Chapter 718: The Rehe

Beyond the border from Zunhua, southeast of the Rehe, at the foot of Bangchui Mountain.

This river's other name is the Wulie River.

It is a tributary of the Luan River; after the split, its water is darker than the Luan's, hence the name Wu-Luan River. Because this area is a tug-of-war zone in the north of You-Yan, the name has changed several times through transliteration.

Sometimes called Wu-Luan River, sometimes Wu-Luo River, it gradually became Wulie River, and later the "lie" was changed to "fierce." Now, because there are hot springs here, people call it the Rehe.

The two Bordered Blue Banners of the Later Jin army left to guard beyond the border were encamped right at the foot of Bangchui Mountain on the east bank of the Wulie River.

Feiyanggu, the Manchu Gūsa Ejen of the Bordered Blue Banner, stood on the mountain, gently tapping his armor skirt with his pipe bowl, frowning as he gazed west and listened to the report of his banner's Colonel Saimuha.

Saimuha's full official title was Boco Uksin Jalan Janggin — "Boco Uksin" means armored infantry, so translated it becomes General of the Foot Battalion.

A very important concept in the Later Jin army is "armor" — the armor of mail.

The troops directly under Hong Taiji had each branch formed into independent banners: for example, the Gabshiyan Uksin of the vanguard, the Aliha Uksin of the armored cavalry, and the Boco Uksin of the armored infantry.

There was also the Ujen Uksin formed by the Three Princes Who Surrendered, but they were a picked-up puppet army, not a traditional Later Jin troop type.

And apart from the three independent corps under Hong Taiji's direct command, each formed into a banner of a single troop type, the forces subordinate to each banner were likewise divided into these three troop types, and all likewise wore armor.

Beyond that, each banner's main force also had many unarmored soldiers as well as household slaves and banner slaves serving as attendants; the latter were generally treated as logistics personnel and not counted in the troop strength.

Saimuha was precisely an infantry commander under the Bordered Blue Banner's organization.

He reported: "On the sixth day of the fourth month, Prince Wuying Commandery led the army into the border. On the eighth, our banner dispatched Manggurjun's Niru to the Shahukou market for border trade. They ran into southern cavalry and fought a skirmish, inflicting many casualties. Later, enemy reinforcements arrived; Manggurjun charged out, beheaded thirty-six of the enemy. Four household slaves and three armored soldiers under the Niru were killed. Sixteen horses were captured."

"On the thirteenth, a large force of enemy cavalry suddenly arrived. Our camp was nearly surrounded. We moved camp under cover of night, retreating to the bank of the Chao River beyond the Changping border. En route, we encountered two hundred Tumed cavalry. Third-rank Jalan Janggin Gasha set an ambush and attacked, routing them, beheading twenty-four and capturing two alive."

"On the sixteenth, while encamped, Segeyi was gathering firewood and faced enemy cavalry across the river. He drew his bow and shot, killing one man. Two men under the Niru left the column and went missing…"

The moment Saimuha's words fell, Feiyanggu waved his hand to cut him off: "Missing, killed in action, captured — don't write those down yet, just keep them in mind. And that thirty-six, twenty-four, and so on — make them a little smaller."

As he spoke, Feiyanggu struck his flint to light the pipe bowl, let out a long sigh, and shook his head slightly in distress: "No matter how you phrase this battle report, it all sounds utterly inglorious."

His tobacco had come as a reward. As early as the Wanli-era Korean campaign, tobacco had been brought to the northeast by the Guangdong troops marching north.

Nowadays, the tobacco in the Amur River basin has basically been cut off, because that route started from Lanzhou and passed through Mongolia into the Amur.

At present, the Later Jin's main source of tobacco was brought in by Korean official merchants, in very large quantities. Apart from that, Pi Island also held large stores of tobacco.

When Liu Xingzhi was straddling the fence on Pi Island, he twice sent one hundred and eighty dao of tobacco; before that, he had also gone to the Later Jin to sell some tobacco.

The "dao" was the unit for tobacco in this period — like with paper, one dao was one hundred tobacco leaves.

These tobacco leaves thus became items that Hong Taiji bestowed upon the nobility.

As for the battle report Saimuha gave, the course of events was all true, and the enemy kills and deaths in action were also basically true — it was just that some things were not fully stated.

For example, the banner slaves and attendants who died in action along the way — no need to mention them; the number of enemy killed could not be verified.

Another example: on the eighth, they had already advanced to the vicinity of Shahukou, yet the encirclement on the thirteenth occurred beyond the border from Yunzhou, and the encampment on the sixteenth was on the bank of the Chao River beyond the Changping border — and now it was the twentieth, and the two Bordered Blue Banners' position was at the Rehe beyond the Zunhua border.

