Chapter 54 : The North
Chapter 54: The North
October, 576.
As soon as Yuwen Yong recovered from his illness, he once again gathered the army and struck Northern Qi.
Having made up for what was lacking during the first Northern Qi Occupation War a year earlier, Northern Zhou rampaged through Northern Qi with unstoppable momentum, arriving at Pingyang, one of Northern Qi’s key cities.
This Pingyang of Northern Qi was not the same as Goguryeo’s Pyeongyang, but a city similar to Paju in 21st-century Korea.
It was the most crucial bulwark blocking the capital Ye.
And what was Emperor Gao Wei of Northern Qi doing at that moment?
“Feng Xiaolian, look here! I’ve caught a deer!”
“Oh my, you could even say it’s a horse, not a deer!”
“Haha, you sly one, you’re as cunning as Zhao Gao!”
“Kyaruruk!”
Amazingly, he was enjoying a hunt with the peerless beauty Feng Xiaolian in the capital Ye.
At his side, his favored sycophants, Mu Jepa and Gao Anagong, laughed louder than the emperor himself.
Wasn’t it originally a trio of sycophants including Han Jangran?
Unfortunately, Han Jangran had recently been killed by Gao Wei’s hand.
This was because Han Jangran grew jealous of Gao Zha, Gao Wei’s half-brother, who had introduced him to Gao Wei’s favorite pastime, “throwing naked court ladies and centipedes into a bathtub.”
As a severe sadist, Gao Wei disliked catfights among his sycophants.
Yet, he was still a ruler with a soft heart.
Rather than punish Han Jangran with death, since they had shared many drinking nights together, he proposed a one-punch game—each exchanging a single blow.
But for Han Jangran, standing still meant being beaten to death, and striking back meant striking the emperor and dying anyway.
He chose to stay still, and Gao Wei strangled him to death.
Thus, with sycophant number one Han Jangran dead, Gao Wei’s cherished lackeys were reduced from a trio to a duet of Gao Anagong and Mu Jepa.
They did not mourn, asking “Trio… duet, where has Han Jangran gone?”
Instead, they rejoiced that a rival was gone.
With one fewer contender, Gao Wei trusted them all the more.
It was in this situation that Yuwen Yong invaded.
“Your Majesty! The enemy has reached Pingyang!”
Gao Wei heard the news of Northern Zhou’s advance. He then asked his sycophant duet:
“Mu Jepa, Gao Anagong. They say the enemy has reached Pingyang. Shouldn’t we send reinforcements?”
“The central army exists to protect the center, and the border troops exist to guard the borders. Such is the order of heaven and earth as spoken by Confucius. At this moment, Your Majesty should focus not on the distant Yuwen Yong but on catching the deer before your eyes.”
“Haha, indeed, that is right!”
In the end, listening to his lackeys, Gao Wei did not send reinforcements to Pingyang.
“No reinforcements are coming?”
“So it seems.”
Yang Jian and Yuwen Yong, delighted at such fortune, swiftly captured Pingyang.
Only then did Gao Wei jump up in alarm.
“Pingyang has been breached?”
“Yes, sire, those incompetents have surely caused this disaster. My lord, send me forth, and I shall bring back Yuwen Yong’s head!”
“No, I shall go myself!”
Suddenly pretending to be a true emperor, Gao Wei personally led the central army out toward Pingyang.
Though it was locking the stable after the cow was gone, he could not simply sit idle.
His lackey duet, Gao Anagong and Mu Jepa, also followed, fiercely blaming each other along the way.
Now, Northern Qi’s lifespan had nearly run out.
It wasn’t just I, the one from the future, who thought so. Everyone who heard news of Northern Qi thought the same.
“They lost Pingyang because they were too busy playing to send reinforcements? That’s like in Goryeo, watching the enemy cross the Amnok River without lifting a finger!”
“This isn’t the time to worry about Northern Qi! Refugees, more refugees are flooding in again!”
And so, Goguryeo faced the second wave of refugees.
But this time, the composition of the refugees was a little different.
“I am a nobleman from Hebei! I’ve brought fifty households of retainers!”
“I am from the old lands of Jin! I’ve brought two hundred households of retainers!”
Whereas most of those who came during the first refugee wave were farmers, this time there were more Han aristocrats than peasants.
The reason there were fewer farmers lay in Northern Zhou’s shift in strategy.
Two years earlier, during the first invasion, Northern Zhou had driven refugees to sow chaos in Northern Qi.
But through that war, Yuwen Yong realized he could topple Northern Qi without such tricks, and so he abandoned the strategy of pushing out peasants.
