Chapter 328: Manpower Abundant

It had probably been ten months since Liu Chengzong last slept in a room. Back in the safest environment he knew, his mind finally relaxed, and he actually slept in for once — not waking until noon.

His talk with his father had made him realize that the family would inevitably spend far more time apart than together from now on, so he figured he would do nothing at all today and just stay in Juer Bay to keep his parents company.

He then made the very awkward discovery that his parents did not need his company. When he woke, the city was so quiet it seemed deserted.

He walked out to the front of the mansion and asked the guard on duty, "Tianbao, where's my father?"

The guard at the mansion gate was called Tianbao, also a man from northern Shaanxi, though he had previously served under Zuo Guangxian. After reaching Xining, he had joined Liu Chengzong's army and been sent to the training camp, only transferring into the guard unit after earning merit in battle to the south.

Tianbao said, "The Old Master went out before dawn — cotton armor, helmet, goose-feather saber, hand cannon. Took two personal attendants with him. I thought it was General Zu at first. He only told me to heat water."

Liu Chengzong scratched his head, thoroughly puzzled. "What did he go off to do?"

"Drilling the academy students outside the city — saber dancing, archery, riding, firing muskets. Came back to the house to bathe and eat, then said he was off to the academy to give the students morning lessons."

Liu Chengzong wiped his face. His old man's hobbies were tilting ever further from the civil toward the martial. Good health was a good sign, at least. Yawning and stretching, he asked, "Then where's my mother?"

"The Old Madam also went out this morning. Took seven or eight young women, called for Commander Fan, and went to the Juer Bay market. Said she was going to have the Hundred Works Bureau make a few pieces of jewelry for Commander Fan and measure her for several sets of outer and inner clothes."

Liu Chengzong froze mid-stretch. "My mother took Sanlang to get jewelry? And who are those seven or eight women? She didn't even take a few guards."

"That I wouldn't know, but they all seemed to be the Grand Marshal's old acquaintances." The guard shook his head. "I heard people mention Prefect Yang's wife, Commander-in-Chief Cao's wife, and I heard the Old Madam call two of the women Bai-niang and Yun-niang."

It was Sister-in-law Cao, Bai Liuxi, and Yun Jiaoyue.

Sister-in-law Cao had once been a fortress lord's wife, skilled with bow and horse. Bai Liuxi and Yun Jiaoyue also had martial training — their little golden melons could crack a skull with brutal efficiency. Add Fan Sanlang, who carried two hand cannons everywhere through all her campaigns north and south, and this lineup could throw an entire prefectural city into utter chaos.

Liu Chengzong set his mind at ease. As he turned to walk back inside the mansion, he heard Tianbao say, "Grand Marshal, also General Zu — this morning he already took Chieftain Chen back to Xining, to arrange Chieftain Chen's garrison at Eight Corners Fortress."

"Got it. I'll go wash up. Let the brothers rest well for a couple of days. Pick a few men, have the horses ready on the street and wait for me. I'm going to the Armory Bureau."

Truth be told, in Liu Chengzong's eyes, this newly built city was riddled with flaws.

The height-to-thickness ratio of the walls was not quite right, the whole thing was built perfectly square with no thought given to dead angles of fire, and the positioning and orientation of the gates could hardly be called crooked gates and slanting paths.

Aside from being half-faced in grey brick, it was practically a county seat built in peacetime — or, put simply, just the most basic square fortification.

But there was little cause for harsh criticism. Not everyone had, as he did, both the experience of storming strongholds and the knowledge of building fortifications.

Still less could he expect his father to be like him — to look at a city and involuntarily start working out how to breach it.

In truth, even having that mindset was pretty damn useless for this city. If they ever actually had to count on defending Juer Bay, it would only mean the entire Qinghai defense system had been shattered and they had lost the ability to organize field counterattacks.

Liu Chengzong did not hurry out of the city. He simply climbed the wall and gazed west, raising his telescope to survey the bustling Juer Bay market in the distance.

Though the Mongol noble clientele was gone, the return of over ten thousand troops from the southern campaign meant the Juer Bay market would not easily collapse in the short term.

