Chapter 72: Camp Elder

The Han people have always been content with modest prosperity; since the Song and Ming dynasties, there has also been the saying that civil pursuits are valued over martial ones, and that a good man does not become a soldier.

Unlike those residents whose homes had been struck by fire and who could be said to be utterly destitute, with nothing at all, and who therefore joined the Taiping Camp to fight for a way to survive, those residents who did not join had not suffered fires in their homes, so they were unwilling to abandon their homes to join this damnable Taiping Camp.

Even if such people's homes were likewise bare-walled and their whole family, young and old, did not know where their next meal was coming from, these people still would not give up their homes, because their homes could shelter them from wind and rain and give them roots.

With a home, there is hope; with roots, one will not die as a lonely wandering ghost in a foreign land.

Unless driven to the last extremity, the Han will not leave their native place, still less go off to be soldiers and serve as cannon fodder. Therefore, when the prefectural office posted the notice requiring all the city's residents to enlist, panic and resistance were naturally unavoidable.

In the eyes of these residents, the Taiping Camp's beguiling of those disaster victims with talk of food to eat, clothes to wear, meat to eat, and the like was nothing but a swindle of ghosts — could there be such a good thing in this world?

Besides, their eyes were not blind; they could see that among the common folk who had flooded into the city these past two days, quite a few wore bitter faces. If this were truly a good thing, could they wear bitter faces as though their parents had died?

And that bunch who days ago had clamored to sign up — how many days has it been? The living, breathing men of then are now buried in the ground.

How exactly did they die? How was that battle fought?

Only ghosts know!

Squire Wu and Old Master Qi were renowned philanthropists, a family of scholars, and both had served as officials under the Great Ming. On what grounds did the Taiping Camp raid their homes?

Was it an order from the Yongli Son of Heaven? No matter how one looks at it, the Taiping Camp's conduct reeks of something sinister.

In any case, it does not look like proper, upright Ming official troops. Perhaps it is truly as some say: these people are no Ming army at all — they are simply bandits!

Besides, we common folk may be illiterate, unable to read, unable to grasp the great principles in books or understand the teachings of the sages, but we common folk are not fools.

In this world, the only ones who would drag all the common people into the army without regard for old or weak, women or children, are roving bandits — no one else!

For us common, humble households, being poor is fine. As long as we keep the law and behave honestly, no matter which emperor sits the throne, no matter whether the masters in the yamen bear the surname Ming or Qing, we can still get by.

After so many years of war, surely the officials need someone to till the land and pay them grain, do they not? Surely they can leave us some way to live.

But now a single worthless notice tells us to enlist — is that not driving people to their deaths and leaving us no way to live at all?

A hundred men, a hundred minds. Under such circumstances, the word "voluntary" on the prefectural office's notice was truly voluntary only on paper. No one volunteered at all — everyone was hiding at home!

At first, Song Xianggong rounded up a host of minor clerks and also found from the camp some young men who knew a few characters and could talk well, mostly shop assistants and waiters.

These men took the brass gongs issued by the yamen and went along the streets beating them everywhere, then shouted at the top of their lungs. But shout as they might, it had no effect.

Two hours passed, and still not one household had opened its door of its own accord to go to the Taiping Camp and sign up.

And so, violence began.

In the process of forcing those residents who refused to join the Taiping Camp into the camp, some had their arms broken, some had their legs injured, and some were beaten until their faces streamed with blood. Truly it was a scene of utter turmoil, with every household weeping.

Force was used, but under Zhou Shixiang's repeated warnings, the several platoon commanders tasked with carrying out the orders still restrained their men, so that no lives were lost.

After an afternoon of shouting, weeping, and chaos, the Taiping Camp finally swept all the residents of Luoding into the camp, thereby gaining more than four hundred able-bodied men and over a thousand old, weak, women, and children.

All the supplies in the homes of the unaffected residents that could be of use to the Taiping Camp were also requisitioned in full — from large iron implements used in the household down to pots, bowls, pans, and ladles. In short, anything that could be used was taken away.

Even door panels were pried off; it was said that on future marches they could be used to block Tartar arrows, and when camping they could serve as beds.

If there were wounded, they could be used to carry people; and if they ran into days of continuous rain and could find no firewood, the door panels would serve for that too.

The old, weak, women, and children in the rear camp swelled to nearly ten thousand. So many people turned half of Song Xianggong's hair white overnight.

Many hands make confusion; many people make clamor; many people make disorder; many people make things hard to manage... In short, more people does not necessarily mean more strength; it can also mean more chaos and harder management.

Without rules, nothing can be accomplished.

Governing the people and marching to war are essentially the same: as long as there are regulations and responsible persons appointed at every level, things cannot fall into disorder. After a few days of adjustment, the matter will get on track.

In order to make these old, weak, women, and children adapt to life in the Taiping Camp in the shortest possible time and accept the leadership and command of the Taiping Camp, Song Xianggong spent most of the night compiling the basic management system for the rear camp.

In the process, Zhou Shixiang also contributed many ideas drawn from methods of later ages. In the end, a "Taiping Camp Rear Camp Organization and Management Regulations" was freshly produced.

Although these management regulations drew on some methods from later ages, on the whole they still followed the people-governing thought of the present era.

Song Xianggong divided the rear camp into twenty small camps, each with one camp elder, five camp managers, and ten deputy camp managers.

The so-called camp elder was in fact equivalent to the platoon commander of the front camp, except that the former governed the people while the latter commanded soldiers. Hence the post was called "camp elder" rather than, as in the army, platoon commander.

The camp elders were mostly chosen from among the elderly, or from village heads and hamlet chiefs.

In short, the sole condition for appointing a camp elder was that the person must win the unanimous approval of the old, weak, women, and children of his camp, and that when he spoke, others were willing to listen.

As for the camp managers, they were chosen from among the old and weak whose legs and feet were still serviceable and who had some strength; their main task was to assist the camp elder in managing the old, weak, women, and children of their camp.

Wounded soldiers retired from the front camp, when settled in the future, would mostly be placed in such posts.

The grain for the camp's common people was also collected from the public storehouse by the camp elders and camp managers in a unified manner and then distributed.

In Zhou Shixiang's view, this procedure was highly likely to lead to embezzlement by the camp elders and camp managers, but for the moment this was not the time to consider that.

Compared with the drawback that camp elders and camp managers might embezzle the people's rations, the camp elder and camp manager system was the most effective organizational method at present.

The selections of camp elders and camp managers were quickly made. The more than one thousand old, weak, women, and children from the Old Phoenix Village copper mine were divided into three camps, and each camp's elder and managers were elected by themselves.

The common folk who had followed voluntarily were also headed by the elders of their original villages.

Song Xianggong intervened only when arranging the camp elders and managers for those Luoding residents who had been forced into the camp; for the other camps, the people mostly decided their own choices and simply reported them up.

Once the operation grew larger, the corresponding organizational structure inevitably had to expand.