Gou was a member of the imperial family in the late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 108 An unexpected start but a tail end
The days that followed were dull. Due to the successive deaths of two emperors, Zhu Shenzhu was temporarily unable to do anything, and even if he wanted to leave Pingyang City, he couldn't.

After all, during the 27th day of national mourning, ordinary people were fine, but as a member of the royal family, it was impossible for him not to abide by it. This was not to mention the many restrictions on national mourning within the royal family. If Zhu Shenzhu wanted to move freely, he had to wait at least another 27th day.

There was no way out. He couldn't go anywhere and could only stay at home. Life like this was extremely boring.

He got up early every day to practice martial arts and strengthen his muscles. After dinner, he either talked with Zhang or played with his niece Qiaoer for a while.

When it was almost noon, Zhu Shenzhui returned to his room, took out pen, ink and paper, and started writing and drawing on them. He pondered for a long time, and no one knew what he was thinking about.

Just like before, after writing, Zhu Shenzhui would quietly take these things to the kitchen and burn them, staring at the jumping flames in a daze for a while.

Then he would read some books. After dinner, Zhu Shenzhui would walk a few laps in the yard, or play with Qiao'er for a while. When the sun went down and it got dark, Zhu Shenzhui would go to bed early. The day passed like this, uneventful.

One day after another, more than ten days passed quickly. On this day, Zhu Shenzhui came out of the kitchen, raised his head and looked towards the north.

The weather today was not good, it was a little gray, and the sun had hidden in the thick clouds. Calculating the time, Ma Shizhou and his men should have reached the grassland, right? When they reached the grassland, I wondered if they could successfully find the current location of Burigude's tribe.

However, with Ma Shizhou, a team leader who is familiar with the grassland, and Wang Hai, who is originally a Mongolian, also in the team, it should not be difficult to find Burigude's tribe.

Zhu Shenzui didn't know whether Burigude had returned to his tribe or whether he was safe and sound. He didn't know all this because he couldn't go with them. He could only hope that everything went well.

Lin Danhan's military campaign against Chaohua had come to an end. In August, news came from the grassland that the war was over.

Surprisingly, Lin Danhan, who had gathered his troops and went to war with great momentum, failed to destroy Chaohua, but instead suffered a great loss.

Whether in terms of mutual status difference or military strength, Lindan Khan was much stronger than Chaohua. Logically speaking, this expedition should have been an easy success.

In Lin Danhan's view, as the Great Khan of Mongolia, he led his elite troops to conquer the already weakened Chaohua tribe, and this battle was a sure win. But he never expected that when he personally led the army to attack Inner Khalkha, Chaohua not only did not surrender, but instead gathered its forces to fight Lin Danhan.

This made Lin Danhan furious, and he immediately ordered an all-out attack on Inner Khalkha. He wanted to use his cavalry to completely crush Inner Khalkha, chop off Chaohua's head with a knife, and let everyone in the world know that he was the master of Mongolia.

But who would have thought that Chaohua was not afraid at all. Not only did he use the advantage of terrain and the cavalry in his hands to avoid the enemy's attack and deal with Ligdan Khan with guerrilla warfare and constant harassment tactics, but he also personally led a thousand elite men to launch a sneak attack on the right wing of Ligdan Khan's army, causing some losses to it.

As he had not been able to capture Chaohua's main force and decide the outcome of the war in Inner Khalkha through a decisive battle, as the war became more and more stalemate, Lin Danhan became a little anxious.

He ordered the cavalry on the left and right wings to deploy, intending to further suppress Chaohua's living space and force Chaohua to concentrate his forces to fight him. But Lin Danhan never expected that when he focused all his attention on Chaohua, he ignored the movement in the northeast.

To the northeast of Inner Khalkha is Khorchin, which is also a member of Mongolia and is a tribe that legally respects Ligdan Khan as the common ruler of the grassland.

Khorchin opposed the attack on Chaohua this time, but under the insistence of Ligdan Khan, they were unable to stop the dispatch of troops to Inner Khalkha. Although this situation made Ligdan Khan very dissatisfied, the arrogant Ligdan Khan did not care too much. In his mind, whether it was Inner Khalkha, Khorchin, or even Outer Khalkha, they were all targets to be dealt with one by one in the future.

