Chapter 883: Zhang Erlang, Thirty Years Later

Two months later, all the able-bodied men of the Xinyang Patrol Office in Qian County had been assembled, and they had even gone to the Qian County seat for a month of formal military training.

Among the Five Tigers of the Wei family, the second brother was steady, cautious, and possessed the strength of ten thousand jun; he could charge in three layers of armor for two full quarter-hours without losing breath, a top-grade beast of burden, so he was immediately appointed squad leader.

This office, in the Central Plains, was utterly unremarkable — it commanded only fifty men, and calling him a military officer was almost flattering.

But in the outer fiefs it was different: a squad leader of the Han elite troops, when the time came for enfeoffment, would either become an officer in the Great King's personal guard or be enfeoffed as a vassal.

And any man made a vassal was generally made a baron outright, the kind who governed one or two thousand households.

The remaining Wei family fourth and fifth brothers, skilled in bow and horse, were at once selected for the Great King of Anguo's direct elite cavalry — their futures were boundless as well.

As for the somewhat younger sixth and eighth brothers, they too were exceptionally certified as full able-bodied men; in a few more years, they would be fierce warriors on the battlefield.

This time, more than seventy men were taken from the entire Xinyang Patrol Office. This was because although Zhang Zhou had set his capital at Luoyang, with his political center in the directly administered region (Henan), the territory closest to his heart, most obedient to the imperial house, and most trusted by the imperial house was still Guanzhong and the He-Long region.

At the same time, the stout young men of these three regions were provinces famed alongside Hebei, Hedong, and Ningxia for abundant martial virtue — and even surpassed them.

At the gate of the Wei family home, the Five Tigers of the Wei family were bidding farewell to their parents.

From Guanzhong to Hezhong, the straight-line distance was around 8,500 li, and the actual distance was certainly under 10,000 li. Once they left, it would be very hard to return home.

The five men first kowtowed to their parents, thanking them for the grace of raising them, then with full ceremony kowtowed to the eldest and third Wei brothers who remained at home; the trivial daily work of caring for their parents in the future could only be left to them.

Of course, so long as the Five Tigers were not all killed in battle, they would still send large sums of money back from Hezhong.

Amid the weeping of her parents-in-law, Sister-in-Law Wei could not help but cry until she was a mess of tears.

Although these five younger brothers did not engage in productive labor, they were not entirely a burden, because their martial strength was a passport to power throughout the countryside.

The year before last, on her way to watch the village opera, Sister-in-Law Wei had been stopped by several lechers and even groped twice. Just as things were turning dire, she let out a scream, and the Five Tigers of the Wei family came flying over, beating the lechers until their bones snapped and sinews broke. Their arrogance vanished in an instant, and they could only crawl along the ground, crawling out of Sister-in-Law Wei's line of sight.

Even when her own parents and brothers were bullied, Sister-in-Law Wei could bring the Five Tigers back to her maiden home and beat the people who had bullied her father and mother until they vomited blood and begged for mercy on their knees.

That was how country folk solved problems — plain and unadorned.

Through her blur of tears, Sister-in-Law Wei could not help thinking: the barbarians of the Hezhong region were in for a blessing! Who knew how many disobedient bandit Hu would be beaten by her five younger brothers until they wailed for their fathers and mothers.

As for what would happen to local order in the countryside once men like the Five Tigers of the Wei family were gone?

Uh, was there a possibility that men like them were the village tyrants!

And besides, at the very rear of this expedition's column, shuffling along shamefaced under guard, were the chicken-thieving, dog-snatching scoundrels who ranked just below the village tyrants.

That lecher who had once groped Sister-in-Law Wei twice was also in the column.

This had long been Zhang Zhou's practice: chicken thieves, dog snatchers, swindlers, and lechers who preyed on young girls — once caught, their cases were swiftly tried and closed, and then all of them were sentenced to exile.

As for the truly ruthless mountain bandits and river pirates, there were none left now. Ten years ago they had basically all been exiled, achieving a physical severing of the root.

A tenth-century feudal army was a furnace for the violent reforging of men. No matter what sort of petty thief or small-time scoundrel you were, once you entered the army, it would — it would surely turn you into a big scoundrel, and then send you off to bully others beyond the borders.

