Chapter 652: The Curtain Falls on Ma Chu

In the second year of Shaoming, 947 CE, on the second day of the twelfth month, Zhang Zhao received Tuoba Heng's counsel and therefore decided not to wait in Langzhou to meet with the various Xi-dong Man peoples west of Huxiang, especially Peng Shichou.

Zhang Zhao was not a petty separatist king like Ma Xifan; he was the Son of Heaven of a great dynasty, and it truly was not fitting at this stage for him to go personally to Langzhou to swear oaths with a few Man chieftains who commanded tens of thousands of tribal people.

Most importantly, of course, Tuoba Heng had made Zhang Zhao realize that this was not the best time to resolve the problems of the southwestern tribes, and the native-official system could not be implemented immediately either; this matter was better left to be slowly resolved after the realm was fully settled.

Before Zhang Zhao departed, good news also arrived from Guo Rong in Langzhou.

Pan Mei had led five hundred elite troops in a surprise night attack through the snow on the Langzhou Man's great mountain stronghold; the Man soldiers were caught completely off guard and were routed by Pan Mei and his five hundred warriors.

Guo Rong seized the opportunity to attack from two sides with Zhao Kuangyin, once more shattering the Man troops at Cili County, beheading over a thousand, seizing more than three thousand plow oxen, and capturing Ma Xi'e's trusted officer Zhu Jinzhong and other military officers who had fled among the Langzhou Man.

The Langzhou Man's losses this time were extremely severe, and the striking power of the court's great army greatly shocked the Man people; many chieftains were frightened out of their wits and no longer dared to support the few who opposed the court.

And so the Man chieftains of more than sixty caves of the Xiang, Tian, Lei, and other clans finally chose to let down their hair, go barefoot, and descend the mountains to surrender to Guo Rong.

Guo Rong accepted the surrender of nearly a hundred thousand men and women, seized countless baggage and supplies, and recovered most of the gold, silver, brocade, armor, swords, and plow oxen that the Man troops had looted from Tanzhou.

As the most sinicized of the Xi-dong Man west of Huxiang, the various Man tribes of Langzhou had in fact been virtually indistinguishable from the Han people of Hunan since the late Tang.

They had long since learned advanced farming techniques from the Han, and many of them were in fact Han people who had fled into the mountains to escape the turmoil.

This situation was actually especially common in Hunan: when the regime on the plains was stable, the Xi-dong Man would come down from the mountains, accept the administration of the government, and become Han.

When the plains were in chaos, Han people would also flee into the Wuling Mountains and become Xi-dong Man.

This practice of the two groups exchanging identities to survive had been going on for at least one or two thousand years.

Cili County was located in the transitional zone between the Wuling Mountains and the Dongting Lake plain; further west lay vast, boundless primeval forest.

The Langzhou Man had now been farming on flat land for seventy or eighty years, and most of them had long since lost the courage to return to a hard life deep in the old mountain forests.

Plow oxen were their very lifeline; among the Langzhou Man, a single bull was more important than the lives of the entire family, being their most essential tool of livelihood and production.

So after Guo Rong captured several thousand plow oxen, if they did not want to go into the mountains and become terrifying upright apes, they could only come down and surrender, seeking lenient treatment from the court.

Zhang Zhao immediately ordered Guo Rong to conduct careful screening, and to severely punish according to law all the Man chieftains, great and small, who had answered Ma Xi'e's call and committed crimes in Tanzhou.

Those who deserved beheading were beheaded, those who deserved exile were exiled, those who deserved hard labor were immediately detained, and not one who deserved a beating was spared.

But in reality, this was a helpless choice, because by this point there was simply no way to screen them one by one; there would certainly be many who slipped through the net, but Zhang Zhao could only do this much — he could not kill them all.

This was also why Zhang Zhao handed the matter to Guo Rong, because this historical Emperor Shizong of Zhou, though an able ruler, was by no means good-tempered — on the contrary, his temper was quite explosive.

Sure enough, at Cili County Guo Rong executed more than a hundred headmen of the various Xi-dong, large and small, sentenced over six hundred Man officers to hard labor, recovered looted goods worth around one hundred fifty thousand strings of cash, and rescued over a thousand abducted women and able-bodied men.

He then also confiscated the gold and silver that the Xi-dong Man chieftain families had accumulated over decades or even centuries, worth more than a hundred thousand strings.

As for the native Man commoners who came down to submit, Guo Rong, following Zhang Zhao's instructions, broke up their original tribal structure and resettled them in scattered groups.

