Chapter 428: Ü-Tsang

After the start of autumn, Hehuang grew colder by the day, and Kangning Prefecture up on the plateau had already frozen over.

On the third floor of Zhaqu Manor in Nangqian County, Cao Yao sat beside the stove in the sunroom, his face dark and brooding as he pressed tobacco bit by bit into a jade-carved pipe; laid at his hand were two unfolded letters and a memorial urging enthronement from Ü-Tsang.

Seated opposite him was Baigan Taiji, clad in thick Ü-Tsang brocade, a kindly smile on his face, while two Mongol warriors, their waist belts and sabers already removed, stood beside him.

Cao Yao raised a hand, pointed at the two Mongol guards, then flicked his finger to the side: "Get out."

The two guards looked awkwardly toward Baigan Taiji; the latter's smile froze, and he gave two slight nods.

Once the guards had left, Cao Yao handed his pipe to an attendant to light, then fixed his dark gaze on Baigan once more, staring until Baigan grew uneasy, before he ground his teeth and said softly: "The Grand Marshal was acclaimed Khan by the Mongol tribes. I told you to make a gesture, and this is the gesture you three brothers come up with?"

Of the two letters at his hand, one was the public proclamation that Liu Chengzong had been acclaimed Khan, circulated far and wide; the other was a letter written personally by Liu Chengzong, telling him he was about to marry, calling him and Yang Dingrui back to Xining, and casually asking his opinion on a successor for Kangning Prefecture.

And that memorial urging enthronement was written to Liu Chengzong by the three Huoluochi brothers of the Qinghai Tümed tribe — Baigan Taiji, Lhazang, and Guru Taiji — urging the Great Khan to inherit the great succession and ascend the throne as Emperor of the Great Yuan.

The gesture Cao Yao had wanted was for the three brothers in Ü-Tsang to offer some blessings, express their support, and submit a memorial of submission — that would have been enough. But this memorial urging enthronement that Baigan Taiji brought, in his eyes, was nothing but troublemaking nonsense.

Never mind for now that urging someone to proclaim himself emperor is the sort of thing that gets people killed.

Who would want to inherit that ill-starred dynastic title? The real Great Yuan had long ago been smashed to ruin by the ancestors; what remained was called the Northern Yuan only because the Mongols propped it up for the sake of face. Generally speaking, its proper designation ought to be Remnant Scum of the Yuan.

Even setting aside ten thousand steps, if they really were going to proclaim an emperor, they absolutely could not use Great Yuan. Anyway, if they proclaimed an emperor right now, Cao Yao figured they had an eighty-percent chance of never fighting their way back into the interior. In that case, the dynastic title should be Great Qing.

If they were aiming to fight their way back into the interior, Cao Yao thought that title of Dunta Ulus was very fine. Later on, when Liu the Lion proclaimed himself king, the dynastic title could be Great Zhong, with the reign title Unification.

They could use the dynastic title that the Taizu Emperor had once wanted but never got to use.

Baigan Taiji forced a smile and said, "The Grand Marshal proclaiming himself emperor — isn't that a good thing?"

"A good thing?"

Cao Yao leaned forward, looking at Baigan Taiji with great seriousness: "It seems to me… you three brothers are pretty furious about the Grand Marshal being acclaimed Khan, aren't you?"

Baigan Taiji, his thoughts struck dead-on, blinked and glanced aside before defending himself: "How could we be angry?"

Cao Yao said nothing, merely turned his head to exhale a breath of stale air, then raised his hand, tore the Huoluochi brothers' memorial urging enthronement in two, and tossed it into the stove.

Truth be told, Cao Yao was not the least bit surprised by the news that Liu Chengzong had been acclaimed Khan by the Mongol nobility. His reaction was the same as that of the vast majority of Han and non-Han officers in the Marshal's headquarters: good, but it doesn't really matter.

Because proclaiming oneself King, Emperor, or Khan — at root, it is all the same thing; it represents the hierarchy of status and the distribution of benefits.

