Chapter 752: Savage

The Nine Ox Khan's Tent hurtled northward through the battle formation.

But Hong Taiji was still a step too late.

The Khan's Tent had just swept past the Plain White Banner's formation when they saw the galloping White Armor Bodyguards reining in their horses ahead.

"Reporting to the Sacred Khan! The Plain Blue Banner has collapsed; the enemy cavalry have already charged into the Bordered White Banner's ranks!"

The Khan's Tent halted abruptly. The immense pulling force of the nine oxen's sudden turn sheared the iron tenon from the axle, sent the massive wooden wheel flying, and the tent overturned and rolled within the formation.

The Chongde Emperor burst out of the overturned Khan's Tent. With no time to compose himself, clutching his injured arm, he unleashed a torrent of military orders.

"Order: the Plain White, Plain Red, and all banners south of them are to cease advancing to reinforce. Each banner shall form three broken lines spaced at intervals of one formation's width, establishing a second defensive line to receive the forward troops."

"The Han armies — Heaven-Blessed, Heaven-Aided, Ujen Cooha, and the Mongol banners under Yoto's command — are also to withdraw behind the defensive line and reorganize their formations."

"No soldier shall leave his banner's standard and move about without authorization. Violators will be beheaded, and their banner lord fined!"

Hong Taiji was panicking.

At this moment, he felt the same terror the long-deceased Ligdan Khan had known when dominated by the Later Jin.

Only, what Liu Chengzong brought was less fury and a far greater shadow.

The Later Jin had not fought a single battle against the Chahar; they relied on political means, shattering the unity of the Chahar's subordinate tribes. By the time troops were dispatched, the Chahar had already been dismantled, leaving only the Khan's court itself.

But the deterrence Liu Chengzong held over Hong Taiji had nothing to do with politics — it came entirely from martial force. He was a pure savage.

Truly. Hong Taiji had captured plenty of wild men, but he had never seen one as barbaric as Liu Chengzong.

Impossible to communicate with, and of exceedingly low moral character.

He sent his eldest son as an envoy to Qinghai, but couldn't even get a meeting. He tried sowing discord, but the man wouldn't listen — or perhaps couldn't understand at all. He sent messages before battle, and by the second letter, the man was already exposing his faults and cursing him.

Once battle began, he'd hide and couldn't be found, lurking somewhere, staring until the back of your neck went cold.

If you ignored him, he'd run faster than a rabbit, dart into your territory to destroy armies and raze cities, plunder estates and abduct nobles, scuttle ships and blow up bridges, smash villages and burn ancestral tombs.

Even if it meant splitting his forces and traveling an extra five hundred li, he'd take the detour just to tear your home base apart. Even the big birds he raised flew everywhere causing havoc — if they caught a crow, they'd yank it down and peck it to pieces. And what about those glazed ridge beasts made of stone — what business of yours were they?

When you mustered your troops and arrayed them in a grand formation, chasing at his heels to force a decisive battle, he'd suddenly emerge from behind you on the pursuit route, shrouded in a black gale, and give you a savage beating.

From head to toe, the man was the very antonym of civilization.

Even though Hong Taiji was well-versed in Han, Mongol, and Jurchen cultures, he still could not find a single word to accurately describe the Liu Chengzong in his mind.

It was a pity that Dahai, the minister who had created the national script — the dotted and circled Manchu script — had already died of illness. Otherwise, he would have coined a new word right then, using the sound of "Chengzong," to describe a person of utterly depraved moral character.

But at this moment, on the other side of the battlefield.

High atop a sand dune, Liu Chengzong was observing the battlefield through a telescope while praising Hong Taiji to Zhang Xianzhong, Qian Shisheng, and the others.

"The ambush struck mere moments ago, the forward troops have only just collapsed, yet the rear camp has already established a firm battle line and drawn up another defensive line. He truly is a decisive sovereign who plans strategies from his tent, commanding an elite army indeed."

As Liu Chengzong said this, he showed not the slightest urgency.

Zhang Xianzhong, however, seeing that the Daicing army had already formed a second defensive line, said hastily, "Marshal, how can we let him array his troops at leisure? Why not order Gao Yingdeng and Li Hongsi to attack?"

