The Ming Dynasty began from Sarhu

Chapter 62 Rest and Victory

On that day, at the instruction of Liu Zhaosun, the military supervisor Qiao Yiqi went ten miles out of the city and went to the Ji army camp to explain to Xiong Tingbi in person that the defeated soldiers in Kaiyuan City had not yet been pacified, and the military and civilians had suffered heavy casualties, and they urgently needed rest and recuperation. He hoped that Xiong Tingbi would enter the city after two days.

Several Jizhen generals insisted that the army should immediately enter the city for rest and recuperation. Xiong Jinglue was also somewhat dissatisfied, but Qiao Yiqi was determined and refused to give in. The reinforcements camped to the west of the city.

What Liu Zhaosun was worried about was that if the foreign troops entered the city in a hurry, it would inevitably disturb the local people, which would be very inappropriate.

He knew that Xiong Tingbi was strict in military discipline, but he did not have high expectations for the quality of the Jizhen soldiers.

Mr. Qiao traveled all over the Ming Dynasty and personally experienced the Battle of Sarhu. He had a lot of insights into the situation in Liaodong, so he was kept in the camp by Xiong Tingbi and talked about some stories about Liaodong and interesting stories about Liu Zhaosun.

This time, Xiong Tingbi was ordered to take charge of the situation and rushed from the capital to Liaodong overnight. He also gathered reinforcements at Shanhaiguan. He thought that Kaiyuan would inevitably fall and Tieling would be lost - this was how it was in history - but he did not expect that Liu Zhaosun would turn the tide and lead the southern troops to Liaozhen to fight against the bandits, and finally he did not lose.

When Xiong Tingbi arrived with reinforcements, the battle in Kaiyuan was at a stalemate. The Later Jin army was already at the end of its strength. The Bordered Blue Banner was severely damaged. Although the casualties of the other three banners were not heavy, they had lost their fighting spirit due to the exhaustion of Liu Zhaosun. When they saw the Jizhen troops arriving, they hurriedly withdrew.

In this way, Kaiyuan became the first city defended by the Ming army since the Eastern Incident, which is naturally of extraordinary significance.

Many of Xiong Tingbi's staff had already begun to discuss and plan, mostly to give Xiong Jinglüe some of the credit for the plan, even though they hadn't even seen the shadow of the Jiannu.

While Xiong Jinglüe's staff were busy vying for credit in the strategy, the dog-headed military strategist Kang Yingqian had already taken the lead.

He joined forces with more than a dozen local students in Kaiyuan to jointly submit the victory report to the court.

In this memorial signed by more than ten people, General Kang directly compared Liu Zhaosun to the reincarnation of Tian Dan and Geng Gong, and the rebirth of Zhang Xun and Wei Xiaokuan, almost equating him to a god of war.

It is said that this battle killed tens of thousands of Later Jin soldiers and killed two major slave chiefs, Daishan and Huang Taiji.

As a result, three of the four great beiles of the Later Jin Dynasty had died at the hands of Brigadier General Liu.

Of course, Kang Yingqian specifically stated in his memorial that both slave chiefs were hit by artillery fire from the Ming army general. At that time, the slave army was about to climb the city wall, and there were heavy casualties on the city wall. General Kang and Lieutenant General Liu, fully armed, climbed the city wall and personally operated the artillery, aiming at the slave chief under Huang Gai at the foot of the city wall and killing him with one shot.

"One cannon shot destroyed an area of more than ten miles, the blood of the slaves and bandits flowed like a river, and the sky and the earth lost their color..."

As to whether Huang Taiji and his brother Daishan were dead, General Kang did not specify in his memorial.

What he meant was that even if the slave chief was lucky enough to survive this time, and the other two died of illness after a while, the military merit would still be counted on his head.

In his memorial, Kang Yingqian also highlighted the White Spear Soldiers under Qin Jianxun who held the North Gate, and Rong Touqiang's Wolf Soldiers who decisively won the battle. It was definitely not Bald Qiang.

General Ma Lin, Lieutenant General Yu Chengming, General He Shixian and other brave generals of Liaozhen died tragically for their country. Kang Yingqian tearfully begged the court to provide them with compensation.

Of course, we cannot ignore the contribution of former General Yang Hao in planning this battle.

When Yang Hao was dismissed, the Battle of Kaiyuan had already begun. His father-in-law repeatedly warned his son-in-law not to run to the front during the battle.

Ask Liu Zhaosun to find some time and free time to go home more often.

This can also be considered as a result of strategic planning.

As for Xiong Tingbi, who arrived late, he was only mentioned briefly in the memorial, making people feel that Jizhen's auxiliary role was dispensable.

