Chapter 426: The Northern Expedition, Five Li

Zhu Cilang's great army set out just as swiftly as he had declared at the grand court assembly. The war situation in the north seemed to have reached the most desperate point, no longer permitting Zhu Cilang and Chongzhen to remain in Nanjing for even one more day. On the day after the grand court assembly, the Chongzhen Emperor, urged on by Zhu Cilang, left the Nanjing imperial city with ten favored consorts and, under the banner of the Emperor personally leading the campaign, crossed the river and advanced north. Northward for five li!

Right! Five li, exactly!

Zhu Cilang and the Chongzhen Emperor boarded a centipede boat together at the Longjiang Pass dock in Nanjing, reached the dock on the north bank, and after disembarking rode north on horseback for five li, arriving at the destination of the Chongzhen Emperor's personal campaign — the Great Camp North of the River.

The so-called Great Camp North of the River was in fact a large bastion fort. It lay within Jiangpu County, subordinate to Yingtian Prefecture, facing Nanjing across the river. The fort was only five li from the dock on the north bank of the Yangtze — entirely within the fire coverage of the Hongyi cannons!

This bastion fort had been built on Zhu Cilang's orders after the Nanjing eunuch faction rebellion. It was also of simple bastion-fort specifications: not counting the eight projecting gun platforms, the perimeter of the fortifications reached 3,000 paces. The walls were built up from logs, earth, and sandbags; the outer wall was also sloped, about one zhang and two chi high. The interior space was very large, somewhat more than one square kilometer. It was divided into five areas: the palace city, the parade ground, the barracks, the storehouses, and the official residences.

Even before Zhu Cilang arrived escorting the Chongzhen Emperor, the 15 regiments of the Model Army originally garrisoned inside Nanjing and 10 ordinary infantry regiments that had not been "modelized" had already quietly crossed the river and entered the Great Camp North of the River.

That is to say, the troops waiting at the Great Camp North of the River for Chongzhen and Zhu Cilang, father and son, numbered as many as 60,000, packing the entire Great Camp North of the River to the brim.

When Zhu Cilang and Chongzhen arrived outside the Great Camp North of the River under the protection of a small escort of guards and Pure Troops, the 60,000-strong army had long since deployed into regimental square formations, awaiting inspection.

"The Great Ming's Grand Progenitor, the Exalted Emperor, reborn — ever victorious in battle!"

"The Great Ming's Grand Progenitor, the Exalted Emperor, reborn — ever victorious in battle!"

The deafening slogans rang out, rolling from the Great Camp North of the River all the way to the banks of the Yangtze.

At the riverside dock there were also several dozen naval warships and several thousand sailors. The warships were moored close to shore, anchor chains dropped, and the sailors stood in ranks along one side of the ships' rails. Hearing the cheers, they too opened their throats and roared "Long live His Majesty" like a mountain.

The Chongzhen Emperor, who had arrived together with Zhu Cilang, was also somewhat stunned by the great army before his eyes.

He carefully studied the soldiers drawn up in formation along the broad Pukou official road — company after company, rank after rank, all presenting a mighty massed array.

The formation was extremely precise! Viewed horizontally, a straight line; viewed vertically, a straight line; viewed diagonally — still a perfectly straight line!

The "997" and last-place elimination methods had evidently been effective. Under the frantic urging of the officers, the Overcome-Hardship New Army infantry's formations, marching, and discipline had finally passed muster!

Formation, marching, and discipline were the main training subjects of the Overcome-Hardship New Army infantry — Zhu Cilang of course knew that individual valor would play an ever smaller role in future warfare. No matter which Manchu champion he might be, in front of a turtledove-foot arquebus, he was just a pile of rotten meat.

In the coming two hundred years, infantry would defeat the enemy chiefly through equipment (flintlocks, rifled guns), discipline and formation, and coordination with artillery and cavalry.

Therefore, over the past year, the focus of the Overcome-Hardship New Army's training had always been discipline, formation, and physical fitness.

As for combat skills, they of course had to be drilled too, but they did not account for a high proportion, and specialization was strongly emphasized — that is, soldiers had to master the combat skills of their own branch and did not need to be all-rounders.

And how to equip the Overcome-Hardship New Army's more than one hundred thousand officers and men with suitable gear had caused Zhu Cilang to rack his brains over the past year.

He knew very well that one important reason for the decline of the Ming army's fighting strength was the poor quality of its equipment!

