Chapter 836: The Great Ming Has Come, and You Won't Pay Grain Tax?

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 solemnity hung between heaven and earth, as if heralding the arrival of a season of war.

On the road from Jinan to Dezhou, dozens of "Black Lance 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 the grand council of war that would assemble all the commanders in Shandong and lay out the strategy for the Dezhou campaign.

Although Li Yuanyin was Li Chengdong's adopted son, after graduating from the "Kong Dai Cram School" he had not returned to Liaodong with his father but had instead been transferred into the "Central Army." His situation had become very common after the "Kong Dai Cram School" appeared: not only did officers of the garrison armies enter the Central Army 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 take a post in the Central Army was actually a very good thing. It meant he had already 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 "firelock cavalry battalion," and later rose to cavalry Vice Regional Commander under the Shandong–Liaodong Governor-General's office. Now he was serving as Vice Regional Commander of the 20th Division, one of the four model New Army divisions 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 beneath his warhorse's hooves had, 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!

Five years earlier, during the Northern Expedition, Qing outriders and light cavalry had lurked and spied 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 those clashes was, of course, the newly minted "Black Lance Mule Soldiers." Strictly speaking, they could not even be called cavalry; they were combined-arms units that moved on horseback by platoon, with shock cavalry, horse archers, and firelock infantry who fought dismounted.

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

Nor was their mounted shock capability weak. When necessary, they could use ten lancers as the vanguard and launch a massed charge!

Their one slight deficiency was the skill of 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.

Therefore, in the frequent cavalry engagements at the end of the ninth month, the Qing cavalry found themselves at a terrible disadvantage. Their casualties were appallingly 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 to the death.

Thus, from north of the Daqing River to the border of Northern Zhili, apart from a handful of Qing strongholds, everywhere else was already Ming territory. All along the way, Li Yuanyin and his companions saw an endless stream of Ming wagon trains hurrying toward the walls of Dezhou. Besides the columns transporting army grain and military supplies, there were Ming infantry and artillery, one unit after another, advancing on Dezhou.

Over the past five years, the Great Ming's Shandong–Liaodong Governor-General's office, the Shandong Governor's office, and the Shandong Land Reclamation Commission had made thorough preparations for another Northern Expedition.

Jinan, on the banks of the Daqing River, had been built up as the great base for the Northern Expedition. Not only had its walls been reinforced and upgraded, but many granaries had been constructed, storing vast quantities of grain produced in the Yanzhou reclamation zone—mainly a foodstuff made from a mixture of wheat flour and sweet-potato flour, with some flour shipped in from Huaibei and Xuhai. Roughly more than 20 million shi had been stored! In addition, incalculable quantities of fodder, padded clothing, wagons, tents, blankets, quilts, medicines, cloth, gunpowder, firelocks, armor, salt meat, oils and fats, 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 Shandong Governor's office had, beginning after autumn, started hiring laborers on a large scale under the pretext of dredging canals and repairing the official roads.

Under the direction of Zheng Zhilong, very likely the best Minister of Revenue the Great Ming had ever had, the two reforms of "spreading the poll tax into the land tax" and "officials and gentry paying grain tax like everyone else"—reforms that were bound to offend no one knew how many people—had been completed throughout the territory under the Ming court's jurisdiction.

Moreover, the "spreading the poll tax into the land tax" reform 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; it could only hire laborers with gleaming silver and yellow copper cash. Along with the laborers came many mule carts and large wagons.

Once the war began, money truly flowed like water!

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

The war had not been underway long, and already along the official road from Jinan north 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 work site had already been laid out—these were grain-depot fortresses under construction!

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

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

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

But they were people of the war zone, forcibly conscripted, and the people of the rear areas were ultimately different. Under the laws now in force in the Great Ming, wherever there was a war zone, military law applied, and soldier and civilian alike had to obey orders!

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

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

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

Quite a few officers from the various units, arriving one after another, were already waiting inside the headquarters gate for an audience with the Governor-General.

Governor-General Shi, who had been leading troops continuously since the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, now finally felt something of what it was to be a great military strategist. In fact, he was a great military strategist. With his experience in commanding troops and his command of both Chinese and Western battles and tactics, if he were transported back to the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, he could take Hong Chengchou's place in the Battle of Songjin—and would certainly do better than Hong Chengchou!

As for the coming Battle of Dezhou, the great strategist Shi had a well-formed plan and was full of confidence. Whether it meant storming fortresses or besieging a point to strike at relief forces, he was certain of victory.

Even if the Valiant Prince Dodo himself came charging over, Shi Kefa would not be afraid—in fact, he was rather looking forward to it.

Li Yuanyin was the first senior officer back from the front to be received by Shi Kefa before the formal council of war began, because his 20th Division was the vanguard of the entire army. Two nights earlier, it had advanced to the outskirts of Dezhou and fought a series of forward skirmishes with the Qing forces, clearing out seven or eight Qing strongpoints and supporting forts positioned outside Dezhou.

"Commander," Li Yuanyin said to Shi Kefa, "Dezhou may lie in the north, but it is a city of water, hemmed in by the Grand 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. In addition, northeast of Dezhou there is a long trench linking the Canal and the Yujin."

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