Chapter 351: Adapting Measures to Local Conditions

As the saying goes, the whole year's planning lies in spring.

If a man slights the land for a moment, the land slights the man for a year.

Across the great land of Hehuang, from west to east, from south to north, people raced to plow and race to sow.

While his two sons fought at the front, their old father Liu Xiangyu posted notices behind the lines to reassure the people, leading Xining's licentiates to consolidate villages, merge tithings, receive the land, and plan the year's grain cultivation.

In truth, posting notices did little good — the common folk who could read them overlapped heavily with those fleeing east, and those who hadn't fled east, even if they could read the notices, didn't care what they said.

Just a different landlord, that's all. The common folk thought to themselves: I don't even have the traveling money to flee — what difference does it make whose land I farm?

But the situation turned out to be nothing like what they imagined.

As soon as the Marshal's headquarters army marched east, township officers from Xining moved in behind them to take up local posts. These township officers assumed office in the barest fashion — no official robes, no seals of office, only a single certificate of appointment.

Typically, three men came to each village.

A veteran with a northern Shaanxi accent was the township officer bearing the appointment certificate; a young Western Barbarian who could speak Chinese served as his attendant; and a Tatar who could understand but could only stammer out broken Chinese acted as the errand runner.

They would ask how many households and how many acres of farmland the place had, and for every two hundred people, they would recruit one civilian auxiliary from the local poor youths who couldn't make a living — providing meals — and then set to work, surveying the fields and population and completing the census.

In name, the township officers were all licentiates dispatched by the Xining Prefectural Office, but the local people, looking them over from every angle, all felt these licentiates were not quite proper... Could they read? They could read. Could they do sums? They could do sums. But they simply had no real learning, nor any official's air of distinction — more like peasants than licentiates, more like soldiers than peasants.

Where would Xining get so many proper licentiates? Never mind xiucai degree-holders — even xiucai had to serve as teachers in Xining, and most of those retained at Liu Xiangyu's side were mere tongsheng candidates.

Those stationed in the localities were all graduates of the Drill Peak Academy, the best the Marshal's headquarters could put forward.

Among them, those with outstanding marks were even high-educated talents who, in the early years, had entered the Xining Prefectural School for two years of advanced study as centurions of the Yu-character Battalion.

These men truly had no real learning — what they could hear, speak, read, and write was limited to common vocabulary, and they had basically only dabbled in specialized subjects like mapping and surveying, camp formation arithmetic, military law and regulations, weapons allocation, and logistics planning.

But they all shared the same experience: a bitterly unfortunate, impoverished origin in Yan'an Prefecture, where in the heaven-and-earth-sweeping drought, Liu the Lion was the single life-saving straw they could grasp.

With frail bodies they challenged government troops armed to the teeth; through hardship and sacrifice they survived, received life-saving grain and the chance to study and learn to read, and became outstanding officers of the peasant army.

Every one of them had experience managing twelve, sixty, or even more soldiers. Some had suffered irreparable wounds on the battlefield; some, past forty, were no longer fit to march to war.

In the end, bearing Old Master Liu's charge, with brimming fervor and boundless loyalty, they carried their appointment certificates to stand upon another battlefield without gunsmoke, fighting for the chance to return to their homeland within their lifetimes.

Liu Chengyun had hurried back from Nangqian traveling day and night. Delayed by heavy snow blocking the roads, he had no time to rest in Xining before plunging directly into new work.

He rode all the way to Machang City, where the fighting had just ended. After the chieftain troops' blocking attempt had utterly failed, this place had become Liu Chengzong's main supply camp. Liu Xiangyu was here, allocating supplies for the front on one hand while managing the newly received lands on the other.

The news of Chengyun's return overjoyed Old Master Liu.

Every man has his own strengths. Liu Xiangyu was extremely adept at managing people, but his background as an official made it hard for him to put himself in the common people's shoes and think from their perspective. Receiving territory was very easy for him, but changing the mode of production on this land according to his second son's ideas — that left him somewhat at a loss as to where to begin.

So Liu Xiangyu's choice was to pave the road first: dispatch the Marshal's headquarters' township officers to every locality, get a clear picture of the fields, population, and the intricate interpersonal relationships everywhere, and ensure that orders could reach every village unimpeded throughout the two-hundred-li valley.

Just at this moment Chengyun arrived. Here was the family's talent for meticulous management, so Liu Xiangyu could free his hands and properly send a group of the old, weak, women, and children off to Xining.

