Chapter 50: 049 Raising Troops for the King? A Farce!

Evening, school let out.

Pang Chunlai was packing up his textbooks when Zhao Han suddenly walked over and said in a low voice, "Sir, the Tartars have broken through the passes. The court has sent an eight-hundred-li urgent summons to raise troops for the King."

"What?" Pang Chunlai jerked his head up, his face full of disbelief.

Although Pang Chunlai was from Liaodong, although his family had been destroyed and his home scattered, although he had lost his native land entirely, in Pang Chunlai's mind the Later Jin regime was nothing to fear — at most, just another Tatar or Oirat horde.

He had always believed that even if the Great Ming were to fall, it would fall to court corruption and peasant uprisings; the Later Jin regime did not have the slightest hope.

This was because Liaodong, too, suffered under the Little Ice Age, and its social productive forces simply could not develop.

Moreover, the Later Jin regime's structure was loose, the Eight Banners system still imperfect — just a gang of barbarians who knew nothing but plunder. They robbed not only the Han people but also other tribes; the Wild Jurchens and others were plundered terribly.

Truly, the minority peoples of Liaodong were constantly rising in resistance, because Later Jin rule was far too brutal.

Even tribes that had submitted to the Later Jin would be subjected to second and third punitive expeditions — utterly baffling. When they lacked grain, they went to seize grain; when they lacked people, they went to seize people. Many Wild Jurchen tribes were longing for the Great Ming.

By the time Pang Chunlai left Liaodong, the Later Jin regime was already showing signs of internal collapse.

But his information came slowly; he did not know that Hong Taiji had taken power and implemented a set of "Tiancong New Policies," pulling the Later Jin back from the brink of collapse.

The Later Jin of this moment, compared to the Later Jin Pang Chunlai had known in Liaodong, had already undergone a qualitative transformation!

Zhao Han said, "The Tartars really have broken through the passes. The Governor of Jiangxi intends to answer the summons to raise troops for the King."

Pang Chunlai shook his head repeatedly and scoffed, "Jiangxi raising troops for the King — what a joke. By the time Wei Chengcheng reaches the capital, the Tartars will have finished looting and gone home. That scoundrel has his calculations well laid: first, he can use the name of raising troops for the King to squeeze out money; second, he can flaunt his own loyalty and valor. When the time comes, without fighting a single battle, he'll have gotten his silver and won the Emperor's favor."

"He does have some petty cleverness," Zhao Han said with genuine admiration. No wonder that fellow Wei could rise eight ranks in a row.

Pang Chunlai thought carefully and said, "First, the Tartars certainly cannot breach the capital; second, every county and department around the capital will inevitably be ravaged; third, the Liaodong Military Commissioner Yuan Chonghuan is going to be in trouble; fourth, the Donglin Faction cabinet will likely fall."

Zhao Han looked at this teacher, unable to hide his astonishment, inwardly exclaiming: damn impressive!

Pang Chunlai's information all came from the official dispatches; the dispatches from this year's fifth month fully revealed Chongzhen's political intentions.

The Emperor, using the opportunity of the capital evaluation, had demoted, dismissed, sent out, or forced into retirement nearly two hundred capital officials, while promoting several dozen supervising censors and remonstrance officials. Combined with the earlier purge of over two hundred from the eunuch faction, Chongzhen had now thoroughly seized control of the court's situation.

At the very least, Chongzhen believed he had already brought the situation under control.

The next step was to purge the Donglin Faction cabinet, and the Tartars breaking through the passes provided ample justification.

Chongzhen truly wished to govern with vigor, impatient to sweep away the decline in one stroke — it was a pity his stride was simply far too large. The many young officials he promoted knew only how to recklessly fire off empty talk; in ability, they were not even the equal of the Donglin Faction.

Teacher and student sat facing each other in silence.

Suddenly, Zhao Han asked, "Sir, what is a xia?"

Pang Chunlai said disdainfully, "Nothing more than law-breaking, prohibition-defying outlaws — not a shred of merit in them."

"Brother, dinner's ready!" Fei Chun suddenly called out.

"Coming!"

After dinner, Zhao Han went straight back to his dormitory. He ground ink, then sat blankly in a daze.

He suddenly wanted to write a martial-hero novel, roughly copying the plot while smuggling in all sorts of personal messages. It must extol devotion to family and country, must champion national integrity, and at the same time call upon those wandering heroes to serve the nation and the people.

The style could not be too formal, or the common masses would not understand it.

The style also could not be too modern, or it would not conform to the ancients' reading habits, and would be dismissed as vulgar and crude.

The style of Water Margin would be just right.

The most suitable works to adapt were naturally The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Return of the Condor Heroes.

But after Zhao Han had ground the ink, he found that the plot seemed to have been forgotten, yet also seemed still largely remembered — the novel and the various television adaptations all jumbled together beyond telling apart.

But no matter what, the minor-fry supporting characters were certainly more than half forgotten; he would just have to fabricate them wildly on his own.

And the Beggars' Sect — he could not write them too upright. After all, the brother and sister had been bullied by beggars!

Now, as for Fourth Young Master Fei Yinggong: having failed to recruit troops in his home region, he took his silver and headed straight for Nanchang, only to find that Wei Chengcheng had already set out with his forces.

He hurried and rushed, finally catching up with them at Nankang Prefecture.

The Jiangxi Regional Commander had conveniently fallen ill and was lying up in Nankang Prefecture, refusing to move on. After days of delay, Wei Chengcheng could wait no longer and led the troops onward himself.

The Southern Jiangxi Regional Commander also did not come, claiming that bandit troubles in Southern Jiangxi were severe and he could not get away for the moment.

