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

Chapter 367: The Old Slave's Western Expedition
Zhu Shenzui did not stay in the capital for too long this time. After dealing with the matters of Xu Xiancheng and Zhang Xijun, Zhu Shenzui stayed in the capital for a few more days, took a good look at the center of the empire, and returned to Pingyang before the New Year.

On the day of leaving the capital, Zhu Shenzhui left the city. After walking along the official road for a while, he couldn't help but look back at the capital.

Although they were some distance away, the towering city walls of the capital were still clearly visible. Looking in the direction of the capital, Zhu Shenzhui felt a little complicated. He looked for a long time before turning back, getting on his horse and continuing on his way. Soon he led his men away and was never seen again.

A few days later, Zhu Shenzhui returned to Pingyang. When he arrived in Pingyang, it was already the 28th day of the twelfth lunar month. The fifth year of Tianqi was about to pass, and the sixth year of Tianqi was about to come.

Just a few days after the New Year, before the Lantern Festival, Nurhaci, the old slave of the Later Jin Dynasty in Liaodong, could no longer hold back. He gathered a large army and marched out from Shenyang to personally lead an expedition to western Liaoning.

In the past few years, Nurhaci suffered a lot because Sun Chengzong served as the commander-in-chief of Ji-Liao.

Before Sun Chengzong came, the Later Jin Jiannu were invincible in Liaodong. In just a few years, their strength increased greatly, and they even had the military power to directly compete with the Ming Dynasty.

But Nurhaci did not have deep roots after all. The Jurchens had a limited population in Liaodong. In addition, Liaodong was a cold and bitter place with little production. The Jurchens were not Ming people. They had always relied on fishing and hunting for a living. Although they were brave and good at fighting, they did not understand farming and production. In order to maintain their rule, the Jurchens had only two methods: one was plundering, and the second was to capture Ming people in Liaodong as slaves and force them to farm to support themselves.

In the previous battles, although the Later Jin Jiannu won great victories and defeated the elite troops of the Ming Dynasty in Liaodong, the territory and population occupied by them also expanded rapidly. However, these victories did not completely change the nature of the Later Jin Jiannu. On the contrary, the Later Jin Jiannu became a little carried away after several great victories. In addition, the expansion of territory in a short period of time also made the Later Jin Jiannu's rule not as stable as imagined.

If the Ming's military strategy in Liaodong remained unchanged, Nurhaci could have used the Jurchens' good fighting skills to continue defeating the Ming army and thus obtain the necessary supplies from the Ming army. In addition, it would have been even better if Shanhaiguan could be taken. Without the protection of Shanhaiguan, the gateway from Liaodong to the Ming would be completely open, and the Jurchens could come and go as they pleased, relying on continuous plundering of the Ming to strengthen themselves, while also constantly consuming the Ming's strength.

But all this changed completely after Sun Chengzong took office as the commander-in-chief of Ji-Liao. Sun Chengzong's strategic policy did not look very good, and it was also very costly to implement in practice. He also avoided direct battles with the Later Jin and Jiannu, and only relied on strong backing to fight hard with the Later Jin and Jiannu, while also adopting a double blockade of military and economic means.

At first, Nurhaci didn't care about Sun Chengzong's actions. In his opinion, Sun Chengzong was just a scholar. How could he fight like this? Moreover, the Later Jin Jiannu had just won the Liaoxi War at that time. Even the famous Xiong Tingbi was driven to Shanhaiguan by them. He retreated to Shanhaiguan and dared not go further east.

Having taken a large amount of land east of Shanhaiguan and gained a lot of people, Nurhaci was in high spirits. At that time, because the territory occupied was too large, the Later Jin Jiannu did not have so many people to garrison, so they had to give up Ningyuan, Jinzhou and other places, temporarily retreat and consolidate the territory, and plan to digest what they had eaten before leading the troops to continue fighting the Ming army.

From this point of view, Nurhaci's choice was not wrong. After all, although the Later Jin Jiannu were capable of fighting, their population base and weak production capacity determined the governance problems they had to face after rapid expansion.

