Chapter 217: A Petty Trick

In the third month, on the first day, the grasses grew tall and the swallows darted about — and men's hearts grew steadily more unsettled.

"Grand Commander!" That morning, inside the main camp of the Yellow Turban rear army's great stockade, Cheng Yuanzhi had just finished breakfast and was discussing military affairs with the various "lesser commanders" and "vice-commanders" when suddenly an ordinary soldier with a yellow head-wrap burst in, panic-stricken. "The Han troops just sent men to sweep through the Left Forward Camp again!"

Inside the great tent, the group of lesser commanders all changed color at these words. Without waiting for Cheng Yuanzhi to speak, they began clamoring with questions all at once:

"Who came this time?"

"Why must it be like this — they won't even let a man have peace first thing in the morning!"

"Was it the red-faced one or the white-faced one?"

"The one riding the white horse or the piebald horse?"

"How many squads came?"

"Did they sweep as far as our central camp?"

"There are many brothers from Yuyang in the left camp — did they kill any acquaintance of mine?"

In truth, within this string of questions, the greatest flaw of the Yellow Turban Army itself was laid bare: these men, who until recently had been Daoist priests, local strongmen, wandering swordsmen, and peasants, simply did not understand military affairs!

To hold a top-level military council on which life and death depended, yet allow a common soldier to burst straight in and blurt out military intelligence the moment he opened his mouth? And then a crowd of lesser commanders, ignoring their Grand Commander Cheng Yuanzhi, simply bypassed their Regional Commander and started holding their own little meeting right there?!

This is not to say they did not respect Cheng Yuanzhi's authority — the man was a disciple of the Great Worthy Teacher and had been the Grand Commander of the Guangyang Taiping Dao for many years; how could they not respect him?

In fact, after listening for a good while, Cheng Yuanzhi shouted once, and the tent quickly fell quiet.

Yet another problem remained: why did Cheng Yuanzhi not call these men to order from the very start? Because he, too, utterly lacked military experience and discipline. He instinctively sensed that this was wrong, but he had no idea what to do about it.

This Yellow Turban Grand Commander was in his forties, dark-complexioned, crude of speech, and rough in manner — he looked exactly like an old peasant. But in truth, his family was a well-known powerful house in the Guangyang region and had always carried a certain swagger. However, back in his father's generation, probably because that swagger went too far, a certain Grand Administrator of Guangyang had crushed them as a political achievement: his father was beheaded, half the family property was confiscated, and Cheng Yuanzhi and his two brothers were all sentenced to the punishment of shaving the beard and doing hard labor at the city walls, toiling a full six years before they were released.

After his punishment ended, Cheng Yuanzhi had intended to live out his days in peace and never imitate his father's swagger again. But then a great plague suddenly struck, and both his younger brothers died of illness. He alone survived "because he drank the talisman water of the Great Worthy Teacher," and from that moment he completely changed his mind. He practically gave away his wealth and abandoned his estate, devoting himself single-mindedly to running errands and serving the Great Worthy Teacher with his very life.

A man like this — what he was best at was expounding the Taiping Jing; his second-best skill was the ditch-digging he had mastered during those years of hard labor; and his favorite thing was brewing talisman water... though he had always been somewhat deficient in this skill, so much so that many who drank his talisman water still died very quickly.

But however you looked at it, he truly did not know how to lead troops, and even after becoming a Grand Commander he still did not know how to lead troops!

"All of you, stop your clamoring, and don't talk in clumps," Cheng Yuanzhi said, seated in a Grand Commandant's chair. He pointed a finger at the soldier who had burst in. "Messenger, you speak first — what exactly happened out front this time?!"

The military tent immediately fell silent.

"This time it was the red-faced one with the long beard, the one who specially brings a man to carry his blade," the Yellow Turban soldier replied with a bitter face. "He still came with twenty men. At first he killed twenty of our men and was about to turn back, but Liu Qiang, Lesser Commander Liu from Hengzhou, because his own younger brother was killed by that red-faced giant last time, was nursing a grievance. So this time he borrowed seven or eight crossbows beforehand and waited early at the front camp crossroads. When that red-faced giant was leading his men back, Liu Qiang suddenly loosed his bolts..."

"No wonder Liu Qiang isn't here," someone could not help but interject.

"Why mention that? Just tell us — did the bolts hit that red-faced giant?!" another person cut in and asked.

