Chapter 211: The Armory

One day in late January, while a spring rain fine as hair still fell outside, Heifu and Feng Jing were already standing before the tall storehouses west of Ying County town. Looking out, they saw it was like a city within a city — thick walls two zhang high, roughly two hundred paces long and wide, encircling the storehouses within, and garrisoned by five hundred commandery soldiers.

"Clerk of the Left Arms Section, Clerk Feng, this is the Ying County Armory."

As a Commandant Clerk, Man was also part of the commandery commandant system. After Heifu officially began work in late January, he had been transferred over and made responsible for guiding Heifu and Feng Jing in learning the business. The Left Arms Section Clerk's duties, apart from the troop mustering and training that only began after spring plowing, also included overseeing the selection of military officers for the commandery, as well as soldier registries, arms and equipment, and military orders. As a hundred-bushel subordinate clerk and scribe directly under the Commandant, the Accessory Clerk also needed to understand the workings of all the above, and so accompanied them.

Looking at the armory's enormous scale, Heifu could not help but sigh with feeling: "It truly is far larger than the county armory at Anlu."

He looked toward Feng Jing. "Clerk Feng, is the Xianyang Armory even larger than this?"

"Naturally."

After Heifu's "prediction" of the troop strength Wang Jian would use that day, Feng Jing no longer dared underestimate him, and answered with a smile: "The Xianyang Armory lies beside Xianyang Palace, guarded by the Guard Commander. It is three or four times larger than the Nan Commandery Armory, and the arms, armor, chariots, and vehicles stored there are four or five times as many!"

As they spoke, the local armory clerk had already arrived with his men, saluted Heifu and Feng Jing, and ushered them inside.

Once inside, Heifu realized that the thickness of the walls here far exceeded their outward appearance. The base of the wall alone was four zhang thick — nearly ten meters!

But thinking it over carefully, he understood. The armory was the most important place in a city. During the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, when feudal lords fought internal strife, rebelled, or when city-dwellers rose up, the armory was always the primary target — seize the armory first, obtain weapons and equipment, and thereby gain an equipment advantage in the fighting.

In war, destroying the enemy's armory was also a vital means of defeating them. The "Fire Attack" chapter in those scrolls of Master Wu's Sunzi that Li You lent Heifu stated that there are five types of fire attack: first, burning enemy men and horses; second, burning enemy provisions; third, burning enemy baggage; fourth, burning enemy storehouses and armories; fifth, burning enemy transport facilities...

Under such circumstances, Qin set the Xianyang Armory within the palace district, and the Nan Commandery Armory was also heavily guarded, with sentries every three paces and guard posts every five, placing it under tight defense — not only preventing it from being exploited or sabotaged, but also allowing weapons and armor to be issued at any moment to rapidly arm troops.

This Nan Commandery Armory was further divided into three sections: chariots, armor, and weapons.

The first place Heifu and the others entered was the chariot depot, which covered the largest area. Inside were over a thousand chariots and vehicles, all neatly arranged in their respective sheds.

As they looked along the way, the forms and types of the various chariots all differed: there were "general's command chariots" serving as command vehicles, battering rams for attacking cities, light assault chariots for charging enemy lines, heavy carts for transporting arms, provisions, bedding, and other military supplies, flag chariots bearing command banners, drum chariots to boost morale, "lofty tower observation chariots" that could be raised and lowered to scout enemy movements, as well as ceremonial chariots, and even quite a few military musical instruments.

Heifu was no stranger to these chariots — he had seen plenty of them in the military camps during the Chu campaign. In peacetime they lay here quietly, each receiving specialized maintenance and lacquering. Once wartime came, they need only be harnessed to horses from the Cloud Dream Marsh stables, and they could go galloping across the battlefield.

While Heifu wandered about the chariot depot asking questions, Feng Jing had also finished inspecting the depot's inventory ledger. It registered every chariot in storage; any that was lent out or damaged had to be recorded and reported. If an audit found discrepancies, the depot clerk would be severely punished!

"Various chariots and vehicles, subtotal: 774."

Heifu also glanced at it and asked, "Last year it was over a thousand, but this year only seven hundred and some remain. Where did those three hundred go?"

The depot clerk looked somewhat embarrassed. "Last year three hundred were sent to Nanyang Commandery for the Chu campaign, and afterward they were never returned..."

So it was still the fault of that defeat. Heifu was rather helpless. In the wake of a lost battle, besides the heavy casualties among commandants and soldiers, all kinds of military equipment, especially chariots and vehicles, were easily abandoned. In the Chu campaign, the Qin army had lost at least over a thousand war chariots — needless to say, most of them had been captured by the Chu army and used to supply the enemy.

Next was the armor depot. Most numerous was the standard-issue leather armor of Qin armored soldiers, piled up like mountains; the ledger recorded a total of ten thousand sets in storage. In addition, there were ten thousand sets of thigh armor, nearly a thousand bronze helmets, three thousand leather-faced shields, and even four hundred sets of horse armor for war chariots and cavalry mounts.

Last was the weapons depot. Heifu discovered that the weapons in storage were indeed still predominantly bronze; iron weapons existed, but not in great numbers. Apart from the usual swords, dagger-axes, spears, and halberds, Heifu paid particular attention to the stock of long spears and extra-long spears.

"At the Battle of Tongyang, the long spears were the key to our army turning defeat into victory."

