Chapter 722: Front and Rear

Southeast of the Khorchin Grasslands.

A gyrfalcon streaked across the sky. Twelve columns of cavalry spread out in a great column over ten li, advancing at a quick trot through the wilderness.

Banners of every color snapped in the wind. On the flanks, banner slaves and servants led camels with heads bowed; in the center, the warriors of each banner galloped in stripped-down armor. Several royal tent wagons, each hauled by nine oxen, creaked forward.

Dispatch riders wove back and forth through the ranks. Shamans danced in full regalia before the wagons; monks blew conch-shell trumpets atop them.

The Manchu army was advancing.

Emperor Chongde was inside the mobile khan's tent at the very center of the army column.

Huang Taiji wore a two-piece azurite-blue satin brigandine embroidered with dragons. He clutched a helmet with a crest, his hand pressed on the long table, his gaze fixed deathly on the map spread across it. His silhouette from behind was as imposing as a mountain.

Time is unkind.

He was already forty-four. The robust physique that had been so active on the battlefield in his youth had, with age and a change in lifestyle, grown stout. He was fat, exceeding two hundred jin, too heavy for even a good horse to carry alone.

So much so that for a minor matter like a hundred-li march, he needed two good horses to carry him in alternation.

In fact, not just Huang Taiji — the Manchu nobility of every banner, though their military banners followed regulations, mostly used blue satin for their armor and everyday clothing. Commoners wore Buddha-head blue cloth daily, which was also predominantly blue.

Traditionally, the Jurchens revered white, but traditions and preferences often change under the influence of the surrounding environment.

For example, in Joseon, which became a tributary state during the Zhu Yuanzhang era, the color of spring couplets was white; whereas in Vietnam, which was subjugated as a vassal after the Zhu Di era, spring couplets were red.

Because in Zhu Yuanzhang's time, spring couplets were simply couplets — white paper with black characters.

In fact, the tradition of couplets, which had a literary bent among high officials and nobles, was popularized among the common people precisely by Zhu Yuanzhang, who had everyone write them.

And the spring couplet, which evolved from the couplet, was itself a development of the ancient ultimate defensive art: the peachwood talisman.

In the past, people hung peachwood boards bearing the names of the two gods "Shentu" and "Yulei" to ward off evil. Meng Chang, ruler of Later Shu, was the first to write a couplet on peachwood, which later became a tradition.

It was not until the Zhu Yuanzhang era that the rule was set to use xuan paper for couplets, with every household hanging spring couplets.

But this posed a problem: the door gods, Zhong Kui, peach boards, peach talismans, and the whole set of ultimate defensive gear at the main gate during New Year's — the wealth-door blunt donkey, the turning-head deer-horse, the celestial travel poster — were all meant to ward off evil.

Only the spring couplet had no meaning in warding off evil or defending against the Nian beast.

Yet, as the most powerful man of the fourteenth century, the rule he set could be changed by no one.

So it was only after Zhu Di ascended the throne — this lord even changed the rule on who got to be emperor; what rule under heaven could not be changed?

Spring couplets then became cinnabar red, finally gaining an evil-warding function.

The current prevalence of blue clothing among the Daichin was likewise tied to the broader environment.

This blue satin was called azurite Japanese satin.

Although called Japanese satin, the fabric was in fact neither Japanese nor satin. For one, Japan lacked the craft; for another, it was a pile fabric.

It was, in truth, traditional velvet.

The reason it was called Japanese satin was that it first entered the Zhangzhou and Quanzhou areas as a luxury fabric via Japan and Japanese pirates. Later, through domestication and improvement in production, it became Zhangzhou velvet — that is, velvet.

One particular production method of velvet evolved at the Jiangning Weaving Bureau into what later became azurite Japanese satin.

The material used was Sichuan silk, woven on a large scale in Nanjing and Suzhou. The process involved a multi-layered structure, dyeing first and weaving later. During weaving, short cotton pile was concealed within the warp threads; every few inches woven, it was scraped and burnished, giving the pile surface an extreme luster.

Because it looked complex and luxurious, it enjoyed a brief period of popularity in the Central Plains.

