emperor

The flames of war in Ningxia are burning fiercely.

Meanwhile in Liaodong, the newly founded Daicing Empire—

its emperor, Hong Taiji, was like a furnace himself, seething with rage.

His enthronement had not gone smoothly; in diplomatic terms, it had even been somewhat humiliating.

When founding a state, international recognition is always a matter of great importance.

Just as when a small kingdom proclaims a king,

it requires envoys from the Central Celestial Court to bring the emperor's investiture, signifying recognition by a great power.

It also requires envoys from neighboring states to bring their kings' congratulatory gifts, signifying acceptance by one's neighbors.

And furthermore, it requires the nobles and vassals to attend in person, signifying submission to one's rule.

Daicing and the Great Ming were sworn enemies; Hong Taiji's very purpose in declaring himself emperor was to challenge Ming rule, so naturally he had no need to consider any great-power recognition. But neighborly acceptance and noble submission were both vital to him and his empire.

The Chongde Emperor's enthronement ceremony need not have drawn ten thousand kingdoms to pay homage, but at the very least, the neighboring states and outer vassal tribes should all have sent envoys to offer congratulations in a scene of thriving prosperity.

Yet many of the tribal chieftains who had been invited simply did not show up.

When a wall is falling, everyone gives it a push.

The most earth-shaking event in the Mongol world that year had been the Ming envoy Ma Shaoyu using the Shunyi Prince's golden seal to bludgeon the Later Jin envoy Ma Mingpei to death in Guihua City.

Although Yang Qi had immediately bolted for Xi'an after the incident, and Ma Shaoyu was soon placed under house arrest by Sechen Taiji of the Uxin tribe and escorted to Xi'an,

before losing his freedom, he still sent word, brimming with pride, to the court's Shanxi communications: "Your humble servant has not failed his mission—I have slain the Jin puppet envoy at the great temple of Qingcheng!"

This affair was not only proclaimed to all under heaven by an elated Chongzhen Emperor in the Great Ming, but also spread across the length and breadth of the desert in a short time, thanks to the Marshal's Office and the 230,000 noble households of Monan.

All at once, the three khans of Mobei began to treat the invitation to the Later Jin enthronement ceremony with perfunctory disdain, finding all sorts of excuses to avoid attending.

It was not that this incident made everyone think Daicing was finished, or that the paltry forces they had on hand could now go toe-to-toe with the Eight Banners.

No. In the hearts of the three khans, Hong Taiji was still the master of Later Jin who had chased Ligdan Khan all over the steppe.

It was simply that the three Mobei khans had their own considerations.

If there were no other options, they would certainly have added luster to Hong Taiji's enthronement ceremony to avoid getting beaten.

But given a choice, they were reluctant to get too deeply entangled with the newborn Daicing Empire.

After all, there was still Liu Chengzong squatting to their southwest. That living terror who had fought his way in every direction—who knew which screw had come loose in his head—had always harbored immense hostility toward Later Jin, whom he had never even met.

For the three Mobei khans, Ma Shaoyu bludgeoning Ma Mingpei to death was like a limited-time protective talisman.

After it happened, the three khans unanimously concluded that no matter what they did this year, Hong Taiji would certainly be too busy to send troops to beat them.

Because clearly, the Chongde Emperor, having lost so much face, would have to make dealing with Yang Qi and the Great Ming his most important task this year.

In truth, because of his declaration of emperorship, Hong Taiji had far too many people he needed to beat.

This whole chain of events was interlinked: because Later Jin needed to restore its prestige, Hong Taiji needed to declare himself emperor; declaring himself emperor required intimidating the Great Ming, which required removing Yang Qi as a stumbling block; removing Yang Qi meant attempting to recruit his surrender, and the recruitment attempt caused internal instability.

When the recruitment attempt failed, not only was the interior unstable, but the exterior became unstable as well.

The Manchu nobles had already been displeased with the Three Compliant Princes, feeling that Hong Taiji favored Han Chinese and slighted the Manchus by granting princely titles, fiefs, and independent armies to three Han commanders whose combined troops numbered less than ten thousand.

And now Hong Taiji had actually intended to grant Yang Qi, a Han Chinese, a princely title as well—and a first-rank prince at that!

