Chapter 386: Fellow Villagers, the Great Ming Is Back!

Just as everyone was beginning to sense something was wrong, the magistrate who looked like a scholar dressed as a bandit suddenly spoke up, and the moment he opened his mouth he gave them all a terrible fright.

Zhang Huangyan, the great Magistrate Zhang, shouted: "Fellow villagers, this official brings you all good news — the Great Ming has returned!"

What did he mean, the Great Ming had returned? Was it going to leave again?

The one or two hundred elders and villagers of Juehua Island, their faces baked black by the sun, were all stunned, staring blankly at Zhang Huangyan.

Zhang Huangyan was a "friend of the people" official, so he did his best to put on a people-friendly manner and said amiably: "This official is the newly appointed magistrate of Juehua County, Zhang Huangyan!"

Magistrate of Juehua County. The elders of Juehua Island remained dumbstruck — not stunned, but scared stiff!

The Great Ming had not only returned, but by the look of it had no intention of leaving! It had even established a county on Juehua Island, complete with a magistrate. What were they to do now? Were their peaceful days at an end? If they had known, they should never have stayed on the island — they should have gone to Ningyuan and moved west with the Wu family!

Zhang Huangyan saw that everyone stood there like wooden statues, just gaping, not even knowing enough to cheer — the Great Ming had returned, such wonderful news, were they not happy? Were they worried that the Ming court's governance of Juehua Island would not last?

At that thought, Zhang Huangyan decided to give everyone another pleasant surprise.

"Fellow villagers, you may rest assured. Since the Ming has returned, it will not leave again. The court has not only established Juehua County, but also the Office of the Governor-General of Liaodong Military Affairs and the Office of the Governor of Liaodong! These will also be moved to Juehua County in the future!"

It was over, all over. The people of Juehua Island were so frightened their legs went weak. The Great Ming had actually established a Governor-General of Liaodong Military Affairs office and a Governor's office, and was going to move them onto Juehua Island — was this because they feared the Great Qing could not be bothered to attack Juehua Island, and so wanted to set up two hate-magnets as targets? Was there any way left for them to survive now?

Seeing that the common folk looked so moved they were about to cry, Zhang Huangyan decided to add a little more, raised his voice, and shouted: "Since this official has come to Juehua Island, he will stay on Juehua Island, and advance or retreat, live or die, together with you all. Even if my bones are ground to dust, I will never let the eastern barbarians take Juehua Island back!"

Ah! Even he was going to be ground to dust. The people of Juehua Island were frightened to tears!

They were truly finished! Juehua Island was going to become a bloody frontline between the Great Ming and the Great Qing again. When winter came and the sea froze over, the Qing troops would arrive, and then the only road left to them would be death.

"Wuwuwu..."

The common folk wept bitterly, while Zhang Huangyan felt somewhat gratified — clearly the people had been moved by him, the good magistrate who would live and die with his people!

"Do not cry, do not cry," Zhang Huangyan consoled them. "This official knows you have long suffered under the Tartars, but your days of suffering are over! Now that the Ming Crown Prince commands the army, governance is being renewed, and high and low are of one mind, there is already the look of a restoration. Therefore Juehua Island, this foothold for the counterattack on Liaodong, will absolutely not be given away. You may set your hearts at ease!"

Set their hearts at ease? At ease about going to die? The people's wailing grew louder, leaving Zhang Huangyan utterly baffled.

What was the meaning of this? Although he was one of the rare good magistrates under heaven, there was no need for them to be moved to this extent!

"Enough, enough, stop crying! All of you, stop crying. Keep crying and I'll be damned if I don't get rough!" Yu Daren now raised a fuss. He had spent a long time at the grassroots, always fighting and scrapping on the front lines, so of course he knew why a bunch of common folk were crying like tear-soaked figures.

He put on a stern face and consoled them: "What are you crying for? With this official and your Magistrate Zhang here, could Juehua Island possibly be lost? And it's only April now — there are still a damned six months until the sea freezes over. If you've got the energy to cry, save it to help the court build the walls! Once the walls are built, you'll have a way to live!

"You won't work for nothing — you'll be fed your fill, and each person gets three sheng of white flour a day. Any damned one of you who dares not show up for work will be treated as a Tartar collaborator!"

Yu Daren was a military officer, armored and helmeted, with a full beard running down his cheeks, and he looked quite ferocious. Now that he had flared up, he cowed the crowd of wailing, grief-stricken commoners, and no one dared cry anymore.