Zhang Xianyu was born in 935, and this year he was already twenty-eight years old.

Only at this age did he set out to take up his fief, unlike his elder brother Zhang Xiancun, who had become Great King of Chu at nineteen. He much more resembled his sworn elder brother Murong Xinzhang, who only at thirty had carved out a great enterprise.

The reason Zhang Zhao had kept Zhang Xianyu until this age was, first, that Zhang Xianyu's mother was of weak constitution and had only this one son, and simply could not bear to let him travel far.

Zhang Zhao also did not wish to be so heartless, so only after Zhang Xianyu's mother Ayiguli passed away from illness four years ago was the matter of taking up the fief put on the agenda.

The second reason was that the complexity of the situation in Hezhong somewhat exceeded Zhang Zhao's expectations.

Apart from the conflict between the Great King of Zheng, Bai Congxin, and the Grand Duke of Dinghai, Lu Sanlang, and the Great King of Jin, Li Congde,

under Guo Zhou'er, who had held real power in Samanid Persia for nine years, a group of people had also gathered, and they too had their political demands.

The Six Dharma Sect had also paid a considerable price in its dharma-battle against Islam after entering Anxi City (Bukhara), and they naturally had political demands as well.

In addition, there was the need to maneuver against the Buyid dynasty in Baghdad, the Saffarid dynasty in southern Persia, and the descendants of Prince Sadid of the renegade Anyuan state in Tokharistan.

At the same time, there was the task of bearing the burden of conquering the Kimek-Kipchak confederation to the north, the Turkic remnant Pechenegs, and the Khazar Khaganate, laying the foundation for the later large-scale western expedition.

Therefore, if Zhang Xianyu had been sent to his fief ten years ago, at eighteen he would not have been able to accomplish this task — he could not even have handled Bai Congxin and Guo Zhou'er.

So during these ten years, under Zhang Zhao's arrangements, Zhang Xianyu had successively served in the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Revenue, and the Bureau of Military Affairs, and had even served as Vice Commissioner of Military Affairs for three years.

Beyond that, in the tenth year of Shaoming, 955 CE, Zhang Xianyu had gone to Yanshan Prefecture (near Ulaanbaatar), the capital of the Mobei Province, and served for two years as Pacification and Dismissal Commissioner, and in his capacity as a Son of Buddha he concurrently held the post of Chief Monk Controller of Mobei.

In the Six Dharma Sect of this time, the Living Buddha was a native of the teaching lands, held lofty prestige, and spent half his time in the teaching lands and the other half in Chengde, Dunhuang, the Chengtian Prefecture of Liangzhou, or even the Divine Capital, receiving enlightenment from the Supreme Heaven.

And in doctrinal affairs, the Great Virtues who supplemented the Living Buddha and actually held religious authority were either sent from the Central Plains or were devout believers trained locally.

Finally there was the Chief Monk Controller — this sounded like an office for managing monks, but in fact it managed local administration, and even had a certain degree of military function.

Zhang Xianyu served two years as Chief Monk Controller in Mobei, which greatly improved his ability to deal with the steppe peoples and made him more familiar with steppe culture and its laws.

In the thirteenth year of Shaoming, 958 CE, Zhang Xianyu was again sent to Pengtai Prefecture (Kurume, Kyushu), the capital of Penglai Province, to take over from Zhao Yanjin and hold Penglai for a period, accumulating rich experience in handling newly conquered territory.

At the same time, during his tenure as Left Vice Minister of War, Zhang Xianyu had also gone as an imperial envoy to Dali City to study the governance of a vassal state and the arts of foreign conquest from his elder brother, the Great King of Chu, Zhang Xiancun.

It could be said that this year, at twenty-eight, Zhang Xianyu had fully matured. He was no longer the somewhat self-conscious, inarticulate little fat boy of his childhood.

He was now a sovereign in the prime of life, immensely charismatic, fluent in Turkic and Persian, versed in domestic governance and foreign war, understanding the way of political compromise, and knowing how to pacify and govern newly conquered lands.

If Zhang Zhao were to die now, Zhang Xianyu would be a qualified emperor — even more suited to be Emperor of the Great Zhou than his elder brother, the Great King of the Chu fief, Zhang Xiancun.