If Northern Qi were destroyed, all of its people would simply become the people of Northern Zhou.
That was why there were fewer peasants.
Then why were there more aristocrats?
“Gao Wei, Gao Anagong, Mu Jepa! Those wretched villains!”
“I knew the nation would come to this ever since they began to scorn us! Please, take us in!”
The reason lay in Northern Qi’s internal problems.
Back during Northern Wei, these aristocrats had prospered under Emperor Xiaowen’s Sinicization policy.
But from the era of Northern Qi, the story was different.
Both Northern Qi and Northern Zhou had arisen from the backlash against Northern Wei’s Sinicization, founded on the ideal: “This is not a land of the Han, but a land of the Xianbei!”
Yet the two states diverged in policy.
Northern Zhou under Yuwen Yong, through the Elevation Policy, preserved the identity of being a Xianbei state, but allowed Han people of ability to be recognized as Xianbei.
Thus, centered on Guanzhong and Longxi, they nurtured talented men of both the martial Xianbei and the scholarly Han, creating a balanced elite of both civil and military excellence.
But Northern Qi under Gao Wei was different.
“To scholars, only beatings suit them best!”
He despised the aristocrats, personally wearing a sword to strike at notable intellectuals, sometimes torturing them to death.
At the same time, he filled their positions with his slaves, appointing them as Lords or Senior Officials.
For aristocrats who lived solely on academic prestige, there was no greater humiliation.
At first, they endured, thinking, “Still, this is the homeland of our ancestors…”
But with Gao Wei’s repeated misrule and defeats, and finally the loss of Pingyang, all affection for Northern Qi evaporated.
“They despised letters and exalted arms, yet even in war they lose?”
“Pfah! Is this even a country?”
They could not endure ten years of Gao Wei, and abandoned their ancestral homeland of dozens of generations.
Some went south to Southern Chen or west to Northern Zhou. Others, thinking it too much to seek asylum in the enemy state, instead requested asylum in Goguryeo, as now.
Go San looked at them and spoke.
“The Grand King has declared that, following the example of Jin, the Governor of Youzhou, he will grant Goryeo’s ranks in proportion to power and position.”
Jin, the Governor of Youzhou, was a man of the Western Land who had sought asylum in Goguryeo during the reign of King Gwanggaeto.
Goguryeo had honored this Jin, giving him the Cheongra Cap and treating him as a Middle Elder.
And the Northern Qi nobles who now sought refuge in Goguryeo received similar treatment.
They were distinct from the refugees from the very beginning, starting with where they were settled.
The refugees usually entered nearby villages as Lower Households, while the aristocrats were sent to nearby fortresses.
Of the more important ones, some were even placed on ships and sent directly to Pyeongyang.
Since they had brought with them both vital information and considerable forces, Goguryeo treated them accordingly.
If the treatment had been stingy, who would have chosen to defect to Goguryeo?
Moreover, the people they brought were extraordinary.
“There are many blacksmiths here.”
“All my retainers can shoot bows and drive chariots.”
“I am a scholar, and those who came with me are my disciples.”
Among their retainers were blacksmiths, monks, and students—S-class resources that could not be bought even with money.
“When a nation collapses, isn’t the greatest sign the exodus of its brightest minds?”
Northern Qi was exactly at that point.
They were finished.
Everyone knew it.
And then.
“Northern Zhou really is destroying Northern Qi.”
“Moreover, there are rumors that Northern Zhou is sending scouts to Liaoxi and the Yan Mountains to gather intelligence. There is even word that they are in contact with T’u-chüeh’s T’uoba Khan!”
“Liaoxi and the Yan Mountains are the gateway leading toward Goguryeo, are they not? Then… could it be that after destroying Northern Qi, they will truly set their sights on Goguryeo?”
My own lord, who had predicted this, rose in esteem once again.
Go San rebuked, “Do not cause unrest with idle speculation!” yet even he could not help but seriously consider the prospect of war under these circumstances.
The seeds I had sown back in my Taehak days were finally beginning to bear fruit.
“It took about four years, didn’t it?”
Faster than ginseng.
Originally, Go San had disliked my involvement in military strategy, but now there was no avoiding it.
“All my words have been proven true—how could they not use me?”
If they excluded me now despite that, it would only backfire.
At last, I began my true work as Garadal—interviewing the Northern Qi nobles who had defected one by one and drawing out their information.
“How does Northern Zhou maintain its army? What are their numbers?”
“Yuwen Yong’s forces number over one hundred thousand under his direct command. Northern Qi has two or three times that many, yet due to constant purges, the quality and morale of its generals are low, and thus it has not achieved any great victories. That mad emperor executed Guk Ryulgwang and Gao Zhanggong, and so it has come to this. Pah!”
