Chapter 283: The Unsettled Regions

From Beizhili to Gugu Pass, Zhending and Baoding were unavoidable stops along the way.

While the Chongzhen Emperor performed ancestral rites, those below naturally could not just stand around gawking—every relevant office had its own affairs to attend to. Besides ample grain and fodder needing to be loaded onto carts and transported with the army, all manner of weapons and equipment also had to be inventoried and carried by designated personnel.

Apart from the regular troops meant for combat, the Prefect of Shuntian Prefecture also had to dispatch able-bodied civilians from the capital region to accompany the army. Whenever a great army marched, it needed to be complete in every respect—only when all aspects were fully prepared could it be a force capable of handling any situation.

At the Battle of military pay and provisions last time, first, there had been no time to prepare under such haste, and second, the Chongzhen Emperor truly had none of these things in hand at the time—no money, no grain, with weapons badly outdated, so they could only scrape together whatever was available.

The capital guard muster roll was compiled overnight by Minister of Revenue Ni Yuanlu on the Chongzhen Emperor's order, based on the previous military registers—it should be quite reliable.

The total number of soldiers in this campaign who could take the field was fifty-five thousand.

Among them, twenty-three thousand one hundred and eight were close-combat infantry wielding spears, sabers, and great shields; one thousand eight hundred and four were musketeers armed with new-style flintlock bird-guns; and over three hundred were archers skilled with the bow.

Beyond that, Zhang Shize, for ease of unified management, organized the civilians responsible for transporting grain carts and weapons into a single baggage camp. The main army marched ahead while the baggage camp followed close behind. According to incomplete statistics, the number of civilians in this baggage camp was considerable—at least thirty thousand or more.

Once preparations were complete, the force the Chongzhen Emperor was personally leading on this campaign differed greatly from the hastily assembled troops that had come to defend the capital from various regions last year.

First, aside from less than a third who were veterans, the great majority were raw recruits who had been drilled for over half a year—never having set foot on a battlefield, never having seen blood.

Second, the capital guard was something never seen in previous dynasties—a new army personally trained by nobles and meritorious officials at the Chongzhen Emperor's direction, different from the new army of the Northwest Grand Camp that Chen Qiyu was responsible for organizing and training.

The name "capital guard" had always represented the elite of the capital region, so this first battle of the capital guard was of utmost importance—all the civil and military officials were watching to see whether this new army would succeed or fail.

In another sense, whether this capital guard could become the strong army the Chongzhen Emperor envisioned was directly tied to the survival or ruin of the Great Ming dynasty in the days ahead.

Third, this capital guard currently thundering out of the capital in formation to reinforce Gugu Pass differed from the Capital Camps of old—from head to toe, they were equipped with entirely new standard-issue gear.

The armor was a unified gray-black, made from newly purchased materials and re-forged, including the swallow-wing helmets on their heads and the boots on their feet. The spears, sabers, great shields, flintlock bird-guns, and cannons were all crafted at great expense by the Chongzhen Emperor—top quality, so their combat effectiveness would naturally be far greater than before.

Counting the baggage camp's personnel, the force the Chongzhen Emperor led was a proper imperial army of fifty-five thousand—a figure Ni Yuanlu had genuinely tallied, with not the slightest inflation.

After performing ancestral rites and swearing oaths in the capital, this imperial army marched forth with great fanfare under the banner of "serving Heaven and punishing the rebels," and soon reached the border of the capital region.

Since he had no cavalry capable of field combat under his command, the Chongzhen Emperor had already issued an edict for Marquis Zhenbian Wuer Mai to lead over three thousand Dorgon troops to set up camp in advance outside a desolate village near Zhuozhou city.

The Dorgon troops under Wuer Mai's command were entirely self-sufficient, having relocated from various tribes to the Wuliangha garrison. Their horses were not the short-legged Central Plains breed—even faster than Li Zicheng's old camp cavalry—so they had long since arrived outside Zhuozhou and were encamped awaiting the main army.

Of course, they could not stay idle while waiting—Wuer Mai had to find fodder for his cavalry and, together with the Garrison Commander of Zhuozhou, clear obstacles along the route for the Chongzhen Emperor's army heading toward Zhuozhou.

On the fourth day after the Dorgon troops, coordinating with the local Ming garrison forces, wiped out the last band of mounted bandits within Zhuozhou's borders, the imperial army marching west entered Zhuozhou territory in full force.

On the fifteenth day of the twelfth month, Wuer Mai's Dorgon troops joined forces with the Chongzhen Emperor's army, which now became a field corps possessing a complete range of land-combat branches. Following the original plan drawn up by the Grand Secretariat, they began steadily advancing to reinforce the Gugu Pass area.

Beyond Zhuozhou lay Baoding Prefecture—land the court had taken back less than a year ago.

The officials of Li Zicheng's illegitimate Dashun regime who had been installed here had all been executed. Baoding's prefectural seat was currently extremely weak—not the five thousand-plus men recorded in the documents submitted to the Ministry of War. In reality, upon arriving in the city, the Chongzhen Emperor saw only thirteen hundred or so officers and men on defense.

Anyone with half a brain could figure out that the local officials, knowing he was coming, would certainly have made careful preparations—yet even so, this was all they had. One could only imagine how many officers and soldiers had actually been defending such a large prefectural seat before.