"They hit the giant, but the giant was wearing iron armor and was not injured. Only four Han soldiers fell from their horses on the spot." At this point, the reporting Yellow Turban soldier's face grew even more troubled. "Three of the four Han soldiers died on the spot, but one fell to the ground and cried out, 'General, will you abandon me?' The giant turned back, narrowed his eyes, took up his own great blade, and before Lesser Commander Liu and his men could draw their crossbows a second time, he charged straight up to them and cut the lesser commander from shoulder to waist — sliced the man clean in two. Blood flowed across half the camp... Then he seized those crossbows, rescued that Han soldier, and only then returned to the city!"

After the Yellow Turban soldier finished speaking, he left directly, and this time the military tent remained silent for a long while.

But no matter how long the silence, they had to start talking again. Seated in the seat of honor in the center, Cheng Yuanzhi gripped the armrests of the Grand Commandant's chair with both hands, lowered his head and thought for a long time, but in the end could only look up and ask: "Everyone speak up — isn't calling you all here precisely to discuss this matter? A dozen or more sorties a day, twenty men each time — we simply cannot hold out!"

How could this crowd of Yellow Turban leaders possibly know what to say?

"You are all lesser commanders recognized by the General of the Earth. If no one speaks, what are we to do? Vice-Commander Zhang, you are the eldest — you speak," Cheng Yuanzhi said, forced in his helplessness to call on someone by name.

Vice-Commander Zhang, already nearing fifty this year, stared blankly at Cheng Yuanzhi in the seat of honor upon hearing this, equally helpless.

The truth was, this Vice-Commander Zhang truly did not wish to speak — he had not even wanted to rebel in the first place!

He was originally a wealthy householder in Anci City, Guangyang Commandery, with no worries about food or clothing, and at his age — nearly fifty, which in these times made him a perfectly standard old wreck — he indeed had no further ambitions. Yet who could have foreseen that a dozen or so days ago, Deng Mao, the County Lieutenant of Anci, would suddenly rally the county's powerful families, great households, and wandering swordsmen to revolt together?!

With naked blades held right there, even if he did not care for his own life, did he not have to consider his precious son, barely seventeen years old? That son idled about all day, tangled up with those wandering swordsmen, and on the day Deng Mao rose up in the county, the wretch had actually followed along and been the first to kill a man... What could he do but follow them in revolt?

And so Vice-Commander Zhang reluctantly went along with the Yellow Turban rebels, and then, because of his advanced age, was pushed forward by that Deng Mao to be a leader, and finally was accepted by the Yellow Turban Army as a vice-commander.

And now that Grand Commander Cheng Yuanzhi was telling him to speak, he could only reluctantly speak.

"This certainly cannot go on." Vice-Commander Zhang put on an expression of utter distress. "I have kept count. Not counting the night of the twenty-sixth when we set up camp, and not counting today — in just the two days of the twenty-seventh and twenty-eighth, the Han troops have come a full fifty or sixty times. Every time it's twenty or thirty men; they kill and then leave. By a rough estimate, we have already suffered seven or eight hundred dead and wounded, while the Han troops have lost only a few dozen... But if you ask me, the key is not the dead. Losing some mud-legged peasants is not necessarily so terrible — we have a grand army of thirty thousand! But they come every day, without cease, and the whole camp, from top to bottom, is in a state of panic. They cannot eat in peace, cannot sleep in peace, and even walking fills them with terror. Nothing can get done! As you said, Commander Cheng, if this goes on it will be a real problem. If it continues for another three or five days, it may well be that the officials in the city... the Han troops in the city, having gathered enough men and rested enough spirit, will suddenly come pouring out, tens of thousands of them following these horsemen, and we will suffer a great defeat!"

The crowd nodded one after another, all saying that Vice-Commander Zhang had hit the nail on the head. Cheng Yuanzhi also nodded along repeatedly... Yet after he finished nodding, he realized that the other man had, in the end, said nothing at all?

Truly impressive!

Of course, what was truly impressive were the Han cavalry, men like Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, and the others — not these Yellow Turban commanders who could only hide in the rear army's great camp, and not even Gongsun Xun. Do not imagine that Grand Administrator Gongsun, with his chest full of confidence that day, standing atop the city wall with a wave of his hand, declaring he would defeat the enemy in ten days, or seven or eight days, as if he could make these nearly thirty thousand Yellow Turbans surrender with a mere flip of his palm, or as if the valor of men like Guan Yu and Zhang Fei was utterly insignificant before his grand strategizing.

