Chapter 754: Reinforcement Camp

Emperor Chongde was in the new "One-Two" formation, deploying officers and shifting troops.

As Daiqing's army successfully formed its second defensive line, the chaos in the ranks from the sudden raid gradually subsided.

Apart from Hooge, the several banner lords on campaign all received Huang Taiji's orders at the central army, then returned to their own formations to don armor and oversee the battle.

Hooge did not need to go back. Besides the small elite force he had led in breaking out, quite a few Bordered White Banner troops had routed back to the main formation, but the Plain Blue Banner troops were pitifully few, still trapped in the enemy's encircling pincer attack, and no longer had the strength to form an independent battle line.

Huang Taiji no longer dared to ride in the Nine-Ox Khan Tent. He shifted his central army to the very tail of the left wing — the left wing of the third "character" — the southwest corner of the entire battle formation.

This position would make his command of the right-wing formation somewhat less smooth than the exact center of the three horizontal lines.

But this was Huang Taiji's personal habit.

Ever since his accession, whenever he took the field, he never deployed the Eight Formations — that is, the Nine-Camp Four-Square Formation. Whether he set a horizontal formation or a scattered formation to besiege the enemy, he was never in the exact center.

In generally safe situations, he would be on the right wing, because the Mongols honor the right, a tradition the Later Jin inherited.

During sieges, he would temporarily station himself in various formations, and only when he needed to command would he halt beneath the yellow banner of the Guard Camp.

Because the Later Jin's opponents all had a great deal of artillery.

And this time, Huang Taiji dared not be on the right wing.

In his eyes, Liu Chengzong was no different from the Mongols — definitely a fellow who honored the right. And a man of low character at that: he had already done the deed of clutching his army and stabbing them in the back. There was no reason he wouldn't clutch his cannons and bombard his yellow banner.

He had heard it: that Liu Chengzong had a great many heavy cannons. The sound of their volleys was like thunder rolling at the edge of the sky, shaking one's very heart and liver!

How to put it — Huang Taiji's view of Liu Chengzong was certainly biased and less than fair.

He was even considering coining a new Manchu word: "Chengzong," meaning this man was rotten from the very root of his ancestors.

His view was bound to be anything but fair.

But Emperor Chongde was indeed very accurate in judging people.

No need to look at Liu Chengzong — just look at Gao Yingdeng behind the Clan Camp's wagon fort. He was busy building gun platforms.

Gao Yingdeng was intensely envious of the frontline troops.

As a great general of the Marshal's headquarters who had followed Liu Chengzong from start to finish and fought in every battle, Gao Yingdeng knew the Grand Marshal's character very well.

The Grand Marshal always gave the army whatever they needed, but when it came to money, the Grand Marshal himself was broke. They could fight well enough, but everyone they beat up was even poorer than they were. Only the Great Ming was somewhat wealthier, yet when the Grand Marshal took a city, he still had to govern it — he neither massacred nor thoroughly looted.

So in terms of hard cash, the Marshal's army truly had not seen much.

Only the battle of Liaoyang, where they scraped the earth three feet deep, made the Grand Marshal act like a nouveau riche, handing out silver for everything.

Given the Marshal's headquarters' financial state, this kind of generous silver-giving was a once-in-a-blue-moon affair. Unless they really came back next year, it wouldn't be long before things returned to normal.

So Gao Yingdeng planned to pile up nine small gun platforms, each a zhang high, and haul up the nine thousand-jin field cannons directly under his brigade, hoping to fire over the formation and blast Emperor Chongde to death.

He originally had twelve thousand-jin field cannons, but two had been struck and damaged by Haizhou artillery during the battle, and one had been fired too rapidly and developed a bulge.

On an iron-core, copper-jacketed cannon, if the cast copper jacket on the exterior bulges and deforms, it means the iron barrel inside is damaged. Firing it again would very easily cause it to burst.

