Chapter 320: Marching by Imperial Edict to Suppress Rebellion

The clang of metal rang out. Below the walls of Weizhou, the Weizhou troops in blue lamellar armor and the Guiyi Army, clad mostly in padded armor, both began to withdraw slowly after the gongs sounded.

After Murong Xinzhang and his men had seized and killed several fierce officers of the Weizhou army, Zhang Zhao at once ordered the three battalions of Erzhu Jing, Zhao Cunyi, and Luo Shande to attack.

But the two sides had only briefly made contact before each sounded the gongs and pulled back.

The Weizhou troops had taken several volleys of arrows, and because they lacked iron armor — all those who had iron armor had followed their officers off to rebel — those few volleys had cost the Weizhou army several dozen men at once.

The Guiyi Army, for its part, had pulled back because Zhang Zhao had seen several bed crossbows appear on the walls of Weizhou.

Moreover, the wall top was crowded with men, and many archers stood with bows drawn, cutting off any chance for the Guiyi Army to rush the gate. Had they truly tried, they would likely have suffered heavy casualties and still not succeeded.

Bed crossbows in particular were extremely effective against dense formations. Though there were only a few, a single bolt could skewer a whole row of men.

Without shield carts, assault wagons, and other siege equipment at hand, spending men's lives to storm the gate was a poor bargain.

Zhang Zhao planned to wait until the camel whirlwind catapults arrived, use the small trebuchets to smash the bed crossbows on the wall, then send the demolition men of the Fenjin Capital forward under cover of assault wagons to blow open the city gate.

As Zhang Zhao pulled back slightly, on the walls of Weizhou the garrison commander Wang Shouye was even more bewildered. Watching the soldiers pouring endlessly out of the Tanzheng Gorge below the city, his mind was nearly at a standstill.

These troops, at a glance, were clearly not easy to deal with. Among them were at least several thousand armored soldiers. Apart from some disorder among the mounted scouts who looked to be Tangut from Yuanzhou, the rest of the army was strictly disciplined, uniform in order, and methodical in advance and retreat.

After stationing three or four thousand men west of the city, they had in an extremely short time detached more than two thousand cavalry to block the small road south of the city leading to Qinzhou and other places.

Then at least two or three thousand light cavalry scattered in all directions. Though they lacked the strength to surround Weizhou completely, with so many light horsemen, anyone trying to leave the city would surely not escape pursuit.

For an instant, Wang Shouye felt dazed, as if he were back in the late Tang, under attack by the elite army of a Tibetan btsanpo.

But reality told him that was impossible. He was no loyal minister of the state; he was in rebellion. Yet where had so many well-equipped troops come from?

"Garrison Commander, the enemy has raised a great banner, inscribed 'Zhang, Military Governor of the Guiyi Army'!" a sharp-eyed junior officer cried, pointing at the distant banner.

"The Guiyi Army? What are they doing here?" Wang Shouye and the assembled officers stared in astonishment. A squad general scratched the topknot on his head.

"The Zhang family of the Guiyi Army lives at ease in Guazhou and Shazhou. Why would they cross several thousand li to come here?"

"No, wait! How could the Zhang family of the Guiyi Army produce several thousand armored soldiers? Let alone march an army of over ten thousand to our doorstep. If they had such strength, why wouldn't they first swallow up the prefectures of Hexi and Longyou?"

The officers could not make sense of it no matter how they puzzled, unable to understand why the Zhang family of the Guiyi Army would come here.

This was in fact a misunderstanding, because Shi Jingtang had only appointed Zhang Zhao as Military Governor of Hexi and concurrently Observation and Disposal Commissioner of the four prefectures of Shan, Lan, He, and Kuo. The imperial envoy bearing the appointment was still blocked in Qinzhou, that is, Tianshui, so the edict had not even reached Zhang Zhao's hands yet.

As for the full set of six banners, staffs of office, and gate banners of a Military Governor, they had not even been made yet, so Zhang Zhao had simply taken out the great banner of the Guiyi Army Military Governor that his great-grandfather Zhang Yichao had once received and put it to use.