Among the government troops of the late Ming period, apart from a few household retainers who could have a good suit of armor and a few handy weapons, most soldiers at best had a suit of rotten armor and a few crudely made weapons. They simply could not compare with the Han troops of the Eight Banners, let alone the even better-equipped true Manchus of the Eight Banners.

And the primary reason for the poor quality of Ming army weapons and equipment was, first of all, lack of money.

Second, the Ming army's military-industrial system was completely rotten. And by the time Zhu Cilang, the Army-Supervising Crown Prince, took full control of the government, even the completely rotten military-industrial system no longer existed.

Whether it was the Arsenal Bureau under the Ministry of Works, the Armory Bureau under the Imperial Household, or the military industries run by the various border garrisons (the guard-battalion system in theory also had military industries), none had followed south as a whole; only a small number of craftsmen had followed — this was only natural. The craftsmen had gained no benefits, so why should they follow Zhu Cilang? The "righteous follower craftsmen" Zhu Cilang had brought to Nanjing had all been pulled in from the Tianjin garrison, because they had suffered enough misery from the roving bandits in the two battles of the Tianjin garrison and were therefore willing to follow.

Relying on these craftsmen, Zhu Cilang could only barely keep the Nanjing Cannon Bureau and the Nanjing Arquebus Bureau going. But these two bureaus were small in scale, limited in output, and their products were very uniform. They were utterly insufficient to support the needs of an army of more than one hundred thousand.

Left with no choice, Zhu Cilang had to adopt a weapons procurement model that later generations would regard as sheer madness — contract procurement!

That is, the Marshal's Office set the forms and specifications for the equipment needed by each branch of the army, then issued them (drawings, specification requirements, and manufacturing methods) to the regimental and battalion commanders, and also issued the required funds to them, letting them procure on their own.

At the same time, the regimental and battalion commanders who received the funds also had to take responsibility for the quality of the equipment!

And the state of equipment readiness was also included among the assessment subjects for last-place elimination!

Of course, not all procurement was delegated. For example, arquebuses, cannons, and gunpowder — items for which no large supply had formed near Nanjing — were procured by the Marshal's Office. Procurement was carried out through the Ten Great Imperial Merchants and the Portuguese merchant Lopez; the Marshal's Office would invite bids from them, then sign procurement contracts and put forward all sorts of requirements.

But the Marshal's Office did not take responsibility for acceptance inspection. The acceptance inspection of arquebuses, cannons, and gunpowder was still the responsibility of the regimental and battalion officers who used them. The Marshal's Office would send people to inspect the relevant regiments and battalions, and the inspection results were likewise included in the last-place elimination assessment.

And among all the equipment and gear for which procurement authority was delegated, the most important was armor.

For armor procurement, the Marshal's Office set three specifications. The first was spliced half-plate armor — this plate armor was also called splint armor, made by riveting strip-shaped iron plates together to make something resembling plate armor. In Europe no one did this anymore; they had water-powered trip hammers and could easily forge whole armor plates.

But here in East Asia, no one had such conditions, so they had to make do with splint armor. The board-laced torso armor common in neighboring Japan at the end of the Warring States period was this kind of splint armor.

And the specifications for spliced half-plate armor put forward by Zhu Cilang's Marshal's Office were far sturdier than Japan's board-laced torso armor.

This was because the Great Ming had a seventeenth-century iron-smelting center of the East — Foshan — which could mass-produce the strip-shaped iron plates used for splicing plate armor!

The blacksmiths here in South Zhili only needed to rivet these strip-shaped iron plates together to make the main parts of the half-plate armor.

The second armor specification was the spliced breastplate — that is, half a suit of spliced half-plate armor, with only the front part and no back part. This "cutting corners" was not to save money, but to reduce weight.

The spliced breastplate was for light cavalry. One breastplate, one eight-panel iron cap, one pair of arm guards, and one spliced splint skirt armor made up the armor of the Ming light cavalry, weighing in total only a bit over ten jin.

The third armor specification was cloth-faced iron armor — iron plates riveted to the inside of a cloth garment, so that from the outside it looked like a cloth armor covered with the heads of iron rivets. This was the armor most commonly used by the Ming army; its protective power was no weaker than spliced half-plate armor, and the price was actually about the same. Its drawback was that it was relatively heavy. It was just that in the southeast it was easier to obtain iron plates than iron splints, so Zhu Cilang included cloth-faced iron armor among the armor specifications.

As for what kind of armor to buy, except for the light cavalry battalions, each unit could decide on its own.

(End of Chapter)