Chapter 728: Fearless City

Twelve hundred li east of the Xing'an Mountains, on the left bank of the Nen River, stands a city called Fearless City.

Its Mongol name is Gelezhuer'gen City, the main stronghold of the Nen River Khorchin tribe.

The Nen River basin has had walled settlements since ancient times. As early as the Liao-Jin period, before the Mongols arrived, the ancestors who settled here built stockades and cities, fishing, hunting, and farming.

When the Mongols swept south, Hasar, the younger brother of Genghis Khan, led the Left-Hand Army to occupy Daning, and the troops passing through this area received its surrender along the way.

At that time, the great war between the Mongols and Jin was raging, with the main battlefields in Jizhou, Luanping, and western Liaoning. This place was sparsely populated, and soon after its capture, the city walls were razed and the site was abandoned.

Later, the masters of this land became the Daur people living along the Tao'er River. Descendants of the Khitans, they built stockades and lived here as before.

During the Jiajing reign, the Mongols came again — the same army, the same people.

The Khorchin tribe, the bow-and-arrow personal guards of Genghis Khan.

Kuimengke Tasihala, the fourteenth-generation grandson of Hasar.

When the Khorchin tribe migrated here, they still lived as nomads at first and had no walled cities, but the stockades and small towns scattered everywhere in the Nen River basin were not torn down — all built by their subject peoples, the Jurchens, such as the Sibe, Ula, Guwalca, and Daur tribes.

As for the several large cities along the riverbanks — such as Gelezhuer'gen City on the east bank of the Nen River, Chuolemen City at the mouth of the Songhua River a hundred and twenty li away, and the other cities in the Nen and Songhua river basins — all were built twelve years ago at the suggestion of Nurhaci to Oba Khan.

At the time, Oba had allied with Nurhaci and fallen out with the Chahar.

Nurhaci suggested he build several empty cities, store some fodder and grain in them in peacetime, and when the enemy attacked, let the Mongols and Jurchen subjects take refuge inside and hold the cities in defense.

Because objectively, the Later Jin state at the time faced the threat of Ming armies and simply had no ability to send reinforcements north when the Khorchin were raided by the Chahar.

But failing to send aid would violate the duty of an alliance — and moreover, if the Khorchin were wiped out by the Chahar, the Later Jin's situation would become even worse.

So Nurhaci put great effort into it, fearing that Oba would cling to the Mongol tradition of having no need for cities, and even wrote in his letters the absurd words: "Those who desire field battle are truly the cowardly; those who fight from behind city walls are the brave."

The meaning of the name Fearless City is that the Khorchin no longer fear Ligdan Khan.

Later events proved that Oba's decision to heed Nurhaci's advice was a wise one. It was precisely by relying on these several empty cities that the Khorchin, during the Chahar's great eastern campaign, escaped calamity without any reinforcements from the Later Jin.

Of course, Oba did not win that battle back then either — thousands upon thousands of his tribesmen were killed, three Noyan died, and in the end, as Ligdan Khan demanded, he handed over the fugitives he had taken in, and only then did the Chahar withdraw their troops.

But in the final analysis, he kept his life and preserved the strength of his tribe.

Fearless City borders the Nen River to the west and is surrounded on three sides by marshland; for a hundred li in every direction, the land is dotted with small lakes.

The great general of the Southern Desert whom Liu Chengzong thought of day and night, the man who had cut such a dazzling figure in this great campaign — Erinchen — was right beneath the walls of this city.

He had chased Badari all the way from the edge of the Liao Marshes for over a thousand li, yet his momentum had not waned. Even facing a walled city and a garrison of more than six thousand men, he still dared to flaunt his might beneath its walls.

Badari had nearly been scared out of his wits by the pursuit. What on earth had Liu Chengzong fed this Ordos Jinong of the Southern Desert to make him so ferocious?

He could only watch as Erinchen rode at ease outside the city, utterly unrestrained, as if he had lost his mind.

Erinchen was not being arrogant — he was simply bewildered.

Ever since Ligdan Khan's westward migration, the Jinong of the Ordos had never been able to find his place in history, passing his days drinking camel-milk liquor, dreaming his life away in a drunken stupor.

