Chapter 610: Go Relieve the Siege by Striking the Reinforcements!

The mountains, rivers, and lands along both banks of the Grand Canal were now cloaked in the colors of late autumn. The sky was high, the clouds thin, and a bleak, killing air hung over everything.

The autumn harvest was done, and heaven and earth stretched wide open. Autumn on the great northern plain was precisely the season for warriors to campaign and heroes to range far and wide.

On the road from Liaocheng, the seat of the Eastern Depot Prefecture, to Anping Town, where the Daqing River met the Grand Canal, several hundred cavalry of the Imperial Guard were escorting the Hongxing Emperor of the Great Ming and a few others back from the Liaocheng front to Anping Town, where the Son of Heaven had halted. There he planned to assemble his generals in force and deliberate on the grand strategy for a decisive battle with the eastern barbarians at Liaocheng.

At this very moment, the heart of the Hongxing Son of Heaven was thoroughly pleased with himself.

After more than a month of steady, methodical advances, by the end of the ninth month of the twentieth year of Chongzhen, the lands along the canal from north of Weishan Lake all the way to Liaocheng, the seat of the Eastern Depot Prefecture, had become Ming territory. All along their southward journey, what they saw was an unending stream of Ming fleet after fleet hurrying toward Liaocheng. Besides resupplying the Ming forces outside Liaocheng, troops and war wagons from the various Shandong armies were moving to the Liaocheng front in column after column, some by boat, some on foot.

The Shandong armies were all "heavy units," equipped with large numbers of side-screened wagons, yet they lacked sufficient mules and horses — not that there were no mules or horses to pull them, but there were not enough relay teams of mules and horses to rotate into service, so the animals' strength had to be conserved. For this reason, Gao Hongtu, Zuo Maodi, Shi Kefa, and the others all favored transporting troops and supplies by river craft.

Over the past two years, the Shandong armies had expended considerable effort building boats, and now at last they had sufficient water transport capacity.

On the canal, fleets coming from the south, or from the direction of Jinan Prefecture along the Daqing River, advanced slowly northward. The boats were laden to the brim with military supplies, provisions, weapons, equipment, and vehicles, riding deep in the water. Because the canal had lacked maintenance these past two years, and because it was now the autumn season of shallow water, every grain boat had a boatman at the prow carefully sounding the depth. There was no southerly wind to borrow now, so apart from punting poles, these grain boats had to be hauled by human or animal strength. The soldiers advancing on foot along both banks served as trackers, taking turns dragging these flat-bottomed, sharp-prowed sand-river boats slowly forward.

Besides the stirring spectacle of boats stretching a thousand li along the canal in an endless stream, every twenty-odd li along the canal's west bank there was a busy, clamorous worksite. Laborers conscripted from all over Shandong toiled like worker ants, digging earth into moats, ramming earth into walls, then piling sandbags into a slope to resist cannon fire, and finally stacking sandbags atop the wall — which stood less than a zhang high — to form a cannon-proof parapet.

This was steady advance, step by step, fortifying as they went!

The great army advanced along the water route, and stout camps and earthen forts were raised along the river as it went.

Such a method of warfare might not guarantee victory, but surely it guaranteed against defeat?

Zhu Cilang rode along the road, feeling rather smug.

Looking back on the past, from breaking out of the perilous situation in Beijing, shouldering heavy responsibilities, risking death to break through the siege, fighting at Tianjin, marching to Dagu, and journeying south all the way — it all seemed almost like a dream. How many years had it been? Already he had gathered an army of more than a hundred thousand for the northern expedition, its spearhead pointing north, sweeping all before it.

Today the Emperor was traveling incognito. He had raised no imperial banner, nor was he wearing dragon robes — just a red riding jacket and a suit of plate armor made in Anping.

Under the joint impetus of Zhu Cilang, Zheng Zhilong, Shen Tingyang, and others, the Great Ming's arms industry had advanced with astonishing speed in recent years. In Shanghai, Nanjing, Anping (Fujian), Foshan, and elsewhere, ironworks using water-powered hammers had appeared, making it possible to forge plate armor from large iron plates.

However, water-powered hammers were still few in number, and plate armor output remained small — not even a thousand suits a year.

But the progress from nothing to something had been accomplished, and that was no easy feat!