Now not only were the Manchu nobles displeased, but even the Three Compliant Princes were displeased.

The three of us have both the merit of surrendering and the hardship of campaigning in your service, and yet that bastard Yang Qi gets to become a first-rank prince just because he led Dorgon on a merry chase?

But in truth, there had never been any suspense about this.

The Three Compliant Princes combined had fewer than ten thousand Han troops under their command. Yang Qi, beyond the frontier, commanded forty thousand bowstrings and held a thousand li of territory, occupying a critical position for the detour route into Ming territory. If he could be brought over, it would give Hong Taiji an enormous strategic advantage.

So the psychological resistance from the Manchu nobles and the Three Compliant Princes was a price Hong Taiji was perfectly willing to accept.

However, the investiture fell through, and Ma Mingpei was killed—which made Hong Taiji rather angry.

This was a blatant, resounding slap in the face. In his entire life, Hong Taiji had never suffered such a great humiliation.

But even this, he could accept.

If it had been only this, Hong Taiji would probably have held his nose and swallowed it, sealed off the news, and pretended that Ma Mingpei had never existed.

If anyone asked, he would say the man had gone missing or fled with his golden seal.

No big deal!

What truly nearly made him die of rage was how widely the matter had spread.

The Ming emperor and his ministers were far too delighted by this affair. They even turned it into a weapon: Gao Qiqian, the Director-General of Guanning, personally wrote the letter, had it translated into three languages, and block-printed tens of thousands of copies, which the night-raiders carried to the border and shot at anyone they saw.

By the time Hong Taiji and the Daicing imperial clan learned of it, it was already too late.

These letters had been brought into Shengjing and spread until every household in Shenyang knew the story.

Naturally, the letters did not contain anything pleasant.

They mainly covered three points.

First: The Great Ming is swarming with bandits, and its national power has indeed declined—so much so that riffraff like the roving bandit Zhang Zhi and the native chieftain Hong Tai have all presumptuously usurped titles and declared themselves false emperors.

And as if afraid no one would know who Zhang Zhi was, they attached the life and career resume of the roving bandit Zhang Yichuan.

Second: No sooner had Hong Tai first declared himself a false emperor than he dispatched the false envoy Ma Mingpei to Guihua, intending to enfeoff Yang Qi as a prince. He was bludgeoned to death on the spot by the Celestial Court envoy Ma Shaoyu using a golden seal, his brains splattered across the ground. Tee-hee.

Third: The master of Monan, Yang Qi, has already accepted the Great Ming title of Shunyi Prince. The lands on both sides of the border wall are now one. Those who have fled beyond the frontier should hurry back—there is no good end for you out there.

This letter alone enraged Hong Taiji so much that he fainted on the spot and did not regain consciousness for two double-hours. When he awoke, he furiously denounced the Ming envoy as a barbarian.

This little report was practically screaming in his face: The master of Jianzhou, the Later Jin Tiancong Khan, has finally, through his own efforts, sunk to the same level as some stray cat or dog like Zhang Yichuan.

Hong Taiji thought to himself, what kind of filthy thing is this Zhang Zhi? Why did he have to declare himself emperor right now, damn it!

He's dragged down the prestige of the imperial title!

And what about Liu Chengzong? What's Liu Chengzong doing? Why the hell don't you declare yourself emperor too, and make the throne a bit more respectable!

This propaganda offensive was extremely effective.

If the letter had said, "The Great Ming's national power has indeed declined—so much so that wretches like the western bandit Liu Chengzong and the eastern slave Hong Taiji have all presumptuously declared themselves emperors..."

Anyone reading that letter would surely think the Great Ming is truly finished.

After all, a man's name casts a tree's shadow — speak the name Liu Chengzong, and from Lake Balkhash to the Heilongjiang River, there is no one who does not know it, no one who has not heard it.

But swap in the name Zhang Zhi, and the weight of it gets hammered straight to the bottom — people would obviously think Hong Taiji proclaiming himself emperor was a farce.

Never mind that no one in Zhang Zhi's home province of Shaanxi knows who he is — even Zhang Yichuan, the man who falsely assumed the imperial title, doesn't know who this Emperor Zhang Zhi is. Isn't that just any Tom, Dick, or Harry?