Liu Zhaosun read through the memorial and sighed. He felt that the writing style was too exaggerated. He wondered if the censor would accuse him of deceiving the emperor. Moreover, submitting it in this way might offend Xiong Tingbi. Kang Yingqian glared at Liu Zhaosun fiercely and said righteously:
"This is the regulation of the Celestial Empire. This is the national condition of our Celestial Empire. How can a warrior like you understand it?"

"This Xiong Manzi has no luck with the censors, and he doesn't have any supporters in the Imperial Household Department. Even the Chu Party dislikes him. Looking across the Ming Dynasty, apart from the Emperor, no one supports Xiong Jinglüe. On the other hand, we have soldiers and people, so why should we be afraid of him?"

Liu Zhaosun did not know much about the dark side of officialdom, but professional matters should be left to professionals. Kang Yingqian was more professional than himself in this area, so he just let him do it.

During these two days, Liu Zhaosun ordered people to clean up the battlefield and bury the dead soldiers.

In this battle, more than 6,900 Later Jin soldiers were killed.

Among them, more than 2,100 Zhenyi people, 17 Niulu Ezhen people, 5 Jiala Ezhen people, 35 Bayala people, more than 4,300 Baoyi and raw Jurchen people, and more than 300 people from the Mongolian Aitu and Chaohua tribes were killed.

With such gains, the results of the battle can be said to be fruitful.

Considering that the population of the Later Jin regime at that time was less than 300,000 (after the Battle of Sarhu), and the number of Zhenyi people was only tens of thousands, one-tenth of them were killed in the Battle of Kaiyuan. This was definitely an unprecedented heavy blow to the ambitious Nurhaci.

The Bordered Blue Banner was completely defeated this time and its morale was completely lost. The other three banners also realized the potential combat power of the Ming army - although this power had not yet been fully utilized.

Liu Zhaosun speculated that if Nurhaci was thinking normally, he would not consider raising troops to attack Kaiyuan, at least within this year. Of course, it is not ruled out that the Later Jin army would take small-scale retaliatory actions.

After the battle, the Ming army was busy killing the defeated soldiers in the city and did not take advantage of the victory to capture prisoners, so few prisoners were captured this time.

After the war, only more than one hundred bondservants who had failed to escape were captured at various gates, as well as a dozen Zhenyi. These people were all loaded with looted gold, silver, and jewelry.

In addition to the direct capture of heads and prisoners, a great deal of military equipment and supplies were also captured. A total of 27,800 taels of gold and silver were seized, including 25,000 taels of silver, 2,000 taels of goldware, countless jewels, and mountains of cloth.

More than 3,760 sets of armor were seized, but after the fierce fighting, most of them were damaged, and less than 1,000 sets were usable. Mao Yuanyi asked the craftsmen brought from Shenyang to repair the damaged armor.

There are more than 8,600 weapons including spears, heavy swords, shundaos, maces, lances, etc. Liu Zhaosun plans to train more professional fire musketeers and spearmen. Except for the spears and heavy swords, he is not very interested in the other weapons and will only use them for training the new army.

In addition, more than 1,370 Later Jin war horses were killed or captured, of which 330 were usable.

The capture of the war horses was mainly attributed to the Liaozhen cavalry led by Yu Chengming. These Liaodong cavalrymen repeatedly charged and fought with the elite cavalry of the Later Jin Dynasty in the southern suburbs of Kaiyuan, killing many enemies. In the end, the entire army was destroyed, and only 36 cavalrymen survived.

Liu Zhaosun planned to divide this batch of captured war horses into two parts. One part would be used to train new cavalry, and the other would be used to establish an elite special forces unit, similar to the special forces of later generations.

Of course, these are just preliminary plans, and the subsequent details need to be finalized through overall consultation between him and the various battalions.

In addition to war horses, there were more than 100 ox-drawn carts of various types and more than 30 shield carts... Many of them were damaged and unusable.

The most important harvest was food and fodder, mainly from the fleeing Bordered Blue Banner.

Because the entire Bordered Blue Banner army collapsed in the end, the Zhenyi soldiers fled across the moat without even bothering to gather their oxen and horse carts, and ran all the way north. Naturally, they were unable to transport the food and fodder, so the bondservants burned some of it, and the rest had to be given to the Ming army for nothing.

After Liu Zhaosun sent people to count, the total amount of food and fodder donated by the four great beiles was more than 9,700 stones, which was enough to support the nearly 4,000 surviving Ming troops for a while.

In addition, the fire soldiers who cleared the battlefield also found thousands of fried noodles from the Later Jin soldiers. This was a unique military ration of Jianzhou. It had a crisp taste, was very light, and was easy to carry. It was similar to the elk cakes, wrinkled rice, and mixed cakes used by the Ming army (1).

On the battlefield of Sarhu, the Later Jin army relied on this kind of fried noodles to maintain their physical strength. Within three days, they marched three or four hundred miles and wiped out Dusong Malin's army.

