Chapter 384: Canjiang

After the great northwestern war, the Marshal's Command, holding He-Huang within and projecting power over Qinghai without, at last possessed a foundation to settle down and sustain itself.

Liu Chengzong had every prerequisite for building a regime — money, grain, population, land, troops, and officials — all in place, yet the internal and external circumstances he faced had also grown more complex.

War is like drinking poison to quench thirst: you cannot feed a hundred thousand people, so you launch a war and seize back enough grain to feed five hundred thousand, only to turn around and find seven hundred thousand standing behind you.

The most pressing matter before Liu Chengzong now was to find ways to reduce the number of people under his command who did not produce grain yet still needed to draw rations, bringing that number down to a normal level.

The Marshal's Command's soldiers, captives, officials, craftsmen, students, and orphans were all non-productive personnel, totaling over seventy thousand.

Their officials, craftsmen, students, and orphans could not be left unsupported, so the only place to look for cuts was the army and the captives… yet, as it happened, the captives taken in this great He-Huang war were of exceptionally fine quality.

Liu Chengzong's solution was to return to the old path of the Hongwu Emperor: the wei-suo garrison system.

The wei-suo was an outstanding system of military agricultural colonies; the essential problem it set out to solve was that the court wanted professional soldiers but was unwilling, or even unable, to pay for them.

This was exactly the same problem Liu Chengzong faced.

The Hongwu Emperor was a master of designing models: military households, relying on the wei-suo to provide farm tools, arable land, plow oxen, and seed, concentrated production and broke through the low productivity of the small-peasant economy, allowing one person to support many.

But the models the Hongwu Emperor designed were all cut with zero margin, just barely sufficient; the moment the court underwent any upheaval, the wei-suo system was prone to break down.

The greatest reason military households lost their combat effectiveness was that soldiering brought no profit, leading to desertions; the remaining households, forced to meet the wei-suo's grain levies, sank into serfdom.

Therefore, as long as the court provided pay, the field armies could still draw recruits from the wei-suo and rapidly forge them into an effective fighting force.

The Eight Banners of the Jin Kingdom were essentially a Jianzhou-style wei-suo military household system; one could even say the Eight Banners represented the ideal model after a wei-suo's total collapse.

The commanders and chiliarch lords no longer needed to openly embezzle and covertly squeeze — they simply turned back the clock and became slave-holding aristocrats; the military households no longer had to be serfs — they went out directly to catch slaves.

Slaves supported military households who were near-professional soldiers, and those military households, in turn, were conscripted for campaigns to keep plundering and acquire more slaves and land.

The military households of the Great Ming dreamed of living such a life, but the Great Ming could not find that many slaves, nor did it have enemies it could plunder.

Liu Chengzong's situation was different again; the Eight Banners could not serve as a model for him to reference.

His core territory was narrow in land and dense in population — implementing a slave system would do far more harm than good; the lands beyond the sea were vast and sparsely peopled but desperately short of suitable arable land, usable only as pasture.

So Liu Chengzong's plan was to take the new city of Ju'er Bay as the dividing line: station one Garrison Battalion in the new city, station five Standing Battalions to the east, and add one Marshal's Guard Battalion, forming seven field battalions paid and rationed by the Marshal's Command, bringing this portion of the force to twenty-five thousand men.

West of Ju'er Bay, across the vast lands of Qinghai, he would establish six local agricultural garrison battalions, drawing mainly on Mongol and Western Tibetan manpower, supplemented by Han herders, to build towns, carry out nomadic production, conduct troop training, and hold the Gobi.

The most important objective was to occupy the vast uninhabited region of Qinghai; there were not many usable places to begin with, and if Liu Chengzong did not actively seize them, the bordering zones would sooner or later be snatched away by Yarkand.

Just as Liu Chengzong was reorganizing the allocation of commanders and troops across thirteen battalions, he received a report that Saghang Taiji, who had ridden back from Haibei County, was requesting an audience.

Saghang Taiji entered the yamen and immediately asked to borrow troops.