Truth be told, at times like this Hong Taiji hated his own cleverness.

Because he could see at a glance what Gao Qiqian — or rather, the Great Ming court behind him — was up to: Gao Qiqian was courting death.

Gao Qiqian's official post was Supreme Commander of Guan-Ning.

To put it plainly, this was a Great Ming court official attempting to use this letter to stoke his fury and hatred, goading him into marching his army in anger to assault the Ning-Jin defense line.

Apart from that, the letter really would cause slaves and even soldiers and officers to flee toward Liaoxi.

This matter itself required no letter at all — the Liaodong people under Later Jin rule, captives taken in war, the flow of them fleeing to the Ming side had never ceased. Even genuine Jurchens wearing the Tartar queue under Later Jin had never stopped fleeing to Liaoxi and Pi Island.

It was just that with Gao Qiqian's letter preceding it, Hong Taiji's attention was inevitably drawn to the escapees.

Such a shallow stratagem — of course he would not fall for it.

Only a fool would attack the Guan-Ning-Jin defense line.

They had made a two-thousand-li detour, ventured into Shanxi's Xuan-Da-Yun region to risk breaching the passes, entered the border walls to plunder the population, and on the return journey the captured slaves would die off by sixty or seventy percent along the way. They still had to risk Ming troops tailing and ambushing them, raiding them after the plunder — every campaign they cremated their own dead themselves. What was it all for?

Wasn't it precisely to bypass the Guan-Ning-Jin defense line!

From Jinzhou to Shanhai Pass, a mere three-hundred-li stretch from southwest to northeast — the corridor at its widest no more than forty li across, at its narrowest barely over ten li. Rivers cutting off the road from northwest to southeast numbered more than twenty. Every step was a fortified camp.

The closer his army drew to Shanhai Pass, the shorter the Ming army's supply lines became.

To pin all one's hopes on breaking through Shanhai Pass to plunder — that would be like hanging a flatbread in front of a horse and racing it to death gazing at the mountain; you could grind all of Manchuria to dust and still never get in.

Crucially, even if by a stroke of luck they captured a city or two, they could not hold them. Strategically, Manchuria could only pursue field battles and raiding — it could not defend any city beyond its heartland.

Cities west of the Liao River could not be held; even Korean cities south of the Yalu River could not be held.

Because the Manchu population was too small.

Defending a newly captured city meant reinforcements could not arrive in time, yet the garrison could not be left too large — it was far too easy to be wiped out.

Rather than waste lives on a few worthless broken cities that offered no advantage, they would sooner risk a two-thousand-li detour to fight.

But being too clever was sometimes no good thing either.

He truly, desperately wanted to kill that bastard Gao Qiqian!

Hong Taiji reined in his rage, doing his utmost to convince himself not to stoop to the level of that eunuch Gao Qiqian. He forcibly suppressed his fury — this stifling frustration was even harder to bear than falling for the trick itself.

And as luck would have it, his humiliations were not limited to this alone.

Long before his enthronement, at the same time he dispatched Ma Mingpei to Guihua City, he had also sent Inggūldai and Mafuta, who often undertook missions to Korea, to lead a delegation. Using the pretext of attending the funeral rites for Queen Inryeol, they were to persuade King Yi Jong of Korea to petition for Hong Taiji to assume the imperial title. The delegation ran straight into a brick wall and returned crestfallen.

By the time of the enthronement ceremony, not a single neighboring state or great feudal lord of the various tribes had attended in person.

Subadi Khan of western Mobei had simply refused to even see the Jaisang envoy. Gombu Khan of the central region did send someone, but the man who came was a minor noble who did not even rank in Mobei.

Only Sholoi Khan of eastern Mobei could barely be said to have shown some face. Making the excuse that he had fallen off his horse and injured his leg, he sent his son Babu bearing gifts to Shengjing. Yet his conduct and bearing were entirely that of a neighboring state on a diplomatic mission — there was no hint of submission whatsoever.

Babu, however, got along splendidly with Hong Taiji's son Hooge. The two had much in common, but whenever those two little bastards sat together, all they talked about was what they had heard of the Marshal's Manor and that bunch of paupers.

