Chapter 1050: Don't Imitate Zhuge Liang (Please Subscribe)

"Right!" Li Guo nodded emphatically. "When we march out of Qishan to attack the Central Plains, we must press on without pause. We can't imitate Zhuge Liang, who tried six times and never succeeded! Prince of Jin, are you confident?"

The Prince of Jin, Li Dingguo, had by now returned from Ava to Kunming, while the "Northern Expedition Army" stationed in Burma and Siam had been placed under Li Laiheng's overall command.

Hearing Li Guo's words, Li Dingguo — burned dark and gaunt by the southern sun — could not help frowning deeply. How could he compare to Zhuge Liang? Zhuge Liang's southern campaign, capturing Meng Huo seven times, had been fought so brilliantly. He himself, by contrast, seemed to have gotten bogged down in Burma and Siam. The opening had been good enough: the territory he had taken was larger than the Shun's original Sichuan and Yunnan combined. But after reaching the Siamese capital of Ayutthaya, the ever-victorious Shun Northern Expedition Army seemed to lose its edge. Not only were they stalled for a long time beneath a strong city, but plague broke out in the ranks and many died of disease. In the end they had taken Ayutthaya, but only with great difficulty, and by then the army had lost its fighting strength.

And after Ming reinforcements arrived in force at the Golden Fortress south of Ayutthaya, uprisings against Shun rule broke out all across Siam. Even the Lan Na vassal state, which had originally been subordinate to Burma and later switched its allegiance to the Shun, seized the opportunity to rise up, expelled the Governor-General Li Dingguo had appointed, and enthroned a Lan Na prince who had fled from Ava back to Chiang Mai.

Faced with this unfavorable situation, Li Dingguo had no choice but to temporarily withdraw from Siam, abandoning Ayutthaya, which had been won at such enormous cost.

He did not, however, return to Ava empty-handed. He sacked Ayutthaya completely, carrying off the accumulated wealth of the Ayutthaya dynasty back to Burma. He also rounded up the city's merchants and artisans, along with the farmers living near the city — altogether one to two hundred thousand people — and took them back to Burma, settling them around the port city of Syriam at the mouth of the Irrawaddy. Since the Shun warriors still could not adapt to Burma's climate and miasmas, Shun rule in Burma could not yet extend into the countryside; it could only be centered on the two relatively comfortable large cities of Ava and Syriam. At the same time, the vast Burmese lands were distributed to the tribal chieftains of the Burmese, Mon, Thai, and Mubang peoples who were loyal to the Shun.

Zhang Yong, who had helped King Narai recover his capital, likewise did not launch any large-scale offensive into Burmese territory. This was because Siam's Ayutthaya dynasty, by the time it reached King Narai's generation, was already in decline, and its control over local forces was far weaker than before — otherwise it would never have been nearly destroyed by a Shun force of thirty thousand. Now, although the capital had been recovered with Ming help, Ayutthaya had been stripped bare by the Shun army, and even its population was almost gone. The dynasty's prestige had collapsed, and it no longer had the strength to control the provinces.

Zhang Yong and King Narai therefore had no choice but to focus their energies on Siam itself, working first to restore the unity of the Siamese kingdom.

Moreover, the Western powers — the Dutch, the Portuguese, the English, and others — who already firmly controlled the Indian Ocean, had no desire to see the Great Ming attack Burma from the direction of Siam. For once Burma fell under Ming control, the port of Syriam would become a bridgehead for the Ming navy to enter the Indian Ocean!

The Indian Ocean was already "very crowded," and no one wanted the colossal beast that was the Great Ming Empire squeezing in as well. The Westerners on the Indian Ocean were therefore very happy to see the powerful Shun Empire establish itself in Burma, and naturally gave military and technical assistance so that this outside force, strong enough to resist the Great Ming, could gain a firm foothold there.

At the same time, the Mughal dynasty in India had entered the era of Aurangzeb. This "China-knowing" Mughal emperor understood well the strength of the Great Ming and likewise did not wish to see the Ming enter the Indian Ocean, so he too gave the Shun considerable help.

Thus the situation Li Laiheng inherited in Burma, while not particularly good, was still sustainable, and could even develop slowly. It could be considered a modestly comfortable state of affairs.

Still, Li Dingguo was somewhat dejected, because he knew that the Shun's room to expand southward was now very limited. West of Burma there was only the small kingdom of Arakan that could be annexed; beyond that lay either the sea or great mountains riddled with miasma, which no army could possibly cross.

To the east, they were blocked by the Ming–Siamese allied forces, and further progress there seemed very difficult.

