Chapter 370: Shortcomings

Liu Chengzong's original plan was to send Yang Qi back and keep He Huchen.

He had let He Huchen go once before; he could let Yang Qi go once too. After all, He Huchen had already lost twice — even if he went back, he might not be able to keep his post as Regional Commander. But Yang Qi would have no such problem.

In the ideal scenario, after a year or so back home, Yang Qi could recruit and train a new Guyuan army. When the government troops came to suppress them again, he could hand this new army right over to Liu Chengzong.

What Liu Chengzong never expected, however, was that Yang Qi was actually from Lanzhou.

That said, even in defeat, there are ways to surrender. Sometimes surrender means making yourself useful to the other side; sometimes it simply means no longer standing against them.

On the walk from the battle lines to the earthen hill, Yang Qi saw Liu Chengzong's army: Mongol cavalry in scattered groups of three or five, Western Tribal soldiers standing in rigid formation with a bearing utterly unlike the others, and the swaggering Han infantry, cavalry, and artillery.

When he climbed the earthen hill and saw Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu at Liu Chengzong's side, Yang Qi made his decision to surrender on the spot.

How far a man can go in this world — opportunity matters greatly, but what matters more is whether he has the ability to seize it.

In the Ming dynasty, if you wanted an official post, you could have your father work hard for it. Whether civil or military, he could earn his son a post — generally, a Chief Minister of the upper second rank could secure a lower sixth-rank post for his child.

But getting a post was easy; rising through the ranks was hard. This was especially true for military posts — few men ever won promotion without battle merit.

Yang Qi was an exception.

He was a man of the Lanzhou Guard, not born into a military family. That he had reached his present station was, of course, carved out blade by blade and shot by shot. Yet in his long military career, there was one promotion he truly owed to luck — and it crossed the hardest threshold for any military officer: the leap from Regional Commander to Vice Regional Commander.

That was twenty years ago. Yang Qi, then a young and promising Lanzhou Chiliarch, was selected for the personal guard battalion of Shaanxi Grand Coordinator Li Qiyuan, serving as Battalion Commander of the Guard.

Li Qiyuan was a Presented Scholar from Nanhe County, Shunde Prefecture, who had started his career as a Secretary in the Ministry of Revenue. He had served in Shaanxi as Guannan Vice Commissioner and then Administration Commissioner, and he thought highly of young officers like Yang Qi. On the strength of autumn defense merits, Yang Qi was promoted to Central Army Commander of the guard battalion.

Central Army Commander was the title of the guard battalion's commanding officer, whose duty was to lead the Grand Coordinator's personal guard. The Central Army Commander of a Grand Coordinator's guard battalion held the rank of Regional Commander; that of a Supreme Commander's guard battalion held the rank of Vice Regional Commander.

Just as he took up the post of Central Army Commander in the Grand Coordinator's guard battalion, the Wanli Emperor passed away. The Taichang Emperor promoted Shaanxi Grand Coordinator Li Qiyuan to Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers.

In the second year of Tianqi, Supreme Commander Li Qiyuan submitted a memorial requesting the title of Vice Regional Commander for him — it went through without a hitch.

Unfortunately, the next year, Old Master Li went to Nanjing to serve as Minister of Revenue, and the year after that, to Beijing in the same post. A Minister had no guard battalion, so Yang Qi became Regional Commander of Yansui.

By his own reckoning, Yang Qi had never made a mistake in managing troops, yet whenever a major event occurred, he always ended up saddled with strange blame.

When he went to Shanhai Pass as Regional Commander, Grand Strategist Gao had always looked down on him. When the great battle of Ningyuan came, the Grand Strategist ordered all troops inside the pass to withdraw behind the walls. When the front line faltered, Grand Strategist Gao accused him of cowardice and failing to advance, and threw him out beyond the pass.

Yang Qi had done nothing at all. The front line fought the battle without him, and he carried a black pot on his back all the way back to Guyuan as Regional Commander.

Later, when the Chongzhen Emperor dispatched reinforcements to Liaodong, Yang Qi still accomplished nothing. He worried that the relief troops lacked pay and provisions. Old Master Liang Tingdong of the Ministry of War said: "The people have their own grain — why must everything depend on the Ministry of Revenue?"

