Chapter 160: Construction

"Plop."

The moment Yang Yunnong crossed the threshold of Chen Xin's office, he dropped to his knees and shuffled forward on them.

Yang Yunnong knelt on the floor, advancing as he spoke: "My lord Chen, your humble subordinate has yearned for this day and night, praying to gods and Buddha at home every day. At last my wish is granted — seeing my lord Chen return safe and sound, my heart feels truly warm."

Chen Xin hurriedly helped him up and said, "Thanks to Commander Yang's heartfelt devotion, I must say the gods and Buddhas in heaven were surely moved by your sincerity, which is why they allowed me to return safely."

Yang Yunnong detected a strange note in his tone and hastily changed tack: "My lord is too kind. It was all your own boundless good fortune. In any case, as long as my lord is unharmed, your humble subordinate is content. Lord Chen led a force of tigers and wolves and achieved unprecedented merit. Wendeng Camp has been gazetted in the court bulletin and its fame shakes the realm. Though I could not attend at your side, I share in the reflected glory."

Chen Xin invited him to sit, then laughed heartily and said, "Weihai, Chengshan, and Jinghai are now one body with Wendeng Camp. Commander Yang may also be counted as a man of my Wendeng Camp."

Though Yang Yunnong was useless in battle, his political instincts were quite sharp. Chen Xin had now risen several ranks in succession, and Wendeng Camp had been granted the authority to evaluate the three guards — clearly Chen Xin was now his direct superior. So the moment he received word of Chen Xin's return, he had rushed over with gifts to pay his respects. His former subordinate had become his superior, and Yang adjusted his form of address instantly, without the slightest awkwardness.

Yang Yunnong agreed wholeheartedly. After a round of flattery, he put on a solemn expression and said, "My lord Chen, a few days ago the seal-holding commanders of Chengshan and Jinghai also came here. They are still waiting in the guard town. I shall notify them tomorrow to come pay their respects to my lord."

Chen Xin chuckled. "Then I must trouble Commander Yang. Commander Yang is always so enthusiastic in his work. I heard that while I was away on campaign, you often came to Mazidun to inquire for news — that speaks for itself."

Yang Yunnong gave a dry cough. At that time he had assumed Chen Xin was certain to die and had been thinking of swallowing up the two Mazidun outposts, and he had been rather blatant about it. Now Chen Xin's tone was unfriendly. Yang Yunnong feared he would use public office to settle private scores.

"Your humble subordinate only came to see if there was anything I could help with. Since I could not contribute my strength when Lord Chen marched to the capital to relieve the Emperor, the least I could do was help my lord resolve some worries at home. Wherever my lord has need of me in the future, I shall certainly follow your wishes to the letter, without the slightest discount."

Chen Xin sized up this fat man. Guard officers of this rank no longer posed the slightest threat to him. He did not intend to waste too much time on this person and said directly, "Then I thank Commander Yang for his support. As it happens, there is an urgent matter I must first discuss with Commander Yang. Wendeng Camp has a troop quota of 3,500, but the court has not provided that much pay and provisions. They have ordered my Wendeng Camp to clear the wastelands of Wendeng. All land within Wendeng County, whether military or civilian fields, shall be inspected by Wendeng and then incorporated into military farms. We both know the situation of the fields in Weihai Guard. Any land that was not fertilized or sown before the sixth month shall be counted as wasteland. When the time comes, I shall ask Commander Yang and Vice Prefect Wang to hand it over in person."

"I shall certainly be there. Certainly be there. My lord need only send word." Yang Yunnong did not haggle at all and agreed to everything. Chen Xin was only clearing wasteland for now. If he foolishly kicked up a fuss, and Chen Xin then forced them to disgorge their hidden fields, that would be a far greater loss.

Yang Yunnong wore a fawning smile. "With my lord's guidance, our Weihai Guard will surely prosper more and more. But my lord should not only look beyond the city walls. Within Weihai city there are also many soldiers and civilians who need my lord's attention. In particular, commerce in the city is withering. Just yesterday two more tenants surrendered their government shop leases, and for the moment no merchants can be found to take them. My lord has wide connections, so your humble subordinate boldly asks my lord to find replacements on our behalf."

Chen Xin did not refuse. Since Yang Yunnong had come bearing gifts, the shops would naturally be accepted. And since Yang Yunnong was so sensible, Chen Xin would let him off the hook regarding the hidden fields he had encroached upon in Weihai Guard.

"Mm. As it happens, someone on Mr. Liu's side needs to open a commercial shop, which will perfectly fill this gap. We must not delay the people's livelihood."