Only after submitting to the Duntar Khanate and becoming the Jinong of the Khaganate under Daicing Khitan Khan did he destroy the Kharchin in a single strike, shattering the khanate that had been at the height of its power on the steppe.

The glorious victory did not, however, go to Erinchen's head and give him any delusions of military genius.

He knew perfectly well that defeating the Kharchin was a matter of good timing in the attack — it was nothing more than a copy of the Ming army's nest-raiding tactics.

In particular, during this incursion into Khorchin, the true strength of the Southern Desert's twenty-three myriarchies was laid out clearly before Erinchen's eyes.

They were indeed formidable fighters — seasoned old border veterans hardened by countless skirmishes and bandit chieftains expert in plunder, combined together, could maintain an extremely high victory rate in small-scale engagements.

But this combat effectiveness had absolutely nothing to do with his, Erinchen's, brilliant command.

All he could see were insubordinate myriarchs and chiliarchs who refused to obey orders, and of course, cavalrymen who would vanish without a trace the moment a campaign began and could never be rallied again.

That said, from top to bottom, their army was quite clear about the overall campaign situation.

From the lowliest soldier to the commander-in-chief, everyone understood that raiding Khorchin was a contest of who could run faster.

Khorchin's cattle, sheep, and women waited ahead to be plundered, while the Eight Banners' army was in hot pursuit from behind. Only by killing quickly, looting fast, and then withdrawing from the flank to find the Grand Marshal and claim their rewards — leaving the enemy to Erinchen, who would continue luring them north — could they escape with their lives.

Erinchen was extremely cooperative, truly chasing Badari all the way northeast, across the Nen River, all the way to the walls of Fearless City.

In truth, it was not that Erinchen wanted to cooperate. After riding three hundred li, he had wanted to turn around and plunge into the Xing'an Mountains to report back to Liu Chengzong.

He was a great noble, the lord of the entire Ordos, and had not brought many troops under his direct command on this campaign. The whole Ordos had mobilized just over two thousand men, dispersed among the commands of his brothers, sons, and nephews — nobles like Sanang, Suonomu, Seleng, Shandan, and Little Zhamusu.

The grazing lands of the Khorchin steppe had the Left Wing in the south and the Right Wing in the north.

They had chased Badari north from the Liao Marshes, and before they had even left the Left Wing's grazing lands, all the nobles beside him except Taiji Sanang had led their troops off to plunder and vanished.

With his troops all scattered and gone, what was the point of him still chasing?

Unfortunately, the most loyal vassal at his side, his cousin Taiji Sanang, truly had nerve.

He advised him, saying: The lord is exalted as Jinong and has led the troops out to war. Now that the soldiers have scattered in all directions, if you turn back on your own, you may well be punished for a crime by the Khitan Khan. It would be better to draw the Eight Banners away for the soldiers and continue chasing the Khorchin main force northward.

Taiji Sanang was Erinchen's brain trust. In a daze, Erinchen followed his advice and decided on the spot to continue leading the army in pursuit.

He spoke those noble words openly, and only then told Erinchen in private: "Retreating westward across the steppe is not safe. I know the way — we can chase the enemy all the way to their lair. When the time comes, even if we cannot achieve merit, we can travel through the Sechen Khan's grazing lands in the Xing'an Mountains and return to the Southern Desert."

In truth, Sanang simply felt they had already missed the best window to pull back. Turning around to retreat would not only risk being routed by Khorchin forces but would also mean crashing headlong into the Eight Banners army.

That being the case, they might as well keep chasing. At least this way was safe, and the Eight Banners army behind them would also have to split its forces to pursue those troops that had broken off and retreated along the way.

Those fleeing troops would think Erinchen was drawing the enemy away for everyone else, and the soldiers following him would also see Erinchen as a hero.

Perhaps in the next campaign, those Southern Desert myriarchs would truly obey Erinchen's orders?

It had to be said, Taiji Sanang's ability was indeed formidable.

When Sanang set out on the campaign, he led only a little over four hundred men from his own two tribes, the Uushin and Besüd. Even to raid the Eight Banners' artillery transport column, he had to borrow five hundred cavalry from Erinchen just to muster nine hundred riders.