These old, weak, women, and children were the mother, wife, and children of Lintao Regional Commander Wang Cheng'en, the family members of Gansu Assistant Commander Chai Shihua and Shaanxi Regional Military Commissioner Tian Yinglong, and others — all sent to Xining, where men were dispatched to guard them carefully and attend to them meticulously.

In Chengyun's eyes, the affairs of Hehuang were actually far simpler than those of Kangning Prefecture. Here, at least, the common people could understand what he was saying, and he could understand what others were saying.

At Machang City he looked over the field and population reports submitted by each township, then immediately hurried to Hezui to meet Liu the Lion.

Liu Chengzong had already been staying for half a month at the Hezui pox village. Along the way, Chengyun saw one village after another ringed by sentry posts, and the barbarian soldiers temporarily quartered within them.

From Liu Xiangyu he knew that smallpox had broken out to the east, and he knew even more that the Marshal's headquarters' cavalry commander Yang Yao was going to moonlight as a pox doctor at Hezui.

But when he drew near Hezui, what he saw did not look at all like preparations to inoculate the common people with human pox. Quite the opposite — the entire Hezui seemed to have become a vast construction site.

The floodplain encircled by the Huang River stretched over ten li long, but its width was only between four and six li, yet tens of thousands of Mongol soldiers were moving back and forth, transporting earth and stone, digging trenches, and even building two earthen fort platforms, each a hundred paces square, at the bridgehead of the river bend.

Chengyun looked at this scene, scratched his head, and thought to himself: Is Second Brother planning to build a fortress stronghold here at Hezui?

And then he saw Yang Yao, out walking a monkey.

He really was walking a monkey. No one knew where he'd gotten a macaque; he had it on a leash, strolling along the northern hill platform. Spotting Chengyun from a distance, he raised an arm in greeting and pointed toward the elevated land on the hill, calling from afar: "Chengyun, the Grand Marshal's up on the hill platform — you'll see him when you go up."

Liu Chengyun suppressed the doubts in his heart and led his horse up onto the platform. Before long, at the platform's edge, he saw Liu Chengzong, who was peering through a telescope to survey the whole of Hezui below. He hurriedly had the surrounding guards announce him.

But to his surprise, Liu Chengzong would not let him come close at all, only calling from a distance: "Don't come near me — I've broken out in pox. Let's talk in the tent over there."

On the hillside not far away stood two army tents, solitary and side by side. Liu Chengzong entered the eastern one; guards led Chengyun into the western one. Separated by two layers of tent cloth, Chengyun asked urgently: "Brother, how did you break out in pox?"

From the other side of the army tent came Liu Chengzong's muffled voice: "It's nothing — inoculated human pox. Your brother's sturdier than a tiger or a lion; I've even been inoculated twice. Don't worry, it won't affect anything."

Hearing it was inoculation, Chengyun finally set his heart at ease. The inoculum used for variolation was far less virulent than the smallpox that raged in epidemics, so there was no need to worry about Liu Chengzong's safety. But immediately after, his concern shifted to the war situation, and he asked: "Brother, now that you've been inoculated, how can we still push east?"

Liu the Lion sighed "What a pity" from the other side, then said to Chengyun: "We can't fight through. Before the eastern campaign, we planned for everything — except the smallpox outbreak to the east. Of my thirty thousand troops, over twenty thousand haven't been inoculated, especially the regulars. The cost of continuing the eastern campaign is too great."

Chengyun asked: "The regulars?"

"That's Basang, Erhu, and Ahai Daiqing. Ahai Daiqing is a surrendered officer of Chuoketu's. If the barbarian and Mongol troops charge into a place with smallpox, every last one of them will fall ill."

Liu Chengzong believed that in natural resistance to smallpox, the Han were strongest, the Mongols next, and the Western Barbarians the weakest.

This was no good thing — it was simply because the Central Plains were densely populated and had always been a land ravaged by pestilence. Generation after generation of ancestors were victors in the struggle against every kind of plague; only the finest genes could be passed down, so there was, more or less, a sliver of resistance.

The Mongols and Western Barbarians had never even seen this disease. Those who had seen it were gone — either separated by the veil of life and death by muddle-headed fools like Little Lhatsun, or worn away by complications on the high plateau.

So these people had no antibodies against smallpox whatsoever.

Liu Chengzong said: "Right now the court has massed a great army south of the Yellow River at Lanzhou, and north of the Yellow River is the Gansu Grand Camp, which is raging with smallpox. On our side, only Big Brother and Yang Yao have over seven thousand troops who've been inoculated. Cleaning up the Gansu troops would be easy, but we couldn't hold the ground after taking it."

Liu the Lion had two objectives in launching this campaign. The primary goal was to resolve the grain and fodder shortage caused by last year's population influx into Xining Prefecture; the secondary goal was to seize the entire Hehuang Valley comprehensively.