On the third day after returning to Weihai, the two men led the combat troops stationed in Weihai and some civilians to the cemetery to pay respects to the fallen soldiers. The ceremony had become standardized: officers of every rank in Wendeng Camp and administrative personnel from the civil affairs system all carried coffins. The memorial process was simple and solemn. The troops fired volleys in place of setting off firecrackers, giving the funeral a more distinctly military character.

Weihai's Loyal Martyrs' Shrine was built right beside the cemetery, funded by the civil affairs office and constructed by the labor of the settlement households. Inside were arrayed the spirit tablets of all the soldiers who had fallen in this campaign, with incense smoke curling among them. Liu Minyou had specially hired some elderly military households to clean the cemetery and shrine daily and tend the regular incense offerings. Some family members performed rites inside every day, and recently the sound of weeping had been unceasing.

In this campaign to relieve the capital, over five hundred men had died in total, accounting for twenty percent of Wendeng Camp's full establishment, with the killer squads suffering the heaviest casualties. Many of them were Dongjiang soldiers who had only come to Weihai the previous year. They had fought with particular valor, achieving the most kills — and the most casualties.

Among the wounded, over seventy could not return to service, while more than a hundred could rejoin their units after recovery. These wounded veterans were precious assets. Some would undergo training and then enter the schools to conduct military drill for students aged ten and above. Others would enter the fortified settlements and take up posts there. Chen Xin was resolute about strengthening control at the grassroots level.

Liu Minyou agreed with him on this point. These wounded soldiers had discipline and strong obedience. After attending a crash literacy course, they would make excellent settlement chiefs. They also understood some military matters and could assist instructors with training. To guarantee their authority, the power to distribute plow oxen, seeds, and farmland within the settlement would rest in their hands. Given the current composition of Wendeng Camp's settlement households, no clan force could rival them.

According to Chen Xin's plan, a portion of veterans would also be selected for training and then dispatched to the various new fortified settlements to train the farmer-soldiers. The farmer-soldiers' formation would be a mixed array of pikes and firearms, primarily modeled on the Gustavus formation, but with even smaller units and greater maneuverability. Its depth would be shallower than Maurice's Dutch formation, and its stability would not match the dense Spanish or Swiss formations. Gustavus's solution was to deploy two lines of formations, strengthen the company artillery firepower, and supplement them with a certain amount of cavalry.

Sweden's superbly trained musketeers could reload and fire while advancing in rotation, covering the pikemen's attack, which meant Gustavus's pikemen were no longer a purely defensive force. However, the formation's inherent lack of mobility meant it remained more defensive than offensive. Without highly mobile cavalry in support, it could not achieve decisive victory — especially against roving criminal gangs like the roving bandits and the Jianzhou Bandits, who were easy to rout but very difficult to annihilate.

Each fortified settlement was organized with ninety-six pikemen and ninety-six musketeers, in a formation four or six ranks deep, plus a fifty-man musket detachment. Including the commander, drummer, standard-bearer, bugler, and personal guards, the total was 250 men, organized as a company. This organization placed greater emphasis on firepower output. Chen Xin planned to later equip the companies with bronze cannons or crouching-tiger cannons, which would make their frontal firepower extremely formidable. The pikemen would face an enemy already greatly weakened and shaken by firearms.

The military-farm farmer-soldiers were currently positioned as Wendeng's garrison and reserve force. Once flintlock muskets were mass-produced, these men could quickly become regular troops. Training musketeers was simpler than training cold-weapon troops, and the manpower requirements for firearm troops were not as high as for cold weapons. Moreover, with a single troop type, a massive army could be rapidly assembled. After a short period of integrated training with artillery and cavalry, they could be deployed as regular troops.

If Wendeng could build seventy fortified settlements, thirty Battalion Commander could piece together fifteen thousand soldiers with basic training. In peacetime they could defend the locality; in wartime they could rapidly replenish combat troop losses. As long as the sea lanes remained open, such a force fighting on interior lines within Wendeng's system of forts and blockhouses truly need fear no one. As for the Wendeng combat battalion, Chen Xin intended to keep its current model, adding support troop types and enhancing mobility on both land and sea.

The veterans selected for transfer were all squad leaders and above. Their unit assignments were first transferred to the training corps. They would begin trials at Weihai's fortified blockhouses, exploring the training methods and combat modes of the formation. Once regulations were formalized, they would be extended to the other military farms in the Wendeng garrison area. The farmer-soldiers were temporarily militia in nature, but they would serve as the reserve manpower pool for future flintlock infantry. Because the Gustavus formation was closer to line formation, they would be able to quickly adapt to new flintlock tactics.

