Chapter 128: Where the Invader Can Go, So Can We

The horns sounded, and the Qing soldiers scattered like the tide. Even the wounded who could still move ran at top speed.

The Shunxiang Army on the wall were shocked and overjoyed — the Tatars had truly withdrawn.

That Qing interpreter, again protected by several White Armor soldiers, approached the wall and stopped about fifty paces away. Cautiously, he poked his head out from behind several large shields and shouted to the Ming troops on the wall: "Soldiers of Ming on the wall, hear this: Our Great Qing's Beile Raoyu respects those Ming commoners who died in battle and will certainly not harm or disturb their remains. We also hope the Ming soldiers on the wall will cease fire and allow us to collect the bodies of our fallen warriors."

Everyone in the Shunxiang Army on the wall looked to Wang Dou to see how he would handle it.

Wang Dou shouted: "Leave behind the Great Ming commoners you captured outside the city, and I will let you collect your dead!"

The Qing interpreter's face showed difficulty, but he quickly rode back to report. Soon he returned and shouted toward the wall: "Beile Raoyu has already agreed to your demand."

Very quickly, a commotion arose below the wall, and several hundred Great Ming commoners were seen being escorted forward — an estimated three to four hundred people, all military household commoners captured by the Qing soldiers from nearby forts. Every one of them was terrified, not knowing what those Tatar soldiers were going to make them do now.

They were delivered below the wall. The Qing interpreter shouted from behind them: "The Ming commoners have been delivered. You should now allow us to collect the bodies of our fallen officers and men."

Wang Dou had Lin Daofu guide those commoners to the other side of the new fort. Only then did the commoners realize they had been rescued, and every one of them wept with joy as they hurried toward the earth pits of the new fort.

Once those commoners had gone far, Wang Dou waved his hand. On the wall, the firelocks that so terrified the Qing soldiers — row upon row aimed outward — and the muzzles of several black Crouching Tiger cannons were pulled back from the parapet. Large numbers of Qing support troops and servants rushed over and carried away the bodies of the Qing soldiers who had been killed outside the city.

Wang Dou estimated there were over a hundred Qing corpses below the wall. Watching those support troops and servants collect the bodies, the Shunxiang Army on the wall all showed regret in their eyes — those heads, if taken, would be another great merit. But a few days earlier the Shunxiang Army had already taken two hundred and forty-three heads; even without these below the wall, it was already earth-shaking merit.

Very quickly, the Qing soldiers collected the bodies of their fallen comrades. Their horns sounded one after another, and they could be seen forming up unit by unit, finally merging into one mass. Looking down from the wall, it was again a sea of red and white banners, and among them Wang Dou once more saw that enormous gold-threaded dragon banner.

Infantry and cavalry intermingled, they slowly struck camp and departed. Under the sunlight, they were densely packed, their gleaming blades still giving off a dazzling radiance. But to Wang Dou, whereas before the sight of the Qing army's martial array had stirred a sense of awe and dread, now it seemed their momentum was nothing more than this.

The Qing soldiers came fast and left fast. Soon their army formation left only small black dots in the distance, and around Shunxiang Fort it was silent again, as if the brutal fighting of these past days had been only a dream.

Watching their departing figures, Wang Dou knew that this battle, for which he had been preparing these two years, was now over. In his heart he said silently: "Abatai, we shall meet again in two years!"

……

The nineteenth day of the seventh month, the ninth year of Chongzhen, noon.

These past two days, Wang Dou had continuously received reports from the Night Scouts: the Qing troops had indeed all withdrawn from Baoanzhou. Even the Qing troops in places like Huailai Guard had struck camp unit by unit and all headed to Yanqingzhou to join the Qing main force. It seemed they had truly withdrawn from Baoan territory.

This morning, the soldiers and commoners who had died in the fort were all laid to rest, buried at the foot of Fushan south of Shunxiang Fort.

Although the kill count was enormous, the entire territory of Shunxiang Fort had suffered grievous losses. The soldiers and commoners killed in battle alone numbered over a hundred, plus several hundred Great Ming commoners who had died below the walls of Shunxiang Fort. The wounded among soldiers and commoners were even more numerous. And the property losses from the scorched-earth policy were beyond counting.

Apart from Shunxiang Fort and Huiyao Fort, all the military forts and garrison forts within the territory had been completely destroyed. Rebuilding these forts would require an unknown amount of manpower and resources. Fortunately, the great majority of Shunxiang Fort's people were still here; as long as the people remained, the day would come when their homeland could be rebuilt.

From early morning, the area outside Shunxiang Fort was filled with dense funeral processions. White banners stood like a forest. Every soldier and commoner in the fort wore mourning white and hemp as they headed to Fushan to see the dead off. The bleak sound of suona horns pierced the clouds, and paper money scattered along the way covered the ground in a sheet of white.

The hundred-plus soldiers and commoners who had died in battle at Shunxiang Fort were buried together on a sunny slope. This burial ground would thereafter be maintained by Shunxiang Fort with specially allocated manpower and funds, and a shrine would be built before the graves for the soldiers and commoners of the fort and beyond to offer sacrifices.

