Chapter 455: Five-Province Supreme Commander

On the fifteenth day of the second month in the seventh year of Chongzhen, an imperial envoy bearing an edict entered Pingliang Prefecture.

The Emperor was not harsh toward Prince Su, who had long been known for virtue; the so-called punishment was no more than a token fine — merely the forfeiture of his stipend rice for three years.

Prince Su's stipend level was the lowest among all the princely estates, equivalent to that of a Chief Minister of the second rank; docking this was, for both the court and Prince Su, little more than a joke.

Prince Han, on the other hand, who always looked like he was just muddling along waiting to die, seemed to be thoroughly out of the Emperor's favor — even though it was Prince Su who had abandoned Lanzhou and fled, the Emperor ordered Prince Han's estate in Pingliang to cover all expenses for the hundred-odd members of Prince Su's household taking refuge there.

This enraged Prince Han so much that he shut his doors and cursed furiously that the fourth ancestor's branch of the family had never produced a single decent person!

But the Son of Heaven's envoy had entered Shaanxi not specifically to punish Prince Su or torment Prince Han; his primary purpose was to meet with the Grand Coordinator of Yansui, Chen Qiyu, and confer upon him a new official post decided after court deliberation.

This new post was Right Vice Minister of War, concurrently Right Vice Censor-in-Chief, with supreme command over military affairs in Shaanxi, Shanxi, Henan, Huguang, and Sichuan.

At this moment, Chen Qiyu became the most powerful provincial grandee in the Great Ming Empire, and the Chongzhen Emperor cast his net over Li Zicheng and the others.

To the northeast of this great net was the Grand Coordinator of Henan, Xuan Mo, leading Zuo Liangyu and Tang Jiuzhou to deploy troops at strategic points.

To the northwest was the Grand Coordinator of Shaanxi, Lian Guoshi, leading He Renlong and Zhang Yingchang to garrison Xi'an; and to the south was Grand Coordinator Lu Xiangsheng, leading Li Yuhua and Zhou Shifeng to garrison Xunyang.

To the southeast was the Grand Coordinator of Huguang, Tang Hui, who was gathering his troops and holding the borders at Nanzhang.

The weakest sector among them was Lu Xiangsheng's defense zone, because in this world there was no such thing as the Tianxiong Army — Tianxiong Army was merely a nickname the common folk gave to the force Lu Xiangsheng had commanded when he served as Military Defense Circuit Intendant of Daming Prefecture.

And the actual composition of that force was the village militia, civilian braves, and landlord regiments of the three prefectures of Daming, Guangping, and Shunde — exactly the same nature as the loyal gentry armed forces of Sanyuan in Shaanxi's early days.

When trouble arose, officials and gentry above took the lead, the populace raised military funds and equipment, and the loyal and righteous among the common people would spontaneously arm themselves and throw themselves into battle; once the matter was settled, the unit designation was dissolved, and everyone went back home to their own families.

What's more, the so-called "Tianxiong" was the name of a separatist garrison army from the Tang dynasty; Lu Xiangsheng was, after all, an official — only someone with a hole in his brain would keep such a unit designation around him.

Lu Xiangsheng had ridden alone to take up his post in Xunyang; it was impossible for him to bring the Daming Prefecture landlord regiments with him, so he had no directly subordinate troops — only the five hundred garrison soldiers left by the previous grand coordinator, all old, weak, sick, or disabled. To prevent Xunyang from falling, he was racking his brains for a solution.

For this, Lu Xiangsheng had three strategies. The worst was to recruit refugees, civilian braves, or landlord forces on the spot and train them; the drawback was that it would take a long time and consume provisions and supplies.

The middling strategy was to write back to his hometown in Changzhou Prefecture, recruit fellow provincials familiar with military affairs to come, and establish a grand coordinator's garrison force of a thousand troops; the advantage was reliability and ease of use, the drawback was that their combat strength would not be strong.

The best strategy, of course, was to directly ask the court for troops — guest armies, the kind that were especially good at fighting.

