Chapter 834: The Great Military Strategist Shi Kefa (Requesting Monthly Tickets)

In the sixth year of Hongxing, winter came a little early to the land of Qi and Lu. By the end of the ninth month, the banks of the Daqing River and the Grand Canal were already shrouded in the withered yellow of early winter, and a bleak, killing air hung between heaven and earth, as if heralding the coming of a military campaign!

On the road from Jinan to Dezhou, several dozen "Black Spear Mule Soldiers" were escorting Li Yuanyin, the adopted son of Li Chengdong, as he hurried back to Shi Kefa's field headquarters to take part in a grand military council that would assemble all the generals in Shandong and lay out the operational plan for the Dezhou campaign!

Although Li Yuanyin was Li Chengdong's adopted son, after graduating from the "Kong Dai Cram School" he did not return to Liaodong with his father (father and son had attended the cram school in the same class), but was instead transferred into the "Central Army." His situation had become very common after the "Kong Dai Cram School" appeared: not only did officers from the garrison armies enter Central Army service after completing the course, but Central Army officers were likewise transferred to the garrison armies.

The independence of the garrison armies was steadily being lost.

But for a fierce garrison-army general like Li Yuanyin, being able to enter the Central Army was actually a very good thing — it meant he had won the favor of the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming, and his future prospects were boundless!

After entering the Central Army, he first served as commander of a "musket cavalry battalion," and later was promoted to Vice Regional Commander of cavalry in the Governor-General's office of Shandong and Liaodong. Now he held the post of Vice Regional Commander of the 20th Division, one of the four Model New Army divisions (Central Army) in Shandong, and had become a senior officer of the Great Ming Model New Army.

At this moment, Li Yuanyin's heart was filled with nothing but soaring pride.

And the land his warhorse now trod upon had, just ten days earlier, still been the domain of the Great Qing. Now it had all been recovered by the Model New Army's 20th Division, to which he belonged!

In the northern expedition more than five years ago, Qing army scouts and light cavalry had lurked and probed everywhere, and the Ming cavalry had been unable to do anything about them. Now the situation was reversed: from north of the Daqing River all the way to the borders of Northern Zhili, there was almost no room left for Qing cavalry to operate.

The two sides' cavalry had clashed frequently in small-scale engagements at the end of the ninth month!

One side in these clashes was, of course, the freshly minted "Black Spear Mule Soldiers." Strictly speaking, they could not even be considered cavalry, but rather combined-arms units that moved mounted on horses (or mules) in platoons of forty riders. They included shock cavalry, horse archers, and dismounted musket infantry (who could of course also fight from horseback).

Their firepower and mobility were extremely formidable, and their tactics were highly flexible; they were especially adept at ambushes and night raids.

Nor was their mounted shock capability weak — when necessary, they could launch a massed charge with ten lancers as the vanguard!

Their one slight deficiency was their skill at shooting from horseback, but every man had a light, sturdy breastplate and an iron-sheet helmet protecting the vital parts of his body, so they were not easily wounded by arrowheads.

Thus, in the frequent cavalry engagements at the end of the ninth month, the Qing cavalry found themselves at a terrifying disadvantage. Their casualties were extremely heavy: every day more than a hundred cavalrymen were killed or captured by the Ming cavalry, and from time to time a mounted column of over a hundred men would be cut down by a few dozen "Mule Soldiers" until more than half were dead or wounded. They were simply no match at all!

No match, so all they could do was shrink back and hold a few strongpoints.

Therefore, from north of the Daqing River to the border of Northern Zhili, apart from a handful of Qing-held positions, everywhere else was already Ming territory. All along the way, Li Yuanyin and his companions saw an endless stream of Ming supply columns hurrying toward the walls of Dezhou — besides the units transporting grain and military supplies, there were Ming infantry and artillery, company after company, advancing on Dezhou.

The Great Ming's Governor-General's office of Shandong and Liaodong, the Governor's office of Shandong, and the Shandong Land Reclamation Commission had spent the past five years making thorough preparations for another northern expedition.

