Chapter 336: Watch and Wait

The common people across the Eastern Circuit generally welcomed the General’s residence proclamation. Those damned bandits who murder and burn, rob and violate—the people detest them to the marrow of their bones. Even those sometimes called “righteous bandits,” who claim to rob the rich to aid the poor and uphold justice, are merely tolerated by the people in their helplessness.

There are scoundrels among the poor, and heroes among the rich. Can indiscriminately smashing kilns and kidnapping for ransom, all under the banner of “killing the rich to help the poor,” cover up every kind of lawless act? Whether “evil bandits” or “righteous bandits,” bandits are bandits in the end; at root, it is the mentality of reaping without sowing at work.

Knights-errant use force to defy the law. Wang Dou has no need for these “champions of heaven’s way” from the greenwood. Any who dare disobey orders—slaughter them all.

The people all talked excitedly: before, the government troops were useless, unable to protect the land and pacify the people. Now that the ever-victorious General Dingguo has arrived, the bandits’ doomsday has come.

Regarding Wang Dou’s actions, the Eastern Circuit officials and local gentry discussed privately: this Wang Dou indeed came up through bandit suppression; wherever he goes, the bandits there suffer calamity.

Of course, Wang Dou’s extermination of bandits within the territory benefits them without harm. Who doesn’t want to live in peace and produce in security?

Once the proclamation was issued, praise poured in like the tide. Not to mention the literati within Wang Dou’s system—the propaganda organs under his command, such as the theater troupes and stages, rushed to extol him. Even the literati throughout the Eastern Circuit mostly held a positive, affirmative attitude. Even men like Wu Zhi, the Department Magistrate of Yanqing, who was most dissatisfied with Wang Dou, published some words of praise against his own conscience.

The grand strategy of bandit suppression was jointly planned by the General Staff Department and the Intelligence Department of the Shogunate.

The Shogunate was not yet fully perfected. Originally, the extermination of bandits in various places was the responsibility of the four sections in charge of bandit suppression under the Operations Division of the General Staff Department. Related intelligence reconnaissance was also handled by the seven sections under the Intelligence Department. But integrating the various departments could not be perfected in a short time, so for the time being, bandit suppression matters were jointly planned by the various officers of the Shogunate.

From the seventh year of Chongzhen until now, the Shunxiang Army’s experience in bandit suppression was already extremely rich. After Wang Dou assumed the post of Defense Commander of Baoan Prefecture, the Night Scouts under his command had also spent many years conducting reconnaissance mapping of the surrounding prefectures, counties, and guard battalions. They already understood a great deal about the mountains and rivers in many places—the Eastern Circuit of Xuanfu Garrison, the garrison city, the Southern Circuit, the Northern Circuit, the Western Circuit, and so on.

In addition, after Wang Dou took office, he received the terrain maps and registers of various places in the Eastern Circuit. While he could not claim to know every circuit like the back of his hand, he could be said to have a clear and thorough understanding.

After the Shogunate was established, the General Staff Department was already researching sand tables. Sand tables were nothing new; it was said that as early as when Qin destroyed the six kingdoms, Qin Shi Huang personally built sand tables to study the geography of each state. When Emperor Guangwu campaigned against Tianshui, his great general Ma Yuan also piled up rice to represent mountains and valleys, pointing out the terrain.

To build a sand table, the most important thing is to have extremely precise terrain survey maps of each region; otherwise, one would end up planning a series of impressionistic tactical strategies.

On the day the proclamation was issued, the Shunxiang Army’s scout cavalry rode out in all four directions. Information on the bandit situation throughout the Eastern Circuit flowed continuously to the desks of the General Staff Department, and was then forwarded to Wang Dou.

The intimidating power of the Shunxiang Army was evident. Within a few days of the proclamation’s release, bandits from every mountain surrendered and came in an endless stream. Some bandit chiefs lamented, “With General Dingguo here, there is no place for us to survive in the Eastern Circuit,” and one after another abandoned their strongholds and fled into other circuits of Xuanfu Garrison.

Of course, there were also those stubbornly unrepentant, or hesitating and watching, or not taking it seriously.

Once the deadline passed, Wang Dou would let these people understand what it means that there is no medicine for regret in this world.

The matter of bandit suppression was only one part of Wang Dou’s planning. After the Shogunate was established, each department performed its own duties and did not require much of Wang Dou’s mental energy. His main focus now was on the land reclamation and settlement affairs across the Eastern Circuit.

