Chapter 837: Is This Qing Beijing or Yuan Dadu?

Shi Kefa's battle plan for Dezhou, to put it simply, came down to four words — besiege the point and strike the relief force!

The "point" was, of course, the city of Dezhou. The present walls of Dezhou had been built in the early Ming, during the Hongwu reign; they ran ten li and one hundred eighty paces in circumference, rammed earth faced with brick, and were extremely strong. The area within the walls was neither large nor small, covering more than 3,700 mu. Defending it was no great trouble, yet it could hold a good many troops, their families, money, grain, and all manner of supplies.

Moreover, Dezhou's walls had been rebuilt and reinforced after the Five-Year Ming-Qing Accord: prismatic bastions were added outside the four city gates, prismatic gun platforms were built at five corners of the wall, and the outer face of the fortress wall was rebuilt with sloped surfaces capable of withstanding bombardment.

Outside Dezhou, along the Grand Canal, the Yujin River, and the long trench northeast of the city, there was also a chain of supporting forts, holding the key terrain and forming Dezhou's outer defense line.

Because Dezhou was the gateway to Northern Zhili, the project to rebuild Dezhou was funded by the Qing court in Beijing, which also dispatched officials to take charge of it.

The official sent to supervise the work was named Zhang Ruolin — the very Zhang Ruolin who, during the Song-Jin campaign, had been ordered to the front to oversee the fighting and had done nothing but urge Hong Chengchou to advance recklessly. After Beijing fell, he first surrendered to the Shun, then followed Luo Yangxing, Guang Shiheng, and others in switching allegiance to the Qing. He was now a bondservant of the Bordered Blue Banner — a grand "thrice-serving minister."

After entering Qing service, Zhang Ruolin's official career had gone rather well. Starting as Vice Prefect of Shuntian Prefecture, he had climbed steadily step by step, and was now a Bureau Director in the Operations Bureau of the Qing Ministry of War...

To repay the Shunzhi Emperor for his favor, Zhang Ruolin had come to Dezhou nearly every month for the past two years, staying ten days or more each time — not for pleasure, but to inspect the Dezhou fortress works in earnest.

Under his diligent supervision, the Dezhou fortress project not only progressed quickly but was also of good quality, and even the costs had been kept to a minimum.

Moreover, Zhang Ruolin felt the city-defense plan drawn up by the Spanish military advisors was not secure enough, so he added a long trench on the northeast side of the Dezhou fortress. When war broke out in Shandong late last month, he had risked entering Dezhou precisely to personally oversee the construction of this northeast trench.

Under his diligent supervision, the trench was at last completed just before the Ming army arrived.

With the protection of this trench, the Grand Canal, and the Yujin River, Dezhou's defenses could absolutely be considered flawless...

But before Zhang Ruolin had time to hold a victory banquet and properly celebrate with the officials under him, Shi Kefa's great army arrived! It easily wiped out the Qing strongpoints outside the Grand Canal, the Yujin River, and the northeast trench of Dezhou. Then, without pause, it began constructing siege works along the Grand Canal, the Yujin River, and the northeast trench.

The Qing troops inside Dezhou and Zhang Ruolin could no longer get out. They could only stare helplessly as an earth-and-timber circumvallation wall and dozens of round blockhouses for mounting cannon and deploying musketeers appeared with astonishing speed beyond the Grand Canal, the Yujin River, and the northeast trench...

Was this meant to besiege Dezhou for the long term, to lure the court's imperial forces into coming?

Standing atop the walls of Dezhou, watching through a telescope the Ming soldiers and Ming laborers working furiously in the distance, Zhang Ruolin suddenly had a feeling of déjà vu... This scene really was familiar!

"Bureau Director, do you think Shi Kefa means to use Dezhou as bait?" Fan Chengmo had appeared behind Zhang Ruolin at some point; he too found the scene before him quite familiar!

He had also taken part in the Song-Jin campaign!

That year he had just turned seventeen and had become one of Hong Taiji's bodyguards. He had followed Hong Taiji on a frantic ride from Shengjing, Shenyang, all the way to the Song-Jin front, and had witnessed the collapse of more than a hundred thousand Ming troops...

And had not the Song-Jin campaign begun with the siege of Jinzhou?

"It won't happen, it won't happen..." Zhang Ruolin shook his head. "Shi Kefa is a man of empty reputation, an official of idle talk. How can he compare with the late emperor and Emperor Chengzong? And how wise is the Imperial Uncle? He is by no means someone Hong Chengchou can match."

Fan Chengmo frowned. "If Hong Chengchou had not underestimated the enemy and advanced recklessly, would he have had a way to lift the siege of Jinzhou?"

