The Wanli Emperor of the Ming Dynasty was extremely rebellious

Chapter 467: Surrender at the Sight of the Old Routine

In the golden autumn of October, the pasture grass in the northeast of Liaodong has all turned yellow.

As the sun sets, it hangs in the sky like a golden disc.

Northwest of Kaiyuan, on the right bank of the Liaohe River, in the huge Ming army camp, Wanli was standing on a high mound, holding a telescope and looking at the endless grassland in the north.

As the breeze blew, the golden grass rippled like waves, without a trace of other colors, and there were no city roads. The scenery was completely different from that in the heart of the Central Plains.

I wish this were golden waves of rice or ears of wheat.

Wanli couldn't help but sigh in his heart.

Such a large plain can cultivate at least hundreds of millions of acres of land. If all of it can be planted with rice or wheat, there will be no need to worry about the Little Ice Age disaster.

However, this is not an easy task.

For thousands of years, it is not that no one knew that there was such a large plain here. Not to mention far away, there are historical records about this place in the Han, Wei, Jin, Tang and Song dynasties.

Famines have struck the Central Plains dynasties many times, but this place is still full of naturally grown grass and there is not a single field to be seen.

This is enough to illustrate the difficulty of growing crops here.

The severe cold in winter may be just one reason. The vast area and sparse population, the distance from the Central Plains, the limitations of agricultural technology, and other factors may all be involved.

How many people are needed to cultivate these hundreds of millions of acres of land?
If we follow the current level of agricultural technology, we will need at least two million young and strong people, and if they bring their families with them, that would be tens of millions!

Where did he migrate so many people?

Northwest?
This seems a bit difficult. It is hard to leave one's hometown, not to mention that this is an extremely cold place thousands of miles away from the northwest.

Unless the common people in Northwest China are starving, few of them would want to come to this place where people can freeze to death to farm in the winter.

In history, the civilians in the northwest during the Wanli period did not seem to be so hungry that they rebelled. This proves that the Little Ice Age was not serious enough to starve people to death.

If someone doesn't want to come, will he order them to come by force?

At this time they had just arrived at the border of the Haixi Jurchen tribe, and had not yet fought their way in, but he had actually begun to consider the issue of reclaiming wasteland and cultivating land here. I wonder what the leaders of the Haixi Jurchen tribe would think if they knew about this.

He was just pondering this when the Emperor's second son, Zhu Changxu, suddenly appeared from under the mound, waving a piece of paper and excitedly saying, "Father, Eastern Route Battle Report: The Sichuan Army has reached Fushun Pass."

So fast?
Upon hearing this, Wanli quickly walked down to take the battle report and looked at it, and couldn't help but show a hint of surprise.

General Qin Liangyu of Zhendong reported that the eastern army attacked from Zhendong Fort and fought all the way to Sarhu without encountering much resistance. They even captured the Jiannu's old nest, Feala City. In total, they captured no more than a thousand enemy heads and less than two thousand prisoners.

Does this mean that Nurhaci did not lead his troops to return for support?
Or maybe this guy went too far into the heartland of the Haixi Jurchens and didn't have time to return?
Another possibility is that this guy is lying in ambush in the mountains north of Sarhu, preparing to ambush the eastern army!
If this is true, then Qin Liangyu can definitely give this guy a big surprise.

Are you kidding? Ambushing the Sichuan Army in the mountains is seeking death!

Wanli thought about it carefully and quickly returned to the big tent which was used as a study. He wrote a letter to Qin Liangyu in his own handwriting, asking her to be careful of the ambush of the Jiannu.

He didn't have to worry about Qi Jiguang. The more than 200,000 border cavalry could easily defeat them on the grassland. The Tatars had no way to resist them, and it was impossible to set up an ambush on the flat grassland.

At this moment, the western army was advancing triumphantly, and the remaining Tatars were almost driven into the mountains and forests more than a thousand miles to the north.

The battle over there will probably end in a day or two.

The next step was to attack the Haixi Jurchen tribe.

The next morning, at about 1 a.m., just as the sky was getting light, the soldiers of the Beijing camp packed up their tents and prepared to set off.

Further north from here is the territory of the Haixi Jurchen tribe. Although their strength is enough to crush the four newly defeated Haixi Jurchen tribes, Wanli did not underestimate the enemy. He directly changed camps and advanced.

The cavalry of the Shenwu Camp was no longer the vanguard, but was dispersed to all sides. He also ordered each camp to send out scouts to spread out over a hundred miles around to investigate while advancing.

The Shenshu Camp and the Shenji Camp gathered in the middle and marched forward in formation.

The advancement speed will be slower than the previous few days, and we can only advance about 100 miles a day, but it is foolproof.

