Chapter 70: The Old and the Weak

The news that arrived brought both joy and worry.

The joy was that the bald man, whose real name was Jiang He, and Tie Yi had not failed their mission: they had successfully led their men into the copper mine, routed the overseers, and persuaded the more than four hundred miners there, along with their families, to head west and join the Taiping Camp.

The worry was that Tie Yi believed utterly in the "Three Haves" ideal of the Taiping Camp that Zhou Shixiang had proclaimed and guaranteed.

Out of a desire to look after his fellow villagers, he had actually gone about the villages around Old Phoenix Manor spreading word of the Taiping Camp's virtues.

As a result, several hundred villagers from the surrounding area had responded with enthusiasm, and everyone, supporting the old and leading the young, had come along together, all hoping to live good days in the Taiping Camp with food to eat, clothes to wear, and meat on the table.

In this way, the number of the old, weak, women, and children had suddenly swelled to as many as two thousand.

Apart from that, the bald man — perhaps because he believed too deeply in Zhou Shixiang's grand principle of expanding the ranks, or perhaps because he understood it all too thoroughly — had actually carried the concept of "sustainable development" to glorious new heights.

On the return journey, there was not a single village or town he passed that he did not lead his men in plundering.

The result was that, aside from adding nearly two thousand more old, weak, women, and children to the Taiping Camp's burden of food and clothing, nothing at all was gained.

The only thing of any value was perhaps those two hundred-odd able-bodied men who could only be called peasants.

Furthermore, what was even more infuriating was this: those able-bodied laborers from Deqing to whom Zhou Shixiang had promised at Xihe Ferry that they could go home had been seized again by the bald man halfway along the road.

This not only made the Taiping Camp's reputation even worse, it also saddled Zhou Shixiang with the bad name of a man who broke his word.

Compared with what the bald man had done, the consequences his series of actions brought upon the Taiping Camp could not be better described than by the two words "utterly ruined."

The Taiping Camp's reputation in the vicinity of Deqing was now utterly infamous, no different from bandits. Within a few days, the plaints submitted by villagers to the Deqing county yamen had piled up to half a man's height.

Outside the yamen and the Green Standard garrison, wave after wave of people knelt begging for troops to be sent to rescue their kin. The townsfolk, upon hearing the three words "Taiping Camp," reacted as though they had heard of a fierce tiger, cursing endlessly.

Lu Gongming, the County Magistrate of Deqing, was also frightened out of his wits by the Taiping Camp's mad kidnapping spree. Had the Taiping Camp not truly withdrawn westward as agreed, he probably could not have sat still in his yamen at all.

Tang Sanshui, the Green Standard Battalion Commander, however, was full of regret over the matter: had he known the Taiping Camp was so fond of seizing people, he should have gone into that business himself in the first place — what a waste of a money-making opportunity.

Amid his regret, he neither drove away nor cursed the people kneeling outside the barracks begging for troops, but simply ignored them entirely, letting them weep and wail as they pleased.

The official dispatch to the prefecture had already been sent; at this point, it would not be out of the question to report that the Ming army had wheeled around for a second strike and plundered the people within the borders.

As long as the county seat did not fall, what did it matter if the people outside the walls were killed or carried off to the last one by the Ming army?

The only thing worth worrying about was whether, after the prefecture received the dispatch, the Regional Commander would promote him to Garrison Commander, and whether he would be ordered to march out and retake Luoding.

As for the former, Tang Sanshui was naturally ten thousand times willing — who would not rejoice at promotion and riches? As for the latter, he was ten thousand times unwilling.

Luoding was a place of barren mountains and foul waters.

Never mind that the news he had heard was only that bandits had seized the prefectural city; even if it had not been occupied by bandits, he would still be unwilling to march out and seize the credit of recovering lost territory.

Besides, whether Luoding was still held by bandits at this moment was very hard to say. What if it was now occupied by the Taiping Camp?

