Chapter 726: Withdrawal

Three days.

Hong Taiji did not close his eyes for three whole days.

He had been trying to deduce Liu Chengzong's strategic intent in joining the war.

He could not figure it out.

At first he thought Liu Chengzong had come to the southern desert to flaunt his might, in exchange for the support of the various southern desert tribes, but then Liu Chengzong cut off Ajige's retreat and pushed his army to the passes of the Khingan Mountains.

Later he believed Liu Chengzong wanted to coordinate with the Ming army's operations, but the man paid no attention to the Ming army at all, nor showed any sign of joint military action — it seemed he was only there to contest the Great Khan's prestige on the steppe.

Even when Hong Taiji began besieging Liu Chengzong's northern detached force, he had considered that crossing the Khingan Mountains was merely a probing attack by Liu Chengzong, and that upon meeting resistance or taking casualties, he would withdraw to the western foothills of the Khingan range.

Truly, the Chongde Emperor at one point believed Liu Chengzong's eastward offensive was simply because he had been stung by his insults.

He doubted his own virtue, but never imagined that Liu Chengzong simply bore him immense malice.

It was not until Erinchen led ten thousand Mongol cavalry charging into the Khorchin heartland, and Hong Taiji led the Eight Banners army to break off the siege at the Khingan Mountains and race to Khorchin's aid —

that Hong Taiji finally realized what kind of madman Liu Chengzong was.

This starving ghost who fought his way out of Shaanxi — he had come for food.

The Eight Banners army's proud marching speed was displayed to the fullest on the road to relieve Khorchin.

They could roll up their armor and advance two hundred li in a single day and night; the Marshal's Army trailing behind them, at a speed of a hundred li per day, could not even catch the dust from their horses' hooves.

But those men were not putting their hearts into pursuing them either.

They were like a pack of madmen — holding the Khingan passes with their troops, then scattering to strike out in all directions, sweeping once more across the pasturelands of the two Kharchin banners, and storming like a gale through the Ongniud, Aohan, and Naiman tribes, leaving the grasslands awash in blood, before rolling into the fringes of the Khorchin steppe under a sky-blotting cloud of dust, linking their camps over fifty li, scattering to plunder and kill, seizing captives and livestock.

By the time Hong Taiji, who had been single-mindedly rushing to Khorchin's aid, received the news, several tribes that had been subordinate to the Later Jin since the days of Ligdan Khan had already vanished forever from the vast grasslands.

Of course, this was only what the Chongde Emperor heard from the surviving elders of those tribes.

In truth, it was not that brutal.

The forces Liu Chengzong sent to round up the tribes were not that numerous, nor that ruthless.

He had merely assigned troops to the Chahar nobles in his own Northern Yuan camp and sent them to recruit the tribes and compete for people and livestock.

These tribes on the eastern foothills of the Khingan range were all old subordinates and old acquaintances of the Chahar; they had betrayed Chahar's Ligdan Khan back then, and the chieftains of these tribes had been the ringleaders — they were certainly not going to get off lightly with the Marshal's Office.

So their only choice was to flee to Khorchin and bring their grievances to the Chongde Emperor.

In fact, once Sechen Taiji sent over an order decreeing that only the chief culprits would be punished, the tribes put up almost no decent resistance; the minor nobles scrambled to drive their chieftains' herding soldiers, cattle, sheep, and fine horses over to pledge allegiance.

Circumstances were stronger than men.

With Liu Chengzong's forces blanketing the hills and plains pressing down on them, and facing the Daicing Emperor's personal campaign, not only had he not collapsed the way Ligdan Khan had, he was still advancing eastward.

Daicing had already retreated — what was the point of the remaining small tribes still thrashing about?

Only, Liu the Lion's mental strain was also immense.

Because the Eight Banners nobles were indeed skilled in war, and the Eight Banners soldiers were indeed fierce and courageous.

It was not that the Marshal's Army was incapable of marching two hundred li in a day and night; it was simply that Liu Chengzong was unwilling to pursue and strike relentlessly.