Under Governor Wei Chengcheng's command were only two thousand tofu-soldiers provided by the Nanchang Guard; he had at least managed to recruit over a thousand local braves, plus the hundred-odd bandits Fei Yinggong had brought along. Traveling by boat the whole way, counting the boatmen and sailors, their strength barely reached four thousand men.

The provisions they had brought were not plentiful, and midway through the journey their army rations were already running critically short.

Fortunately, traveling by boat was fast; upon reaching Nanjing, Wei Chengcheng obtained support from Chen Yuting.

Chen Yuting was a major figure in the Donglin Faction and also Wei Chengcheng's mentor, currently holding the post of Right Chief Censor of Nanjing. Moreover, he had presided over the Nanjing capital evaluation for two consecutive years — a power broker whose word carried weight.

Having procured some provisions at Nanjing, the King-raising Grand Army continued its march. When they passed the Huai'an customs checkpoint, the supervising official actually demanded a transit fee.

The officers and soldiers were overjoyed at this, seized the chance to turn hostile, and looted the Huai'an docks. Then, before the canal-defense troops could assemble, they promptly scrambled to flee — every last one of them making a killing in the process.

The third year of Chongzhen, early second month.

The Jiangxi King-raising Grand Army reached Dezhou by boat and encountered large numbers of White Lotus sect bandits.

This time there was no fabrication — there really were White Lotus sect bandits.

Because the Tartars had broken through the passes, the Northern Metropolitan Region had descended into utter chaos; every department and county suffered successive pillaging by Tartars and government troops alike. The White Lotus followers seized the chance to rise in revolt, spreading across three provinces — the Northern Metropolitan Region, Henan, and Shandong — and blocking the Grand Canal passage entirely.

Wei Chengcheng grew somewhat afraid and wanted to withdraw to the Eastern Depot Prefecture.

Fei Yinggong, however, was itching for action: "Governor, do not panic. Let me go exterminate those villains!"

"Worthy brother, you must not. The villains are numerous; I fear we cannot match them by force," Wei Chengcheng hastily dissuaded him.

"A few paltry villains — what is there to fear?" Fei Yinggong laughed heartily.

That night, Fei Yinggong personally led his hundred-odd bandits, picked out two hundred local braves, promised them gold and silver, and landed for a night raid.

The White Lotus congregants outside the city fell into chaos; the Dezhou Magistrate seized the chance to lead troops out of the city, and with coordinated action from within and without, routed over ten thousand White Lotus bandits — who were, in truth, just a gang of refugees who had only just picked up weapons.

Wei Chengcheng rewarded the troops, selected able-bodied captives to serve as soldiers, and the Jiangxi King-raising Army's strength reached five thousand.

By the time they reached Tongzhou, the fighting had long since ended; the Tartars had finished their looting and withdrawn back to Liaodong.

The Jiangxi King-raising Grand Army was ordered to withdraw immediately from the Northern Metropolitan Region.

That rotten court — not only did it refuse to pay reward money, it didn't even provide army rations.

And Wei Zhaocheng knew only how to bribe the great ministers at court, securing his own merit for the relief expedition while casually reporting a few of his officers for commendation, without the slightest concern whether the troops under his command lived or died.

On the march back, the great army ran out of provisions in Shandong and, in their fury, disembarked to plunder the towns and villages.

They looted all the way home!

This relief expedition was nothing but a farce.

The Shanxi Regional Commander Zhang Honggong was ordered to relieve the capital. On the first day he encamped at Tongzhou, on the second day he was reassigned to guard Changping, and on the third day reassigned again to guard Liangxiang.

Such frequent rotation of defense posts was solely because, on the day an army arrived, the court was not required to provide rations.

The Shanxi troops marched a thousand li to rescue the sovereign, were rotated through three posts in three days, and didn't get so much as a mouthful of grain. The soldiers, enraged, plundered the towns and villages, whereupon the court threw the Shanxi Governor and Regional Commander into prison. Five thousand crack frontier troops scattered in a single uproar. After fleeing back to Shanxi, they either joined the peasant armies or seized mountain strongholds and turned bandits.

Wu Zimian, the Yansui Regional Commander, used the relief expedition as a pretext to extort soldiers unwilling to join the guard force, while also withholding pay and rations and illicitly selling off army horses. On the march, large numbers of troops deserted. Governor Zhang Mengjing died of grief and indignation.

The Gansu relief army, having received no mobilization pay and being driven hard on forced marches by their officers, lost many men and warhorses to exhaustion and death.

Consequently, a mutiny broke out in the Gansu garrison. The soldiers killed their commanding officer, seized the pay and provisions, and set off for home. They were suppressed en route; part of them continued on to relieve the capital, while the rest returned to their home garrisons to guard the frontier.

This whole chain of absurd operations not only failed to kill any Tartars, but instead wrecked the northwestern frontier armies entirely.

The crack frontier troops of Shanxi and Shaanxi were utterly lost, and the peasant uprisings spread like wildfire.

In some places, in fact, the main force of the rebel armies consisted of those very deserters from the frontier forces. With crack frontier troops joining the rebellion, the peasant armies' fighting strength surged dramatically. They were no longer chased and beaten as they had been the year before.

The north had already changed skies, but Jiangnan remained as prosperous as ever.

Although Jiangxi had suffered minor disasters, on the whole conditions were still normal — only the summer grain harvest was slightly short.

Zhao Han still spent each day reading, practicing martial arts, studying military strategy, and, on the side, continuing to write his Water Margin–style Legend of the Eagle-Shooting Hero.

By the time the great relief army returned to Jiangxi, Zhao Han had already reached the full age of twelve — thirteen by the traditional count.

Fourteen years remained until Chongzhen hanged himself!

(End of Volume One)

(End of Chapter)