"Borrow troops? I have already ordered that Eight-Corner Fort be lent to your elder brother for defense. Once I have reorganized the army, I will march south to relieve him. What do you need to borrow troops for?"

Saghang Taiji was a clever man and had accompanied the army through the He-Huang war; he had long since seen that bloodline and legal principle carried no weight at the Marshal's Command — these people recognized only strength and practical reality.

Compared to the Chahar and Oirat, who were fighting to the death, Liu Chengzong was clearly more concerned with the Marshal's Command's internal problems; even if the two sides beat each other's brains out beyond the sea, the Marshal's Command could remain perfectly calm, wait a while, and find an opportunity to sweep them all up in one go.

But the Chahar could not afford to wait that long: thirty thousand womenfolk were in the Marshal's Command's hands. Once the Oirat had battered them down to a tribe of barely over ten thousand, even if they barely survived, would Liu Chengzong return the womenfolk to them?

Even if they had thirty thousand warriors, Liu Chengzong might still not return the womenfolk to them, let alone… compared to the Chahar's elite soldiers who had come as refugees, the Marshal's Command soldiers with their higher standard of living were clearly better marriage prospects.

A protracted war worked to Liu Chengzong's advantage, but for the Chahar, resolving the war as quickly as possible was the beneficial course.

Their positions were not the same.

Saghang Taiji said, "Grand Marshal, I fear my elder brother cannot hold out that long."

For Liu Chengzong, saving the Chahar was not difficult, and destroying the Chahar was not difficult either, but leaving the Chahar just barely alive — that was very hard to manage.

Liu the Lion mused: if I lend you troops, how am I supposed to ensure the Chahar are left half-dead after the war?

He asked, "How many men do you want to borrow?"

"Five thousand. The Mongols farming at the new city or pedaling the boats on the Western Sea will do."

This was a number arrived at after careful deliberation.

Any more and Liu Chengzong would certainly refuse; any fewer would be useless down south. Five thousand was neither too many nor too few — a force that could be put to use on any battlefield.

Most importantly, Saghang Taiji knew that Liu Chengzong had just that many idle men on hand.

Saghang Taiji had long since noticed that many Mongols under Liu Chengzong's command — men whose physiques and skills in archery and horsemanship were more than sufficient to send to the front lines — had been tossed into the rear to do rather irregular jobs.

For instance, the pedal-boat operators of the Qinghai Navy's paddle-wheel ships: each one built big and burly, yet wasting away on the sea for two bowls of parched flour over two hundred li. Off the boat, they'd set up little stoves to smoke salted fish and boil tea, living quite contentedly.

These were precisely the men Saghang wanted — enough to form an army that could turn the tide.

Liu Chengzong thought to himself: aren't you just daydreaming?

How difficult had it been to train the Tümed Horoču Mongols into competent farmers and sailors?

That was far harder than training them to be soldiers. They could pick up a hoe and farm, board a skiff and pole it, mount a wheeled boat and pedal the wheel, swing onto a horse and shoot a bow — and they even spoke Chinese with a heavy Mongol accent. All of this was the painstaking work of the Marshal's Command.

Give them to you? I'd say your face as a taiji is not small.

In Liu the Lion's heart, these survivors of the Tümed tribe ought to grow old and die on the sea, free from want for food and clothing, spending their lives turning the Qinghai pastures into farmland.

But if they were to go a step further, they should follow him marching overland and sailing the rivers, entering Guanzhong as the mightiest navy in Qinghai.

"Here is what I will do: I will lend you regular troops who have seen battle — two battalions, one at full strength and one understrength, fully equipped with sixteen cannons and ammunition, forty-six hundred Mongol soldiers."

Liu the Lion's eyes did not so much as blink; he raised his chin slightly as he looked at Saghang Taiji, and amid the latter's wild look of anticipation, raised a single index finger and said, "There is one condition."

"Grand Marshal, name it!"

"The full-strength battalion has thirty-six hundred men and is called the Khalkha Battalion, led by Canjiang Ahai Daiching; the understrength battalion has one thousand men and is called the Chahar Battalion, led by Canjiang Saghang. They will carry eight Heaven-designation General Cannons and eight five-hundred-catty Frankish breech-loaders. I will provide the gun crews."

