Chapter 1665: Searching for Li Zicheng (Seeking Monthly Tickets, Seeking Subscriptions)

Zhu Youjian nodded approvingly at Sun Zushou and said, "Councilor Sun is right. If the grand formation presented by Mr. Yang is to truly display its power, it must be supported by armored cavalry! Without armored cavalry, even if the infantry and artillery square can repel the eastern barbarians' horse troops, there will be no way to pursue them! In the end, we could only rout them, not annihilate them.

Moreover, without armored cavalry to screen us and light cavalry to scout, whenever we face the eastern barbarians, we are in the open while the enemy is hidden. Whether to fight or not would then be up to the enemy, not us!"

Cavalry is the master of the battlefield in this age!

Whether cavalry can break an infantry square is one matter; whether it can dominate the battlefield is another matter entirely.

And to dominate the battlefield means to hold the initiative — to hold the choice of whether to fight or not, where to fight, and when to fight!

That is why the true core strength of the Ming armies in this era — the household retainers of the Nine Border commanders — are all cavalry, to a man!

Of course, these cavalrymen are all what one would call traditional cavalry, or rather knights, mounted warriors. They must master many combat skills both on horseback and on foot, which makes them very difficult to train, and the cost of keeping them is correspondingly considerable.

Yet the military men of the Nine Borders are still willing to spend the money they have so painstakingly embezzled to maintain a small number of household retainers, which shows that these mounted warriors are worth the price.

If they did not maintain household retainers but instead, like Sun Zushou, properly maintained their camp troops, they would find themselves short of elite cavalry when needed — with the pay and provisions the Ming court issues to the quota horse troops, even if received in full, one still cannot raise elite cavalry. Moreover, the Ming bureaucracy could never supply the camp horse troops with warhorses of sufficient quality, and even if the Ming government did procure warhorses, the camp cavalry soldiers would not necessarily take good care of them.

Therefore, in this present age, truly elite cavalry can only come from household retainers.

Even though Zhu Youjian is the Emperor, he can only follow the path of the Son of Heaven's own household retainers!

Zhu Youjian paused, then said, "So we must recruit the full ten thousand household knights of the Imperial Guard as quickly as possible. A few days ago, Sun Yingyuan, Zhou Yuji, and Huang Degong reported that from the three camps of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses, three or four thousand household knights of the Imperial Guard should be selectable — all of them skilled in bow and horse and eager for battle! If we count four thousand households, then six thousand households are still unaccounted for and must be recruited elsewhere."

All 6,500 camp troops of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses are cavalry, but there are still differences in quality among them, and it would be inappropriate to take all of them into the ten thousand households of Imperial Guard cavalry. Selecting four thousand households from among them should be the limit. Moreover, the Directorate of the Imperial Horses as an office will not be abolished and will continue to be maintained, because the Directorate of the Imperial Horses is also responsible for dispatching garrison eunuchs (army-supervising eunuchs) to various regions, and these eunuchs sent out also need to bring along a few stout men to keep up appearances.

So Zhu Youjian will still leave the Directorate of the Imperial Horses a quota of two thousand troops — a quota, not an actual number. Because the three camps of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses already had some vacancies to begin with, after pulling out roughly 4,600 men (when Zhu Youjian exterminated Wei Zhongxian, he took more than five hundred men from the three camps of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses as his own bodyguards, and later rounded the number up to a full six hundred), only a little over a thousand men remained, and the remaining several hundred vacancies would have to be filled by the eunuchs of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses themselves.

Yang Gao, who had been racking his brains trying to recall when he had presented this set of formation diagrams, heard that Zhu Youjian wanted to recruit household retainers and hurriedly collected his wits. He rose and offered a suggestion: "Your Majesty, the Liaodong army has long been at the front, fighting bloody battles against the eastern barbarians for years, and the army is full of stout warriors. If they hear that Your Majesty is recruiting household retainers, they will surely flock to enlist. Recruiting a full six thousand stout men should be no problem at all."

Zhu Youjian naturally would not listen to Yang Gao. He shook his head and said, "The stout warriors of the Liaodong army are all on the front lines resisting the barbarians. If We were to recruit them into the Imperial Guard, would that not weaken Liaodong's strength in resisting the barbarians? Therefore, We wish to go to the northwest to recruit household retainers. The northwest has the four great border garrisons of Gansu, Ningxia, Guyuan, and Yulin, which have always been places of martial prowess, so there must be many stout men skilled in bow and horse. Moreover, the northwest has poor land, and in recent years the harvests have been bad, with disasters year after year. In the seventh month of this year, starving people in the Weibei region of Guanzhong have already risen in revolt. It has still not been suppressed!