In the three days since Liu the Lion had ordered the pursuit, his main work had been not only commanding the main army to press toward the Khorchin steppe, but also transporting the wounded officers and soldiers from the northern route back to the rear at Upper Capital of the Yuan for proper medical treatment.

The Eight Banners' siege of the northern detached force over those few days alone had inflicted nearly two thousand casualties, light and heavy, on the northern route's battalions, with over five hundred killed in action, and a general of Regional Commander rank, Wang Cheng'en, had been struck by an arrow and withdrawn to the rear.

Of course, such losses were indeed very heavy.

But for Liu Chengzong, after understanding the entire course of the battle, it did not mean the officers and soldiers were incompetent.

Quite the opposite.

When the Marshal's Army's Ding Guodong division at the Yanqing Raider Camp was ambushed and split in two, the Monan Wang Cheng'en Wuyuan Camp and He Huchen Shuofang Camp rushed to the rescue and threw themselves into the fight; moreover, Feng Rang's Provisional Liang Brigade wagon fort deployed on the spot, steadied the battle lines, and made a defensive stand possible — thus turning a rout into a stalemate.

They fought very well.

The heavy battle casualties were not because their own troops were afraid to fight, but because the enemy was indeed fierce and unusual.

So unusual that Liu Chengzong found the entire battle bizarre, even laughable.

They were two armies, specialized forces tailored to counter the Ming army's heavy formations.

The Marshal's Army, built from the ground up by Liu the Lion, went without saying — from the very founding of the Lion Camp, its hypothetical enemy had always been the well-equipped Ming army's elite.

They had better-quality standard-issue armor, firearms with longer range and greater power, and at the same time stronger organizational capability, aiming to inflict massive casualties on the Ming army in a short time during pitched battle and standoffs, to achieve victory.

And after Liu Chengzong compiled intelligence from all levels on the northern route battle and examined the spoils from clearing the battlefield, the conclusion he reached was that the Eight Banners army belonged to the complete opposite extreme.

The weapons Feng Rang's wagon fort captured on the battlefield contained almost no standard-issue arms from any regular army's drill manual.

No long spears; the longest blades and polearms measured at most eight chi; short weapons were mostly axes, hammers, and short spears; even war bows with a draw weight of over a hundred jin were, in actual battlefield use, treated as close-combat weapons at a distance of three to five paces.

In other words, at least among the Eight Banners troops facing the northern route Marshal's Army, they were all using melee weapons and had no intention of fighting in formation at all.

Feng Rang's battle report, like the commander of the northern detached force himself, relayed this characteristic of the enemy in exhaustive detail.

For one, Wang Cheng'en was wounded and unable to submit a battle report; for another, He Huchen and Ding Guodong had both been in the thick of the melee and lacked a clear picture of the overall battlefield.

And Feng Rang — this was not his first time fighting the Later Jin Eight Banners.

As far back as the Sarhū period, he had served alongside Cao Yao in the capital army's firearms camp, fought together, and been routed together.

This time, fighting his way through as a commander deploying a wagon fort gave him a deeper understanding of the Eight Banners troops from a higher vantage point.

In his battle report, he described the Eight Banners soldiers as a nine-headed worm — cunning and fierce.

When the Eight Banners' company captains, under the command of the high nobles, attacked a fortified camp, they would conceal the main thrust of their assault and, in an extremely erratic manner, feinting east and striking west, launch all-around attacks on the entire encampment.

It looked like a massed army, but in reality, all of a sudden, like a nine-headed worm, death squads would open the way and charge fiercely at the army formation from all directions.

Elite cavalry wielding long blades followed behind, and wherever a gap appeared they would ram right in, their objective extremely clear — solely to destroy the army formation's organization.

This tactic seemed very brutish on the surface, as if they treated human lives as worthless, charging headlong into gunfire.

But in reality, precisely because the tactic was simple, it was exceptionally effective, and it inflicted enormous psychological pressure on the defending enemy troops.

There was nothing special about this tactic itself, but the ability to employ it skillfully inherently meant that officers at every level had extremely strong control over their soldiers.

It was precisely because of this fighting style of the Eight Banners army that Liu Chengzong was unwilling to pursue and strike relentlessly.

