Chapter 581: We Will Crush the Eastern Barbarians! (Seeking Monthly Tickets)

"The armies from Shandong and Huaibei advancing along the river are not certain to win, but attacking Ningyuan from Juehua Island should be a sure thing! We refuse to believe Dorgon would watch Ningyuan perish without lifting a finger. Besides, Zu Kefa's memorial also mentioned that Dorgon plans to draw eighty niru from the banners inside the Pass to go reclaim land in Liaodong! Can he afford to ignore Ningyuan?"

In the western warm chamber of the Fengtian Hall, Zhu Cilang stood with his hands behind his back before a huge map hung on the wall, speaking with Li Yan, Wu Xiang, Wu Guoyong, and Huang Binqing behind him.

The newly completed Fengtian Hall had two attached chambers, the eastern warm chamber and the western warm chamber. The eastern warm chamber was where Zhu Cilang worked, reviewed memorials, and held small court sessions of the two offices. The western warm chamber was where Zhu Cilang handled confidential military affairs; staff officers from the Staff Office of the Grand Marshal's Office were on duty there around the clock. The Staff Office was an agency under the Grand Marshal's Office. After Zhu Cilang ascended the throne, the Grand Marshal of the Pacification Army had been reorganized; the post of Grand Marshal, once held by Zhu Cilang himself, would remain vacant indefinitely, while two positions, Left Military Counselor and Right Military Counselor of the Grand Marshal's Office, were established to manage its day-to-day affairs.

Below the Left and Right Military Counselors were five offices: the Staff Office, the Military Education Office, the Navy Office, the Right Communications Office, and the Military Personnel Office, along with two guards: the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Upper Direct Guard.

The Staff Office was similar to a later-era general staff headquarters; its chief was called Staff Office Commissioner, held concurrently by one of the Left or Right Military Counselors. The current Staff Office Commissioner was the Right Military Counselor Wu Guoyong.

The Military Education Office, as the name suggests, managed military education; its chief was called Military Education Office Commissioner, likewise held concurrently by one of the Left or Right Military Counselors. The current Military Education Office Commissioner was the Left Military Counselor Li Yan.

The Navy Office managed the navy (water forces); the Navy Office Commissioner was Huang Binqing. At present, what fell under its jurisdiction was still only the Yangtze River Fleet. A true navy could not be built overnight; it required a process of accumulating sailors and developing the shipbuilding industry — and sailors and shipbuilding were usually tied to central ports of maritime trade. Only in central ports did sailors and shipyards gather in large numbers.

In the present Southern Ming, the cities that could be called "central ports" were only Guangzhou, Quanzhou, and the rapidly developing Shanghai.

Although Shanghai was developing quickly, it ultimately lacked deep foundations; without ten or twenty years, it would be hard pressed to replace Guangzhou and Quanzhou as the foremost port under heaven.

And Guangzhou and Quanzhou lay at the edge of the Southern Ming imperial power's reach. They could not be brought under control just by willing it!

Quanzhou had taken the surname Zheng, so there was no need to say more. The situation in Guangzhou Prefecture was little better. Although Cao Youyi had already led two or three hundred thousand "beggar groups" to settle in Guangzhou Prefecture and had begun building a city and reclaiming land in the sparsely populated "Gang-Shen" area, their arrival at most served to intimidate the local gentry and Hakka clans around Guangzhou Prefecture, Zhaoqing, and Huizhou. Even the Chaoshan area hardly paid them any heed, and the maritime merchants and pirates active along the Guangdong coast were even less subject to control.

The Right Communications Office managed military postal services, that is, the transmission of information and orders. Its current commissioner was the Respectful and Obedient Marquis Wu Ruzheng.

The Military Personnel Office handled personnel matters, though not all personnel matters; it managed only the appointment and transfer of military officers, not their promotion, demotion, or merit evaluation. In other words, where an officer was posted was managed by the Military Personnel Office of the Grand Marshal's Office, while the promotion, demotion, and dismissal of officers was managed by the Merit Evaluation Bureau of the Ministry of War.

At present, the Military Personnel Office was in the hands of Li Ruolian, who had returned from Shandong.

The Embroidered Uniform Guard remained as before, a secret-police organization controlled by Zhu Chunjie.

The Upper Direct Guard, meanwhile, was an office that managed hostages. Zhu Cilang had partially adopted the suggestions in the "Memorial Admonishing on Feudalism and Deliberative Governance," implementing the policy of "what belongs to official administration shall be officially administered; what belongs to feudalism shall be enfeoffed." For territories that could not yet be managed by centrally appointed officials, control was exercised by enfeoffing local lords (inner feudatories; vassal states submitting to the Great Ming were called outer feudatories). The enfeoffed lords were required to surrender hostages, usually their sons as hostages, who, upon arriving in Nanjing or Wuhan, were granted an official post in the Upper Direct Guard and kept (controlled) there.

As for the titles of these lords, for the time being there were Military Governor, Pacification Commissioner, Garrison Commissioner, Feudatory Prince, Feudatory Duke, Feudatory Marquis, and the Autonomous City Deliberative Council — this council was a "collective lord," not a natural person but a collective that jointly served as the lord!

