Chapter 748: Three Times Past the Border Wall Without Leaving

On the Kulun grasslands beyond the Liaodong border.

For five days straight, two massive armies rolled northwest — now racing, now halting abruptly — tangled and pulling at each other across more than two hundred li.

Liu Chengzong moved in stops and starts, splitting his forces to harass and counter harassment; every time he paused to rest, he made sure to put on the posture of a well-rested force turning back for a decisive fight.

Hong Taiji hurried and chased but dared not press too close; while attempting envelopment on one flank, he kept his teeth locked on, waiting for an opening. His follow-up troops were still reinforcing him continuously, and the balance of numerical superiority was tipping in his favor.

The Eight Banners army had already chased far from Shenyang; it no longer looked like they meant to retake the baggage and money, and they showed no fear that Zu Dashou might actually seize Liaoyang.

It looked more like they were waiting for the troops and artillery behind them, intending to fight a decisive battle with him.

But Liu Chengzong could understand.

After all, anyone whose ancestral graves are smoking will be in a great hurry.

The fire was not set by Zhang Xianzhong.

What Zhang Xianzhong had originally intended to do might well have killed the Chongde Emperor on the spot, right there on horseback, from sheer rage.

He had been ordered to take Tang Tong to the eastern city, planning to go through the Ministry of Rites' procedures for grave relocation and sacrifices, and to invite the Old Khan out to be taken to Shaanxi.

When they got there, they found the Old Khan wasn't there; the steles were all inscribed with names he didn't recognize, like Cuyen and Šurhaci. Zhang Xianzhong lost all enthusiasm.

Tang Tong was thoroughly honest, and like many of the Marshal's Army's officers, he maintained the old Ming army's ideology and took pleasure in raiding enemy nests.

He had already prepared the gunpowder to blast open the tomb passage and start digging, when Zhang Xianzhong's dignity as Minister of the Ministry of Rites suddenly surged up. He tossed out a "Forget it, their status is too low," wheeled his horse around, and left.

This left Tang Tong, who had been raring to go, completely baffled: What the hell do you mean, status too low?

I don't care about your status — what our rank-and-file soldiers want is a good time.

It's the same as blowing up bricks with firecrackers, setting houses on fire, or burying powder to blast city walls.

A perfectly well-built mausoleum — boom!

Blown up — what a good time!

Apart from the bad reputation, there's really no downside to this.

But here in Liaodong, that didn't matter. He had orders from the Minister of the Ministry of Rites — someone to take the blame — so of course he wanted to blast first and dig later.

But then Zhang Xianzhong left.

Tang Tong led his troops toward the Eastern Capital. The further he went, the more he brooded, and the angrier he got. When he saw the woods outside the city, fury ignited: "Burn them, burn them — burn it all for me!"

That fire outside the city really was just a spur-of-the-moment thing.

His soldiers set the woods alight; once the woods caught fire, the flames rode the wind straight onto the grave mounds.

Liu the Lion knew the whole story, but he could hardly send a special letter to the Chongde Emperor explaining: That fire on your family graves was an accident — stop chasing us.

That wouldn't be appropriate.

The man's fury was entirely understandable.

Hong Taiji was truly desperate.

In all his born days, he had never suffered such an extraordinary humiliation.

Ancestral tombs set ablaze, the old capital torched, the imperial environs plundered, a beile captured, people and livestock, manors and estates burned, looted, and slaughtered — any of that was enough to send one's fury blazing sky-high.

But even that could not compare to the greater humiliation inflicted on Hong Taiji: his naval fleet sunk in the river, and the Prince of Obedience, whom he himself had enfeoffed, beaten so badly he barely escaped with his life.

Those buried in the Eastern Capital Mausoleum — his grandfather, his great-grandfather — had all passed before Hong Taiji was born, and his elder brother Cuyen's relationship with him in life... had actually been quite good. Before his succession, Hong Taiji had been on excellent terms with all his brothers.

Moreover, they had once studied Chinese under the same teacher. But now, that relationship could not be good.

Because Cuyen had thrown his lot in with the Han side, and in the end, his execution was also a matter of political line.

Cuyen had no desire to be the Hong Baturu of the Mandate of Heaven Khanate; what he wanted was to peacefully serve as the Dragon-Tiger General of the Great Ming.

You could see this from the names he gave his sons: the eldest was called Dudu, the second Guohuan, the third Hanren — a very orthodox Jianzhou tusi heir.