Because he had seen clearly: if the northern route battle had been only the three-thousand-man wagon fort against three thousand Eight Banners soldiers, the Marshal's Army would certainly have won, and would even have routed the Eight Banners troops.

The larger the battle, the more uneven the troops and their elite quality across battalions. Below ten thousand, all were crack soldiers — they not only didn't fear such a breakthrough assault, they'd be overjoyed.

But the more troops committed, the easier it became for such breakthrough tactics to shatter the weak units. One battalion, two battalions driven off or routed, and then a large-scale collapse would follow.

Liu Shizi, on the pursuit, mulled it over — this opponent wasn't easy to chase; it'd be too easy for them to rest up, set an ambush, and break him. So why bother chasing?

He therefore merely ordered the pond cavalry to race into the heart of Khorchin, search for Erenchin, and deliver his orders.

Tell Erenchin to take his troops and run if he could, take a long detour back to where there was support. No need to fight Daiching anymore. As long as he could bring back the spoils taken from the Khorchin campaign, it would count as a major achievement.

In Liu Shizi's mind, he thought Erenchin was quite the capable fighter.

Only he didn't know that the victory at the Liao Marshes wasn't actually as glorious as Erenchin had described in his battle report.

What "utterly annihilated five thousand of the enemy" — that was pure ghost-talk fit for burning at a grave.

How could two armies made up of Southern Desert cavalry fight such a ferocious battle?

In a pitched battle, ten thousand riders couldn't encircle five thousand, let alone the fact that the two sides could never have fought a pitched battle. The Khorchin tribe weren't fools — clearly outnumbered, would they stay to fight a pitched battle?

In reality, the total forces committed by both sides exceeded fifteen thousand men and thirteen thousand mules and horses. After the initial encounter, they scattered into small units of various sizes, running back and forth along the marshland edges of the southern Khorchin grasslands.

Into the marshes, through the woods, dashing across the gobi — they fought until neither side could see the enemy or find their own subordinates. The whole massive force, me driving you, him chasing me, tangled and tumbling, surged all the way into the Khorchin heartland.

It was just that Erenchin had more troops and could spare the men to cut the vital routes to the Xing'an Mountains battlefield. Seeing no large enemy force fleeing in that direction, he reckoned he'd won.

So he sent a battle report to Liu Shizi.

On this point, the Ordos Erenchin and the Khorchin Badali actually thought exactly alike during the campaign.

Neither man considered himself a direct subordinate of the Marshal's Office or the Daiching Empire. Both wanted to preserve their strength as much as possible and were unwilling to go near their own side's main army corps.

Erenchin didn't want to be at Liu Chengzong's side, and Badali didn't want to lead his troops to Hong Taiji's side.

So both men, with an excuse, tacitly led their troops and ran toward Khorchin.

There was no other reason — both men knew exactly what their subordinates were worth. Their forces, on the battlefield where the Marshal's Office and Daiching's main forces clashed, would be crippled in a single round.

Erenchin was unwilling to plaster the flesh and blood of the Southern Desert Mongol troops onto Liu Chengzong's throne, just as Badali was unwilling to nail the Khorchin tribe into the foundations of Daiching.

At the same time, both sides had their own weak points.

Erenchin had no strong control over his subordinates. The men under him, these "Ten-Thousand-Household Great Nobles" with only eight or nine hundred men apiece — never mind that they were all mud-legged in origin, each was more unruly than the last. They'd come on campaign to loot and plunder; they didn't listen at all to his grand strategy.

On Badali's side, the Khorchin nobles were already discontent with Emperor Chongde abolishing the Khan title and conscripting troops en masse. Several troublemakers, the moment they encountered the enemy, took their followers and went home.

This then triggered an even larger-scale rout.

It was much like the state of Ming commanders sometimes forced into battle — all driven onto the stage before internal thinking was unified, collapse lacking only an excuse.

Compared to Erenchin's "total annihilation of the enemy" in his battle report, the report Badali sent to Hong Taiji was far more well-behaved.

He just told Emperor Chongde plainly: our relief force was routed. The enemy was everywhere, covering the hills and plains in a dark mass — utterly impossible to fight. We could only lure them deeper, draw them into the Khorchin grasslands. Come reinforce us quickly!

