In the autumn’s end and winter’s beginning of the second year of the Jianshuo era, the chaos of the northwest erupted like a powder magazine bursting apart, scattering enormous flames across this poor, treacherous land — even the endless, drizzling rain could not extinguish it in the slightest. Within a short time it had already burst to its peak, and its aftershocks, as they appeared at the time, still seemed to be growing ever more intense.
The first clash between the Huaxia Army and the Jurchen Western Route Army had taken place on the night of August 25th. After this first round of confrontation, propaganda for the resistance against the Jin, driven by the operations of Bamboo Registry members and coordinated with the Zhong family’s influence, had already begun spreading on a large scale.
Centered on Yanzhou, Qingzhou, and the surrounding prefectures of Ning, Fang, Yuan, Huan, Lin, Fu, and Feng, as well as Bao’an Prefecture, Qingjian City and other places, the Bamboo Registry’s storytellers and information peddlers had begun spreading this news, stirring up an atmosphere of resistance against the Jin. And as the Jurchens withdrew and Yan Zhenguo’s army scattered, within the following two or three days, the situation in the northwest had already begun to shift dramatically.
The first to commit most resolutely to the fight was, naturally, the Zhong family’s army led by Zhong Lie. Beyond this, in Yanzhou, Qingzhou and other areas, militias spontaneously formed by common people under this propaganda began gathering, and in the northwest, certain mountain strongholds and local power-holders, under the Bamboo Registry’s persuasion, also began to stir into action — during Little Cangriver’s earlier large-scale transport of goods, these entrenched bandit forces had, in fact, benefited considerably, and had maintained certain ties with Bamboo Registry members as well.
At a mountain stronghold called Luofeng Mountain, on the border between Qingzhou and Bao’an Prefecture to the northeast, was in fact one such small faction.
Several armies from the direction of Jingzhou and Pingliang Prefecture also began to mobilize. Meanwhile, on the other side, Yan Zhenguo, with no way back, had gathered his scattered troops, regained his composure, and pushed once more toward Qingzhou, joined by two Wu Dynasty forces — one of twenty thousand, one of thirty thousand — that had earlier surrendered under Jurchen pressure, now advancing from the southeast toward the northwest.
Regular armies, local powers, militias, righteous forces, and bandit strongmen — whatever their individual motives, once set into motion on this massive scale, formed a great whirlpool of chaos and war across the northwestern land, with all manner of friction and collision appearing frequently around the periphery of the main battlefield.
Yet the true core of the fighting remained the confrontation between Loushi’s Western Route Army and Little Cangriver’s Huaxia Army. The two forces, each numbering just over twenty thousand men, faced off and fought bitterly at the edge of the loess plateau — and the ferocity of this peripheral fighting alone was, for a time, unmatched by anything else.
To maintain the momentum of using the strong to press the weak, the Huaxia Army immediately pressed Wanyan Loushi’s army hard from the front; Wanyan Loushi, relying on his cavalry advantage, repeatedly harassed and tore at the Huaxia Army’s lines, trying to make them think better of continuing. Yet once the Black Banner Army’s small units deployed their combat strength, the probing skirmishes at the battlefield’s edges frequently turned into direct clashes.
Even the small detachments of the Black Banner Army, backed by a core of many veteran soldiers, proved far too resolute in the face of the strength the Jurchens displayed.
And the Jurchens — especially the elite troops under Wanyan Loushi’s command — never feared battle. They too were formidable soldiers who had swept across the realm; having destroyed Liao and twice swept through the Wu Dynasty like autumn wind scattering fallen leaves, they now found themselves, in this corner of the northwest, repeatedly provoked by their opponents. Though they normally felt no shame in retreating from weaker foes, when it came to gnawing on a hard bone like this, their blood inevitably rose.
After all, the courage to charge without hesitation when necessary was also part of what allowed the Jurchens to sweep across the realm.