If every region was in such a state, it was no wonder Li Zicheng could sweep all before him—even the most loyal and courageous generals, defending an empty city, could not stir up the slightest ripple.

Learning that the Chongzhen Emperor was coming to Baoding's prefectural seat, the Eastern Depot and Embroidered Uniform Guard agents hidden within Baoding Prefecture had begun compiling all manner of key intelligence and converging here half a month before the army's arrival.

Listening to the reports of the various Centurions, Chiliarchs, and bureau chiefs, the Chongzhen Emperor's expression did not change in the slightest. In truth, this was how the localities had always been—the Chongzhen Emperor had already known more or less about it in his later life.

Take this very Baoding prefectural seat where he now stood—though it currently belonged to the court, the Chongzhen Emperor had no doubt that the moment he lost at Gugu Pass, they would immediately hoist the banner of Dashun and change dynasties.

The common people would not care who ruled them, nor would they fight to the death defending a city for such a corrupt local government. To hold a place, one had to fundamentally change the local people's view of the court and the emperor—this was also one of the reasons for the Chongzhen Emperor's personal campaign.

When you are in the capital, even if the newspapers praise you to the skies and the various edicts and proclamations make the Great Ming seem incomparably mighty, all of that is but a fleeting cloud to distant commoners—invisible and untouchable.

Only by personally leading the army there, by the emperor coming among the people, letting them see what kind of emperor he was, letting them witness the spirited bearing of his capital guard soldiers—only then could they understand.

Just yesterday, the Chongzhen Emperor had received an urgent report from Chen Qiyu at Gugu Pass.

It stated that since the day of the oath-taking, Li Zicheng had personally led his rebel army in ferocious assaults on Gugu Pass. Fortunately, the pass had long since been repaired and reinforced, and with Shandong Regional Commander Mou Wenshou and Xuanfu Regional Commander Gao Jie leading from the front and fighting bravely, they had barely managed to hold off wave after wave of attacks.

However, Chen Qiyu also noted in his urgent report that Zhending and Baoding were unstable, advising the Chongzhen Emperor to exercise extra caution when passing through these areas. The situation at Gugu Pass, though critical, had not yet reached the point of being untenable.

The implication was a suggestion that the Chongzhen Emperor settle matters in the rear before coming—at least to secure a line of retreat. Otherwise, if he rushed to Gugu Pass and rebellion erupted again in Zhending and Baoding, he would be a turtle in a jar—utterly finished.

In truth, the Chongzhen Emperor understood that the localities were now mostly in the same state as Zhending and Baoding prefectures—unless it was the capital right under his nose, the registers and household records submitted from elsewhere were almost all unreliable.

Local officials, fearing punishment, tended to exaggerate the number of officers and soldiers in their cities, while military commanders delighted in killing innocents to pad their merits and falsely claiming peace.

A personal campaign meant leaving the capital camp—the base he had not left for nearly two years. In this late Ming era, danger lurked everywhere, and because he was the emperor, the danger was even greater than for ordinary men.

At this critical juncture where his very life hung in the balance, the Chongzhen Emperor naturally had to be one hundred and eighty percent alert—this was the foremost matter concerning his own skin. He had better not end up failing to hang himself from a southeastern branch, only to die in some foreign place and become a laughingstock.

Upon arriving at the prefectural seat, the Chongzhen Emperor immediately dismissed the Baoding Prefect and the garrison military commanders from their posts, had the Vice Prefect temporarily exercise the Prefect's authority, and ordered the Assistant Regional Commanders of the two prefectures to command the original garrison troops.

Next, he transferred the Zhending troops to Baoding and moved the Baoding troops to Zhending, openly establishing Eastern Depot and Embroidered Uniform Guard surveillance, and applied the same measures to the remaining prefectures and counties—strictly preventing local officials from colluding with one another.

Beyond that, on the very first day the imperial army arrived at Baoding's prefectural seat, Duke of Ying Zhang Shize and others personally took charge, raiding and exterminating fifteen families of officials, gentry, and wealthy households who, according to Eastern Depot reports, had colluded with the bandits—the common people all clapped their hands in approval.

All silver and grain seized from the raids were distributed to the people by the newly appointed Vice Prefect. The Chongzhen Emperor also personally issued an edict ordering a fresh survey of the landholdings of the raided wealthy households within Zhending and Baoding prefectures, redistributing them to the common people. He also used silver carried with the army to back-pay the wages owed to officers and soldiers in both prefectures for years.

One advantage of being emperor was absolute authority in the localities—without the checks and balances of the civil and military officials at court, every word the Chongzhen Emperor spoke here was an imperial edict. The reason was simple: he was the emperor.

The local officers and troops were all old and weak, and the guard stations had no combat capability whatsoever. So after briefly stabilizing the region, the Chongzhen Emperor first abolished the hereditary military households of the guard stations, keeping only a portion of the able-bodied young. Guard station households under fifteen or over thirty were all discharged within a few days—those remaining were to farm at home and need not train or take the field.

Put simply, these men were useless in combat, and keeping them around meant idle hands with nothing to do—better to cut them all. In the Chongzhen Emperor's thinking, since he was heading to Gugu Pass, he naturally needed to settle matters behind his back first.

These outdated guard stations had always been hotbeds of mutiny and defection to the enemy, so they naturally had to be abolished entirely. Keeping them would only make them parasites on the state—and quite possibly the road to his own death in the future.