So it was only now that Zhang Zhao felt at ease letting Zhang Xianyu take his two younger brothers, Zhang Xianxi and Zhang Xiantai, westward to annex Samanid Persia and prepare the ground for the western expedition.

And the final reason, also the most important reason, was strength.

In 962 CE, the third year of Qianyuan, the greatest difference in strength compared to twenty years earlier, in the seventh year of Tianfu of the false Jin, was population.

In 942, the population of all under heaven was only between 22 and 25 million, and the Central Plains was so impoverished that it could not even produce the grain for an army of over a hundred thousand to campaign for a single year.

But now, according to the results of the national household census in 961 CE, the second year of Qianyuan, the population of all under heaven had recovered to over sixty percent of the Great Tang's peak — a full 50 million people.

Within this figure, a great number of hidden persons had been discovered over these twenty years; unregistered households who had fled to the mountains and marshes now came out with confidence to receive equal-field land, and there were also Khitan, steppe, Nanzhao, Goryeo, and Japanese populations joining in.

On this population base that they had pushed up together, the number had surged by nearly double in twenty years.

Thanks to the spread of new crops such as maize, and especially Champa rice and yellow-husk rice, abundant grain, a stable political situation, a relatively clean bureaucracy, and reasonably stimulating tax policies, Zhang Zhou had produced the terrifying statistic of an average of more than five children born per couple.

Take Old Father Wei's family, for example. Twenty years ago he had only three sons, all just children of a few years old.

Even ten years ago, although Old Father Wei had seven children, the eldest was only thirteen or fourteen and the youngest four or five. To send such children on a distant campaign was obviously unrealistic.

Only after Old Father Wei's Five Tigers of the Wei family had all grown to adulthood, and such fierce men as the Five Tigers — idle, born for war and colonization — had appeared, did the western expedition have a foundation on which it could be carried out.

Zhang Xianyu traveled all the way from Guanzhong toward the Chengtian Prefecture of Liangzhou. As he went, patrol commissioners who had long since received court orders delivered men like the Five Tigers of the Wei family from the countryside under their control into the column, where after selection by the three Great Kings and their subordinate officers, they were incorporated into the army.

These inspection commissioners were the new generation of local strongmen who maintained armed force in Zhang Zhou's countryside.

From Zhang Zhao's perspective, he would certainly not go down the Northern Song path of overcorrection; the people's martial spirit had to be preserved.

But over rural magnates, Zhang Zhou's control was stronger than that of the Han or Tang.

This was not to say that the overall quality of Zhang Zhou's officials was higher than the Han or Tang, but rather that Zhang Zhou's civil and military examination system had matured, and advances in printing had brought knowledge down to the common people.

At the same time, compared to the Han and Tang, Zhang Zhou — having solved the steppe problem — possessed ample channels for "opening the sluice to release the flood."

These rural magnates and their descendants would in the future either be selected through the civil or military examinations to serve as officials in the capital or the provinces, or be ordered to follow the king on campaign to win glory beyond the frontiers.

Through this ceaseless pumping-style "flood release," Zhang Zhou could, for at least a hundred and fifty years, keep domestic magnates at a low intensity without destroying the people's martial culture.

As for after a hundred and fifty years — heh, Zhang Zhao was not truly a god; to maintain it for that long was already quite good. As for what came after, one could only truly trust in the wisdom of later generations.

Thus when Zhang Xianyu departed the Divine Capital, the three brothers' Great King's Three Guards were basically empty shells, but after reaching Liangzhou they already had twenty thousand infantry and cavalry, of which more than eight thousand were elite cavalry and twelve thousand were infantry.

And among these twenty thousand men, those who supplied their own armor and warhorses — the personal armies, the imperial guards, and the sons of low-ranking meritorious officials — numbered more than four thousand.

Counting the three thousand fully armored guardsmen that their father Zhang Zhao had allocated to each of the three brothers at the time of departure, this not particularly large force already possessed thirteen thousand armored soldiers.

As for training, there was no need to speak of it — men like the Five Bears of the Wei clan, upon reaching Transoxiana, were bear-like warriors who slaughtered all before them.

And not many days after Zhang Xianyu arrived in Liangzhou, the messengers from the steppe arrived.