While the Weizhou officers on the wall were still puzzling, a young officer appeared, riding a tall chestnut horse at full gallop.

The horse was extraordinarily swift, covering several hundred paces in the blink of an eye. The newly risen morning sun shone on the chestnut horse, and its sweat and reddish coat actually reflected a faint reddish-brown golden sheen.

"A heavenly horse! It's a heavenly horse! A Ferghana blood-sweating heavenly horse!"

A junior officer beside Wang Shouye knew his horses; his ancestors had served as a military governor, and he recognized at a glance that the lightning-fast chestnut horse in the distance was extraordinary.

At once the wall top buzzed with excitement. The soldiers nearby all ran over, crowding together and marveling at the legendary blood-sweating heavenly horse.

"Wu Ying'er, your master didn't lose unfairly. With a heavenly horse like that, covering several hundred paces in an instant, who could stand against him?" someone called to Wu Ying'er, the one who had first recognized the blood-sweating heavenly horse.

'Xiu—wu!' A strange sound rang out. Still about two hundred paces from the walls of Weizhou, the young officer dismounted, took up a great stiff bow, and loosed a whistling arrow at the wall top.

"His Excellency the Acting Minister of Works and Military Governor of Hexi, Lord Zhang, has received the imperial edict to suppress rebellion! Open the city and surrender at once, and only the ringleaders will be executed. If you dare resist stubbornly, your kin will be implicated." Cui Huxin shouted at the top of his lungs below the wall.

Wang Shouye quickly had men find the whistling arrow that had struck the gate tower. Sure enough, a letter was bound to it.

"Zhang, Acting Minister of Works, Military Governor of Hexi, and concurrently Military Governor of the four prefectures of Shan, Lan, He, and Kuo, has received the imperial edict to suppress rebellion! Thirty thousand troops of the Hexi Army have marched east through Lan, Hui, and Yuan, and the Hedong Army has likewise sent troops south from Qing and Ning. Those who surrender live; those who resist die!"

The assembled officers fell silent. As for the so-called Hedong Army coming south from Qing and Ning, they were not very worried, and they suspected it was likely an exaggeration.

Because to come south from Qingzhou (Qingyang in Gansu) and Ningzhou (Ningxian in Gansu), one had to travel along the Maling River (the Huan River).

And the Maling River differed enormously between its dry season and its flood season. It was not yet the flood season, so boats could not travel it at all.

Without the advantage of boats, it would be very difficult for a large army to come south from Qing and Ning. Besides, the yabing guards and garrison troops of Ningzhou had long since joined them in the uprising, so even if the court's army came, it would first have to fight Ningzhou.

It was only this Hexi Army that was troubling. When they had risen in rebellion, no one had ever imagined that men would come from the west.

Therefore the elite troops had all left and were now assembling in Binzhou, preparing to march on Chang'an. Those left behind to hold their old nest of Weizhou were all old and weak.

At this time, a Military Governor's army generally consisted of two parts. The stoutest were the yabing guards, mostly recruited or brought by the Military Governor himself when he took office.

A small portion were local yabing guards, passed down locally from father to son and son to grandson, waiting specifically to be recruited by a Military Governor.

These men were the better fighters and formed the core military force of the entire Military Governor's headquarters.

The rest were a supplementary force recruited locally. They generally followed the various garrison commanders and were stationed in different places, making them semi-professional soldiers. Among them were also some militia troops with fixed terms of service, all men of the local soil.

If broken down further, they could be divided into three groups.

The yabing guards were a professional army, corresponding to elite mercenaries.

The semi-professional garrison troops were in fact the remnants of the old fubing system and could be regarded as fubing.

The militia troops were locally raised conscripts from the village regiments.

Of course, this held only for ordinary military provinces. Freaks like the Silver Spear Loyalty Army and the Jingyuan yabing guards, who seized prefectural cities, intermarried with one another, and created a kind of military democracy, fell outside this framework.