If not for Nurhaci, the Mandate of Heaven Khan, pressing down from above, they might well have been named Guozhu, Guohuan, and Guozhong.

Before the Old Khan raised his army, Cuyen went to the Liaodong Regional Commander's headquarters to inform on him to Zhang Chengyin, saying: My father's ambitions are vast; the court must be wary of him.

Zhang Chengyin thought the boy had lost his mind.

On the eve of Nurhaci's founding of the Jin state, as the great army marched out to war, Cuyen, right behind them in the city, burned paper and made sacrifices to Heaven, cursing them to defeat. He even told others: If my father loses this battle, I will absolutely not let them back into the city!

Thus, throughout the entire Mandate of Heaven era, Cuyen was a political symbol, and now that the Chongde Emperor had ascended the throne, relations with him could only be worse.

The great fires in the two cities of Liaoyang, the plundering of the imperial environs and the Liaoyang outskirts — these were enormous losses for the Daicing Empire. For Hong Taiji, they were a blow to face, hard to swallow, and a shaking of his political prestige, but in truth, they caused him no great personal pain.

But the smashing of Kong Youde's troops and the scuttling of Shang Kexi's naval fleet were a different matter entirely.

This directly caused a precipitous decline in the armed foundation that Hong Taiji controlled.

This was fatal at a time when his political prestige was already wavering.

However, what truly affected Hong Taiji's mood was that the further he went down this road of pursuit, the angrier he got.

Hong Taiji's original plan had been to lead twenty thousand elite troops in a rapid dash beyond the border, disregarding the disparity in numbers, exploiting his marching speed to strike Liu Chengzong's rear guard.

But this plan was precisely what Liu Chengzong had countered.

It was not that the Marshal's Army marched faster than the Eight Banners — they didn't.

The Eight Banners army organized its infantry, cavalry, and heavy artillery into separate columns. For infantry and cavalry, seventy or eighty li a day was a perfectly normal marching pace; on a forced march, they could even shed their armor and cover two hundred li in a day.

The Marshal's Army's strength also lay in marching, but they mixed cavalry and artillery. While plenty of their horse units could raid six hundred li in three days, the cannons could not move that fast. Their normal march was only sixty or seventy li.

So Liu Chengzong blew up every bridge along the route and scuttled every boat.

This forced Hong Taiji's Eight Banners army, in their pursuit, to bolt wildly across flat ground, only to be brought to a forced halt every time they hit a river.

So much so that Liu Chengzong's main ox-cart column, traveling fifty li a day, had already crossed beyond the border while the Eight Banners army was still wrestling with river crossings, missing the best window for pursuit.

This was even more infuriating than having the ancestral tombs burned.

The Chongde Emperor's mental state at this moment was even worse than the Chongzhen Emperor's after the Jisi Incident.

After all, the Great Ming was vast in territory and dense in population; even an invasion that shook the realm gave people the most direct impression of merely "they actually dared to flaunt their might beneath the walls of Beijing."

But the core region of Daicing was just the three hundred li between Liaoyang and Shenyang. Most of the old Jianzhou population had followed the army in migrating to the Liao-Shen area. Further afield, in the broader Northeast, even past the Songhua River, their degree of control was inferior to Liu Chengzong's over the Oirat and Ü-Tsang.

Those were not Daicing territory at all, but human mines where they sent troops to catch slaves.

Liu Chengzong's charge and plunder wrought such devastation and terror that the newborn Daiqing Empire was nearly shaken apart.

Hong Taiji was only a little better than Chongzhen — he was smart.

He did not kill anyone.

In truth, just like Chongzhen back then, in Hong Taiji's eyes everyone was carrying a black pot, and he very much wanted to pick some people to kill.

But he knew that killing people now would be utterly pointless beyond venting anger, and would only pain his allies and delight his enemies.

He had lost the battle — those who stubbornly defended to the death were killed by Liu Chengzong, and those who fled back were then killed by him. What good could come of that?

So he disciplined no one. Even Yoto, whose unauthorized deployment led to Dudu's capture, was only given a scolding by Hong Taiji. He still let him oversee the Ministry of War and lead four thousand troops of the Bordered Red Banner as the vanguard on the campaign.

The situation was actually very similar to the Later Jin raids into the Great Ming.