At the same time, production capacity for cannon and firearms was gradually taking shape. Not only were the ironworks in Foshan and Anping increasing output; in Shanghai, Nanjing, Dengzhou, and elsewhere, clusters of iron workshops had also appeared, most of them serving the arms industry. Although the firearms, plate armor, and splint armor these ironworks produced were still insufficient to meet the needs of the rapidly expanding "Overcoming Hardship" New Army, and thus could not yet fully achieve "import substitution," given time, the day of complete domestic production would surely come.

Of course, these ironworks springing up like bamboo shoots after rain were all privately run! Even the Nanjing Cannon Foundry (whose products included 12-pounder Hongyi cannon, 3-pounder battalion guns, 24-pounder mortars, turtledove-foot arquebuses, Spanish light arquebuses, black powder, explosive shells, chain shot, canister shot, and more), which Zhu Cilang himself had invested in founding, was not a so-called state enterprise, but a privately run workshop jointly held by its employees and His Majesty the Emperor. Zhu Cilang himself was merely the largest shareholder, and his stake was not even large — only thirty percent.

The reason for this was in fact tied to the vigorous promotion of the arms industry by the trio of Zhu Cilang, Zheng Zhilong, and Shen Tingyang — highly skilled blacksmiths could not be conjured out of thin air simply by throwing silver at them! The more ironworks opened, the scarcer blacksmiths naturally became. Not only did they command high pay, many also demanded a stake in the business.

And Zhu Cilang's thinking was rather capitalist. He would not use the method of conscripting blacksmiths for corvée labor to staff ironworks — blacksmiths dragged in by force would not work properly without harsh laws and severe punishments. Firearms and cannon could not be botched; a botched barrel would explode! So quality had to be enforced the way Helian Bobo forged the Great Xia Dragon Sparrow Saber — by chopping off heads!

But a workshop had concerns beyond quality: there was cost, output, and the transmission of craft. Chopping heads alone could not solve such a mountain of problems! Craft transmission alone was a dead end. If heads were lopped off at the slightest provocation, who would dare come learn the trade? Who would come if a bit of blacksmithing could cost you your head? If no one came, would they have to fall back on hereditary artisan households?

And what sort of treatment would Emperor Zhu have to give hereditary artisan households? Without generous treatment, and with heads liable to fall at any moment, old blacksmiths could not even find wives — who would come to inherit the trade?

So after going around in circles, it still came back to silver. Since economic incentives were to be used, then let it be capitalism!

A state-run workshop is like raising sons — every one is a treasure, and none may be allowed to lose money!

A capitalist handicraft workshop is like raising venomous insects — survival of the fittest, the strong devouring the weak; do poorly and you go bankrupt.

And since there was as yet no machine-based large industry, guns and cannon still had to be made in small workshops (relative to large industry), by hand. With a great mass of small workshops, quality, cost, and output were all very hard to control. Without a "venomous insect" mechanism, and without being able to enforce quality by chopping heads, it would be a miracle if barrels did not explode.

Under the "venomous insect" mechanism, not only did the equipment of Zhu Cilang's Overcoming Hardship New Army grow better and better, even the garrison armies of the Six Northern Garrisons obtained quite a few good things.

These Six Garrison armies were troops owned by their commanders, so the masters of the three armies were naturally more attentive and willing to invest!

Watching the large columns of garrison infantry advancing along the canal, all with fine armor and weapons, the great Emperor Zhu's confidence swelled further. He turned to Li Yan beside him and said, "A hundred thousand crack troops — how many can Dorgon muster? Fifty thousand?"

Li Yan laughed. "About that number. He has to leave some at Luoyang, and keep men in Shanxi too. Liaocheng, Linqing, Wucheng, Dezhou, and Suizhou and Shangqiu to our south all have substantial garrisons. It would not be easy for Dorgon to gather fifty thousand crack troops!"

Zhu Cilang smiled. "And where could fifty thousand men strike? To meet us in battle beneath Liaocheng?"

"That would be certain defeat!" Li Yan said. "This is no longer the time of the Song-Jin campaign. We have more men and better weapons, and we can afford to spend them."

Zhu Cilang nodded. In this campaign he did not seek victory; a draw would satisfy him. Nor did he demand a one-to-one exchange ratio. How many Manchus were there? How many Han? There was no need to train his troops to trade lives with the enemy one for one.

If war had to be fought that way, what was a population of over a hundred million for — counting for fun?

Li Yan thought for a moment, then added, "Relieving the siege by attacking our base is the more likely move. But it does not matter. As long as we do not walk into their ambush, our numerical superiority makes it a near certainty. Even if the fighting goes poorly, as long as we can kill ten or twenty thousand Manchus, it will not be a loss."

(End of Chapter)