Liu Chengzong fixed his gaze on Saghang Taiji and said, "You will become my Canjiang, and after the war, you will draw two thousand households from the Chahar tribe and merge them into the Chahar Battalion."

Saghang Taiji did not react for a moment; he stared blankly at Liu Chengzong for a long while before he grasped the meaning. "The Grand, Grand Marshal wants to grant me an official post? Wonderful!"

Clapping his hands and laughing heartily, Saghang Taiji asked, "Could we change the battalion name — something like the Grand Taiji Battalion?"

Liu Chengzong's face was expressionless as he looked at Saghang Taiji and slowly shook his head.

The smile on the Chahar taiji's face gradually faded.

Liu Chengzong's intent was not hidden, and Saghang, who had accompanied him through the He-Huang war, was no fool… Liu Chengzong's move was vicious in intent: it was meant to split the Chahar tribe in substance.

Saghang had indeed considered keeping a fallback for himself at the Han Marshal's Command, but all he had wanted was a piece of pastureland; he had never planned to work assiduously to split the Chahar.

The Chahar were already in this wretched state — if he split them again, would the Chahar even have a future?

But Liu Chengzong was utterly calm: "The mountains and seas have it recorded — the Quanrong and the Xia people share the same stock, both descended from the Yellow Emperor. Therefore I have always held that in this time of rampant natural disaster, whether Xia or Yi, all must unite heart and mind to overcome this trial together."

"The war between the Oirat and the Tatar was originally no concern of mine. I bear neither grievance nor favor toward either side. My decision to send troops and rescue the Tiger Khan was made with the future in mind."

"I have the ambition to enter and rule the Central Plains. I have no wish to idle away my years in the northwest. I heard from Magistrate Chen of Haibei that your elder brother is fond of saying the Southern Court has only one emperor, so the north should also have only one man — him. As Great Khan, he would never willingly submit to me."

Liu Chengzong slowly gestured and said, "You have been here with me a long time. You can surely see that under my rule, there is no distinction of tribe, no inquiry into origin, no division between noble and base. But tell me — after this battle, how am I to live in harmony with your elder brother?"

Chantu Taiji opened his mouth, then closed it. The question was far too difficult.

True, his brother's principle had always been to settle internal affairs first, then deal with the outside. But now the Southern Mongol steppe had already been settled out of existence by his brother — only the outside remained to deal with.

It was plain to see: through marriage alliance and trade, the Chahar would form a pact with the Marshal's Manor after this war — but the breaking of that pact was only a matter of time.

The moment the Great Ming next massed its armies in the northwest and Liu Chengzong raised his troops eastward — that would be the moment the pact shattered.

At root, Qinghai was enough for the Marshal's Manor and the Chahar to coexist. But Liu Chengzong would not give them the land that could sustain the Chahar's survival.

The grazing lands of Little Lhazang and Guru Taiji could support tens of thousands, but Liu Chengzong could not possibly give all that land to them.

Liu Chengzong gave Chantu Taiji no room to choose. He said, "That is why I must have a Chahar Camp. The Chahar Camp will receive the lands from Dulan to Golmud as its grazing territory. I will lend the former lands of the Quxian Garrison to your brother."

Chantu Taiji listened, and his brow furrowed. The Grand Marshal was using blatant favoritism to tempt him into serving as the Chahar Camp's Brigade Commander.

From Dulan to Golmud is gobi grassland — a place unfit for farming, but for nomadic herding, the land is vast, the rivers are plentiful, and apart from the cold, it is a fine place to settle.

As for the former lands of the Quxian Garrison — that is northwest from Golmud, all the way to the border with Yarkand... If that place could sustain human life, it would not be called "former lands."

To the best of Chantu Taiji's knowledge, that place held nothing but salt, stones, desert, and desert bandits.

Anyone who ended up there would become a bandit — either crossing the northwest pass to raid the towns of Yarkand, or heading northeast to plunder Golmud.