Seeing that the commoners had stopped crying, Yu Daren said in a deep voice: "Every last one of you men, cut off those damned queues for me! Anyone who doesn't cut the queue loses his head!"

They even had to cut off their queues! The people of Juehua Island were miserable at heart! The queue was proof of being a loyal subject of the Great Qing! If they cut it off, then when the Great Qing returned later, there would be no way to survive at all! But if they did not cut it, their heads would be gone at once.

Yu Daren gave them no time to delay. Soldiers with daggers immediately stepped forward and cut off the queue from the back of every man's head.

Seeing how cooperative the masses were, Yu Daren nodded with satisfaction and pulled out a batch of minted silver coins — these were the "half-tael coins" issued by the Salt Merchants' Bank. Because they were struck round, they were also called "silver dollars." These half-tael silver dollars had just gone into production, and output was still small; all of it had been given to the Hard-Working New Army for "trial use," meaning it was being used to pay military wages.

Zhu Cilang's Hard-Working New Army's "Division Army" had now expanded to six divisions plus fifteen regiments; counting the supply troops, the total was close to one hundred thousand men. About half of them had enlisted before Zhu Cilang brought Shi Kefa to heel, and all had been allotted land in South Zhili; they were Zhu Cilang's most core strength. Through them, Zhu Cilang could not only firmly control the Division Army, but also firmly control the Guard Army — the Guard Army included the seven guards of Denglai, the five guards of Runing, the one guard of Anqing, the one guard of Jianyang (Taiping Prefecture), the one guard of Hukou, and the eight guards and one battalion of Fengyang, among other units. The new Guard Army that could be fielded totaled twenty-three brigades plus one battalion. Its middle- and high-ranking officers all came from Zhu Cilang's "original follower clique."

And in order to pay the one hundred thousand men of the Hard-Working New Army's Division Army, the more than one thousand backbone officers of the Guard Army, and the twenty thousand officers and men of the navy, Zhu Cilang's court now had to spend over five hundred thousand taels of silver every month. Converted into half-tael silver dollars, that was nearly one million one hundred thousand coins! The Salt Merchants' Bank of course had no such output; its current monthly production was only a few tens of thousands of coins.

Yu Daren hefted the silver dollars in his hand and asked with a smile: "There are several silver dollars here, freshly minted by the Salt Merchants' Bank, each weighing half a tael. Whichever of you can tell me whether there are any Tartar agents on this island, and where there are boats that can cross to the Liaoxi shore, the silver goes to him!"

Juehua Island was by no means small — roughly twelve or thirteen square kilometers — and the terrain was fairly complex, with most of the land covered by hills and woods. Without a guide, Yu Daren and his handful of men could not search it clean in three to five days.

Moreover, there were fishermen and fishing boats on Juehua Island, and they had to be brought under control at the first opportunity, lest someone go tip off the Qing troops on the Liaoxi shore. Juehua Island was only a dozen or so li of sea from the Liaoxi coast; a large Qing force could not get across, but a small party slipping over was still possible.

So Yu Daren wanted to seal off Juehua Island, to buy a little time to build a simple bastion fort right against the coast on the island — a bastion fort was actually a structure that could be elaborate or simple; it did not necessarily have to be tall and grand.

In fact, a bastion fort simply changed a castle from a convex polygon into a concave polygon, so that no matter which point of the castle was attacked, the attacker would be exposed to more than one face of the fort, and the defenders could use crossfire to deliver multiple strikes, greatly increasing the difficulty of assault.

In addition, to effectively resist bombardment, the walls of a bastion fort were built as an inclined plane, to increase the chance of cannonballs glancing off and to increase the effective thickness of the wall (for the same amount of work, an inclined wall is thicker than a vertical wall). At the same time, the height of a bastion fort's walls was generally lower than that of traditional walls, to reduce the probability of being hit by cannonballs — although low walls are harder to defend than tall walls, the crossfire provided by the concave polygonal walls made up for this shortcoming.

Therefore, a simple bastion fort built of earth, timber, and sandbags was very difficult for the enemy to breach, as long as the garrison had sufficient firepower and its will to fight was not too weak. Unless the attacking side possessed enough mathematical and engineering knowledge to locate the bastion's firing dead zones and position artillery there.

(End of Chapter)