When Hong Taiji saw the battle report, he nearly went mad.

The Khorchin tribe — one could say that Nurhaci and Hong Taiji, two generations of Later Jin Khans, had used marriage alliances and coalition tactics to dismantle and swallow this number-one great enemy.

As far back as Nurhaci's era, Khorchin was the only powerful alliance in the northeast capable of contending with the Later Jin state for supremacy.

The reason it had become what it was now was entirely the result of the Aisin family's political maneuvering, unrelenting for over a decade, constantly dividing and absorbing it.

Just last year, Khorchin had erupted in an internal feud led by young-turk nobles, who killed Galdzhuserter, leader of the Khorchin Right Wing's Seven Taiji tribe, for refusing Later Jin conscription — symbolizing that the traditional noble power of Khorchin as an independent polity had been stripped nearly to nothing.

Until this year, this great annexation lasting over a decade was finally drawing to a close. The carefully nurtured seed had at last grown into a great tree, its fruit ripe for the Daiching Empire to pluck.

Before he could even taste it, the Marshal's Office Mongol Corps had charged first into the Khorchin grasslands.

How could Hong Taiji bear this!

He had to relieve Khorchin.

Even at the risk of being pursued by Liu Chengzong, he hazarded dividing his forces — leaving Dorgon with five thousand riders as the rear guard, while he personally led the main force in a frantic rush to relieve Khorchin.

In the end, Khorchin was fine; it was the Naiman, Aohan, and other tribes in the rear that were raided. Hong Taiji was so furious he wrote to blame Dorgon.

Dorgon was wronged too.

The order he'd received was to serve as rear guard, not to cross blades with Liu Chengzong.

Of course wherever Hong Taiji ran, he'd lead his troops and follow — as long as the main force wasn't caught up and ambushed, that was enough.

Who knew Liu Chengzong would ignore him entirely, only seizing on the other vassal tribes to relentlessly pursue and hammer?

Dorgon, having been blamed, furiously planned to set an ambush near a Khorchin subordinate tribe, fight an ambush battle against the Marshal's Army, and cut down their swagger.

In the end, he waited two full days and saw no pursuing troops. He even ran straight into the scattered Southern Desert Mongol tribes after Erenchin had been blocked by Hong Taiji and broken up.

Hong Taiji led his army charging into the Khorchin grasslands, his troops and horses scattering everywhere, launching raids and pursuits against the Southern Desert tribes plundering livestock and people. Within days, dozens of skirmishes were fought around the large and small lakes of northern Khorchin.

More victories than defeats, but the enemy was very good at running.

He was still on tenterhooks, terrified that Liu Chengzong would continue advancing.

Then he received Dorgon's glad tidings: Liu Chengzong had withdrawn his army. Forty to fifty thousand troops had only reached the Khorchin Left Wing before being blocked by the Liao Marshes. They had neither continued toward Shenyang nor advanced into Khorchin, but had obediently withdrawn back to the Xing'an Mountains.

This outcome greatly relieved Emperor Chongde. He mused that the Great Ming's Chongzhen Emperor must have played his intended role, beginning to send Ming troops to harass Liu Chengzong's rear supply lines.

With a brief respite, Hong Taiji immediately entered a post-battle state, dispatching trusted nobles to every Khorchin niru to assess losses, and sending men back to Shenyang to mobilize supplies, beginning relief efforts for the Khorchin tribes.

Those that could be relieved, he relieved; tribes too severely damaged, he simply annexed into the Eight Banners.

Only this pleasant mood lasted less than two days in Hong Taiji's heart.

Very soon he got another piece of news from Dorgon: Liu Chengzong had indeed withdrawn, but not far.

A large number of Han troops were still entrenched between the Xar Moron River and the Chagan Moron River on the eastern foothills of the Xing'an Mountains, their movements peculiar — it seemed... they were farming.

Moreover, according to intelligence provided by Naiman tribe captives who had escaped from the Marshal's Army camp, within the Xing'an Mountains, between the Xar Moron River and the Baicha River, the Simple Khan's army was building a city.

These people, it seemed, had no intention of leaving.