Chapter 595: The Third Prince Outwits the Imperial Ama

On the afternoon of the tenth day of the sixth month in the fourth year of Shunzhi of the Great Qing, just as the Great Qing's Imperial Ama Dorgon was leading his troops in pursuit of Jiang Xiang and was about to win a great victory and deal a heavy blow to Jiang Xiang's forces, the good booi of the Bordered Yellow Banner Han Army, Zhao Tingchen, and Fan Wencheng's son Fan Chengmo were standing atop the north gate tower of Xiezhou city, their throats dry as they watched the scene before them.

North of Xiezhou's prefectural seat, where the salt fields of the Xie Salt Lake lay, the air was filled with shouting men and neighing horses, a scene of boiling commotion. The official road was a surging mass of heads, spears thick as a forest, as dense ranks of Ming troops pushed rapidly along the road like a mountain torrent rolling down from the Lüliang Mountains, unstoppable. The vanguard of this great army, roughly two thousand cavalry, had reached Changle Town the day before. There were Ming agents inside Changle Town, who took advantage of the chaos to open the gates and let the Ming troops pour in. After Changle Town was occupied, communication between Xiezhou's prefectural seat and the Salt Administration City, which managed the salt-field affairs, became precarious — for Changle Town lay between those two fortified towns.

So Fan Chengmo, the Shanxi Salt Inspection Censor stationed in Salt Administration City, immediately withdrew to Xiezhou with his salt soldiers and one company (niru) of regular Green Banner troops, joining forces with Zhao Tingchen, the Prefect of Xiezhou.

Zhao Tingchen came from the Bordered Yellow Banner Han Army — he was a "second-generation collaborator," so he had been selected to gild his credentials at the Imperial Academy, and not long before had been appointed Prefect of Xiezhou.

Right, nowadays the Great Qing had no civil examinations for ordinary Han scholars! If a Han wanted to enter official service, he first had to join a banner.

Nor did he necessarily have to join one of the old Eight Banners — joining a regular Green Banner also counted as joining a banner. When Dorgon established the regular Green Banners, he took all the Han officials who had submitted to the Great Qing but were neither in a banner nor under the Xi (in the service of the Prince Who Pacifies the West) and enrolled them all in the regular Green Banners.

So the Great Qing now had no officials who were not in a banner!

To become an official one first had to join a banner; only after joining a banner did one have the qualifications to serve as a soldier and win merit, to sit for the juren examination and the Imperial Academy, and to go to the various ministries and offices as a clerk. And joining a banner — even joining one of the old Eight Banners as a slave (the regular Green Banners had no booi slaves; joining them made one a regular soldier) — was now becoming harder and harder. Because once one joined a banner as a slave, one no longer paid grain taxes or performed corvée for the court, and the court naturally did not want ordinary Han people all joining banners.

If all the Han joined banners, the Great Qing would fall apart — if all the population and land were divided among ten banners, would the state not be split into ten?

And the mark of being in a banner or not was that money-rat queue, and that queue was not something one could grow just as one pleased!

Of course there was no law now saying "keep the hair and lose the head," but there was a "crime of unauthorized head-shaving." A shaved head with a money-rat-tail queue was the mark of the great lords of the nine banners — how could ordinary commoners shave their heads and braid queues? Were they planning to impersonate banner gentlemen to smuggle, deal in illicit goods, swindle, and cheat?

So "unauthorized head-shaving" in the Great Qing of today was punishable by having one's skull chopped off!

Commoners without the right to shave their heads and braid queues — whether they had been scholar-officials or poor and lower-middle peasants — were now all given land by headcount and made to farm honestly, pay taxes, and perform corvée. No exceptions!

And within Xiezhou city on the afternoon of the tenth day of the sixth month in the fourth year of Shunzhi of the Great Qing, the men qualified to hang a money-rat tail behind their heads numbered barely a thousand. Fan Chengmo and Zhao Tingchen could rely on only these few men.

Although the Great Qing had also carried out land distribution by headcount in Xiezhou, what the people of Xiezhou had to bear was only grain taxes and corvée labor at the Xie Salt Lake; they were not required to perform military service, and there were no landlord militias either.

Relying on the garrison of the salt lake and Xiezhou city (one thousand men in all) and some runners and constables who did not shave their heads, the local bandits and mountain brigands around Xiezhou did not dare act up. But what had come now was the great army of the Third Prince of the Lüliang Mountains, and in enormous numbers!

Throughout the afternoon of the tenth day of the sixth month, troops kept arriving in succession, no fewer than thirty thousand men!

They were no ordinary rabble, but elite soldiers who had received regular training, were well equipped, and were of quite good quality. Who were the people who had gone up the Lüliang Mountains? They were the landlords, rich peasants, and unscrupulous merchants of Shanxi, and their sons had become the main source of the officers and men of the Lüliang Ming army (also called the Third Prince's Army) — now that they had no place to sit the civil examinations, what else could they do but become soldiers?

