Chapter 169: Conciliation

The Emperor did not take Sun Chuanting's plea of guilt to heart.

Such unexpected incidents could not have been foreseen by anyone; Sun Chuanting's handling of the matter had been entirely appropriate. The conduct of the surrendered rebel Zhang Wenyao also proved him to be a usable talent—whether his actions stemmed from opportunism or genuine loyalty, the Emperor trusted that Sun Chuanting would make a fitting disposition.

At the Emperor's suggestion, the Ministry of Personnel had already prepared to issue directives to all provinces, laying down explicit regulations concerning official appointments.

Through the new provisions drawn up by the Ministry of Personnel, the Emperor intended to impose mandatory restraints on officials belonging to what later generations would call the Donglin Faction, thereby changing the situation in which officials in the Jiangnan region formed their own self-contained system, detached from the court's jurisdiction.

Literati had developed a bad habit since the Song dynasty: openly refusing the court's summons to office.

Wang Anshi was a typical example.

When the emperor and the court summoned him, swayed by the instigations of those around him and out of a desire to build his reputation, he repeatedly declined and refused on various pretexts, invisibly causing a great loss of the court's authority.

Wang Anshi's purpose was in fact very simple—he felt the official post offered by the court was too lowly and was unwilling to stoop to accept it. Want me to come out of seclusion? Fine—then give me a position where I have the final say.

This bad habit had persisted all the way into the Great Ming, and especially now, with the situation in turmoil, the court's authority had been greatly diminished.

To give an example: if the court were to transfer the Prefect of Suzhou to serve as Prefect of Fengxiang Prefecture, the outcome went without saying—the Suzhou Prefect would rather submit his resignation than take up a post in the northwest, a place both dangerous and devoid of any lucrative pickings.

This was by no means an exaggeration; given the nature of some Ming officials, they would absolutely do such a thing.

This was no different from military officers refusing to obey orders.

In essence, it was contempt for the court, and there would be no particularly serious consequences.

In a court where various forces were deeply intertwined, even if you were the Emperor, if you flew into a rage and sought to hold them accountable according to the law, you would encounter obstacle after obstacle, and in the end the matter would fizzle out amid mutual buck-passing and prevarication.

Following the Emperor's wishes, the Ministry of Personnel imposed restrictions on such conduct.

When the court transferred officials at any level to any post, all officials were to obey unconditionally.

If anyone resisted the court's orders on various pretexts—well then, the Emperor was merciful; he would not send men to confiscate their property, but he would strip them of their official status, send them back to their native places, and permanently disqualify their descendants from holding office.

This new regulation did not stir much of a stir in the court. On the surface, it was enacted to strengthen the court's authority, so the members of the Grand Secretariat naturally would not oppose it.

They had not yet realized the implications behind this move of the Emperor's.

Zhenbeibu was the headquarters of the Ningxia Regional Commander. Around the hour of si (9–11 a. m.) that morning, in the crude but spacious main hall of the Regional Commander's office, the Assistant Regional Commanders and Mobile Corps Commanders responsible for the various sectors of Ningxia, along with the commanding officers of Lingzhou Station and Pinglu Station, all arrived and took their places on either side of the hall, awaiting the address of Sun Chuanting, the Governor of Shaanxi.

After Sun Chuanting led five thousand troops to Leifu Fort in Ningxia Guard a few days earlier, he placed the army under the command of Huo Bin, Assistant Regional Commander of the Qin army, and then, accompanied by a hundred personal guards and escorted by Ma Ke, the Ningxia Regional Commander, first rode east to inspect several border forts such as Zhenbian Fort and Lijia Fort, then followed the border wall north to examine Pinglu Station, and finally reached Zhenyuan Pass at the northernmost extremity before returning to Zhenbeibu.

Sun Chuanting's party spent more than ten days on a journey of nearly a thousand li, gaining a preliminary understanding of the situation in Ningxia Town.

This first impression was not a good one—to sum it up in four words: desolate and utterly impoverished.

Each border fort was garrisoned by varying numbers of border troops along with their families, all living in low, shabby rammed-earth dwellings built of yellow mud.

Most of the border troops in the forts wore mandarin-duck combat jackets that had been passed down for who knows how many generations; the original crimson had been washed to a faded white, and the jackets were covered in patches. From a distance they looked like beggars—only the blades and spears in their hands were polished to a fine sharpness.

They had no choice but to keep them sharp. Because they were close to the border wall, the Mongols beyond it would often climb over through damaged sections to raid and plunder inside. Without serviceable weapons and bows, how could they fight those Tartars?

