Chapter 1783: The Khutugtu Khan Could Not Wait Any Longer

The vast Yan Mountains were now sealed in ice for a thousand li, with snow drifting across ten thousand li — look out in any direction, and all was wrapped in silver.

This land of such beauty now lay beneath the feet of the Chongzhen Emperor, Zhu Youjian, back on the job once more.

On the official road from Beijing to Xuanfu, several hundred cavalry of the Imperial Guard were escorting Zhu Youjian and his party northward, and had now entered the gorge of Juyong Pass.

At this moment, Zhu Youjian's heart was filled with nothing but soaring pride.

The mountains and rivers beneath his feet were unchanged, yet there was no longer any risk of the slave-bandits' iron hooves breaking through the pass at any moment. Nor was there any possibility of the Roving Bandit's great army sweeping in. Probably, perhaps — certainly — there would never again be an unfilial son with a sword chasing after Zhu Youjian's backside shouting about filial piety.

Because the eight prefectures of Zhili south of the Yan Mountains, Datong Garrison west of the Yan Mountains, the six garrisons around the Yan Mountains — Xuanfu, Yanshan, Miyun, Jizhou, Liaoxi, and Changping — and Beijing, the foremost city under Heaven, had finally, for the first time, been truly grasped by Zhu Youjian.

Only truly — not yet completely.

Complete control would require restoring the guard-battalion military system, directly grasping the population and land of over a hundred guards completely in hand — only then could it count as complete.

But such completeness could only be achieved after the realm fell into chaos and the population plummeted. And it would be hard to sustain for long, because hearts change and populations grow. A small number of Imperial Guard cavalry could still maintain their combat strength and economic prosperity under Zhu Youjian's personal supervision and protection. But if there truly were a hundred-odd guards with several hundred thousand military households, Zhu Youjian could not manage them all.

Moreover, the northern climate was now dry and cold, and the population too large. To support several hundred thousand military households — households, not individuals — on the profits of working the land, while also maintaining a sufficient standing force of elite troops, was simply a dream.

So Zhu Youjian simply abolished, in practice, the military authority of all guard-battalions under the eight prefectures and six garrisons he could truly control (excluding the Yanshan and Liaoxi garrisons). He turned them into ordinary local offices, responsible only for collecting military-farm grain and handling ordinary administration and lawsuits.

As for the eight prefectures of Northern Zhili, they became pilot areas for "officials and gentry paying grain taxes as one" and "equalized tax burdens across counties." Apart from Zhu Youjian's own land and the land distributed to the Imperial Guard cavalry (which was in fact imperial estate land), all the rest was to pay grain taxes as one. Moreover, the standard for militia grain tax was a single flat rate: five sheng per mu. No questions about whether the land was good or bad, no regard for whether the landowner was rich or poor, no consideration of whether they held examination degrees, no concern for how many people were in the landowner's household. Plant one mu, hand over five sheng of grain (mainly wheat), collected in two installments — once in summer, once again in autumn.

Five sheng of grain was only five or six jin. Even with a bit of transport cost, it was no great sum. As long as it was spread evenly, paying the tax was not difficult.

Of course, paying taxes is never pleasant, so evasion and resistance were inevitable. Zhu Youjian had for now merely pressed the Grand Secretariat and the Directorate of Ceremonial to issue the great edict on the land-tax reform of the eight Zhili prefectures. Whether those below would carry it out, and whether it would trigger unrest and tax resistance, was still unknown.

But Zhu Youjian was not the least bit afraid of these things. How great a storm could the scholar-officials and hereditary military officers of Zhili stir up? The Son of Heaven now had 100,000 elite troops — the Imperial Guard Army, the Xuan-Da-Chang-Jing troops, and the Mongol ten-thousand-household troops. Was he afraid he could not put it down?

Vaguely, he even hoped someone would rebel. If someone rebelled, there would be property confiscation and exile!

Within the narrow, long gorge valley of the pass, although the New Year was approaching, military movements had still not ceased. As Zhu Youjian traveled north, all he saw were endless convoys of grain and supplies hurrying toward Xuanfu — these convoys were all resupplying the various guards of Xingzhou east of Xuanfu. These newly opened guards were all still in their construction phase; not only did they produce nothing, they required massive inputs of manpower, materials, and funds. Besides these convoys, there were also guard-battalion troops organized by the noble houses of Beijing, passing through the long gorge of Juyong Pass in file after file, heading to the Xingzhou guards of Yanshan Garrison to strengthen the defenses there.

