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

Chapter 267 Night Raid on the Plain Yellow Banner Camp 4.0
Ten years had passed since the Ming Dynasty lost Xiping Fort. At that time, Nurhaci led 50,000 Eight Banner troops to besiege Xiping Fort, while the defending commander Luo Yiguan only had 3,000 men. Faced with his old friend Li Yongfang's offer to surrender, Luo Yiguan remained unmoved.

Three days later, Xiping Fort fell. Luo Yiguan, facing south, kowtowed and uttered the words, "My strength is exhausted," before committing suicide. Seeing this, Commander Chen Shangren and other officers also took their own lives. None of the three thousand defenders surrendered; the entire army was wiped out. The Jurchens suffered seven thousand casualties, exceeding their losses in the Battle of Sarhu and the defense of Liaoshen.

The collapsed walls of Xipingbao bear witness to that great battle. The grass inside and outside the city grows exceptionally tall. Parting the grass, one can see numerous weathered corpses. Sun Tzu's Art of War, in the chapter on marching, mentions that "night camps must have beacon towers," usually with sentries using lamps while those in the shadows remain unlit.

Xiping Fort no longer has a city gate; a dim lantern hangs above the gate opening. The wind blows through the gate, sounding like a sob, and the already faint light appears almost imperceptible as the lantern sways.

The Tartar guarding the gate was dozing against the wall, hidden in the shadows of the lamplight so no one could tell if his eyes were open or closed. The city walls had collapsed; what was the point of guarding the gate? Guarjia Batu couldn't understand, nor did he need to. He simply obeyed the orders given from above.

A breeze picked up, and Batu hugged his arms, shrinking further into the corner. The daytime heat was unbearable even in short sleeves, so they hadn't brought any warm clothes for the night. Actually, it wasn't too cold at night; if they were squatting or lying down, they probably wouldn't feel cold—the weather was just right for sleeping.

Batu felt incredibly unlucky. Why did he have to be on guard duty out of all those people?! Batu was a veteran of seven or eight years, but fighting in the summer was a first for him.

At this time of year, he would usually be lying in the courtyard under the loquat tree, enjoying the cool shade, disciplining his newly captured servants with his horsewhip, and basking in the servile service of his bondservants. But not now. His old servant of ten years was shot in the back last month, and his entire chest cavity was shattered.

This was his last slave; the others had long since starved to death. He couldn't bear to let this one die, so he fed him bran and chaff, but he still died. Without this old servant to help him, teaching new slaves manners would be much more difficult.

Batu felt a pang of regret; he should have left the old man at home. His wife had scolded him mercilessly for taking the old servant with him. All the servants in the house were dead; there was no one left to do the work. The Jurchens were inherently noble; they couldn't possibly do the work themselves, could they?

Batu recalled how, before setting off on the expedition, he had confidently patted his chest and assured his wife that he would bring back at least three aha (young men), but now he had none, and his initial investment had been lost. He had originally captured quite a few Korean slaves, but they had all been used to fill ditches.

The Plain Yellow Banner was the old man's own unit, and originally enjoyed the best treatment. After it passed to Huang Taiji, although the treatment declined somewhat, it was still among the top tier. But in the last two years, things have become increasingly difficult.

The Ming army was finding it increasingly difficult to fight; they couldn't seize money and supplies, and the princes were infighting and losing their minds. Batu saw all this but could do nothing; it was impossible for him not to feel resentful.

Three miles west of Xipingbao, Man Gui led the vanguard of the Sixth Battalion, slowly advancing. At first, they could only see a few faint orange lights in the distance, barely brighter than fireflies to the naked eye. As the army drew closer, the once quiet Jurchen camp suddenly became bustling with activity.

The Jurchens lit a fire, and the sentries swept away the ashes from the brazier. The flames leaped up in the wind, instantly reaching waist-high, roaring fiercely. Facing an enemy night attack, the first priority was to maintain order, as night raiders were often small, and casualties were mostly due to panic and infighting. Their use of fire did prevent a mutiny, but it also completely exposed their position. The Ming army had only known a general location of Xiping Fort, and the situation ahead was unclear, causing them considerable anxiety. Now, the Jurchens had illuminated their entire camp.

Where the roads were, where the best places to flank were, and the approximate location of the central army camp—in other words, where Huang Taiji might be—this information quickly flashed through the minds of the Ming cavalry. At six hundred paces, Man Gui spotted two hundred-man squads emerging from the Jurchen camp. The Jurchens were truly ferocious; instead of trying to escape, they dared to fight back?!

The Ming army was 400 paces from the main camp and only 200 paces from the Jurchen 100-man squad. The Jurchen cavalry turned their horses around, began to turn right and draw their bows to shoot to the left.

Man Gui lowered his head slightly, but his warhorse did not slow down. Whoosh! The sound of air being cut by the horse passed by everyone's ears, and occasionally there were scattered tinkling sounds, but no one fell off their horse.

One hundred paces! A thousand cavalrymen had already gathered outside the Jurchen camp, a chaotic and disorganized mess. Man Gui spurred his horse tightly, and the warhorse, understanding his intention, bolted forward like an arrow. Man Gui's personal guards' eyes nearly popped out of their sockets: "Boss, at least give us a heads-up before you charge!"

The vanguard accelerated, quickly widening the gap between themselves and the two rank cavalry behind them. Cao Wenzhao ordered the fire arrows to be lit, and in the darkness of night, a fire dragon hundreds of meters long instantly appeared. Man Gui took the lead and caught up with the fleeing slave cavalry in the blink of an eye.

Without any apparent effort from him, he simply pushed his lance forward, and the Tartar fell from his horse. He was trampled into a bloody pulp without uttering a single scream.

Swish! A volley of arrows, though not in large numbers, rained down. Man Gui glanced ahead quickly, then ducked down. Unseen by anyone, his grin stretched from ear to ear.

The Jurchens could shoot arrows at the face from five paces away and break through heavy armor, but now the two sides were only forty paces apart, and they were already firing arrows. You can imagine how panicked they were.

Man Gui laughed even more because most of the Jurchens were not wearing armor, and some hadn't even had time to put on clothes, sitting naked on their horses and shivering like leaves.

At this point, either fleeing immediately or dismounting to fight on foot would have been better options than what they were doing now, but they insisted on making a compromise and chose a dead end.

Having withstood another volley of arrows unscathed, the Ming cavalry became slightly more serious. The lead hundred or so Ming cavalrymen rose from their horses, using their stirrups to brace their lances, and leaned forward, ready to withstand any impact.

More Ming cavalrymen gripped their sabers tightly, while at the same time, a barrage of rockets streaked across the sky above the vanguard, illuminating the panicked faces of the Tartar soldiers!
(End of this chapter)