Chapter 50: Capturing Xuanfu

Zhu Shuang led his troops to Xuanhua in Hebei. The Liao Dynasty had previously established a city and garrisoned troops here, and during the Yuan Dynasty, it was known as Baoan Prefecture, serving as a critical strategic pass between Juyongguan and Dadu.

Adjacent to Yanqing Prefecture and Huailai, it was a mandatory route for the fleeing Yuan Emperor heading north to Shangdu, and Zhu Shuang decided to capture this location first.

From Guantong and Tuoyin Temur, he learned that the garrison inside Baoan Prefecture had been completely drawn away by Nahachu, leaving fewer than two thousand defenders. He ordered Qiu Fu to take a detachment and escort Guantong to knock on the gates.

Unexpectedly, as soon as the garrison commander of Baoan Prefecture, He Ping, saw more than sixty thousand well-equipped troops approaching menacingly, he shrugged straightforwardly and gave the order to open the gates and surrender.

The man before him was in his nineties, with a pale complexion, sparse facial hair, and a thin build, looking far more like a scholar. Finding a Han Chinese among the cluster of Mongol generals of the Yuan Dynasty was a rare sight indeed.

Curious, he could not help asking, "I wonder how a civil official like Your Excellency managed to become one of Nahachu’s most trusted and favored generals?"

To his surprise, He Ping burst into tears, weeping as if his heart were breaking with grief.

After a long while, once He Ping had calmed down and recounted the story in detail, Zhu Shuang finally understood why the fellow was so emotional.

It turned out that He Ping had a wife of surpassing beauty. While she was burning incense at a temple, she caught the eye of Nahachu, who was then serving as the Grand Commandant. That very night, under the pretext of searching for Ming spies, Nahachu forcibly seized his wife. Every night, the two of them indulged in feasting and merrymaking in his mansion, while He Ping dared to harbor anger without uttering a word.

Seeing how spineless he was, Nahachu began to groom him like a brother-in-law, eventually entrusting such an important military stronghold into his hands.

Under normal circumstances, when heavily garrisoned, He Ping would never have dared to surrender. However, the Yuan Emperor’s decree to eradicate the two rebel forces of him and Xu Da had stripped the entire northern region of its Yuan garrisons. The remaining defenders of the city were mostly the elderly, the weak, the sick, and the wounded, which finally gave He Ping the courage to surrender to the Anmin Army.

Zhu Shuang pulled him into the command tent, grasped both of his hands, and said with utmost sincerity, "I have arrived late, causing an upright official like Lord He to suffer such grievances."

Seeing the other treating him with such high regard, He Ping said in fear and trembling, "He is merely a remnant of the Yuan Dynasty; how could I be worthy of such great affection from the Prince?"

"Lord He’s brilliance has been buried in the Northern Yuan. Why not come to my Great Ming and seek a loftier position?"

Zhu Shuang personally poured a cup of wine and placed it in his hands. He Ping hurriedly drained it with both hands and bowed respectfully, "This humble subordinate will strictly obey the Prince’s commands. I wonder what the Prince requires me to do?"

"That Nahachu defiled your newlywed wife and treated you as if you were worthless. Such vile acts of violating another's wife and daughter make even an outsider like me boil with anger. One must remember that even gentle men have tempers. I wonder what an upright man like Lord He thinks of this?"

As he spoke, Zhu Shuang poured He Ping a few more cups of wine. Hearing these words, He Ping, whose eyes were already misty with intoxication after several cups, felt a raging fire burn within his heart. He stood up, pointed toward the north, and cursed fiercely, "It is a pity that He is merely a scholar with no strength to truss a chicken; otherwise, I would surely perish together with that old thief Nahachu."

Zhu Shuang swirled his wine cup, patted He Ping on the shoulder, and sighed heavily, "I have the heart to lend Lord He a helping hand, but alas, my troops are few and my generals are weak, making me no match for that old thief Nahachu."

"Furthermore, I cannot bear to see a mid-career talent like Lord He undertake such an act of striking a stone with an egg. Yet, I do have a stratagem in my mind that could cause that old thief Nahachu and Koke Temur to tear at each other like dogs. It is a pity that this plan is far too vicious, and an upright gentleman like Lord He would certainly never agree to it."

With a loud crash, He Ping, thoroughly overwhelmed by alcohol, cast aside his status as a prisoner and smashed his wine cup fiercely onto the ground.

With a flushed face and a hoarse, desperate voice, he shouted, "That dog Nahachu and this tyrannical Yuan are both damned beasts! The Prince is acting on behalf of Heaven to punish the tyrant; any stratagem is in accordance with the Mandate of Heaven—why would it not be permissible? As long as I can avenge this grievance of having my wife stolen, this humble subordinate He Ping will leap into mountains of blades and plunge into seas of fire, all at a single word from the Prince!"

Zhu Shuang smiled. It seemed that when a gentle man lost his temper, it was truly earth-shattering.