Kublai Khan relied on the hereditary Han military households to contend for the realm, and there was nothing improper about him ascending the throne as emperor. Although Cao Yao still did not understand exactly what agreement Liu Chengzong had reached with the Oirats, the Marshal's headquarters alone had tens of thousands of Mongol troops under its command, and ninety percent of its territory was pastureland — being acclaimed Khan was only right and proper.

But Liu Chengzong could not proclaim himself emperor, because the time was not yet right. Proclaiming himself emperor would mean it was time to settle accounts with his subordinates; official posts and noble titles would all have to be handed out, and given the territory they currently held, they could not afford it.

That said, Cao Yao had seen things far more absurd.

Take, for example, the very Baigan Taiji sitting before him — now the master of the Ü-Tsang snowlands.

Kangning was not far from Ü-Tsang. Although Ü-Tsang was boundless and endless, its main population was concentrated in the Lhasa River Valley. Moreover, Kangning Prefecture had always maintained trade with the Huoluochi armed group that had entered Tibet, so the lag in information was basically between one and six months.

One month was when the three Huoluochi brothers took the initiative to inform them; six months was the time it took for rumors to reach Chamdo.

These past two years, not only had Liu Chengzong been busy campaigning in the north, but the three Huoluochi brothers of the Tümed tribe had also been busy campaigning in Ü-Tsang. It was only this year that the three brothers finally stormed the Samdrubtse Dzong Fortress, entered the Lhasa River Valley, and became the kings of Tibet in name and in fact.

But in Cao Yao's eyes, whether they had truly "entered and taken charge" or not… the difference was not all that great.

This time last year, Baigan Taiji's envoy had passed through Chamdo to Nangqian and sought out Cao Yao to borrow men — men who knew how to use an abacus. They said that many nobles of Ü-Tsang had already submitted to them, and only the Tsangpa Khan's stronghold at Zongshan Fortress remained uncaptured.

Cao Yao had no idea whether these three brothers, having experienced defeat in Qinghai, had learned the value of unity, or whether they had found new enemies in Ü-Tsang that made them lose interest in infighting.

In any case, they were living quite happily in Ü-Tsang, and the strategy they employed was simple and easy to grasp: plunder.

There was no helping it. Relative to the local armies of Ü-Tsang, the complex terrain and sturdy mountain fortresses could, to the greatest extent, neutralize the advantages of the Mongol cavalry.

But in field battles, the Ü-Tsang armies could not gain any advantage either.

So the local nobles refused to engage the Huoluochi brothers in a decisive pitched battle, preferring instead to make them gnaw and hammer away at one mountain fortress after another.

The three brothers were naturally not that foolish. They stretched the span of the war out; one Mongol cavalry unit after another roamed the highland snowfields, plundering every territory.

If the enemy fled or held out in their fortresses, it did not matter. They would plunder the population, livestock, wealth, and grain outside the fortress until nothing was left, then return to their own grazing lands.

Then the trade caravans would set out for Chamdo, and they would sell off all the able-bodied laborers and valuables into Chamdo — they could not sustain them if they kept them anyway.

The next year, they would dispatch troops again and ask those enemies: will you submit or not? If not, they would do it all over again.

Everyone was tormented by this method of warfare until they lost all their defiance and submitted memorials of allegiance one after another. Lhazang became the religious leader of Ü-Tsang at Zongshan, Guru Taiji became the political leader, and Baigan Taiji became the military leader… they became the masters of the snowlands.

Their policy remained unchanged: collect a ten-percent tribute each year, and pay no heed to anything else. The local regions continued their separatism as before; everything went on as it always had.

Baigan Taiji had asked Cao Yao to lend him men who understood the abacus and knew arithmetic for no other reason than to find some clever people to bring into Ü-Tsang, so they could calculate the annual incomes of those noble fiefdoms clearly and plainly, the better to collect the tribute.

It was not that the three Huoluochi brothers did not understand the structure of Kangning Prefecture. Baigan Taiji still remembered his agreement with Liu Chengzong. He would have liked Liu the Lion to dispatch officials to govern the territory for him; he would have liked to cut down the local nobles.

They simply could not do it.

