Chapter 1732: You're Even More Treacherous Than a Treacherous Minister!

Hearing Zhu Youjian's words, Zhang Weixian truly had a bellyful of bitterness he couldn't voice!

The Xuanfu Garrison's paper strength of horse and foot officers and troops was 151,452 men! But in reality there weren't that many. According to a count by those honest officials in the Ministry of War who can't even count on their fingers, the actual officers and troops numbered 83,000, with 32,000 warhorses. And how many men could Hou Shilu's three garrison battalions and household retainers amount to? Counting 13,000 would be generous, wouldn't it? Give the remaining 70,000 to Zhang Weixian — and he still couldn't hold the little Changping Garrison?

But the problem was, could there really be 70,000 horse and foot officers and troops? Dream on! If the Xuanfu troops really numbered that many, even if they were all old, weak, and crippled, Hong Taiji wouldn't dare enter the passes!

The actual number — the entire Xuanfu horse and foot officers and troops, by Zhang Weixian's estimate, would be at most 30,000. This time Hou Shilu would give him at most 20,000 old and weak — but Zhang Weixian didn't dare expose that!

The Xuanfu troop numbers had been counted by the Ministry of War — did Zhang Weixian dare say they didn't exist?

If he dared say they didn't exist, Hou Shilu might not be in a hurry, but the Ministry of War certainly would be! Then could the Capital Camps still claim a paper strength of 120,000? Count carefully, and 20,000 would already be doing well. If in one year the pay for 100,000 Capital Camp troops were cut, wouldn't Zhang Weixian become a public enemy? Then he'd be hauled off to the Embroidered Uniform Guard for an anti-corruption investigation, with not a single person to rescue him — he'd surely die inside!

Zhu Youjian looked at the sweat beading Zhang Weixian's forehead and said with a beaming smile of consolation: "Duke of Ying, don't you worry about the Jianzhou slaves not coming to Changping. If they don't come, that's still your merit!

If they do come, you've even less to worry about. Changping Garrison has 30,000 troops, and Xuanfu will transfer another 70,000 south — 100,000 great soldiers in all, and still can't hold? And what's more, you're defending the imperial tombs. Even if the losses are a bit heavy, We can accept that!"

Losses a bit heavy... Zhang Weixian understood in an instant — this little emperor, more treacherous than any treacherous minister, wanted him to cook the books on the phantom troops!

A paper strength of 100,000, with 70,000 phantom! Cook them all away, and only 30,000 paper troops remain. Doesn't this little boy emperor's conscience hurt?

Seeing the old lord so anxious he was nearly spinning in place, Zhu Youjian felt unspeakably vindicated — your Capital Camps have a paper strength of 120,000! Never mind what happened in the jiashen year — in the jisi year you'd only just retired, hadn't you? When Hong Taiji attacked, where were your Capital Camp troops? Did they all retire along with you?

A great army of 120,000! With so many Hongyi cannons and Folangji cannons too — even a defensive battle before the walls should have smashed Hong Taiji, shouldn't it?

And what happened?

They couldn't even leave the city, and still had to rely on Yuan Chonghuan to come to the rescue!

Come to think of it, if Yuan Chonghuan deserved death, you deserved it even more! At the time of the Jisi Incident, if the Capital Camps had had 60,000 troops fit for battle, even if Hong Taiji didn't die he would have suffered devastating losses, and there would have been no later four incursions. Even without 60,000 battle-worthy troops, if you people had embezzled a little less and reported 60,000 phantom troops on the payroll, the court would have saved over one to two million in pay each year.

Though he hated them to death in his heart, Zhu Youjian still could not fall out with this crowd of ennobled aristocrats. Because right now he was only a "King of Datong," and still lacked the power to drive this pack of corrupt nobles out of Northern Zhili, so he could only keep up a surface appearance of harmony.

"This old subject understands," Zhang Weixian could only swallow his anger and accept the assignment of defending Changping. "This old subject will strictly guard every point of the Changping Garrison, and will not let the eastern barbarians disturb the peace of the late emperors."

Zhu Youjian nodded with a smile. "Good! Good! With the Duke of Ying holding Changping, We are at ease! Well then, today's court session ends here. Hanlin Qian, Companions Chen and Qi, draft the edict! Once drafted, send it at once to Beijing and have the Grand Secretariat append the formal endorsement.

Duke of Ying, Duke of Cheng, We shall first issue you a palace edict. Take it and set out. Once the Grand Secretariat appends the endorsement, you will receive the formal imperial decree."

Having left Beijing, Zhu Youjian had shaken off the control of the Grand Secretariat and the ennobled aristocrats, but at the same time he could no longer, as he had inside Beijing, issue imperial edicts to government offices across the land through the Grand Secretariat and the Directorate of Ceremonial.