The Mongols came mainly to steal iron pots.

Because the court forbade trade with the Mongol tribes, these Tartars beyond the wall could not exchange their furs and silver for daily necessities even if they had them—especially iron pots. No matter how many cattle and sheep you had, you still needed a pot to cook them, didn't you?

And because Ningxia Town was remote and bandit horsemen were active, the vast majority of merchants simply refused to come here to do business. No matter how high the profits, they wouldn't come—if they were careless and lost their lives here, no one would even collect their corpses.

The families and children of the border troops likewise wore tattered robes and skirts, their faces sallow and gaunt with a malnourished pallor—the result of chronic nutritional deficiency.

Each fort had several deep wells to supply daily water to its inhabitants. In Ningxia Town, where water was as precious as oil, water mattered more than grain.

The border troops' morale was still fairly good; most had been stationed here for generations and had grown accustomed to this poverty.

The border troops' grain came mainly from the produce of fields they had reclaimed outside the forts. In the northwest, where drought was frequent and harvests depended on heaven's whims, sowing widely for meager yields was a common phenomenon. Outside each fort stretched vast tracts of fields, all planted with wheat.

On the road back after inspecting several border forts, Sun Chuanting's heart was exceptionally heavy.

The court had indeed treated these border troops somewhat shabbily.

Over two hundred years, the forebears and descendants of these border troops had made enormous sacrifices to resist Tartar invasions. After so many years of attrition, the Tartars had finally begun to decline—yet these soldiers guarding the border had become a forgotten lot.

Ma Ke, the Ningxia Regional Commander, was around thirty years of age. His family had served in the military since his grandfather's generation, making him of martial lineage. In the seventh year of Chongzhen, he was promoted to Regional Commander on accumulated merit and transferred from Yansui Town to Ningxia Town.

Through casual conversation with Ma Ke along the way, Sun Chuanting learned that since Ma Ke had taken up his post in Ningxia, the court had issued pay only once—not a single tael of silver had been delivered to Ningxia since last year. Adding the arrears accumulated over the years, the court's unpaid wages to the more than twenty thousand border troops of Ningxia could no longer be counted.

When Sun Chuanting asked how the border troops managed to survive with so much pay in arrears, Ma Ke smiled and replied: "Your Excellency may not know—it's not only the Tartars beyond the wall who come raiding us. We also regularly go beyond the wall to raid them. Then we gather up the cattle, sheep, horses, furs, and felt we've seized, and the commanding officers send troops to escort them to the Pingliang and Qingyang area to sell to merchants. The silver we get is either exchanged for oil, salt, vinegar, and soy sauce, or distributed directly to the soldiers who went out to fight. This is how we've sustained ourselves for years!"

Sun Chuanting grunted in acknowledgment, seeing through the whole game at a glance.

The soldiers went out and risked their lives; the commanders sat back and collected the money.

The soldiers had no way of knowing what the loot sold to merchants was actually worth. The lion's share certainly went into the commanders' pockets, while the soldiers received only the bare minimum needed to keep their families alive.

Sun Chuanting snorted coldly: "Among the bandits in Shaanxi, there must be many former Ningxia border troops who joined them, aren't there? The armor and weapons they use are those issued to government troops—don't think I don't know! By the laws of the court, you can hardly escape the charge of lax discipline over your subordinates!"

Though the Ningxia border troops deserved sympathy, Sun Chuanting could not show it. These military men were the sort who would climb all over you if you gave them an inch—those who needed a rap on the knuckles had to be rapped.

Ma Ke hastily released his reins, clasped his hands in salute, and protested: "Your Excellency, though what you say is true, your humble servant is wronged!"

Sun Chuanting reined his horse to a slow walk without turning his head, and said coldly: "If it is indeed true, where does your grievance lie?!"

Ma Ke, whose horse lagged a step behind Sun Chuanting's, reported: "In answer to Your Excellency: though your humble servant holds the post of Regional Commander, I have no jurisdiction over the Assistant Regional Commanders and adjutants of the various sectors within the territory. I can only discipline my own troops; as for the rest, I truly lack the means! The border wall of Ningxia Town stretches over a thousand li, and each unit defends its own segment, with your humble servant coordinating from the center. In peacetime I must also drill the soldiers, leaving no energy for other matters. That is how deserters came to join the bandits. I beg Your Excellency to make allowance for these circumstances!"

Sun Chuanting had been in office for nearly two years and had long since gained a full understanding and awareness of the complexity of border affairs. What Ma Ke said was already known to him—and it was also the very problem he intended to tackle next.

