Chapter 1441: The Ming Has Seed! (Please Subscribe)

Old Mountain, the parade ground of the Guards Army — a scene of grim, killing austerity.

Guards soldiers, Yingtian cavalrymen, New Army combat troops. Under banners of every kind, they stood in rigid silence across the parade ground. Their armor and weapons were immaculate, their bayonets cold and gleaming.

They were part of that mighty army which had ranged across ten thousand li and rebuilt the great Ming Celestial Empire. Over the past twenty-odd years, this army had grown from nothing, from weakness to strength, campaigning on every front and never suffering defeat. And this army seemed to have found a way to preserve its fighting power for the long term — namely, the officer academies plus frontier youth soldiers (that is, the Guards Army, whose elite could also attend the military academy and thereby embark on an official career), plus the "997" mercenary troops. And, of course, the endless wars!

Officer academies whose main source of students was the military aristocracy, and boy-soldier Guards units, had both shown warlike, bloodthirsty traits in the histories of Europe and the Ottoman Empire. And Zhu Cilang, in order to make up for the military shortcomings of a Ming dynasty that had moved its capital to Yingtian, had no choice but to introduce both of these military monsters at once — the aristocratic cadets and the boy-soldier Guards. The military weakness of Yingtian, that is, Nanjing, was plain to see. The rich lands of southeastern China had never been an ideal place for waging war. For this territory was too wealthy, and too far from the frontier regions of the Chinese dynasties, so it easily slipped into a comfortable era of peace.

The frontier of a Chinese dynasty was usually the zone where the steppe nomad lands met the northern farming regions — that is, along the line of the Great Wall.

Even if all the steppe beyond the Great Wall fell within Chinese territory, the Wall line would still not be very stable. For the Chinese dynasties always found it very hard to effectively control the Mongolian Plateau, which could not be farmed. Even if they used "temple-building" and "marriage alliances" to win over the Khalkha Mongols, there remained two troublesome opponents to the west: the Oirat Mongols and Russia.

If the Dzungar Khanate truly gained control of Central Asia, sooner or later it would become a threat to the security of the Ming's north and northwest!

As for Russia — the terrain of Siberia meant that the Ming, unable to use the Arctic Ocean for transport (going through the Bering Strait into the Arctic Ocean was more trouble and less safe than going to the Americas), would, when penetrating deep into the Siberian interior, find itself at an enormous strategic disadvantage, pitting long overland supply lines against the enemy's short waterborne ones!

Precisely because of these two enemies, the steppe nomads and Russia, the military garrisons of the Ming's north would always face conflicts of every kind, and thereby be tempered.

If Zhu Cilang had not introduced these two war machines, the officer academies and the boy-soldier Guards, then within fifty years the Ming would surely have fallen into the old vicious cycle of reducing the feudatories and the Jingnan Rebellion.

But after the introduction of the officer academies and the boy-soldier Guards, the central military bloc of the Ming was growing ever more bloodthirsty and warlike!

The expansion of the Tuhao King in Xinzhou, the coveting of the Great Jüz and Middle Jüz by Zhu the Third Prince, the hostility of Wu Yingxiong and Wu Guogui toward the three feudatories of the Snowlands, the "friendliness" of the Ming army and navy toward the Timurid Empire of India, and this northern expedition now presided over by the Crown Prince Zhu Hexing — all of these, to a greater or lesser degree, were being pushed forward by career officers from the military academies and the boy-soldier corps!

All of them needed war to gild their own names!

If there should ever be another Jingnan Rebellion in the future, it would be a contest between the brave warriors of the northern garrisons who had swept the steppe, and the Guards regiments that had fought bloody battles against the armies of England, France, Holland, and Spain on the battlefields of Xinzhou and India.

Perhaps one day, the enemies of Galdan Tseren would meet on the battlefield the rivals of Eugene of Savoy.

But in the second month of the twenty-fifth year of Hongxing, there was as yet no sign of a split between the Ming's central elite troops and the northern garrisons. The Great Emperor Zhu, who had ruled the country for twenty-eight years, still firmly controlled everything, and was still working hard to strengthen the cohesion of his vast empire.

Zhu Cilang sat on horseback, back ramrod straight, in full armor, with a martial bearing that fully deserved the title "a second founding emperor." The tall figure of the Lucky Crown Prince was at his side, like an iron tower, even more imposing than his father. If he had not been lucky enough to become Crown Prince, he probably could have made a fine general leading charges into battle. Father and son, at this moment, were reviewing the northern expedition army about to set out.