The men left behind now, Wang Shouye and the others, belonged to the local garrison troops and militia, while the rebel He Chuan was actually made up of yabing guards that the previous Military Governor Zhang Congbin had recruited from various places.

When Zhang Congbin went to Luoyang to take up his post, he had taken part of them with him and left part behind to control the region.

Wang Shouye supported this rebellion — though in many eyes it hardly counted as a rebellion, merely a mutiny — but his family and clansmen were all in Weizhou, so he was not so eager about it.

This was also the survival strategy of such garrison troops. They provided grain and fodder, weapons, and even some of their braver men to join the yabing guards in the uprising, but they never took the lead.

If the yabing guards won and the court could do nothing to them, then the yabing guards ate the meat and they drank the soup.

If the yabing guards lost, they would either surrender quickly or stab them in the back, in exchange for lenient punishment from the court, or even no punishment at all.

Of course, sometimes things went wrong. Sometimes the yabing guards, having taken money, grain, and weapons, still felt it was not enough and would wipe them out entirely.

Those cases of "a mutiny in such-and-such a place, and such-and-such a city was massacred" were generally local powers whose schemes had gone wrong.

Sometimes the court sent troops from other military provinces and the imperial guard, who fought well enough that they did not need the locals' backstabbing to finish off the rebel yabing guards, and the locals could only suffer along with them.

All in all, it was a dangerous business, very hard to control, like dancing on eggs.

Zhang Zhao of course understood this. The moment he saw that Weizhou was largely intact and the surrounding countryside showed no signs of plundering, he knew what was going on.

That was why he sent Cui Huxin forward to demand surrender. If he could seize the old nest of the Zhangyi Army mutineers, he would be in an invincible position, able to advance and attack or retreat and defend.

Wang Shouye sighed. Zhang Zhao had guessed right — nearly all of the Zhangyi Army's yabing guards had run off east, and these few thousand men in Weizhou were all that remained.

And these few thousand were not professional soldiers like the yabing guards at all. They were a few hundred garrison troops who still had some armor, plus more than two thousand militia conscripts levied from the whole city.

Weizhou lay on the western frontier of the Guanzhong region, where every man could fight, so even these few thousand militia could be marched out in decent order.

But they certainly could not fight a hard battle. Given time, these militia would break down mentally, and might well fall into disorder on their own.

If he truly had a few thousand yabing guards, then he would not fear Zhang Zhao — he would have already met the Guiyi Army in battle beneath the city walls.

"Commander Wang, do not heed such words. Who is this so-called Military Governor of Hexi, this Zhang? His origins are still unclear.

Moreover, the court has never controlled Hexi. The Hexi Military Governorship has always been held concurrently by the Military Governor of Lingwu — it is nothing but an empty title. How could an edict have been issued ordering the Hexi Military Governor to put down a rebellion?

If these men are Wenmo rebel slaves from the Liangzhou and Lanzhou region, and we open the gates, would that not be sheep walking into a tiger's mouth?"

"Right! Squad General Sun speaks reason. Besides, Troop Commander He and the others are still out there. If we sell off their families and goods, and they come back victorious, they will never let it rest. Our Weizhou has high walls and thick defenses, and we still have several thousand men. Let us hold firm first and talk later."

Soon the officers on the wall made their decision. Squad General Sun, who had argued most forcefully against surrender, seized the moment to draw his bow and loose an arrow at Cui Huxin below the wall.

Cui Huxin did not so much as flinch. The bow in his hand was a one-dan-three strong bow, which was why he could shoot up to the walltop. The bow in the other man's hand, at a rough glance, had no such power.

Sure enough, the arrow drifted feebly to the ground a dozen or so paces in front of him, without even the force to stick into the earth. But it made the city's stance clear — they would not surrender.

Seeing this, Zhang Zhao in the distance calmly waved a hand. It seemed he would have to hurt these fellows before they understood.

"Set up whirlwind catapults on the spot, cut timber and build siege equipment, order Hanzhen to detach one battalion of light cavalry to screen the surrounding country, and prepare to assault the city."

All chapters have been cached for you. Download the APP to view them.