Volume 3: Confrontation! The Run of Civilization Chapter 436: Not Changing the Han Clothes
"What's your name? Which tribe are you from? Why didn't you follow Tumed's Tabunang to the north?"
"My name is Batubuhe. We are a small tribe under the Kharachin tribe. Because there are not many young and strong men in the tribe, we can only send out 200 cavalrymen. That's why Tabunang disliked us and asked us to stay here and take care of the elderly of the Tumed tribe and some Han slaves."
"Hmm?" Li Rubai's eyes widened when he heard this: "Where is my Han family disciple? Take me there quickly!"
Of course, that's what he said. But Li Rubai, who had been on the border for a long time, still knew to prevent the other side from cheating. So he gathered about a thousand cavalry and set off first. He also told He Shixian to quickly organize three thousand infantry to follow up. The other soldiers continued to guard the camp tightly.
Led by Batubuhe, Li Rubai's cavalry saw a large group of tents in a depression behind the mountain.
The entire camp was built very densely, and a quick look from the top of the mountain showed that there were quite a lot of people in the camp. But when he walked into the camp, even though Li Rubai had been transferred to Datong as a general for many years, he couldn't help but frown.
Dirty and smelly, there is nothing to say. The key point is that this camp is almost full of old and weak people, women and children are rarely seen. It would be fine if they were all old and weak, but Li Rubai walked less than a third of the way in the camp under the protection of his servants, and he clearly felt that the people here were seriously lacking in food! Not only were their cheeks extremely thin, but they also had obvious paleness!
"Where are my Han children?"
"Master Ming, please calm down. They are in the camp a little further inside."
"Lead the way quickly!" Even the Mongols were not well fed , so Li Rubai had a very bad feeling about how the Han slaves who were looted over the years would be treated.
Batubuhe trembled and led Li Rubai to continue walking inside. When they reached the outermost part of the depression, which was also the least windproof, he fearfully raised a finger and said, "Master Ming, they are right there."
With a clang, the servants opened the gate outside the camp and quickly went in to understand the situation. After a while, the servants came out, all of them were furious, holding the handle of the knife, just wanting to cut Batu Buhe into pieces.
Seeing the expressions of the servants, Li Rubai's heart skipped a beat, but he still rode forward. However, before he entered the camp, because of the servants, the Han people in the camp had already supported each other and walked out of the shabby, small, and thin tents.
Li Rubai only glanced at them, and this great general who had fought in battles all his life couldn't help but feel his eyes getting warm.
They were naked, looked like skeletons, and had hollow eyes with a little color in them. Some of the people here didn't have a hat or a bun. But all of their tattered clothes were right-side-open!
An old man in his seventies or eighties, supported by two other old women who looked to be in their sixties, came up tremblingly and spoke in a weak but hopeful voice: "Excuse me, is this the general of my Ming Dynasty?"
Li Rubai dismounted from his horse with a crashing sound. He said, "I am Li Rubai, the general of Datong. I have been ordered by the emperor to lead the expedition to the north to attack Mongolia. I am sorry that I arrived a little late and caused you all to suffer."
"Really? It's really the army of our Ming Dynasty that has arrived!"
"Old man, this is really the army of our Ming Dynasty!"
"Wow, wow, wow, I never thought that since I was abducted in the 18th year of Wanli, I would be able to see the king's master again in my lifetime. This way, I can die with my eyes closed!"
After saying this, the old man fainted.
"Someone, go and inform the cooks in the rear to cook a few large buckets of porridge! And invite a few doctors over. Also, our baggage soldiers, quickly send over some charcoal, cotton clothes, etc., according to the amount for 5,000 people."
The servants around Li Rubai shouted in unison: "Yes, sir!"
"Come on, a few people, enter this camp and count how many Han Chinese there are here. Register them according to age and gender. After they have some porridge to drink, we'll decide whether to transfer them back or treat them on the spot, based on the doctor's opinion."
"yes!"
After making all these arrangements, Li Rubai got back on his horse, and then looked down at Batu Buhe and said, "Are you the leader here?"
Batubuhe was a Mongolian man in his forties. Although he was very thin, he still had a big frame. There was a long scar on the upper and lower eyelids of his right eye, which showed that he had been chopped before. It was unknown whether this scar was left by a tribal feud among the Mongols or caused by the border troops of the Ming army.
At this time, facing Li Rubai's questioning, the man lowered his head and said in fear: "Yes, after the Taiji of this department followed Tumed's Tabunang away, I was responsible for guarding here."