So they did as Old Master Liang said. The border troops were billeted in commoners' homes, which led to the Anding Gate disturbances.

Yang Qi carried another black pot on his back and went back to Guyuan.

Dodging black pots had become Yang Qi's instinct.

This time, four of the five routes were defeated. The only one that wasn't was the sickly Wang Xingshan — he could throw his pot onto smallpox. Yang Qi figured that since He Huchen had now lost twice, he certainly wouldn't be going back.

If he himself went back, on his left would be Gansu Vice Regional Commander Wang Xingshan with a pack of invalids, on his right would be Yansui Vice Regional Commander You Shilu with inflamed testicles, and in the middle would stand him — a Regional Commander with four sound limbs and a healthy body and mind.

Who the pot of defeat would land on — wasn't that obvious?

Based on this analysis, Yang Qi felt that going back would bring no good end. Lanzhou was close at hand; a second battle was certain.

They couldn't win in the field, and defending the city was even more hopeless. Even if they managed to hold Lanzhou, once Liu Chengzong withdrew his troops, an even bigger black pot would come crashing down on his skull… Wouldn't the elders of Lanzhou pin all the losses in the countryside on his head?

Better to surrender right here and be done with all that dogshit trouble.

Only, this put He Huchen, who had been mentally prepared for none of this, in an extremely awkward spot. Kowtowing after a defeat was perfectly normal — after all, he wasn't planning to die rather than surrender — but this Yang Qi hadn't even given a man a heads-up. Now that you've kowtowed, doesn't that just make me stand out for still standing?

He Huchen glanced at Yang Qi, then at the two titans of the Marshal's headquarters standing to the left and right before the commander's desk, and finally met the eyes of Liu Chengzong behind the desk. He too bowed and prostrated himself: "He Huchen, a defeated general, kowtows to the Great Marshal."

Liu Chengzong had seen the sequence of their actions with perfect clarity. He rose and stepped forward to help them up, saying, "Since you two old generals are willing to surrender to me, past deeds done in service to your former master shall not be held against you. When assignments are given after the war, I ask that you devote yourselves fully to your duties."

He wasn't worried about the two of them trying something like an assassination. Truth be told, even if they were armed, let alone empty-handed, the age difference alone meant they might not be his match.

At the moment, he was in the middle of discussing further plans with Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu and had no time for the two of them. He simply had his bodyguards escort them away. The remaining several hundred defeated troops were also disarmed and stripped of their gear, then sent back to their respective camps by the routes they had come.

If these two were willing to lead troops, he had already prepared official posts for them in his mind: Vice General.

In the imperial court, Vice General meant Vice Regional Commander. But under Liu Chengzong, Vice General meant the deputy to a Battalion Regional Commander.

Battalion Vice General was not a high rank. After all, they had surrendered only after being defeated. In Liu Chengzong's understanding, the court was using Regional Commanders as mere Regional Commanders, each leading three to five thousand men on roving patrols — they weren't doing the actual job of a Regional Commander at all.

On the other hand, once this war ended, many men in Liu Chengzong's own core forces would need promotion. The army would have to be reorganized into at least seven battalions. Building a united front with the enemy was one thing, but understanding who his true base was mattered far more.

He couldn't promote Huang Shengxiao to Battalion Regional Commander and then assign him as a subordinate officer under the surrendered general He Huchen.

Making defeated Regional Commanders serve as Battalion Vice Generals wasn't too low a rank either.

After meeting the two surrendered Regional Commanders, the main camp ate a meal. The surrendered-troop overseers commandeered the landlord's compound on the northern mountain plateau. The bodies of the fallen from both sides were buried, and the entire river valley fell silent in the daylight hours.

Everyone had been up all night; all were utterly exhausted.

Only a handful of officers still buzzed with the excitement of victory. Liu Chengzong's wakefulness was not entirely due to excitement. He first sent word of the victory to his elder brother on the northern route, who was still besieging the mountain fort. He also took the opportunity to write a letter to Wang Xingshan, hoping to persuade the Gansu army to surrender.

Even if he couldn't persuade them to surrender, persuading them to withdraw would do.

