Chapter 372: Jackals Everywhere

At the White Salt Pool, Qiongre Duojin had taken the city, and Zhang Zhao immediately assigned Yin Yaozi to hold it with two thousand cavalry while he himself rode without pause to the White Salt Pool, more than fifty li north of Yanzhou city.

"Great King, so much salt! The salt from Minqin County in Liangzhou is nothing compared to this.

If we hold this salt pool, Hexi and Longyou will never lack salt again, and the Military Governor's office can collect a large new salt tax every year."

Chen Nianban, who had not gone on the last campaign, had come along this time. Gazing at the boundless salt pool and the gleaming white refined salt before him, he could no longer stay calm.

No one yet knew the White Salt Pool's total output, but the tens of thousands of jin of salt seized right now already exceeded a full year's production from Minqin County's white salt pool.

Of course, Hexi and Longyou did not actually lack salt. Past Shanzhou lay the Western Sea (Qinghai Lake), where there was as much salt as anyone could want.

However, the tribes near the Western Sea had not yet submitted, and there were no salt-drying pools or other facilities at all. Without large-scale investment, there was simply no way to get output immediately.

Add the rugged roads and the cold weather, which shortened the salt-drying season, and it still could not compare with the White Salt Pool.

Zhang Zhao was also very pleased, though his pleasure was not only that the White Salt Pool's salt would bring Hexi and Longyou another stream of revenue.

It was that he was now certain he would not have to attack Xiazhou. That was Tongwan City — just thinking about it was terrifying.

With the White Salt Pool producing this much salt, it had to be worth at least thirty percent of the Dingnan Army's annual income. If Zhang Zhao simply occupied the White Salt Pool and refused to leave, he did not fear Li Yiyin failing to bring the Dingnan Army out to fight him to the death.

"Send out the light cavalry of every unit. Drive off all the Tangut tribes in the vicinity. Do not let them go east — drive them all north toward Lingzhou and Youzhou.

Hucile will lead the Uyghur sworn-follower left camp twenty li north to guard against Tangut forces coming south from Youzhou. All other units will rest and refit in place."

Just as Zhang Zhao was deploying his forces, Tangut men were also steadily gathering in Xiazhou city.

The great clans — Luoli, Yeli, Wuyi, Yueyi, Xueshan, Miewei, Nanshan, and others — all began sending troops, and secret envoys had already ridden out at speed to summon the Xifeng clan back from their attack on Qingzhou.

In Xiazhou city, Li Yiyin slaughtered cattle and sheep and lavishly scattered coin to reward the various tribes, promising them the Guiyi Army's weapons, armor, and tall warhorses.

He further falsely claimed that the Central Plains court had ordered the Dingnan Army to march against the Guiyi Army, and that fifty thousand court troops would soon advance north from Bin-Ning to join him in striking Zhang Zhao.

Thus in a short time Li Yiyin had assembled more than twenty thousand cavalry, and with the Pingxia tribe's own several thousand men, nearly thirty thousand troops had now gathered.

But Li Yiyin was not as anxious as Zhang Zhao imagined. He knew that anxiety was useless.

For the title "Dingnan Army Military Governor" sounded like a single unified body, but in reality that was only an illusion. The Dingnan Army was still a Tangut tribal confederation led by the Li family of the Pingxia tribe.

Although it was more cohesive than the loose sand of the original six Wenmo tribes, and the Pingxia tribe's prestige among the Tangut tribes was far greater, it still could not compare with the Guiyi Army.

Li Yiyin did not have the ability to summon the various tribes' troops and immediately order them into battle.

He first had to feast them well, and only after the granting of offices and promises had been sorted out would these levied troops have any fighting spirit.

Great King Zhang was measuring the current Dingnan Army by the mobilization standards of the later Western Xia, but he did not realize that the Dingnan Army of this time was far more pathetic than he thought.

More than twenty thousand Guiyi Army troops occupied the White Salt Pool. They waited until the flowers had withered, and the Dingnan Army's main force was still assembling in Tongwan City in Xiazhou.

Of course, while the Guiyi Army sought to learn the Dingnan Army's movements, and the Dingnan Army sought to learn the Guiyi Army's true intentions, the two sides' roving-scout cavalry fought fiercely across the somewhat rugged ravines and plains between Yanzhou and Xiazhou.

At the same time, neither Zhang Zhao nor Li Yiyin forgot to send accusations against the other to the court.