But in truth, when all was said and done, his so-called "strategy" relied precisely on the valor of men like Guan Yu.

Gongsun Xun had noticed at the time that the Yellow Turban Army's military discipline was abysmal. Though the participation of wandering swordsmen and local strongmen had given them over a thousand cavalry, they did not even understand the need to concentrate their use. Moreover, they had no particularly effective means of military coordination among themselves, and the layout of their camps was a chaotic mess. More importantly, they also lacked truly formidable warriors of their own... It was this that allowed Guan Yunchang, leading twenty newly enlisted Youzhou wandering swordsmen, to come and go as if entering a land without people.

What did this show? It showed that the Yellow Turban Army was utterly incapable of dealing with small-scale elite cavalry raids!

That being the case, why should Gongsun Xun not send Guan Yu out a few more times?

Add Zhang Fei as well — let him also take twenty men and run a few sorties each day!

Then Han Dang, skilled in both bow and horse; Wei Yue, who had grown up beneath the Yin Mountains and was naturally adept at this kind of warfare; Liu Bei and Qian Zhao, who were themselves leaders of wandering swordsmen; and Yang Kai, who had been carefully trained by Lady Gongsun from childhood and was accustomed from the start to leading small bands of cavalry against mixed Hu forces — send them all!

From over twelve hundred Youzhou local wandering swordsmen who brought their own horses and spears, select the best of the best — pick four hundred, divide them into twenty squads of twenty men each, and send them out in rotation under these commanders of peerless martial prowess to sweep the enemy!

No deliberate tactical objectives — just kill. Bring back ten heads and you pass; twenty or more and you receive special commendation!

Coin, silk, military rank, civil posts, even beautiful maidservants — all could be given as rewards!

These wandering swordsmen had just enlisted and were not skilled in large-scale formation fighting? Then let them fight in the way they liked best!

And what could you, the Yellow Turban Army, do about it? Your infantry could not catch up, could not overtake them; your small bands of cavalry did not dare face these commanders of peerless martial prowess head-on — you could only passively take the beating.

And if the Yellow Turban Army kept passively taking the beating, helpless to respond, then do not blame the army's morale for sinking day by day. After seven or eight straight days of this, Gongsun Xun would have enough confidence to pull out all those newly recruited soldiers, even those convicts forced to defend the city, and have them raise the freshly cast iron spearheads on wooden poles for a full-scale banzai charge!

A petty trick — not necessarily useless, and not necessarily with a solution.

Sure enough, inside the Yellow Turban rear tent, the men talked and talked but still came up with nothing, and Cheng Yuanzhi grew increasingly agitated.

"What if we ask the General of the Earth to send some Yellow Turban Strongmen? Isn't it said that those Yellow Turban Strongmen, after drinking talisman water, become impervious to blade and spear?" someone suddenly asked in earnest.

The crowd nodded one after another, their faces showing hopeful expectation, but Cheng Yuanzhi immediately shook his head and grew even more irritable... What a joke! Even setting aside whether talisman water, which could at best cure illness, could possibly make one impervious to blade and spear — even if there truly were Yellow Turban Strongmen, he, Cheng Yuanzhi, would have no face to ask for them!

"We absolutely must not request reinforcements from the General of the Earth!" At that moment, a man who had remained silent all along suddenly spoke up, and with forceful conviction. "The General of the Earth's men are all from Jizhou, while we are all from Youzhou. We have only been beneath these city walls for two and a half days, and already we ask for reinforcements? Those who know the facts will understand the fearsomeness of those Han commanders before us; those who do not will think that we Youzhou men are all worthless! If we ask for reinforcements this time, and later the General of the Earth's camp looks down on us Youzhou men, what then? When the Yellow Heaven is established, and official posts are handed out only to Jizhou men, what then?!"

"There is reason in those words." Cheng Yuanzhi shifted uneasily in his Grand Commandant's chair. "Besides, things are not so dire... After all, the General of the Earth sent us here to Zhuoxian not to take the city, but only to keep this newly arrived Grand Administrator of Zhuo Commandery, Gongsun Xun, from going to the relief of Fanyang. Once the General of the Earth leads his fifty thousand troops and breaks Fanyang, he will come join forces with us here... By then, we will have eighty thousand, perhaps even a hundred thousand... With a hundred thousand troops besieging the city, what could we not swallow?! These difficulties are only temporary — do not think the sky is falling just because of such a trifling matter."