Under these circumstances, for the survival of the Shun Empire, and for the future of the 250,000 veteran-camp warriors and their descendants who followed the Shun, the Northern Expedition had become imperative.

"As things now stand, the chances of marching out of Qishan are far better than attacking Siam again," Li Dingguo said. "While in Ava, this subject met many Western maritime merchants and asked them how long it would take the Ming to reinforce Siam. If they sail with the monsoon, a great army departing from Shanghai can reach the Golden Fortress in a matter of weeks. Moreover, Siam abounds in rice, so an expeditionary force need not carry provisions; it can live entirely off the land in Siam.

"By contrast, if our army marches from Yunnan, it is more than four thousand li by land to Ayutthaya, and the route is obstructed by mountains and dense forests, all of it miasma-ridden territory. Before the army even reaches the battlefield, a third of the men will likely have fallen ill!

"But if we fight at Qishan, both sides are constrained by logistics: the Ming side suffers from long supply lines, while our side is hampered by difficult terrain.

"This subject believes that the plan of advancing from Sichuan into Shaanxi is nothing more than a surprise attack while the enemy is unprepared, or else fighting and farming in alternation, establishing military colonies before the enemy's face. In the past, Zhuge Liang marched out six times without success precisely because he dared not use surprise and never established military colonies. If our dynasty now marches out of Qishan, we should make surprise our priority and military colonization our foundation."

"How do we make surprise our priority?" Li Guo pressed.

"By making surprise the priority, we should select several thousand death-sworn warriors to cross the Zhongnan Mountains and raid Guanzhong, throwing the Ming army into panic and drawing the various Shaanxi forces to the rescue. By making military colonization the foundation, the main army should carry farming tools and seed grain out of Qishan, seize the territories of Qinzhou and Longxi, build fortresses, and cultivate grain, so as to sustain a prolonged campaign."

"A prolonged campaign?" Li Guo frowned. "Our army has always succeeded through swift, elusive movement, while the Ming army excels at building walls and defending cities. If we now build fortresses and farm, aren't we fighting with our weakness against their strength?"

"What Your Majesty describes is the Ming army of the past!" Li Dingguo shook his head. "The Ming army of today is not only skilled at building fortifications and defending cities, but even more skilled at open-field battle."

Li Guo nodded and fell silent.

If the Ming army could not fight in the field, how could the Great Ming have achieved its present resurgence?

Li Dingguo continued: "Our dynasty's advantage now lies in the fubing system. Fubing soldiers require no pay and cost nothing to recruit; we can field a hundred thousand men without spending a single tael on wages. If we can also fight and farm in alternation, establishing colonies on the Long plateau, we can sustain a prolonged campaign and win through endurance.

"Because the Ming army's mercenaries cost money. For every soldier deployed on the Long plateau, wages alone amount to several tens of taels of silver per year. If grain supplies from Guanzhong run short and must be brought in from Huguang, then the cost of transporting grain a thousand li must be added on top. Deploying a single soldier would then cost a hundred taels of silver. A hundred thousand men fighting on the Long plateau would consume silver by the tens of millions every year!

"At the same time, with Guanzhong and Long devastated by war, the Ming's annual tax losses would likely amount to several million more.

"And the war in the northeast will cost hundreds of millions, while the naval war against Spain is no less expensive. With such reckless militarism, how can the Ming not fall?"

"Right, right!"

The Grand Military Advisor Song Xiance nodded repeatedly and said with a smile: "The Prince of Jin speaks truly. This subject has recently been compiling the national history, and I have found that the rise of our Great Shun lay precisely in coordinating with the eastern barbarians, bleeding the Ming again and again. Although the late emperor had no contact with the Manchus, in practice the two still worked together to drag the Ming down. And the failure of our dynasty and the eastern barbarians lay in attacking each other before the strong Ming had been destroyed, giving the Ming time to regroup and reorganize in Jiangnan. Fortunately, the Ming's so-called restoration sovereign does not know how to let the people rest, but instead pursues reckless militarism, sending his forces all the way to the far side of the Pacific. With such expenditure on war, his defeat is only a matter of time.

"It seems the Mandate of Heaven, after all, rests with Your Majesty!"

Li Guo nodded: "Indeed. Since ancient times, no one who overuses military force has escaped ruin. So be it — we will also issue land bonds. We won't issue too many; let's start with thirty million mu and distribute the land of Shaanxi and Gansu first."

He was still relatively conservative, unlike Zhu Cilang, who issued fifty million mu at once and even turned land bonds into a tool for developing rural capitalism.

Li Guo added: "But our land bonds cannot be traded. Every bond must be registered with a name, and may only be inherited, not transferred to others!"

(End of Chapter)