So Gao Yingdeng had his men push the destroyed cannons into the river, while the cannon on the verge of bursting was given to the accompanying army craftsmen, who worked through the night to file down the bulging copper jacket before dumping it near Liaoyang.

Whether it was the Jinzhou army or the Eight Banners army, whichever lucky soul picked it up and fired it, if it blew them up, the Marshal's army would suffer no loss.

And the gun platforms on the battlefield — those were what Gao Yingdeng had prepared for Huang Taiji.

For the people of the Marshal's headquarters, from top to bottom, a warrior's highest honor was probably to kill an emperor right there in the battle line.

Simply letting them know there was an emperor in the opposing formation was enough to make the Marshal's army's fighting spirit surge.

And for Gao Yingdeng, if he could blast Emperor Chongde to death in the line, it would cement his honor as the Marshal's headquarters' greatest general. Once back inside the passes, he would firmly overshadow Wei Qian'er and Zhang Tianlin.

To make a name in the Marshal's headquarters, you had to accomplish great things.

Zhang Tianlin used to be so fierce — his might awed the region where Bai Guang'en operated.

But then Wei Qian'er pulled off a plague march. Not only was he enfeoffed as an earl, but now in the regions of Huazhou and Tongzhou north and south of the Wei River, temples have been built to him, worshipping the Mighty Spirit Plague-Repelling True Lord, Wei Jinming.

How awe-inspiring!

Only, Gao Yingdeng's wish was destined to go unfulfilled. Emperor Chongde had long anticipated eating cannonballs at the front line.

Another reason he stationed himself at the far corner of the left wing was that the Bordered Blue Banner on the right wing, led by Fiyanggū, was the most elite, and the Bordered Yellow Banner's reinforcements were also on the way — there was nothing to worry about over there.

Just at that moment, glad tidings came from the battlefield's left wing.

The assault by the vanguard cavalry led by Losa on the left-wing battlefield had succeeded.

The Vanguard Camp was the gathering place of the Eight Banners' superhumans.

In Nurhaci's era, the number of armored soldiers was very large. A niru of over three hundred men had one hundred armored soldiers, half of whom were bayara — ten white-armored, forty red-armored — but their quality varied.

By Huang Taiji's era, everything had been standardized, and many had died in war. A niru was downsized to three hundred men, armored soldiers to sixty, and at the same time, white-armored troops were drawn from each banner to form the Guard Camp.

After his draw, each niru still had white-armored soldiers, but the most elite batch — Nurhaci's old bayara, one picked from thirty — became his Guard Camp.

And within the Guard Camp, the forward scout cavalry who donned armor, braved arrowheads, and were often active on the front lines of the Guan-Ning battlefield were independently organized into the Vanguard Camp.

They were essentially the bayara's Vanguard Division.

Losa was the leader of the Vanguard Camp, and at this moment, the true, undisputed First Warrior of the Later Jin.

Because Turusi was dead. Before Turusi died, both were fierce, and it was hard to tell who was superior.

These two assistant generals, at most, had once each led a vice general, four officers commanding a total of one thousand troops — each man leading just over two hundred men, and their command capacity was maxed out.

The form of warfare they were most familiar with was leading a dozen or a few dozen men, catching enemies alone on the battlefield to charge and kill.

This time was no exception. The moment the hundred-odd vanguard cavalry led by Losa entered the left-wing battlefield, they struck like a whirlwind, beating Subadi's Mobei cavalry into steady retreat.

But they could not fight for long. After clashing on the battle line for a while, they wheeled their horses and returned to their lines covered in arrows, withdrew behind the Han army formation, shed their armor, cooled down, and rested.

Yet that brief moment was enough for Jin Yuhe's routed Han troops to flee back into the formation and reorganize their ranks. The morale of Ma Guangyuan's Han troops was also greatly boosted, and they shifted their firearms and cannons toward the front-line central army.

For Emperor Chongde, it seemed the most critical moment had passed.