The city of Jinan, on the banks of the Daqing River, had been built up as the base camp for the northern expedition. Not only had its walls been reinforced and upgraded, but many granaries had been constructed to store large quantities of grain produced in the Yanzhou reclamation zone (between the canal and the Taiyi mountain range) — chiefly a foodstuff made from a mixture of wheat flour and sweet-potato flour, with some flour also shipped in from Huaibei and Xuhai. Roughly more than twenty million shi had been stored! In addition, incalculable quantities of fodder, padded clothing, wagons, tents, blankets, quilts, medicine, cloth, gunpowder, muskets, armor, salt meat, grease, and other supplies had been stockpiled — enough to sustain a northern expedition on a grand scale.

Besides the various supplies that could be stored long-term, the Governor's office of Shandong had, since autumn, begun large-scale hiring of laborers under the pretext of dredging canals and repairing official roads.

Under the direction of Zheng Zhilong, very possibly the greatest Minister of the Ministry of Revenue in the history of the Great Ming, two reforms that were sure to offend countless people — "spreading the poll tax into the land tax" and "officials and gentry paying grain taxes like everyone else" — had been completed throughout the territory under the Ming court's jurisdiction.

Moreover, the "spreading the poll tax into the land tax" measure did not merely spread the poll tax; it also folded corvée labor into the land tax as well.

Therefore, the Ming government could no longer conscript laborers outside the war zone, but had to hire them with gleaming silver and glittering copper cash. Along with the hired laborers came many mule carts and large wagons.

Once war broke out, money truly flowed like water!

But the Ming court of today not only had money, it also knew better how to spend it — money was not squandered carelessly; rather, every cash spent was sure to produce a cash's worth of result.

The war had not been underway for long, and already along the official road running north from Jinan to Dezhou one could see civilian laborers widening and reinforcing new roads.

And on every river that lay in the path of the advancing army, one could see pontoon bridges under construction and bridgehead fortifications built up from sandbags.

Every fifty-odd li, a large construction site had been opened up — these were grain-depot fortresses being built!

From Jinan to Dezhou was more than two hundred li, and starting from the north bank of the Daqing River, a "grain-depot fort" was to be constructed every fifty li — fortresses used for "relay transport."

Besides the hired Shandong laborers who had come from Ming territory, the farmers of the Qing-held Jibei Prefecture had also been forcibly conscripted and made part of the Great Ming war machine.

Of course, the silver, cash, and rations due to them were issued all the same, at exactly the same rate as the hired laborers from Ming territory.

But they had been forcibly conscripted. The common people of a war zone were, after all, different from those in the rear. According to the laws now in force in the Ming, wherever there was a war zone, military law must prevail, and soldier and civilian alike had to obey orders!

Moreover, the people of these "Qing-occupied areas" now had to make their allegiance clear!

Shi Kefa's field headquarters had now been set up in Pingyuan County town, just over sixty li from the city of Dezhou.

When Li Yuanyin arrived, Shi Kefa had just returned from inspecting a grain-fortress construction site south of Pingyuan County town, and was coming back to his own headquarters under the escort of his staff officers and personal guards.

Quite a few officers from various units who had arrived one after another were already waiting inside the headquarters gate for an audience with the Governor-General!

Governor-General Shi, who had been commanding troops continuously since the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, now at last felt something of a great military strategist — and in fact he was one. With his experience in leading troops and his command of both Chinese and Western battle examples and tactics, if he were transported back to the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, he could have taken Hong Chengchou's place in the Song-Jin campaign, and would certainly have done better than Hong Chengchou!

As for the coming battle of Dezhou, the great strategist Shi had a well-thought-out plan. Whether it meant storming the fortress or besieging the point to strike the relief force, he was confident of victory.

Even if the Valiant Prince Dodo himself came charging over, Shi Kefa was not afraid — he even looked forward to it a little!

Li Yuanyin was the first senior officer back from the front to be received by Shi Kefa before the formal council began, because his 20th Division was the vanguard of the entire army. The night before last, it had pushed forward to the outskirts of Dezhou and fought a series of forward-position battles with the Qing forces, clearing out seven or eight Qing outposts and supporting forts placed outside the city.

"Commander," Li Yuanyin said to Shi Kefa, "Dezhou may lie in the north, but it is a city of water, hemmed in by the canal and the Yujin River. Moreover, Dezhou itself has been rebuilt as a bastion fort, and multiple supporting forts have been constructed along the banks of the canal and the Yujin River. In addition, northeast of Dezhou there is a long trench linking the canal and the Yujin River."

Shi Kefa laughed when he heard this. "This Fan Wencheng is rather amusing. Hasn't he gone and dug our siege trench for us?"

(End of Chapter)