Chapter 391: Not Only Chives, but Sweet Potatoes Too

Hearing Li Dakai complain about too many people and too little land, Gao Hongtu merely smiled. "How can there be no land? The Taiyi Mountains are wide open! Cut down some of the trees on the slopes, and won't you have land?"

"But—but this slope land is no good for growing grain. Slope land sits high up, it easily runs short of water, and its yield is far below flat land." Li Dakai shook his head. "The refugees now under our Shandong Governor's yamen alone number three or four hundred thousand. How much slope land would we have to clear to feed them?"

"You understand farming?" Gao Hongtu looked at Li Dakai with a smile.

"Governor, though this humble official holds a hereditary military post, my family is not well off. We are soldiers and farmers at once, so I do know a little about agriculture."

Gao Hongtu smiled. "Then do you know of the sweet potato?"

"A vassal state?" Li Dakai was taken aback. "A tributary kingdom or a vassal prince?"

"No, it is a crop introduced from overseas. It grows as large as a fist, with crimson skin, crisp and juicy inside, edible raw or cooked, high-yielding, and it thrives even in poor soil."

"Oh, sweet potatoes!" Li Dakai remembered. "This humble official has eaten them. Roasted, they smell quite good."

"This thing can be planted anywhere, and it withstands drought and poor soil, with no small yield." Gao Hongtu said. "When I was Minister of Revenue in Nanjing, I urged the planting of sweet potatoes in the Southern Metropolitan Region, so I know its merits. Therefore at the end of last year I sent a memorial to the Ministry of Revenue requesting a batch of sweet potatoes for seed, to plant widely in the Taiyi Mountains. The Ministry of Revenue is handling matters briskly now, and has already delivered tens of thousands of piculs. With these sweet potatoes, we can establish military farms throughout the Taiyi Mountains and hold out for the long term."

"That is excellent!" Li Dakai was now at ease. "As long as there is food, three or four hundred thousand refugees can be turned into thirty or forty thousand crack troops. Even if we cannot fight the Tartar caitiffs in open battle, holding forts and stockades will be no problem."

Gao Hongtu stroked his beard, looking thoroughly pleased with himself. "Why stop at thirty or forty thousand crack troops? There are also the powerful local militias in Jinan, Yanzhou, and Qingzhou that we can command! Once we have these tens of thousands of crack troops, do we need to fear they will not obey?"

"Moreover, Zuo Zhongji also has no small number of refugees who can open military farms, and he too has received tens of thousands of piculs of sweet potatoes. As long as he can raise twenty or thirty thousand able-bodied farmer-soldiers, then the powerful local militias of Dengzhou, Laizhou, and Qingzhou can also be put to his use. In this way, the troops available to me and Zuo Zhongji alone will number no fewer than a hundred thousand! Even if the Tartar caitiffs have crack troops, Zuo Zhongji and I do not fear them!"

"The only worry now is that the nearly two hundred thousand troops in Shandong have no single commander, and each can only fight on his own."

This was rather a bold claim, but the Ming's defenses in Shandong had indeed reached their most formidable state since the Yongle era.

Not only had the guard-battalion system of the three prefectures of Dengzhou, Laizhou, and Qingzhou been rebuilt, but the Shandong Regional Commander and the Prince of Lu's household together now commanded as many as fourteen guard units (seven guards in Dengzhou and Laizhou, four in Qingzhou, three under the Prince of Lu), able at any time to field twenty or thirty thousand elite troops from the various guards.

And Gao Hongtu, Zuo Maoji, and Shi Kefa had each raised a body of local militia as well!

In addition, on Shandong soil there were also Li Shiyuan and Liu Zhigan, two Prefectural Regional Commanders, and Ma Degong, Li Chengdong, and Li Huajing, three "Minor Regional Commanders." The title of Regional Commander on Zhu Cilang's side had lately been handed out somewhat indiscriminately, so to distinguish rank among the crowd of Regional Commanders, three grades had been established: "Provincial Regional Commander," "Prefectural Regional Commander," and "Minor Regional Commander."

Among these, a Provincial Regional Commander was the Regional Commander of an entire province, such as Li Ruolian, the Shandong Regional Commander. A Prefectural Regional Commander was a Regional Commander garrisoning one prefecture; not every prefecture had a Regional Commander, only a few prefectures did.

The so-called Minor Regional Commander was also called a Battalion Regional Commander. This "battalion" was not a battalion of the Kenan New Army, but a designation hung beneath a Provincial or Prefectural Regional Commander, such as "such-and-such battalion," usually Left, Center, Right, or the like. For example, the Shandong Left Battalion Regional Commander or the Jinan Right Battalion Regional Commander were in fact miscellaneous Regional Commanders. Some held territory, but not enough to make up a full prefecture. Some had no territory at all, either living under another's roof or drawing their pay from the Ministry of War.