With this batch of food and grass, Liu Zhaosun no longer had to go to Guiyuan Temple to beg for alms from the old monk, nor did he have to sharpen his knife to fight with the wealthy people in Kaiyuan. However, the problem of food shortage has not been fundamentally solved.

After clearing the battlefield, Liu Zhaosun immediately began to reorganize the troops, which was also a top priority.

Of the 15,000 Ming troops gathered in Kaiyuan, only about 3,700 remained after this bloody battle, excluding those who fled and disappeared, those who looted and were beheaded, and those who died of their wounds. The troops led by Ma Lin, He Shixian, and Yu Chengming were completely defeated, and about 5,000 fled back to Shenyang and Liaoyang.

Of the more than 3,700 survivors, except for the wolf soldiers who joined later, most were veterans who had followed Liu Zhaosun since the bloody battle of Hunjiang.

Not to mention that each of these soldiers has survived hundreds of battles. After these bloody battles, any one of them can be regarded as a brave pioneer who can break through the enemy's formation and kill the enemy.

A strong army is nothing more than a military that, through rigorous training, achieves victory after victory, accumulating combat experience, courage, and confidence. A force that consistently loses battles, even if it's well-equipped and has numerous soldiers and generals, cannot be called a strong army.

This is also one of the reasons why the Qing army became stronger and stronger while the Ming army became weaker and weaker in military terms.

After these bloody battles, these elite troops had become obedient to Liu Zhaosun's orders, and each of them had long regarded Brigadier General Liu as their spiritual support.

After this battle, all the battalions suffered heavy casualties, the army was in disarray and its organization was incomplete. Liu Zhaosun decided to readjust it and add officers at the level of Qianzong.

The entire army was reorganized into three thousand-man headquarters, each with a thousand-man commander, a deputy thousand-man commander, and a thousand-man commander instructor. Liu Zhaosun took command of the first thousand-man headquarters, with 1,500 men; Wang Erhu, formerly the battalion commander, was appointed as the thousand-man commander of the second thousand-man headquarters, with 600 men; and Deng Changxiong, formerly the battalion commander, was appointed as the thousand-man commander of the third thousand-man headquarters, with 600 men.

A cavalry battalion was formed with a total of 300 soldiers, consisting of 36 cavalrymen from Liaozhen and the original Southern Soldiers Cavalry Battalion. Li Yuchen, the commander of Jizhen, was appointed as the deputy battalion commander, and the battalion commander was to be determined.

A mountain warfare battalion was formed with 600 soldiers. Qin Jianxun, the commander of the White Spear Soldier, was appointed as the battalion commander, and Rong Touqiang, the Wolf Soldier, was appointed as the deputy battalion commander.

An intelligence bureau is set up, but the number of soldiers is not yet determined. The soldiers will be recruited from the night soldiers, combat soldiers, and Liao people in each camp. Zhang Dong will be the team leader, and the intelligence bureau will not be part of the military system.

There is a Quartermaster Department, which is mainly responsible for the logistics supply and food and material management of the army. It belongs to the civil affairs system, and the chief officer is Xie Yang, the former quartermaster of the Eastern Route Army.

A Bureau of Industry and Commerce was established, with Wei Zeng, a Liao man, as its chief officer. He was responsible for maintaining the business operations in Kaiyuan. If conditions permit in the future, the business scope will be further expanded. Currently, it only manages the dozen or so southern goods stores that were destroyed in the city.

In addition, the remaining 32 trusted servants of Liu Zhaosun were all incorporated into the Central Army Guard of the Lieutenant General.

In order to dilute the color of the servants, Liu Zhaosun also made an exception to recruit twenty refugees and incorporated them into the central army guard. These twenty people were not only excellent in martial arts, but also followed all the way and had long worshipped General Liu as a god, so their loyalty could be basically guaranteed.

However, he was vaguely worried that while this would dilute the influence of the servants, it would probably strengthen the religious color and the cult of personality, and eventually create a monstrous phenomenon of the integration of politics and religion, which would be troublesome.

He consoled himself by saying that there was no such thing as a perfect system in the world, and that he could only rely on constant tinkering later on.

When Emperor Taizu created the Wei Suo system, his original intention was to maintain millions of soldiers without spending a single ounce of silver from the country. However, he did not expect that the Wei Suo system would begin to collapse a few decades later.

Zhu Yuanzhang was so smart, but he couldn't solve all the problems once and for all, let alone himself.

Note:
(1) Elk cakes: Use elk powder to make cakes. Add boiling water to make cakes, one inch thick. Let cool, cut into pieces, dry in the sun, and store. If you are in the camp, pour it over the soup and eat it. If you are on the road or in the battlefield, eat it dry. It is delicious and will not make you thirsty. For other cakes and wrinkled rice, prepare them as usual, but dry them in the sun to make them very dry so that they can be kept for a long time.

(End of this chapter)