Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 101 I have a nephew who is practically a reincarnated Lu Bu and a human Xiang Yu.
At the forefront of the Northern Barbarian army were not cavalry, but a herd of horses driven by the Northern Barbarian soldiers with weapons. These warhorses, which were incredibly precious in the eyes of the Ming Dynasty, had now become cheap expendables. Braving a hail of bullets, the horses forcibly broke through the barricades, smashed through the shield carts, knocked away the swordsmen and shield bearers behind the shield carts, and crashed into the four-meter-long spears of the spearmen.

Smoke billowed from the city walls. Cannons, muskets, ballistae, siege engines, thunderclaps, and even catapults—Qu Jiazhen had emptied the Datong arsenal, bringing every possible projectile weapon. Some items even bore inscriptions marking them as "Made in the Yongle Reign of the Great Ming Dynasty"!
It is inherently difficult for infantry to subdue cavalry. Qu Jiazhen's only advantage was the city walls he could rely on, while the Northern Barbarians had a limited number of troops and no siege equipment. He did not need a large number of troops scattered across the various sections of the city walls. The focus of the struggle between the two sides was on seven gaps in the city walls, ranging from five to thirty paces apart.

The Datong soldiers lined up to meet the enemy at the breaches, each breach requiring manpower to defend, with only a few hundred to a thousand troops at any given time. Support troops were positioned outside the city walls to fill the breaches as needed, while the two sides of the walls provided crossfire support.

Half an hour into the battle, the Ming army's cannons began to explode one after another; an hour later, at a large breach about twenty paces from the center, the gunpowder exploded due to overheating of the cannon barrel. Tens of thousands of pounds of gunpowder were ignited in an instant, the enormous sound drowning out the battle cries, and a huge mushroom cloud slowly rose, reflecting the fanatical expressions of the Northern barbarian cavalry and the pale faces of the Datong defenders.

The cannons were temporarily rendered unusable. The Ming Dynasty's code of conduct for firearms stipulated the charge and firing intervals for various weapons, but due to troop shortages and insufficient numbers of firearms, the Datong garrison was forced to violate regulations and use firearms in the chaos. Everyone knew the consequences, yet they were gambling that these firearms would only explode later in the day.

The firearms of the Datong defenders gradually stopped working, and other weapons also had various problems. The only reliable weapons left were the broadswords and spears in their hands, and the most brutal hand-to-hand combat began!

After resting for an hour, the Ming army's firearms roared again. The Northern barbarians had learned their lesson and were using low-intensity, frequent attacks to wear down the Ming army's firearms, waiting until the time was almost up before launching another large-scale assault.

Three hours later, Qu Jiazhen's 9,000-strong army was reduced to less than 5,000, and their morale was on the verge of collapse. If it weren't for the Great Wall, they would have scattered and fled in open battle, pursued and killed by the northern barbarians. Even now, deserters have begun to appear one after another.

Qu Jiazhen stood on the city wall, his lips cracked and his hair disheveled, staring intently into the distance, praying for reinforcements to arrive soon. He had already sent out three waves of soldiers to request help.

Ligdan Khan's army was also on the verge of collapse, suffering even greater casualties than the Ming army. If they hadn't known their homeland lay on the other side of the wall, the soldiers he had driven to their deaths would have long since deserted. But where could they escape to? Within Ming territory, they would ultimately be annihilated. They had initially regarded the Ming as lambs, but now that the lambs were biting, they were afraid.

"The Ming army is almost exhausted. Khuntu Taiji, lead the Iron Spear Konots into battle!" A cruel smile appeared on Ligdan Khan's face.

"Yes, sir!" Bongtu Taiji replied with a resounding thud.

The Datong army fought to the bitter end, with no reinforcements. Even their cavalry had repeatedly charged against the northern barbarian cavalry, suffering more than half their casualties. However, even after fighting to the death, what happened next still filled them with despair.

The Northern barbarian Iron Pagoda, which had been conserving its strength, slowly advanced in a dense formation. If it were at the beginning of the battle, they could have used artillery to deal with these reckless fools, but now, they had few usable firearms left.

A few scattered shells rolled in front of the Iron Pagoda, but they did not deter them. Only the Iron Pagoda's charge could be stopped by the sidecars; flesh and blood could not possibly intercept it, not even if you planted a big gun in the ground.

Covered in blood, Cao Wenyao returned to Qu Jiazhen's side and said in a hoarse voice, "General, you can go now. I'll lead the troops to cover your retreat. You were right. I won't impeach you."

Qu Jiazhen said disdainfully, "You think you're so fearless? Men, bring me my broadsword! If I die in battle, my son can still be protected by me; if I abandon the army and run away, the court will execute me, and my family will be implicated as well."

The Iron Pagoda army advanced two hundred paces and began their charge. Ming soldiers, trembling, released their bowstrings and lit their muskets, but could not penetrate the Iron Pagoda's armor. Having suffered humiliation in Xuanfu, the Iron Pagoda finally unleashed their true power in Datong; spears snapped, and swordsmen and shieldmen were sent flying. Under the onslaught of this monstrous force of armored men and horses, even Li Siyuan and his Mo Dao troops would likely be unable to withstand it.