Since inspecting the many border forts and beacon towers, Sun Chuanting had revised his original preconceptions about the border troops.

He had initially believed that the generals of the Nine Border Towns were all unruly and hard to control, that embezzling military pay and secretly colluding with the enemy were universal practices. But the actual situation showed that his understanding had been greatly mistaken.

He had originally planned to use the same method he had employed against the various guards of Xi'an—singling out the commanders with the worst records and most pernicious influence among the soldiers, executing them in a purge, then distributing the confiscated spoils to quickly win over the army's hearts, paving the way for the series of actions to come.

But as things now stood, the Xi'an approach would not work in Ningxia.

Though poverty was universal throughout Ningxia Town, during the inspection Xie Renxing and others had privately interviewed many border troops and their families, and most bore little resentment toward their own commanding officers, all saying that their superiors had not engaged in embezzlement, oppression, or other excesses.

Though life was hard at present, it had been this way for many years, and the court could no longer be counted on anyway. In ordinary times, their own commanders led them beyond the wall to raid for plunder. Every household had fields, and though the harvests were meager, they were not yet at the point of starving or fleeing as refugees. The silver gained from raiding was used by their commanders to purchase oil, salt, vinegar, and soy sauce from Pingliang Prefecture, which barely sufficed for a family's needs.

Sun Chuanting understood that it was not that the commanders did not want to embezzle—it was that there was simply nothing to embezzle. When the court issued no pay at all, how could they deduct anything?

As for the commanders not mistreating their soldiers—that was because the border troops were hereditary over generations, and everyone's forebears had known each other. Who would have the face to go too far?

Moreover, having long served at the frontier, though large-scale warfare had not been seen for years, small-scale clashes with the Tartars occurred from time to time. If a commander treated his men too harshly in peacetime, there was no guarantee he wouldn't be killed by a stray arrow in some battle—and then it would be blamed on the Tartars. Who would investigate the truth?

After much deliberation, Sun Chuanting concluded that in handling the border troops of Ningxia Town, he should adopt a policy of conciliation as the primary approach, and could no longer use his former crude and heavy-handed methods.

This time, to guard against any trouble in Ningxia, he had brought a large army to overawe the region, with Luo Shifang of Pingliang as rear support—so that if any disturbance broke out during the rectification, it could be swiftly suppressed.

As it turned out, his worries had been unnecessary.

Judging by the attitude of Regional Commander Ma Ke and his men, the border troops still held the court in fear and respect.

In the campaign to wipe out Ma Jinzhong and the other bandits, the Qin army had reaped considerable gains—several hundred war horses and over three hundred thousand taels of gold and silver—but not a single grain of provisions.

The roving bandits had been trapped at Baishi Plain for eight days, their repeated breakout attempts failing. Only after their provisions were completely cut off did they beg to surrender, and Ma Jinzhong's two thousand-plus war horses had been eaten down to almost nothing.

After setting aside two hundred thousand taels of the recovered loot as rewards, more than a hundred thousand remained. Added to the two hundred thousand taels Zhou Yuji had brought, Sun Chuanting still had over three hundred thousand taels at his disposal—a veritable fortune, especially for the Ningxia border troops.

Sun Chuanting, seated in the place of honor at the head of the official hall, gave a light cough, and the room fell instantly silent.

His eyes swept over the generals on both sides, and he spoke with authority: "I have served as Governor of Shaanxi by imperial decree for nearly two years now. During that time I have cultivated military farmland, drilled troops, and suppressed bandits to pacify the people—I have not failed His Majesty's trust. Ningxia Garrison is one of the Nine Border Towns of importance, and it falls under Shaanxi's jurisdiction. I have come here on behalf of Heaven to inspect and investigate, to eliminate the danger of border troubles and relieve the worries of the border troops, so that you may bask in imperial grace and keep the court's kindness in your hearts. His Majesty, mindful of the soldiers of the Nine Border Towns, has specially ordered me to bring pay here to reward the border troops for their toil in garrisoning the frontier. Once I have sent men to verify the troop rosters, the pay will be distributed! Considering that you generals guard your respective posts and your soldiers cannot easily gather at Zhenbei Fort, I will send men to accompany each of you back to your garrison posts, so that the military pay is delivered into the soldiers' own hands! I have already sent a memorial to the court yesterday—the weapons and armor the border troops lack will be dispatched here by the court itself. You generals must relay this to your armies, to inspire the soldiers' morale!"