No matter how familiar the Haixi Jurchens or the Jiannu were with the terrain, they couldn't possibly launch a surprise attack on them while they were under the surveillance of more than 100,000 cavalrymen from the Shenwu Camp on the periphery.

Moreover, his goal this year is not to wipe out all the troops of the Haixi Jurchens and the Jiannu.

His goal this year is to take over this large plain and drive the Haixi Jurchens and Jiannu to the real far north to spend the winter, letting the extremely cold weather weaken the strength of these guys.

Therefore, the formation he put up was a bit intimidating.

If they still formed a long dragon formation, the Haixi Jurchens and Jiannu would not be able to tell how many troops they had. After all, if they formed a long dragon, the length would be more than a hundred miles, and the end would be invisible to the naked eye.

He formed a large circular formation, which was a huge black mass. From far away on the hilltop, one could see how terrifying they were.

Faced with this situation, the Haixi Jurchens and the Jiannu probably didn't even have the courage to fight.

Sure enough, his formation was really scary. They did not encounter any resistance along the way. They didn't even see any people from the Haixi Jurchens or the Jiannu. The only thing they could see were the traces left by the nomadic camps.

The Haixi Jurchen tribe was also in great misfortune.

They originally planned to join forces with the Tatars to destroy the Jianzhou Jurchens.

Who knew that Nurhaci would dig a huge pit for them and almost kill all of their 70,000 to 80,000 coalition troops.

Immediately afterwards, Nurhaci rushed over and beat them up.

They originally wanted to ask for help from the Tatars.

Who knew that the Tatar tribe would also be beaten.

The Tatars seemed to be in an even worse situation than them. They only had Nurhaci's 30,000 to 40,000 troops. If they gathered all their troops and recruited young and strong men, they could barely resist. However, the Tatars were beaten to a pulp by the more than 200,000 Ming cavalry and had no power to fight back at all.

They had no choice but to find a way to resist on their own.

Who would have thought that Nurhaci would run away after fighting for only a few days, and even gave up the territory he had seized!

They were just puzzled when hundreds of thousands of Ming troops came from the direction of Liaodong Town in the south!
They were frightened by the huge black mass, and they immediately ran north with their tribesmen.

The problem was that it was useless for them to run further north because the Ming army kept pushing north. They had run from the Liaohe River to the Songhua River, but the Ming army was still pushing north.

What to do in this situation?
Did they flee all the way north?
They are different from the Jianzhou Jurchens. The Jianzhou Jurchens have been attacking the Donghai Jurchens in the northeast in recent years, and all the Donghai Jurchen tribes in the Changbai Mountain area have been conquered by the Jianzhou Jurchens.

When the Jianzhou Jurchens fled north, they at least had a place to stay, so they would not freeze to death in the wild when winter came.

They didn't. If the Ming army continued to push them northward and out of their existing territory, they would have frozen to death in the bitter cold of the far north.

In this situation, they had no choice but to use the old trick, which was to surrender to the Ming Dynasty and pay tribute.

They had originally surrendered to the Ming Dynasty, at least on the surface they obeyed the Ming Dynasty.

Moreover, during the Jiajing period, in order to suppress the Jianzhou Jurchens, they captured the rebel leader Wang Gao and handed him over to the Ming Dynasty.

Compared with the Jianzhou Jurchens, they were relatively submissive to the Ming Dynasty and they never rebelled against the Ming Dynasty.

However, later on, the Tatars' Tumen Khan and even Altan Khan repeatedly invaded Liaodong, and they had a close relationship with the Tatars, so they stood on the side of the Tatars instead of the Ming Dynasty.

This should not be considered a capital crime, and there should be nothing wrong with them surrendering to the Ming Dynasty again.

After several leaders of the Haixi Jurchen tribe discussed it, they simply sent people to surrender to the Ming army!

When Wanli received the news, he couldn't help but frown.

At this moment, the fighting on both the east and west fronts has ended.

Nurhaci ran away without a trace.

Buyan Khan of Tatar actually surrendered directly!

Now the Haixi Jurchens have also sent people to ask for surrender.

This is not a good thing for them.

Because what he wants is not the surrender of these guys.

These guys are using this tactic not because they really want to submit to the Ming Dynasty.

They just feel that they can't win now, so they surrender first to avoid the limelight, and what will happen in the future will be the same.

These guys have been using this trick for one or two hundred years.

The Haixi Jurchens, the Jianzhou Jurchens, and even the Tatar tribes, the Three Doyan Guards, etc., all surrendered to the Ming Dynasty.

What is the result?
These guys can invade whenever they want, rebel whenever they want, and surrendering is as easy as pie!
(End of this chapter)