Like the various departments of the Shogunate, the Civil Affairs Department was also not yet perfected after its establishment. There were a great many plans for the future of the Eastern Circuit, and the most urgent was to first settle those refugees and disaster victims, opening up farmland and establishing fortified settlements.

But there was a problem here. Not counting the original inhabitants of the Eastern Circuit, the refugees Wang Dou had rescued and the disaster victims who had flowed in over the years added up to a new population of over 230,000. If they followed Wang Dou’s original method of land reclamation, all these people would be converted to military households, with each household allocated fifty mu of land. The land required would exceed 2.5 million mu.

It seemed that the entire Eastern Circuit combined did not have that much arable land, nor that many plow oxen.

While the Civil Affairs Department Commissioner Zhang Gui was fretting over this, on the third day of the fifth month, the department clerk Ye Xizhi presented to him a plan for collective farming. Zhang Gui’s eyes lit up, and he hurriedly rushed over to present the strategy to Wang Dou.

“This humble official believes that for land reclamation throughout the Eastern Circuit, we may initially establish a collective farming system, granting land collectively. Seeds, farm tools, and plow oxen would all be supplied by the government. All grain harvested would be turned over to the authorities, and the farming households would be issued monthly rations. In this way, the manpower and oxen of each settlement would be concentrated for use, eliminating worries about shortages of farm tools and the like, and also increasing the efficiency of land reclamation...”

The term “efficiency” was coined by Wang Dou and was already in common use among his subordinate officials.

The collective farming Zhang Gui described was nothing strange. At the beginning of the Ming dynasty, Zhu Yuanzhang’s military colonies initially used the collective farming method. When Sun Kewang governed Yunnan, he likewise established a collective farming system, similar to the production teams of later ages. In the early stages, it could indeed increase land reclamation efficiency, but...

Wang Dou said slowly, “I only fear that in the future, the soldiers and civilians will grow slack and unwilling to labor for the government.”

Whether the common people of China or humanity as a whole, there is one characteristic: they exhaust their minds laboring for their own families, but when working for the public, they are utterly unwilling to put their hearts into it. It was just like the manufacture of firearms at this time. A literati’s notebook from the period recorded: “...It is not so. I have heard that in trade between the Eastern and Western Oceans, the various barbarians exclusively buy guns from Guangdong. Those sold by the common people to the barbarians are extremely fine workmanship, while those made for the government are shoddy and inferior. From this we can see that we Chinese are unwilling to do fine work, not that we are incapable of fine work.”

Wang Dou worried that the collective farming system would, in the future, breed a great mass of idlers, with some so-called “clever people” thinking up every possible way to slack off, dragging the entire fortified settlement into a culture of bad habits. The early Ming collective farming system later evolved into land allocation by household, presumably for this very reason.

Zhang Gui chuckled, “The General is brilliant and farsighted, capable of what others cannot—this humble official thinks the same.”

He continued, “Therefore, this humble official’s collective farming system has a set term of years and corresponding supervision regulations. Those who perform outstandingly—the sons of their families may be selected for military service. At that time, when they retire, they may receive fifty mu of land from the settlement’s fields, along with plow oxen and farm tools, which will become their own property, passed down to their descendants.”

“In this way, in order to join the army and to obtain land, they must work diligently. It has the advantages of collective farming without its drawbacks. By extension, if the civilian clerks of each fort perform outstandingly, they too may receive land in the future. Of course, they must change their household registration, converting from civilian households to military households.”

Wang Dou rose and paced, looking out the window at the blazing sun. It was already the fifth month, and the weather was growing hotter by the day. Time passed so quickly.

Wang Dou sighed with emotion, then returned to the matter at hand.

What Zhang Gui said was highly feasible. Now, under his governance, military household registration was valuable; many civilian households secretly converted to military households—something unimaginable in other guard battalions of the Great Ming. In particular, families with a male serving in the army became hot commodities.

With limited financial resources, Wang Dou only planned to train an additional five thousand troops in the future. Unlike the previous urgent shortage of soldiers, the newly added population under his governance now included over a hundred thousand men fit for military service. With too many monks and too little gruel, undercurrents were already surging throughout the Eastern Circuit in the scramble for these five thousand military slots.

Wang Dou was fully entitled to be picky. If Zhang Gui’s method were implemented, in the days to come, in order to become soldiers and for the future land for their families, the military households under his rule would work hard and fight hard. This would maximize the utility of these new military households.

Given Zhang Gui’s mind, he probably could not have conceived such a meticulously far-sighted strategy. The lofty figure of Ye Xizhi flashed through Wang Dou’s mind.

