Chapter 68: Relief

Since an Embroidered Uniform Guard chiliarchy left the capital for Zhangjiakou Fort on official business, the Chongzhen Emperor's mood had been excellent.

Because nearly a year had passed since he arrived in the Great Ming, his first pot of gold in this world was about to land in his hands; the privy purse, nearly scraped dry, would soon be replenished. The Ministry of Revenue, which daily submitted memorials crying poverty and begging His Majesty to dip into the privy purse to subsidize the state treasury, would also receive its proper share. Minister of Revenue Hou Xun had been diligent and conscientious after all, and out of regard for his son Hou Fangyu, whose fame would be considerable in later ages, giving the old man a few hundred thousand taels more at that point was no great matter—one could hardly bear to watch a minister of revenue who had just passed fifty, still middle-aged by later standards, fret himself into looking like a man of seventy.

Good news had come in an unbroken string lately. Lu Xiangsheng had annihilated tens of thousands of roving bandits in a single battle at Chuzhou, and had memorialized the throne that he was even then in pursuit of Gao Yingxiang, with the entire army's morale running high—he was determined to strike the Dashing King's bandits a heavy blow and strive to wipe them out within the bounds of the Southern Direct Administration.

Sun Chuanting, drilling troops and farming military land in Shaanxi, also sent glad tidings. The well-digging teams the Chongzhen Emperor had dispatched from the imperial estates had earned their merit. Though rainfall in Shaanxi had remained scant from last year to the present, under the hard labor and technical guidance of the well-digging teams, Sun Chuanting had raised several dozen more teams of varying sizes. At the same time, the workshops of the Ordnance Directorate responsible for civilian farm tools had forged large quantities of iron spades, picks, shovels, and other implements from fine iron stock and delivered them to the Shaanxi Governor's yamen. These agricultural tools greatly boosted productivity. Now every hundred mu of military farmland had a deep well, and the water yielded was ample for use. The crops in the fields were growing splendidly—barring mishap, this would be a rare bumper harvest year.

Though Shaanxi's drought had persisted long, there was none of the later-age industrial-scale extraction that drained groundwater dry; at this time the groundwater reserves were still rich. The surface rivers around Xi'an—the Jing and the Wei among the principal ones—carried little water but had not run dry. In the slack farming season, Sun Chuanting organized large numbers of farming households to dig irrigation channels and build waterwheels, using the silt dredged from the rivers to fertilize the fields and the waterwheels to lift water for irrigation. The volume was not great, but it was an excellent supplement to well irrigation.

The farming households, freed from hereditary military household status and from the long-standing extortion and exploitation of their superiors, burst forth with tremendous productive fervor and initiative. Following the Chongzhen Emperor's wishes, Sun Chuanting vigorously encouraged and supported the households in opening wasteland for cultivation, and proclaimed that all newly opened land would be exempt from rent and levies for three years, after which taxes would be paid at a rate of three-tenths. He also supplied seeds for opening wasteland and dug wells free of charge. These several measures drove every farming household into a collective frenzy—nearly every family worked day and night at clearing land during the slack season. Every extra mu of wasteland reclaimed meant another mouth fed; with grain came the capital to take a wife and sire children, and with many children the family line would extend unbroken for generations.

Of those households with many brothers, besides clearing land and farming, many chose to enlist in the army. The monthly pay of one tael was pure income. Though the training was hard and they would eventually take the field, their clothing, armor, boots, hats, and daily rations were all supplied by the court. So long as they avoided the vice of gambling, they could send every month's silver home. The family lost one able-bodied mouth to feed and gained a substantial income besides; after saving for several months beyond expenses, they could marry off the family's bachelor. These were blessings they had never dared dream of before. The vast majority of hereditary military households had never in their lives seen a whole ingot of silver and could not save more than a few copper coins in a year. In their joy, the soldiers came to revere the Governor who had brought them this good life as a god, and Sun Chuanting's renown around Xi'an Prefecture blazed like the noonday sun.

Hearing the news, some starving refugees also streamed toward Xi'an. Fortunately, Sun Chuanting had at hand large stores of grain seized in confiscations; so long as there was no massive influx of refugees, this grain would hold out without trouble until the summer harvest.

