Chapter 1442: No Endurance Left — Li Dingguo

In Songpan Guard City these days, the alert level had been doubled compared to usual. The household soldiers and their dependents who had followed Li Dingguo here — anyone with a bit of strength — had been recruited with two meals a day of dry rice and flatbread, and were digging earth and piling stones like mad, repairing the city walls and building outlying forts. The moats on the north and south sides of Songpan Guard City (the city lies in a narrow river valley, with the river on the left and mountains on the right, so only north and south offer entry and exit) had also been deepened and widened, and the two stretches of city wall on the north and south had been rebuilt, with sandbags piled into slopes so they could withstand cannon fire.

The Li family troops stationed at various points around Songpan Guard had also pulled back in stages, concentrating in the upper reaches of the Min River and the southern foothills of the Min Mountains, centered on Songpan Guard City.

In Cangtang City and Duogan Command City, within the Duogan Regional Commission territory that also fell under Li Dingguo's rule, the scene was much the same. Although Li Dingguo's official post was Military Governor of Duogan, his army did not control the whole Duogan Regional Commission territory — it occupied only the northeastern part of it, the ground near Songpan Guard, and the area actually under his control was not large. And Li Dingguo's main force still clung to Songpan Guard territory and refused to leave.

Over the past two or three years, however, the Ming army's Western Sichuan Military Governor's Office had adopted a policy of turning a blind eye to the Li family troops entrenched at Songpan Guard, as if acknowledging that Songpan Guard belonged to Duogan Command. And Li Dingguo, without standing on ceremony, had set up his headquarters directly in Songpan Guard City, and settled most of his soldiers and civilians (household soldier households) in the valleys and river valleys within Songpan Guard territory, letting them seize the lands of the local chieftains and farm military colonies to make a living. Life was bitter, but at least they could scrape by. Just when these soldiers and civilians, survivors of disaster, thought they would toil away in the great mountains of Songpan Guard and Duogan Command until they died, the situation suddenly grew tense!

On the streets of Songpan Guard City, officers in red robes were constantly galloping past, receiving military orders from Li Dingguo's headquarters and then going off to deploy their units. From the start of the new year, the air of grim lethality in Songpan Guard City had grown heavier by the day.

At this moment, inside the command hall, several Li family army officers stood before the commander's desk, reporting military affairs in low voices to Li Dingguo, Military Governor of Duogan and Left Commissioner-in-Chief of the Great Ming. Li Dingguo looked considerably older than he had two or three years before, and a little thinner, but his eyes were still bright and sharp, and his body was in excellent health. He did not sit, but stood behind the commander's desk, a coarse cloth robe thrown casually over his shoulders, yet he still cut a majestic and imposing figure.

Since the previous year, because of the hostile stance of Zhu the Third Prince, Wu Yingxiong, Wu Guogui, Galdan, and the others, morale in Li Dingguo's army had already grown somewhat unsettled, and now it relied entirely on the prestige he had built up over many years to sustain it.

"Commander, lately every place is conscripting able-bodied men and building fortifications. We don't have to pay them wages — we ourselves haven't seen coin or silk in quite a while — but we still have to feed them their fill! The grain stores everywhere only shrink by the day and never grow. The Western Sichuan Military Governor's Office has also sealed the Min River trade route and won't let grain be shipped to us. The army's stored grain will be hard-pressed to last until after autumn!"

"Commander, we've recently counted the weapons and resupplied the battalions. Swords, spears, bows and arrows are still adequate, but there isn't much in the way of firearms and gunpowder — not enough to take the field for a single battle."

"Commander, Songpan Guard and Duogan Command are both bitter, cold, barren lands. They probably can't support us much longer. Better to stake what capital we still have and gamble on one throw, damn it!"

Li Dingguo had been listening impassively to his officers' complaints. He knew all about the shortages of grain and equipment. Although his army had been co-opted by the Ming court, the court had never treated Li Dingguo's troops as regular government forces, and likewise, few in Li Dingguo's army were loyal to the Ming court. So the court's willingness to assign Li Dingguo land to hold and let him fend for himself was already the height of benevolence. Expecting the court to supply money, grain, weapons and equipment was utterly impossible. And Songpan and Duogan were indeed bitter and barren — you could scrape the ground until it bled and still not support Li Dingguo's tens of thousands of troops and more than a hundred thousand military dependents.

Li Dingguo had no solution for this either. He could only endure — and when the enduring would end, he himself did not know.

Now, when his subordinates brought up the matter of "gambling on one throw," his brow tightened.