So the literacy rate of the Lüliang Ming army's officers and men was absolutely number one in the world today!

They watched as company after company of neat and orderly Ming troops, under the command of their officers, deployed in good order and set up camp by the Women's Salt Lake outside Xiezhou city.

Zhao Tingchen, standing beside Fan Chengmo, was breathing rapidly: "Brother Jingong, how are these Ming troops so disciplined? Did they really come down from the Lüliang Mountains?"

"They should have, right?"

Fan Chengmo swallowed. Although he had come from the imperial bodyguard, he had never led troops, nor had he ever faced the Ming army in battle. He had only heard from Fan Wencheng and other elders how rotten the Ming army was. But the Ming troops he saw today, come down from the Lüliang Mountains... something was off! Was this rotten?

The elite troops of the Eight Banners were no better than this, were they?

"Th-then what do we do? We can't hold the city!"

"Brother Junlin, do not panic. After dark I will break out of the city and go to Tongguan Garrison to seek help from the Doro Beile Nikan." Fan Chengmo said gravely, "You are the defending official, with the duty of holding the land. Guard Xiezhou well!"

"What?" Zhao Tingchen nearly jumped. "I have only a thousand men. How can I hold it?"

"How is it a thousand men?" Fan Chengmo was somewhat surprised. "The Green Banner troops garrisoning Xiezhou amount to only one company, a mere five hundred men!"

Right, the other five hundred were the men Fan Chengmo had brought from Salt Administration City — their duty was to protect the Salt Inspection Censor and crack down on salt smuggling.

This Third Prince of the Lüliang Mountains was not a salt smuggler, so he was not among those to be cracked down on...

Just as Fan Chengmo and Zhao Tingchen were discussing how to defend the city and how to seek help, a group of cavalry had already escorted the Great Ming "Lending Prince" Zhu Cijiong to a high slope on the eastern shore of the Women's Salt Lake, less than three li from Xiezhou city.

Beside Zhu Cijiong was the Prince's Household Guard General Luo Xiushen. He had originally known nothing of war, but over the past three years and more, following Wang Yongji, Gao Di, and others in campaigns across the region, he had broken through many cities and forts and had been tempered by experience. Now, with just a distant glance, he knew that Xiezhou city would not be hard to take.

"My Prince, Xiezhou is indeed weakly held. Let the army rest one night, build siege equipment tomorrow morning, and by afternoon we can take the city in one assault."

Zhu Cijiong nodded. "A hundred li away is Fengling Pass. Have the Tartars stationed a large force there? If they come in full strength, can we handle it?"

Luo Xiushen said, "Fengling Pass and Tongguan on the opposite bank of the Yellow River have four or five thousand Qing troops stationed, commanded by the Tartar general Nikan, and they are there to block Zhang Xianzhong. If they all come, Tongguan will be left empty. If only a part comes, our forces outnumber them ten to one, and victory will not be difficult."

"Good!" Although Zhu Cijiong was young, he had spent three or four years in the army, and everything he saw and heard was military affairs. He was no layman in marching and fighting, and he made his decision at once. "Then we shall meet Nikan here at Xiezhou! If he dares to come with his whole force, that villain Zhang Xianzhong will surely seize the chance to advance east on Luoyang, and the realm will fall into chaos. Then our Lüliang Mountains can breathe easy.

If he does not come, then We can plunder our fill and leave — this trip we can always seize over a million in goods and wealth, enough to last us a year."

So Zhu Cijiong's march south to Xiezhou was not only for the wealth of the Xie salt lake, but also to lure Zhang Xianzhong into an eastern campaign!

Zhang Xianzhong had reached Guanzhong the year before, but the two great roads east from Guanzhong — the Tongguan road and the Shangluo road — were tightly blocked by Qing troops and Ming troops.

Blocking the Tongguan road were the four or five thousand elite troops of the nine banners commanded by Nikan. Though not numerous, they had repeatedly beaten back several attacks by Zhang Xianzhong's forces.

At the same time, the Southern Ming had deployed a full division of heavy troops at Xixiakou and Neixiang county seat in Nanyang Prefecture, likewise bottling up Zhang Xianzhong tightly.

So although Zhang Xianzhong had gained Guanzhong, the most strategically advantageous land under heaven, he still could not move, nor did he dare fall out with Li Zicheng, who was playing dead. He could only honestly call himself the Xi Prince of the Shun — one can hardly say how stifled he felt.

If Nikan's main force really left Tongguan and marched north to Xiezhou, Zhang Xianzhong would absolutely not let this chance to advance east slip by.

And once that scourge Zhang Xianzhong advanced east and took Luoyang, the Central Plains would inevitably fall into chaos, and the Great Qing's Imperial Ama Dorgon would for the time being have no energy to deal with the Third Prince of the Lüliang Mountains.

(End of Chapter)