Lindan Khan's greatest wish was to unify the grassland again like his ancestor Genghis Khan, gather all the Mongols under his golden tent, and once again establish the glorious Mongol Empire. He himself could truly become the master of all Mongolia, rather than just the nominal leader as he is now.

To achieve this goal, Lin Dan Khan had to use force to subdue the Mongolian tribes. Apart from the factors of Jianzhou, this was also a major reason for attacking Chaohua of Inner Khalkha. As long as Inner Khalkha was swallowed up and Chaohua was destroyed, the strength of Lin Dan Khan's headquarters would surely increase greatly. By then, he would be free to deal with Khorchin and Outer Khalkha, and he would have a much better chance of success.

When fighting against Inner Khalkha, Lin Dan Khan never expected Khorchin to stand on his side from the beginning. In his opinion, it was enough to force Khorchin not to participate in the war, and he could completely deal with Chaohua with his own strength. For this expedition, Lin Dan Khan also specially appeased the Khorchin tribe before sending troops, with the purpose of avoiding Khorchin from causing trouble for him after the war.

Unfortunately, although Lin Danhan had a good idea, he overlooked other issues. He never expected that the Khorchin tribe had been secretly flirting with Nurhaci. In order to win over the Mongols, Nurhaci had spent a lot of effort on the Khorchin tribe over the years. Through continuous marriages, the two sides had become close friends in private. After the Battle of Sarhu, Nurhaci's Later Jin became the most powerful military group in Liaodong with this victory, but the subsequent progress was somewhat unsatisfactory.

As Wanli quickly changed his strategy, he appointed Xiong Tingbi and placed him in Liaodong, and gave him strong support. Xiong Tingbi adopted a strategic deployment of solid defense and encroachment in Liaodong, which resulted in Nurhaci gaining some advantages in territory for a while, but the subsequent development was not satisfactory.

Xiong Tingbi was very stable and experienced in dealing with situations. He was neither arrogant nor impatient and took every step carefully. He first stabilized his position with the profound foundation of the Ming Dynasty, and then pushed back and oppressed Nurhaci's Later Jin Dynasty bit by bit. During this period, Nurhaci attempted to replicate the victory of Sarhu again and break the deadlock through a decisive battle. However, faced with the airtight defense, which simply ignored him, Xiong Tingbi was like a turtle with its hands and feet retracted. No matter how good Nurhaci's teeth were, he could not do anything to him.

In less than half a year, the advantage gained from the Battle of Sarhu gradually began to change. The balance of advantages and disadvantages between the two sides began to change again. Seeing this situation, Nurhaci felt a little anxious. If he continued like this and did not break the deadlock, then the advantage he had gained with great difficulty would completely disappear over time.

In desperation, Nurhaci could only think of other ways when he could not deal with Xiong Tingbi temporarily. In this way, the Chaohua tribe became the direction for his breakthrough.

The subsequent military operations against Inner Khalkha went as smoothly as he had imagined. After teaching Chaohua a severe lesson, he forced the Inner Khalkha and the Later Jin to form an alliance, which enabled the Later Jin to develop westward from Liaodong and give them room to maneuver in the confrontation with the Ming army.

But now Lindan Khan has sent troops to Inner Khalkha to destroy Chaohua, which is a result that Nurhaci absolutely will not allow to see.

Now the Inner Khalkha tribe is an ally of the Later Jin Dynasty. If Nurhaci sits back and watches Ligdan Khan swallow up the Inner Khalkha tribe, not only will all the efforts made by the Later Jin Dynasty before come to nothing, but once Chaohua is destroyed, it will not only be a heavy blow to the credit of the Later Jin Dynasty. In addition, if the Inner Khalkha tribe falls into the hands of Ligdan Khan, then Nurhaci will not only lose an ally, but also lose the military and living space to the west, and put himself in a pincer attack from both the Ming Dynasty and Ligdan Khan.

Nurhaci would never allow such an outcome to happen. Once it came to this, the newly rising Later Jin would be in danger.