The first force Lu Xiangsheng set his sights on was the Sichuan army under General Deng Qi. This army had worked tirelessly without complaint, and its conduct had always been very good in the past. However, everyone knew Deng Qi's Sichuan troops could fight, and many grand coordinators had their eyes on him — Tang Hui in Huguang also wanted Deng Qi to come over.

He was well aware that even if he could get Deng Qi's army under his command, he probably wouldn't be able to keep them for long. The Sichuan troops had been away from home for four years, and their military discipline was already deteriorating.

Therefore, another army entered Lu Xiangsheng's field of vision: the Guanning Army.

If the deterioration of discipline among interior guest armies due to prolonged deployment away from home was a flaw, then the Guanning Army, whose military discipline and conduct had remained consistent from start to finish, was perfectly flawless.

Guanning's discipline had never been particularly good; besides, outside the passes was a battlefield, so being transferred inside the passes to fight was basically equivalent to a long holiday between battles. Neither officers nor soldiers would feel much homesickness — a campaign of three to five years, and they'd grow happier the longer they fought.

At this very moment, there were two Guanning armies that had entered the Central Plains. One was led by Cao Wenzhao, under Hong Chengchou's command, but this force was now in reality northwestern border troops led by Guanning officers.

The other, led by Li Chongzhen and Zu Kuan, had been fighting a major battle against the rebels in Shandong. That battle had just concluded, and the court had no intention of transferring them back outside the passes. Lu Xiangsheng planned to request this army.

Chen Qiyu's jurisdiction did include Sichuan, but the Chongzhen Emperor's great net did not encompass Sichuan, because the Grand Coordinator of Sichuan, Liu Hanru, had said the wrong thing.

Sichuan was already fighting the peasant armies — originally against the faction known as the Thirteen Houses of Yao and Huang — and since last winter, large contingents of peasant armies from the Central Plains had also entered Sichuan.

Because Sichuan's crack troops and elite soldiers had all been transferred to fight in the Central Plains, Grand Coordinator Liu Hanru had no other options. While waiting for Qin Liangyu to return, he was pitifully mustering village militia and local braves, fighting the peasant armies group by group, and personally escorting supply trains to provide support everywhere.

Sichuan's regular army was truly not up to much; the peasant armies beat them dizzy — every time they fought, they got hammered until their heads were covered in lumps.

But the strange thing about Sichuan was that the village militia and local braves recruited from the common people were formidable. Don't be fooled by the Sichuan men's small stature — ordinarily lazy, pleasure-loving, and always laughing and joking — but when it came to battle, they listened to commands, feared no death, and though they had received little training, they could fight the peasant armies that had battled their way out of the Central Plains on even terms, trading blow for blow. They were fierce.

Liu Hanru was actually fighting quite well and was especially honest. He submitted a memorial to the Chongzhen Emperor summarizing his experience, stating that the reason for this strange situation was that the military officers were all outsiders who didn't take the Sichuan soldiers seriously; therefore, Sichuanese should be used to command Sichuanese troops.

Aiyo, this made the Chongzhen Emperor so angry his liver hurt. Damn it, today you want Sichuanese to command Sichuanese troops — what will you want to do tomorrow?

The thing was, Liu Hanru had consistently achieved good results in governance ever since he became Grand Coordinator of Sichuan in the fifth year of Chongzhen, and this time he had fought the bandits quite well too, leaving Chongzhen no excuse. But on the strength of this memorial alone, he had already been marked down... sooner or later, they'd find a pretext to dismiss him.

This was the first time the Ming court had combined the forces of five provinces to suppress the rebels, and good commanders everywhere were rubbing their hands together, hoping to achieve total victory in a single campaign.

Only, at this moment, Chen Qiyu's opinion differed from that of the various provincial grand coordinators.

Everyone else wanted to first annihilate the Shaanxi righteous armies trapped within the great net. Actually, by this point, calling them the Shaanxi righteous armies was no longer accurate — of the hundred thousand-plus peasant soldiers roaming the Central Plains, nearly half were now Shanxi men, and there were also quite a few Henan men.

People had this idea because they could all see that the peasant armies at this time were likewise united to an unprecedented degree; it was just that, due to their loose organization, they could not form a combined force.

