Chapter 540: The Five Capitals System and the Department of State Affairs

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The twenty-second day of the first month, the first year of Shaoming of the Great Zhou, 946 CE.

The state of Zhou, which held only the five military governorships of Hezhong, Shanzhou, Luoyang, Kaifeng, Dengzhou, and Shannan West Circuit in the Central Plains, had at last completed the final piece of its political puzzle.

Zhang Zhao announced that the Great Zhou would adopt the Five Capitals system: Luoyang as the Divine Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture as the Eastern Capital, Chang'an as Jingzhao Prefecture, Liangzhou renamed the Western Capital and called the Western Capital Chengtian Prefecture, and Taiyuan renamed the Northern Capital and called the Northern Capital Fengtian Prefecture.

The Emperor would reside for the time being in the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, while Cao Yanming, Duke of Ziting Commandery, was appointed Commissioner for the Construction of the Divine Capital, charged with building the Divine Capital of Luoyang and dredging the Bian Canal, the Yang Canal, and the Yinluo River.

On the foundations of the original Great Tang imperial palace at Luoyang, the Ziwei Palace and Daming Palace were to be built, and Jinyong Fortress was renamed the Wuliang Palace.

To commemorate his homeland, Mount Beimang was renamed Gold Mountain, and the Gold Mountain Palace was to be built on its southern slope; once construction was complete, the capital would be moved there.

Zhang Huaiqing, Duke of Nanyang Commandery, was appointed Defender of the Western Capital, and Pei Yuan, Duke of Hedong Commandery, was appointed Deputy Defender of the Western Capital and concurrently Governor of Chengtian Prefecture.

Cao Yuanzhong, Duke of Qiao, was appointed Defender of Chang'an and concurrently Governor of Jingzhao Prefecture, and Yan Jin, Duke of Jin, was appointed Defender of the Northern Capital and concurrently Governor of Fengtian Prefecture.

An explicit edict was also issued ordering Liu Zhiyuan to obey the court's command and lead his Hedong civil and military officials in transferring his garrison to Yedu as Defender of Yedu.

In the inner palace, Zhang Zhao promoted Cao Yannai, Lady of Shouchang Commandery, and Li Ruoliu, Lady of Shanshan Commandery, to the rank of Noble Consort.

Cao Yanmian became Worthy Consort, Guo Wan'er became Pure Consort, Ayiguli became Solemn Consort, and Li Cunhui's aunt Li Yunxiu became Gracious Consort.

The Persian princess Sefiyeh became Healthy Consort, and her younger sister Pantaiya became Beautiful Concubine. Hua Jianxiu became Virtuous Concubine.

However, the Great Tang inner palace's Six Bureaus and Twenty-Four Offices were far too cumbersome, so Zhang Zhao cut them down to Six Bureaus and Twelve Offices — and even those twelve offices were largely understaffed, little more than a formality.

At the same time, in politics, Zhang Zhao made certain modifications to the system of government.

At this time, the central organs operated on a parallel model of the Secretariat and the Bureau of Military Affairs: the Secretariat leaned toward civil administration, the Bureau of Military Affairs handled military matters, and the Chancellery under the Secretariat and the Commissioner of Military Affairs under the Bureau served as Chief Ministers.

Zhang Zhao, under the banner of restoring the great dynasty, brought back the Department of State Affairs, which had lost real power in the mid-Tang, and took over part of the duties of the Secretariat and the Bureau of Military Affairs.

The concrete method was to elevate the authority of the Six Ministries — in particular, using the Ministry of War to take away from the Bureau of Military Affairs its three functions: military registers, horse administration, and armor and weapon stores.

In effect, from now on the Bureau of Military Affairs would be responsible only for deployment, training, border defense, and operations, while personnel and logistics were returned to the Ministry of War.

This was Zhang Zhao's early preparation for reducing the powers of the military governors, until finally turning the post into that of a Regional Commander.

For the Later Tang's Bureau of Military Affairs was in fact the decision-making body of the military governor's headquarters from the days when Li Cunxu was still a provincial governor.

The Commissioner of Military Affairs was the military governor's Secretary — itself a product of the transformation of a military province into the central government.

Or, to put it more broadly, the Bureau of Military Affairs was not only such an institution in the Later Tang; even in the late Tang, it was a product of the weakening of the Tang central court into military governorships.

Therefore, to eliminate the martial ethos that had prevailed since the late Tang, the first thing to do was to remove, from the highest level of the political ecosystem, the concrete embodiment of warriors wielding sole power.