And what Zhang Gui proposed—that the literati within the settlements must change their household registration status in order to receive land—made Wang Dou realize that his own group had already developed its own vitality, had begun to think for itself, proactively proposing methods to protect the group’s interests and exclude various forces outside the group.

Whether this change was good or bad, Wang Dou needed to watch and wait.

On the fifth day, Wang Dou approved Zhang Gui’s proposal, endorsing his collective farming system. On the seventh day, the great land reclamation campaign of the Eastern Circuit began in full force.

As the saying goes, before the three armies move, provisions go first. Establishing fortified settlements, opening up wasteland... Although Wang Dou would no longer build fort walls for each settlement, the money and grain needed for land reclamation was still an astronomical figure. In the initial period, for at least one year, several hundred thousand commoners would need Wang Dou to feed them—a burden that could be called extremely heavy.

The stored silver, coin, grain, and rice in various places of the Eastern Circuit were not plentiful. Even though he had seized back a considerable amount of grain, the grain and rice in Wang Dou’s storehouses amounted to less than four hundred thousand shi. How long the rations needed for over two hundred thousand commoners could last was extremely hard to say, not to mention all the other various expenses required.

In the eyes of his subordinates and outsiders, Wang Dou was like a child prodigy of wealth, endlessly conjuring up grain and rice. In truth, Wang Dou had unspeakable hardships.

Fortunately, during that campaign in the eleventh year of Chongzhen, Wang Dou had not only seized back a large quantity of grain and rice but also silver, cattle, and horses in no small number, as well as several thousand bolts of satin.

The plow oxen were now barely enough for the use of the Eastern Circuit’s people. However, a few years ago, reminded by Lai Mancheng, Wang Dou had understood the principle that cows give birth to calves. Two years had passed, and the original two thousand-odd plow oxen of Baoan Prefecture had already given birth to several hundred calves.

He had seized back many plow oxen in this campaign. Once they multiplied, he would no longer need to worry about the matter of plow oxen.

Similarly, he had seized many pigs and sheep. In the future, they would breed piglets and lambs to serve as meat, which could greatly ease the demand for grain among his soldiers and civilians. But veterinary medicine was a problem. Although the livestock farms had recruited many talented individuals from various places, related expertise was still lacking. Particularly excellent ox handlers and horse handlers were in short supply.

After much deliberation, Wang Dou finally decided that, aside from keeping a portion of ordinary cloth for making military uniforms, all the remaining satin, silks, and furs such as raccoon dog, fox, leopard, and tiger pelts would be sold. As for the horses and mules, apart from keeping the breeding stock, several thousand warhorses, and a portion of the mules, the rest would also all be sold.

Wang Dou was certainly not foolish enough to accept silver. Grain, iron, cloth, oil, salt, soy sauce, vinegar, timber, cotton, and the like could all be exchanged at equivalent value. The horses and mules would be sold first to the soldiers and civilians of Baoan Prefecture. Each of their households had fifty mu of land and paid taxes; after deducting their own rations, every household had some stored grain.

In particular, over the years, the sons of their families who served in the army had received considerable rewards and had substantial savings. The silver they were given they mostly used to buy grain and goods, accumulating even more. It was perfect to use these horses to exchange for their grain, which would help stabilize prices to some degree.

Of course, in order to maintain the spirit of hard work and plain living among the people within his territory, Wang Dou did not intend to sell those silks, satins, and raccoon dog, fox, leopard, and tiger furs within the Eastern Circuit.

Apart from this, Wang Dou had a large amount of silver on hand and planned to find some reliable merchants to purchase grain and goods from outside the circuit on a large scale.

xxx

Old White Ox:

A reader mentioned the issue of the official rank of a Ming dynasty Defense Commander. Unlike the Qing period, Great Ming generals were mostly appointed from guard battalion officers, so their rank depended on their official position within the guard battalion. In the late Ming, guard battalion positions were worthless, so those serving as Defense Commanders were a minority who were Guard Commanders (Upper Third Rank), while the majority were at the level of Assistant Guard Regional Commander (Upper Third Rank).

Saying that a Defense Commander was at the Upper Fifth Rank is absolutely impossible. That rank was only for Battalion Commanders and the like, who at most could serve as a Garrison Commander, in charge of a fourth-grade small fort—like the Shunxiang Fort that Wang Dou once commanded. First-grade garrison cities, second-grade circuit cities, third-grade fort cities (guard cities), fourth-grade small forts (units of Battalion Commanders, Company Commanders, etc.), fifth-grade fire beacon towers.