Chapter 197: Great King Zhang Opens His Princely Establishment

There were seventy-four pieces of goldware of various kinds, one hundred and twenty pieces of jadeware, silver ingots worth about two thousand strings of cash in total, and copper coins beyond count — many had rotted too badly to tally properly, but the total likely did not exceed ten thousand strings.

This was the treasure brought up from the Loyalty Repository, and it showed that in the final years of the Anxi Army and Dayun Temple, the two highest organs of Great Tang control over the Western Regions had truly fallen on hard times.

Of course, while gold, silver, and jewels were scarce, there was no shortage of other things — mainly military equipment.

Among them were more than seven hundred sets of lamellar armor, though the cords had almost all rotted away, the armor plates were somewhat rusted, and they would need a certain amount of repair before they could be used.

Besides the lamellar armor, the storehouse also held more than one hundred sets of ring-lock armor — that is, Chinese-style mail.

These were all forged from refined iron and were the best preserved; when they were brought out, the pig fat and sheep fat on the oilpaper wrapping the mail was even still slightly sticky to the touch.

Apart from the Chinese-style mail, there were also more than three hundred sets of Persian-style mail, which by their style appeared to date from the Sassanian Persian period; they too were relatively well preserved and could be used after some patching.

These five hundred sets of armor combined were what delighted Zhang Zhao most, because they matched perfectly with the cloth-faced armor he had been making.

Zhang Zhao made a point of testing it: he had Man Xiong wear a padded jacket against his skin, then a suit of ring-lock mail, then a layer of cloth-faced armor over that, and then had Dunzhu hack and stab at him with a long spear and a great axe.

Although Man Xiong was left grimacing in pain, Dunzhu said that even if he were facing not a fierce man like Man Xiong but an ordinary armored soldier, it would still take a great deal of effort and strength to defeat him.

Before his strength was exhausted, such an armored soldier was nearly invincible.

As for the assorted other supplies — several thousand jin of smelted iron bars and blocks, long spears so rotted that only the spearheads were usable, somewhat rusted hengdao sabers, arrowheads, and the like — all were being sorted out in a rush.

After these things were brought up, Li Shengtian and Zhang Zhao could each take a portion, and the most crucial items — the more than one hundred sets of ring-lock mail and more than three hundred sets of mail — all went to Zhang Zhao.

But although Li Shengtian said nothing, Zhang Zhao knew there were conditions: the capture of Ferghana and the great haul in India that he had promised, as well as completing the small-scale internal circulation of the Khotan Golden Kingdom — all of it was for him to carry out.

After bringing up the treasure of the Loyalty Repository and dividing the armor and ironware, Zhang Zhao left; as for the goldware and silver ingots, he did not so much as glance at them.

Because he understood this uncle, the Son of Heaven, very well: now that Li Shengtian knew his ambitions, and the marriage pact between the third generation of the Li family and the second generation of the Zhang family had been established, when he returned east, Li Shengtian would certainly not stint him in gold and silver.

He had just returned to Shule when two extremely important matters immediately awaited Zhang Zhao's handling.

The first was the establishment of his princely establishment. Since Li Shengtian now knew Zhang Zhao's ambitions and had decided to invest heavily in him, there was no need to wait until after the return east to open the establishment.

Li Shengtian said: open it now, open it grandly, according to the regulations for a prince of the Great Tang.

By Tang regulations, a princely establishment had a Recorder Adjutant, a Chief Clerk, adjutants of the various bureaus (Merit Bureau, Granary Bureau, Household Bureau, Military Bureau, and so on), a Registrar, commanders of the various guards, and officers of the Personal Service Office and the Inner Quarters Office.

But Zhang Zhao's would be somewhat simpler; he had no use for the guard commanders, the Personal Service Office, or the Inner Quarters Office.

Because, out of the need to interface with the Guiyi Army, the military organization under Zhang Zhao now followed the Guiyi Army pattern — the garrison-battalion-command-platoon-squad model.

So what the establishment needed to set up was the remaining civil official system.

Among these, the post of Recorder Adjutant was charged with overseeing all the bureaus' documents and records, impeaching and commending good and evil, and the like.

To put it plainly, if the princely establishment were compared to a court, the Recorder Adjutant was the Great King's true confidant — he could manage anything and meddle in anything, depending solely on the wishes of his lord.