Liu Chengzong had distributed a total of one hundred sixty thousand taels in reward silver to the soldiers who followed him. Soldiers on leave from all around the lake region clogged the river valley with warhorses and carts. Men carried sacks of gold and silver to exchange for thick stacks of Lion notes, spending freely throughout the market.

This scene of prosperity would continue for a long while yet.

At the Armory Bureau, Liu Chengzong did not let anyone announce him. He simply toured the workshop courtyards with his guards, and it was not until he had wandered through most of the bureau that Shi Chengwo and He Xin got word and hurried over to pay their respects.

Both were astonished that Liu Chengzong had come to the Armory Bureau the very day after his return, assuming some major crisis had occurred. They had no idea that when they finally saw him, the Grand Marshal was simply watching the smiths forge iron and refine steel.

"How much military equipment can the Armory Bureau produce in a year?"

Shi Chengwo answered without hesitation. "Reporting to the Grand Marshal, due to the craftsmen's hours being taken up by sales at Juer Bay, the Armory Bureau's annual quota is nine hundred sixty sets."

"Not a small number. To the office."

Liu Chengzong nodded, acknowledging the figure, and told the Armory Bureau officials to lead him to the office. "Tell me as we walk — what does each set of equipment include?"

This time Shi Chengwo looked to He Xin. He Xin said, "Reporting to the Grand Marshal, one set of equipment comprises: two sets of soldier's clothing, inner and outer; one helmet; one body armor; one waist saber; one bow; two bowstrings; one arm shield; thirty arrows; one quiver set. For every two sets, add one matchlock musket, one pair of tin gourd powder flasks, thirty powder tubes, three hundred lead balls, and six catties of gunpowder. For every three sets, add one long spear and one long shield."

As he spoke, Shi Chengwo had already ordered an Armory Bureau clerk to fetch three sets of equipment from stores.

Listening to He Xin's report, Liu Chengzong laughed out loud. Frowning, he asked, "I don't recall you ever serving in the imperial Armory Bureau?"

This method of calculating equipment by the set bore the heavy personal stamp of the Great Ming's Hongwu Emperor, saturated with distrust toward officials.

To put it simply, if not counted by the set, these nine hundred sixty sets of equipment could be reported as over one hundred seventy thousand individual pieces of various arms. If the armor plates were counted separately, it could be called over three hundred thousand pieces.

He Xin shook his head. "Reporting to the Grand Marshal, this old man has never served in the Armory Bureau. It came from Xining. When the Third General was overseeing Juer Bay, he recruited some craftsmen from the Xining Guard's Armory Bureau, and the imperial armory regulations came along with them."

Liu Chengzong acknowledged this with a smile. So it was Cheng Yunqian's doing.

He had already spotted the problem. The Armory Bureau's production capacity was insufficient, and the equipment it manufactured was seriously outdated. The equipment regulations were still suited to a small-unit setup of one combat soldier and two support soldiers.

This made him sigh with emotion. The Marshal's Manor was fortunate to be born in this era. The various factions had no lower limits, while the natural environment constrained their upper limits, and the soldiers' demands of him were very low.

Everyone was fiercely loyal. Even with only this pitiful arms production capability — with almost no self-made equipment in the entire army except for wall guns and cannons — just having enough to eat was enough to carve out a thousand-li domain.

Before long, the Armory Bureau clerk arrived at the bureau office with a dozen apprentices carrying the three sets of equipment.

One look confirmed Liu Chengzong's suspicion: this was indeed the equipment for a three-man combat-support squad. Only the soldier's clothing and armor were things he had never seen before.

This left him deeply frustrated. Many of the soldiers who had followed him on the southern campaign wore Ming army uniforms. A handful of veterans wore a single winter coat from the Lion Camp days all year round. The majority of the soldiers, including the entire Basang Camp, wore captured gear that did not necessarily fit.

As for weapons and armor, needless to say — they wore whatever was available, used whatever was at hand.

Their pitiful manufacturing capacity and the vast distance between the two prefectures meant the Marshal's Manor army was nowhere near the point of using whatever they could make.