But Zhang Zhao's changes stopped there. He did not immediately alter the situation in which military governors garrisoned the various regions.

Because taking back the powers of the various military provinces was not something that could be accomplished overnight.

Especially with the realm not yet settled and a lack of sufficiently high-quality officials, it was better to proceed slowly than hastily.

The most urgent task now was to strengthen the central imperial guard armies.

Accordingly, Zhang Zhao expanded the Left and Right Yulin Guard to a strength of six thousand men.

He also recruited the brave men who had recently come to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, to seek refuge, and formed them into the Left and Right Jinwu Guard, likewise six thousand strong.

Next, Zhang Zhao selected six thousand men from the garrisons of the former Yong state and the Guanzhong volunteer troops to form the Left and Right Longxiang Guard.

These six guards, together with the Hanshan Unit of one thousand men, the roughly one-thousand-strong Shenji Battalion and Silver Spear Unit, and the variable-strength Brocade Guard personal troops, made up the Emperor's personal army: seven guards, two units, and one battalion, totaling twenty-one thousand men.

How shabby! With the wealth of Hexi, Longyou, Anxi, and other regions unable to be quickly transported to the Central Plains, Zhang Zhao could afford to maintain only these twenty thousand personal troops, apart from the garrison troops stationed in the various regions.

But these twenty thousand men received excellent treatment and were also the best equipped: half wore cloth-faced iron armor, there were over a hundred camel-mounted whirlwind catapults, and fifteen hundred divine-arm crossbows. They could truly be called the elite of the elite.

At the same time, the nine garrisons of the Yong army that had come from Hexi — Hanhai, Yingyang, Yucheng, Wuwei, Xiongwu, Datong, Lingwu, Dingyuan, and Feng'an — were all promoted to imperial guard status.

At this time, most of the fields around the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, lay abandoned, and in the lands south of the Yellow River there were large numbers of women who had lost their husbands.

Zhang Zhao therefore granted them land and arranged marriages in the area from the Eastern Capital to Luoyang, so that their descendants for generations would serve as imperial guards protecting the capital region.

In form it somewhat resembled the guard-battalion system of the early Ming, and should be able to maintain its fighting strength for several decades.

At the same time, the Hexi sworn-follower cavalry and militia archers who had come along, plus the Guanzhong volunteer troops, were, according to the custom of the time, to be distributed to the various regions and become the yabing guards of the regional military governors.

As for the former Later Jin troops still remaining around the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, there were about fourteen thousand of them. Zhang Zhao thought it over and decided he could not abandon them.

After all, these men had rendered meritorious service in the two battles against the Khitan; bending the knee and surrendering had not been their own intent, and they had also performed the great deed of turning their weapons around outside Yanshi.

So after arranging matters for his own army, Zhang Zhao selected six thousand men from these former Later Jin troops and formed the Left and Right Shenwu Army, which belonged to the imperial guards.

The rest — those too old and those with wounds — were given pensions and allowed to retire. The remaining five thousand or so were left by Zhang Zhao for Later Jin surrender generals such as Fu Yanqing.

Only after all this was done was the overall framework of the Zhang Zhou state considered complete.

But by this time, the unease of the Later Jin surrender generals — An Shenqi, Fu Yanqing, Gao Xingzhou, and others — had reached its peak.

Zhang Zhao learned from reports by his Brocade Guard spies that An Shenqi had already prepared a coffin at home.

Zhang Zhao merely chuckled. The days of breaking the hawk were about to end. He wanted these men to understand that he, Zhang Zhao, could do perfectly well without them — and that the Zhang Zhou dynasty could do without them too.

On the twenty-fifth day of the first month, Zhang Zhao proceeded in state to the residence of Wang Zhou, the former Military Governor of Yiwu Army of Dingzhou under the Later Jin, accompanied by Murong Xinzhang, Hu Guang, and Huangfu Chong, nephew of Huangfu Yu.

Just as the carriage set off, Zhang Zhao asked Hu Guang with a smile, "I hear your elder brother Hu Wei divorced his wife and married the cousin of Li Jing, and the dowry alone came to ten thousand strings of cash. Envious?"

"If you hadn't come back, that treatment would certainly have been yours."

Hu Wei's ability was far inferior to Hu Guang's. If Hu Guang had still been at Hu Cile's side, Hu Wei would certainly never have had his day.

