Free Web NovelChapter 2148: Chapter 1560: A Gift! The Mongolian Pearl Maiden (2)
"If they charge straight at us, they’ll die, without a doubt. We’ll barely take any casualties, but we probably won’t be able to keep many of their horses. If they turn and run, then they’ll get away. We can’t catch them, but the cattle and sheep in the village will become our spoils of war!"
"Chief Divine! What use are cattle and sheep to us? Those slow four‑legged beasts can’t possibly be brought back before winter... What we want are their horses, horses that can move fast! Whether we ’buy’ them with Bow Spear, or ’buy’ them with goods... how can these people be even more timid than rabbits? They’re staying so far away, and they won’t send anyone over to make contact with us? By rights, since we’ve raised the banner of the Mongolia Great Tribe, they ought to be coming to us of their own accord!..."
"Ancestor High Priest, they’re watching us, trying to figure out what our intentions are, whether we’re friend or enemy. If we’re enemies, they’re weighing whether we’re an enemy they can resist. This is the combat habit of the Mongolian Tartar Tribe! This is surely a nomadic tribe that’s migrated east from the Mongolian Plateau, that’s gone through many brutal slaughters, and that has no marriage ties with the Great Tribes to the south, being very distant from them... Among the large and small tribes of Mongolia, the fighting over pastures, the vendettas against hereditary tribal enemies, are all too common. They will never be as close to one another as our Shushu Jurchen Guard Station... That’s why they’re being extraordinarily cautious and guarded!"
"Ali, if it’s as you say... then the moment they first meet us, before they’ve even decided whether we’re enemy or friend, they’ve already made ready to run? That’s far too strange! When these Mongolian Tribes face an enemy, won’t they hold fast to this sturdy village, the way the Jurchen Tribe would?"
"Yes, that’s exactly it! They have to prepare to run in advance, otherwise once an enemy on the grassland bares its fangs, charges on horseback, and is upon them in an instant, they won’t have time to escape. They’ve never had the habit of holding fast; they’re neither skilled at attacking cities, nor at defending them. All they know is how to fight field battles on flat, open ground. Look at the Bow and Arrow in their hands—almost all of them are short‑ranged compound horse bow, smaller than our Heavy Bow... From the look of things now, this tribe really is ready at any moment to abandon the village and flee on horseback!"
"? Then in this village, what about their tribe’s children and women? They just abandon them, just like that?"
"East Sea Chief Divine bear witness! If we show any intention of attacking, and the Mongolian Chief over there decides he can’t win... they’ll simply run! Any hesitation or delay will only cause his tribe greater losses!... As for this village and the women and children, it’s very likely they really will abandon them without a second thought. As long as he preserves his men and horses, he can go seize someone else’s tribe whenever he wishes."
"Ah?! These Mongolian Tribes really are like foxes and wolves?..."
"Yes—swift as the wind, cunning as a fox, ruthless as a wolf... that is what Mongolians are!..."
Shushu Jurchen Ali spoke with a sighing expression, gazing at Huli Ping Village before him with its gates flung wide open, at the more than a hundred Tribal Cavalry who had ridden out of the village and formed a loose array, and at the several hundred aged and weak Herdsman on the stockade walls, their faces stricken with panic and fear. The old, weak, women, and children hold the camp and can be abandoned without hesitation; the able‑bodied ride outside and can flee at any time... this is the hallmark of the Mongolian Tartar Tribe!
"East Sea Chief Divine bear witness! With just a hundred Armor of the Great Ming Border Army, you could easily storm Huli Ping Village occupied by the Tatars, slaughter all those old, weak, women, and children who have no horses to flee on, and take this place back again! Yet though taking it is easy, keeping it after taking it—that is where the trouble begins!..."
"The Ming Army can take a village, but it’s very hard for them to inflict serious losses on the main Force of the Tatars’ tribe, and there’s no way, under the threat of these numerous Cavalry who come and go without a trace, to sustain long‑term logistics for strongpoints on the grassland. Or rather, the cost of maintaining these strongpoints is simply too exorbitant, enough to make the court give up... It’s like a mighty, heavy punch that can snap branches thicker than a sapling’s, yet is utterly helpless against leaves light as air!"
"And to maintain lasting control over this middle reaches of the Huntong River, we still have to rely on Emperor Taizhong’s method: extending amnesty and investiture to some Tatar Tribe, taking them in as our own. Then, letting the Ming Army cooperate with loyal Tatar vassals to suppress those enemies unwilling to submit. After that, the Ming Army garrisons the village, while the vassal tribes control the pastures outside the village. The Duoyan Sanwei were originally such vassal tribes, providing support from various grassland garrison for the court, and thereby controlling the thousands of li of the Huntong River’s middle reaches..."
"What a pity! Once Taizong died, the court found it hard to control the three guards; it saw them only as alien hounds to be driven, with neither grace nor awe reaching them. In the end the three guards still rebelled completely, turned to the Mongolian Tribes, and thus left the Wala Grand Preceptor Esen free of worries to the rear for his southward campaign... And once the three guards rebelled, these garrison strongpoints that reached farther North deep into the grasslands, including this Huli Ping Village, could no longer be maintained and were all abandoned..."
Shushu Jurchen Ali murmured softly to himself. The half‑century‑odd history of this Huli Ping Village on the Black River had shifted with the struggle between Mongolia and the Ming Dynasty. In the hands of the Ming Dynasty, this village controlled the confluence of the Heilongjiang River and the Jingqili River, and was one of the most important strongpoints on the middle reaches of the Heilongjiang River! Yet now, for these wandering Tatars who migrate without fixed abode, chasing Water and pasture, this Huli Ping Village left behind by the Ming Dynasty is nothing more than a wooden tent that shelters them from wind and rain, one they don’t have to build themselves.
If they really encounter some enemy they cannot hope to resist, for the tribes to abandon the village, even abandon the old and weak, and flee—that too is a matter of course under nomadic tradition.