At this point, fifty li of the Hehuang Valley still remained, but more than half of the grain and fodder problem had been solved as the war progressed.

Chengyun picked up the thread: "So, Brother, you plan to build a fort here and stand off against the Lanzhou government troops?"

"Not exactly a standoff — more like defense and counterattack. I've heard that five Garrison Supreme Commanders have gathered at Lanzhou. I still don't know who's leading the five garrisons, but none of them will dare use the smallpox as an excuse to halt their troops and bear the blame for losing territory. This battle is unavoidable."

"First have the Mongol troops build fortifications, and have Vice General Yang inoculate the barbarian troops. Once the barbarians are inoculated, then inoculate the Mongols. That'll give us just enough time to cultivate tens of thousands of doses of inoculum, and this year we'll inoculate all the Hehuang common folk."

Liu Chengzong's reaction to the pox breaking out on his body was very mild — it neither hindered his movement nor his thinking, and he didn't even have many pox marks. These past few days, pondering the situation, though he knew in his heart that under normal circumstances this battle was unavoidable, the Great Ming... to be honest, was very hard to fathom with normal thinking.

So he had to prepare for both possibilities — whether they came or not.

If they came, he would rely on the terrain advantage of the fortifications, use firearms, cannon, and the river to hold them off for a spell, drag things out until they grew slack, then send out the inoculated troops to strike and finish them. If they dared not come, he would use this time to build siege engines, and once the inoculation was complete, go over and seize Lanzhou.

Liu Chengzong still had no precise intelligence on exactly how many men the court's five-garrison frontier army numbered, but what he could be certain of was that the court could not afford to drag things out.

How many times had something similar happened — before they were even ready, they'd be pressed to march because of grain and fodder problems. Liu Chengzong believed this time would be no exception. That army should come attacking very soon.

Listening, Chengyun suddenly broke in with a laugh: "I saw Vice General Yang just now at the foot of the hill. He was leading a monkey — quite amusing."

"Yeah, a macaque. Li Wanqing caught it while fighting in the northern mountains. I told him to try inoculating cows with smallpox, and he turned out to be pretty good at drawing inferences — rabbits, cows, pigs, chickens, horses, sheep... everywhere he went, he tried inoculating anything that moved."

Chengyun listened to Second Brother say this, and could even picture Liu Chengzong shaking his head on the other side of the tent cloth: "Some worked, some didn't. So, Li Wanqing caught a monkey and a lynx for me to play with. He saw them and immediately wanted to take them for inoculation. If you like them, have Li Wanqing catch you one, or Yang Yao can give you one after he finishes inoculating."

Liu Chengzong said from the other side of the tent: "Ah, never mind that big genius. Have the population and land figures for He-Huang been tallied yet?"

Hearing this, Chengyun knew the brothers' idle chat was over. Though Liu Chengzong couldn't see him, he still straightened up on his side of the military tent and took out the little notebook he had prepared in advance.

Before departing Kangning Prefecture, and at Horse Farm City with Liu Xiangyu, he had considered what Second Brother might ask when they met. His little notebook was densely filled with notes, and only by relying on it could he say with full confidence: "A rough tally has been made so far; the detailed one hasn't been reported to Second Uncle yet."

"The two-hundred-li river valley of the Huang River east of Xining has over twenty-three thousand households, over one hundred twenty thousand people, and more than seven hundred twenty thousand mu of farmland. It is expected to be organized into two hundred bao and twenty xiang-bao."

Seven hundred twenty thousand mu of farmland.

Liu Chengzong drew a deep breath. He was extremely satisfied with this figure.

The He-Huang valley lands are all good fields capable of growing wheat. From west to east, the terrain lowers the further east you go. Extrapolating from this figure, once the government troops are defeated in a single campaign and the entire He-Huang region is taken, the valley farmland alone could increase by a million mu.

A million mu of farmland unaffected by drought — this was different from the farmland in Kangning Prefecture. No matter how much farmland Kangning had, with uninhabited wilderness lying in between, it could hardly provide much help. But He-Huang is separated from Gansu and Longxi only by the Yellow River, a single natural barrier — you could just charge across whenever you wanted.

Just then, Chengyun flipped through his little notebook and said: "Brother, I looked on my way here. Along the two-hundred-li road from Xining to Ice Gully, there are forty-seven north-south longitudinal ravines. The valley floor has less than one-tenth of He-Huang's population and farmland. Most of the people and land are up in the mountains."

