Chapter 1484: Every Man a Gun, Every Man a Plot of Land

Yining City, the seat of the Commandery Prince of Luoshan.

Emerging from Zhu Cijiong's Protectorate headquarters and returning to her own temporary lodgings, Princess Consort Li Yue'e's face turned livid. Without waiting for Zhu Ci'en to pull her inside, she began lecturing her husband right in front of his brothers.

"My prince! Why did you agree to let the Prince of Dai become the first Overlord of Western Chu without discussing it with me first?"

Hearing his wife's words, Zhu Ci'en felt utterly miserable! This wife of his simply didn't understand the need to preserve his dignity as a man and a husband. If you're going to scold someone, do it indoors — even if it means kneeling on a washboard! But Li Yue'e would have none of that. Whatever she had to say, she said it in front of his subordinates, carrying herself like a domineering mistress of the household. Yet once inside the room, she turned into a soft, tender little woman who would do anything he wanted, perfectly obedient.

"My princess, well, if I hadn't agreed to let him be Overlord, he'd have pushed the first Overlord title onto me. Then how would we clean up this mess?" Zhu Ci'en shook his head. "We may have forty thousand households, but we've already marched several thousand li — how much strength do we have left? And all along the way, we've relied on the military garrisons to supply our grain. Without the Northern Court and the Principality of Dai providing supplies, what would all our people eat?"

Li Yue'e snorted and glared at her husband. "The Prince of Dai has been farming the Western Regions for years — he has grain! We may not have grain, but every one of us has a gun! Tell me, who do you think ends up with the grain?"

"Every person has a gun" was admittedly an exaggeration, but "every household has a gun" was no problem at all!

Li Dingguo had originally been the foremost military commander of the Shun army, and he controlled a massive reserve of arms and equipment. After the Southern Shaanxi campaign, he had begun arranging a general withdrawal. While arranging the retreat, he had also shipped every weapon he could gather to Songpan Garrison. Among them were as many as tens of thousands of matchlock muskets — enough to give one gun to each of the forty thousand households under his command!

Although these matchlocks were nothing special in performance — most were the cumbersome turtledove-foot arquebus, and none could mount a bayonet — the quality of the Shun's second-generation fubing soldiers was still very high. Nearly all of them could properly use the turtledove-foot arquebus; otherwise they could never have held out against the Great Ming for so many years.

So Li Yue'e, with her "every household has a gun," was not at all afraid of her people going hungry. The premise, of course, was that her people not be branded rebels by the Ming court. Otherwise, once the imperial armies arrived in force, Li Yue'e's paltry firepower could not possibly hold them off — and once the guns were gone, so were their lives!

But now Li Yue'e had already led her people all the way to Yining, which was somewhat beyond the Ming court's reach. Could grabbing a bit of food really be considered a crime?

Besides, they still had Zhu Ci'en as their great banner!

A堂堂 Commandery Prince of the Great Ming — would he really lose his head over grabbing a bit of food?

"Yue'e, we can't do that!" Zhu Ci'en shook his head. "We do have guns, and we could seize some rations, but how much could we actually take? My third brother has only thirty thousand households under him in total, and ten thousand of those are nomadic Mongols — how much grain could he have stored up? Moreover, the passes by the Hot Sea are formidable, and the Chu River Prefecture is a strong fortress. The only places easy to strike are Yining here and the trading town seven hundred li away. But Yining and the trading town won't have much grain, because my third brother is an extremely calculating man. He'll certainly be on guard against us and won't let us seize enough grain to last until next year's autumn harvest.

If you don't believe me, go take a look at my third brother's command residence — see how solidly it's built!"

What an old fox Zhu Cijiong was! Of course he would guard against his brother and sister-in-law. Yining was a large city and Zhu the Third had few troops, so naturally he could not defend all of it. But Zhu the Third's Protectorate headquarters was not large at all, so it had long since been built as a small bastion fort — not star-shaped, but triangular — tucked into a corner of Yining, extremely difficult to assault!

If Zhu Ci'en and Li Yue'e turned hostile and wanted to seize Yining, that would of course be no problem — they were already inside the city. But if they wanted to seize the Protectorate headquarters, it would not be so easy.

Li Yue'e glared at her husband. "With a family like yours — father and sons, brothers all guarding against each other, scheming against each other — you still dare to speak of a loving father and filial sons, of elder brothers who are kind and younger brothers who are respectful?"