For this western campaign of his, apart from the Basmyl, Ili, and Kyrgyz tumens that were already near Transoxiana,

the remaining nine great tumens, under the coordination of Fu Zhaoxu, the Pacification and Removal Commissioner of Mobei, and the various tumen Elders and Chief Monk-Controllers of the Six Dharma School, had allocated a total of twenty-five thousand elite cavalry, nineteen thousand five hundred herder households, and one hundred seventeen thousand men, women, old and young to follow the campaign.

Compared to the Han lands, the steppe was the region Zhang Zhou monitored most closely — though this monitoring did not mean restricting personal freedom, but rather keeping watch on the population growth of the steppe regions.

In these years, after the steppe and the Central Plains became one, grain from the Han lands flowed into the steppe in great quantities through official trade markets and traveling merchants, while furs, horns, sinews, cured meat, and the like from the steppe entered the Central Plains unimpeded.

Therefore the steppe population grew very quickly, but their carrying capacity was very low, so it was all the more necessary to keep channeling population westward to avoid chaos.

At the same time, on the steppe, Zhang Zhou had formed a cross-cutting control model of tumen, mingghan, jagun, and Chief Monk-Controller, Monk-Controller, and Dharma-Propagating Monk.

When it was said that your whole family was to follow the king on campaign, apart from those with a family member about to give birth who could delay for a month or so, everyone else basically had to set out immediately.

If anyone dared say they would not go, they were surely bewitched by demons — daring to disobey the decree of the Supreme Heaven meant your whole family would immediately be reduced to slave-soldiers; and if you still dared to resist, execution of the male members was the only outcome.

Fortunately, however, with material support from the Han lands, going west on campaign from the steppe was no hardship, and the great majority of people were quite willing.

Therefore, the steppe cavalry allocated this time to the three kings, including Zhang Xianyu, were extremely elite, and their will to fight was very strong.

Among these twenty-five thousand elite cavalry, three thousand were heavy armored cavalry, five thousand were light armored cavalry, and the rest were the finest unarmored horse archers on the steppe.

And among these nineteen thousand five hundred herder households, under extreme mobilization, they could still pull out roughly thirty or forty thousand unarmored horse archers — a fighting strength not to be underestimated.

Zhang Xianyu was overjoyed to hear this. To control Transoxiana and Khorasan, with their many cities, Han heavy infantry and elite cavalry were the finest claws and fangs.

But to strike at the various nomadic peoples west and north of the Western Sea (the Caspian Sea), these steppe cavalry would be needed.

And considering the enormous logistical pressure of the entire army marching through the Hexi Corridor, Zhang Xianyu immediately had the fierce general Liu Tingrang, Commander of the Marching Camp Cavalry, accompany his tenth brother, the Great King of Shu Zhang Xiantai, with five hundred elite Shu cavalry to go receive and take control of these steppe cavalry, then march through the steppe into Beiting and then rendezvous in Anxi.

The tenth imperial son Zhang Xiantai was eighteen this year. His birth mother was the elder Fu, Fu Ying'er. Zhang Xiantai had inherited the martial genes of both the Zhang and Fu families, and his martial skills had been personally taught by his maternal grandfather Fu Yanqing.

Therefore, although he was only eighteen, on horseback or on foot he was a peerless fierce general. Even the little black bear Zhang Liechao, who had accompanied them west on this campaign as a chief general, was no match for him on horseback.

And the current Pacification and Removal Commissioner of Mobei, Fu Zhaoxu, was Zhang Xiantai's own maternal uncle, so it was entirely fitting for him to go to Juyan Lake to receive these steppe cavalry.

When the army reached Dunhuang, two thousand Tibetan heavy armored soldiers who had come from the Batang Plateau through the Dangjin Pass and the Ganquan River, under the leadership of Lun Tongheng of the Lun clan, had long been waiting.

At the same time, Pan Mei, who had replaced Guo Tiance as Defense Commissioner of Batang Province and Protector-General of Huba, had also allocated one thousand armored soldiers to go directly from the Pamirs to Khotan, waiting only for Zhang Xianyu and the others to receive them.