In these first few days, the tangled tearing and slaughter occurred without pause; since these were not large-scale pitched battles between whole armies, neither side treated these skirmishes as formal engagements, yet each side’s willpower was pushed to its very limit. To avoid the Black Banner Army’s cannon and formation advantages, Wanyan Loushi nearly issued an outright order to his cavalry: under no circumstances were they to charge the formation directly — only harass, withdraw, harass, withdraw again… Such a rigid order was, of course, never actually given, but if things had continued this way, the “kite-flying” cavalry tactics that later Mongol forces would commonly employ might well have first been perfected in Loushi’s hands.
Meanwhile, the Black Banner Army’s main force pressed forward relentlessly with its ironclad formation discipline. In a sense, Loushi was continually adapting to the tactics of this elite army equipped with cannon. Qin Shaoqian, for his part, was also trying his best to fully understand the strength of the troops under his command — as Ning Yi had once said at Little Cangriver, before using the unorthodox, one must first master the orthodox thoroughly.
Though this army was growing and adapting day by day under his guidance, even Qin Shaoqian and the others had not yet truly determined the potential and limits of this force, tempered as it was through new training methods.
Looking back on it much later, this sudden eruption of confrontation on the northwestern land had, from the very start, pitted against each other two forces already representing the pinnacle of military strength of their age. Within just two or three days, countless small and large clashes had shown both sides displaying strength and endurance unmatched by any other army of the period. The intensity of the fighting was staggering — yet in the moment, both sides were simply making their moves as the situation demanded, without pausing to consider any of this.
By the evening of August 29th, as autumn rain fell, several Black Banner Army units on the edge of the battlefield, realizing that the heavy rain would negate their firearm advantage during the forced march, chose instead to lure the enemy in. A Jurchen force of about a thousand men, led by the officer Axibao, seized the opportunity and launched a bold charge; the resulting melee dragged on for over ten li, with portions of both sides becoming separated from their main forces during the fighting.
That same night, other developments were also unfolding. This concerned a force of considerable weight in the northwestern lands. Several days after receiving word of Wanyan Loushi’s deployment, the Zhe family, whose attitude in this region had remained ambiguous all along, finally made its move.
Under Zhe Kequ’s orders, large-scale arrests began in Linzhou, Fuzhou, Fengzhou, Qingjian and other places, targeting Bamboo Registry members who had been stirring up resistance against the Jin within the cities.
At the same time, Zhe Kequ mobilized forty thousand elite Zhe family troops, personally taking command with Zhe Yanzhi as his deputy, and marched toward the Qingzhou battlefield — an unmistakable gesture of support for Wanyan Loushi.
Few could clearly grasp Zhe Kequ’s thinking at this moment, yet looking back from later events, his choice was not without earlier signs.
When the Jurchens first marched south, the Zhong family’s army had gone to support the capital, and the Zhe family’s army had likewise deployed at the time; Zhe Kequ’s choice then had been to coordinate with Liu Guangshi in relieving Taiyuan — a battle in which the two of them had suffered a crushing defeat near Tianmen Pass at the hands of Wanyan Zonghan. After this great defeat, once the siege of Bian Liang was lifted, Qin Siyuan and others had petitioned for troops to be sent to Taiyuan, and Zhe Kequ had submitted a similar petition as well. After this, the Zhe family’s army had made a second attempt to relieve Taiyuan, but was ultimately defeated once more, unable to match the Jurchens.
Later still, when Taiyuan fell and Ning Yi rose in rebellion, and the Jurchens attacked Bian Liang a second time, the Zhong family’s army had once again deployed. The Zhe family, however, continued to concern itself only with Fuzhou and the fighting along the Taiyuan front, and fought there with great caution. Later still, when the Western Xia invaded from the south, the Zhe family’s army, which should have been guarding the northwest, watched as the Zhong family was destroyed and merely held onto its own patch of territory, no longer sending out troops at all.
This time, when Loushi came, the Zhong family had refused to surrender, while the Zhe family had verbally agreed to submit but was unwilling to send troops to help Loushi subdue the northwest. Yet no one had anticipated that the Zhe family, which had refused to move when Loushi’s campaign was going smoothly, would now, as Loushi’s great army ran into trouble, choose to stand on the side of the Jurchens.