Being unable to stop Liu Chengzong from leaving the border meant they had lost the chance to use the border walls to envelop and encircle the invading army.

If they could not block him inside the border, blocking him outside was even harder.

Fortunately, the terrain beyond the border in Liaodong was not as open as it was beyond Xuanfu, so Hong Taiji could deduce Liu Chengzong's marching route.

After all, the Great Ming's border troops were notoriously poor and fierce, and Liu Chengzong, as the poorest and fiercest among them, could not possibly be unaware of their own situation.

If he were empty-handed, the Great Ming border walls would let him swagger through — anyone who saw this desperado would keep far away.

But now he was laden with wealth and livestock, and saw everyone else as a desperado. No matter how bold he was, he would not dare to skulk along the Great Ming border walls.

He would certainly still withdraw west through the Khingan Mountains.

If he took the Khingan route, he would definitely be caught up.

Hong Taiji knew that road through Songmo Prefecture — Dorgon had taken it when he led the army west to attack Guihua City. Let alone large oxcarts, even for light cavalry, that wretched road could pass at most eight thousand troops a day.

Forces simply could not be deployed wide, and no one could move fast there.

What Hong Taiji knew, Liu Chengzong naturally knew as well.

Therefore, Hong Taiji no longer hoped to recover the people, livestock, and wealth. He only sought to hurt Liu Chengzong badly enough that he would not dare to come again next year.

Otherwise, just as the sign Liu Chengzong erected said, if he came again next year, Daiqing would collapse.

When the Liao River froze, they had to guard against a Ming eastern campaign; when the Liao River thawed, they had to guard against Liu Chengzong's raids. If they had to mass tens of thousands of troops in Shenyang all year round, nothing else could get done.

For this reason, Hong Taiji abandoned his previous conscription practice of leaving two out of every three armored men from the niru, and pulled out all the remaining armored men and even the unarmored troops. The Liao River defense line at places like Niuzhuang was contracted nearly two hundred li to the northeast.

Right now, Shengjing City was defended only by a small number of regular troops' supernumeraries; a large number of old men and women who could use bows had all taken to the city walls… As for the children, everyone over fifteen was in Hong Taiji's border-expedition army.

In a very short time, he mobilized forty-two thousand from the Eight Banners' regular men, supernumeraries, banner slaves, and Fish-Skin Tatars; gathered nine thousand from the two Mongol banners' supernumeraries and the remnant troops of the Khorchin tribes; and even drew twelve thousand from the Han troops — forming a colossal force totaling sixty-three thousand troops, pursuing all the way to the northwest.

It is said: when holding a blade, one must cut; when wielding an axe, one must strike.

Since Hong Taiji had massed a great army, he made multiple preparations and was determined to force a pitched battle.

Even if Liu Chengzong fled, should the Jinzhou army then attack and seize Liaoyang, he would swing his forces south to take Jinzhou, thereby restoring the prestige lost in the brutal pillaging.

Beyond that, massing the great army had another use: after driving Liu Chengzong away, they could receive Ajige, who was trapped inside the Great Ming.

Many Eight Banners nobles believed that being pushed to the brink by Liu Chengzong this year was precisely because Ajige's twenty-thousand-strong army had earlier taken a roundabout route to attack the Ming, leaving Shengjing with insufficient troops and stretched too thin.

Otherwise, they would never have let Liu Chengzong breach the border walls.

Two massive armies rolled forward beyond the border. By day their marching dust veiled the sky; by night their campfires spread like a sea of stars.

The immense display of force made Jinzhou city shut its gates and bar its doors. Even the shops by the sea were rolled up and brought inside the city, terrified that the two enemy armies might turn south.

In truth, however, on the battlefield, neither Hong Taiji nor Liu Chengzong knew that part of Ajige's army had already exited the border.

Ajige was afraid. Before entering the border, he had left Fiyanggū's two Bordered Blue Banners outside the border to send word to Hong Taiji, but that force had vanished. After entering Changping, he sent men out of the border but could not make contact either.

His scattered looting in the capital region went rather smoothly — after all, Ming troop movements could not catch up to him for a while. He raided in all directions, trampled everywhere, looted and ran. Local militias and smaller battalions were simply no match for him.

But Ajige knew very well that this was all an illusion.

No matter how great the Eight Banners' advantage over the capital region's commoners, they were rootless duckweed. There would always come a time of exhaustion, and their combat strength would inevitably and continuously decline.

