Chapter 755: Counter-Charge

Tang Tong was utterly dumbfounded.

He had watched Uda Hai's cavalry company lose their nerve the moment they charged the formation, barely managing to loose a volley of arrows before spreading their wings and wheeling away.

At that moment he had been mulling over whether to send troops onto horseback to capture the commander in the python-patterned battle armor who was directing forces in the distance.

Then, as if his wish had been granted, the moment that commander spotted Left Guangxian's cavalry, he led his men to merge with the horse company and, practically fleeing for his life, plunged headlong straight into Tang Tong's formation.

The entire formation-collision happened in a flash.

The horse company galloped close, once again spreading both wings to loose arrows in a sweeping strike — it looked just like the last time.

But this time they came prepared: the arrows were fiercer, denser, and more precise, all concentrated on a single point of the square formation.

As several soldiers were shot down, a squad of armored troops dismounted, slashed their horses' rumps with blades, and drove the panicked mounts straight into the banner-spears to smash the formation.

The dismounted armored troops followed up, fighting the reinforcement troops at the breach, gradually tearing the gap wider, and behind them the horse company filed into the formation in single file.

It was ferocious.

They had no choice but to be ferocious — only half the horse company made it into the Left Division's formation under Tang Tong's Han troops; the other half, blocked by the Left Division soldiers' resistance, had no time to enter before the lance cavalry sweeping past outside cut them off.

There was no collision.

The lance cavalry slowed as they drew near and spread their formation wide, striking a pose meant to intimidate the enemy riders.

The Bordered Blue cavalry were indeed spooked — the horse company that couldn't enter the formation in time immediately veered sideways, bending bows and nocking arrows, shooting as they retreated.

But that was exactly what the lance cavalry wanted: they had driven off nearly half, and the Mongol cavalry behind them continued the pursuit, while the Oirat cavalry wheeled their horses around and skewered with lances, one by one, the scattered riders outside the formation who had neither entered nor fled.

They fought with casual ease — it was simple.

Because the Mongol contingent's Assistant Regional Commander in the Mobile Troops Battalion was Yundu Chi.

He was the fifth son of the Khoshut Khan, and the elder brother of Duo'erji, the Mobile Troops General stationed at Yanqing.

Yundu Chi not only showed none of the grave caution one would expect when facing the Eight Banners' horse companies — he didn't even take them seriously at all; even as he advanced and watched the horse company charging the formation, his gaze was amused and mocking.

Anyone who saw that look in his eyes could read a single line: Let's see how you die.

Because this scene felt familiar to him.

The commander of these armored cavalry was too stupid.

Yundu Chi thought to himself: Just as stupid as I was back then.

Young men are like that — they've seen too little.

Though the Eight Banners horse company's armor wasn't bad, Yundu Chi felt that compared to the Khoshut cataphracts in their mail hauberks layered with four-mirror armor, their protection still fell a bit short.

Back in the great battle of He-Huang, under his father the Khan's command, Yundu Chi had driven surrendered Chahar troops to charge Liu Chengzong's formation, filling their trenches with the corpses of men and horses, then committed the Khoshut cataphracts to smash head-on into Liu Chengzong's artillery.

Artillery had to be the weak point in formation fighting — at the time, both the Khan and Yundu Chi thought so.

So they blindfolded their warhorses, overturned the lele carts and battle lines, and charged in. The artillery had been closed with — the advantage was ours, victory was right before their eyes!

What happened after that?

After breaking the formation, the real fighting had only just begun.

The artillerymen not only didn't run — they drew their blades, pulled out their golden-melon short maces, and beat the cataphracts until the shit came out of them.

Charging them was practically courting death.

Yundu Chi even thought that even without reinforcements, Tang Tong's musketeers and gunners could have slaughtered those cavalrymen inside the formation.

This was a lesson the Khoshut cavalry had bought with blood and tears when they charged Liu Chengzong.

When troop quality, equipment, and organization are roughly equal, a horse company charging a formation loses nine times out of ten.

A horse company charging a formation is a gamble.

As long as the infantry formation holds without breaking, then it's the horse company's turn to be finished.

That was why Tang Tong inside the formation wasn't flustered at all — when he saw the Oirat cavalry coming to support, he simply stopped paying attention to the half of his Han division that had been torn apart by the cavalry charge, and turned to redeploy his other, untouched Han division, pulling them out of formation and advancing to support the Western Tibetan contingent.

He himself focused intently on the front.

The infantry clash on the front — that was the battlefield where the real contest would be decided.