The central elite troops that would follow the Crown Prince on campaign were not many in number — only about ten thousand or so, a motley force drawn and mixed from the Guards Army, the New Army, and the Yingtian "slacker knights." They looked very fine, but as for their fighting ability, no one could say.

But neither Zhu Cilang nor the Crown Prince expected this hastily assembled army to defeat Oboi and Yolo, because they were not the true main force. The real force meant for charging into battle was the Liaoyang Army stationed at Liaoyang — this unit was not a frontier garrison force, but a directly controlled army of the court. The officers of the Army Command and the divisions and directly attached units under its jurisdiction were all rotated on a regular schedule. Most units of the Guards Army and the New Army would take turns being sent to Liaoyang to join the Liaoyang Army.

Besides the Liaoyang Army, the directly controlled armies of the Ming court also included the Sichuan Army (not the army of the Two Rivers Military Commission), the Xinzhou Army (also not the army of the United States of Xinzhou), and the Nanyang Army — three "field armies." The number of divisions under each varied, but all were central armies (New Army and Guards) rotated on a regular basis, and the officers of the Army Command were all officers directly controlled by the Ming court.

Just as the review was about to conclude, Zhu Cilang reined in his warhorse in front of a formation of "slacker knights," then let his gaze pass slowly over this unit clad in dazzling golden plate armor.

This unit of knights was not large — only 360 riders in all, roughly the establishment of a cavalry battalion, and their formation was not very precise. At least they could not compare with the officers and men of the Guards and the New Army. But these men had impressive origins — the great majority of them bore the surname Zhu, all sons of the princely households of Yingtian, and their core consisted of twenty-four Commandery Princes of the Ming.

So this battalion was also called the "Princes' Battalion"!

Twenty-four Commandery Princes — that is, twenty-four of Zhu Cilang's younger brothers — now sat on horseback at the very front of the formation, every one of them upright in posture, wearing sturdy plate armor, with long cavalry lances slung on their backs, and flintlock muskets and bows hanging from their saddles.

Though these princes were slackers in their studies and somewhat given to dissipation, they were all highly skilled at riding, archery, and shooting — riding, archery, and shooting were essential skills for a Yingtian dandy; if you could not do them, you could not even qualify as a dandy.

Moreover, the military knowledge of these twenty-six princes was not bad either. The secondary schools they attended were all army secondary schools; although they had not passed the exam for the military academy to become career officers, they had all received the necessary military training. Once on the battlefield, they could manage a cavalry mass charge passably well.

And by the way, their horses were all excellent — fold-eared horses, Persian horses, Arabian horses. If these 360 riders had been transported to the battlefields where Ming and Qing clashed twenty-odd years ago, they could probably have smashed through a Qing niru, could they not?

Of course, before the Lucky Crown Prince, before the Tuhao King, before the Kangaroo King (Zhu He'ao's new nickname) — before these elites of the younger generation of the Ming imperial house — they were merely pretty rubbish, fit only for marriage alliances.

Zhu Cilang raised his hand and pointed at this crowd of handsome good-for-nothings, then turned to his son and said: "Lucky boy, these are all seed men of our Great Ming!"

"Seed men..." Zhu Hexing frowned, thinking: What kind of talk is that? I've heard of stud pigs and stud horses, but since when are there seed men?

Zhu Cilang laughed: "Lucky boy, the key to this northern expedition is not to kill Oboi and Yolo, but to go to Heilongjiang and Andong on behalf of our old Zhu family and sow seed!

It is to plant these seed men into the soil of Heilongjiang and Andong, and let them take root and sprout!"

Zhu Hexing thought: Bury these men in the earth and they won't sprout — they'll only breed maggots... If they want to take root and sprout, it won't be that easy!

Zhu Cilang paid no attention to the Lucky Crown Prince's thoughts, but turned his head and said loudly to the crowd of handsome seed men: "Hear me, all of you. You are descendants of the Great Ancestor, the Exalted Emperor, kinsmen of our Great Ming Celestial Empire.

Today, you are to go north with Our son, the Crown Prince of the Ming, to the old territory of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission. To fulfill the uncompleted wish of the Great Ancestor and the Accomplished Ancestor, and on behalf of the Great Ming Celestial Empire to spread branches and scatter leaves in the old territory of the Nurgan Regional Military Commission... Only when you have taken root and sprouted in the lands of the northern Nurgan Regional Military Commission will our Great Ming truly hold the land of White Mountains and Black Waters forever in its grasp!"

(End of Chapter)