Chapter 251: How Did I End Up a Eunuch-Party Man?

"Elder Brother, neither of the two parties I sent to contact Huang Degong has returned..."

"What? They haven't returned? What on earth happened?" Xu Hongji heard the report from that commander of his own clan and felt a buzzing roar fill his head.

"I don't know!" The commander spread his hands. "We've sent two parties, one after the other. The first should have been back before the first quarter of the zi hour, and the second by the third quarter of the chou hour. But now the yin hour is almost here, and still no sign of them. Could it be..."

He only got halfway through; the other half was too frightening to say aloud!

Could Huang Degong have defected?

If he had defected, then all these ennobled families and meritorious officials inside Nanjing would be finished — they could never hold out until Zuo Liangyu came to the rescue!

And come to think of it, Zuo Liangyu probably wasn't coming either... Now Gao Jie, who commanded the largest force among the Four Garrisons of Jiangbei, had already gone over to Zhu Cilang. If Huang Degong, the strongest in battle, went over too, what would the Crown Prince have to fear? His Highness already had tens of thousands of men of his own; add Gao Jie's and Huang Degong's troops and he could muster a hundred thousand!

If Zuo Liangyu came, he'd just be walking into a slaughter...

Just as a deathly silence hung over the barbican tower of Chaoyang Gate, a head retainer of the Xu household who had been posted at the gate came running up, gasping for breath, a visiting card in his hand. The moment he saw Xu Hongji he shouted: "My Lord Duke, Governor-General Ma has just sent word that he and Commander Huang are about to lead their troops down the mountain to relieve the Xiaoling Guard city. He asks whether we will send troops out or not?"

Only then did Xu Hongji and the ennobled lords and meritorious officials in the barbican tower of Chaoyang Gate let out a long breath of relief. They had been overthinking it — Huang Degong had not defected. Something had gone wrong with the men sent earlier to make contact; perhaps they had run into night patrols sent out by the Crown Prince, or perhaps they had seen which way the wind was blowing and fled on their own.

"Send out the troops! Send them out! Quickly, send them out..." Xu Hongji had in truth long since lost his composure; he gave the order to march without a second thought.

Although he had served for many years as Garrison Commander of Nanjing, that was a post he had gotten by being born into the right family — what did he know about fighting a battle?

If Zhu Cilang had not seized the Xu family's salt profits and moved to reclaim the occupied guard-farm lands, he would have stayed home nursing his illness and waiting to die. How would he ever have ended up in this situation?

But sending out troops, it turned out, was no simple matter. There were more than ten thousand men at the Chaoyang Gate barbican — not many, but not few either. How to assemble so many men, how to form them up, how to march them, how to array them for battle — there was a great deal of learning in all that!

Inside Nanjing there were no experienced generals like Wu Xiang, Wu Sanfu, or Li Ruolian, and no men to make use of like the Wu household retainers, the veterans of the Valiant Guard Camp, or the junior officers of the Capital Camps. There was only a pack of hereditary military officers who had no idea how to lead troops, and retainers of ennobled families who had never set foot on a battlefield. In peacetime they could still get a force into some sort of order and put on a show for a Minister of War like Shi Kefa. But when it came to actual fighting, they were bound to dissolve into utter chaos!

The moment Xu Hongji's order to march went out, the Chaoyang Gate barbican fell into complete disorder. The ranks could not be formed up, no one was willing to take the vanguard, and the officers below all climbed up to the gate tower to demand money from Xu Hongji — not for themselves, but because the common soldiers below wanted money! Without seeing two or three taels of reward silver, not a man was willing to move!

This infuriated Xu Hongji so badly that his consumption flared up; he was racked by fit after fit of heart-rending coughing, and even brought up blood... With the Regional Commander in such a state, how was the battle to be fought? But the Xu family was already being roasted over the fire; they had no choice but to fight. If the Crown Prince usurped the throne, would he not exterminate their entire clan?

In the end the old man gritted his teeth and dug out thirty thousand taels of silver for rewards, and only then did he barely manage to muster a full ten thousand troops and march them out of Chaoyang Gate.

Old Xu himself could not lead troops, and he did not trust his son Xu Yunjue to take the field, so he sent his cousin Xu Yongji in command. Under the banner of "rallying to the throne," off they went.

Of course, Xu Hongji did not expect these ten thousand men under Xu Yongji to perform beyond themselves. What he was counting on was still Huang Degong up on Bell Mountain!

As long as Huang Degong could bring his six thousand elite troops charging down before Zhu Cilang broke through the Xiaoling Guard city, the battle to rally to the throne at Nanjing still had hope.

But what Xu Hongji could never have imagined was that at this very moment Huang Degong had run into serious trouble — he was already as frantic as an ant on a hot pan.

He was frantic because Ma Shiying had disappeared!

Did Ma Shiying's disappearance warrant such panic?