The men in the tent stirred at these words. Ten days ago, they could not even imagine what ten thousand troops looked like, and then suddenly they had thirty thousand. By the sound of this, in a few more days they would have a hundred thousand... What did this mean? It meant that the Yellow Heaven would ultimately be established, and as Yellow Turban commanders under the Yellow Heaven, sooner or later they would become grand administrators and county magistrates.

That being the case, they truly could not lightly request reinforcements, lest they be looked down upon by the Jizhou side.

But... if they could not resolve the trouble before their eyes, that probably would not do either, would it?

"Deputy Commander Deng." Cheng Yuanzhi looked toward the man who had just spoken, a trace of hope in his eyes. "You once served as a county lieutenant. In our army, you are the most knowledgeable. Tell us, then — how can we hold out?"

"I do have an idea." The man who had spoken before — none other than the former Lieutenant of Anci County, Deng Mao — puffed out his chest and sat up ramrod straight upon hearing this, as if he had been waiting for this moment all along. "But I fear the various junior commanders may not be willing!"

"Out with it!" Cheng Yuanzhi could not help but urge him. "This concerns the greater situation — what is there to be willing or unwilling about?"

Deng Mao swept an expressionless glance across the men in the tent, and only then did he turn his head and present his strategy to Cheng Yuanzhi: "My method is actually quite simple. We gather all the cavalry in our army into one force and place it under my unified command!"

The others were either puzzled or hesitant.

"Think about it, everyone." Though Deng Mao said "everyone," he directed his earnest explanation solely at Cheng Yuanzhi. "Isn't the Han army relying on their cavalry coming and going like the wind, excelling in small-unit skirmishes? Then we shall concentrate our own cavalry. When the Han army comes out, never mind how many routes they take or which city gate they emerge from — I will simply intercept whichever squad penetrates deepest. With over a thousand riders surging forward together, shooting arrows, thrusting spears — a mere twenty men, we could drown them! If we can kill off two or three squads in succession, I'm afraid the Han army in the city won't dare come out anymore, will they?"

Cheng Yuanzhi pondered this carefully, then suddenly slapped the arm of his chair and pointed at the other junior commanders in the tent: "I won't hide it from you — I don't know whether this method is good or not, but Deputy Commander Deng is the only one who has offered a plan at this moment. If you have no other ideas, then you must follow this one! Anyone who hides his own cavalry and refuses to hand them over is disloyal to the General of Heaven! I will punish whoever does so — do you understand?!"

The men looked at one another. Though in their hearts they understood perfectly well that Deng Mao was simply after the cavalry in their hands, in the end they dared not object and could only rise and reluctantly agree.

Seeing that the matter was settled, Deng Mao could not help but beam with delight. If all these thousand-plus cavalry came under his command, where could he not go?

And so he immediately stood up and thumped his chest before Cheng Yuanzhi: "Commander Cheng, rest assured. Give me these thousand riders this morning... red-faced or pale-faced, long-bearded or full-bearded — today I will capture one of them alive for you."

Cheng Yuanzhi nodded with satisfaction as well... This kind of spirit was necessary, after all!

But just as Commander Cheng was about to offer a few words of encouragement, another Yellow Turban soldier burst into the tent, gasping for breath, drawing everyone's sidelong stares.

"Commander!" This second Yellow Turban soldier who had barged into the tent was likewise ashen-faced, making a fitting pair with the previous one. "The Han army has come raiding again! This time it's that full-bearded one — Deputy Commander Zhang's son, the sworn brother of Deputy Commander Deng. He couldn't stand it and gathered fifty riders to intercept them, but he was skewered with a single spear thrust!"

A dazed silence fell over the tent.

—————I am a dazed and silent dividing line—————

"The Grand Ancestor fought the Yellow Turbans in Zhuo Commandery. The Yellow Turbans had over thirty thousand elite troops and several thousand horses. The Grand Ancestor then divided his able generals — Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, Han Dang, Qian Zhao, Wei Yue, Yang Kai, and others — giving each several tens of riders to charge and break through the Yellow Turban formations. In a single day they would go out three or four times, each time cutting off heads as they withdrew. After several days of continuous battle, the Yellow Turbans gradually grew exhausted." — *Dianlüe*, annotated by Pei Songzhi of Yan

PS: This tactic was historically used by Lu Bu against Zhang Yan's Heishan bandits — small squads of elite troops launching repeated assaults. The result was "over ten days of continuous battle, and then Yan's army was defeated."

(End of chapter)