In twelve days, they had retreated over eight hundred li to the east.

Still, it was not all disgraceful matters. Along the way, they had raided Tumed herders, seizing sheep, horses, and livestock — not just sixteen head; in fact, horses alone numbered over sixty.

But he dared not report all of them, for fear that later they would fight a truly disgraceful battle, and then they would need some "captured warhorses" battle achievements in reserve.

Feiyanggu fretfully removed his helmet with its tall crest spike and sat down heavily on a tree stump in distress.

Puffing on his pipe bowl, he lifted a hand to rub his head, where half an inch of unkempt hair had grown out and he had no time to trim, and asked Saimuha: "How is Huxibu's side?"

Huxibu was the Mongol Banner of the Bordered Blue Banner — that is, what later became the Bordered Blue Gūsa Ejen of the Eight Banners Mongols.

In this campaign, the Mongol Niru that had submitted to the Later Jin served as troops attached to the Eight Banners, formed into independent banners and assigned to each banner.

Saimuha shook his head: "About the same. Less than twenty dead, but all five shield carts were lost in flight. They're rushing to build replacements in camp now, hoping the Beizi won't report this to the Great Khan."

"These are all minor matters. Lost is lost. Thank heaven we ran fast and didn't lose too many men — that's already a great fortune."

Feiyanggu waved his hand: "Tell him to build three extra. Our banner also lost three of its five shield carts — they must be replaced, or we'll be punished when we return. We'll figure out the iron plating later."

Actually, the Later Jin army was already using shield carts less by now, especially outside of Liaodong.

On this campaign, their twenty-three banners had each brought only five shield carts, mainly as a precaution against the unexpected.

In the old Liaodong campaigns, a hundred-man company had to carry five shield carts, and there was a military regulation forbidding battle until the shield carts arrived.

For the Ming army, losing a battalion's war wagons was no great matter.

But for the Later Jin army, losing a single shield cart meant the blame already fell on that banner's Gūsa Ejen.

Because… the Later Jin's shield carts were well made.

The Ming army's war wagons were meant to defend against direct arrow fire, and were even a kind of expendable field fortification — their main value lay in making camp setup easier.

Even if the war wagons were built sturdier, it meant nothing. Before Liu Chengzong appeared, no one had ever used cannon on a large scale to destroy war wagons.

The Later Jin's shield cart, on the other hand, was originally created by Nurhaci after the battles of Sarhū and Fushun-Qinghe, where Ming gunfire and cannon had inflicted heavy losses on him and he urgently needed a field weapon that could shield against firearms.

It was designed specifically against Ming firearms, and the thing was built very thick and heavy.

War is highly targeted and dynamically changing; it is hard to say that weapons and equipment are inherently backward or advanced — there is only what works for a time and what does not.

The Later Jin shield cart had only a single board, one man tall and three men wide. The board was made in three layers: five or six inches of thick wood planks, plus a layer of rawhide and a layer of iron plate. Moreover, the board had a rotatable mechanism to prevent the enemy from suddenly firing guns or shooting arrows from the flank.

So once this thing was lost, it was not easy to build replacements on the battlefield in a short time.

The mere thought of this gave Feiyanggu a headache, and he could not help but feel full of envy for the banners that had entered Ming territory.

In truth, it was not that he really wanted to deceive Hong Taiji with the battle reports. It was simply that Ajige and his lot had all entered the border, and he feared that when the time came, everyone else would be lying, their battle achievements looking utterly glorious, while he alone told the truth — and then he would be finished.

The Bordered Blue Banner had always held a lower status among the Eight Banners, because they were outsiders.

In the earliest days, their master was the number-two figure of Jianzhou, Nurhaci's brother, Šurhaci.

Later, Šurhaci lost the power struggle and died in prison. A large number of his partisans and old followers were purged, their strength greatly diminished, and they became the Bordered Blue Banner, with Šurhaci's son Amin as banner lord.

Now Amin was in turn imprisoned. The banner lord was Amin's younger brother Jirgalang, and the Gūsa Ejen — that is, the commander — was Jirgalang's younger brother Feiyanggu.

Feiyanggu was sometimes also called Fengu, Feiyangwu, and the like — it did not matter, they were all transliterations.

His name was given according to the traditional Jurchen birth-order custom.

The eldest would be called Ajingga, and the youngest would be called Fiyanggū — that is, Feiyanggu. A synonym was Lokata, which is also the origin of the northeastern nickname "Old Gada" for the most doted-upon youngest son or daughter.

