Chapter 23: Fight to the Death for His Majesty!

In the Han dynasty, if you wanted to join the army, the first requirement was that you had to be a son of a good family. If you were the child of a tenant farmer, don't even think about it.

At the very least, you had to come from a family of small independent farmers. For units like the Flying Fox Army, Gouzhu Army, or Willow Camp, the requirements were even higher.

The Feathered Forest Guard, for instance, demanded that your father had died on the battlefield — especially on a foreign battlefield — which is why the Feathered Forest Guard were, in their youth, simply the Orphans of the Feathered Forest.

By the Tang dynasty, the requirements were of course not as strict. But getting into the fubing garrison militia was still beset with obstacles.

As for the period starting with the Former Song, the military became a laughingstock.

Zhao Kuangyin himself did not come by the realm rightfully — he bullied the widow and orphan of the Chai clan and was draped in the yellow robe at Chen Bridge Station. Naturally, he guarded against others following his example and pulling the same stunt on his own descendants.

So, under the fine-sounding pretext of preventing the frontier-command disasters of the preceding Tang, he adopted the military strategy of "strengthening the trunk and weakening the branches."

The so-called "strengthening the trunk and weakening the branches" meant concentrating all elite soldiers in the Palace Army, while the provincial armies were nothing but decorations.

Whenever natural or man-made disasters struck, refugees would also be conscripted into their ranks.

Add to that the fact that convicted criminals were basically all sentenced to military service in the provincial armies, and just how much fighting strength those provincial armies could muster becomes a question worth pondering.

Small wonder, then, that once the founding generation of veterans had all died off, the Zhao Song dynasty was basically pinned to the ground and pummeled in every foreign war.

After all, back in the Han and Tang, if committing murder could get you sentenced to military service, who knows how many people would have gone out killing and burning long ago!

Consequently, by the time of the Zhao Song, the sense of superiority in military service built up over successive Chinese dynasties was utterly destroyed in a single reign.

Coupled with the practice of tattooing soldiers on the face, it became an even deeper humiliation, giving rise to the wretched saying: "Good iron is not forged into nails; good men do not become soldiers."

On top of that, the Zhao Song "shared the realm with the literati-officials," upholding the principle of civil officials controlling the military. Generals were a rung below civil ministers.

Men like Yue Wumu and Di Qing — pillars holding up the sky — could not be tolerated. No wonder the Zhao Song came to its pitiful end.

By the time the Great Ming's Hongwu Emperor, Zhu Yuanzhang, won the realm, he thought to himself: I am far more brilliant and martial than those wastrel sons of the Zhao clan. So he slapped his own head and came up with the freakish institution of the guard-battalion system.

Clinging to the notion that "a hero's son is a hero too," he decreed that the descendants of artisan households could only be artisans, and the descendants of soldiers would hereditarily be soldiers — blocking off all channels of talent mobility.

As a result, the guard-battalion system rotted away just as quickly.

Later on, the guard-battalion system became a joke as well: the rank-and-file soldiers mostly turned into the household slaves of the Chiliarchs and Centurions — hereditary household slaves at that!

The status of a soldier eating imperial grain plummeted day by day, and it was only logical that the troops had no fighting strength.

Until this very day, the imperial decree personally proclaimed by the Chongzhen Emperor before a great assembly signified that, for the first time since the Zhao Song began suppressing them over six hundred years ago, the status of military men was finally about to rise — perhaps even to match the standards of the mighty Han!

What do military men fear most? They do not fear death! They only fear being forgotten!

If, as in the former Song, a great general who fought for his country was held in less glory than the top jinshi whose name was sung out at the Eastern Flower Gate, then who would be willing to fight to the death for the nation?

The Great Ming had been the same — until now, when the Chongzhen Emperor completely rewrote all of that!

The edict the Chongzhen Emperor issued today, though filled with plain vernacular, was exactly what Chongzhen wanted. Parallel-prose essays in four-six rhythm may be ornate in rhetoric, but what of the mud-legged bumpkins and the rank-and-file soldiers?

How many of them can even read? Only by making it so that the mud-legged bumpkins and the rank-and-file soldiers can all understand clearly can they truly support him.

Having dropped the mic and strutted off, the Chongzhen Emperor returned to the rear palace in high spirits to kick back. The soldiers of the Capital Camps, the Five Chief Military Commissions, and the White Rod Army who got the news, however, completely exploded!

What do Chinese people value? What they value most, in truth, is the transmission of incense and fire. In an ordinary family, if a boy is born, that is called having incense and fire. If there are only daughters and no sons, then people say that family's incense and fire has been cut off.

What is meant by incense and fire? The continuation of the bloodline — that after you die, someone will escort you into the ancestral graves, and someone will offer incense and burn paper money for you during the festivals and holidays. That is incense and fire!

Now the Emperor values military men.

With the Shrine of the Loyal and Martyred established, one need no longer fear being without incense and fire after death! Even if one's own descendants are unfilial and forget you, the incense and fire in the Shrine of the Loyal and Martyred will always have a share for you!

As for one's elderly parents at home, the imperial court will support them in your stead, and the local officials — the father-and-mother magistrates — will visit to offer comfort. As for wife and children, no need to worry about them either!

For eight hundred generations, your ancestors were all illiterates who wouldn't recognize the character for "one" even if a carrying pole fell over and formed it.

Now, if you die in battle, your little brat gets the chance to enter school and study — this is a good thing you couldn't find even with a lantern! As for yourself, you should have died long ago.

If your single death can trade for such a good life for your family, then staying alive any longer feels like a sin!

Humans, in later ages, were called higher animals. Since they are still animals, they certainly retain some animal habits. For example, herd mentality — the bellwether theory applies just as well to humans.

When the majority of people resolve to die for the Chongzhen Emperor, even if some still harbor doubts in their hearts, they will be swept along by the fanatics and go calmly to their deaths.

In this way, Man Gui was astonished to discover: the same old lords of the Capital Camps, the same soldiers who once clung greedily to life and feared death — now they were like madmen, every single one utterly reckless with his own life.

One man had an arm hacked off by a Jianzhou barbarian, yet instead of retreating, he pressed forward, using his one remaining arm to grapple the barbarian and fiercely sink his teeth into the barbarian's neck, striving to give the comrade behind him the chance to kill the barbarian.

As for the blades and swords hacking wounds into his own body, he paid them no heed whatsoever — it was purely a fight of trading life for life.

For Hooge, who was commanding the assault on the city, this sudden change was nothing but frustration.

The Ming troops on the battlements were like madmen one and all, suddenly become utterly fearless of death. Time and again, grievously wounded Ming soldiers would grapple Jianzhou barbarians and leap together from the city walls!

If all Ming troops were like the men before his eyes now, never mind attacking the southern barbarians' capital — could they themselves even withdraw safely back to Liaodong?

If every man in the army were truly like this, even if they withdrew to Liaodong, could they still hold Liaodong? Those damned Ming troops — how did they suddenly all become like different people?

Could it be that shouting "Die for His Majesty" really holds such tremendous power? Can it make a man shed his mortal frame and exchange his bones?

Unwilling to accept it, Hooge simply detached a thousand men from his last remaining reserve force and sent them to press the assault, while he himself headed straight for Hong Taiji's tent.

It must be understood that from the start of the siege until now, the ten thousand Han Eight Banners troops Hooge had brought were nearly spent. The five thousand elite soldiers of the Jurchen Eight Banners were the last core strength in his hand.

If they too were ground to nothing, the Great Jin state, whose population was never large to begin with, would — even if one could not call it a crippling blow — at the very least be severely battered!