Yet on the march north to expel the Khorchin, among all the Ordos nobles, only Sanang could, by his prestige, restrain his men and keep them riding together. He even won battle after battle, and his troop strength actually increased compared to when he had set out.

Cavalrymen who had been lost by other nobles during the plundering were also more willing to be gathered up by Taiji Sanang and temporarily placed under his command.

Because Sanang Hong Taiji bore the honorific title of Sechen.

Throughout the entire history of the Mongols, only a handful of men have ever received the title of Sechen.

Khubilai, Mandukhai, Altan Khan, Buyan Sechen Khan, Ligdan Khan, Sholoi Khan, and Qutughtu Qong Taiji.

Among them, only Qutughtu received such an honorific as a vassal, and it was he who had this title bestowed upon Sanang when Sanang was only ten years old.

Part of the reason was certainly that Qutughtu was the first among the Six Myriarchies to practice Buddhism, but on the other hand, it was also because his achievements were unmatched by anyone.

His expedition against the Oirat, raiding the Torgut; his expedition against the Kazakh, and on the triumphant return, south of the Hangayn Mountains he accepted the surrender of eight thousand Khoid, north of Hami he subdued the Batur tribe, dispatched his two sons with troops to Tannu Uriankhai to subdue the Choros, rescued the Khalkha from Oirat control, and made his lord Altan Khan master of half the Oirat.

What this title signified on the steppe was self-evident.

Those men, reassigned by the Three Khans from Mobei to Monan, accepting the Great Khan's redeployment, followed the Wanhu called Cook or Bowman as they marched into Khorchin — a stretch of grassland they had never set foot on.

During the plundering, a soldier would only dismount to cut a chunk of beef from a leg, stuff it into a leather bag and tuck it under his saddle, and when he looked up his own unit had already vanished without a trace.

Fortunately, amid the terror and confusion, they spotted friendly troops passing by and were promptly gathered up on the spot, planning to find a chance to ask where Cook had run off to and rejoin their unit then.

On asking, they learned that the leader of this friendly force actually held the title of Sechen, and was also a Hong Taiji.

Good heavens, a wise and brilliant Crown Prince!

The odds of surviving the war were clearly ten thousand times better than following that damn Cook!

In the end, Cook plundered a fortune, each soldier seizing two or three horses, with wives tied to the saddle and lambs clutched to their chests, before being chased back to the Khingan Mountains by the Eight Banners troops to report to the Great Khan and claim their reward.

Their brilliant Crown Prince, however, drove straight for the dragon's lair, chasing all the way to Fearless City, twelve hundred li away — a lone army plunging deep into enemy territory.

As for this place, Fearless City, it lies near Qiqihar, anciently under the Shiwei Protectorate, where the ancestors of the Nine Clans of Tatars lived before their westward migration.

So it was basically coming home.

The lord of Khorchin, Badali, was grinding his teeth to dust inside Fearless City — he truly could not beat these madmen under Erinchen!

At the edge of the Liao Marshes, Badali had his strongest forces, but Erinchen had even more cavalry. They clashed several times, and he could never win in the field, instead losing troops and officers.

By the time he withdrew into Fearless City, though his numbers had grown, the able-bodied men in the city were all forest-dwelling subjects who had fled there from every direction.

These forest folk, with their superb physiques, could be armed by Hong Taiji into ferocious Solon death-squads, breaking enemy lines and charging into battle, invincible in every assault.

The problem was, Badali had no arms.

Fearless City was normally just an empty fort for storing grain, with no weapons or armor at all.

So much so that although Erinchen outside the city had only a little over two thousand troops, and there were six thousand able-bodied men inside, Badali dared not sally forth to fight him.

The army outside the city had extremely fine armor and weapons — definitely not the kind of useless trash armed with stone arrowheads.

What they wore and what they carried in their hands did not even include Marshal's Headquarters equipment; it was uniformly standard-issue Ming army and Eight Banners armaments.

On the steppe, there was only one man who would mix these two houses' armor into a single force — Subudi of the Kharachin.