It was similar to the Han practice of Bo, Zhong, Shu, Ji.

So this name has a huge number of duplicates — Nurhaci's sixteenth son was also called this.

But actually, the biggest problem Fiyanggū faced right now was not how many of his men had died during the earlier eastward withdrawal.

In truth, even counting the dead banner slaves and bondservants, along with the Tümed herders seized along the way to serve as cannon fodder, his combined Bordered Blue forces had not lost very many men at all.

The Bordered Blue Banner's status among the Eight Banners might be low at present, but that political standing was not immutable — which of the Eight Banners was strong and which weak depended chiefly on the banner lord.

Their low status was precisely because they had not yet been fully digested by Nurhaci's line, and still retained a measure of autonomy.

This did not mean they could not fight. On the contrary, they could fight extremely well, and in every campaign had strained every sinew to prove their usefulness — which was why this force had been preserved to this day.

Although the course of battle was hardly as heroic as the dispatches claimed, the Southern Mongols had indeed inflicted remarkably limited casualties on them.

This force, combining the Manchu Bordered Blue and Mongol Bordered Blue banners, had originally numbered close to three thousand troops, and still had over two thousand seven hundred men.

Fiyanggū was not the least bit afraid of the Mongol soldiers of Southern Mongolia.

At equal strength, he was confident he could rout them in very short order; even if they outnumbered him two or three to one, he had the nerve to maneuver against them.

Because he ran fast.

In the mountains, nearly three thousand horse and foot soldiers had covered eight hundred li in twelve days, crossed three great rivers, broken out of encirclement several times, and still had the leisure to build a fortified camp at the Rehe River.

Such a result already spoke volumes about where the Eight Banners army's advantages lay.

He had not fled in reckless, desperate disarray — in fact, he had turned back twice to strike, hoping to pick off an enemy detachment.

The trouble was, the Mongol soldiers of Southern Mongolia were truly numerous.

The Eight Banners army was no horde of savage divine warriors; they did not surge mindlessly into positions like madmen, hurling themselves against wooden palisades and abatis, or throwing themselves onto blades and gunfire.

On the contrary, they fought exactly like the Ming army — with extreme shrewdness.

If they could call in allies and fight with superior numbers, they would never face the Ming army at a disadvantage.

On top of that, their organizational cohesion and combined-arms coordination were also very strong.

Their standard battle practice, compared to the Ming army's, was nothing special.

They used the bayara to protect the commander's headquarters.

The core striking force was armored heavy infantry, backed by unarmored infantry and banner slaves and bondservants, supported by field weapons like shielded carts, forming camp at the front to hold the enemy line.

A small number of bayara outriders — that is, the guard troops — together with large numbers of armored cavalry and unarmored cavalry, would circle to the rear, strike the flanks, break through from the edges, and shatter the enemy formation in a single blow.

This customary tactic was nothing rare; anyone could use it, and the ones most practiced at it were precisely the Ming army.

From the pincer cavalry of Zhu Yuanzhang in the early Ming, all the way to the present five-detachment formation, the basic tactics had never changed.

That was why battalion-level engagements so often saw the Ming and Jin armies fight each other to a standstill.

Mountainous terrain was, moreover, advantageous ground for the Later Jin army and disadvantageous ground for the Southern Mongol cavalry.

Fiyanggū was full of confidence on this point, planning mobile operations to swallow up a few Mongol detachments of several hundred men each, to make them think twice about pursuing too aggressively.

But once he tried to circle around, he was dumbfounded.

Because the Mongol soldiers were circling too — and when they met, they would not fight, only delay or even withdraw.

With an unprecedented degree of organization, they displayed an intent to avoid open-field battle and simply encircle and annihilate him.

The manifestation of this fanatical intent terrified Fiyanggū.

Because whether Ming army or Mongol army, he had never before seen an enemy that wanted nothing short of their total annihilation.

From Fiyanggū's perspective, when enemies spotted their small roving patrols, as long as the numbers were roughly equal — or even when the Ming troops were fewer — they were reckless fools who would throw their lives away charging in to fight.

This was especially pronounced in small-unit actions.

The other side radiated pure startup fervor, pouncing to claim heads.

For this reason, the tactic every Later Jin noble, great or small, was most familiar with was luring the enemy deep, then fighting a battle of annihilation.

Whether it was a few hundred men or a few thousand, they could all be lured.

And now these Mongol cavalrymen, grown suddenly clever, were plainly using the lure-the-enemy-deep stratagem against them.