In any case, the Inner Khalkha tribe must be rescued, there is no doubt about that. But facing the army of Ligdan Khan, although Nurhaci's Later Jin could fight, they had few people and were not sure of winning. After thinking about it, Nurhaci thought of the Khorchin tribe.

It is unknown how Nurhaci persuaded the Khorchin tribe, but the two sides reached an agreement in private. At the critical moment when Lin Danhan was concentrating on dealing with Chaohua and intending to force the Inner Khalkha tribe into a decisive battle and defeat the Inner Khalkha tribe in one fell swoop, Nurhaci's Later Jin cavalry and Khorchin cavalry suddenly attacked from the northeast of Inner Khalkha and defeated Lin Danhan's left wing cavalry in a few seconds with a thunderous force.

When the news came that the Houjin and Khorchin cavalry appeared on his left wing and the Mongolian cavalry on the left wing had begun to collapse, Lin Danhan could not believe his ears. He never thought that such a thing would happen, and he did not expect that the Houjin cavalry would join forces with Khorchin to raid his left wing at this time.

Although Lin Danhan's troops were large in number and he also held the title of the Great Khan of Mongolia, there was an essential difference between the Mongolian cavalry and the cavalry of the Ming Dynasty and the Later Jin Dynasty. This was due to the Mongolian habits.

During the Mongol Empire and the Yuan Dynasty, the Mongolian army's organization was relatively reliable. At that time, Genghis Khan established a professional military system. The army was the army, and ordinary Mongolians were ordinary Mongolians. The two were different.

However, when the Yuan Dynasty was driven out of the Central Plains by Zhu Yuanzhang, the military system of the Mongols changed. The entire Mongolian high-level officials once again regressed from a centralized system to a loose system of nomadic peoples. This institutional regression also led to a regression in the militarization of the Mongols. The Mongols today are no different from the nomadic peoples of the past. Although the Mongols are civilians when they dismount from their horses and soldiers when they mount on their horses, and they are said to have hundreds of thousands of cavalrymen, there are not many real professional soldiers among them.

Apart from the guards of Lin Danhan, most of the troops were ordinary herdsmen who were temporarily recruited from various tribes. It's not that these herdsmen can't fight. If they fight one-on-one, they are still quite combative, but war is definitely not a war of one person. War is about the whole. In a large-scale battle, in addition to the command ability of both sides, the quality and training of the soldiers are the most important. In this case, Lin Danhan's troops have no problem fighting a favorable battle, but once the battle becomes unfavorable, everything will be different.

Upon learning that the left wing had collapsed due to a surprise attack, the morale of Ligdan Khan's army plummeted. Many Mongols began to think of self-preservation, especially the ordinary Mongols who were recruited. With people's hearts in turmoil, how could this war be fought?
Although Lin Danhan immediately made adjustments, intending to reorganize the left wing and free up his hands to repel the coalition forces of Houjin and Khorchin and regain the advantage on the battlefield, at this time, not only Houjin and Khorchin, but also the Inner Khalkha tribe was not idle, and seized the opportunity to launch a counterattack.

For a while, Lin Danhan's troops were surrounded on three sides. Even though his total military strength was still superior, facing such a huge change, not only did his morale plummet, but his command also became ineffective.

After barely coping with two rounds, the cavalry under Lin Danhan were defeated again and again, and some tribal leaders even secretly led their troops to leave the battlefield without permission. Seeing this, Lin Danhan was furious, but he was powerless. He knew that this battle could not be fought any longer. If he continued to fight, not only would he not win, but he might even get himself into trouble.

As the saying goes, there is always a chance of having no firewood. Lin Danhan was no fool. When he saw that the situation was hopeless, he immediately ordered the entire army to retreat.

When Lindan Khan retreated, Chaohua, Later Jin and Khorchin did not force him too much. After all, although Lindan Khan was defeated, his strength was not greatly damaged. In this way, this sudden war ended with this result. Lindan Khan's expedition returned in vain. Not only did he fail to solve the problem of the Inner Khalkha tribe, he also lost soldiers and generals in this war and lost face.

(End of this chapter)