On one hand, Baigan Taiji had tried to manage the territory according to Kangning Prefecture's methods, establishing county government posts, but unless they stirred up another war and smashed Ü-Tsang to pieces, setting up such posts was the same as not setting them up at all.

On the other hand, Yang Dingrui refused to dispatch officials to Ü-Tsang — they did not even have enough officials for their own use.

Kangning Prefecture had seven counties, and over two years they had indeed trained quite a few people who could read, but these were all former nobles who already had a certain level of education. The children in whom they placed their high hopes had not yet grown up.

Moreover, regarding the Ü-Tsang question, Yang Dingrui and Cao Yao, the chief military and civil officers of Kangning Prefecture, held the same view: neither wanted the Marshal's headquarters to bring Ü-Tsang under direct rule.

Occupying Kangning could still be justified as building a forward base for advancing into Sichuan. But what would occupying Ü-Tsang be for — performing the Feng and Shan sacrifices on the Himalayas?

In Cao Yao's view, punching through the Lhasa River Valley would be very easy for the troops under his command. There would be no need to dispatch any great general; as long as they could safely cross the treacherous road into Tibet, giving Li the Old Jackal three thousand men would be enough to sweep through the Lhasa River Valley in one push.

More men would be useless; given the terrain there, thirty thousand troops would be far less flexible than three thousand.

But occupation — that was not something three thousand troops could accomplish.

Now was not the time for such a thing.

In fact, occupying and governing Kangning Prefecture had already caused Yang Dingrui and Cao Yao, the two great generals of the Marshal's headquarters, to suffer untold hardship.

By now, the troops commanded by Cao Yao, Li the Old Jackal, and Luo Rucai had all transformed from the medium-armor mounted infantry they had been when they first entered Kangning into entirely light-equipped musketeers.

This was the only way they could maintain their combat effectiveness under existing conditions.

Warhorses, donkeys, and mules had died or broken down in droves during the campaigns to pacify rebellions and suppress bandits on the plateau. Having lost their tall, sturdy Hequ horses, they could only replenish with local horses. The local horses were adept at traveling the highlands and would not die off in large numbers during combat, but their carrying capacity was somewhat inferior.

The best load for a Kangning horse was one hundred Ming jin, with which it could travel sixty li a day on the plateau.

Adapting to local conditions, the equipment and tactics of the entire army had all changed. At first, they had two horses per man, but later they found that too extravagant, because the seven counties in the region all needed horses as a means of transport as well.

Later they switched to a single horse per man, but a single horse's carrying capacity was insufficient, so they could only reduce their load.

Because the Marshal's army was highly mule-and-horse mobile, its load had always been heavy. Suddenly losing so many warhorses, and with mountain warfare in Kangning not allowing large numbers of vehicles to follow, the army's combat strength plummeted.

Bows and firelocks are both heavy. Two bows and four quivers of arrows, counting the bow case and quiver case, weigh twenty jin. One firelock, a hundred rounds of ammunition, and five coils of match cord weigh nearly thirty jin.

Add their padded coats, armor, helmets, weapons, and field rations, and a fully armored soldier's normal load was basically around eighty jin. Under present conditions, they could only go into battle light.

First they shed armor and carried shields. Later, as the Kangning Prefecture Armory Bureau gained more military craftsmen, they simply dropped the shields too — every man got a firelock and a waist saber. Finally they even dropped the waist saber, carrying only a gun-blade when they went bandit-suppressing.

If not forced by circumstances, Cao Yao would absolutely never let soldiers go to the battlefield like this.

Since the re-equipping at Kangning Prefecture, seventeen bandit-suppression battles large and small had occurred. Cao Yao had seen many times in battle reports Li Laochai and Luo Rucai describing scenes of soldiers charging with gun-blades and shattering enemy lines.

But this could not fool Cao Yao. He knew such imagined scenes did not exist, though he did not mind commanders using such rhetoric to boost their soldiers' courage.

After all, Cao Yao was the earliest man in the Marshal's headquarters to use the gun-blade. Before Liu Chengzong had even become a soldier, Cao Yao was already using gun-blades in the capital army's firearms camp.