It was somewhat like the chief eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial in the Ming dynasty, so Zhang Zhao simply did not create the post, because at present he had no suitable candidate.

And the Chief Clerk was the chancellor of this establishment. In the Tang, when princes of the Li surname were young or for other reasons did not go to their fiefs, the Chief Clerk acted on their behalf in the affairs of the fief.

Originally Zhang Zhao did not want to establish this office either, likewise because he had no good candidate, but after thinking it over, he appointed Zhang Zhong as Chief Clerk of the Great King's establishment.

Because everyone knew the relationship between Zhang Zhong and Zhang Zhao; with him as Chief Clerk, no one would dare voice dissent.

But at the same time they also knew Zhang Zhong's abilities — old Zhang Zhong simply could not serve as Chief Clerk, so this Chief Clerk was bound to be a figurehead, and the Great King Zhang would still be doing the work himself.

That gave the people below a goal: the Great King could not do the Chief Clerk's work himself forever, so whoever was most capable and handled affairs most efficiently could rise to the post.

As for the bureau adjutants, these were the offices Zhang Zhao truly wanted to establish.

Wu Yuan'er, who had followed Zhang Zhao all along, received the two key posts of Merit Bureau Adjutant and Military Bureau Adjutant.

From then on, matters of soldiers' meritorious service and rewards, compensation for casualties, and the allocation of arms and equipment were all under Wu Yuan'er's management.

Guo Tiance, who had just performed admirably in printing The Complete Heroes of the Great Tang and quickly completed the task, received the post of Household Bureau Adjutant.

However, Zhang Zhao did not have many households at present, but he did have quite a bit of money — from the Shule royal palace alone he had obtained more than two hundred thousand strings — so the Household Bureau Adjutant could not manage many households, but could manage a good deal of money.

Great King Zhang was now a true bare-stick king — not that he lacked money or men, but that he himself had almost no private wealth.

All assets, even those granted to him by Li Shengtian, Zhang Zhao counted into the public account; otherwise he simply could not support so many people.

Of course, separating public and private was only a matter of time, and Cao Yanmian of the Cao family had already begun taking it over.

The Granary Bureau Adjutant post was granted to Zhu Qingquan; this house-watching and courtyard-guarding post suited him best — a descendant of the Anxi Army whom Zhang Zhao himself had found in the royal city of Khotan.

Besides being able to write and calculate, his only family was one small grandson, who was also studying under Zhang Zhao and had been adopted as a foster son, so there was no question about his loyalty.

Finally, Cao Yanming received the post of Works Bureau Adjutant, which also formally confirmed the status of the Fire Thunder Office, the department researching gunpowder. Besides the work of researching gunpowder, the Works Bureau was also to take on the forging of armor and weapons and other such tasks.

With this, the establishment was complete, everyone received their posts, and most of the organs of Great King Zhang's little court were formed — small as a sparrow, but complete in all its parts.

With the establishment complete, the second matter was the attack on Ferghana.

Zhang Zhao's establishment and appointment ceremony had just finished, and he had not yet had time to exchange a few words with Cao Yanmian and Guo Wan'er in the rear courtyard, when Li Qilang, supported by several guards, came straight to Zhang Zhao's residence.

A wooden box was raised by Li Qilang and handed to Zhang Zhao — it was exactly the one Zheng Shouli had given to Ma Yaozi, containing the treasure map of the Loyalty Repository belonging to the Xue family.

Ma Yaozi and Yang Shouli of course did not know that Zhang Zhao had already brought up the Loyalty Repository, so they had made Li Qilang travel day and night, nearly running himself to death to reach Shule.

"Great King, the three families of Zheng, Yang, and Xue have built a city on the northern mountain of the land of Ferghana, calling it New Kucha, with a total of seven thousand six hundred seventy-seven souls.

Of these, there are one thousand four hundred fifty-one adult males, all willing to follow the Great King east. In addition, with the help of the various peoples of the northern mountain, the old road in and out of Ferghana has also been explored."

Li Qilang, after drinking a mouthful of honey water, finally caught his breath, and he began to recount, bit by bit, the hair-raising journey of searching for the three families of New Kucha.

When Li Qilang said that New Kucha had been besieged and that the people on the mountain had almost run out of drinking water for two days, a cold sweat instantly broke out all down Zhang Zhao's back.