Zhu Ci'en sighed. "When father and sons, brothers all guard against each other, and no one can scheme against anyone else, only then do you get a loving father and filial sons, kind elder brothers and respectful younger brothers. Yue'e, rest assured — my third brother will not scheme against us. I know his character. As long as every one of us has a gun, he'll be my good brother and everyone's good Overlord. And when the ten-year term is up, we won't have to worry about him clinging to the Overlord's seat and refusing to leave!"

That was right! Every man had a gun!

And these people were the former fubing households of the Shun — fierce as anything. How would Zhu the Third Crown Prince dare not be a good elder brother of the Great Ming, not be a good Overlord of Western Chu?

Besides, being supreme commander over a mob of armed ruffians was no cushy job. Ten years of it would surely leave a man utterly worn out.

While Zhu Ci'en was enlightening his wife Li Yue'e, Zhu the Third Crown Prince was in his own Protectorate headquarters listening to Zhang Xixian report on "enemy movements."

"My prince, the roving bandit military households are moving west in large groups organized by Chiliarchs. At present, fifteen Chiliarchs have already arrived near Yining."

"How is their armament?" Zhu the Third Crown Prince asked with narrowed eyes. At that moment he was leaning back in a round-backed armchair in his study, holding a cup of clear tea that had long gone cold.

"A great many firearms. Each Chiliarch has about a thousand guns, and roughly the same number of pikes. But they have almost no cavalry or artillery."

Zhu the Third Crown Prince's eyes widened. "A thousand muskets and a thousand pikes per Chiliarch? Wouldn't that mean two thousand men?"

"Just about. These roving bandit military households are ferocious — not only can the men fight, but the women can shoulder guns and wield weapons too! Many elderly men and boys of twelve or thirteen also have the strength to fight!"

Wang Fuchen exclaimed, "Then wouldn't forty thousand households be able to field a hundred thousand warriors?"

"A hundred thousand soldiers for pitched battle they do not have," Zhang Xixian said, "but a hundred thousand for assaulting or defending a city — that is no problem."

Wang Fuchen grumbled, "With so many able fighters, how did the court ever pacify them?"

Zhu the Third Crown Prince glanced at his top enforcer and gave a cold laugh. "That's because the court had even more able soldiers and generals in its hands! And these fubing are very hard to support. Aside from being good at killing people, they're useless at everything else. In ten or twenty years, they ate Sichuan into poverty."

"Great King," Yu Chenglong said with a frown, "if even Sichuan, the Land of Abundance, could not support them, can we?"

Zhu the Third Crown Prince laughed. "We don't support them. We are a republic, and they are citizens. The state has a share for them, so they must also support themselves!"

"Then how shall we settle them?" Yu Chenglong asked.

"Give them all land!" Zhu Cijiong said. "The Western Regions have little else, but land is plentiful. Since every one of them has a gun, then every one of them should have land! Even if each household gets a thousand mu, we can still spare it!"

Zhu Cijiong's territory was vast — stretching from the middle reaches of the Ili River in the east to the Talas River in the west, over 1,500 li from east to west. It included half the Ili River valley, the entire Chu River valley, the entire Talas River valley, and large tracts of land on the northern slopes of the Tianshan Mountains, plus a number of rich mountain valleys and fertile grasslands. The arable and grazable land together amounted to a full 100,000 square kilometers. And the military and civilian households under his command, plus the military households brought by Zhu Ci'en and Li Yue'e, totaled only seventy thousand households.

Even if each household were allotted one square kilometer of land, vast tracts would still remain unfilled!

And this great stretch of rich, fertile land was merely part of the Great Jüz region. If necessary, Zhu the Third Crown Prince could open up even more land.

Zhu Cijiong laughed. "We have little else, but land we have in abundance — give them a bit more. They may not be much good at farming, but give them that much land, let them plant whatever they like and raise some cattle and sheep, and they'll have enough to eat. They won't starve. And once they're not starving, the guns in their hands can serve us!

With their guns, my spine as Overlord of Western Chu will finally be straight!"

Yu Chenglong asked again, "Great King, how shall we distribute the land to them? Should we settle them together, or scatter them apart?"

Zhu Cijiong smiled. "Allotting a thousand mu per household — it can't possibly be concentrated! Of course we scatter them. But there's no need to break them up too much. Keep them organized by Chiliarchs and Centurions so that we can muster a great army at any moment!"

(End of Chapter)