Of course it did! Because Ma Shiying's three thousand Guizhou troops were drawn up in ranks blocking the mountain gate of Linggu Temple, while Huang Degong's three thousand household retainers were arrayed inside the gate.

If Ma Shiying's Guizhou troops did not move, Huang Degong's retainers could not move either — unless they went over the mountain. But none of Huang Degong's men knew the terrain of Bell Mountain; leaving the main road to cross by mountain paths would be no easy task.

By now fierce fighting had already broken out at the Xiaoling Guard at the foot of Bell Mountain, and Huang Degong knew he had to march. Otherwise, once the Xiaoling Guard fell, his men would be bottled up on the mountain, and even getting out later would be difficult.

Yet at this critical moment, Ma Shiying had vanished without a trace, and his three thousand Guizhou troops were blocking the mountain gate, refusing to budge no matter what was said. Oh, and saying anything to them was useless anyway! Because they only spoke the Guizhou dialect and could not understand the official tongue. And Huang Degong was a Liaodong man, with northern soldiers under him — none of them understood the Guizhou dialect either. The two groups simply could not communicate!

Huang Degong was at his wits' end. He could not order his own retainers to fight the Guizhou men, so he could only send people out in all directions to search for Ma Shiying — but he simply could not be found.

It was enough to drive Huang Degong to death with anxiety...

Just as Huang Degong was nearly dying of anxiety, Zhu Cilang, at his newly established central command post outside the Xiaoling Guard city, was meeting with Ma Shiying.

"Your Highness, this is the memorial jointly drafted by this subject and Huang Degong, humbly beseeching His Majesty to abdicate the throne in Your Highness's favor!"

Ma Shiying produced the memorial he had just finished writing, raised it above his head, and presented it to the Great Ming Army-Pacifying Crown Prince, who sat astride his horse.

Zhu Cilang smiled as he took the memorial and opened it for a look. Sure enough, Huang Degong's signature was on it. He nodded repeatedly: "Excellent, excellent... Minister Ma and Commander Huang are indeed loyal to the state and mindful of the public good — true pillars of the nation! In this pacification of the Nanjing rebellion, you have both rendered great service. You shall both be counted among the heroes who overcame the crisis!"

He deliberately raised his voice so that Zhang Shenyan and Han Zanzhou, who were being held under guard by Chen Shifang's men, would hear it clearly. They had to be made to know that Huang Degong was a traitor!

Just then, Wu Sanfu, who was directing the assault on the Xiaoling Guard city, suddenly reported in a loud voice: "Thousand Years, the night patrols have spotted a large body of rebel troops issuing from the direction of Chaoyang Gate, advancing along the main road toward the Xiaoling Guard city! Their marching pace is slow, and their ranks are noisy and disordered — clearly a rabble!"

"Ha ha ha!" Zhu Cilang burst out laughing. "They're coming to throw their lives away! Excellent... Sanfu, how do you want to fight them?"

Wu Sanfu thought for a moment, then said: "We can first set an ambush on Bell Mountain, then let the rebels into the Xiaoling Guard city, and finally cut off their line of retreat and trap them inside."

"Good!" Zhu Cilang nodded. "Do as you say — let the rebels into the Xiaoling Guard!"

Although Zhu Cilang liked to be at the front in person, he very rarely interfered with his generals' command. The only exception had been at the Battle of Dagu, where he had stubbornly insisted on his own way and fought it out with the Tartars. But this campaign to pacify the Nanjing rebellion was a sure win from the start; with a steady, middling general like Wu Sanfu handling it step by step, victory was certain.

So Zhu Cilang boldly delegated authority and made himself a mere spectator on the battlefield.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Xu Yongji, leading some ten thousand disorderly rebel troops, had not the slightest idea of method. He had sent no vanguard to scout the road, posted no men on the flanks to keep watch, and sent no one to secure the edge of Bell Mountain's southern slope. The force of more than ten thousand marched much as they would on any ordinary day — and with a great deal of noise and confusion besides.

Wu Sanfu's ruse to lure the enemy was not particularly clever either. He simply sent out a small number of "divine marksmen," screened by the night-patrol cavalry, to fire their turtle-dove-foot matchlocks from long range, goading the enemy into firing back, and then fight while retreating. By the time the sky was just beginning to lighten, he had lured Xu Yongji's ten thousand or so Nanjing Capital Camp troops right up to the walls of the Xiaoling Guard city.

Then, without even waiting for them to enter the city, a brigade of matchlock men and two battalions of cavalry that had earlier been lying in ambush around Xiamaping on the southern slope of Bell Mountain rushed out and wedged themselves between the Xiaoling Guard city and the Chaoyang Gate barbican.

Xu Yongji, discovering that his line of retreat had been cut, proved most obliging to Wu Sanfu: instead of organizing a breakout back to the Chaoyang Gate barbican, he led his men crowding into the Xiaoling Guard city — which was even then under bombardment — to hold fast and await relief. Though one wonders who could possibly come to relieve him now?

. m.