And whether they spotted a few of their riders or a few hundred, they kept trying to lure them.

Every time their flanking cavalry circled around, they collided with the Southern Mongol flanking cavalry; switch to another mountain path and circle again — collide again, and again.

On every side, along every mountain path, the enemy was circling to the rear in small bands.

This was how Fiyanggū had retreated eight hundred li through the Yan Mountains.

He was utterly stupefied, with a hundred thousand questions he could not answer — how did the Mongols of the Southern Mongolian steppe dare to be so bold in the Yan Mountains?

Even more incomprehensible: how had the Mongol soldiers, always a loose collection of stragglers, been so forcefully organized, and who was the commander behind it?

Liu Chengzong?

That can't be right!

Even if they meant to hound them, Liu Chengzong should right now be encamped beyond the Xuan-Da frontier — otherwise, if Ajige led his troops into the borderlands and popped out again, wouldn't that cut off his rear?

Of course, even if the opposing commander really was Liu Chengzong, Fiyanggū had not been afraid at first.

Because he had already tested it: no matter who commanded them, the enemy army simply could not run as fast as he could, and their marching standard was far inferior.

If his entire force mounted up, they could run even faster.

But once they reached the Rehe River... Hong Taiji would not let him run any further.

To Fiyanggū, this was the most terrifying thing of all.

Though staying perpetually roving the outer perimeter, men never shedding armor nor horses unsaddled, was agonizing, having the Emperor behind the front lines send an edict forbidding further retreat — that, for him, was utter catastrophe.

The reason he was forbidden to continue fleeing east was also very simple.

His army, upon reaching the Rehe River, had run into the vanguard camp men — Šongkoro Baturu, Sūdara, Nusan, and others — who were scouting intelligence along the frontier under Hong Taiji's orders.

Once Fiyanggū had steadied his footing and begun laying out camp, Šongkoro Baturu and the others went back to report the frontline news to the Chongde Emperor in Shenyang.

The moment Hong Taiji heard this, he sent an urgent edict ordering Fiyanggū to find a position near the Rehe River, hold it as opportunity allowed, and retreat no further east.

Because the Rehe River was already very close to the traditional territory of Daicing Gurun; another hundred-odd li east, and they would cross the Greater Khingan Range and see the Old Khara River — the former site of Daning Garrison, called Josotu in Later Jin.

Even from the name of this river, one could tell: it was the old homeland of the Kharchin tribe.

The problem was that although the Harqin tribe still had two banners' worth of grazing land, they had no people.

No people meant no soldiers. That area was practically no-man's-land, and the horse grass grew exceptionally well.

This was precisely why, when Fiyanggū halted his troops at Rehe, the mere mention of Liu Chengzong's great army to the west made Hong Taiji exceptionally nervous.

If Fiyanggū withdrew any further, the Southern Mongol soldiers would follow them and surge into the eastern foothills of the Greater Khingan Range, discover the Harqin river bend completely empty, and then swarm in all at once — and then things would get messy.

Because no one understood the situation they currently faced better than the Chongde Emperor.

He had not merely dispatched Ajige with twenty thousand troops to Yanqing to raid the capital region.

In reality, to cover all bases in this campaign, Hong Taiji was, in the literal sense, deploying troops in four directions.

To the northeast, to offset the population losses from this campaign, he sent soldiers into the old forests to capture wild men — this had been ongoing since the start of the war and still had not ceased.

To the south, with the Bordered Blue Banner commander Jirgalang holding the line, they relocated the population north of the Yalu River to the Shengjing capital region, guarding against Joseon, which was preparing for war on a massive scale, from jumping the fence, while also preventing the Ming troops on Pi Island from seizing the chance to raid.

To the north, Ajige led over twenty thousand main-force troops on a detour through the passes to plunder the capital region — this was the primary force for generating revenue, which goes without saying.

And then there was the most critical direction — the west — where the effort was invisible.

That is, the Liaoxi Corridor where the Guanning Army was stationed.

Before learning that Liu Chengzong had marched out of Jining, Hong Taiji and the Eight Banners nobles all believed that whether they could successfully pin down the Guanning Army was the greatest variable in this incursion.

On that front, the Chongde Emperor Hong Taiji personally led the troops to hold the line, advancing the great army toward the Daling River to draw the Guanning forces far from Shanhai Pass, so they would not dare — and could not — turn back to reinforce.

However, Liu Chengzong's eastward advance had completely thrown Hong Taiji's plans into chaos.

And dropped a brutal decision squarely onto his head.

Which hand, exactly, was Hong Taiji supposed to free up to plug the hole in the west?