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

Chapter 102 Serving as a dog for the Ming Dynasty isn't something I haven't tried before; practice makes perfect, right?
Even at this point in the war, Ligdan Khan's forces still hold the numerical advantage. However, he has lost the will to continue fighting. This is because Ming reinforcements are arriving in droves, which is why they are being routed by the more than ten thousand troops from Xuanfu.

In the past century, in order to cope with increasingly severe crises, the Ming Dynasty's army has had to carry out iterative reforms time and time again, which has made the large-scale application of chariot technology and firearms the mainstream: such as the reduction of armor weight and the enhancement of firepower.

For many years, the Mongol army, however, has remained stagnant, or even regressed. The only slight progress has been in their military organization, which has become more organized. The expansion of warfare has meant that they no longer dare to bring their families into battle. In fact, the Mongol army is equipped with a small number of firearms, but these infrequently deployed weapons are less effective in actual combat than their bows and arrows.

The power of firearms increases exponentially with the size of the formation. Early wagon battalions numbered only a thousand or so men, but now they have grown into massive formations of six or seven thousand, spanning hundreds of paces. And this is all because the Ming Dynasty was extremely poor.

In Yu Dayou's envisioned "Ten Million-Strong Formation," there should have been ten chariot battalions and ten infantry battalions, totaling 60,000 men, to conduct coordinated operations. Unfortunately, the plan never came to fruition.

Sun Chuanting led an army composed of 3,000 elite cavalry from Yansui and 7,000 garrison troops. The number of chariots and artillery was relatively small; the majority of the force was infantry. The elite Yansui cavalry had been doing exceptionally well lately: well-fed and watered, and winning battle after battle, they had become arrogant and fierce. They not only dared to charge into enemy lines but were even able to defeat them.

The strength of the garrison troops varied considerably, as they were agricultural settlements that had been neglected due to prolonged peace. Even though these men were elite troops drawn from various garrisons, they were still far inferior to the border troops.

Sun Chuanting used three thousand elite cavalry to intimidate Lindan Khan, killing hundreds in a single charge, which terrified Lindan Khan, who assumed that all of his tens of thousands of troops were such elites. In reality, Sun Chuanting himself was also quite nervous.

As a result, both sides showed a certain degree of restraint: Sun Chuanting's chariot formation advanced slowly with the support of his cavalry on the left and right; Ligdan Khan's army unleashed a barrage of arrows to stop the Ming army's advance, and then hastened its retreat.

The remaining soldiers of Datong huddled on the city wall, wanting to stop the attack but powerless to do so. The ferocity of the Datong defensive battle was beyond imagination: the corpses piled up on both sides of the breach in the wall almost reached the height of the wall itself, and blood flowed and gathered into pools in the low-lying areas.

The Northern barbarians continuously moved and cleared the obstacles at the seven breaches, allowing the army to pass through quickly; some sections of the city wall had already been occupied by the Northern barbarians and turned into fortifications for them to defend against Ming army firearms attacks from a high vantage point.

Seeing this, Sun Chuanting couldn't help but feel anxious. His allies had spent so much to hold back the Northern barbarians. If he were to let them escape, wouldn't he become a sinner?! He dared not be negligent, so he led his wagon battalion and charged straight at them through the rain of arrows.

The vans at the front of the battalion were essentially artillery vehicles equipped with shields: square wooden shields with holes cut into them to allow for artillery firing ports; several men could also stand behind the shields to fire handheld weapons. The side vans had shields mounted on their sides, making them heavier and more resistant to impact.

However, these shield carts could only defend against surface attacks. Faced with the fire from above on the city wall, they could only barely hold their ground by raising their shields. Sun Chuanting's goal was to recapture one of the breaches, then scale the city wall, drive out the northern enemy forces, and rescue the allied troops in Datong.

The battle between the two sides was unremarkable, even somewhat tedious: a portion of the Northern Barbarians escaped beyond the pass, while the majority remained within the walls, cut in two; after Sun Chuanting's army penetrated the middle, they were further split in half, ultimately becoming four parts in a grid pattern. Of course, these four parts did not lose contact. Sun Chuanting himself entered the fray, finding himself surrounded, but wagon camps are meant to be surrounded; they are ineffective without being surrounded. Sun Chuanting's wagon camp deployed in the middle of the breach in the wall, directly blocking the largest breach, and continuously harassing the Northern Barbarian cavalry trying to cross the wall with firearms, significantly slowing their progress.

Ligdan Khan, unable to bear the harassment any longer, launched several attacks on his wagon camp, even managing to create a breach with his cavalry, only to be pushed back again, unable to break through the enemy lines. Perhaps this wasn't due to the exceptional tenacity of Sun Chuanting's Ming army, but rather the lack of decisiveness among Ligdan Khan's forces.

If Sun Chuanting had stood by and done nothing, it would have taken the remaining tens of thousands of Northern barbarians about an hour to cross the border wall. His arrival doubled that time. Finally, half an hour later, the cavalry from Datong, Jizhou, and Beijing arrived, along with the cavalry from Yansui, totaling ten thousand men.

A cavalry force of this size was no longer something the northern barbarians could easily drive away. The two sides fought several battles along the border wall, with each side gaining some ground and losing some. Then, the Jingying Chariot Battalion, the Jingying Infantry Battalion, the Jizhou Chariot Battalion led by Yu Zigao, and the Datong Chariot Battalion arrived one after another, and Ligdan Khan's army completely collapsed.

The northern cavalry, who had not yet crossed the pass, disregarded their leaders' arrangements and rushed towards the breach, trampling each other and causing countless deaths and injuries. Some, seeing that they were surrounded by the army and could not escape in the short term, simply threw down their weapons, knelt down and surrendered. For the Mongols, surrendering did not bring much psychological pressure.

Tribes on the grasslands fought each other, and submitting to the strong was almost instinctive for them. They had been dogs of the Ming Dynasty before, and practice makes perfect.

Although the generals also wanted to capture prisoners, since they could bring back elite cavalry that could be used immediately, the emperor had already given an order to kill them all, so they had no choice but to comply. This group of Mongol soldiers did not let go of the surrendered Datong army, and now they were not being let go by the Ming army either.

Yu Zigao failed to meet his performance targets, only managing to collect a little over a thousand heads. Therefore, he could only lead his wheelbarrow battalion beyond the pass to try and capture a few more bandits. Among all the battalions, his wheelbarrow battalion had the fastest movement speed, but at the cost of the weakest defense, relying entirely on firepower and accompanying melee infantry for defense.

Despite the victory in the great battle, though not a complete success and with Ligdan Khan having escaped, everyone was still in high spirits. They felt sympathy for the unfortunate Yu Zigao, fearing he might be isolated and lost, so they dispatched their respective cavalry to accompany him out of the pass to pursue the enemy and provide mutual support.

The remaining tens of thousands of troops cleaned up the battlefield, aided the wounded, and began repairing the border wall. In this battle, the Beijing garrison shone brightly, its superior firepower making the reinforcements from several border towns envious.

After discussion among the commanders of the various armies, it was decided that the greatest credit for this battle should be given to the Datong Army. The Datong Army was in a terrible state; of the more than 9,000 who went into battle, less than 4,000 were still alive.

(End of this chapter)