As for Qian Shisheng, the old gentleman in his crimson official robes had also been issued a telescope from the Tiger Guard Battalion. He looked toward the battlefield, his lips trembling, utterly unable to speak.

Even his quarrels with Wen Tiren in the Grand Secretariat had never stirred him to such agitation.

Liu the Lion was genuinely afraid the old man might have a seizure right there on the battlefield.

As for Zhang Xianzhong's suggestion to send the First Brigade's main and flank battalions into the attack, Liu Chengzong did not adopt it. He shook his head and said, "The time is not yet right."

He had more or less figured out that the current comfort zone for the Minister of the Rites Office's command was a battle of ten thousand against ten thousand.

Sometimes, when the enemy was weak, concentrating forces for a single wave assault would pin them down and crush them — then you acted decisively, the first battle being the decisive battle, one fight settling the outcome.

But the army of Hong Taiji before him stretched beyond the horizon, and he had only half their number in hand. Gaining some advantage on the battlefield was enough.

In a large-scale campaign like this, being able to use a quarter of the enemy's total strength, in a surprise attack, to strike a local portion comprising one-fifth of their forces, creating a situation of speed against slowness and many against few — that was an overall advantage.

With an overall advantage, it was inadvisable to commit more troops to expand it.

Because Hong Taiji had already very decisively opened a new defensive line, and Liu the Lion had no spare troops left either.

If the enemy had no second defensive line, or if the routing troops had smashed through it, then there would be no need to commit more troops; the nearly twenty thousand soldiers on hand would be enough to overrun the sixty thousand routed soldiers.

But since the enemy had re-established a defensive line, a line that twenty thousand troops could not break through, thirty thousand would likewise fail to break through.

On the contrary, throwing those two battalions in would mean Liu Chengzong had played all his cards.

When the time came, the frontline troops wouldn't even be able to withdraw, with no rearguard force to cover them.

Unless he sent the Feathered Forest and Tiger Guard battalions to serve as the rearguard.

The problem was, if those two battalions served as the rearguard, then Liu Chengzong would certainly be going to the rear with them.

He couldn't very well direct a retreat from the battlefield with just the hundred or so men of his central guard, could he? If the enemy sent five or six hundred cavalry, they'd capture him. He'd be safer staying on the battle line with the Feathered Forest Battalion.

The fighting at this stage was like a turn-based game.

His surprise attack was still in progress, and Hong Taiji was also preparing to counterattack.

Liu the Lion needed to see how Hong Taiji counterattacked before deciding his next deployment.

Still, even if it was turn-based, he could guess the few things Hong Taiji was capable of doing.

Military ability requires talent. Liu the Lion might not be the absolute best under heaven, but when it came to experience commanding campaigns, truly no one under heaven had more than he did.

In the seven years since he raised his army, with high-intensity warfare year after year, large-scale battles personally commanded by him — engagements where both sides committed over ten thousand men, and even campaigns composed of several such battles — averaged more than two per year.

Centered on Lanzhou, within a radius of three thousand li, there was no one he had not beaten.

The immediate priority for the Daicing army right now was to use several battalions in a horizontal line to establish a defensive front, gather the routed troops, and reorganize them.

The next tactical move, Liu Chengzong judged, would be to redeploy into a one-two character formation, with both wings spreading out to envelop him.

Of course, they might also use a narrower front and engage with overlapping three-character formations, but that was unlikely.

Because although Liu Chengzong had fewer troops, he had many ironclad soldiers. Rotating them in combat to recover their strength would instead give his ironclad soldiers the best fighting environment, allowing them to counter-envelop the Eight Banners army with inferior numbers.

And if both wings spread out, Liu Chengzong would need to see how wide Hong Taiji's battle line was.

This was also why Liu Chengzong had deployed Zuo Guangxian and Tang Tong's battalions on the left wing, and Subadi's Mobei army on the right wing.

On the surface, this force of just over ten thousand was striking the enemy's flanks while simultaneously blocking enemy reinforcements from both wings.

In truth, Liu Chengzong intended to use them to force Hong Taiji to raise the cost of encirclement — stretching the battle line wide and thinning it out.