The two of them were even plotting to cobble together a trade route — shipping silver east and goods west — it gave people a headache just listening to it!

Hong Taiji thought to himself, if it were that easy I'd have done it long ago — did I need you two little whelps to scheme it up? After looting Shanxi, he could sell the captives and goods on the spot in Ordos to that guy for all he cared.

That living terror Liu Chengzong, with a brain kicked by a donkey — getting our Jaisang's silver to him is easy enough, but getting goods out of his hands? Impossible.

The more Hong Taiji thought about it, the angrier he got. To this day he still did not understand why. The eastern caitiffs and the western bandits joining forces to strike the Great Ming together — a strategy of sheer genius.

Yet somehow it just didn't work on that idiot Khan Liu Chengzong.

You could say the Mongol tribes, the Korean Kingdom — their relations with us are poor, generational feuds, that's understandable.

But you, a pauper whose family has lived in Shaanxi for generations, and me, a savage from these old forests — what the hell kind of generational feud could we possibly have?

Even if you want to contend for supremacy under heaven, what's wrong with waiting until we've toppled the Great Ming, then having it out with real swords and spears? Why must you block me in Monan, you dog thing that harms others without benefiting yourself!

Compared to Korea, even the Three Khans of Mobei could be considered to have given face.

After all, Hong Taiji had never actually fought the Three Khans of Mobei. Korea, on the other hand, had been battered beyond recognition in the Jeongmyo War. In name a fraternal alliance, in reality it was subjugated. The envoys asked the Korean King to petition for Hong Taiji to ascend the imperial throne — refusal time and again was one thing.

But what he never could have imagined was that no sooner had the Later Jin delegation left Hanseong than King Yi Jong of Korea issued a proclamation to all eight provinces, bitterly denouncing the eastern caitiffs.

Yi Jong said that earlier, during the Jeongmyo Incident, they had been defeated and were forced into subjugation by the eastern caitiffs. Yet their greed was insatiable, their threats and intimidation growing worse by the day — this was a shame unprecedented in the history of their nation.

Enduring disgrace and swallowing pain, they wished to build up strength and rise again, yet this shame seemed to have no end. Now the eastern caitiffs grow ever more brazen and rampant, daring even to falsely assume the imperial title — is this something our ruler and ministers can tolerate?

Therefore Korea, disregarding the balance of strength and the prospects of survival or ruin, decided solely by righteousness, flatly refusing to accept their demands. This caused the barbarian envoys to slam down an ultimatum and depart in fury.

He expressed the hope that the people of the eight provinces, hearing that the court had taken such a righteous stand, would be roused by the news, vowing shared hatred unto death, regardless of distance, rank, or station. He called upon the loyal and righteous to each offer their strategies, and upon the brave to volunteer for the campaign, striving together through hardship to repay the nation's grace.

To put it simply, the Korean King directly ordered the kingdom to prepare for war, readying to resist the eastern caitiffs.

At the same time, he strengthened ties with the Ming, sending word of the rejection of Later Jin to Pi Island and reporting it to the Chongzhen Emperor, hoping to receive all manner of support — saltpeter, sulfur, even military forces.

Because the Korean Kingdom's military readiness... was utterly decrepit.

Commanding talent: none. Armor and equipment: insufficient. Provisions and pay: scarce. Even troop numbers were lacking — a vast and populous Korean Kingdom had a military force of barely one hundred thousand.

In battle they relied on the birdgun tradition inherited from the war against the Japanese, yet their country could not produce saltpeter, depending entirely on the Ming's annual customary sale of three thousand jin of saltpeter and sulfur for military needs.

And from the fifth year of the Chongzhen reign, the court, fearing Korea might aid the enemy, had halted this customary sale.

This was a genuinely weak state. Its survival strategy was one of civilian complacency and military frivolity — politically tearing itself apart through internal strife, militarily relying on the protection of the superior state. That was its condition.

Precisely because of this, the Korean King's furious denunciation of the false imperial title was a real slap in the face to Hong Taiji... They would rather throw away their lives than not curse you.