Soldiers could shatter enemy lines with these entirely because they had so many firelocks that the enemy simply could not trade fire with them. But to say soldiers fixed gun-blades not to pursue already-broken enemies, but to genuinely charge and break them with these... Cao Yao felt you could swap in a different general.

Take the Marshal's headquarters' number one horse archer Liu Chengzong for example. If Lion Liu had any random thing in his hand, even a two-chi-long gun-blade, Cao Yao would not want to fight him — no confidence of victory.

But if Lion Liu held a matchlock with a gun-blade fixed, never mind giving him a long spear — even giving him a quick-fire lance of similar length, Cao Yao felt it would be no big problem, he could fight.

The gun-blade is under two jin; the firelock is over eight jin. Fixed together they weigh ten jin, and the way you grip it basically makes it an exotic weapon.

An eight-chi short spear only weighs five jin. A matchlock with a blade fixed is at a huge disadvantage fighting against something like that.

But Cao Yao did not think the thing was useless. It solved the problem of having versus not having. At a disadvantage against cold weapons, but in a fight against firelock troops, the side with gun-blades definitely had the edge.

He used to think this set of treasures was born at the wrong time. Now he no longer thought so.

Because before, the force around them that used firearms the most was the Ming army. The Ming army equipped itself with gun-blades, but still could not stab through anyone else's cold weapons. Yet now, the force with the highest firearm equipment rate was still the Ming army — and that made things interesting.

So gun-blades were actually quite necessary.

Cao Yao planned, on this trip back to Xining for Liu Chengzong's wedding, to bring a company of light firelock troops with him, to let Lion Liu see the Kangning Prefecture army and gauge their combat strength, so he wouldn't make a wrong strategic judgment later.

Thinking this side was three thousand heavy troops entering Sichuan, when in fact it was three thousand light firelock troops — that would be a joke when the time came.

From Lion Liu's order transferring them north, Cao Yao had already discerned that the Marshal's headquarters' future strategic center of gravity would shift eastward.

Now his only worry was the Huoluochi brothers in Ü-Tsang, especially after those three fellows had produced that memorial urging enthronement... They wanted to declare themselves Khan.

Baiyan Taiji watched helplessly as Cao Yao burned the memorial urging enthronement, staring wide-eyed, not knowing what to say, when he heard Cao Yao say: "Write it now — forget it, you come back to Xining with me, face the Grand Marshal and tell him yourself."

"I go to Xining?"

Baiyan Taiji did not want to go to Xining. He remembered how Liu Chengzong had dealt with those nobles in Kangning Prefecture. Now their brothers had become the biggest nobles in Ü-Tsang.

This made him afraid to go see Liu Chengzong. He could only evade, saying: "How about Marshal Cao goes first, and I go back to prepare gifts for the Grand Marshal?"

Cao Yao shook his head without a second thought: "Baiyan Taiji, why do you think we do not enter Ü-Tsang?"

Baiyan did not know why Cao Yao asked this. After a moment's thought, he said: "The Grand Marshal is a man who will enter the Central Plains and become the Great Emperor. Ü-Tsang is a remote, out-of-the-way corner — the Grand Marshal does not think much of it."

Cao Yao shook his head again, looking at Baiyan with a faint, ambiguous smile: "Ü-Tsang is remote, but if we wanted to go, we've already reached Chamdo — is Dzongshan really that far? Not necessarily."

"Three years ago we did not enter Ü-Tsang because Ü-Tsang was too high. We have been stationed in Chamdo and Nangqên for three years now — Ü-Tsang is no longer high."

These words sent a chill straight up Baiyan Taiji's tailbone.

In truth, the strength of the Huoluochi tribes had grown many times over compared to before they entered Tibet.

But he clearly remembered how Liu Chengzong had stormed the Nangqên Qianmo Palace three years ago. Those mountain fortresses, difficult to assault and solid, were as good as empty decorations before the Marshal's headquarters' firearms troops.

And in these two years, the Marshal's headquarters' power to intimidate him had only increased, not diminished.

"The reason we do not enter Ü-Tsang now is entirely because the Grand Marshal regards you as a friend."

－－－－－－Off-topic－－－－－－

Good evening!