Chantu Taiji could therefore foresee it clearly: the moment he accepted Liu Chengzong's appointment as Brigade Commander of the Chahar Camp, even if he did not oppose his elder brother, the Chahar tribe, for the sake of survival, would have no choice but to accept the fate of being split apart.

It was even highly likely that they would turn their blades on their own kin for survival... The nomadic mode of production cannot achieve self-sufficiency. In the end, they would still have to rely on trade with the Gulf of Ju'er to obtain the necessities of life.

And how that trade was conducted — that, in the end, would be for Liu Chengzong to decide.

Chantu Taiji's face was written all over with chagrin. With great difficulty, he asked, "Grand Marshal, can a marriage alliance truly not set your concerns to rest?"

"A marriage alliance can prevent war — do you believe that?" Liu Chengzong let out a short laugh. "If you are unwilling to serve as Brigade Commander of the Chahar Camp, I will not force you. You can go with your brother to the Quxian Garrison. I am certain there will be other nobles in the Chahar tribe willing to take up this post."

In truth, Liu Chengzong had already done his utmost not to appear overbearing.

In reality, judging by the current situation and the shape of things to come, caught among the four powers of the Oirat, the Chahar, the Great Ming, and the Jin Kingdom, the Marshal's Manor's diplomacy was in an excruciatingly awkward position.

The Oirat and the Jin Kingdom had the least conflict with the Marshal's Manor. As long as Liu Chengzong nodded, trade, marriage alliances, intelligence sharing, even a formal pact — all would face almost no resistance.

But the Oirat had sent envoys and tribute to the Jin Kingdom, and Liu Chengzong could not possibly ally with the Jin Kingdom. That made the Oirat a hypothetical enemy to be dealt with.

The Chahar and the Great Ming, on the other hand — their conflicts with the Marshal's Manor were truly irreconcilable.

The Great Ming went without saying. If Liu Chengzong cooperated with the Great Ming, sooner or later he would be dragged down to his death. And the Chahar — fine in every other way, but fatally flawed by the existence of a Great Khan of all Mongolia.

West of Xining, the Marshal's Manor, counting the thirty thousand Chahar women, had a population of one hundred forty thousand. A hundred thousand of them were Mongols. And sprawled right beside them was a Mongol Great Khan. Never mind an eastern campaign into Guanzhong — if the Great Khan was within a thousand li, Liu Chengzong could not even sleep soundly.

In that brief span of time, Chantu Taiji ran through every possibility in his mind.

Refuse the appointment, and the Chahar would starve to death in the former lands of the Quxian Garrison, and trade with the Marshal's Manor after the war would be nearly impossible. Let someone else accept the appointment, and the Chahar would be split — perhaps even more violently split.

Accept the appointment, and once they entered the grazing lands, his elder brother would soon come raiding him. Even if his elder brother did not raid him, his elder brother's followers would drift into his own grazing lands, and when that time came, conflict between the brothers would be inevitable.

The greatest conflict on the steppe is: by what right are you eating my grass?

This had nothing to do with whether the Chahar Camp would truly stand united with Liu Chengzong. Unless some divine miracle shook Qinghai — the heavens spinning, the earth turning, the mountains crumbling — the Chahar Camp would have no choice but to oppose the Chahar tribe.

Chantu Taiji turned it over and over in his mind until he was frantic, scratching his head and tugging at his ears, wondering in his heart: why in the world had this landed on him?

He asked, "Grand Marshal... is there no room for discussion?"

"I could refrain from sending troops. I could wait until the Chahar is defeated, then attack the Oirat alone. They have forty thousand troops. My men are fewer, but they would find it very difficult to hold a prolonged standoff against me beyond the sea. I might not win, but I would not lose."

Liu Chengzong slowly shook his head. "But when that time comes, victory or defeat will have nothing to do with the Chahar anymore. There will be no Chahar."

"On the other hand — give yourself a chance, and give the Chahar Mongols a chance. We will, in the end, carve a bloody road through this age of disaster. Neither the Great Ming nor the Northern Yuan — a better nation, one that belongs to us alone."