But what Zhang Zhao meant as teasing, Hu Guang took seriously. He looked solemnly at Zhang Zhao and said with a cupped-hand salute:

"My elder brother avoided battle at Suyab to preserve his strength — that is disloyalty. For the sake of wealth and rank he divorced the wife of his youth — that is faithlessness. Such a disloyal and faithless man, I could never envy."

But after saying this, Hu Guang paused, then chuckled.

"When the Great Zhou's heavenly troops arrive before the walls of Jiangning, Your Majesty will simply banish him three thousand li, sending him back to Yuechang to eat sand. How could I envy a man who is about to eat sand?"

Hu Guang's words were artful. If a wretch like his elder brother Hu Wei — who had nearly betrayed Zhang Zhao at the critical moment in Suyab and had shamelessly urged their father Hu Cile to betray Zhang Zhao — was only to be sent to Yuechang (Qiemo) to eat sand, then Hu Cile himself could naturally escape death.

"You!" Zhang Zhao glared at Hu Guang, speechless.

"If you could apply that clever mind of yours to mastering the art of war and leading troops in battle, even the Duke of Qinghai Commandery might not surpass you."

"Rest assured, your father and I have known each other for many years, and he has not wronged me in any great measure. In the future he can live out his old age in the Divine Capital, Luoyang — it will just be a somewhat harder life."

Hu Guang, hearing this, slid straight down from his horse and prostrated himself, knocking his head on the ground.

"Your subject Hu Guang kowtows in thanks for Your Majesty's mercy in sparing my life. It is only that my father is old and long accustomed to comfort, so I beg that some of his assets be preserved for him."

Hu Guang knew that Zhang Zhao's words meant nothing more than that life would be a little harder — and what that signified.

From the perspective of the realm at large, Hu Cile had not truly betrayed Zhang Zhao to any great degree.

Because Hu Cile's posting to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng, had itself been part of the deal between Zhang Zhao and Shi Jingtang at the time.

It was by sending Hu Cile and several hundred great Liangzhou horses that Zhang Zhao had secured the trade route from Hexi to the Central Plains, and had moreover won back Murong Xinzhang.

One could say that from the moment Hu Cile went to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng, he was a subject of Jin rather than a subject of Zhou.

So when he later fled back to Xuzhou, refused to pay homage to Yelu Deguang, and finally went over to the Southern Tang — how to put it — far from being disloyal, he showed a certain integrity.

But Hu Guang knew that when he and his father had gone to the Eastern Capital, Kaifeng, they had gone with the mindset of planting a nail for Zhang Zhao in the Central Plains, and the two of them had sworn to remain loyal to Zhang Zhao, who was then still King of Liang.

And in all those years in the Eastern Capital, Zhang Zhao had never once failed to send their pay, and had even given them more than they had received in Liangzhou.

Over the years, the three men of the Hu family and the seven hundred great Liangzhou horses had cost Zhang Zhao more than fifty thousand strings of cash in total.

Zhang Zhao's talk of making Hu Cile live a hard life was, on the surface, about recovering this money; beneath it, he was still somewhat displeased, and genuinely wanted Hu Guang to suffer a little.

Zhang Zhao was silent for a long moment, then looked seriously at Hu Guang on the ground.

"You truly wish to plead this for your father? I think it was those years in the Eastern Capital, spending lavishly, that corrupted his will. Otherwise it would never have come to this. A little hardship won't kill anyone."

Hu Guang raised his head, tears streaming down his face. "How can a son watch his father suffer in old age while he himself holds high office and rich pay? My father is guilty, but I beg Your Majesty, for my sake, to show leniency."

As he spoke, Hu Guang removed the headscarf from his head, and the depression in his skull — struck by a Khitan cavalry lance at the battle of Baituanwei Village in Yangcheng — was laid bare before Zhang Zhao.

Zhang Zhao sighed up at the sky. "If that is how it must be, then the son must bear the father's punishment. Otherwise the law of the land will not permit it. I shall strip you of your hereditary earldom, in exchange for your father's peaceful old age."

A look of joy instantly appeared on Hu Guang's face, and he knocked his head on the ground again and again.

"Your subject kowtows in thanks for Your Majesty's heavenly grace! Kowtows in thanks for Your Majesty's mercy!"

"Since ancient times, loyal ministers come from filial sons! Rise! There will be plenty of chances in the days ahead to win merit and build a career."

Zhang Zhao could not say exactly what he felt — joy, most likely, made up the greater part. As he had said, people of good character were, for the most part, reliable.

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