The soldier's clothing consisted of two sets, summer and winter, inner and outer. The inner clothing was a yellowish-brown cross-collared, right-lapped tunic and trousers. The outer clothing was a cotton-padded jacket and trousers reaching below the knee, reinforced with oxhide at the chest, back, crotch, thighs, and arms, along with two wide sashes, two sets of leg wraps, and a pair of leather boots.

The armor was primarily a short-sleeved iron mail shirt joined by copper brazing — fine workmanship — supplemented by a set of leather-padded iron greaves and vambraces.

Liu Chengzong was fairly pleased when he looked at the clothing, seeing evidence of the Marshal's Manor's abundance of fur and leather. But when he saw the armor, he was far less satisfied. Pointing at the mail shirt, he asked, "What is the meaning of this?"

Liu Chengzong thought to himself: So my Armory Bureau treats my soldiers as common levies, sending them onto the battlefield wearing nothing but this.

To be fair, well-brazed mail was not bad. But Liu Chengzong felt this armor set was missing too many things. The winter coat and mail shirt together made an excellent heavy infantry underlayer, but the outer armor — where was the outer armor?

They couldn't all be light infantry, surely.

So much so that Liu Chengzong lost any desire to examine the waist sabers, long spears, shields, and matchlocks in detail. If his army had to rely on this mail shirt to contend for the realm, then they could forget about it.

Most critically, his army received no pay. What would the soldiers use to buy armor accessories? It meant that before their first battle, soldiers had no chance whatsoever to acquire armor.

Shi Chengwo had not understood the meaning of his question at first. Only afterward did he realize the Grand Marshal was dissatisfied with the armor. He said, "Grand Marshal, the iron arm-guards and cloth-faced armor can all be self-supplied by the soldiers later."

"Self-supplied?" Liu Chengzong frowned. "It seems to me the Armory Bureau's manufacturing capacity is not lacking. Why do the soldiers need to supply their own?"

He Xin looked rather awkward, sitting to the side and not daring to speak. Shi Chengwo suddenly grasped the reason for Liu Chengzong's anger and immediately relaxed. He explained, "Grand Marshal, please calm your anger. Permit your subordinate to speak frankly. The Marshal's Manor has been at war for a long time. Many things in Xining changed after the Grand Marshal's southern campaign. The various divisions no longer answer to a single authority, supplies are not coordinated smoothly, and arms and equipment must account for cost."

Liu Chengzong said, "Go on."

"In the past, when the Grand Marshal was here, every division coordinated through the Grand Marshal. No matter the issue, the Grand Marshal could decide with a single word. But after the southern campaign, everything old continued as before, while for new matters, no one dared overstep their authority. Everything relied on strenuous effort just to keep things going."

Shi Chengwo explained them one by one: "For instance, Third General manages the Juerwan market. The training camp officers want fresh vegetables, but our army's old practice only rations grain, dried meat, pickled vegetables, and vinegar cloth. Fortunately, the Juerwan market still turns a profit and Third General has the standing to allocate fresh vegetables for the training troops — it's simply counted as a cost."

"And the Armory Bureau needs millions of jin of charcoal and coal, tens of thousands of jin of copper and iron — how are those to be procured? Xining Prefecture can only feed itself; it has no capacity to allocate materials. We can only rely on market profits to purchase materials and complete the jingal guns and heavy arquebuses the Grand Marshal requires. For regular-issue arms, we simply have to pick and choose."

Having said this, Shi Chengwo looked toward the three sets of armor in the hall and said, "Armor is the costliest item. Your subordinate also feared that making light armor would bring the Grand Marshal's punishment, so I chose mail as inner armor. If the Grand Marshal returns and is dissatisfied with the armor, these won't be wasted — they can serve as inner lining for the troops."

Liu Chengzong understood. In the end, the Marshal's Manor's administrative mechanism was too immature, and Juerwan's departments had all once been directly subordinate to him.

When he was present, there were no problems. When he was absent, there was no institution that could take his place, and that led to managerial chaos in Xining Prefecture.

Even if his father served as Prefect and Chengyun managed Juerwan, neither could direct the various departments the way he did — at most they could coordinate from the center and barely hold things together.

Liu Chengzong pondered for a moment without speaking. He was wondering whether the same chaos would occur in Kangning Prefecture.