Cui Shisheng, Xie Renxing, Yang Mingsheng, and the others had learned a great deal of administrative knowledge in the course of digging wells, building channels, and opening wasteland for farming. These men, once full of bookish airs, had fully experienced the hardship and poverty of the farming households and accumulated sound experience for governing a locality. Sun Chuanting also deliberately separated them to train their ability to take charge independently; when the time was ripe, he would memorialize the Emperor and the court to have them enter official service and bring benefit to their regions.

Because the number of enlistees was too great, after selecting the best, Sun Chuanting—who had originally planned to recruit ten thousand men to form the Qin Army—expanded the number to roughly fifteen thousand. Though Luo Shifang had risen by merit to Mobile Corps Commander, a Mobile Corps Commander's authority was insufficient to command so many troops. The Chongzhen Emperor therefore urgently transferred Zhou Yuji, then far off in Shandong, to Shaanxi to serve as Vice Regional Commander of the newly formed Qin Army and take charge of the entire force. The Chongzhen Emperor still wanted to keep important armed forces in his own hands. Zhou Yuji had already proven his loyalty and righteousness through deeds in history, and the Emperor was quite at ease entrusting this force to him; moreover, Zhou Yuji was exceptionally capable—there was no fear he would fail to lead the troops well.

With the commander in place, the new army still lacked a great number of grassroots military officers. Frontline officers such as Battalion Commanders, Company Commanders, and squad leaders needed to be filled by veterans with rich combat experience. Military command is a highly complex skill—drums and gongs, banners and flags, formation ordering, and battlefield improvisation all required officers of outstanding adaptability and steady composure to direct.

To fill these vacancies, Sun Chuanting sent letters to Hong Chengchou asking for aid. Hong Chengchou transferred a hundred-odd men from Zuo Liangyu's command to Sun Chuanting's side to serve as the new army's grassroots officers. The Chongzhen Emperor selected several men from the Ministry of War and the Embroidered Uniform Guard to come to the Qin Army as military discipline officers, to supervise discipline in daily life and in battle, and to verify battle results and merits, lest any commander embezzle the soldiers' credit. This was an unprecedented innovation.

Many armies in the past had eunuchs as army supervisors, but the eunuchs, considering themselves emissaries of the palace representing the Emperor, believed that once in military affairs they should be transcendent beings—from the Regional Commander at the top to the common soldiers at the bottom, all must obey them. They were therefore almost universally arrogant and overbearing, beating and cursing officers and men, arbitrarily altering military orders, and interfering with the commander's direction—such incidents occurred from time to time. Every commander was deeply resentful of this but dared not voice it, and this was one of the causes of the slackened morale among Ming troops.

Since the beginning of this year, the Chongzhen Emperor had successively recalled some supervising eunuchs. Though this was welcomed and supported by the generals, it also drew doubt from many court officials. Eunuch supervision had all manner of drawbacks, but its greatest benefit was that these military chiefs dared not harbor other thoughts, for the eunuchs could at any time submit a personal memorial to the Emperor reporting any unusual behavior by the army or its commanders. Without supervisors, whether commanders holding military power might entertain other designs or pay lip service to the court's orders while acting otherwise was hard to say clearly.

The Chongzhen Emperor naturally understood the pros and cons here. The reason he recalled the supervising eunuchs was precisely to prevent the historical scene in which the eunuch Gao Qiqian, commanding tens of thousands of men, sat and watched from a distance of several dozen li while Governor-General of Xuan-Da Lu Xiangsheng was surrounded and killed by a heavy Qing army.

The Ministry of War sending men to inspect military discipline was done as representatives of the court, while the Embroidered Uniform Guard's dispatched personnel represented the Emperor. Moreover, the Chongzhen Emperor ordered that the Ministry of War and Embroidered Uniform Guard personnel concern themselves only with military discipline and record the daily and battlefield conduct of officers and men, with no authority to interfere in the commander's battlefield direction. This avoided amateurs leading professionals and allowed the commander to focus more intently on directing operations.

Sun Chuanting had no objection whatsoever to installing discipline officers. He considered this only proper and fitting. As a civil official, he deeply detested certain commanders who slaughtered innocents to claim merit or turned a deaf ear to court orders. The Great Ming's official armies ought to belong to the Emperor. Moreover, these were not eunuchs but the Ministry of War and the Emperor's own personal guard supervising simultaneously—this showed all the more regard for the court and for civil officials.