While Uda Hai was charging the camp, Fiyanggū's combined horse and foot troops of the Bordered Blue Two Banners were still advancing; now the distance had closed to a hundred paces, and the Bordered Blue front was gradually spreading wide.

The Bordered Blue Two Banners also had a horse for every man, but like the Marshal's Army, when battle lines engaged, to prevent the infantry and cavalry from losing contact, the horse-and-foot troops all led their horses on foot; some units tasked with infantry assault duties simply left their warhorses with the central army.

By now, Tang Tong could clearly make out the enemy's formation — it was likewise a "One-Two Formation" with gaps on all four sides, meaning dozens of small squads arranged in three lines of horizontal ranks.

The first line was mostly infantry with few cavalry, positioned at odd numbers: one, three, five, seven, nine; the second line was mainly cavalry, positioned at even numbers: two, four, six, eight; the third line was a mixed infantry-cavalry reserve with warhorses, positioned the same as the first line.

The formation of each Niru squad was also basically similar, mostly the One-Two Formation, with each small formation spaced a formation's width apart front-to-back and side-to-side, so that the entire grand formation formed an immensely broad, jagged battle line like interlocking fangs.

This was also the "formations within formations, squads within squads" concept from Zhuge Liang's Eight-Formations thinking.

The advantage of deploying this way was that it made it easier to maneuver troops at leisure during battle, and to support and withdraw.

Fiyanggū was in the third line of the battle formation, the Bordered Blue Banner troops were in the second line, and the first line was still Hūsibu's Mongol Banners.

Ever since Nurhaci rose up to fight the various Jurchen tribes, this had been the method of warfare: if you could seize people and livestock first, you seized them first; the seized people were thrown onto the front line of battle to absorb arrows and cannon fire, to expend gunpowder and stamina, and once the enemies had worn each other out, their troops exhausted and their will to fight gone, then you sent in the Jianzhou troops to break them in one blow.

In the battles for Shenyang and Liaoyang, and even in later campaigns, the rule was always to seize people first if you could; the Ming even had a term for these people — they called them "Shaved Troops."

This wasn't specifically targeted at Han people.

The Later Jin nobility targeted everyone equally; starting with the Jurchen Jushen themselves, for assault troops, if they could use Suwan they wouldn't use Suzi, if they could use Jecen they wouldn't use Suwan; later, when the scale grew, they could use Haixi and not Jianzhou, could use Wild Men and not Haixi.

Having long employed the Liaodong Commander Li's strategy of "using barbarians to control barbarians," Nurhaci had surpassed his teacher, devising a set of highly effective management methods.

This was also why, when Ajige was making his westward detour, Hong Taiji had specially issued an edict to tighten military discipline, demanding that when plundering populations, they must not separate husbands and wives.

Because through their use by the Eight Banners, Han, Mongol, Jurchen Wild Men, and Korean captives — the bachelors among them were all hard to handle.

Though there were always some timid, cowardly weaklings everywhere, more of them would ruin things.

The Wild Men were tolerable — at most they'd kill a few guards watching the captives while escaping; the Mongols were the best — though they looked down on the Jurchen a bit, Mongol nobles valued strength, and once they submitted on the battlefield, they submitted in their hearts too; aside from stealing iron pots, their tribesmen weren't much trouble.

The bachelor captives among the Han and Koreans were more outrageous, each in different ways.

The Koreans' outrageousness mainly lay with the Yangban nobles — those bastards bullied the weak and feared the strong; when other men escaped after being captured, the first people they'd kill were definitely Later Jin soldiers, but when Yangban nobles tried to escape, they'd first violate Later Jin women.

The Korean soldiers captured at Sarhū — Nurhaci had originally wanted to kill them all, but Daišan dissuaded him; then some Yangban nobles did exactly that, and the Old Khan couldn't bear it; Daišan pleaded over and over, and in the end they only killed the nobles outside the city — four or five hundred of them.

The absurd thing about Han captives was how unpredictable they were. The Liaodong Ming army itself came from all over, so even people seized in roundabout raids could be anyone at all.

Treat him well, and he'll rebel and kill you; treat him poorly, and he'll rebel and kill you too.

The key was they weren't trying to escape — they were trying to rebel. Killing their masters was the least of it; they'd set fires or poison people at the drop of a hat. Though limited poison supplies and the conspicuousness of arson often thwarted them, it was like as long as the trade count exceeded one death, it was worth it.

On the contrary, if you brought a husband and wife together, you could tie the person down — as slaves they couldn't run, and as shaven soldiers they'd dare to die.

At this moment, the Bordered Blue Banner's battle formation had no Han troops to deploy, so they could only send Hu Xibu's Mongol banner in the first wave to charge and fight to the death.