"How many people are there in the entire camp now? How many of my Han people are there?"
"Three days ago, the number was more than 17,500. Three days ago, there were more than 3,700 Han Chinese."
"Three days ago, there were still some?" Li Rubai's eyes rolled slightly before he realized, "Why? Are people dying in your camp every day?"
"Hey, Master Li, you've seen it all. The strong men in the tribe, even the women and children, were taken away, and the only ones left were the old and weak. Tumed's Tabunang originally wanted to let these people fend for themselves, so there were very few cattle, sheep, and food left. As for the Han people, uh, Master Li, please forgive me, the strong Han people were forced to move north, and the only ones left were the old and weak."
"Hu~" Li Rubai let out a long sigh, feeling a little complicated.
Of course, there was anger: after the Battle of Tumu, the Ming Dynasty's military strategy against Mongolia changed from offense to defense. Then, due to the advantage of the Mongols in mobility and the gradual decline in the combat effectiveness of the Ming border troops for various reasons, every time the Mongols invaded on different scales, they would always capture some Han people from the nine borders and take them back as slaves. During the Jiajing period, the Mongols even broke through the border wall and approached Beijing... In short, the number of Han people captured and taken to Mongolia was really not small, accumulating year by year.
Many of the Han people died of exhaustion. But the Han people are a very tenacious people, so even in such a situation, there are still Han people who survived in the Mongolian tribes and married and had children. Among these people, a very small number of them were assimilated, and most of them retained their own ethnic characteristics and persisted hard.
The population of the entire Tumed tribe was about 500,000 (Feng Yuxiang mentioned in "Outer Mongolia" that the overall population of Mongolia in the late Ming Dynasty was about 12 million. The Qing Dynasty reduced the total number of Mongolian men on the grassland to less than 1 million through various policies such as promoting Tibetan Buddhism and conscripting Mongolians to settle in the pass). Among them, there were no less than 30,000 Han slaves. Now these more than 3,000 have obviously been squeezed dry and abandoned without any value.
Li Rubai's thoughts were still surging, but Batubuhe's words did not stop: "Master Li, it's a good thing you came early. After the weather warmed up in February this year, Tabunang led the entire tribe to migrate north. Although I have always asked everyone to save the food left behind, these old people came from various tribes, and I couldn't control myself. So, the food was eaten up five days ago. The hungry Mongolians from various tribes have already proposed to kill the Han people who stayed behind... I led more than 200 men in the entire camp and fought desperately to stop them and save these Han people..."
"Hmph~" Li Rubai glanced at Batubuhe: If you hadn't heard that my Ming army of 200,000 was coming, would you be so kind to these old and weak Han people? You just want to rely on these Han people to survive. But how to deal with these Han people and how to deal with these Mongols really need to be carefully considered.
"General." A servant's voice interrupted his thoughts: "We have completed the inventory. There are still 3,365 people in the entire Han camp."
"Hiss, it's only been three days, and more than 300 people have died?" Although as a senior general, Li Rubai had killed countless people himself , but hearing about the daily death rate in this camp still made him shudder.
"Hey, order the camp staff to send more porridge over."
"Marshal? Do we have to raise these Tartars as well?"
"Ah..." After a long sigh, Li Rubai patiently explained to his men: "No matter what these Mongols think in their hearts, at least they haven't really killed all these Han people. Even Tabunang of Tumed let these old and weak Han people fend for themselves before setting off, instead of killing them all. Therefore, I can't just kill these old and weak Mongols. The emperor has fully delegated power to us military generals this time, and has not set up civilian supervisors to let us make decisions on our own. If we kill the Mongols on sight, how can we explain to the emperor when we go back? Facing such a situation, will the emperor be completely disappointed with our military generals? Will he send supervisors to suppress us from now on? Besides, it has been agreed long ago that this expedition will not be counted by the number of heads."
"I see. The Marshal is still thinking long-term. In this case, I will go back to the camp to make arrangements immediately."
"Hmm." After watching the servant leave, Li Rubai was in a state of confusion. He asked Batu Buhe for a pen and ink and began to draft a memorial to Zhu Youdong. In this memorial, he reported in detail the various problems of the northern expedition and used a lot of words to explain and make suggestions on the old and weak Han people he encountered now, as well as the more Han slaves he might encounter on the way to the march in the future. At the end of this memorial, there is a sentence: I see that the children of the Han family on the grasslands, although they are poorly clothed and hungry, they will never change the clothes of our Han family!