Fighting bandits was one thing; fighting the Taiping Camp — no! May Heaven bless him: let promotion and riches come one and all, but spare him from marching to war.

When the bald man swaggered up and stood before him, smug and self-satisfied, looking for all the world like a man of towering merit, Zhou Shixiang truly did not know whether to laugh or cry.

He clasped the bald man's hands and sighed repeatedly, his cheeks twitching without cease, truly unable to utter a single word, nor knowing where to begin.

This behavior, however, only made the bald man all the more pleased with himself, thinking that Zhou Shixiang was so overcome with emotion at the magnitude of his achievements that words failed him.

Tie Yi, as the miners' representative, naturally received an audience with Zhou Shixiang. After speaking a round of encouraging words, Zhou Shixiang took Song Xianggong, whose brow had long been furrowed, up onto the city wall.

Below the city gate, more than four thousand old, weak, women, and children, over four hundred miners, plus more than two hundred able-bodied men seized by force and those hundred-odd laborers who had "gone and come back" — a full five thousand people in all — were streaming into the city of Luoding in a long, orderly line.

The influx of so many people made the Taiping Camp's available housing extremely tight, and also caused the daily consumption of grain to multiply.

If the Taiping Camp wanted to grow stronger, what it urgently needed was people — but that meant able-bodied men, not the old, the weak, women, and children.

Luoding lay in mountainous terrain, and after years of continuous warfare, the land within its borders had long been desolate. It simply could not bear the burden of housing and sustaining so many people.

More importantly, Luoding lay between the Ming and Qing defense lines, where there was no possibility whatsoever of resting and recuperating.

Even if such a possibility existed, without several years' time, the Taiping Camp could not hope to feed so many people without relying on outside resources.

The old and weak, women and children; the army; grain; development.

For an entire day, these few words circled in Zhou Shixiang's mind. Maintaining an army required money and grain, and supporting the old, weak, women, and children beyond the army required an endless outlay of money and grain.

Compared with maintaining troops, providing for the old, weak, women, and children was unquestionably a bottomless pit — no return in the short term, and not necessarily any return in the long term either.

Zhou Shixiang's promise — or rather, his boast — had already been made, so he could not go back on his word to fatten himself and refuse these old, weak, women, and children entry.

If he did that, then from now on the Taiping Camp would probably truly have no choice but to expand its strength through forcible seizure, which would mean losing the hearts of the people entirely.

The problem was that winning or losing the people's hearts was not even the most pressing matter at hand. What mattered were those miners.

Zhou Shixiang did not want these four hundred-odd miners, who could be converted into fighting strength immediately, to lose trust and hope in the Taiping Camp.

Therefore, no matter how difficult it was, he would grit his teeth and take on the burden of these four thousand-odd old, weak, women, and children.

Adding the original two thousand-odd people in the rear camp, the number of old, weak, women, and children the Taiping Camp now had to support was close to seven thousand. The able-bodied soldiers, counting the miners and the newly seized men, numbered only a little over 1,300.

The supplies seized from Deqing and the grain provided through the deal with the Deqing Green Standard could only last one month. After one month, if the Taiping Camp did not obtain a new source of grain, the entire camp would run out of food.

Once the food ran out, it took no brains to know that the whole enterprise would surely collapse. Looking across all of history, there had never been an army that could hold together after running out of food.

The present Taiping Camp was not an iron army forged by faith as in later ages; it was merely a rabble. Therefore, Zhou Shixiang had to take measures to strangle the food-shortage crisis in its cradle.

The first measure he adopted was to move immediately against the several wealthy households in the city and the commoners who had not joined the Taiping Camp, seizing all their supplies and grain for military use.

The second was to leave Luoding and seek out a territory where he could obtain a stable logistical supply, in order to sustain the long-term struggle against the Qing.

Where this territory should be, Zhou Shixiang had not yet decided. After finishing a bowl of congee that Lin Wan'er had cooked for him, he told her that he was going to send troops to raid her father's house.