August 30th, autumn rain. If the Zhe family’s army joining meant there was no longer any middle ground left in the entire northwest, then the clashes and slaughter at the center of the Qingzhou battlefield grew even more brutal still. Following this rainstorm, Wanyan Loushi gathered his infantry and launched a large-scale counterattack against the steadily advancing Black Banner Army.
At Huangyang Ridge in Qingzhou, on the edge of the loess plateau, the terrain was complex. Across these mountains, hills, and river valleys, the main forces of both sides clashed at several points. Wanyan Loushi’s deployment was massive in scale, and the soldiers under his command were indeed battlefield elites. The Black Banner Army initially opted for a defensive, positional battle, but in fact, at four points of engagement, three were feints and one was the real thrust — on the fourth battlefield, on one side of the ridge obscured from view by forest, Wanyan Loushi personally led troops in repeated waves of attack.
After more than an hour of fighting, the Fourth Regiment’s formation was torn open in several places. The Jurchen charge spread through the gap; Fourth Regiment commander Sun Ye, with his personal guard, held the line at the front. They managed to hold the situation together for a moment, but were finally driven back step by step. Only when the special forces regiment, positioned nearby in support, came to their full aid was part of the trapped force finally rescued.
In a certain sense, neither Qin Shaoqian, who commanded the overall force, nor the various regiment commanders, could be called mediocre — among Wu Dynasty men, they ranked among the very best. Yet the circumstances the Wu Dynasty’s armies had faced over the years were fundamentally different from what confronted them now; facing the very strongest of the self-made, battle-hardened Jurchen generals, after several days of relentless pressure, they had finally lost a move in the contest of tactics.
The soldiers’ own tenacity kept the situation from turning too dire — at the other points of engagement, the Jurchen forces attempting feint attacks were at times drawn into grinding battles, suffering heavy casualties themselves. But likewise, the Black Banner Army’s Fourth Regiment suffered over fifty percent casualties, and its commander Sun Ye, who had led the charge at the front, was gravely wounded; by the time he was rescued, he was already close to death.
The Jurchen forces withdrew, and the Black Banner Army continued to advance. Sun Ye and the other wounded were temporarily left near Huangyang Ridge, taken over by the vanguard of the arriving Zhong family army for rescue. That night, in a thatched shelter near Huangyang Ridge, Sun Ye finally woke. He was a native of Yingchuan in Xuzhou, forty-seven years old, skilled in strategy. When he woke, two of his personal guards were watching over him. Sun Ye asked them about the situation at the front, and upon learning that the Jurchens’ losses might not be any smaller than the Black Banner Army’s, he nodded and blinked.
He seemed to be searching for his thoughts in his state of extreme weakness, and only after a long while did he finally speak softly.
He said, “As for our rebellion, our regicide — afterward, we often debated whether it was right or not… But with soldiers like you, I think — perhaps it was. Master Ning, he…”
Sun Ye looked ahead and blinked again, but his gaze had no focus. He remained quiet like this for a moment. “My command of troops was clumsy — my death matters little… What a pity… so soon…”
His voice grew faint at this point. His last words were: “…I won’t live to see the future. You all go and see it for me.”
The wind moaned mournfully. The sobs of the two soldiers, veterans of many fierce battles, soon followed.
A song of grief for the dead. That night, word of Sun Ye’s passing spread to the front lines along the Black Banner’s advance; in the following days, the surviving soldiers of the Fourth Regiment would tie white cloth strips around their arms whenever they charged.
Even fiercer, ever more ruthless confrontations and slaughter occurred in the days that followed, both sides gritting their teeth, testing the very limits of their will — this was, perhaps, the first time in this southern campaign, even in his entire life, that Wanyan Loushi had encountered a battle like this. He personally took part in the fighting several times and was said to be in remarkably high spirits throughout. Meanwhile, the fighting on the periphery had already erupted like a volcano; after Zhong Lie sent men to negotiate with Zhe Kequ and the talks broke down completely, the two western armies clashed for the first time on the second day of September.
This was an age of chaos already descended upon the land; in the northwest alone, several hundred thousand people among the various factions drawn into this vortex, plus the unfortunate commoners caught up in it — reaching perhaps even several hundred thousand more — were locked in chaotic slaughter that seemed only just to be beginning…