That night, inside the camp of the Anmin Army, three surrendered Yuan soldiers rode swift horses toward the Yuan army camp over a thousand li away.

The next day, they reached Xuande Prefecture, which was known as Zhangjiakou in later generations.

Originally established as Shanggu Commandery during the reign of King Zhao of Yan, it had been the northern gateway of the Central Plains dynasties since ancient times.

Zhu Shuang knew that in a few years, Xuanfu would become the foremost of the Nine Garrisons along the borders of the Ming Empire.

As the primary force defending against the incursions of the northern Tatars during the middle and late Ming Dynasty, the commonly mentioned Xuan-Da Regional Commanders were naturally the commanders of Xuanfu and Datong. One could say that the two military towns were so close that they relied upon each other as mutual supports, neither being dispensable. If Xuanfu were captured, the garrisons at Datong and Jizhou would become isolated forces incapable of making any waves.

Looking at the city walls, which were more than six li wide, spanning a total circumference of over twenty-four li, and featuring seven city gates, Zhu Shuang summoned his generals into the commander's tent. Zhu Wenzheng, serving as the deputy commander of the Anmin Army, was the first to speak: "The walls of Xuanhua are tall and the moats deep; it is easy to defend and difficult to attack. Furthermore, our army lacks scaling ladders and can only rely on cannons to breach the gates. The biggest problem now is that we only have four hundred cannons left, and most importantly, we do not have enough artillery personnel."

To increase production capacity, Zhu Shuang had used iron-cast replicas of the Fojilang cannons. To reduce the burden during marches, he had reduced the weight of the barrel to just over two hundred catties—essentially two-pounders with an effective range of four to five hundred meters.

Moreover, in this era, unless bronze was used, the problem of pinholes and air bubbles could not be resolved. Coupled with the thinning of the barrel's inner walls, the probability of these things exploding sky-rocketed. A single cannon could fire at most two rounds—this was the lesson written in blood that his artillery brothers had taught him.

He did not pity the nearly six hundred cannons that had blown up; he only pitied those thousand-odd artillerymen, for a qualified artilleryman required at least a year of training.

Zhu Shuang waved his riding crop and said in a deep voice, "Drag out those thousand-odd Mongol-Yuan nobles and make them pack earth to assault the city."

Atop the city walls of Xuanhua stood Darughachi Tenhage, who was Nahachu's younger brother.

Although Nahachu claimed the title of king in Liaodong, this Xuande Prefecture was the fiefdom won by their ancestor Muqali when he accompanied Genghis Khan on the campaign against the Jin Dynasty. Back then, Muqali had routed the forty-thousand-strong Jin army led by Wanyan Chengyu, the participant in political affairs of the Jin Dynasty, at Wild Fox Ridge within the territory of Xuanfu. Ever since the Battle of Wild Fox Ridge, the relative strengths of the Mongols and the Jin had completely reversed. One could say it was the founding battle of the Mongol-Yuan Dynasty.

It was, so to speak, the ancestral land of the Muqali family. Tenhage watched as a group of Yuan people dressed as Mongol-Yuan nobles were driven by the enemy troops, each carrying heavy sandbags, step by step beginning to pack earth beneath the city walls.

"Archers, prepare for a volley..."

Just as he was about to give the order to loose arrows, a snow-white scimitar pierced straight through his chest. Tenhage strained his neck, turned his head, and looked.

The person holding the blade was none other than the surrendered general Pan Cheng, who pulled the blade out with a fierce expression, stabbed twice more in succession, and finally slit his throat with a final stroke.

Tenhage's personal guards simultaneously drew their blades and stepped forward, intending to chop Pan Cheng into mincemeat, but Pan Cheng leaped in a single bound onto the parapet.

He shouted at the Han soldiers inside the city: "The Prince of Qin is outside the city! Brothers of the Red Turban Army, follow me to slaughter the Tatars!"

Pan Cheng hacked several guards to death with his blade, only to be shot straight through the neck by a Yuan thousand-man commander hiding in the arrow tower.

The Yuan and Han soldiers on the city walls locked in fierce hand-to-hand combat. Outside the city, Zhu Shuang listened to the deafening battle cries echoing from within, bewildered and unable to help asking, "Why are these Yuan troops killing each other?"

Zhu Wenzheng explained to him, "The man who just died is called Broken-Headed Pan. He was originally a subordinate of Liu Futou, and a leader of the Northern Red Turban uprising's Later Song Dynasty. When he was obstructed during the siege of Kaesong in Goryeo, he retreated to Liaodong, only to be ambushed by Nahachu and unfortunately captured."

Had it not been for veteran Red Turban followers like Zhu Wenzheng who had started out with Zhu Yuanzhang by his side, Zhu Shuang would truly have remained clueless about the intricate complexities within the Red Turban Army before Old Zhu rose to power.

He drew his crimson cavalry saber and issued an order to the entire army: "Brothers, blast open the city gates for me and rescue our Han brothers inside!"