Chapter 54

As soon as Zhu Yuanzhang arrived in Dadu (Yuan Dynasty), even before he had time to settle into anything, Tang He presented him with a generous gift. With Dadu captured, the Ming army advanced into Shanxi on multiple fronts. Wang Baobao sensed disaster and dispatched his subordinate Hanzhaer to counterattack Zezhou (Jincheng, Shanxi). Why target Zezhou? Because Tang He was stationed there. Naturally, people always pick the softest persimmons to squeeze. Among the commanders of the various Ming armies, who was the softest? That, of course, was General Tang. And so, true to form, Tang He was defeated. To be fair, the outcome of this single battle had little bearing on the overall situation. Wang Baobao was merely staging a dying gasp. The problem, however, was that this marked the first major head-on defeat the Ming army had suffered at the hands of the Yuan army in two years.