They were dismounted cavalry, far more capable at charging a formation than when on horseback.

Mounted charges are terrifying in momentum, but actually not that formidable — as long as you aren't intimidated, even an unarmored formation can fight into charging cavalry.

Because cavalry entering a formation falls into chaos and inevitably faces many with few in local engagements... but troops without even armor could be scared off by a charge on donkeys; it was nearly impossible not to be frightened off by the sight of a cavalry charge.

Infantry charges were far more powerful, because their formation was denser. When they closed in on musketeers, with equal numbers, armored troops had a huge advantage over unarmored ones.

The Kangning musketeers' protective equipment was very poor. Though they wore cloth-faced concealed armor, only their helmets were standard issue; the cloth-faced armor had only forty plates on the chest and back, offering even less protection in melee than the two iron arm-guards on their forearms.

This was not Liu Chengzong showing favoritism, nor officers skimming supplies — virtually all musketeers in the Marshal's Army were equipped like this.

Even setting aside how the Marshal's Army's firearms and ammunition were heavier, just looking at the Ming army's three long arquebuses — the standard equipment for matchlock gunners in the Chongzhen years — the firearm, ammunition, and matchcord alone weighed twenty jin.

That was nearly the weight of a full-length heavy armor of wrought iron reinforced with steel, with cold-forged armor leaves.

But Ming army muskets carried three hundred shots of prepared ammunition, each shot weighing six mace, with thirty preloaded cartridges.

The Marshal's Army's heavy arquebuses carried no prepared ammunition; the powder and lead ingots were all kept on the carts, to be melted down at leisure.

They only had thirty preloaded cartridges. Even so, their ammunition was heavy — a single preloaded cartridge with one large and three or four small shot weighed four taels and five mace, and this alone came to over eight jin.

In fact, ever since switching to heavy arquebuses, the Marshal's Army musketeers had been carrying fewer and fewer cartridges. It started at thirty; after fighting the Oirats they put ten on the carts, and after fighting Cao Wenzhao and Zu Kuan's lot, they put another ten on the carts.

Because they'd discovered that no one could make them fire ten shots in a single battle.

Ordinary armies would be stunned by one volley, their morale would collapse after two rounds of fire, and they'd be routed outright.

Even relatively elite enemies would withstand three volleys at most before charging in for melee... Liu Chengzong's arquebusier units drew too much hatred on the battlefield; they were almost always charged in every battle.

Right now, Fiyanggū felt that the sheets of matchlock smoke across the way were just for atmosphere — what was really pumping out a torrent of lead balls were cannons hidden among all those firearms.

The shot was simply too dense; there was no way a few hundred arquebuses could produce this.

The Later Jin had seen heavy arquebuses and wall guns before — they had them too. They were just the turtle-dove arquebus and the great wind-chasing gun.

But the turtle-dove arquebus and the great wind-chaser each fired only a single large ball, and not even as large as the lead balls coming from the other side.

Several thousand small lead pellets spraying over all at once — that just didn't make sense.

Fiyanggū was certain: there had to be at least three thousand-jin great cannons in that formation.

In reality, there wasn't a single one.

Just four small two-hundred-jin cannons. Because their barrels were short, their grapeshot range was even less than the wall guns', so they hadn't opened fire and were just positioned inside the formation.

The Bordered Blue Mongols suffered heavy casualties charging the formation.

At twenty or thirty paces, the banner troops of each niru concentrated their attack on a few zones in front of the formation, loosing arrows madly at a single point. Sheets of arrows fell like rain, thudding into the wall-gun war carts and tall shields with a tearing sound.

Their archery was extremely accurate at this range, not only wounding musketeers who couldn't dodge in time, but also pinning down more soldiers sheltering behind tall shields and war carts, making them afraid to show their heads, in hopes of completely disrupting the musketeers' fire from the reinforcement camp.

At this moment, quite a few musketeers of the Xifan tribes had finished reloading. They simply thrust their guns through the gaps in the tall shields and fired toward the enemy formation.

Though few in number, even the three small lead pellets crammed into the barrel as filler could pierce armor and inflict severe wounds.

But in practice, every shot was lethal — the range was too close, and the one large and three small lead pellets had no time to spread, all striking the same unlucky man.

Moreover, while the small pellets couldn't achieve much, the large lead ball could pierce through a man and his armor, even passing through a Bordered Blue Mongol soldier in the front rank to wound the Bordered Blue Banner troops behind.

Only, at this point, no matter how much damage the muskets inflicted, they could no longer stop the enemy from charging the formation.