They only had to wait for Ma Guangyuan's firearms to array in a single line at the central army, for Yoto to lead the Bordered Red Banner and the Mongol tribes in array at the second "character," and for the Eight Banners to hold the rear — then they could completely neutralize the impact of Liu Chengzong's raid and engage in alternating-formation combat.

Yet precisely at this moment, on the right wing, which he had been most confident in, the battle line fell into great chaos.

The Bordered Yellow Banner's reinforcements were still on the way when the Bordered Blue Banner's banner toppled to the ground.

Unless absolutely forced, Fiyanggū truly dared not let the battle line fall into disorder.

To cover up the lie that he had no shielded war-carts, he stubbornly held formation on the right wing, never expecting that what came was the Marshal Army's musket-and-cannon battalion.

Fiyanggū badly wanted to ask Liu Chengzong — what kind of bizarre formation was this?

Who puts cavalry not on the flanks, but puts muskets and cannons on the flank?

Aren't you afraid the gunners will get trampled to pieces by cavalry?

Before Fiyanggū even understood what was happening, just as he reached the right wing and had yet to steady himself, he saw gun-smoke rising everywhere on the horizon two hundred paces away.

Two hundred paces!

They were almost out of sight — a burst of gun-smoke rose, and several thousand pellets came spraying over.

Some struck the sky, some struck the ground, and some struck bodies without the power to break through armor, but the dense rain of projectiles still inevitably wounded the eyes of some bannermen, and pained cries rang out everywhere.

Yet there were also some bannermen fully arrayed in armor and gear for whom, because the power of certain massive lead balls was so overwhelming, after their armor was pierced they did not realize in the first instant that they had been hit; their bodies mechanically continued to step forward, and only at some moment, without any warning, did they suddenly pitch forward and collapse.

At first, Fiyanggū did not even realize what a ferocious firearms strike this was.

Relying solely on the experience of a veteran battlefield commander, he immediately ordered the cavalry to circle around from the flank, wipe out that distant musket-and-cannon formation, and the infantry to keep pressing forward as well.

In the interval while the cavalry raced off, Tang Tong's battle line advanced another thirty paces and opened fire again.

The distance between the two sides was closing rapidly, and this time the firearms' killing power was far greater than the first volley; Fiyanggū could clearly sense it — cavalry running on the flank, infantry collapsing at the front.

One volley came over, and the front line toppled in a neat swath; nearly two hundred soldiers in the first rank went down at once, and even a dozen or more in the second rank fell, writhing and struggling on the ground, their shrieks and wails rending the heavens and earth.

The crucial point was that the cavalry he had dispatched had also failed to achieve their attack as hoped.

The cavalry Fiyanggū sent out was the mounted unit of Udahai, a company commander under Hūsibu's Bordered Blue Mongol Banner.

Because at the start he had thought Liu Chengzong's formation was flawed, leaving the isolated gunners exposed on the flank — one cavalry charge and they'd be gone — he considered this a chance to earn merit and gave it to Udahai.

Udahai was also of the Daicing imperial clan, Murhaci's fourth son.

Receiving the order to charge the gunners, he was beside himself with joy; he immediately led his mounted unit to circle out from his own right wing, avoiding the firearms' field of fire, intending to sweep in and strike from the flank.

A distance of two hundred paces is quite far for infantry, but for a mounted unit at a gallop, it's just a matter of a blink before you're on them.

As it happened, the other side thought the same.

Udahai had just led his cavalry out from the right wing when he heard another volley of muskets and cannons not far off; his heart could not help but leap with joy — as long as this volley was fired, the enemy ahead would certainly have no time to reload before his cavalry charged into their faces.

Gunners — the Eight Banners troops had fought plenty of them.

Whether Ming army or Eight Banners, those who used muskets and cannons were invariably weak soldiers who could not draw a strong bow or wield lance and horse.

Or, put the other way around, it held just as true: if you had veterans skilled in bow and horse, once they donned armor on the battlefield they were like bulldozers — what general or noble would have such men specially train in muskets and cannons?

Generally speaking, that was indeed the case.