Soon after, the great textile merchants discovered that this fabric was impractical.

In a social environment with simple class structures and weak manufacturing capacity, fertile soil exists for the creation of luxury goods with inflated value.

In a society with complex class structures and strong manufacturing capacity, that soil becomes barren.

There were more people in the know, more people involved in production, more people with the power of cultural dissemination, and more people in possession of basic wealth.

As long as these people generally considered the item bad, its inflated value would quickly come under the influence of public opinion.

Azurite Japanese satin — complex to weave, costly to produce, and ostentatious in appearance — faced precisely this predicament a few decades ago.

During the Wanli era, silver flooded in and all goods were cheap. Even commoners could afford this fine fabric; if they couldn't buy enough for a whole garment, they could buy a small piece to use as trim.

Either for hats, or for collars.

But therein lay the problem: as a hat, it easily collected dust; as a collar, it deformed at the slightest abrasion.

Everyone came to despise it, to the point that even wealthy merchants and officials eventually disliked it.

Its high price kept falling, until it could no longer be sold domestically. So it was taken through the northern passes and sold to the northern barbarians.

Large quantities of Japanese satin flowed into Mongolia, the Later Jin, and other places as a luxury good, deeply beloved by the nobility.

This habit formed a tradition and gradually became a fixed rule. Huang Taiji also regulated it heavily: those below the nobility were forbidden from wearing satin clothing, permitted only to wear clothes made of Buddha-head blue cloth, which cost merely a tenth of the price.

And Buddha-head blue cloth was woven by all the various Wild Jurchen tribes, which effectively meant the Later Jin controlled the production areas.

For instance, recently Huang Taiji had been continuously dispatching troops to the Hurha and Warka tribes of the East Sea Jurchens to plunder wealth, goods, people, and livestock. The amount of Buddha-head blue cloth seized exceeded even the sable pelts.

Inside the royal tent wagon, Huang Taiji was enveloped by immense pressure, his face ashen.

He could not even clearly articulate the source of this immense pressure — it was much like the Chongzhen Emperor's financial situation.

It was not that the imperial fiscal deficit gap was truly absurdly large, but that no matter how one robbed Peter to pay Paul, the gap simply could not be closed.

Huang Taiji now faced a similarly awkward situation.

For this campaign, his original plan was for Ajige to make a detour through Shanxi into the imperial capital region, while he dispatched troops to observe the situation in the area from Liaoxi to the capital region, and personally led the army across the Liao River to pin down the Guanning forces.

To put it plainly, for him, Ajige, Hooge, Dorgon, and the other great Eight Banners nobles, this campaign was a dress rehearsal for the destruction of the enemy state.

No one knew if it could succeed, which was precisely why a rehearsal was needed.

But now, two unexpected factors had appeared on the battlefield.

The first was the Great Ming.

In the third month of this year, Chen Hongfan was appointed Coastal Commander-in-Chief, bearing the seal of General Who Pacifies the Barbarians. He drew naval forces from various garrisons and led troops from Shandong to occupy the three positions of Lüshunkou, Beixunkou, and Tongjiang.

According to Ming army prisoners taken by Later Jin scouts, the new Shandong Marshal Chen Hongfan commanded four hundred warships and a hundred thousand troops — a display of power so immense it even surpassed that of Mao Wenlong, who had once held the imperial sword.

The second was the Monan Governor's Office.

In truth, before the campaign, limited by Yang Qi's cowardly performance the previous year, Huang Taiji, Dorgon, and the others, though they had factored in Yang Qi's participation to some extent, had completely failed to anticipate that the Mongol army's battlefield performance would be so ferocious.

Dorgon, in full armor, stood respectfully at Huang Taiji's side. Duoduo, his face buried under a large black fox-fur hat, sat askew in a camp chair inside the tent, looking like a sickly weakling.

It wasn't that Dodo had actually fallen ill — he was just displeased.

He hadn't been very willing to join the campaign at Jinzhou in the first place, and had already submitted a request to Hong Taiji to go home and perform opera.