We fear that some stout men of the northwest, with no food or clothing, will join the rebellion, and that would be trouble! So We wish to recruit from the four garrisons of the northwest and the borderlands of Yansui some stout men skilled in bow and horse to serve as household retainers. They may be recruited from the camp troops of the four garrisons, from the post stations, and from the common folk of the Yansui region."

Zhu Youjian had very nearly named Li Hongji (Li Zicheng), the post-station runner of Yinchuan Guard, outright!

Besides Li Zicheng alone, Zhu Youjian also wanted to recruit into the Imperial Guard as many as possible of those stout men of the northwest border region who had no prospects but could ride and shoot.

This was a bargain that could not possibly be more worthwhile!

For every additional battle-ready man with no other way out recruited from the northwest, Zhu Youjian gained a measure of strength himself, while the Roving Bandit on the other side (the Roving Bandit is not necessarily Li Zicheng; Gao Yingxiang also called himself the Roving King) lost a measure of strength.

"Mr. Sun," Zhu Youjian turned to look at Sun Chuanting, "you come from a military household and grew up in Datong, so you know the border armies well. Why not lead a party to the northwest to recruit household retainers on Our behalf? We shall give you the title of Imperial Commissioner for Troop Recruitment, and We shall select a group of assistants for you from the Imperial Guard and the Directorate of the Imperial Horses. You may go to Datong to recruit some men.

By the way, We shall also allocate you three hundred thousand taels of silver for recruitment expenses. We will not ask how you spend it. We only require that within one year, you recruit a full six thousand battle-ready men skilled in bow and horse! Can you do it?"

Zhu Youjian's extravagance had been inflated by that unfilial son as well. For merely recruiting six thousand warriors skilled in bow and horse, he gave three hundred thousand taels — spread evenly, that came to fifty taels of silver per man. And this silver was not taken from the Imperial Treasury, but personally handed over under Zhu Youjian's own watch.

Moreover, the man taking the money to carry out the task was the extremely reliable Sun Chuanting, so this assignment could not possibly be botched!

"This subject will exert himself to the utmost and will not fail Your Majesty's great expectations!" Sun Chuanting did not hesitate, and immediately thumped his chest amid the envious gazes of the others.

Zhu Youjian also nodded approvingly — this was exactly the spirit of boldness in undertaking tasks that he wanted! This task of capturing — no, of recruiting the Roving King Li Zicheng — is hereby entrusted to you!

After settling on the man for the mission to "find Li Zicheng," Zhu Youjian was about to say something more when Xu Yingyuan, the brush-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, arrived.

He had come to notify Zhu Youjian that it was time to eat — after the midday meal, it would be time for the Grand Secretariat ministers, the censors and supervising secretaries, the Commander of the Capital Camps, and the Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard to come and report on affairs.

Because the time for these reports had long been fixed and could not be changed, Zhu Youjian could not "keep them after class."

He looked at his several lecturers and said with a smile, "Gentlemen, let us end today's lesson here. Stay and share a meal before you go! By the way, Mr. Sun, tomorrow we shall discuss the concrete arrangements. Recruiting household retainers is something We are doing for the first time, and We do not quite understand it. If any of you have suggestions, you may all raise them tomorrow, and we shall deliberate together."

While Zhu Youjian was eating with his several lecturers, along with Yang Gao, Sun Zushou, and the others, the assembled officials who had attended the morning audience at the Hall of Literary Splendor had already finished their midday meals in their respective offices and were now making their way in twos and threes toward the Eastern Splendor Gate.

Chief Grand Secretary Huang Liji and Minister of War Wang Zaijin were walking together, both with brows tightly knitted. One look was enough to tell that something was wrong.

It turned out that Wang Zhichen, the Supreme Commander and Governor of Liaodong, had just submitted a memorial reporting that the Chahar Mongols, who occupied the grasslands of the Liao River bend, had begun migrating westward!

This meant that Ligdan Khan of the Chahar had been so badly beaten by the eastern barbarians that he no longer dared to remain in the lush pastures of the Liao River bend, and was instead moving west to seize the territory of the right-wing Mongols.

And once the Chahar left, the eastern barbarians' influence over the Mongol steppe would swell further! The various eastern Mongol tribes and the Khalkha tribes to the north would sooner or later be subdued by the eastern barbarians and become their accomplices and running dogs.

Moreover, there would no longer be anyone who could tie down the eastern barbarians from the flank when they attacked western and southern Liaoning.

Originally, in the northeast, the Ming, the eastern barbarians, and the Chahar Mongols had been playing a three-legged game. Although the Ming was at a disadvantage, by joining hands with the Chahar, it could always manage to hold the situation together.

If the Chahar were to withdraw from the Liao River basin and go west to contend with the Tumed, then the Ming would have to face the eastern barbarians one-on-one. Just thinking about it made one worry! Even when the Chahar were still around, the Ming had been at a disadvantage; now that the Chahar were gone... what was to be done!

(End of Chapter)