How close! Truly close! Had they been a few days later, New Kucha would surely have been breached — the old and weak slaughtered to the last, the able-bodied men and women carried off — and regret would have come too late!

These were true sons of Tang, more than seven thousand of them, and all willing to follow him east — to Zhang Zhao, they were priceless beyond measure.

"Qilang, you have truly worked hard. I never expected those two simpletons Ma Yaozi and Shanzhu'er to actually use their heads. Not bad at all!" Zhang Zhao praised him delightedly for a few sentences, then asked:

"What is the condition of the old road in and out of Ferghana? Is it still passable? Did you come back by this route?"

"It is still passable. I came back by this old road together with several Hu tribesmen of the northern mountain peoples.

The old road is very broad; not only can horses gallop along it, but eight or more people can walk abreast, and carts can pass as well."

Li Qilang quickly nodded and replied, "However, the road condition is somewhat poor. That wretch Yusuf, as early as when Satuq led his army back to Shule and prepared to attack Suyab, had already conceived the idea of setting himself up as king of the region.

Therefore, after killing the trusted followers Satuq had left behind, he used the method of destroying the mountains to seal off several key sections of the road, and also destroyed the relay stations and grain depots Satuq had established along the way."

"When the servants came back along the old road, they'd brought too little dry provisions and nearly starved to death. They only pulled through because they managed to bring down a Mongolian gazelle on the way. A few men can manage that, but an army certainly can't."

Zhang Zhao was rather speechless. This Saketu—what the hell kind of eye do you have! The governor you left in charge of Fergana turned out to be a ruthless backstabber.

Damn it all. The old road stretches over a thousand li of uninhabited wilderness, and on top of that he deliberately collapsed the mountain to block the way. How the hell am I supposed to get through?

"What is the fighting strength of the false Fergana governor Yusuf's troops? Do they have the same combat power as Saketu's ghulam guards below Polu Prefecture's walls?" This question was critical—it would determine what action Zhang Zhao should take.

Li Qilang thought it over seriously for a moment, then said hesitantly, "Their fighting strength… should be quite poor. At least the soldiers besieging New Kucha were almost all pulled straight from the fields and pastures. Only the officers have armor.

Captain Ma interrogated the captured officers. They belong to iqta infantry raised by the various begs.

In the two great cities of Andukan and Kasan, there are some troops bearing the title of ghulam, but their fighting strength is said to be nothing special either.

Because the best ghulams were all Saketu's trusted men. Apart from a small number willing to switch allegiance, most were found opportunities by Yusuf and eliminated.

It's said that at a banquet in Kasan back then, Yusuf killed dozens of officers and their guards in one go."

Oh! That's good news!

Zhang Zhao grinned. This Yusuf was a ruthless one indeed!

Historically, it seemed that after Saketu seized Fergana, it was indeed quickly retaken by the Samanid Persians.

The two sides ended up seesawing for over a decade before Fergana was finally firmly held by Saketu. It seems this Yusuf put in quite a lot of "effort."

"Fan Quan! Qiong Reduojin! Shi Chongmin!" After thinking for a while, Zhang Zhao made his arrangements.

"Fan Quan leads one hundred armored soldiers of the Hanshan Du's right third squad, Qiong Reduojin leads one hundred elite cavalry of the Youyi Du's right third squad, plus two hundred men of the Fenjin Du as the vanguard, with Fan Quan in overall command.

First repair the road into and out of the old Fergana route, especially the section blocked by Yusuf. After exiting the valley mouth, find a defensible position and build a stockade. Do not deliberately seek battle—holding the valley mouth will be a great merit in itself."

"Yes! Your subordinates obey!" The three men hurried out and saluted with clasped hands to accept the order.

Although all three were squad leaders, Fan Quan had once been Zhang Zhao's personal bodyguard, so Qiong Reduojin naturally didn't dare contend with Fan Quan—let alone Shi Chongmin, whose status was even lower.

But this also reminded Zhang Zhao that he still needed to return east soon! Otherwise he couldn't even sort out things like rank titles.

"Adjutant Guo, come with me to the royal city. I need an audience with the Great Sage Son of Heaven."

Militarily, he could let himself take the vanguard, but establishing supply points and transport arrangements along the route for the army—that was Li Shengtian's business.

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