Hong Taiji had just granted his request when Fei Yanggu's arson incident occurred, forcing them to march north in frantic haste, and Dodo's wish to go home and sing opera went up in smoke.

So now he sat there with a stony face, ten thousand times unwilling.

Dorgon asked, "Imperial Brother, why did you send that letter insulting Yang Qi?"

In Dorgon's eyes, the letter itself was not problematic, but if combined with the other letters, the risk of the estrangement ploy being exposed was very high.

So he did not understand why Hong Taiji had done this.

Dorgon's words seemed to lift the gloom that had shrouded Hong Taiji's face.

He turned to look at Dorgon, took two more steps, tossed the black fox-fur cap from that brat Dodo's head aside, and only then said, "You want to ask, since we already guessed it's Liu Chengzong who has come, why did we still deliberately write that letter?"

At the mention of this conjecture, Dorgon's expression turned awkward.

None of them wanted to think in that direction.

After all, Liu Chengzong, whose main base was in Qinghai, leading his army to the frontier beyond the capital over three thousand li away, was in itself utterly absurd.

But now something even more absurd — Mongol troops routing the Eight Banners — had already happened.

What was impossible anymore?

Over the past decade and more, the Great Ming had won at the level of defensive counterattacks and campaigns, while the Mongols had not tasted a single victory at the campaign level, their morale long since crushed under pressure from all sides.

Even the Mongol troops attached to the Later Jin had never delivered any noteworthy battlefield performance.

For them to dare to actively engage the Bordered Blue Banner, and even drive the Bordered Blue Banner off — it was as if they had been possessed.

Hong Taiji would sooner believe Liu Chengzong could fly than believe that coward Yang Qi could lead a pack of stray dogs from the Mongol tribes to stand on their own feet.

His hand covered the area west of the Xing'an Mountains, where the Marshal's Army was currently positioned, on the map. "That was a deliberate flaw we exposed. We cannot be certain whether it truly is Liu Chengzong."

There is no foundation of mutual trust to speak of between Han Chinese and Mongols.

This had been verified many times in the campaigns between Ming and Jin, and the same held true even for the barbarian troops under Ming generals.

Whenever Hong Taiji tried to drive a wedge between Mongol troops and the Great Ming, it worked every single time.

Ejei of the Ordos and Ombu of the Tumed wielded immense influence in Mobei, so they could hardly be said to enjoy trust within the Governor's Office.

If the supreme commander on the opposing side were Yang Qi, even if he did not believe it, he would certainly have to transfer Ejei and Ombu away.

Because Yang Qi's status could not bear such a heavy responsibility.

But if the supreme commander were Liu Chengzong, and he had already made mobilization deployments regarding Yang Qi, then he would see through the estrangement ploy at a glance.

If men like Ejei and Ombu truly had a covenant with the Later Jin, then the mobilization deployments made upon Liu Chengzong's arrival would certainly have already been known to Hong Taiji, naturally rendering that letter insulting Yang Qi unnecessary.

That letter insulting Yang Qi was precisely a deliberate flaw he had exposed, in exchange for Liu Chengzong's mockery.

After all, there was now a rather awkward matter: Fei Yanggu had set a fire to stabilize the battle line.

The existence of this great fire had directly resulted in the near-total severance of the routes on both the eastern and western sides of the Xing'an Mountains, leaving only the Hexigten Pass to the north, while to the south one would have to travel hugging the border wall.

Moreover, the path left to the south was, due to the Luan River, extremely difficult for large formations to traverse.

The problem was, given the ferocious zeal with which those small bands of Ming troops were lopping off heads, small formations could forget about passing through that way either.

Before the battle began, although Hong Taiji could ensure that intelligence east of the Xing'an Mountains remained unknown to the enemy, it was equally difficult for him to obtain intelligence from the west.

Therefore, he could only exchange information by means of deliberate exposure.

"Estranging a few frontline generals is far less important than clarifying who the enemy's supreme commander is."

As Hong Taiji spoke, he shook his head slightly in vexation.

He drew a deep breath and said, "If the enemy commander is Yang Qi, then the enemy only has the thirty thousand troops of the Mobei Governor's Office, and the fight will not be too hard."

