Chapter 182: Which King Should We Rally To? (Bonus Chapter — Please Subscribe)

"What?" Gao Jie, who had just been playing the gentleman with his eyes lowered and a meek expression, exploded at these words. "The Man, the Manchu Tartars are attacking? How far have they come? Have they reached Shandong?"

Although Gao Jie had started out among the roving bandits, he had joined the government army back in the eighth year of Chongzhen and had long since been infected with the fear of the Manchus. His case had not yet reached the terminal stage, but hearing that the Manchu Tartars were attacking still set his heart pounding with alarm.

He had come north to win merit, not to throw his life away!

Shi Kefa glanced at him and shook his head. "They have not reached Shandong yet. The Capital Gazette says the Tartars suffered a setback at Dagukou in the Tianjin Guard, defeated by the New Army of Overcoming Difficulties led by the heir apparent, with two or three thousand killed or wounded! The heads taken alone number more than two thousand several hundred!"

"What?" Gao Jie drew a sharp breath. "Two thousand several hundred heads? That is a bit too ruthless, is it not?"

"Ruthless?" Shi Kefa did not catch his meaning at once and stared blankly at Gao Jie.

"Killing civilians and passing them off as enemy dead!" Gao Jie said. "How could anyone cut off two thousand several hundred Tartar heads? It must be killing civilians and passing them off as enemy dead. Damn it, that is too savage! Over two thousand several hundred innocent civilians slaughtered at one go!"

Shi Kefa thought it over, then nodded. "That must be it. The heir apparent grew up deep in the palace and knows nothing of military affairs, so he has been deceived by Wu Xiang and his son Wu Sanfu!"

"Then what is to be done?" Gao Jie probed.

Shi Kefa understood that Gao Jie was sounding him out, so he sighed and said, "The Tartar forces are at their peak and beyond what our dynasty can resist. For the present, the best course is peace negotiations first, with war and defense second. Still, preparations for war and defense cannot be neglected!

Commander Gao, you are the General-in-Chief of the Reinforcement and Suppression Forces, first among the garrisons of the Central Plain. You must make thorough preparations for resisting the caitiffs and bandits."

Gao Jie frowned bitterly. "Grand Marshal, this garrison's troops are nominally thirty thousand, but the number actually usable is only a few thousand, and they are soldiers worn down by repeated defeats. How can they hold off the eastern barbarians and the roving bandits at the same time?"

"If you lack troops, then transfer more in!" Shi Kefa stroked his beard and paused. "This office intends to move north to Yanzhou and there assemble the three garrisons of Huang Degong, Liu Zeqing, and Liu Liangzuo, together with the two Governors-General Ma Shiying and Lu Zhenfei, and march north together to rally to the throne! Commander Gao, Yanzhou is now your territory. Before long a hundred thousand troops will be gathered there, so there will be a good deal of preparation to do, will there not?

Moreover, the court has already moved to Dengzhou, so the overland route to Dengzhou must be opened as quickly as possible! Only when the overland route is open can we lead our troops to rally to the throne and welcome His Majesty!"

The region of Shandong was now in complete chaos. The Shun forces had already withdrawn, but Ming rule there had likewise all but collapsed. Only the prefectural seats of Dengzhou and Laizhou, along with the guard cities of Dengzhou, Lingshan, Weihai, Chengshan, Jinghai, Dasong, and Aoshan, still flew the Ming banner.

The overland route from Dengzhou to the south had also been cut. Therefore the orders, gazettes, and dispatches that Zhu Cilang sent south all had to be carried by Shen Tingyang's sand-boats to Haizhou, and from there forwarded to their various destinations.

Because the sea route was entirely in the hands of Shen Tingyang, who was loyal to Zhu Cilang, even a loyal minister like Shi Kefa found it very difficult to establish direct contact with the Chongzhen Emperor, and so could not know the Emperor's mind. What if it was not the Crown Prince seizing power, but the Emperor genuinely believing the Crown Prince brilliant and mighty, and wishing to abdicate early?

Until the great loyal minister Shi had the situation clear, he dared not rally to the throne recklessly! If he got it wrong, he would be a traitorous minister and a villainous subject, and would lose his head!

"This subordinate understands," Gao Jie said, his eyes darting as he grasped Shi Kefa's meaning. "This subordinate will set out for Yanzhou at once."

"My son," Shi Kefa said to his adopted son Shi Dewei, "take a few men and go with Commander Gao's people to Yanzhou. If the road is open, then go on to Dengzhou immediately."

"Your son obeys."

Sending Shi Dewei north to Dengzhou was not a spur-of-the-moment decision by Shi Kefa; he had been mulling it over for several days. As a leader of the Donglin faction and the head of the Southern Metropolitan officialdom, he had to find out the true situation at the temporary court in Dengzhou before deciding whether to uphold the sovereign and father and drive out the rebellious son and treacherous ministers!

South of the Dengzhou naval port, a large stretch of level open ground had now become a sea of soldiers!