Compared to the exhaustion of provisions — a problem that would only become fatal six months from now — the present standoff with Zhu the Third Prince's faction was the crisis burning at his eyebrows.

Zhu the Third Prince was pressing step by step, and Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu could only grit their teeth and endure. Because the Ming court clearly wanted to paper things over, Zhu the Third Prince's side only pressed hard, without tearing off all pretense and starting a war.

Their scheme was to push Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu into a corner and force them to strike first!

If Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu dared to strike first, what awaited them would be the imperial army's punitive expedition!

So before the new year, when Li Dingguo met with Ai Nengqi and Liu Wenxiu at Qamdo, the three of them had settled on the strategy: "When you can endure no more, you must still endure a little longer."

To placate Galdan, the most aggressive of Zhu the Third Prince's faction, Li Dingguo had even persuaded Liu Wenxiu — the weakest of the Three Feudatories of the Snowlands — to withdraw his troops from western Ngari and hand the territory over to Galdan's men.

Right — the Ngari Military Governor's Office territory was not fully controlled by Liu Wenxiu's army. He controlled only the eastern half of Ngari, that is, the Ali region. But at one point Liu Wenxiu had also had troops in the western half of Ngari — though they had not fought their way in; they had been invited in by the locals, so they had not taken over the government, only garrisoned troops there.

The territory of western Ngari now belonged to a Tibetan kingdom called Ladakh. The dynasty now ruling Ladakh was the Namgyal dynasty, and the current king was named Tsewang Namgyal, a direct descendant of the Tubo dynasty. Although this kingdom of Ladakh was a state founded by Ü-Tsang people and also believed in Tibetan Buddhism, it was not of the same school as the Fifth Dalai Lama. The kingdom of Ladakh followed the White Sect (Kagyu school), while the Great Lama belonged to the Yellow Sect (Gelug school). Moreover, the king of Ladakh was a descendant of the Tubo dynasty, so of course he did not buy the Great Lama's account.

But Ladakh had not come to blows with the Great Lama either, because to their south, the Timurid Empire of India was pressing closer step by step!

Ladakh, on one side at odds with the Great Lama and on the other threatened by the Muslim Timurid Empire, was naturally having a hard time of it.

So when Tsewang Namgyal discovered that the Ming army coming from the east had driven out the Great Lama of Lhasa, he of course sent men at once to offer allegiance — the Ming had supported the White Sect's Great Treasure Dharma King in the past. And Tsewang Namgyal had also learned from Indian merchants who came to trade in Ladakh that the most beautiful Princess Nisha of the Timurid Empire had become the Empress of the Great Ming, so all the more reason to cling to the Great Ming's thigh. Once he clung to that thigh, he need not fear the Yellow Sect's threat, nor the Timurid Empire.

As for whether the Ming court would seize the Namgyal dynasty's realm, Tsewang Namgyal was not worried in the least, because he felt his country was so wretchedly poor that there was really nothing worth seizing.

As it turned out, Tsewang Namgyal's analysis was basically correct. The Yellow Sect's Great Lama and the Timurids of India both dared not provoke Ladakh (even if Aurangzeb knew that those who had entered Ladakh were roving bandits, he would not dare provoke them! His army had already been beaten black and blue in Bengal by Li Jicheng). The only miscalculation was that those who had entered Ladakh were not real Ming troops at all!

Liu Wenxiu had not brought many troops to Ladakh — only a little over two thousand men — but the spoils they carried off were not small! In the meantime, they had also made a probing jab at the Muslim troops in the Kashmir Valley (vassals of Aurangzeb). They had not fought in earnest, but had extorted quite a bit of grain (Aurangzeb treated it as tossing alms to beggars). Just when they were feeling pleased with themselves, they had no choice but to withdraw back to the Ali region and hand Ladakh over to Galdan.

But the concessions of the Three Feudatories of the Snowlands did not buy peace — instead they bought the other side's insatiable encroachment. The Sichuan Ming army, which had not previously done much against Li Dingguo, had recently adopted the hostile measure of sealing the trade routes.

So Li Dingguo's subordinates were all already stirring restlessly, wanting to gamble on one throw!

Just then, the Ming Western Sichuan Military Governor's Office sent Li Dingguo another piece of news that left him speechless — the Ming Emperor was preparing to transfer him to serve as Military Governor of Eastern Sichuan, and had even dispatched some Commandery Prince to deliver the edict. Was this a scheme to lure him to Chongqing and do him harm?

(End of Chapter)