"If Liu Chengzong has come in person, then the matter becomes troublesome. We cannot hope for a swift victory; we must drag the war into summer, even autumn, and exhaust his provisions."

In truth, as he said these words, Hong Taiji's heart was bleeding.

Indeed, he firmly believed his judgment was correct.

If Liu Chengzong led his army to a prolonged garrison north of the capital, the consumption of provisions for his soldiers would surely be a pain the Shaanxi paupers could hardly bear.

But then again, given the financial state of our Warrior Nation, we had better not laugh at others.

With troops stationed on three fronts, even he, the Chongde Emperor, could not hold out.

It was nothing more than gritting his teeth and enduring.

So even though he had mentally prepared for the worst-case scenario, Hong Taiji still wished to avoid facing it.

Soon, as the army column advanced, a dispatch rider came galloping from the front to report. In mere moments, a gate-guarding White Armored Soldier requested entry into the tent and reported, "Reporting to the Sacred Khan, urgent report from the Bordered Blue Banner: the enemy troops west of the pass have pulled back to establish camp, while the captive cavalry still prowls the battlefield."

Hong Taiji waved the White Armored Soldier out of the tent, faced the tent entrance, clenched his jaw, and furrowed his brows tightly.

Things had gone contrary to his wishes.

The Mongol troops had not been transferred away. Even though no mocking letter had been delivered, it still signified that it was indeed Liu Chengzong who had arrived on the battlefield in the west.

The difficulty of the matter had climbed yet another notch.

After a moment, Hong Taiji drew a deep breath and said, "Summon Ai Songgu, to mobilize troops from Khorchin; Luobi, to the Aohan, Naiman, Jarud, and Urad tribes; Xibai Deyi to the Talai of the Aru Four Sons Tribe, Ongniud, Barin, and other tribes."

"The Mongol tribes, the Mongol tribes — each niru shall provide fifty soldiers."

At these words, Dorgon immediately shot him a sidelong glance, and even the seated Dodo rose and said, "Eighth Brother, this won't do!"

In previous levies, the Mongol tribes had always joined the campaign with each banner contributing around a hundred men, which did not touch the nerves of the great nobles.

This year in particular, Hong Taiji had just abolished the Khorchin Khan title, and for fear of provoking a backlash from the Khorchin nobles, he had not even levied troops from Khorchin.

But this conscription, with each niru providing fifty soldiers — what kind of concept was that?

The six Khorchin banners had one hundred and six niru, and all these outer feudatories combined amounted to just over two hundred niru. This meant drawing over five thousand troops from Khorchin alone in one go.

It was directly pulling out their very lifeblood — who could endure that?

But Hong Taiji had no choice; his troop strength was truly insufficient. He would gamble.

To see whether his own interior collapsed first, or the Marshal's Office's army provisions collapsed first.

Dorgon urged caution: "Imperial Brother, if we encamp like this, we will certainly be the first to falter. Liu Chengzong's supply line is long, but what if the Great Ming provides grain and fodder to Liu Chengzong?"

"If that were truly the case, it would actually be a good thing."

Hong Taiji let out a rare laugh and tapped the position of Zunhua on the map with his hand.

"This place — anyone we send beyond the border will be captured by Ming troops. Write a letter. Select a Han man from the banners who has family held as slaves, order him to carry the letter and deliver it to Liu Chengzong. He will go through here."

"Do you know how the letter should be written?"

Hong Taiji looked at Dorgon, his finger lightly tapping the table: "Say that I, the Khan, have long esteemed the Marshal. Though I wish to negotiate peace with the Ming court, I find it hard to go against the Marshal's goodwill in forming an alliance. Therefore, I am willing to put on a show for now beyond the pass, retreating ninety li in Liaodong, and will only wait for the Marshal to secure grain and fodder before joining forces to attack the Ming, and so forth."

"Wait until this letter is received by the Great Ming Emperor."

As Hong Taiji spoke, he drew a circle on the western part of the Khingan Mountains on the map: "The Marshal's army entrenched here will then face attacks from both front and rear."