At this point, the military forces for the three kings' western campaign were all assembled: nine thousand trusted elite veterans discharged directly from the personal armies and imperial guards, twenty thousand Han regulars, twenty-five thousand steppe cavalry, and three thousand Tibetan armored soldiers — fifty-seven thousand men in total.

In addition, there were twenty thousand thugs, ruffians, and wandering knights exiled from the Han lands, and more than thirty thousand steppe cavalry obtainable through extreme conscription — in total, over one hundred twenty thousand men with decent fighting ability.

Then counting the two kings and one duke now in Transoxiana, the Anxi Army and the Ningyuan Army,

excluding the Samanid Persian auxiliary troops, the maximum that could be mobilized was two hundred to two hundred twenty thousand fighting men.

Moreover, there were at least fifty thousand armored soldiers, and the grain currently stockpiled in Ningyuan, Suyab, and the Zheng fief was enough for two hundred thousand troops to campaign for four to five years.

Clearly, such terrifying military strength — even in the Central Plains of old, it would have been the combined might of the Southern Tang and Southern Ping armies — would not be used merely against a single Buyid dynasty.

In Shule, when Li Shengtian saw Zhang Xianyu arrive with the great army, a delighted smile appeared on his face.

After Zhang Xianyu led Zhang Xianxi in paying respects to him with the rites due a grandfather, Li Shengtian took both of them by the hand and immediately began explaining the specific situation in Ningyuan.

Li Shengtian could be said to have been thoroughly put through the wringer in this life by his fine nephew Zhang Zhao.

More than ten years ago he had wanted to remain in the Central Plains, but in the end he had worked until his temples were white and he was old and frail before he had the chance to extricate himself from Anxi.

A few years earlier Li Shengtian could have left, but old Zhang Zhong's sudden illness disrupted Li Shengtian's plans. During the four years from when old Zhang Zhong could no longer attend to affairs until his death from illness, it was Li Shengtian who actually controlled Ningyuan.

The hardships of it all were understood only by Li Shengtian and Zhang Zhao themselves.

Khotan was in fact the ancestral estate of his Yuchi clan, yet under Li Shengtian's arrangements, not only did he have to move the fief and hand over the ancestral patrimony, he even had to hand over Ningyuan, which Zhang Zhao had conquered but already given to Khotan.

It must be known that the present Ningyuan was even wealthier than Shule and Khotan, and from the heir apparent Li Congde down to the ordinary members of the royal clan, there was not one who did not covet it.

Li Shengtian had almost constantly to bear the opposition of everyone in order to uphold Zhang Zhao's strategy.

On this, Li Shengtian was also deeply moved. He said to Zhang Xianyu and Zhang Xianxi: "Reviving the great dynasty, defeating the Arabs, protecting the Dharma of our Buddha — this is the grand strategy your imperial father is now realizing, and it was also the long-cherished aspiration of this Li Shengtian in days past!"

Almost from the very beginning, this nephew Zhang Zhao had been the "dream stand-in" through whom Li Shengtian, a monarch not particularly skilled in military strategy, realized his great undertakings — which was why uncle and nephew were so of one heart and one mind.

But there was actually another reason Li Shengtian did not mention: he knew Zhang Zhao's temperament very well.

This nephew of his had always had a red line in his heart. Before crossing that line, he was a benevolent and magnanimous monarch, but once that line was crossed, he could absolutely harden his heart and disown his own kin.

Compared to the court, Khotan was but a tiny vassal state. Looking at history, when rulers of the Western Regions failed to obey the court's commands, their ends were often miserable. Li Shengtian himself had invested in creating Zhang Zhou, so he could not allow a good thing to turn bad.

He remained in Anxi precisely to ensure that things would never reach that point.

Zhang Xianyu again prostrated himself with the grand rite. "Grandfather, set your mind at ease. The imperial father knows of Grandfather's labors and great merits. Before this grandson came to Anxi, the imperial father exhorted him a hundred times over. This grandson has it firmly in mind."

"Good!" Li Shengtian was overjoyed. "With these words from Erlang, your grandfather is at ease."

Having said this, Li Shengtian sighed with deep emotion: "Thirty years ago, your father Zhang Erlang came from Dunhuang, and thus there was the Great Zhou.

Today you too are Zhang Erlang. What the lands west of the Central Plains will become now rests entirely in your hands."

(End of Chapter)

Related