Chapter 138: Slaughter of the Captives

Governor-General of Grain Transport, concurrently Superintendent of Military Affairs, Governor of Fengyang and other regions, also in charge of waterways—behind this long string of titles lay enormous power. Though his rank was now only that of a second-grade official, compared to his former first-grade post as Governor-General of the Five Provinces, Chen Qiyu was already quite content.

Superintendent of Military Affairs for the Five Provinces sounded impressive, but it was a job that could wear a man to death.

Every day he received a blizzard of military dispatches reporting bandit activity from all directions, and then he had to analyze from this intelligence where the roving bandits were wreaking the worst havoc, where they would likely flee next, where troops should be deployed to intercept them, how many troops were needed to win, where military pay and provisions could be raised, and countless other such problems.

The Governor-General of the Five Provinces had no fixed office. Wherever large armies gathered, the Governor-General had to rush there to command in person—mainly to supervise the battle line, really, to prevent certain Regional Commanders and generals from going through the motions without putting in real effort. Even more importantly, he had to prevent such dark deeds as killing innocent civilians to claim credit for bandit kills, sitting idly by while allied forces were trapped without sending aid, and privately releasing bandit captives.

Of course, even with the Governor-General present in person, many such things still happened anyway, but certain generals would not dare to do them so openly.

The greatest risk for the Governor-General of the Five Provinces lay in failing to suppress the bandits, and Chen Qiyu had precisely committed this cardinal sin, which was why he had ended up in chains.

To be honest, it was rather unjust for him. Old Chen truly had real skill at suppressing bandits. In less than a year in office, he had chased Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Xianzhong, Li Zicheng, and a host of other bandit chiefs all over the place. If only he had paid more attention to the matter at the Chariot Canyon.

Chen Qiyu sighed inwardly. He had been too full of himself back then. He had thought the war was won in a single stroke, and all that remained was to return to the capital and receive the Emperor's rewards amid the envious, jealous, hateful gazes of the court's senior ministers. With such a great achievement, he would at least become Minister of War. If the Emperor was pleased, entering the Grand Secretariat was not impossible either—standing at the pinnacle of officialdom was the glory of a lifetime.

There is no medicine for regret in this world. After spending several months in the Imperial Prison, Chen Qiyu treasured everything he had now all the more.

Sometimes he felt rather proud of himself.

Though it was by the Emperor's special grace that he had been released from prison to become Governor of Fengyang, had he not keenly perceived the importance of the Battle of Shouzhou, had he not prepared for the future by taking command of the Xuzhou troops into his own hands beforehand, had he not made the decisive judgment to personally lead a large force to relieve Shouzhou and join with Lu Jian to win that great victory—then no matter how he bustled about in Fengyang, he would never have caught the Emperor's attention. And once forgotten by the Emperor, promotion would become nearly impossible.

Now he had finally gotten his wish. The Emperor truly had a discerning eye for talent, haha! As long as he achieved solid results in this important post, returning to the capital and taking his place in the court hall would be only natural.

Huai'an sat at the midpoint of the Grand Canal, where the Yellow River and the Huai River converged—the very key to the entire grain transport system. In the second year of Xuande, the court established a Regional Commander's office in Huai'an Prefecture to oversee the canal.

Later, as grain transport affairs grew increasingly busy, and since grain transport broadly involved the administration and military affairs of many provinces, requiring a great deal of coordination that no single military officer could manage, the court frequently dispatched civil officials such as Vice Ministers, Censors-in-Chief, and Junior Vice Ministers to participate in overseeing transport. By the second year of Jingtai (1451), the court decided that civil official participation must be made permanent, so it petitioned the Emperor to establish the post of Governor-General of Grain Transport, and converted the former Grain Transport Regional Commander's office into a Governor-General's office.