If it stretched wide enough, Hong Taiji's command and the support between his various units would become strained; if it thinned enough, the First Brigade's Regular and Surprise battalions could punch right through their center!

If it didn't thin enough, then after Liu Chengzong had taken his advantage, he would use the Regular and Surprise battalions to form a defensive line behind the wagon fort. The forward line would pull back, deliver a counter-strike against the pursuers, then turn and withdraw.

Just then, startled cries rang out once more from the western side of the battlefield.

Subadi, who had been circling on the western flank and feinting to block the enemy, had been observing the battlefield from the periphery the entire time.

At first, he had not dared to attack.

Because he had been chased and beaten by the Eight Banners earlier when they sortied from Shengjing, even when Chantu Taiji's Yanmen Camp and Wu Sihu's Northern Yuan Camp had both broken into the enemy lines, and the allied camps of the various Mongol tribes in the Eight Banners' center had collapsed on their own, he still had no intention of charging the Ujen Cooha position led by Jin Yuhe.

For one, the direction he was positioned in was the front that Daiching's troops had originally been pursuing — not a favorable direction to attack from.

For another, the Mobei cavalry's equipment was poor. Inside the border, the Eight Banners had chased and beaten him; he had only gotten out because He Huchen's Shuofang Camp charged in to cover the rear. And with Liu Chengzong's example right before his eyes, Subadi had a deeply ingrained belief that the Han troops were ferocious.

A flanking force of one or two thousand men charging the formation would probably struggle to achieve the same breakthrough effect as those two camps, Northern Yuan and Yanmen.

Third, an independent great lord of Mobei like Subadi could not possibly throw his family's fortune into a desperate fight for Liu Chengzong the way those two Mongol camps, Northern Yuan and Yanmen, did.

So Subadi simply carried out Liu Chengzong's orders to the letter — letting his more than six thousand Mobei cavalry rest at the battlefield's edge while putting on a menacing, tiger-like glare to intimidate the enemy.

But he did want to attack. After all, if the lips are gone, the teeth grow cold. If the Marshal's army was left stranded here, Daiching would not spare him either.

So earlier, when he had ridden straight west to scout Daiching's troop movements, he had found the Marshal's army's relay riders and learned that He Huchen had been watching the battle situation here all along. Once the message was passed, Shuofang Camp was already on its way.

Subadi's plan was to wait for He Huchen to arrive and have his Mobei cavalry follow Shuofang Camp in trampling the enemy formation.

But Hong Taiji had halted the support from the rear camps and seemed to be pulling a defensive line behind them, while at the front, the Ujen Cooha under Jin Yuhe were laboriously moving their cannons to the north.

Subadi saw that the situation was now stable — no enemy reinforcements were coming to the flank, and the enemy directly ahead was in the middle of repositioning their artillery. If he didn't strike with his cavalry now, he'd be courting divine punishment later.

He immediately seized the moment and ordered his subordinates to sound the attack horn.

Scattered in small groups of three to five across the desert, nearly seven thousand Mobei cavalry — leaving only Gumbu Khan with over a thousand riders to continue blocking the enemy — erupted in a clamor. The remaining cavalry flocked to the minor nobles in the army and converged on the edge of the enemy formation, then launched their charge.

Yet another flank assault!

Subadi's timing for the attack was exceptionally cunning.

A moment earlier, Jin Yuhe's cannons had not yet been shifted north, and Ma Guangyuan's troops to the south were still moving north to provide support.

A moment later, having received the Chongde Emperor's retreat order, Jin Yuhe would have been leading his troops south in withdrawal.

But precisely when Jin Yuhe had just received the retreat order yet had not finished preparing to withdraw, Subadi launched his charge — and in an instant, Jin Yuhe's Ujen Cooha unit was shattered and routed.

The Mobei cavalry never even collided with them. From several hundred paces away, the Ujen Cooha fired a volley of muskets and cannons. Seeing that they could not halt the cavalry's momentum, some drew their blades to counter-charge, while many more threw down their guns and fled.

At the very first contact, Jin Yuhe's battle line was torn to shreds, and a great mass of defeated soldiers fled south in rout.