Company after company of combat troops stood in red battle robes — simple long gowns of red cloth, with white cloth shirts and cotton trousers underneath, and on their feet a pair of thousand-layer-soled cloth shoes, their calves wrapped round and round with cotton strips as puttees.

More than ten thousand men, uniformly dressed, stood on the drill ground. Before them were the New Army officers in official robes and military boots. Seen from a distance, they now had something of the bearing of an elite force, and they looked somewhat different from how they had appeared at the Tianjin Guard and at Dagukou.

The New Army of Overcoming Difficulties that had reached Dengzhou had undergone yet another round of reorganization!

Although Zhu Cilang did not understand much about military affairs, he did know something about the modern European-style armies that fought in firing lines. Earlier at Dagukou, he had drilled the vanguard brigade of the New Army's Central Division in that direction, and the results in actual combat had been quite good!

Musketeers fitted with socket bayonets proved no less effective than pikemen in withstanding the charges of the Manchu cavalry — among the Ming armies of the Chongzhen period, the proportion of pikemen was actually not high, and the quality of the pikes was generally poor, so they often snapped easily.

But the bayonet musket could fully combine a melee weapon and a missile weapon, making every man at once a "short-spearman" and a "musketeer." In the course of battle there was no need to change weapons, nor any need to adjust formations.

All that was needed was to obey commands to form ranks, march, fire, and charge!

Compared with the traditional methods of fighting, the difficulty of training and command was in fact greatly reduced.

The minimum requirement was like the musketeers under Hao Yaoqi at the Battle of Dagukou: form ranks, let the enemy come close, fire one volley, then charge as a mass.

Although the results would not always be ideal (an outcome like Dagukou involved an element of chance), the exchange ratio would never be too poor.

Therefore, after arriving in Dengzhou, Zhu Cilang began using the Central Division's vanguard battalion as a template to train more musket brigades.

According to his vision, in the future the army of the New Army of Overcoming Difficulties should be built around musketeers as the main force, with cavalry and artillery in support, supplemented by engineers and supply troops, forming a quasi-modern army.

Of course, the idea was fine, but reality was also very frustrating. First, His Highness the Crown Prince's "modern army" did not have enough muskets, so most of the "musketeers" still had to carry pikes as substitutes.

Second, the artillery could not be established for a long time, because there were no usable field guns and no qualified gunners — the gunners Zhu Cilang had brought out of Beijing, and those disciples of Johann Adam Schall von Bell, were not qualified field artillerymen.

Finally, Zhu Cilang had no qualified new-style officers to use. Neither Wu Sanfu, Wu Guoyong, and Li Ruolian, nor the former bandits Hao Yaoqi and Feng San, understood what a "modern army" was, and Zhu Cilang himself did not understand either.

So for now they could only train the troops to form line and column, to obey orders to pretend to fire, and to pretend to fight hand-to-hand with bayoneted muskets — simple tactics like these.

Apart from the above, there was a great deal of physical training and discipline enforcement!

Two drills a day were indispensable, and from time to time there was night training. Beatings with the military rod and confinement to quarters were handed out every day. The rod was administered in public, guaranteed to make the victims wail for their fathers and mothers!

And every day Zhu Cilang would spend several hours walking around the camp, and would also watch the discipline being carried out.

Today was no exception. Wu Xiang, Cao Youyi, Wu Sanfu, and Bi Jiucheng all clustered behind him.

Amid the chorus of wailing, Wu Xiang said softly, "Thousand Years, is this not too harsh? Haste makes waste."

Without turning his head, Zhu Cilang said coldly, "It is not that We are impatient for results, but that the Tartars are pressing too hard. Do you think they will be content with the northern half of the realm? That is impossible! Because all the wealth and tax revenue of the empire lies in the southeast! Relying on the little territory of Northern Zhili and Shanxi alone, a Great Qing state cannot be sustained!"

He paused, then said to Wu Sanfu, "Later, tell the officers of the men who were beaten that they must look after them well, and must personally apply medicine to them!"

Wu Sanfu nodded quietly.

Zhu Cilang turned and left with a cold face, then suddenly turned back and instructed, "Today We will take the midday meal with the Second Battalion of the Left Division's vanguard brigade, and after the meal the pay will be issued!"

The rod had to be applied, but the food also had to be good, and the soldiers' pay absolutely could not be withheld — otherwise the beatings would scatter men's hearts, and the unit would have no cohesion.

Training, equipment, and command ability could not make a leap forward in a short time. Muskets and cannon would take time to procure, and foreign officers who could raise the level of training would also take time to invite.

What could be raised quickly now was only the army's morale, discipline, and cohesion.

A report to the readers of "Rescuing the Great Ming": as of the early hours of today, this book's twenty-four-hour initial subscriptions have reached 3,100+, so eleven extra chapters are owed. Monthly tickets have now reached 2,100+, requiring ten extra chapters, for a total of twenty-one extra chapters. Fourteen were added yesterday, leaving seven. Today four will be added first; this is the first extra update, with three at noon and two in the evening. Thank you all for your support.

(End of Chapter)