When preparing to select this group of veterans, Chen Xin suddenly realized there was no officer training institution. The current training corps instructors all focused on training new recruits and were clearly unsuitable for training officers. So he set aside a plot of land in the Weihai military camp and established an officer training course. His goal was naturally a military academy, but an academy could not be opened on a whim. Venue and funding were minor issues; the key problem was the lack of instructors and teaching materials. Moreover, opening a military school would attract too much attention. So Chen Xin decided to start with an officer training course and gradually perfect it.

The first problem to solve was instructors: they needed practical combat experience, literacy, and the ability to articulate. Chen Xin racked his brains but could not find suitable candidates, so he had to temporarily have the commanding officers serve concurrently and have the army itself compile the teaching materials. He immediately summoned Dai Zhenggang, Wang Zhangfu, Dong Yu, and others, assigning each of them to write teaching materials on tactics and logistics.

Dai Zhenggang and Wang Zhangfu were both rough, unlettered men. Though they could now read, they had never written teaching materials in their lives. Under Chen Xin's relentless pressure, treated like a combat mission, they had no choice but to grab their subordinate squad commanders and company commanders to brainstorm ideas, then find their unit's training officers to polish the prose. Every night a group of officers burned the midnight oil. They produced a draft, but after Chen Xin's initial review it was all sent back for rewriting. The reason: it plagiarized too much from the combat regulations and was unsuitable for officer training. Chen Xin's requirement was that they distill command principles from actual combat experience to teach the officers who would be promoted in the future.

While Dai Zhenggang and Wang Zhangfu were tearing their hair out, Chen Xin did not let Zhu Guobin and the others in Tianjin off the hook either. He had reserved topics for these commanding officers as well. Lu Chuanzong's First Unit had performed brilliantly in Luanzhou, so he was assigned to write on urban street fighting. Zhu Guobin was assigned cavalry-infantry coordination and cavalry pursuit.

At the end of the sixth month, another small wave of refugees came from Dongjiang. After Yuan Chonghuan killed Mao Wenlong the previous year, he had submitted a memorial to the Emperor requesting that Dengzhou promptly replenish Dongjiang's military rations, stating that Dongjiang had already been starving for eight months and hoping for swift action. When the first shipment of grain arrived, it slightly alleviated Dongjiang's dire situation, but the consequence of eight months without grain was that most Dongjiang soldiers had lost their combat effectiveness. Before the Jianzhou Bandits invaded the interior, Lord Yuan had suddenly reduced Dongjiang's troop quota to 18,000. At that time Liaodong was already frozen over, and the islands of Dongjiang knew nothing of it. Moreover, after the new year the court was busy dealing with the Four Cities campaign, and Dongjiang was once again selectively forgotten. The islands of Dongjiang Garrison were cut off from supplies again. Amid hunger and cold, the island soldiers could no longer speak of loyalty to the court. Coupled with Liu Xingzhi's rebellion, people began fleeing in a steady stream from the Liaodong coast and the Dongjiang islands. Because Wendeng Camp's reputation had already spread to Dongjiang Garrison, Weihai became their first choice.

The Dongjiang Garrison that Mao Wenlong had painstakingly built was disintegrating, its strength less than half its peak. Liang Tingdong had at the time intended to relocate the entire Dongjiang force to Guanning or Jizhen, but Sun Chengzong roundly rebuked him and presented the Emperor with an accounting, calculating that the relocation time would be at least two or three years, and the resettlement costs even more staggering. Liang Tingdong had to abandon the idea. Similarly, some had suggested relocating Wendeng Camp, but Wen Tiren had refuted it with much the same reasoning.

Due to the problems in the broader policy direction, famine broke out again in Dongjiang. As usual, Weihai traded with them under the guise of merchants, exchanging grain for people. On board the ships were some former Dongjiang men who described the conditions in Weihai. Islanders from every island scrambled to go. Many who were not selected stole boats and fled to Weihai on their own. Though the island commanders were displeased, they had nothing of value to trade, and the new Regional Commander had yet to arrive, so they could only watch as Weihai ceaselessly poached their manpower.

Wang Zugui and Qin Lufang began recruiting sailors from among the refugees and the surrounding fishermen. Chen Xin still knew nothing about naval warfare, and the standard of the naval camps around the Liao Sea was very low — including the later-famous Shang Kexi, who was merely the best of a bad lot. So Chen Xin positioned the naval force primarily for transport for the time being, more like armed merchant ships. Apart from keeping a firm grip on military pay and personnel appointments, he left everything else to these two men to decide on their own.

Liu Minyou was also busy with civil affairs. He had ample staff, and his deputies were all in Weihai, so his work went more smoothly than Chen Xin's. Amid the bustle, the seventh month soon arrived.

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