Within the Governor-General of Grain Transport's long string of titles, the clause about superintending military affairs was quite formidable. This meant that, like the Governors-General of other provinces, he held real military power. Moreover, the troops under the Grain Transport Governor-General were considerable in number—nominally more than twenty thousand battle-ready soldiers under his command, plus a transport army of as many as one hundred twenty thousand men, that is, the grain fleet soldiers who ran the boats.

The Governor-General of Grain Transport commanded the Yingzhou Circuit Intendant, the Xuzhou Circuit Intendant, the Huaiyang Maritime Defense Circuit, seven guards including Fengyang under the Central Capital Garrison Command, the Hongtang Defense Station, and from the Southern Metropolitan Region: the Luzhou Guard, Yangzhou Guard, Gaoyou Guard, Yizhen Guard, Chuzhou Guard, Xuzhou Guard, Huai'an Guard, Dahe Guard, Pizhou Guard, Yizhou Guard, Sizhou Guard, Shouzhou Guard, Suzhou Guard, and the Haizhou Central Defense Station. Thus the Governor-General of Grain Transport was called Marshal, Great Marshal, or Grain Marshal. He maintained a command headquarters with a central army, left camp, right camp, and city defense camp. The defense of Huai'an City where he was stationed did not fall under the local government such as Shanyang County or Huai'an Prefecture, but was handled by the city defense camp of the Grain Transport Governor-General's office; the local authorities merely assisted. In times of war he could also mobilize troops within his jurisdiction, such as the Yangzhou Camp and the Xuzhou Camp.

The Governor-General's authority included managing funds and grain, drilling troops, repairing city walls, pacifying soldiers and civilians, and prohibiting and eliminating corruption and malpractice. Should war break out, he could select generals and mobilize troops to prepare for battle. For officials who lacked ability or disobeyed orders, civil officials below the fifth rank and military officers below the fourth rank could all be investigated, interrogated, and even dealt with under military law. As for submitting memorials of impeachment that got some subordinate official demoted or executed—that was a trifling matter.

More than a month had passed since he assumed the post of Governor-General. The Fengyang guards who had followed him into the great battle at Shouzhou had all returned to their original posts. Guo Tai's Xuzhou troops, after escorting the prisoners to Huai'an, had also returned to their garrison in Xuzhou. For his merits in this campaign, Guo Tai had been promoted by the court to Vice Regional Commander of Xuzhou, and so he was even more obsequiously obedient to Chen Qiyu. Following Lord Chen twice and getting promoted both times—where else could one find such good fortune?

Lu Xiangsheng, leading the Tianxiong Army, the Liaodong cavalry, and Huang Degong's forces, was advancing toward the Huguang region to continue pursuing and suppressing Zhang Xianzhong and other great bandits.

The more than fifty thousand captives taken at the Battle of Shouzhou, under the guard of soldiers from the Governor-General's office, had been divided into sections by a Bureau Director from the Ministry of Works' Bureau of Waterways, and had begun dredging operations on the severely silted middle section of the canal.

The fifty-odd thousand captives were divided into twenty teams, each team fewer than three thousand men, guarded by one hundred soldiers each, and set to work under the direction of Ministry of Works clerks.

Chen Qiyu knew he understood nothing of such matters, so he delegated the entire affair to Dong Fan, the Ministry of Works Bureau Director. After instructing Chen Qizhi to oversee the provisioning of grain for the dredging work, he took his men on inspection tours, striving to gain an understanding of grain transport affairs in a short time, so that he could submit a memorial to the Emperor explaining the advantages and disadvantages—thereby adding a few more points to his good image in the Emperor's eyes.

The vast majority of these captives came from farming families, who had joined the roving bandits only because their fields had produced nothing. All they sought was to eat a full meal—even not quite full would do, for it was better than waiting at home to starve to death. But among them were also many of brutal nature who had committed no small number of rapes, robberies, and abductions.

On the march escorting the captives to Huai'an, Chen Qiyu had conducted a screening operation among the sixty-odd thousand men, with the purpose of cowing them into submission.