“What is the ratio of light cavalry to heavy cavalry?”
“Though they sometimes recruit northern light horsemen, the core of their army is still the Gapgigu-jang, the armored heavy cavalry.”
What Goguryeo called Gaema Cavalry, Northern Zhou called Gapgigu-jang.
In truth, I already knew that the Gapgigu-jang were the central force of Northern Zhou.
Even up until the Sui dynasty, it remained so.
But I had not yet proposed a proper countermeasure.
It was less a problem of knowledge than of persuasion.
“Until now, Goguryeo had no accurate information about the inland armies of Northern Zhou.”
In such circumstances, even if I argued that we must prepare for Northern Zhou’s heavy cavalry, it would have fallen on deaf ears.
But now, I had the reference I needed.
It was time to begin moving.
Among the players I used to play miniature games with, there was one person called “Khan.”
I don’t remember his real name very well, as we usually called each other by nicknames.
As his name suggested, Khan was obsessed with cavalry.
If it was a World War II game, he always played Germany, and in fantasy games, he only ever picked cavalry factions.
And as expected, people crazy about miniature games usually had some interest in history too.
For example, he would say things like this:
“Ahh, heavy cavalry! The 6th and 7th centuries were the golden age of heavy cavalry. Not only Goguryeo, which already had many iron cavalrymen, but even the Xianbei from the steppes, who had once relied on mounted archers, by this time abandoned that tradition and mostly converted to heavy cavalry. Northern Wei, Northern Zhou, and the Sui dynasty all centered their armies on heavy cavalry like the Gapgi.”
“I see.”
“But starting from the Tang dynasty, the meta changed somewhat. Strategies mixing light and heavy cavalry were developed. And it was the Jin dynasty that really advanced this, with their ‘Guai-zama tactics.’ That’s what I’ll show you now.”
To be frank, I didn’t like Khan very much.
Not because he was a history geek.
Playing with such setups and sharing knowledge was part of the fun of face-to-face miniature games.
I disliked him for another reason.
“So, can we play the next match without skills? Honestly, skills don’t make sense.”
“Games are supposed to have skills.”
“But they don’t exist in reality!”
What I hated was that Khan treated miniature games not as games but as “realism made manifest.”
And in such situations, he would usually beg.
“Oh, today’s my birthday! Please, just once, go along with it. You take five units of heavy cavalry, I’ll take three units of light and two of heavy. Please, please, please!”
“Didn’t you say it was your birthday just recently?”
“Uh, that was my lunar birthday.”
“Were you born twice? Sigh… fine, understood.”
So we played, and I lost.
“Ha! I won, you loser!”
“Well, that’s because I didn’t use skills. If I’d cast two spells, you know it would have been a wipeout, right?”
“The excuses of the defeated are always sweet. Huhu. But remember this well. It may prove useful someday, don’t you think?”
“What use would a thousand-year-old tactic be…?”
Even thinking back now, he was a truly petty fellow.
To cheat his way to victory and then teabag me.
If only there had been more miniature game shops near our village.
I wouldn’t have had to bother with someone as forceful as Khan.
But who can know what life brings?
The method he taught me to counter heavy cavalry might now prove most deliciously useful.
As things turned out, Khan was the miniature friend who became the most helpful in my entire life.
Originally, the Xianbei of the Western Land, being nomads, had a tradition of light cavalry.
But now, having occupied the iron-rich Central Plains for almost three hundred years, their core strength was none other than armored heavy cavalry, the Gapgigu-jang.
“Light cavalry is only really useful for messengers, pursuit, or scouting, isn’t it?”
Then what about Goguryeo?
Though Gaema Cavalry was what people usually thought of, in truth, Goguryeo had many light cavalry as well.
The Malgal tribes of Manchuria were at the heart of this.
In later times, when they founded states like Jin and Qing, they would field elite units like the Eight Banners, clad in iron helmets and lamellar armor from Liaodong.
But not yet.
“For now, their identity is that of poor hunters.”
Because of their poverty, they could not afford heavy cavalry, which cost dozens of gold pieces per head.
But as hunters of the plains, they were naturally skilled at riding.
Thus, they inevitably became light cavalry.
And since Goguryeo had many such Malgal tribes under its command, it was only natural that it had an abundant light cavalry force.
So much so that, later in the wars against Sui, Crown Prince Go Daewon led ten thousand Malgal light cavalry in a preemptive strike against the Sui.
If so—
Could I not apply, here and now, the Jurchen-style tactics of mixing light and heavy cavalry, which Khan had said would one day arise in Jin?