Do not assume that this parliamentary-democracy-looking system was something Zhu Cilang copied from later times. Zhu Cilang was now the Emperor and would hardly be fond of parliaments or anything of the sort!

This "Deliberative Council" had appeared during the Wanli era of the Ming dynasty! It was a "native" Ming institution, appearing in Huizhou, founded by a group of scholars who had risen up to resist taxation. The cause was that She County, the principal county of Huizhou Prefecture, had alone borne a levy of 9,000 bolts of "poll-tax silk gauze" (paid every year). It had been paid for 200 years without incident, but then in the Wanli era trouble broke out; the six counties shifted blame onto one another, none willing to pay the tax, and even an imperial edict from Wanli coordinating the matter proved useless.

Over a trifling matter of a few thousand taels of annual tax revenue, the six counties of Huizhou fell into chaos, and the local government collapsed along with them. Under those circumstances, a Deliberative Council organized by the gentry emerged to maintain order in Huizhou and to bargain with the court on behalf of the Huizhou populace. However, this Huizhou Deliberative Council did not continue indefinitely; after reaching an agreement with the court's Ministry of Revenue, it dissolved itself.

But Ji Kun, Huang Zongxi, Gu Jiang, Wang Fuzhi, and the others all knew about the Huizhou Deliberative Council, so they treated it as a "precedent" and slipped it into the "Second Memorial Admonishing on Feudalism and Deliberative Governance." This memorial was one Zhu Cilang had ordered them to submit, the purpose being to have these "thoughtful" fellows produce a draft legal framework for "enfeoffment." Zhu Cilang could then take it, revise it, and promulgate it.

And this "Deliberative Council feudalism" insertion had not been struck out by Zhu Cilang, because Zhu Cilang needed it to resolve the Macau problem — which was also a headache!

But compared to the Northern Expedition question that the Hongxing Emperor was about to discuss with several of his subordinates today, it was not worth mentioning.

"Your Majesty, the battle for Ningyuan is certain to be won, but Dorgon will not necessarily send troops to its rescue," Wu Xiang said to Zhu Cilang. "And if the armies from Huaishang and Shandong advance westward, they will certainly be defeated!"

Zhu Cilang did not have much faith in Wu Xiang's military judgment, so he looked to Li Yan.

Li Yan said, "Your Majesty, if we are certain to win, then the barbarians are certain to lose! With the abilities of Dorgon and Dodo, would they fight a battle they are certain to lose?"

"But..." Zhu Cilang thought for a moment. "Beyond the Pass is the eastern barbarians' homeland! How can they disregard it?"

Wu Guoyong interjected, "Your Majesty, do you believe that by taking the single city of Ningyuan our army can seize the eastern barbarians' territory beyond the Pass?"

"Would it not at least block the Liaoxi Corridor and make travel between inside and outside the Pass inconvenient?"

Wu Guoyong said, "The eastern barbarians are not a trading people. What does inconvenient travel and communication matter to them?"

Zhu Cilang frowned. "Then the Ningyuan campaign is not feasible?"

"Not so," Wu Xiang said, shaking his head. "Was not the purpose of developing Juehua Island precisely to take Ningyuan? Now that Juehua Island's foundations are secure, it is time to take another step forward.

But taking Ningyuan is only the beginning of pacifying Liao; one cannot expect to accomplish everything in a single campaign. If we are to recover all of Liao, we must fight and advance along the Liaoxi coast, the Liaodong coast, and both banks of the Liao River, constructing bastion forts, consolidating step by step, and spending ten or twenty years before great success can be achieved."

"How much money would that cost? How many troops would it require?" Zhu Cilang asked.

"That..." Wu Xiang glanced at Li Yan. "This subject is Minister of the Ministry of War and does not handle matters of military strategy and deployment."

Li Yan said, "Your Majesty, it is not a question of how much money or how many troops, but a question of horses! The coastline from Shanhai Pass to Jinzhou Guard is no more than a thousand li. Building one fort every fifty li means only twenty forts. Built with sandbags, how much would they cost? Each fort garrisoned with either 1,000 or 500 men; twenty forts with twenty thousand troops would suffice. Supplemented with one or two divisions of elite troops and several regiments of cavalry, we could bring all the coastal lands of Liaodong and Liaoxi under our control. And the key lies in those several regiments of cavalry. Can the two cavalry regiments we have on hand leave the main body of infantry and artillery and fight field battles against the eastern barbarians' cavalry?

If our cavalry cannot independently engage the eastern barbarians along the thousand-li front in Liaoxi and Liaodong, and must rely everywhere on infantry squares and artillery to face the enemy, then one or two divisions of elite troops may not be enough! And it would also be very difficult to fight large-scale battles of annihilation."

A chapter recommendation for a new book, by Yan of Yandang Mountain, titled "I Want to Be a Master Detective." Transmigrated to the Song dynasty, starting as a fake County Magistrate, watch how Cao Xiu rises step by step and ultimately becomes a master detective on a brilliant path.

(End of Chapter)