Besides them, there was also a unit of "New Capital Camp" infantry clearing the road ahead of the cavalry column led by Zhu Youjian — the so-called "New Capital Camp" was the militia trained by Gao Hongtu, Shi Kefa, Yang Sichang, and others, totaling over 20,000 men. They had now filled the vacancies of the Capital Camps and become a regular army of the Great Ming, with 14,000 of them transferred to Beijing and Changping, under the overall command of Zhu Youjian's trusted man Lu Xiangsheng.

According to plan, Zhu Youjian also intended to turn this army into a Western-style new army. But the reform had not yet begun, and the troops had not been reorganized; they were still led by officers trusted by those militia leaders.

The remaining 6,000 men followed Gao Hongtu, Yang Sichang, Shi Kefa, Lu Zhenfei, Lü Daqi, He Tengjiao, and others to take up posts elsewhere.

Gao Hongtu was now Governor-General of Yanyun, and Yang Sichang had become Governor of Xuanfu.

Shi Kefa, Lu Zhenfei, Lü Daqi, and He Tengjiao were respectively appointed Prefect of Baoding, Prefect of Hejian, Prefect of Zhending, and Prefect of Yongping. Together with Feng Quan (Prefect of Shuntian), Cui Chengxiu (Prefect of Shunde), Wu Chunfu (Prefect of Guangping), and Tian Ji (Prefect of Daming), who had signed military pledges, they now controlled all eight prefectures of Northern Zhili — the land-tax reform of Northern Zhili going forward would depend on them to push it through.

Zhu Youjian of course could not let them take office empty-handed; he assigned troops to all of them. Shi Kefa, Lu Zhenfei, Lü Daqi, and He Tengjiao took office with their own militia, while Cui Chengxiu, Wu Chunfu, Tian Ji, and Feng Quan each led 1,000 Datong troops to go "do evil."

Taking office with the blade in hand, there was no problem of reforms that could not be pushed through — the only question was whether one was willing to play the villain.

"His Majesty's banner!"

On the walls of Xuanfu, several sentries suddenly pointed at the banners appearing on the distant horizon and shouted loudly.

The man on wall duty that day was none other than Zu Dashou's adopted son Zu Kuan. Hearing this, he immediately ran over from nearby, pushed aside the sentries, leaned on the battlements and craned his neck to look, then habitually stroked his full beard and grinned: "Finally back! If he'd stayed out any longer, Her Majesty the Empress would have been frantic — she's about to give birth any day now!"

It was now the end of the twelfth month of the first year of Chongzhen. In just over a month, the unfilial son would be born into the world! Yet the Chongzhen Emperor had been out roaming and not returning — how could Empress Zhou not be anxious?

As Zu Kuan spoke, he turned and shouted at Zu Kefa, who was following him and was just as big and burly: "Old Five, I'll go receive His Majesty. You take the trouble to run to the imperial city and report the good news to Her Majesty!"

Zu Kefa, however, shook his head and said: "I'll go greet His Majesty myself, and report to him on the mission to the Tumed lands along the way."

Zu Kefa was now a "diplomat." A while back he had made another trip to the Tumed lands, met with the Khutugtu Khan, and discussed the matter of a grand Mongol assembly to jointly attack the slave-bandits.

The Khutugtu Khan had by now recovered some of his strength, and had successively defeated the Tumed and Ordos ten-thousand-household forces, absorbing large numbers of followers from these two ten-thousand-households to make up for his earlier losses. In addition, because the Great Ming and the Later Jin had clashed in the Yanshan region, many Kharchin people had also defected to the Chakhar tribe.

So the Chakhar tribe was now somewhat stronger than before the Battle of Datong!

And the Khutugtu Khan, grown powerful, seeing the Later Jin defeated by Zhu Youjian, naturally began to think of counterattacking — and he could not even wait until the autumn of the second year of Chongzhen. How much would that delay matters?

Moreover, if they waited until autumn, the warhorses of the Later Jin and the Khorchin tribe would be fattened up! On the steppe beyond the frontier, mobility depended entirely on horses. Once their warhorses were strong, their mobility would greatly increase. The Battle of Mameng Mountain would very likely become a great decisive battle between the Great Ming, the Northern Yuan, and the Later Jin.

But the Khutugtu Khan felt he still had no certainty in such a great battle, so he wanted to launch his troops in the spring of the first year of Chongzhen — to take advantage of the spring famine afflicting the Kharchin at Mameng Mountain, and the opportunity of the frozen ground in Later Jin territory just beginning to thaw, with flooding everywhere and troops finding it hard to move — to first destroy the Later Jin forces and the Kharchin at Mameng Mountain, and then fight a decisive battle to the death with the great army led by Hong Taiji.

(End of Chapter)