Without a large population base, the Later Jin Jiannu would not be able to occupy so much territory. Without sufficient self-sufficient production capacity, the Later Jin Jiannu would not be able to maintain their rule by simply plundering.

Nurhaci was said to have started his rebellion with thirteen sets of armor. Initially, he was only the commander of the Left Guard of Jianzhou in the Ming Dynasty. Because Li Chengliang, the general of Liaodong at that time, kept the enemy at bay, Nurhaci had the opportunity to suck blood from the Ming Dynasty and continue to grow stronger.

After a series of military operations, Nurhaci first unified the Jianzhou Jurchens and then annexed the Haixi Jurchens. After that, Nurhaci established the Eight Banners system. After his strength increased greatly, Nurhaci completely tore off his disguise, launched a rebellion with the so-called "Seven Great Hates", and established the Later Jin regime.

Since the Battle of Sarhu, Nurhaci led the Eight Banners of the Later Jin Dynasty to great victories in several battles against the Ming army. The Later Jin regime also expanded rapidly. Moreover, because of the bravery and fighting skills of the Eight Banners, there was even a rumor that "if there are less than 10,000 Jurchens, if there are more than 10,000, they are invincible."

But no matter what, the number of people in Nurhaci's Eight Banners was not large. After the uprising, Nurhaci had no more than 60,000 troops. The entire Later Jin Dynasty, including the elderly, the weak, women and children, had a population of no more than 150,000.

After the Battle of Sarhu, the Later Jin Dynasty gained great momentum. In order to solve the problem of insufficient population, Nurhaci continued to annex various wild Jurchen tribes, or plundered other tribes in Liaodong and incorporated them into the Eight Banners. To this day, the total population of the Eight Banners of the Later Jin Dynasty is less than 200,000, and the number of combat soldiers of the Eight Banners is even smaller. The Later Jin Dynasty also suffered losses in several major battles, and now there are only about 80,000 at most.

These do not include the Ming people and other tribesmen plundered from the Ming Dynasty. These people did not belong to the Eight Banners, but were actually slaves of the Eight Banners, also known as "baoyi". Their role was to use the Ming people's farming production base to provide resources for the Eight Banners. From all aspects, the so-called Later Jin regime was not stable. It was just a deformed military group. In addition to being relatively strong militarily, its political and social structures, including basic production, were very weak. If such a regime could not continue to expand, once it stagnated, its internal contradictions would continue to intensify and it would inevitably collapse in a very short time.

Sun Chengzong had a sharp vision and saw this point at a glance. This was also the biggest reason why Sun Chengzong implemented this strategy in Liaodong.

After several years of blockade, and with the completion of the construction of cities such as Ningyuan, although the Ming Dynasty had not yet launched a large-scale battle with the Later Jin in Liaodong, Sun Chengzong directly cut off the possibility of development of the Later Jin Jiannu with these means alone, and at the same time used the blockade to make the life of the Later Jin Jiannu increasingly difficult.

As mentioned earlier, the Jurchens were a fishing and hunting people who did not know how to farm. The Eight Banners were a war machine created by Nurhaci. Although they had strong combat effectiveness, they also brought tremendous logistical pressure to the Later Jin.

As time went by, many problems continued to arise within the Later Jin Dynasty. In particular, due to the long-term blockade, the Later Jin Dynasty could not meet its needs by relying solely on the farming of its bannermen. The daily material consumption of the huge military group was not a small number. If it were in the past, it could barely be maintained by plundering everywhere, but now Sun Chengzong's blockade policy made it impossible for the Later Jin Dynasty to break through the Ming army's iron wall in Liaodong. As long as the Ming army firmly held a few key points and withdrew the Liaodong military and civilians from the front line to create an uninhabited area in the middle, the Later Jin Jiannu could neither break through the Ming army's strong city nor attack Shanhaiguan. They could not even plunder the materials of the Liaodong military and civilians as supplies. Over time, when the materials previously plundered by the Later Jin Dynasty, especially the food and grass, were constantly consumed, problems arose.