His own troops couldn't move today; they would have to wait until tomorrow to send reinforcements north for a flanking maneuver.

Apart from that, the greatest force driving him to forgo sleep was the deficit… Right now, the surrendered troops east and west of Hehuang were eating over ten thousand catties of his military grain every day. That was all processed field grain — converted back to raw grain, it came to at least two hundred dan per day.

With costs so enormous, he had to get these men moving — working for him, exerting themselves for him.

The fewer things a man possesses, the stingier he becomes.

At the very start of this campaign, Liu Chengzong had not actually been rational. He had simply realized, with no other options, that this was a good opportunity to intervene in Hehuang. From that moment on, his mind had been filled with nothing but how to win.

But it was only this morning, when he realized he had already won this campaign, that all his rationality came flooding back.

He began calculating costs, tallying his remaining grain — and naturally, he became exceedingly tight-fisted.

Not only did he find the daily cost of feeding the surrendered troops exorbitantly high, but even the thirty-two thousand commoners in the southern mountains, whom Zhong Bao had organized into over sixty Hundred-Household Units, now struck Liu Chengzong as a terrible drain on his resources.

The quiet that had settled over the Hehuang Valley made Lion Liu's mind sharper and sharper.

It also allowed him, even as he laid out the next phase of deployment, to reflect on the gains and losses of this campaign.

In his command tent, Liu Chengzong wrote down his impressions of the government troops at his desk: six characteristics — insufficient resolve among the commanding generals, inadequate authority for the officers, weak will among the common soldiers, shortages of provisions and fodder, relatively poor equipment, and insufficient war preparations.

Now that the campaign was over, through captives like Bee-Tail Needle, Liu Chengzong gradually reconstructed the course of the battle. The reasons for the Five-Garrison Coalition's loss of initiative and disarray became ever clearer to him.

The so-called Five-Garrison Regional Commanders — in this campaign, never mind coordinating operations, even the three Regional Commanders on the central route couldn't manage unified command or coordination. At best, they were three Regional Commanders marching through the Hehuang Valley at the same time.

At the level of frontline fierce generals, each of the Regional Commanders had performed quite well, but they were far from worthy of the title of Great Marshal.

Once a battle plan is set, some want to do it, some don't, some want to but dare not — when carrying out the mission they look ahead and behind, unable to steel their resolve to advance west, lacking the decisiveness to withdraw east.

Without preparation, without intelligence, they have only hot-blooded courage. Like dealing with ordinary roving bandits, they ask only where the enemy is, not even how many, and charge straight in — then at the slightest setback, they lose their minds and fall into disarray.

For a commander like that to succeed, it takes the massive operational support of a great state's national power.

And the true irony is that Liu Chengzong is on this same level — except that on the ground west of the Pass, Liu Chengzong's Marshal Manor is stronger than the Great Ming's national power.

In terms of war preparation, the Marshal Manor, poor in land and people, has been preparing for the next war ever since it entered Xining.

In terms of funds, grain, and supplies, everything the Marshal Manor possesses can be used for war.

In terms of military training, Liu Chengzong's soldiers have not gone hungry a single day.

Liu Chengzong has even formed his own guess as to why the five garrison regional commanders have fought the war to this state — the answer lies in the official titles of Wang Chengen, He Huchen, and the others.

It lies right in the Left Chief Commissioner, Right Chief Commissioner, and Vice Chief Commissioner of their official posts.

The Five Chief Military Commissions were not merely five war zones, but also the administrative and command organs for regional troops. In the past, men like Wang Chengen and He Huchen would have held posts in the Chief Military Commissions, managing regional troops in peacetime; only when war broke out and the court appointed them as Regional Commander would they gain command authority and lead troops into battle.

Their focus was on refining military affairs and managing guard forces. When war came, troops were assembled from an entire Chief Military Commission — they arrived ready to fight.

Now the Chief Military Commissions are gone, and these men hold no posts in the Ministry of War either. Everything relies on a single Grand Coordinator or Supreme Commander. Managing local matters requires procedural approval from the Ministry of War, but if you stay out of the war-fighting side, you're just a human-shaped rubber stamp; if you get involved, you may not understand military affairs.