"That..." Zhang Ruolin fell into deep thought.

This was a question he had indeed pondered for a very long time.

Back then, acting on Chen Xinjia's orders, he had urged Hong Chengchou to fight quickly — on the one hand because money and grain were running short and could not be sustained; on the other because Jinzhou was in dire straits. In the third month of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, Zu Dashou had sent an urgent appeal to the court: "Jinzhou has only a little over a month's grain left, and the beans for the horses will not last a month..."

If Hong Chengchou did not relieve Jinzhou, then Jinzhou would inevitably fall once its grain was exhausted.

But to relieve it...

At this thought, Zhang Ruolin sighed. "Fortunately, our stored grain is sufficient, so we need not fear a long Ming siege."

Shi Kefa of course knew that the Qing troops in Dezhou did not fear a long siege, but besides besieging Dezhou, he held an even greater trump card in hand: the Governor of Shandong, Zuo Maodi, and the Shandong Military Colony Commissioner, Zhang Huangyan.

Gao Hongtu, being old and ill, had retired and returned home to recuperate. The original Military Colony Commissioner, Zuo Maodi, had been promoted to Governor, becoming the highest-ranking official in all of Shandong, while Zhang Huangyan had taken over Zuo Maodi's post and become the Shandong Military Colony Commissioner.

By Zhu Cilang's order, once hostilities began, the Governor of Shandong and the Military Colony Commissioner were placed under Shi Kefa's command — in peacetime, a Governor-General like Shi Kefa had little power, but once war came, he was a true master of an entire frontier region!

Just after Shi Kefa had completed, through the Pingyuan military conference, the disposition to "besiege Dezhou, keep watch on Liaocheng and Anping, and await the main force of the eastern barbarians coming south," he invited Zuo Maodi and Zhang Huangyan to Pingyuan and began arranging operations to recover lost territory.

Because of the Qing army's voluntary contraction, only Dezhou, Anping, and Liaocheng in Shandong remained under Qing control. Of the rest, a small part was occupied by Ming forces, while most lay in a power vacuum.

"Zhongji, Xuanzhu," — inside the headquarters gate of Shi Kefa's central army in Pingyuan County, Shi Kefa, Governor-General of Shandong and Liaodong for the Great Ming, was speaking with Zuo Maodi and Zhang Huangyan in his study — "the Qing forces in Shandong have pulled back severely and left a great swath of territory vacant... If we can fill that gap, then from here on we can sustain the war through the war itself. The Qing will surely not be able to bear it."

Zhang Huangyan had served in Shandong and Liaodong for several years now, so he knew well that the three prefectures of Jibei, Western Yanzhou, and the Eastern Depot, occupied by the Qing, held a great deal of fine farmland... Many loyal officials and brave generals of Shandong origin were eyeing it hungrily!

Loyal officials and brave generals or not... they were members of the landlord class too!

How could they not love land? If they did not love land, why would they be marching north at all?

Now that the Qing forces had pulled back, the level farmland of the three prefectures of Jibei, Western Yanzhou, and the Eastern Depot lay open before everyone...

So Zhang Huangyan did not answer Shi Kefa's question directly, but instead turned his gaze to Zuo Maodi. The Zuo family were loyalists, and at the same time the largest landlords in Shandong!

"Xianzhi," Zuo Maodi said, "the land in the three prefectures of Jibei, Western Yanzhou, and the Eastern Depot... must not be disposed of hastily! The court should first make clear that not a fraction of it will be taken for the state, and then have it placed in trust under the Military Colony Commissioner's office and the Governor's yamen until the northern frontier is fully settled, and only then distribute it."

Zhang Huangyan chimed in: "Governor Zuo is thorough... But what about the farming households on the land in the three prefectures of Jibei, Western Yanzhou, and the Eastern Depot? They have tasted the benefits of land distribution by headcount!"

That was a big problem!

The basis of land distribution by headcount was the "public-field system," which was also the foundation of the land policy now practiced by the Qing state!

The land system practiced by the Great Ming in the southeast — Hunan, Hubei, the four Jiangs, Fujian, and Guangdong — was based on the "private-field system." The court therefore also held a great deal of land, but that could not change the foundation of private fields as the root, and the Ming court had always pursued a policy of protecting private fields with clear property rights.

Zuo Maodi was also somewhat troubled. Stroking his beard, he thought for a while, then said to Shi Kefa: "The land will certainly have to be redistributed... But for now it is best not to raise the matter. First send out the magistrates to the various counties, post notices to reassure the people, and grant something like a three-year tax exemption."