But sometimes exceptions appeared.

Watching the cavalry come howling in tight formation, charging from the flank, Tang Tong was not alarmed; he simply had men wave flags atop the war-carts to summon Zuo Guangxian's Roving Cavalry Battalion, waiting behind the battle formation, to get ready for work.

At the same time, he calmly and coolly ordered a formation change: the Xifan tribe's Kangning firearms troops held their positions, continuing to fire the heavy muskets and wall guns; the Han army division pulled down all the flag-spears from the war-carts — the front company prepared to bear the charge, the rear company prepared for a counter-charge.

Facing the Eight Banners mounted unit howling in from the flank, the Kangning firearms troops' line continued loading ammunition as usual, only their movements a bit more hurried.

The cavalry drew closer and closer, and along the war-cart line, the sound of sutra-chanting to suppress fear gradually rose.

Just as Udahai's cavalry was about to crash into the flank of the reinforcement battalion, the Han army division completed its formation change; the two companies of soldiers swiftly formed two hollow-square sub-formations, shielding the Xifan tribe's left side and rear.

Rows of long spears flying military banners were held on the outside by red-armored Han soldiers, and beside every soldier holding a banner-spear stood two muskets; while on the inside, a circle of soldiers with drawn goose-quill sabers were already prepared to sally out and hack.

The hoofbeats drew nearer and nearer, and the sound of sutra-chanting on the front line grew louder and louder.

When the sonorous chanting reached its peak and the two armies were only a dozen or so paces apart, the mounted unit facing the sharp spear-points lost its nerve; like flowing water striking a reef, they split into two wings at the edge of the square formation, wheeled around and retreated, able only to loose a scattering of heavy arrows into the formation.

Behind the formation, Udahai was so furious he raised his riding crop and cursed.

It was just that mounted archery was, of course, also very formidable; most of his mounted unit were good hands who could draw strong bows, and just from what he could see behind the formation, in a single charge the mounted unit had sent several hundred arrows into the formation, pinning those ranked infantry down so they could not lift their heads.

In a single charge, they had wounded several dozen men and made quite a few collapse outright.

If this battle had involved only them, then the charging tactic would have been fine.

The problem was that even considering only the localized battlefield on the right wing, there was no time for them to launch mounted archery charges against the formation again and again, nor could they first weaken the enemy formation with mounted archery — they had to crash into the formation!

This formation would not break without crashing into it; wounding a few dozen men with projectiles was useless — the formation remained immovable as ever; they snapped off the arrow shafts, and could even keep standing there in formation with the arrowheads still in their armor.

Even if the spot hit lost combat effectiveness, they just pulled the man inside the formation, and that was that.

And even the charging tactic — his mounted unit hadn't used it well either; holding their bows, instead of shooting men in the face, they went and shot at their cloth-faced iron armor, relying on luck to gamble on the probability of hitting a gap in the armor. Wasn't that just idiotic?

Especially after the mounted unit wheeled around, there were still men sporadically shooting arrows backward — that made Udahai even angrier to watch.

The enemy were all fully equipped with cloth-faced concealed armor and bowl helmets, and likely even wore other protection underneath; arrows stuck in their bodies as if nothing had happened — why were you still wasting arrows!

Were they borrowing arrows with armored men here?

Just at that moment, the Kangning firearms troops on the front line finished loading and once more loosed a volley of muskets at Fiyanggū's formation not far away; this time they were already very close, the power of the wall guns and heavy muskets immense, throwing the formation's front ranks into chaos in one blast.

At the same time, Fiyanggū's troops also drew their war bows and launched projectiles at the musket line.

And on the flank, Udahai, cursing and swearing, led his guards into the second charge.

It was not that he wanted to lead troops charging into the enemy formation seeking a thrill, but rather that on his flank, amid the vast, billowing dust, military banners fluttered and hoofs stamped and clattered.

The Oirat lance cavalry had burst out from an oblique angle to get to work!

(End of Chapter)