At the Chongde Emperor's enthronement ceremony, two Korean spring envoys had been forced, necks pressed down, to come and make up the numbers. Yet these two men stubbornly kept their necks rigid — while everyone else performed the three kneelings and nine kowtows, they simply stood there stiffly, refusing to bend.

One of these two was named Luo Dexian, the other Li Kuo.

Of course, they were not the only ones — Sholoi Khan's son Babu also stood.

Babu was a good-natured sort, and he even muttered quietly, trying to persuade them: "Why not just kowtow once? My father's place is far away, they can't reach him, and even if they did attack, there's somewhere to retreat. Your place..."

Babu shook his head. During his days in Shengjing, his brother Hooge had told him quite a few things — in Korea, any further retreat and you'd be in the sea.

Who knows if those two classes of nobles can learn to swim in time.

Babu felt this enthronement ceremony was far too desolate.

Apart from himself and the Joseon men making up the numbers, as well as the Later Jin's Eight Banners proper and the Three Compliant Kings, there were only the ten tribes and twenty banners of the Mongols.

Among them, the Khorchin two wings with six banners, Aohan two banners, Baarin two banners, Jarud two banners, Ongniud two banners, Kharchin two banners, Kheshigten one banner, Aru Khorchin one banner, Khalkha one banner, and Muumyangan one banner.

And among the banner chiefs and leaders of these twenty banners, the names that rang loud in Babu's ears numbered only two. The rest were either sons-in-law of the Later Jin imperial clan, or minor figures who had surrendered and been taken in after their fathers or ancestors were defeated and destroyed.

One of those two was Badari, enfeoffed as Prince of the Khorchin Right Wing and appointed chief of the Right Wing's five banners.

Badari went without saying — the Khorchin tribe's strength was very substantial. He had earlier inherited his father's title of Khorchin Khan; now that his ally had grown powerful, to avoid the calamity of war he had abolished his own khan title and accepted Daiching's princely rank.

The other was Gürüschib, enfeoffed as chief of the two Kharchin banners.

This man, once the leader of the Kharchin who had dominated the northern desert for a time, though he had fallen short of a princely title, had not actually fared too badly.

After all, his tribe had been raided and slaughtered all the way by Erinchen and Sechen Taiji leading the cavalry of the Chahar's southern desert thirteen myriarchies, and only eight hundred people remained in total.

So few people amounted to no more than two and a half niru, or half a jalan. According to the Eight Banners system, five niru made one jalan, and five jalan made one gūsa — that is, one banner.

With the military strength of one-tenth of a banner, Hong Taiji had still granted him two banners' worth of pastureland and organization — that could already be considered exceptionally generous favor.

In short, as an outsider, Babu saw it clearly: on the face of the Chongde Emperor at the enthronement ceremony, there was none of the radiance of a new emperor ascending the throne, not a trace of a smile to be seen.

The nobles of the Eight Banners, too, all wore solemn expressions, each suppressing a fierce resolve. This year, the southern desert would certainly not be peaceful — there would be war.

In fact, even as the formal enthronement ceremony was underway, the entire Eight Banners were already mobilizing.

By the time the ceremony ended, the Eight Banners' scouts and prisoner-taking cavalry had already set out, rushing to the submitted tribes to deliver the campaign orders.

Babu dared not linger long. He immediately took his leave of Hong Taiji and raced back to the northern desert on swift horses, reporting to his father the news that the Chongde Emperor had ordered Ajige to lead troops on a campaign against the Ming.

Sholui gave it some thought but dared not reveal the intelligence himself, so he promptly passed the news to Subudi Khan.

Subudi, being farther from the Later Jin and wholly unencumbered, set out in person at once, rushing to the southern desert to deliver this vital intelligence to Yang Qi.

Only, Subudi had not expected that when he arrived travel-worn at the southern desert, what he saw was not that crafty, rat-like cowering Grand Commandant Yang Qi, who had dared to sit and watch as Ming envoys bludgeoned Later Jin emissaries to death.

Instead, it was the vast, sprawling Han army encampments of the Ordos and banners and warhorses stretching beyond the horizon, and within the central army's command tent, the Grand Marshal who had just won a brilliant victory over Ningxia — Liu Chengzong.