Although leaders would still be promoted from among the Man to govern them, these promoted men were no longer Man chieftains but village elders and ward heads, and their authority would at all times remain under government supervision.

The Langzhou Man had existed since the pre-Han period, and after Lei Man rose in arms and carved out his own domain, they had enjoyed another fifteen or twenty years of prominence; even Ma Yin could only divide them against each other.

Now Zhang Zhao had finally seized the moment when they had committed a grave error and were especially weakened, and brought them under court administration.

In the end, much credit was due to Ma Xi'e; had he not lured these Xi-dong Man out, let them make a great fortune, and made them reluctant to part with their gains and unwilling to flee back into the deep mountains as before, these Langzhou Xi-dong Man, capable of fielding around thirty thousand Man troops, truly would not have been so easily defeated.

Of course, the Langzhou Man Guo Rong had captured so far could only be considered the finest part of them; at least another forty percent of the Langzhou Man had still chosen to flee into the deep mountains.

These people could only be dealt with through a combination of blockade and pacification, for the vast mountains of western Hunan could never be conquered by force alone.

This, however, brought one consequence: Peng Shichou, the father of Peng Shisong, delayed his journey to Langzhou.

No matter how Peng Shisong urged him, Peng Shichou did not dare come to Langzhou, fearing that Zhang Zhao would imprison him.

Zhang Zhao, upon receiving Peng Shisong's letter of apology, did not press the matter, which further confirmed Tuoba Heng's counsel.

To win over the southwestern tribes, conquest by arms and intimidation were the foundation; the native-official system was the flower that bloomed from that foundation.

On the fifth day of the twelfth month, Zhang Zhao ordered the execution of more than sixty rebel officers, including Ma Xichong, Zhu Jinzhong, and Xu Keqiong, by the Xiang River outside Tanzhou.

Executed at the same time were more than seven hundred yabing guards of the Wu'an Army who had sacked Tanzhou, dyeing the Xiang River red with blood.

The people of Tanzhou spread the word to one another; those whose family members had died at these men's hands rushed over with clubs and cleavers.

The enraged people hacked the corpses strewn across the ground into mincemeat, not even bothering with burial, and flung them directly into the Xiang River to feed the fish.

As for Ma Xi'e, he was naturally to be taken back to the eastern capital, Kaifeng Prefecture, for public punishment according to law, to display the might of the great army.

After the killings, Zhang Zhao pretended he was going to enfeoff Ma Xiguang as King of Chu, Chief Clerk of the Tanzhou Grand Governor's Office, Commander-in-Chief of the Various Circuits of Jiangnan, Military Governor of Wu'an, and other posts.

How could Ma Xiguang dare accept? He could only kneel outside the east gate of Tanzhou, weeping and pleading, saying that the Ma Chu mandate was exhausted and that he wished to surrender his territory to the state.

Zhang Zhao immediately took the opportunity to go along with it, abolishing the Ma Chu vassal kingdom, converting the entire Ma Chu territory into Hunan Province, renaming Tanzhou as Changsha Prefecture, Langzhou as Wuling Prefecture, and Guizhou as Guilin Prefecture.

He appointed Ma Xiguang as Chief Minister of Hunan Province; Ma Xiguang declined again, so Zhang Zhao withdrew the appointment and instead enfeoffed Ma Xiguang as Grand Tutor of the Palace Examination, Grand General of the Right Leopard Strategy Guard, and Secretariat Director, with the noble title of Prince of Changsha Commandery.

He granted him marriage to the Princess of Yutan and specially appointed him Commandant of the Consort's Escort, granted him the right to wear princely robes, and allowed him the full princely regalia.

All of Ma Xiguang's posts were purely nominal — especially the Secretariat Director, which looked lofty and powerful, but in fact the Secretariat Director of the Zhang Zhou dynasty was Zhang Zhao himself.

The actual day-to-day management was handled by the Secretariat Vice Director and the subordinate Zhangtai and Luantai directors; the honorary Secretariat Director merely drew a salary.

After enfeoffing Ma Xiguang, Zhang Zhao moved more than three hundred members of the Ma clan — Ma Yin's sons Ma Xizhan, Ma Xineng, Ma Xiguan, and others — to the divine capital Luoyang, while also agreeing to let the Ma sons build a temple outside Luoyang to worship Ma Yin.