No matter how much chaos he caused inside the border, it was all false. The key was getting out of the border.

The problem was that Liu Chengzong was outside the border.

Ajige did not even dare to loot heavily once he reached the outskirts of the capital. He focused solely on threatening the capital on one hand, while sending troops to strike the Malanyu pass of the Ji Prefecture border wall on the other.

It was a small pass, but the Eight Banners were familiar with it. During the Jisi Incident, they had been led into the border there by the disbanded Ji Prefecture troops. Its defenses were weak, and exiting the border was relatively easy.

The problem was the difficult mountain road — only three or four thousand men could pass through in a day.

Just as they reached the third day, a little over four thousand troops had gotten out, along with quite a lot of baggage and plundered wealth. Then the vanguard that had rushed out the first day came back.

The vanguard reported that several dozen li beyond the border, Liu Chengzong had set the mountains on fire. Nearby was ash; farther away it was still burning. The rivers had been boiled dry, and there was not a bit of food or water along the route.

Only near the border wall could one find mushrooms to pick and eat.

With captives and livestock, a large force could not move fast. The soldiers, captives, horses, and oxen would all have nothing to eat or drink. Exiting the border this way was a dead end.

Of course, this fire was not set by Liu Chengzong.

But no matter how hard the Eight Banners tried, they could never imagine that their own people had set the fire and blocked their retreat.

Ajige's sky had fallen.

The people, livestock, and wealth they had painstakingly moved out of the border had to be laboriously hauled back inside through the Malanyu trail, and quite a bit was snatched away by the Ming troops that charged over.

Actually, the Ming troops had no idea what he was doing. They just figured the eastern caitiffs would be panicked when leaving the border, so they seized the moment to grab some things. They never imagined Ajige would come back, and it scared the Ming troops into fleeing at once, each secretly cursing Ajige for being so stingy.

For just that little bit of stuff, was it worth coming back into the border walls to fight?

Ajige actually did not care at all about the wealth the Ming troops had snatched. Since he had re-entered the border anyway, he could just keep looting.

Afterward, Ajige went south and attacked Wuqing County but failed to take it. He then turned to probe Xifengkou in the north of Yongping Prefecture, but was blocked by Ming forces. However, during the lull in the fighting, the defenders at Lengkou to the east were redeployed, creating a gap.

But this was not a good route either.

Not far after exiting at Lengkou, heading northeast, one could follow the Daling River to the border region outside Yizhou Garrison in Guangning, Liaoxi. This was also the closest route outside the border.

During the Jisi Incident, Hong Taiji's troops had taken this route, following the river valley outside the border to Malanyu and Da'ankou outside Zunhua, bypassing the Guanning Army to enter the pass.

But now, Zu Dashou's Jinzhou army was running wild outside the border to guard against the two forces to the north, and Ajige's troops ran into them not far after exiting.

The Liaodong troops were like wolves spotting meat when they saw the wealth. As soon as the Eight Banners' vanguard clashed with them, they hurriedly ordered the rear units to retreat.

With the east impassable, Ajige had no choice but to order the vanguard north.

Ajige's plan was sound enough: bypass the Guanning Army, cut through the Kharchin tribe's territory, pass through Aohan, Naiman, and Khorchin, grab some sheep from them first, then loop all the way back to Shenyang.

Then he laid eyes on the Kharchin tribe's lands — completely deserted. Gürüsükeb, who had followed him across the border, was on the verge of tears. Where are my people?

He wasn't the only one weeping. The taijis of the Aohan and Naiman tribes, along with Wang Lama, whose fief lay at Kulun — every last one of them looked as wretched as mourners at a funeral. If even the Kharchin's paltry numbers had been plundered clean, could their own territories fare any better?

No chance in hell.

Because after Ajige's vanguard camp advanced another two hundred li, they spotted Liu Chengzong, crouched right between the Ongniud and Naiman tribes.

At the edge of the great desert, forty thousand troops stretched across more than ten sprawling encampments, with cattle and horses in herds of a thousand, and mounted scouts ranging in every direction.

The moment Ajige got the report, he was decisiveness itself — turned right around, re-entered the capital region through Lengkou, and went back the way he came.

When the Chongzhen Emperor received this news, he practically went insane. You son of a bitch, weren't you supposed to be gone?! Why the hell are you back again!

Good afternoon!

(End of chapter)