Zhang Zhao, together with Zhang Xichong, submitted a memorial to Shi Jingtang, saying that Li Yiyin had encroached on court territory, that Pingxia Tangut cavalry had plundered the people of Yanzhou and seized raw salt from Huama Pool, White Salt Pool, and Green Salt Pool, and that he, at Zhang Xichong's invitation, had sent troops to drive out the Tangut bandit cavalry.

Li Yiyin likewise swiftly dispatched three waves of urgent messengers, accusing Zhang Zhao of crossing the border and arbitrarily killing the Defense Commissioner of Yanzhou, harassing Tangut herders, and harboring designs to swallow Lingzhou and Yanzhou — his disloyal intent plain for all to see.

He too had received a secret letter from Lingwu Military Governor Zhang Xichong, and was willing to raise troops to drive out the Guiyi Army and restore peace to the people of Yanzhou.

But when the secret envoys of both sides reached the Eastern Capital at Kaifeng Prefecture, they were immediately dumbfounded. Shi Jingtang had already personally led his army north to Yedu to confront An Zhongrong.

The regent left behind, Shi Chonggui, Prince of Zheng, was so worried by the rebellion of An Congjin, Military Governor of Shannan East Circuit, that he had lost all appetite for food and drink, and was busy scattering official posts left and right using the blank commissions Shi Jingtang had left behind.

In particular, An Shenhui, Military Governor of Weisheng Army in Dengzhou, who held the key position blocking An Congjin's northward advance, had already been promoted to the office of Acting Grand Tutor.

No one was paying any attention at all to the affairs of the Guiyi Army and the Dingnan Army!

In Yecheng, Shi Jingtang was now also at his wits' end, because outside Yecheng the land was occupied by countless starving refugees, who wailed day and night outside the walls, begging Shi Jingtang, the Son of Heaven, to let them into Yecheng to save their lives.

It turned out that Zhenzhou, where An Zhongrong was garrisoned — the area around later Zhengding — had suffered a massive locust plague that year.

So even though it was now the autumn harvest season, many farming households in Zhenzhou had reaped not a single grain and could only become disaster refugees.

To spite Shi Jingtang, An Zhongrong had used his troops to drive the refugees southward, sending them to Shi Jingtang to demand food.

An Zhongrong's calculation was this: if Shi Jingtang ignored the starving people, then he could be called heartless, unwilling even to care for his own subjects.

But if Shi Jingtang did take them in, then since he had brought more than sixty thousand imperial guards north and his military grain was already not ample, taking in the refugees would likely make it impossible for him to remain in Yedu.

At the very least he would have to withdraw to Xiangzhou, or even Weizhou and Huazhou, where the locusts had not struck and grain was plentiful — and then An Zhongrong would have his chance to pursue and strike.

Pitifully, the road from Zhenzhou (Zhengding) to Yedu (south of Handan) was a full three hundred li. More than forty thousand starving refugees had no food to begin with, and all the way south they ate grass roots and tree bark.

By the time they reached Yedu, several thousand had already starved to death. Worse still, Shi Jingtang simply would not open the gates.

With Shi Jingtang's intelligence, how could he fail to see through An Zhongrong's scheme?

The Child Emperor was shameless beyond measure and no ruler who loved his people, but he was the Son of Heaven after all, and Shi Jingtang could not very well just drive the refugees away. After racking his brains for several days, he finally came up with a "fine" idea.

These refugees had come from Zhenzhou and were mostly gathered near Yedu's north gate, and An Zhongrong's army was right behind them.

After Shi Jingtang learned that An Zhongrong's force numbered only a little over twenty thousand, he immediately issued stern orders for Du Chongwei to march north and force a decisive battle with An Zhongrong.

But the north gate of Yedu was completely blocked by refugees. The fastest way out of the city was through the north gate; the other gates required a detour of several li. Seizing the chance, Shi Jingtang feigned fury and kept pressing Du Chongwei to march north.

This Du Chongwei was a man counted as worthless even among the Five Dynasties. The common people called him "Lord Plague" and regarded him as a pestilence.

With a man like this, once Shi Jingtang's prodding set his temper ablaze, why would he care about refugees or not?

He led more than forty thousand Huguo, Husheng, and other imperial guard troops out the north gate and fell upon the starving refugees outside the city, who were too weak even to walk, slaughtering them indiscriminately.

Men were cut down on the spot and thrown into the moat. Women with any looks at all were all carried off. The old, the weak, and the young were simply ridden down by horses.

For a time, screams rose unceasingly outside Yedu, with cries to heaven and earth and shouts of injustice shaking the sky. Du Chongwei had not killed a single man of An Zhongrong's, but first slaughtered several thousand refugees.