In truth, by his own inclination, these roving bandits could simply have been killed and buried to fertilize the fields—keeping them alive was just wasting grain. But Chongzhen had admonished him in an imperial edict that this action was meant to win hearts and minds, to leave the bandits elsewhere a thought of surrendering. Though Chen Qiyu disagreed considerably, he still carried it out as ordered.

He ordered the captives divided into several dozen camps, with stockades erected to separate them, and left them to starve for three days. Then he had the government troops place white steamed flatbreads at the camp gates and proclaimed to the captives: whoever reported and exposed the crimes of others could leave the camp to receive food. The court would arrange a way to live for them, and they would be fed two meals a day. Crimes included seizing commoners' property after breaching cities, killing and wounding people, raping women, killing or wounding officials and government soldiers, uttering words of resentment against the court, and so on. Such persons would be taken to the mines to dig ore.

Most of the roving bandits, starving for three days, had long since sunk into despair, thinking they would be slaughtered by the government troops at any moment. When they suddenly heard they could eat white flatbreads and would have work and food, nearly everyone grew restless. What was reporting or being reported, after all? Nobody would die from it—the work would just be different.

Under the tight watch of government soldiers armed with blades and spears, the bandits left the camp in groups of ten, came to the clerks' tables, and stated the name, age, native place, nickname, and crimes of those being reported. The government troops would call out the accused and take them to a separate camp for detention, while the accusers went to another camp to eat.

After several hours of frantic activity, those who had been reported numbered more than five thousand, including no small number of mutual denunciations among fellow villagers and relatives.

Men whose eyes had gone green with hunger, upon seeing food, cast aside the bonds of kinship passed down through generations. Nothing mattered more than eating a full meal. Besides, the court had already said they would be sent to the mines to atone for their crimes. Since you really had done things that violated heaven and reason, don't blame me for turning you in.

Chen Qiyu stood with his hands clasped behind his back, coldly watching it all. These ignorant people had caused the court such enormous trouble, had brought great harm to the Great Ming. How many innocent commoners had died directly or indirectly at their hands? His womanish mercy at the Battle of Chariot Canyon had cost him his office and thrown him into prison—that humiliation was all thanks to these stubborn villains before his eyes!

When the so-called wicked and the so-called good had been separated into their respective camps, Chen Qiyu turned and went back to the main tent.

The more than five thousand reported bandits squatted or lay inside the stockade, some gathering in small groups of acquaintances to chat, whispering about where they might be taken.

Suddenly a rumble of footsteps came—five hundred government archers marched in formation. Under the bandits' startled or despairing gazes, they quickly spread out and took positions outside the stockade, drew their bows, and aimed through the gaps between the stakes at the bandits within. At a stern command, the archers loosed their arrows.

After each man had shot seven or eight rounds, the archers, exhausted, ceased firing. Inside the bandits' camp lay corpses and wounded everywhere. Of the more than five thousand, barely a thousand remained unharmed. These men wailed loudly as they scrambled to dodge, some trying to climb the stockade to escape, only to be shot down by archers who still had some strength left. The entire camp ran with blood like a river, cries of agony and despair ringing without end. The bandits in the nearby camps all turned pale, and many wept aloud in terror.

Then the camp gate was thrown open. Five hundred fully armored sword-and-shield men and five hundred spearmen marched in formation into the enclosure. A quarter of an hour later, no bandit remained standing inside. The sword-and-shield men began turning over the fallen bandits, finishing each one off with a blade. Finally the archers entered to retrieve their spent arrows.

Chen Qiyu ordered the local county government to deliver hoes and iron shovels. Under the watch of the government troops, selected bandits dug several dozen large pits in a stretch of wasteland and buried the dead bandits within.

Many years passed, yet few locals dared walk through that place alone. It was said that at night, cries of agony could often be heard there.

On the day of the incident, a triumphant dispatch was sent to the capital reporting that a group of bandit prisoners had gathered together, attempting to seize government weapons and stage a revolt, but had been forcefully suppressed by the government troops, resulting in several thousand bandits killed and no government casualties.