Because both the Ming and the Jin had sent armor and weapons to the old Kharachin chieftain Subudi, and both had been raided by Subudi's troops.

After Subudi's death, Gurusiqibu had not been chieftain long before he was plundered bare by the Monan tribes, and as the commander of the surprise attack, the Ordos tribe reaped the greatest spoils — these arms naturally became standard equipment for the Monan cavalry.

In fact, at this stage, the troops of Erinchen and Sechen Taiji surpassed even their suzerain Liu Chengzong in armor technology.

The Eight Banners' modified fittings for Ming-style cloth-faced iron armor, such as the attached groin-guards and armpit-guards, had all been taken and used by them.

Right now, the only thing he could pin his hopes on was Hong Taiji's Eight Banners army.

And before the Eight Banners arrived, Badali hoped to keep Erinchen steady — to stop him from running.

Khorchin had been raided by these madmen, and thousands of casualties were a small matter; the key was that during the pursuit they had captured his cousin Baisgal. If Erinchen got away, Badali could not swallow this humiliation.

At this very moment, in the camp outside the city.

Erinchen was planning escape routes with Sechen Taiji. Scouts riding ahead to probe the way west had already been dispatched. They intended to plunder the area around Fearless City one more time, then lead their troops west and flee to the Khingan Mountains.

Just then, a Jaisang of the Uxin tribe arrived bearing a sheepskin document to report: "Hong Taiji, the confession of the Khorchin captive Noyan."

Sechen Taiji immediately took the document and studied it carefully.

According to the captive cavalryman's confession, the Baisgal they had seized was an important Noyan of Khorchin, his identity being the son of Budaqi, Prince of the Khorchin Right Wing Front Banner.

Both being of the Golden Clan, Sechen Taiji had originally intended to use him as a captive to exchange for horses from Badali for their retreat, but he had not expected that after capture this fellow was full of grievances, going on about some discord between the Left and Right Wings of Khorchin.

Sechen Taiji considered this important intelligence for the Marshal's Headquarters, and ordered his subordinate Jaisang to question him on the reasons.

He had not expected that after just a little questioning, the Jaisang would bring him a thick stack of sheepskin confessions, making Sechen click his tongue in secret: this was longer than the book he had written!

"Jinong, I fear we cannot let this Baisgal go back."

Sechen Taiji pointed at the thick sheepskin confessions, looked at Erinchen, and explained: "This man is a descendant of a great Noyan of the Khorchin Right Wing, and he knows the story of Hong Taiji's annexation of Khorchin like the back of his hand."

"He believes Hong Taiji deliberately incites feuds and internal slaughter between the Left and Right Wings, favoring the Left Wing while slighting the Right Wing; that rewards and punishments are unclear, enfeoffing the utterly meritless Ukšan as Prince while only making his father a Junwang, breaking up tribal followers and departing from tradition... This man is extremely dissatisfied with Hong Taiji and the Daicing State."

Erinchen looked worriedly at that stack of sheepskin, then raised his eyes again to Sechen Taiji: "So, you intend to use him to persuade Badali to surrender? Dissatisfied or not, they won't surrender to the Great Khan at a time like this."

Liu Chengzong's army had come here on a distant campaign — they could come and then leave. Khorchin could not run away.

Without outside aid, even if Badali were the great lord of all Khorchin, let alone just the chief of one of the Right Wing's three banners, he could not possibly rebel against the Manchu Eight Banners.

"Jinong, it's not about persuading surrender. We must take him back with us."

Sechen Taiji sighed with emotion: "The Khitan Khan is truly skilled at sowing discord. Jinong, think of what he said to the Three Khans of Mobei — it has spread everywhere, that the Later Jin treats the Mobei Mongols by making them restrain and harm each other, seizing your real power to hold you by the throat."

"This man is a living example of Khorchin being restrained and harmed, its power seized and held by the throat. If by chance we pass through the Chechen tribe and are blocked by their troops..."

As he spoke, Sechen smiled and said: "The moment he sees him, Sholoi Khan will surely, because of the Khitan Khan's farsighted insight, grant us a path to survival."

?? Good afternoon!

? (End of chapter)