Ma Degong, Li Chengdong, and Li Huajing were exactly such Minor Regional Commanders, each with a few thousand troops and each allotted a few counties and districts as territory. Every month each could draw a contracted military allowance from the Ministry of War, all of it fifteen thousand taels of silver.

In addition, Shi Kefa and Su Guansheng (Governor-General of Liaodong and Governor of Dengzhou and Laizhou) had headquarters battalions, and Gao Hongtu had a governor's headquarters battalion, each of four or five thousand men.

All these scattered forces added together came to two hundred thousand men!

The numbers were not small, but equipment and training could not quite keep up, and most of them had something of the look of a rabble. What lagged even further behind was that so many troops had no unified command!

It was not that Zhu Cilang failed to understand the importance of unified command, but that he truly had no commander of independent ability at hand.

If any one of Hong Chengchou, Sun Chuanting, or Lu Xiangsheng were still alive, Zhu Cilang would long since have sent him to Shandong.

But now he truly had no one to send. Gao Hongtu, Su Guansheng, Shi Kefa, Hou Xun, Ma Shiying, Lu Zhenfei, and He Tengjiao—these frontier officials who led troops were all in fact amateurs. Send any one of them, and in a single battle he might well bury the entire two hundred thousand.

So Zhu Cilang simply appointed no Regional Commander, and instead let each fight on his own and hold his own patch. Though this arrangement was unfavorable for a decisive battle, it was favorable for dragging things out. As long as one of the four—Gao Hongtu, Su Guansheng, Shi Kefa, or Zhu Yihai—still held on in Shandong, the Shandong campaign could not end.

Moreover, this arrangement made it impossible to combine the two hundred thousand troops in Shandong for a decisive battle against Dodo. If Dodo wanted to besiege a point and strike the relief forces, luring the Ming troops in Shandong to the walls of Qufu to be destroyed, he would need a good deal of patience.

After all, Shi Kefa, that seemingly grand Governor-General of Seven Provinces, could only command the area around Qufu County. Even if Dodo killed him, it would be no concern of Su Guansheng, Gao Hongtu, Zuo Maoji, and the rest.

But this state of affairs was something Dorgon and Dodo could not adapt to for a while. For they both knew the old Ming too well—what a fine opponent the Chongzhen Emperor had been! Even Li Zicheng missed him to death now. Dorgon and Dodo, after a while longer, would surely miss him too.

And to Dodo, who had just led his great army to the desolate and uninhabited region around Liaocheng, it seemed that unless Shi Kefa and Kong Yinzhi abandoned the tomb of Confucius at Qufu and fled, then once Qufu was besieged, was there any fear that Ming troops would not come endlessly to their deaths?

In the past, when the Great Qing besieged Jinzhou, they had fished out Hong Chengchou's army of over a hundred thousand! What was Zu Dashou, compared with the bones of Confucius? Those foolish scholars of the Southern Court would surely rush to the rescue regardless of everything!

With that thought, Dodo drew his mind back and fixed it once more on the castle of Liaocheng before him.

"What is that thing?" Dodo took a Western single-tube telescope and looked again and again at Liaocheng, that "city in the lake." "Why does it look like grain sacks?"

"Your Highness, those are sacks of mud and sand." He Luohui knew about the building of the city on Juehua Island. "The Nikans built a city on Juehua Island out of stacked mud-and-sand sacks."

"Mud-and-sand sacks?" Dodo laughed. "Who would have thought of that? When the time comes, one blast from our cannons and it will collapse at once!"

"Exactly so!" He Luohui said. "Your Highness, the Han troops of the Plain Yellow Banner under this slave have brought cannons with them. Shall we let them try?"

"Try what?" Dodo smiled. "Even if we knock down the walls of Liaocheng, can we swim over and storm the city?"

"Your Highness is right," He Luohui said with a flattering smile. "But those Nikans are fools, thinking that this bit of water can stop the celestial troops of our Great Qing. Once the weather turns cold and the water freezes, we can take the city with ease."

Dodo smiled. "It won't come to that. Once we smash the main force of the Shandong Ming troops at Qufu, will Liu Zhigan still dare to hold the city?"

"By the way, is Shi Kefa still at Qufu?"

"He is," He Luohui said. "According to the scouts' reports, Shi Kefa and Kong Yinzhi are both at Qufu. Moreover, these days the Nikans in the northwestern part of Yanzhou Prefecture are all heading for Qufu, all counting on Shi Kefa to save their lives. It seems we won't need to trouble ourselves driving people there—Qufu will soon be packed with Nikan commoners."

Dodo laughed. "Then send word to Liu Liangzuo and Xu Dingguo: order them to advance quickly, and within five days, bring their troops to the walls of Qufu!"

"Zha!"

(End of Chapter)