Now Nurhaci has been forced into a desperate situation. The entire Houjin military group will soon not even have enough food to eat. Without food, it is useless for the Eight Banners soldiers to fight. How can people go to the battlefield without enough food? If this continues, it will not be long before the Eight Banners will fall apart without the Ming army attacking.

At the end of last year, a piece of good news finally came, which made Nurhaci, who was about to go crazy, overjoyed. He never thought that the Ming Dynasty would withdraw Sun Chengzong and drive him back to his hometown just because of a small battle in Liuhe.

As soon as Sun Chengzong left, Nurhaci danced with joy. This old man had been suppressing him for the past few years and he felt suffocated. If he continued to let him blockade Liaodong like this, the Later Jin regime that he had worked so hard to build would probably collapse.

Now, the Ming Dynasty itself helped the Later Jin Dynasty remove the stumbling block. The person who succeeded Sun Chengzong was Gao Di. Nurhaci was no stranger to Gao Di. After all, Nurhaci was also an official of the Ming Dynasty before. As a veteran minister of three dynasties, although they had never dealt with Gao Di before, they had heard a thing or two about him.

In Nurhaci's eyes, Gao Di was at best a civil servant similar to Wang Huazhen, and his talent was not as good as Sun Chengzong, and even the previous Liaodong governor Xiong Tingbi was far inferior. Replacing Sun Chengzong with Gao Di, wouldn't that be equivalent to giving the Later Jin the best opportunity to break the blockade? Thinking of this, how could Nurhaci hold back? He immediately began to prepare.

It took more than a month to finally gather the army, but it was the Chinese New Year. Nurhaci patiently celebrated the Chinese New Year, and just after the New Year, before even the Lantern Festival, Nurhaci could not wait to lead his army out in full force, heading towards Ningyuan in western Liaoning.

On the 17th day of the first lunar month, Nurhaci's army crossed the Liaohe River. On the 18th, Yuan Chonghuan in Ningyuan received the news that Nurhaci had sent troops, and immediately convened a front-line military meeting to make pre-war arrangements.

On the one hand, Yuan Chonghuan asked Man Gui, Zu Dashou, Zuo Fu and Zhu Mei to guard the southeast, northwest, northeast and southwest directions of Ningyuan City respectively. He personally led the artilleryman Peng Zhangu and Luo Li, a servant he recruited in Shaowu, to be in charge of the city defense artillery.

At the same time, Yuan Chonghuan sent people out of the city to burn down houses and stores outside the city. He adopted the strategy of clearing the walls and fortifying the countryside, and made preparations for the enemy to approach the city.

In addition, Yuan Chonghuan also sent urgent letters to the imperial court, Qiantun, and Shanhaiguan.

Yuan Chonghuan reported to the court that Nurhaci had sent troops, and expressed his determination to hold on to Ningyuan. As for Qiantun, Shanhaiguan and other places, Yuan Chonghuan asked them to hold on to the second line at any time and intercept deserters. Any deserters who escaped from the front line would be killed without mercy.

Yuan Chonghuan also wrote a special letter to Gao Di, the newly appointed governor. He knew that Gao Di had always maintained his attitude of giving up Ningyuan, so in the letter, Yuan Chonghuan not only reiterated his determination to live and die with Ningyuan, but also instructed Gao Di to hold Shanhaiguan and not to reinforce Ningyuan, so as to prevent Nurhaci from repeating the same trick of besieging the city and attacking the reinforcements.

Although he and Gao Di had different opinions on military matters, it was necessary to put aside personal conflicts for the time being in the face of the Liaodong crisis. Moreover, if Gao Di lost his composure, he would not only fail to help him, but would also cause trouble for himself. In this case, it would be better to give Gao Di a reason to hold on, so that Gao Di would not rush to rescue in a hurry. Once Nurhaci took the opportunity to defeat him, it would bring a major blow to Ningyuan.

(End of this chapter)