Not far from this burial ground was another sunny slope, where the several hundred women and children who had died below the city were buried. Before their graves, a Loyal Commoners Shrine would also be built, and Shunxiang Fort would likewise allocate manpower and funds for its upkeep.

At the same time as the burial and sacrifice ceremony, ten captured Qing soldiers were disemboweled and had their hearts cut out before the graves and laid out together with the incense offerings, to console the heroic spirits of the fallen soldiers and commoners. Their heads would also be counted toward military merit.

At the grand burial and sacrifice ceremony, Wang Dou made a public pledge to the soldiers and commoners: the land allotted to the fallen soldiers and commoners could continue to be held by their families. For those households lacking labor, the army would in the future specially organize manpower to farm for them. Each household of a fallen soldier would receive a lump sum of ten taels of silver as consolation payment, and thereafter their household could also draw a monthly grain ration of five dou of rice from Shunxiang Fort.

For those soldiers discharged due to injury, besides receiving a lump sum of five taels of silver as consolation payment, they could likewise draw a monthly consolation grain and funds of five dou of rice from Shunxiang Fort. No matter how difficult things became, Wang Dou would guarantee that the families of these fallen and wounded soldiers would live without worry.

Wang Dou's pledge moved the families of the fallen and wounded to tears of gratitude, and it also strengthened the confidence of the living to continue serving Wang Dou.

Sorrow and joy intertwined — that was the scene outside Shunxiang Fort this morning.

……

For Shunxiang Fort, the war was basically over. Healing the wounds of war would take time. But life had to go on, the homeland had to be rebuilt, and what Shunxiang Fort should do going forward needed careful study.

In the Battalion Commander's office, Lin Daofu said to Wang Dou: "My lord, this humble officer has surveyed the situation. Within our Shunxiang Fort's territory, apart from Shunxiang Fort and Huiyao Fort, all the remaining military forts and garrison forts have been utterly destroyed and are uninhabitable. If we are to rebuild these forts, the manpower and resources required would be vast. Has my lord decided whether to rebuild these fortifications?"

Wang Dou pondered for a long while, then sighed: "Building cities and forts is ultimately useless. No matter how many we build, they are still destroyed by the flames of war. Better to use that grain and money to train soldiers, so that in field battles and open combat they can defeat the slave bandits fair and square, making them afraid and not daring to set half a step into our Shunxiang Fort again. That is far better than merely building city walls."

Everyone nodded. After these days of fighting, the officers in the fort had almost entirely lost their fear of the Qing soldiers, and their confidence in their own army's field combat ability had greatly increased. Training more soldiers, even if it cost more grain and money, was still better than laboriously building cities only to have the Qing soldiers come, enforce a scorched-earth policy, and burn it all down.

In the end, everyone agreed: those burned garrison forts and military forts would not be rebuilt. Instead, barracks would be built along the northern wall of Shunxiang's old and new forts to house the military households relocated after the scorched-earth policy. Once the new barracks were completed, no city wall would be built around them — only a small enclosing wall two meters high along the perimeter would suffice.

Those garrison forts were also all abandoned. Only when Shunxiang Fort's military households went out to farm the garrison fields, and some fields were far from Shunxiang Fort, would the nearby garrison forts be slightly repaired to serve as resting stops for the military households going out to farm.

Afterward, Wang Dou discussed with everyone the upcoming autumn planting. Wang Dou asked Clerk Feng Dachang about Shunxiang Fort's current population situation.

According to Feng Dachang, including the households moved in during the several scorched-earth operations, Shunxiang's old and new forts now had a total population of over six thousand. The four hundred-plus women and children rescued on the seventeenth, after persuasion by Lin Daofu and others, saw that life in the fort was stable and that the Ming army in the fort was fierce and fully capable of protecting their safety, and they too decided to stay in Shunxiang Fort.

Now Shunxiang Fort had a population of over six thousand, approaching seven thousand, half male and half female. Among them were over twelve hundred established households, plus many unattached individuals. Feeding these people was a heavy responsibility and a long road ahead.

Wang Dou currently had less than three thousand taels of silver in storage, and less than a thousand shi of grain and rice. After a series of bandit-suppression and slave-killing campaigns, though they had eaten a great deal these days, they still had over three hundred pigs and sheep, over two hundred head of cattle, and over two hundred mules and horses. This was the entirety of Wang Dou's assets.

But with a population of nearly seven thousand and over a Battalion Commander, by Wang Dou's standards, if each household needed to be allotted several tens of mu of land, they would need over seventy thousand mu of land in total.

At present, Shunxiang Fort had over three thousand mu of new fields, and Jingbian Fort had also reclaimed nearly five thousand mu of new fields — still far from the target. After the scorched-earth policy, the livelihood of the soldiers and commoners in the fort still largely depended on Wang Dou's support.