Kangning had no departments like the Juerwan market, Shi Chengwo's Armory Bureau, or the Grand Training Camp that he had personally built from the ground up, so management there would be much easier.

"I understand. This problem will be resolved later."

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong asked, "How many craftsmen does the Armory Bureau have now?"

"The Armory Bureau is divided into fifteen craft workshops: large wood, small wood, lacquer, bow, arrow, metal and fire, gunpowder, furnace, casting, forging, arquebus, cannon, charcoal and coal, leather and fur, and textiles — twenty-seven courtyards in all. Across all workshops there are one hundred twenty-eight master craftsmen, seven hundred forty craftsmen, and one thousand one hundred fifty-three laborers and apprentices."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly. The scale of craftsmen and artisans was very large, but relatively speaking, output was not much. There were certainly reasons involving raw materials, costs, and management.

He thought for a moment, then said to Shi Chengwo, "Here is what we'll do. I've seen the Armory Bureau, and there are many things in my mind that need adjustment. You'll return with me to the Marshal's Manor... Bow-making can stop. Give the bow craftsmen a holiday first."

Both men were stunned. Their Grand Marshal had once been a great advocate of the bow. How could a battle fought in the south make him seem like a changed man, actually ordering the Armory Bureau to stop making bows?

Facing their astonished expressions, Liu Chengzong waved his hand. "In the past, our army was small but elite, and we had no source for recruiting troops, so we followed the imperial court's practice: those with great strength and skill use the bow, those with little strength and weak constitution use the arquebus... But you don't know how many bows I captured in the south."

Liu Chengzong had crossed Qinghai Lake on the first fleet of ships. The men behind him transported spoils from Nanshan Fort to the Naval Office. They had captured over twenty thousand bows in all, some of which had come unglued from poor maintenance after the river valley campaign. He simply couldn't be bothered to ship them to Juerwan, so they were all temporarily stored at the Naval Office.

This year of campaigning had made Liu Chengzong truly realize that solving problems still depended on firearms and close combat.

Whether he was willing to admit it or not, the bow's effectiveness against fully armored regular troops was indeed no longer significant.

Now Xikang had a large enough population to support his recruitment of an army, and given the nutritional state of the recruits, training them to use firearms was more advantageous.

On the road back to the Marshal's Manor, Liu Chengzong described his development blueprint for the Armory Bureau to Shi Chengwo: "Our weapons and armor should be as simple as possible. Moreover, the Juerwan Armory Bureau has no material advantage. Xining Prefecture has many mines, so we'll build factories right below the mines and process the iron, steel, copper, tin, and lead on the spot to reduce transport costs."

"Along the rivers, choose places with swift currents to build factories for arquebuses, cannons, blades, spears, armor, and gunpowder. Each factory will first construct large water-powered machinery. We'll use lathes for everything that requires one."

'Lathe' was not a new term. In ancient times, any machine that rotated on an axle was called a 'che,' and any base that held an object was called a 'chuang' — such as water wheels, chain pumps, tube water lifts, ox carts, as well as drill beds, grinding beds, and polishing beds.

"Blades, spears, and armor will each have only one specification. Each factory will have several workshops, and each workshop will make only one thing. For example, a blade-forging factory will have a forging workshop, a grinding workshop, a polishing workshop, an adjustment room, and an assembly room. Each workshop is responsible only for that one task, and each worker is responsible only for that one process."

Liu Chengzong said to Shi Chengwo, "With just one master craftsman, you can quickly train many skilled workers."

Shi Chengwo listened somewhat dazedly, but he grasped the general idea. As a traditional craftsman, he could recognize the benefits of this approach, and he could also recognize that skilled workers trained this way would absolutely be unable to leave the Marshal's Manor.

"Grand Marshal, blades, spears, armor, even cannons can be done this way, but making arquebuses... a matchlock arquebus requires fifteen or sixteen workshops, and a flintlock jingal requires at least thirty workshops."

Having said this, Shi Chengwo nodded emphatically and added, "But arranged the way the Grand Marshal describes, output will certainly increase."

"That's enough!"

Liu Chengzong laughed. "Now is the perfect time to provide work as relief. Our manpower has never been this abundant."