“After all, didn’t Jin also begin in Manchuria?”
And so, I had preached this idea since my days at the Taehak.
But the results had not been good.
“Organizing a mixed formation of cavalry? I’m not so sure. Wouldn’t mixing light and heavy cavalry just cancel out each other’s strengths because their pace is different?”
That was Yeon Taejo’s opinion.
And I understood his reasoning.
“After all, Goguryeo right now doctrinally prefers separate formations rather than mixed ones.”
It was less a quirk of Goguryeo than simply the orthodoxy of the age.
Generally, light cavalry and heavy cavalry were organized separately into “heavy cavalry units” and “light cavalry units,” and their cooperation occurred on the battlefield, such as when light cavalry lured the enemy and the heavy cavalry annihilated them.
However, starting roughly one hundred years later, this meta changed.
They began organizing both heavy and light cavalry together in the same unit, allowing such light–heavy combined action not only on the battlefield level but also in every single skirmish and clash.
It was like changing the composition of a strategy game into something more like a raid in an RPG.
But it was not as easy as it sounded.
To achieve this, one first had to resolve a question.
“Why change something that has already worked well for hundreds of years?”
That was the question.
New things were uncertain, and even if they were genuinely good, it took a long process before their utility was proven.
This was because all things required skill and proficiency.
Just look at the Agricultural Light Law.
It took me years to prove it before it spread, and even here, when it spread poorly, it ended up ruining fields with fertilizer instead.
Unless it was truly at the point of “this cannot go on,” people rarely attempted new things.
It was probably the same here too.
In the end, it was like with farming.
I had to persuade people and press my opinion.
At that moment, I recalled Boknyeo’s third piece of advice.
“If you have eaten well and rested enough to keep your mind clear, then do what you truly believe is right. If my husband acts, I will adjust myself to match. I will use my head, so you use your heart. Just make sure to write often.”
She meant that if I laid out the framework, she would make it fit.
So some time ago, I wrote a letter to Boknyeo and sent it to Pyeongyang, and today her reply arrived.
[As I am ignorant of military strategy, I cannot give you direct assistance.
But even one who does not know how to make fire can still hand you the tools to light it.
Soon, people you can trust will come to you.
In all things, people must come first.]
She said she would send reliable people.
Moreover, the extra pouch she had sent contained several roots of dried ginseng harvested this year and shining pieces of gold.
People and wealth.
Instead of giving me the solution, she had given me the means to find one.
“Even if I took every single tax share from Beomchon, it would not amount to even half the value of this ginseng.”
It felt like I was spending more money than I was earning.
But that did not matter.
If one could buy face with money in Goguryeo, then it was always a profitable deal.
Jin, Governor of Youzhou (roughly the region from Beijing to Liaodong), is the owner of the Deokheung-ri tombs, and opinions differ about his identity.
Some claim he was a Goguryeo man, while others say he was a Chinese exile.
The Deokheung-ri tombs resemble Chinese styles more than Goguryeo’s unique stone-mound tombs, and his title is recorded in the Chinese system as “Governor of Youzhou,” not in Goguryeo’s system.
For this reason, he is generally seen as a Chinese exile.
There are also different views on his office name “Governor of Youzhou”—some say he was truly the governor of Youzhou who defected, others that Jin invented a false title for himself, and still others that King Gwanggaeto appointed him to a Chinese-style office familiar to the many Chinese living in Liaodong in order to solidify control.
At present, the last theory—that he was a Chinese-born Goguryeo official—is the one with the most support.
In any case, King Gwanggaeto appointed this Jin as a Middle Elder and a Vassal King, and stationed him as a regional governor in an area close to the Western Land.
Judging by the scale of his tomb, he must have been a man of considerable power in Goguryeo at the time.
It is often said in the East that mounted archers were predominant and heavy cavalry was rare, or that Sui’s heavy cavalry was crushed by Tang’s light cavalry, but this is not true.
There are many reasons for such views of Eastern light cavalry, but the Mongol world conquest seems to have played a large role.
Yet even the Mongols absorbed heavy cavalry tactics when facing the Jin dynasty, and their armor grew heavier as wars went on.
They looted the enemy’s equipment and wore it.
After all, who would choose thin clothes over thick armor?
Though estimates differ, the Mongols themselves fielded about 30–40% heavy cavalry.
The T’u-chüeh as well, though centered on light cavalry, placed great importance on heavy cavalry.
They had originally been a blacksmith clan under the Rouran.
Indeed, although sedentary peoples with better productivity used it more widely, the true origin of heavy cavalry lay with the nomads.