Zhang Zhao confiscated all of the Ma family's residences, shops, fields, gold, silver, brocade, and other wealth in Chu territory, obtaining around five hundred seventy thousand strings of cash; he left one hundred thousand strings of it to Ma Xiguang and distributed seventy thousand strings among the various Ma family members.

Ma Xiguang and the others were overwhelmed with gratitude, and under the escort and watch of five hundred cavalry and infantry of the Left Leopard Strategy Guard, they bade farewell to Changsha and the Ma ancestral altars, and set off northward.

On the eighth day of the twelfth month, Zhang Zhao formally appointed Guo Wei as Chief Minister of Hunan Province and Defense Commissioner of Hunan Province.

He also had Guo Wei carry out land equalization in Hunan, establish the Changsha Garrison of the imperial guard, and set up garrison armies in Changsha, Wuling, Yueyang, Hengyang, and other places.

Subsequently, Guo Wei, citing the devastation of Changsha, petitioned to move the provincial seat to Wuling Prefecture (Langzhou); Zhang Zhao immediately approved and appointed Guo Wei as Governor of Wuling Prefecture.

Changsha now had only ten thousand residents, and the city was a field of rubble; it truly could no longer serve as a provincial capital. Moreover, only by moving to Wuling (Changde) could the newly subdued Langzhou Man be better kept in check.

Zhang Zhao then left He Zhongju in Changsha as Surveillance Commissioner of Hunan Province and Governor of Changsha Prefecture, overseeing the recovery of Changsha.

At the same time, Zhang Zhao ordered Zhang Zhaojun (Ma Shacai) to lead six thousand infantry and cavalry south to Guilin Prefecture.

He appointed Zhang Zhaojun as General Who Pacifies the South with Imperial Credentials, Commander of Military Affairs for the prefectures and counties south of Guilin Prefecture, and concurrently Governor of Guilin Prefecture and Military Supervisor of Guilin Prefecture.

After Zhang Zhaojun arrived at Guilin Prefecture, he reorganized the local Ma Chu Jingbian Army yabing guards, obtaining over three thousand elite troops; through land equalization he raised nearly ten thousand garrison troops; together with the six thousand personal and imperial troops he had brought, his forces reached twenty thousand — enough to keep Southern Han from daring to cast covetous eyes.

Thereafter, following Zhang Zhao's instructions, Zhang Zhaojun repaired the Ling Canal between the Li River and the Xiang River, trained the Li River navy, gathered hydrological data on the Li River, built warships and grain transports of various sizes, and began preliminary preparations for the destruction of Southern Han.

On the tenth day of the twelfth month, Zhang Zhao arrived once more at Yueyang Prefecture and personally presided over the wedding of his adopted son Zhao Yanjin and Ma Xiguang's youngest daughter.

At the same time he appointed Zhao Yanjin as Troop Supervisor of the Yueyang Prefecture military, handing over all of Yueyang's naval and land forces to Zhao Yanjin.

At this time, Lu Yin, who had been sent as an envoy to the Southern Tang, returned. Li Jing had been so thoroughly frightened by Zhang Zhao's combined hard and soft tactics that he had completely lost his nerve, terrified that Zhang Zhao would hold him accountable for sheltering Gao Baoxu and for attempting to recruit Wang Yun, the former Prefect of Yuezhou under Ma Chu.

Yuan Heng (Tuoba Heng), who had already reverted to his original Yuan surname, and Liao Kuangtu, the newly appointed Prefect of Yueyang, immediately suggested that Zhang Zhao seize the momentum and launch a surprise attack on the Southern Tang's Ezhou. Once Ezhou fell, the entire Southern Tang would completely lose its advantage on the Yangtze.

But Zhang Zhao did not want to do this for the time being, because the Southern Tang was merely fat meat at his lips — there was no need to go about it this way. What mattered now was still dealing with Meng Shu.

For according to news coming out of Shu, Meng Chang had not been as extravagantly wasteful and idle as he was in history. On the contrary, he was still desperately accumulating strength, and seemed to have some ideas of his own.

Zhang Zhao's original view of Meng Shu, and especially of Meng Chang, had in fact been misled by the historical outcome.

Historically, Meng Chang would indulge in wine and pleasure. Apart from his own character flaws, there were two enormous reasons for this.

First, Meng Shu's advance into Guanzhong had suffered successive blows from the Later Han and the Later Zhou. Its elite troops and fierce generals — especially Sun Hanshao, Zhang Qianzhao, and others — had essentially made their final exit, and all hope was already gone.