Every Regional Commander got his post by being able to fight with the troops he brought himself. They no longer need to consider the combat capability of an entire Chief Military Commission's guard forces the way a Grand Commissioner once did — they only need to lead one highly effective battalion.

Several Regional Commanders, all quite capable in battle, thrown together — none yields to another, none obeys another. So you're a Left Chief Commissioner, so what? I fight one more battle and I'll be a Left Chief Commissioner too. We're all Regional Commanders — what gives you the right to order me?

When the Yansui garrison army was broken through, the Guyuan army and Ningxia army did not turn back to reinforce. In the end, You Shilu was not the Supreme Commander. If the Supreme Commander were about to be killed behind them, they would have brought their troops back no matter what to complete a counter-envelopment.

A complete military system of command, training, selection, farming colonies, and campaigning has degenerated into this present free-for-all of Regional Vice Commanders. Who is the most capable Regional Vice Commander matters a great deal, but the ability of a supreme commander to direct large-corps operations no longer matters.

Today's Regional Commanders are all specialized talents cultivated under this model. The ideal is not Guan Yu or Yue Fei, but Cao Wenzhao.

The reason Liu Chengzong analyzes this is not to flog the Ming army's corpse after the campaign ends, but because the Marshal Manor, born out of the Ming military system, suffers from the same flaw — and he has reached this checkpoint: the highest rank in the Marshal Manor is currently Regional Vice Commander.

In the short term, his leading campaigns in person is no problem, but in the long view, this framework is unstable.

To say nothing else — if he does not go on campaign and sends only Wang Wenxiu and Yang Yao out with the troops, as long as they meet no setbacks they will sweep all before them, but the moment they hit a setback, their performance will be just as directionless as the three garrison Regional Commanders.

For now, however, his opponent is the Great Ming, and this problem cannot be solved by slapping his head in a rush. Far more important is finishing off Wang Xingshan's army, seizing the native chieftains of Yongdeng and Liancheng, and advancing toward Lanzhou.

He does not intend to seize Lanzhou city. Seizing Lanzhou city would further intensify the conflict, driving the court to frantically mobilize troops for a second encirclement campaign. To be honest… Liu Chengzong has weighed the limits of war each side can bear, and he is deeply afraid of another campaign like this in a short time.

One more campaign like this, and the Marshal Manor faces a dead end.

Lose, and it is death; win, and it is collapse… If he does not accept surrendering troops, the court can continue to organize a third campaign. The Great Ming may lack grain, but its arms and armor manufacturing capacity is very strong, and the reserve troop strength of the northwestern garrisons is ample. Drag it out until the spring planting season passes, and he is finished.

Accepting surrenders is equally unbearable — unless he advances into the Guanzhong plain. But once he charges into Guanzhong, plundering becomes impossible. Even if he seizes grain, he cannot transport it back. The battle line would be too long; he cannot swallow that much territory. Hehuang and Lanzhou would all be lost, and the result would be internal chaos.

Therefore, the purpose of advancing east is to plunder the money, grain, and livestock of all wealthy households in Lanzhou, Hezhou, Lintao, and other places — but there is no need to seize people.

He is not the Later Jin, and Hehuang is not the Northeast. There is no great plain for him to farm. At present, the six to seven hundred thousand people of Hehuang are sufficient for cultivation. Further seizing population would make famine in Hehuang unavoidable.

To accomplish this step, he must first transfer Cheng Yun over. The cowhide and sheepskin rafts they rushed to produce at Kangning Prefecture can be put to use, and together with the rafts captured from the government troops, they are enough for a large force to cross the Yellow River quickly.

At the same time, Cheng Yun can transport the seized provisions and wealth back from the rear.

Second, he must formulate a thorough and precise plundering plan: rely on surrendered troops to divide the region into zones and sectors, draw up a list of major households and powerful gentry, and assign tactical missions to each unit.

Use the main force to besiege Lanzhou, while the plundering detachments conduct rapid reconnaissance, rapid breakthroughs, and rapid withdrawals across a territory two hundred li wide and deep — using the shortest time, the fastest speed, and the most precise intent to strip away every last piece of wealth.