Chengyun said: "If we can fully take the mountain lands, I estimate at least thirty thousand qing of farmland, with a population of around four hundred thousand."

Liu Chengzong actually knew about this. He said: "The mountains are all tusi or tribal domains. I plan to relocate the tusi to the west. When the time comes, the native and tribal people left behind will also be registered as common households. But that won't happen overnight — let's focus on the river valley first."

Truthfully, Liu Chengzong couldn't attend to anything else right now. Annexing the valley was a whale-swallowing operation, similar to the southern campaign against Kangning.

The shortcomings that various separatist regimes throughout history have faced during rapid short-term expansion — insufficient accumulation — were unavoidable for him as well. Professional talent was always in short supply. It was insufficient when they fought Kangning, and they had to forcibly reassign soldiers as village officials, which was like forcing a duck onto a perch, barely managing to keep things going.

Now, annexing He-Huang, it was still insufficient. But the court had stationed heavy defensive troops on the opposite bank of the Yellow River, making it impossible for him to pull soldiers away for other tasks. To the point that, subconsciously, he was reluctant to swallow the lands of the mountain regions north and south of the Huang River.

"Brother, I know what you're worried about, but I have a different view on this."

It wasn't just that Chengyun had a different view — he had very strong views. It pained him. It pained him to think of the mountain land.

In Kangning Prefecture, his job had been land reclamation. He worked himself to exhaustion, opening up the best land, yet the yield from two mu there was probably only about equal to that of the mountain fields in He-Huang.

In Chengyun's view, the forty-seven north-south longitudinal ravines of He-Huang held far more population and farmland than the Huang River valley. Though not the best land in the region, they absolutely could not be abandoned.

He said: "In the short term, we lack enough literate and numerate talent, the ravine terrain is complex and unfavorable for support, and the local tribes and natives live intermingled. Without large numbers of personnel, Second Brother's people's communes for equalizing grain and purchasing taxes probably can't be run well in the ravines. But this is precisely an opportunity."

Liu Chengzong asked: "What opportunity?"

"To leave a fallback path. Brother, this matter of the people's communes — unified grain planting, unified grain purchasing — we're doing it for the first time. It consumes manpower and resources. Whether it can succeed, we don't know. If it succeeds, whether the grain for the villagers of each township will be enough to eat, whether the military grain for the Marshal's headquarters will be enough to use — we don't know either."

"So I think the people and land in the mountains must be held firmly in our hands. At the very least, they must know that He-Huang has changed its surname."

Chengyun said: "From Xining to Ice Gully, one post station every forty li — five in total. Using these five post stations as a foundation, add five garrison towns, each with five hundred troops stationed. If the northern troops are insufficient, transfer some from the south. Set up an express relay every ten li."

In ancient times, a zhen was not entirely an administrative unit. Since the Northern Wei dynasty, it primarily referred to the name of a garrison settlement where soldiers and their families were stationed, carrying the meaning of guarding and defending.

"In my opinion," Chengyun said, "for the single river valley of He-Huang: organize bao-jia, establish people's communes, distribute farmland. The government provides seed, unifies grain planting, and purchases the harvest uniformly. For the tribal and native people of the forty-seven mountain ravines, they must also be registered as common households. Don't control what they plant, but make them pay grain to the government."

"This way, even if the people's communes' harvests are not entirely satisfactory, there will still be tax grain from the forty-seven ravines. At the same time, the two thousand five hundred troops of the five garrison towns can be mobilized at any time to overawe the various tribal and native domains, and can quickly suppress unrest when needed."

After Chengyun finished speaking, his tone finally relaxed. He asked: "Brother, did your idea of the government managing people's planting also come from the Hongwu Emperor?"

Liu Chengzong was amused by this. His idea actually had little to do with the Hongwu Emperor, though Zhu Yuanzhang did indeed control what commoners planted — just not as ruthlessly as he did.

Zhu Yuanzhang's rule was: for private fields of five to ten mu, plant half a mu each of mulberry, hemp, and cotton; for those above ten mu, double that.

Liu Chengzong laughed: "More or less, but in reverse. For each people's commune's farmland, ninety percent is collectively owned by the commune members, and ten percent is reserved for personal use by commune members — allowed for planting vegetables, cotton, mulberry, and hemp. Ninety percent must be planted with grain, but what kind of grain to plant is to be decided by erudites proficient in agriculture, elected by each township and bao, tailored to local conditions."

Having said this, Liu Chengzong exhorted: "I'll leave the matter of He-Huang's farmland to you... Once the fighting here subsides a bit and Adjutant Yang produces a safer vaccine, you should get inoculated as well, to avoid any future smallpox outbreaks."