Because quite a few of the Directorate of Ceremonial's brush-holding eunuchs had come out with him, but the Grand Secretaries of the Grand Secretariat had all stayed in Beijing. So it was still fairly convenient for Zhu Youjian to issue palace edicts, but not convenient to issue formal imperial decrees.

And his palace edicts did not carry weight everywhere. In the Datong Garrison, which he had reorganized, they naturally carried weight. When he brought the Datong troops and the headquarters troops to Xuanfu, naturally no one would dare disobey. But elsewhere, Zhu Youjian still had to issue edicts through the Grand Secretariat, which meant enduring the Grand Secretariat's foot-dragging. The drop in administrative efficiency after the separation of emperor and Grand Secretariat — if it happened in ordinary times, it wouldn't matter much; everything would just follow the old rules.

The efficiency of the Great Ming court and government offices was just like that. Without sweeping reform, there was no way to improve it.

And to carry out sweeping reform, one had to have enough "great blades" and "great axes" in hand!

And Zhu Youjian's reorganization of the army and land surveys in Datong had already exposed his true face — he was a little emperor even more treacherous than a treacherous minister!

So Zhu Youjian now did not dare return to Beijing, which was still under the control of the ennobled aristocrats and court officials. And since he, the Great Ming's supreme sovereign, did not return to Beijing, there was no way to exercise unified command over the Ming armies in the capital region to resist the Later Jin forces.

Therefore, in this Wuchen Incident of the first year of Chongzhen, the Ming armies in the capital region split into three clusters fighting independently, plus a number of independent strongholds.

The three clusters were: the Xuan-Da cluster personally controlled by Zhu Youjian; the Jing-Chang (Beijing and Changping) cluster controlled by the Beijing court and the ennobled aristocrats; and the Ji-Liao cluster controlled by Wang Zhichen, Yuan Chonghuan, and Zhao Shuaijiao.

The independent strongholds were Zunhua, Yutian, Jizhou, Shunyi, Pinggu, and Tongzhou, plus a newly built bastion fort at Nanhaizi — this fortress was the base in Beijing that Zhu Youjian planned to use as his headquarters, expanded from the Nanhaizi main camp. In fact, bastion walls, hollow bastions, and triangular forts had been built around the Nanhaizi main camp. They were not cheap constructions piled from sandbags, but rammed earth faced with great stones and bricks. On the hollow bastions and triangular forts, gun platforms had been built and Folangji cannons mounted — one could call it exceptionally strong. Moreover, the interior area of this bastion was not small, enough to shelter the families of the headquarters cavalry remaining around Beijing and the troops of the three battalions of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses. If the Later Jin army really could fight its way through every pass and reach the walls of Beijing, the Nanhaizi bastion would prove of great use.

Of course, it would not be easy for the Later Jin army to reach the walls of Beijing — every step of the way was hard bone!

And the first hard bone they would have to gnaw was Zunhua County, defended by Shi Kefa, the newly minted jinshi of the first year of Chongzhen and magistrate of Zunhua.

Shi Kefa had formally taken office on the first day of the fourth month of the first year of Chongzhen, only a little over four months ago. The time was not long, but this Magistrate Shi's work had already been highly effective.

First, he had widened the moat outside Zunhua County.

The present Zunhua County had been built when Qi Jiguang oversaw Ji Garrison. The walls were three zhang thick and three zhang six chi high, with a total length of 1,351 zhang, and both the inner and outer faces of the walls were built entirely of grey brick. Around the city there was also a moat three zhang wide and two zhang deep. In addition, barbicans had been added outside the four city gates of Zunhua — one could call it impregnable!

After Shi Kefa arrived and saw that the city was extremely strong and there was nothing much to improve, he doubled the width of the moat, bringing it to seven zhang wide and two zhang deep.

Beyond ten zhang, shooting arrows from below up at a wall three zhang six chi high would greatly reduce the power of the arrowheads.

Second, Shi Kefa, well-read in history, had dug out of the History of Song a weapon that looked somewhat outdated — the bed crossbow!

Because Zhu Youjian worried that Zunhua County might be breached, he had not issued Shi Kefa any large firearms. So Shi Kefa could only think of his own solutions. He lacked the technology to cast cannons, so he had to blaze a new trail and build many bed crossbows.

Furthermore, using the officers and veterans from the three battalions of the Directorate of the Imperial Horses whom Zhu Youjian had assigned him as a backbone, Shi Kefa recruited able-bodied men locally in Zunhua and formed a militia army. Though it numbered only 3,000, every man was strong and every man worked hard — it could be called elite.

But on the tenth day of the eighth month of the first year of Chongzhen, the whole of Zunhua County was still wrapped in peace and tranquility. No one foresaw that a bloody battle was about to unfold around Zunhua County!

(End of Chapter)