When firearms fell silent, the Iron Pagoda (a type of cavalry unit) became the most terrifying force in the age of cold weapons. Ligdan Khan relied on these few thousand Iron Pagodas to defeat one steppe tribe after another. Before him, his collateral ancestor, Altan Khan, became the emperor of the steppe with ten thousand Iron Pagodas. The successive rise of the Tumed and Chahar tribes dragged the Ming Dynasty into a quagmire of war, leaving it unable to attend to the rapidly growing Jianzhou Jurchens. It can be said that the rise of the Jurchens was due to the great war between the Ming and the Chahar, allowing them to reap the benefits; the fall of the Ming Dynasty was also a huge stroke of luck for them—the Jurchens were simply easy prey!
Knowing he was powerless to resist, Qu Jiazhen ordered his soldiers to open a breach and let the iron pagodas pass. The gunpowder buried under the breach was ignited by Ming soldiers disguised as corpses, and several brilliant fireworks bloomed, burying hundreds of iron pagodas in the process.

Khedrup Taiji, bringing up the rear, luckily escaped the Ming army's trap. However, his face was blackened by gunpowder, and much of his hair was singed; he almost perished along with the other soldiers. Though tragic, the Ming army's fortified position had indeed fallen, hadn't it?
Now that the battle had progressed to this point, Ligdan Khan was no longer content with simply breaking through the pass and escaping; he wanted to savor the spoils of his war. The northern barbarian cavalry began to dismount and scale the city walls through the breaches in the border wall, annihilating the Ming army.

General Qu Jiazhen, wielding a broadsword, led the remaining few hundred cavalrymen, charging back and forth on the city wall alongside Cao Wenyao. Every now and then, Ming cavalrymen and their horses would fall from the wall, while northern barbarians would be thrown into the air, crashing to the ground and convulsing.

The Ming soldiers had been fighting for half a day and were already exhausted. By now, they were simply unable to resist the vigorous and fresh Northern barbarian army's attack; this was the disparity in troop strength. Nine thousand against forty thousand was not a simple exchange of forces, but a one-against-four battle of attrition. They might be able to hold out at first, but later it would become a one-sided massacre.

When Qu Jiazhen personally took to the battlefield, it meant that the Ming army's command had collapsed, leaving only officers of all ranks to lead their troops in making various choices: some fought to the death, some knelt down to surrender, and some wanted to escape.

However, how can two legs outrun four? After suffering heavy casualties, the Northern barbarians no longer wanted prisoners. Under immense psychological pressure, what they needed was a massacre, a complete release.

Although the city walls were wide enough for horses to gallop, they weren't large enough to allow for maneuvering. Qu Jiazhen's warhorse was quickly stabbed to death, and his personal guards dwindled. He began to be wounded, but the guerrilla general Cao Wenyao was even more seriously injured.

But the more he talked like this, the more he said: "General, I have an older brother who is a soldier in Liaodong. He's much better than me and stronger than you. I also have a nephew who is practically a reincarnation of Lu Bu and a human Xiang Yu. He can take on three of me. You haven't met them, otherwise you would definitely like them."

Luckily, they weren't soldiers in Datong, hahaha... My brother wants me to stay home and take care of our elderly mother, saying the Tartars aren't as fierce as the Jurchens, and I won't die back home. General, weren't you a general in Liaodong? Are the Jurchens really fiercer than the Tartars?!

"Nonsense, even the Tartars have to be dogs for the Jurchens!" Qu Jiazhen said impatiently. "I've met your elder brother, Cao Wenzhao, but as for your nephew, I haven't paid much attention to him. That bastard Zu Dashou dotes on your elder brother. When I asked him for your brother back, he beat me up!"

"Huh?! Commander, I think I hear cannon fire! Commander, cannon fire! Yes, reinforcements have arrived! We won't die, hahahaha!!!" Cao Wenyao was like a madman, laughing and crying at the same time. He swung his sword and killed one Mongol soldier, then turned around and stabbed another to death. The Northern barbarian soldiers screamed at each other, then retreated from the city wall like a tide.

Qu Jiazhen lay sprawled on the city wall like a dead dog, watching as a Ming cavalry unit charged towards them from the southeast. They were incredibly fierce; with three shots from their guns, they charged head-on with their three-eyed muskets. Their horsemanship was superb, and they were in no way inferior to these northern barbarians who were accustomed to riding horses.

The northern barbarians' scimitars could not pierce the Ming cavalry's iron armor, but the Ming army's three-eyed muskets were enough to smash the northern barbarian cavalry into coughing up blood.

After a round of charging, the cavalry circled around, and then a light wagon formation composed of regular wagons suddenly appeared. Upon seeing this, the Northern barbarian cavalry turned tail and ran without hesitation!

Ligdan Khan opened champagne halfway through his journey. He hadn't left when he could have, because he estimated that the pursuers from Xuanfu wouldn't arrive in half a day. He had even arranged for cavalry to ambush any Ming cavalry rushing to reinforce them. However, he hadn't expected that the pursuers wouldn't be from Xuanfu, but from Ming troops coming from another direction. Now, he wanted to leave, but it wasn't so easy.

Even if the Datong army hadn't plugged the breach, it was still impossible for tens of thousands of troops to quickly pass through that narrow gap. They could only fight and retreat, but how were they supposed to fight against the Ming dynasty's chariot formation?! Lin Dan Khan felt his teeth ache!
(End of this chapter)