The gūsa ejen of the Eight Banners Mongols was usually a Mongol, but not for the Bordered Blue Mongols — their gūsa, Hu Xibu, was a Yehe noble.

Hu Xibu was a fierce man, originally a retainer of Irgen Gioro Ashan.

Before there was even a Jin state, Ashan had taken his whole family to defect to Nurhaci and was placed under Daišan. But Daišan gave him no important post, so in a rage he went to defect to the Great Ming.

But as soon as he crossed the border, the Ming frontier forces hacked at him, and he fled back in terror.

Nurhaci killed two of his sons and kept him serving at his side.

Later, in the Hong Taiji period, when Dodo was fourteen, Ajige wanted to arrange a marriage for him, planning for Dodo to wed the daughter of their maternal uncle, Abutai. He sent Ashan's younger brother as the matchmaker.

Abutai was the Ula tribe's chief headman in the Later Jin. If the marriage alliance had succeeded, the power of the three brothers Ajige, Dorgon, and Dodo within the Later Jin would have become overwhelming.

So Hong Taiji flew into a rage, stripped Ajige of his Bordered White Banner lordship, and directly executed Ashan's younger brother.

Ashan was again so terrified he defected to the Great Ming. This time he sent two retainers ahead to make contact, but these two were also killed by Ming troops.

As his retainer, Hu Xibu felt there was no hope in following Ashan's defection, so he fled back to the Later Jin.

Upon returning, he was stripped to commoner status and assigned to the Mongol gūsa under Ibai. Though Ibai was Jurchen, his family had long resided in the Khorchin-ruled region, and he had little regard for the Manchu identity Hong Taiji was promoting, considering himself a Mongol. He also managed the Mongol banners that had surrendered to the Later Jin.

The Later Jin's reception of and missions to Mongol nobles were mostly handled by him.

So Ibai was especially protective of Mongols. In battle, he always sent the Jurchen under his banner first, with the Mongols watching from the rear, only advancing once the front line was exhausted.

But at the time, Ligdan Khan was not yet dead, and winning over the Mongol tribes was Later Jin state policy. Ibai had too much prestige among the Mongols, and no one could do anything about him — they could only entice the Mongols under him with offers of gain.

During the Jisi Incident, when they attacked Zunhua, a Mongol soldier under Ibai was the first of the Eight Banners to scale the city wall. Hong Taiji was overjoyed, summoned him personally to bestow wine, and rewarded him with cattle and horses, python satin, and bolts of cloth, granting him the title Baturu and appointing him niru janggin from commoner status.

In that battle, Hu Xibu was the second to scale the wall and received the rank of bei yu.

Later he achieved merit after merit. With his Yehe noble background and his accomplishments in the Mongol banners, when the Eight Banners Mongol forces expanded, he became gūsa ejen.

Hu Xibu had very ample experience in fighting against firearms.

When the arrow storm rained down and failed to kill many of the enemy, Hu Xibu was not discouraged — on the contrary, he was relieved.

Because the enemy was dodging the arrows.

Ming soldiers wearing armor would not dodge arrows; at most they'd lower their heads.

When attacking, Hu Xibu had long prepared for two outcomes. If these musketeers hadn't flinched or dodged the arrow storm, he would have had to consider pulling back.

Conversely, now that the enemy's firearms had been disrupted and they'd closed to close range, the battle seemed all but won. He immediately urged each niru to press the assault harder.

In an instant, the Bordered Blue Mongols surged forward en masse. Those in the rear drew bows and loosed arrows, suppressing every point along the war-cart and shield line, while the armored troops in front threw themselves at the war carts, ramming the tall shields and hooking and dragging at the carts.

The firearm soldiers atop the carts and behind the shields also drew their blades to stab and thrust. For a time, both sides wrestled ceaselessly across the shielded war-carts. In the end, the Western Tribesmen were outmatched in armor, and lacked the nerve for close combat — their battle line was soon punched through with breaches everywhere.

Across every section of the reinforcement battalion's front, the pressure suddenly eased. Swarms of Bordered Blue Mongol soldiers surged toward the breaches, trying to tear them open step by step, hoping to pour through and break the formation in single file.

But just at that moment, the Niru Zhangjing who had been first to charge into the formation looked up — and saw that behind the opposing cart-wall, the men had changed.

They were fully armored infantry, each wearing a bowl helmet and long crimson armor, bearing banner-lances and raising golden melon maces. Under the command of unit officers, they pushed forward four small Red Barbarian cannons, forming a new battle line and launching a counter-charge straight at them!

?? Good morning!

(End of chapter)