The Mongolians were more powerful than the Ming Army.
This was what everyone was thinking. Everyone knew that the Ming Army was always passive in the war while the Mongolians took the initiative to attack. Most of the generals in the Ming Army were timid and did not dare to fight with the Mongolians in the open. They only dared to defend the city and fight passively.
Therefore, in this invasion, the Ming Army could not help but position themselves as the weaker party.
Both Wang Shiyang and Li Chengliang felt that they were the weaker party. They were the defensive party and had never thought of taking the initiative to attack. They did not know the real intention of the Mongolians.
If you can't figure out the other party's strategic intentions, you won't be able to understand the true meaning behind the other party's actions. You will think that the Mongolians attacked Zijing Pass because they wanted to attack the capital. Because A Da had done this before, the Mongolians will do the same.
This kind of habitual thinking would affect almost everyone, such as veterans like Li Chengliang.
Because of their lack of confidence, they were overly cautious and sensitive. They did not dare to take the initiative to attack and only dared to defend the city passively. As long as they could defend Zijing Pass, they would feel that everything was fine. However, they did not know that the Mongolians did not intend to attack Zijing Pass and then the capital.
Their goal was to plunder the large amount of food stored by the Shanxi Merchants and then escape.
They did not know that the Mongolians were actually afraid of the hundreds of thousands of soldiers near the capital. This was because the Mongolians did not have a unified government. There was no one at the level of A Da or Da Xian. Lalik was at most the leader of a tribe while A Da Xian was the overlord of a region.
The difference in status, strength, and confidence determined that A Da Xian dared to set Beijing as his target and force the Ming Dynasty to agree to his terms. Lalik did not have the confidence and did not dare to attack the capital of the Ming Dynasty.
He felt that his success this time was largely due to luck. He was even worried that the Ming Dynasty would take revenge on him.
Therefore, he decided to leave after the plunder.
He did not have the strength and determination to shake the Ming Dynasty. This was his situation. The Ming Dynasty mistakenly thought that every invading Mongolian tribe was coming for Beijing, especially the hundreds of thousands of Mongolians!
Liu Xi's thought happened to hit the biggest weakness of the Ming Dynasty – lack of confidence.
The Ming Empire's lack of confidence towards the Mongolians before and after the Tumu Fortress Incident caused the Ming Empire's mentality to change drastically.
Before the Tumu Fortress, although the Ming Empire was slowly losing the military power that it had in the early days, it still had some power. The Mongolians did not dare to invade the Ming Empire recklessly.
After the Tumu Castle, just like how the Song Dynasty suffered from a phobia after Yong Xi's northern expedition, the Ming Dynasty's literati government also suffered from a phobia. Although they were stubborn on the surface, they lacked confidence in their hearts. The gradual abandonment of the important military sites that they originally controlled was a clear proof.
The Ming Dynasty and the Ming Army were bound by the powerful and undefeatable enemy they imagined themselves to be. Not a single one of the sixty thousand Ming Army in Purple Thistle Pass would imagine that they were facing a mere eight thousand Mongolian cavaliers and not the legendary forty thousand.
Splitting up their forces after they took down Pingxing Pass was also Liu Xi's strategy. He believed that he could use this strategy on the Ming Army in Taiyuan so that they would only dare to defend and would not dare to gather their main forces to the north to launch a counterattack. This would limit the Ming Army's movements and footsteps, allowing the Mongolians to first steal the food around Wutai.
Cart after cart of food left Shanxi through Pingxing Pass. Then, they left Datong and entered Returning Righteous City. During the entire journey, they did not run into any obstructions from the Ming Army.
The Ming Army in Datong was defending, the Ming Army in Shanxi was defending, and the Ming Army in Purple Thistle Pass was also defending. Nearly two hundred thousand Ming Army were mobilized, but not a single unit dared to counterattack!
They were all on defense!
There were only five thousand Mongolian cavaliers surrounding Datong, but they trapped the twenty thousand Ming Army and thirty thousand strong men in the city, making them unable to move. There were sixty thousand Ming Army in Purple Thistle Pass, but they did not dare to take a step forward in the face of eight thousand Mongolians.
There were ten thousand Ming Army guarding Dingxiang, twenty thousand Ming Army guarding Xinzhou, twenty thousand Ming Army guarding Shiling Pass, forty thousand Ming Army gathered in Taiyuan City, and forty thousand reinforcements from Yulin, who would arrive in Taiyuan in six days.
Wang Shiyang currently commanded ninety thousand Ming Army, and in a few days, it would be one hundred and thirty thousand. There were also nearly fifty thousand young and strong men who were mobilized to build a war fortress for the Ming Army.
The Mongolians who truly came to attack Taiyuan did not exceed forty thousand.
There was no need to mention that the forty thousand people from the allied forces of the Mongolian tribes at Yanmen Pass were badly battered by Wei Yunzhen. No one knew when they would be able to take down Yanmen Pass.
But no one dared to take the initiative to attack.
However, if they were to really talk about it, even if they took the initiative to attack, the Ming Army who lacked food and clothing might not be able to defeat the Mongolians. Even though the border armies did not lack training, they still needed food and clothing, right? The Ming Army in Taiyuan and Datong were not the only ones who did not have enough food and clothing.
The situation could not get any worse.
On the way to Purple Thistle Pass, Li Chengliang continuously ran into a large number of refugees who fled from the west of Purple Thistle Pass. As they fled, they talked about how many Mongolians there were and how brutal they were. They begged the government to fight back and help them take back their homes.
Then, quite a number of government soldiers snatched their clothes and shoes, mixed into their ranks, and fled together.
Li Chengliang knew this much better. He did not try to stop them at all. He pretended to kill eight deserters, but he did not manage to stop more people from escaping. When he arrived at Purple Thistle Pass, there were only thirty thousand soldiers left from the fifty thousand soldiers from the capital army.
Just like that, the garrison of Purple Thistle Pass, which claimed to have sixty thousand soldiers, actually only had a little more than forty thousand left.
Chai Guozhu looked at Li Chengliang, and Li Chengliang also looked at Chai Guozhu. Both of them could feel each other's despair.
At this time, Li Chengliang suddenly remembered when he was chatting with Qi Jiguang. Qi Jiguang talked about the scandal that happened when he was fighting against the Japanese in the southeast. At that time, Qi Jiguang said that he was almost killed by the master soldiers, and from then on, he did not dare to use the master soldiers anymore.
Now, Li Chengliang also personally experienced Qi Jiguang's pain.
The Mongolians were far more brutal than the Japanese pirates. They were also cavalry, and their fighting strength was more swift and fierce. Li Chengliang did not know how long he could last if he wanted to go out of the city and fight in the field. He did not know if he could run back or if he could run back.
He immediately lost the will to fight in the field. He arranged for the remaining soldiers to set up defenses, and then stood at the top of the city wall with Chai Guozhu. They could not see the end of the refugees in the distance.
On the sixth day of the twelfth month of the twenty-fifth year of the Wanli calendar, half a day after the refugees disappeared, and the last refugee cried that his family was killed by the Mongolians, a cloud of dust and smoke appeared at the end of the horizon before Li Chengliang's eyes. Li Chengliang's pupils shrank, and he instantly realized …
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