Traveling through the late Ming Dynasty to promote Chinese civilization

Chapter 580 It’s better to leave the remaining brave men to chase the poor bandits

Liang Xiaoming was shocked: "Still chasing? The fighting was so fierce today, the First Regiment suffered heavy losses. Shouldn't we take a break?"

"Pursue them, we must pursue them." Liu Ye's expression was firm. "The fact that the arrogant Tartars were able to abandon their supplies and retreat shows that they have been terrified by us and their morale is completely gone. It will be easier to fight them again next time. We can't let them recover from this setback. We must strike while they are weak."

Yan Guang chimed in, "General, you're right. The Tartars are currently demoralized and exhausted, while we still have two regiments that haven't been fought much. This imbalance of power presents a perfect opportunity to press our advantage. We've gone to great lengths to come here from Qiongzhou Prefecture, and it wasn't easy. We can't be satisfied with just a few Tartar heads. If only we could take Abatai's head."

Liu Ye said, “That’s right. We should press on with our remaining strength and not be like Xiang Yu who sought only fame. The Tartars don’t have many people, and experienced generals like Abatai are even rarer. Killing one is better than nothing. If we can annihilate this Plain Blue Banner army and kill or capture Abatai, it won’t just be cutting off one of Huang Taiji’s fingers, but at least it will be a serious blow to him.” He pointed north, “We must not give the reactionaries a chance to breathe. We must annihilate them quickly. Send down the order to clean up the battlefield, and then the whole army will board the ships and head north!” No one else knew the meaning of the last sentence, except Liang Xiaoming, who smiled knowingly. As for the poem with its heroic spirit, only the two of them knew its origin.

Xu Yifan and Shi Ying ordered their men to clean up the battlefield, gather the wounded, and collect the spoils and captured civilians abandoned by the Later Jin army. Then they came to Liu Ye to ask how to deal with the corpses and spoils of both sides.

Liu Ye first acknowledged Shi Ying's merits: "Shi Ying performed exceptionally bravely today, with skillful command. He held off 10,000 to 20,000 Tartar troops with the strength of a single regiment, killing countless enemies. He deserves the greatest credit today!"

Unable to hide his excitement, Shi Ying saluted and said, "Thank you for your praise, General. This is what I should do."

"As for the bodies..." Shi Ying thought for a moment, "It's not realistic to transport our fallen soldiers all the way back to Lingao. We'll record their unit numbers and names according to their badges, cremate their bodies on the spot, then put their ashes in urns and take them away, labeling them with their names. After returning to Lingao, they'll be buried in a unified manner. I want to build a martyrs' cemetery to house these fallen heroes and erect a monument in their memory. Their families will also receive monthly pensions—even if the soldiers of the Qionghai Navy die, they'll have more honor than officers and soldiers."

Everyone said, "The general is kind and benevolent. The soldiers will surely thank him in the afterlife."

"There's no need to be polite with the Tartar corpses. If it weren't for the fear of causing a plague, I'd rather just leave them to rot in the wilderness and feed them to the jackals and wild dogs," Liu Ye said. "Find some young and strong civilians, untie them, and have them dig a pit to bury the Tartars. They must have suffered a lot at the hands of the Tartars, and perhaps even have blood on their hands. They should be very diligent in burying their enemies with their own hands, right?"

Xu Yifan asked, "What should we do with these people? Should we let them go home or...?"

Liu Ye smiled slyly: "We need to replenish our losses. How can we let these readily available able-bodied men slip through our fingers? Send two companies back to Dengzhou first, and have my father-in-law enlist them in the army. We'll take them back after we return from our campaign."

Upon hearing this, everyone exchanged bewildered glances. The general was truly ruthless; so many civilians, locals at that, were simply incorporated into the military without warning. His methods were undeniably brutal.

Xu Yifan, who came from a military garrison, knew the hatred and rejection that lower-level military households had towards the constraints of military registration. He hesitated and said, "General, these people are all locals, and unlike the starving people we recruited before, they have lost their families and are homeless. Is it inappropriate to rashly include them in the military register and make them military households?"

Liu Ye snorted: "Do you think the Tartars are all kind-hearted men and women? They've captured so many able-bodied men; they must have killed everyone in their villages, maybe even burned them down. They'd all be homeless. We're recruiting them into the army to give them a way to survive, so they don't starve. Besides, we don't know how long our northward march to fight the Tartars will take. If we don't turn them into military households and keep them safe, what if they all run away? When we return, we can convert them into regular soldiers and give them the same pay as our own soldiers."

In the Ming Dynasty, military households were hereditary, and they could not leave their posts without permission, nor could they engage in commerce or other professions. Originally designed to provide the state with a reserve of soldiers, by the late Ming Dynasty it had become a tight rein on military households, turning them into farmers and beggars. The military garrisons also declined and became utterly ineffective, completely losing their original purpose. Liu Ye's temporary conversion of these people into military households allowed him to supervise them under the guise of government authority and prevent escape.

After hearing this arrangement, Xu Yifan felt it was a prudent approach and stopped trying to dissuade him.

Shi Ying, however, was thinking from a different angle: "Isn't one company too few to escort all these people? A rough count shows there are nearly ten thousand of them, and most of them are young and strong..."

Liu Ye waved his hand: "Simple. After burying the Tartars, tie them up with ropes, like now, in a long string. One armed soldier can easily guard a hundred or eighty people. Anyone who dares to cause trouble or tries to escape will be shot on the spot as a Tartar spy!"

Quartz shrank back. In this way, no one would joke about their own life, and it seemed feasible for a company to escort nearly 20,000 people.

With the arrangements made, Xu Yifan and Shi Ying were about to go down to direct the cremation of their own people and the burial of the Tartars when Yan Guang said, "Wait, General, it's a pity to bury all the Tartar corpses. Why not cut off their heads and send them to the capital to claim credit?"

Liu Ye was somewhat puzzled. "I didn't kill these Tartars for Chongzhen's sake... Besides, I was just granted a title of Earl and a first-rank imperial decree, and those honors are still fresh in my mind. It's impossible for Chongzhen to give me any more rewards in such a short time, right?"

Yan Guang advised, “General, you are wise. It is precisely because killing the Tartars is not for the emperor that you deserve these merits. Whether the emperor bestows any reward upon the head, or what reward he gives, is not important. What is important is that the court proclaims your achievements to the world, letting everyone know that you dared to fight the Tartars head-on and were able to kill thousands of real Tartars. In this way, your reputation for skill in battle and your reputation for resisting the Tartars will be deeply ingrained in people's hearts…”

Liu Ye was tempted. What he said made sense. By using the court's channels, he could showcase his military prowess and establish a positive image of himself bravely resisting the Tartars. If he were even more shameless and bribed some scholars to sing his praises, a hero who could turn the tide and save the collapsing empire would emerge. This was how he would win people's hearts in order to eventually conquer the world.

Without much hesitation, he agreed to Yan Guang's suggestion. "Mr. Yan is right. Let's do it this way. Cut off all the Tartar heads, preserve them by salting, and send them to the capital."