But now, Meng Shu's strength had not suffered any great loss. On the contrary, it seemed to be flourishing day by day, and Meng Chang still harbored some expectations in his heart.

To put it precisely, the future of the Shu kingdom had not yet reached the point where Meng Chang was completely in despair.

Second, worthy ministers like Zhao Jiliang, who could have guided Meng Chang, had only just passed away, and Lady Huarui had only just been obtained by Meng Chang and brought into the palace. This Great King Meng had not yet had time to reveal his true nature.

And now, of all the kingdoms under heaven, the Khitan were basically destroyed, Nanping and Ma Chu were already settled, Li Jing of the Southern Tang was scared out of his wits, Qian Yue and the Southern Han were not worth fearing, and only Meng Shu still had some strength. Zhang Zhao naturally had to strike him first.

Even so, Yuan Heng still offered his counsel, saying: "The Southern Tang kingdom was able to stand upon three great pillars. The first is the natural moat of the Yangtze, the second is the sharpness of its navy, and the third is its brave generals and loyal ministers.

Of these three great pillars, the Yangtze moat and the sharp navy are about to be lost. Among the loyal ministers, Chen Qiao, courtesy name Ziqiao, of Jizhou, and Lu Jiang, courtesy name Jinqing, of Hongzhou, though they possess the talents of kingly counselors, the Southern Tang ruler is unable to employ them.

Therefore only the brave generals remain — Liu Renzhan of Shouzhou, He Jingzhu of Ezhou, and the like — commanding great armies and holding the natural defenses. They are the gravest hidden threat to the court.

Even if we do not take Ezhou, we cannot allow He Jingzhu to remain in his post there."

"Do you have some good plan to drive He Jingzhu away?" The time was not yet ripe for attacking Ezhou, but getting rid of He Jingzhu was worth considering.

Yuan Heng immediately said to Zhang Zhao: "Since Gao Baoxu and the others are now in Ezhou, Your Majesty can send an envoy there to demand that they be handed over.

Did the Southern Tang ruler not say that he never ordered Gao Baoxu to be received, and shift the blame onto He Jingzhu's head? Then we can use precisely this pretext to call He Jingzhu to account.

Moreover, since the Southern Tang ruler has received investiture from the Sage and is a vassal of the Great Zhou, He Jingzhu, as Military Governor of the Wuchang Army in Ezhou, is likewise a vassal of the Sage.

So when we demand that He Jingzhu hand over Gao Baoxu and the others, we should also require him to come out of the city and explain the situation to the imperial envoy. The moment he leaves the city, we seize him at once, then send him to the court for an official post."

Zhang Zhao rubbed his chin. "He Jingzhu has been operating in Ezhou for many years. The Southern Tang's Wuchang Army still has twenty thousand troops, and its navy at least ten thousand or more. For us to seize their Military Governor right there in Ezhou — is that not somewhat too risky?"

Zhao Yanjin, who had just taken off his bridegroom's wedding robes, immediately walked over, pointed at the map, and said to Zhang Zhao: "My lord, east of Ezhou there is a town called Hanchuan. We can have the imperial envoy stop at Hanchuan and order He Jingzhu to come there.

If we seize him at that place, the Wuchang Army in Ezhou will not be able to come to his rescue in time. Your son will then lead the Yueyang navy to provide support — this will be entirely foolproof."

It seemed that this He Jingzhu must indeed have some ability, because whether it was the local Zhang Shaodi or his own adopted son Zhao Yanjin, both regarded him with considerable wariness.

Thinking of this, Zhang Zhao simply hardened his heart. "In that case, We shall first order Du Lun Chixin to lead the Jiangling navy and set out for Yueyang Prefecture as well. If the capture fails, we must also guard against a Southern Tang naval attack."

Then Zhang Zhao turned with a chuckle and asked those behind him: "For this mission to deliver the edict, We need a bold yet meticulous man as envoy. Which of you, good sirs, is willing to go?"

Wang Jiu laughed heartily from a distance. "Sage, this is a duty I will not yield to anyone. The last time I cursed out the Southern Tang ruler, it still wasn't satisfying enough. This time I'll use He Jingzhu to make up for it."

Very well! Zhang Zhao also felt that this sort of task was something only someone like Wang Jiu could pull off, and immediately poured a bowl of wine for Wang Jiu with his own hands.

"If you capture He Jingzhu and bring him back to court this time, your title of nobility will be settled."

(End of Chapter)

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