More than sixty li away, An Zhongrong learned from his scouts that Du Chongwei had killed several thousand refugees, and was himself shocked by Du Chongwei's brutality.

But he did not dwell on it. He figured that since Du Chongwei had already marched north, his strategy of driving refugees forward as a vanguard was no longer working, so he had better hurry south and force a decisive battle.

What An Zhongrong did not consider — or simply ignored — was that the soldiers of his Chengde Army were mostly men of Zhenzhou!

Although the soldiers' closest kin had not necessarily been driven south as refugees, many were neighbors and distant relatives.

When they heard that several thousand refugees had been slaughtered by Du Chongwei outside Yedu's north gate, they did not, as An Zhongrong expected, burn to avenge themselves on Du Chongwei. Instead, they hated An Zhongrong all the more for forcibly driving the refugees south.

That night, Du Ying, secretary of An Zhongrong's Military Governor headquarters, was washing his eyes with clear water again and again.

Because he was afraid others would see that he had been crying — among the famine refugees An Zhongrong had driven south were his maternal grandfather's entire family.

As a pitiful scholar, he naturally had no ability to protect all his family after the great locust plague that struck the whole of Zhenzhou.

A secretary is not the Secretary; the Secretary is the Military Governor's trusted confidant, while a secretary is merely a clerk who handles documents.

This An Zhongrong came from a military family of Daibei, so of course he valued brave and fierce soldiers, but he was not so respectful toward the local scholars of Zhenzhou — he would curse and beat them at will, and if angered, cut one down with a single stroke. Such things had happened.

In fact, never mind a petty clerk like him — when An Zhongrong raised his troops, Jia Zhang, Commander of the Right Army Horse and Foot of the military province, held that for one province to contend against the whole realm was utterly unwise, and urged An Zhongrong to stop.

In the end, An Zhongrong judged him guilty of disturbing the army's morale and immediately ordered his yabing guards to hammer Jia Zhang to death before everyone's eyes.

If even an army Commander could be killed on a whim, how would a clerk like Du Ying dare go plead with An Zhongrong over his family's affairs?

But though Du Ying did not dare seek out An Zhongrong, he did dare seek out another man — Zhao Yanzhi, Troop Commander of the Military Governor's Retinue of the Chengde Army.

Troop Commander of the Military Governor's Retinue was the second man in the Chengde Army after An Zhongrong. Zhao Yanzhi was a local man of the Chengde Army — that is, a man of Zhenzhou.

An Zhongrong was merely an outside Military Governor who had come to take office with his yabing guards, and in many matters he still had to rely on the local power-holders, so Zhao Yanzhi controlled eight thousand of the Chengde Army's twenty thousand men and counted as a strongman of the local faction.

After Du Ying washed his eyes, he did not go straight to Zhao Yanzhi, but instead went to the military camp.

This Du Ying had read a fair number of books and knew the power of prophetic sayings. He ran all over the camp spreading the talk that Hedong bore the aura of a Son of Heaven.

Du Ying said to the officers and soldiers, "In this world, fortune has its fixed measure. Hedong bears the aura of a Son of Heaven, and that is why two dynasties' rulers have both risen from Hedong.

Zhenzhou is narrow and remote — how can it compare with Hedong? Nor has it ever had a kingly aura. The present Son of Heaven rose from Hedong and possesses great fortune. We are certain to be defeated!"

The soldiers and officers of Zhenzhou had originally still been willing to stake everything with An Zhongrong — after all, this was the Five Dynasties, and what did soldiers hope for but trouble? Without trouble, where would the benefits come from?

If by chance they succeeded, and Military Governor An entered the Eastern Capital and became Son of Heaven, would they not all become eminent, just like the men of Hedong?

But An Zhongrong's driving of Zhenzhou's famine refugees south, and then allowing them to be slaughtered by Du Chongwei, had truly wounded the hearts of Zhenzhou's soldiers and officers.

With Du Ying's instigation added on top of that, the men below all came to think this rebellion had no prospects, and the army's morale began to waver.

——————A word outside the story——————

In the last chapter a reader said my Tang-dynasty iron production figures were problematic. I've looked at several viewpoints, but privately I feel that for the era the Great Tang was in, an annual output of nearly twenty thousand tons of iron is a bit exaggerated. Of course, it may be that I underestimate the ancients. Anyway, figures like these all seem to have some reasoning behind them — everyone should just go with their own understanding.

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