In ancient times, with a lack of meat and rich foods, people simply ate a lot. Add heavy labor, and an adult man could easily eat one sheng of cooked rice per meal. One sheng of cooked rice required five ge of raw rice — by later calculations, roughly one jin of rice. In the Great Ming, one shi of rice or wheat was one hundred and eighty-eight jin; after removing the bran and husk, it was considerably less.

Including the army, there were roughly three thousand able-bodied young and middle-aged men in the fort, who would eat at least fifteen shi of rice per day at Wang Dou's expense. Add the old, weak, and women in the fort, and they would eat twenty shi of rice per day at Wang Dou's expense — six hundred shi per month.

Even with the silver and grain reserves in the fort, they could only hold out until early next year at most, not counting the costs of reclaiming wasteland. If they ate some meat and rich foods, they would eat less grain. But even if those able-bodied men ate only two liang of meat per day — in the Great Ming, a pig raised for a year only grew to one hundred and forty jin, yielding about eighty jin of meat — those able-bodied men would still eat five of Wang Dou's pigs and sheep per day.

There were many difficulties. Yet the officers present were all brimming with confidence, full of faith in the future. In any case, they had Wang Dou. In their minds, it seemed that as long as Wang Dou stepped in, any problem could be solved.

Wang Dou kept his troubles to himself. He looked at the ceiling, just calculating what to do next.

A guard came to report that Night Scout leader Wen Daxing had returned from scouting the enemy situation. Wang Dou hurriedly had him brought in.

Soon, the tall and sturdy Wen Daxing, his cheeks covered in a curly beard, entered. After Abatai withdrew from Shunxiang Fort, he had, on Wang Dou's orders, been quietly shadowing them all the way to Huailai, Yanqing, and other places. According to the intelligence he had continuously sent back, the Qing troops in Baoan, Huailai, and elsewhere had indeed largely withdrawn to Yanqing and other places. They had successively entered Juyong Pass and Changping City, and even the Qing troops remaining in Yanqingzhou were now few.

Wen Daxing and his men had followed all the way to Yanqingzhou. Once the information was confirmed, his mission was complete, so he led the Night Scouts back.

After reporting his mission complete to Wang Dou, he also reported the latest intelligence he had scouted: "On our return journey, we encountered a picket of slave bandits, roughly one jalan in strength, escorting about five thousand captured Great Ming commoners, over a thousand head of cattle and sheep, and a large number of carts passing by — likely carrying a great deal of grain, rice, silver, and taels. When this humble officer returned, they were moving through the vicinity of Tumu Fort. I observed that they were advancing slowly and would probably need several more days to reach Yanqingzhou."

"Within Huailai Guard territory, apart from this band of slave bandits, we saw no other slave troops passing through."

A look of contempt appeared in his eyes: "Though the government troops in the various forts saw the slave bandits passing by, they still cowered inside their forts and dared not sally out."

In recent days, Wang Dou had sent men to the prefectural city and other places to gather news. According to intelligence sent back by Shunxiang Fort's Night Scouts, the gates of Baoan Prefectural City and the Guard City were still tightly shut and would probably remain so for several more days before opening. Naturally, Wang Dou's report of his great victory over the enemy had not been transmitted out that quickly either.

Wang Dou said coolly: "Escorting Great Ming commoners — only a single jalan's strength?"

Wen Daxing laughed: "This humble officer saw clearly: that slave bandit jalan is the very same unit that suffered defeat beneath our Shunxiang Fort."

Everyone laughed.

Wang Dou ordered: "Bring the map."

Soon a guard brought the map and spread it out, a large sheet, on the table. A map belonging to a mere Battalion Commander like them could of course only be the crudest kind; fine military maps were not something someone of Wang Dou's rank could possess. In the future, he would still need to send out Night Scouts to draw accurate maps in various places.

Wang Dou studied the map carefully. Beside him, Han Zhong, Han Chao, Lin Daofu, and others also came to Wang Dou's side to examine it closely.

Wang Dou watched for a long time, his eyes growing brighter and brighter. Suddenly he slammed the desk with a thunderous crash.

Wang Dou bellowed, "The thieving slaves run rampant, poisoning the living. I, Wang Dou, am an officer of the Great Ming army — how can I sit by and watch the people suffer calamity? I must rescue them from the sea of fire."

The others came to their senses one after another. Within Huailai Guard territory only one jiala remained, and it was the same jiala that had suffered defeat beneath their own fortress walls. More inconveniently for them, they had the audacity to march off escorting so many Great Ming subjects and so much wealth, swaggering along and moving so slowly.

Toward these Qing soldiers, every man in Shunxiang Fort was filled with contempt. They declared one after another, "Indeed! We are the royal army, officers and soldiers — how can we sit by and watch the people suffer calamity? My lord is benevolent and kind-hearted, willing to rescue the people from the sea of fire. We shall follow at my lord's side, even unto death without regret!"

Wang Dou roared, "Pass the order! Leave one picket of troops to hold the fort. All remaining officers and men, follow me out to battle and retake the plundered people and wealth!

."