Because both adjacent formations had already collapsed, they were already facing a three-sided pincer. Let alone five or six thousand cavalry charging across a desert that offered no cover — even if just five hundred riders had come and loosed a few arrows, it would have been enough to make them abandon their firearms and run.

Some did not even flee south; they threw off their armor and helmets and ran toward the empty west, only to be overtaken by the scattered cavalry, whereupon they knelt and surrendered.

The Eight Banners' nobles kept their soldiers under strict control, and the banners operated under a collective punishment system. Many men, even if passively war-weary, dared not surrender while still in formation, fearing their comrades would report and kill them.

Even to surrender, they had to flee beyond the camp lines before kneeling and begging for their lives.

In truth, it was not just the Ujen Cooha — the Eight Banners' lords themselves were collapsing at this moment.

Earlier, when Hong Taiji had declared that any bannerman who strayed from his banner's standard and moved recklessly would be beheaded and his banner lord punished, Dodo's face had frozen stiff.

He had not even been in his camp, nor had he ever expected a sudden attack. He had been lingering in Hong Taiji's imperial tent the whole time. Now the Bordered White Banner was being trampled by enemy cavalry and smashed into rout. Never mind moving recklessly — the soldiers had no discipline whatsoever and were collapsing straight back behind the defensive line.

Yoto, the center commander of the one-two formation, had been leading the Bordered Red Banner and commanding the various Mongol tribal forces. Now, disregarding the unresolved charges from his unauthorized sortie at Shengjing, he used the opportunity of setting up a defensive line and reorganizing the formation to rush over and urge Hong Taiji to retreat.

"Reporting to the Sacred Khan, the Plain Blue and Bordered White Banners have both collapsed. We cannot meet this sudden assault with force. I therefore presume to ask the Sacred Khan, for the sake of the dynastic foundation… to retreat for the time being."

This battle was simply impossible to fight.

Hauge's Plain Blue Banner contained many men from the Plain Yellow Banner that Hong Taiji had originally commanded — many of them Hong Taiji's own trusted followers.

Now, struck by a sudden attack, bombarded by muskets and cannons, and trampled by armored cavalry, no one knew how many would make it back.

Dodo's Bordered White Banner was even more critical — that was the old Yellow Banner from the early Jianzhou days.

The vast majority of its officers and nobles were either elders who had submitted at the founding of the state or the descendants of those elders — the bedrock of the state itself, the very foundation upon which the Later Jin was built.

And they had not even gotten a chance to fight head-on. Before they could even don their armor, the routed troops had smashed their battle line to pieces.

Hong Taiji was more anxious than Yoto and understood even better that this was a matter that could shake the dynastic foundation. "You want to retreat? You'll need that Liu brute to let you retreat. If you don't fight him now, how do you propose to withdraw?"

Just then, a guardsman came to report that Hauge had fled back from the front and into the formation.

Hong Taiji, a bellyful of rage with nowhere to vent, strode forward with a furrowed brow — but the moment he saw Hauge, he was speechless.

His helmet had been knocked away to who knows where, blood from his head streaming down his face and mixing with dirt into a black paste. The little queue at the back of his head had come undone. The mercury-coated armor of blue cloth backing and hanging plates on his body was riddled like a hedgehog. The moment he saw Hong Taiji, his strength gave out and he collapsed to the ground, wailing loudly.

"Father Khan, Colonel Ilecun was struck by cannon in the formation. The Blue Banner… has collapsed!"

The reprimand on Hong Taiji's lips died as he watched Hauge's wretched, weeping state. Gritting his teeth, he said: "Yoto, lead the Bordered Red Banner's Mongols to form a front line. Alternate formations with Ma Guangyuan and Geng Zhongming to block the enemy. The two Yellow Banners will spread out on both wings — if the enemy charges the formation, drive them back."

"Loosa, take the Vanguard Camp and wait for an opening on the left wing to strike. Get out there and win back our morale for me!"

Vanguard Commander Loosa saluted upon receiving the order, swung onto his horse, took up his bow, arrows, and lance, and assembled the Vanguard Camp cavalry, moving to the left wing.

?? Good evening!

? (End of chapter)