Looking at those slender long spears neatly arrayed on wooden racks, Heifu could not help but sigh. That day, without those fine weapons, their casualties might have been even more grievous.

After completing the inspection tour, Feng Jing also sighed with feeling: "No wonder the art of war says that to raise a host of one hundred thousand, the cost of glue and lacquer, the outlay for chariots and armor, amounts to a thousand gold pieces a day. The chariots, armor, weapons, and equipment in this Nan Commandery Armory can only outfit a little over twenty thousand men, and yet it is already so vast and numerous. I truly dare not imagine..."

He glanced at the person beside him, drew closer to Heifu, and said: "I truly dare not imagine how many chariots, armor sets, weapons, and equipment six hundred thousand men would require."

"Probably enough to empty the armories of every commandery and county in Qin," Heifu said with a smile. He felt the same — before, when they were in the army, they simply picked up their weapons and fought. Now, serving in the Arms Section and beginning to handle organizational work, he understood just how extraordinarily difficult it was to launch a war.

No wonder there was a theory: the organization and prosecution of war is a major driving force pushing the organizational forms of human society to develop in more effective directions.

Since the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, frequent warfare had transformed the regimes of every state — this was the reform movement. And under Shang Yang's direction, Qin had transformed most thoroughly and was best adapted to war. Tempered in one great battle after another, this realm had become a machine born for war; every subject was a tiny screw in the machine, and Heifu was no exception.

That evening, Heifu and Feng Jing reported the results of their armory inspection to Li You.

"We venture to inform the Commandant: due to the first Chu campaign, a considerable amount of Nan Commandery's chariots, armor, weapons, and equipment was sent north to outfit soldiers and was lost on the battlefield. Therefore, every depot has shortages, especially the weapons depot, which is missing nearly half!"

Li You took the ledger Feng Jing had used to record the figures and saw that the shortfall in chariots and vehicles was roughly three hundred, while chest armor and thigh armor were each short by five thousand sets, and another two thousand shields needed to be made.

The greatest need, however, was actually for weapons. Chariots were only used by chariot soldiers, and soldiers in the rear ranks could go without armor, but weapons were indispensable to every man. Without weapons, soldiers were like beasts missing claws and fangs — they could hardly break branches for weapons and raise poles for banners...

"Swords, dagger-axes, and spears — the three most common standard-issue blades — each require two thousand to be made. Bows and crossbows also require one thousand each. The most troublesome are arrows: at least two hundred thousand more are needed!"

At this point Heifu finally understood why the ancients had made up the story of "borrowing arrows with straw boats." On the eve of battle, if the crossbowmen and archers had no arrows, even the cleverest housewife could not cook without rice. Sometimes a single siege battle would see a hundred thousand arrows shot — one can see how enormous the consumption was. Not every arrow could be retrieved, especially when you had lost the battle...

Fortunately, it was now only the end of the first month. The start of war Qin envisioned was after autumn; they still had half a year to prepare.

"Every workshop in Nan Commandery will probably have to work through the night," Li You said, deeply troubled. Before coming, he had been full of ambition; only after arriving did he realize that overseeing a commandery's military affairs was not just about drilling troops. He had also never imagined that a single failed Chu campaign could have cost the Nan Commandery Armory so dearly.

There was no mechanized production in this era — everything was made purely by hand. Even though Nan Commandery's workshops had several thousand convict laborers, male and female, making up the armory's shortfall in chariots, armor, weapons, and equipment within half a year would be no easy task.

Fortunately, those living by the mountain live off the mountain, and those by the water live off the water. Nan Commandery's natural conditions were good; the raw materials for making chariots, armor, weapons, and equipment could basically all be obtained locally.

In his day, Mozi had said: Jing has Cloud Dream Marsh, teeming with rhinoceros, wild buffalo, elk, and deer; it also has tall pines, patterned catalpa, nanmu, and camphor. All kinds of wild beasts could be hunted and their hides stripped to make armor, while the various types of timber could be used to make chariots and arrow shafts. And the ducks and geese raised by common households, as well as the waterfowl flying everywhere in Cloud Dream Marsh, were natural materials for arrow fletching.

By this point, the war's impact extended beyond just the thirty thousand soldiers who would be conscripted and sent to the front lines. The artisans and convict laborers in the workshops would have to work overtime; hunters, merchants, farmers — every one of the one hundred fifty thousand households in Nan Commandery would be mobilized by the authorities, either to collect military supplies or to labor at farming to store up provisions...

"Timber and feathers and the like are easier to manage," Li You said after thinking. "What worries me most is still copper and iron. If copper and iron are insufficient, even with half a year, the weapons and arrowheads still cannot be fully made. And if we transport copper from elsewhere, the cost would be too great."

Thinking thus, he slapped the armrest table and said: "Tomorrow, you two will accompany me to the copper office on Ji Mountain to take a look!"

"Yes!"

Hearing Li You worry about copper and iron output, Heifu's heart stirred, and an idea came to him...

PS: After thinking it over, I won't ask for monthly tickets this month — the big authors are competing for the rankings, so everyone can use them to trade for monthly ticket red envelopes and Qidian coins. The second chapter is in the evening. In April, the guaranteed minimum is two chapters a day; starting the 13th I'll make up the eight chapters owed from last month. I have things to take care of early in the month.

(End of chapter)