In the complex terrain of southern Shaanxi and eastern Sichuan, their massive troop strength could not be brought to bear, while government forces could rely on the terrain to encircle, pursue, and intercept them — this was their chance to resolve the problem in one stroke.

After all, anyone with clear eyes knew that although Liu Chengzong's forces in the west were far smaller than the mass of bandits, their superior organization allowed them to display even stronger capability in pitched battle, and they could not be dealt with in a short time.

Yet Chen Qiyu's thought, against all expectations, was to first retake Lanzhou.

In Chen Qiyu's mind, this was the prerequisite for the Five-Province Allied Army to carry out a successful operation — first recover Lanzhou, only then could they annihilate the mass of bandits.

This meant he would have to redeploy Lian Guoshi to the west to take Lanzhou.

Lian Guoshi was not pleased. He made a special trip to see Chen Qiyu and said, "Supreme Commander, why must we first recover Lanzhou to annihilate the mass of bandits? This is putting the cart before the horse. In my humble opinion, we should first destroy the bandits, then recover Lanzhou."

Hearing this, Chen Qiyu grew anxious too. After all, the loss of Lanzhou was neither Hong Chengchou's responsibility nor Chen Qiyu's responsibility — we are the Supreme Commander of the Three Borders and the Grand Coordinator of Yansui; this is your responsibility, the Grand Coordinator of Shaanxi.

Yet now His Majesty has made me, Chen Qiyu, the Five-Province Supreme Commander — I'm anxious to retake Lanzhou, and now you're not in a hurry to retake it?

He asked, "If we don't retake Lanzhou, are we to fight on two fronts? Are we to leave the Ministry of War's five-province encirclement for Liu Chengzong to tear open from the outside?"

Lian Guoshi said, "Setting aside whether Lanzhou can even be taken, even if we take it, must we not station heavy troops there? Will Liu Chengzong obediently watch as the city is seized?"

"If we can take the city, I have someone in mind to hold it — I won't say it would be absolutely foolproof, but it would be as secure as a fortress of metal and stone."

Chen Qiyu thought to himself, how am I supposed to explain to you that I hold a divine general card in my hand?

But to his surprise, Lian Guoshi simply waved his hand: "Supreme Commander, I know who you are referring to. There are no six ears here, so I will speak boldly — it is General Yang of Yan'an. I presume the reason you wish to first recover Lanzhou is also because of him."

"In my humble opinion, this absolutely must not be done."

Chen Qiyu raised an eyebrow: "Brother Junyu, do you believe General Yang has a problem?"

"I would not dare say such a thing."

Lian Guoshi's suspicion of Yang Yanchang had nothing to do with Liu Chengzong; it was because earlier, before Gao Yingxiang moved south, he had fought a battle with the Yan'an Prefecture army, and later, when Gao Yingxiang reached Xi'an Prefecture, he fought another battle against Lian Guoshi.

He did not know what Yang Yanchang's situation was, but he knew Gao Yingxiang's army's situation very well.

That bunch didn't look in the slightest like they had sustained any losses. After several years of farming, Gao Yingxiang's army was more disciplined than anyone's, and the whole thing was basically a master of high-quality knockoffs.

Gao Yingxiang had a knockoff Lion Brigade, complete with infantry and artillery, exactly like the army Liu Chengzong had when he ran wild through northern Shaanxi; he also had a knockoff Guanning Brigade, with two cavalry battalions and one wagon battalion, also looking exactly like the genuine Guanning Army, right down to the configuration of tribal cavalry retainers.

Those two brigades came down the mountain at full strength — even if Yang Yanchang was utterly incompetent, he couldn't possibly have failed to destroy even a single battalion headquarters before letting Gao Yingxiang come down.

So for Lian Guoshi, there was no need to think about this question — Yang Yanchang definitely had a problem.

It was just that without proof, he couldn't badmouth a commanding general in front of Chen Qiyu. If nothing was actually wrong, and his words here prompted Yang Yanchang to rebel over there, then the fault would fall on him instead.

Chen Qiyu knew what he was worried about and said with a smile, "That's precisely why we must retake Lanzhou and have Yang Yanchang hold it. As long as we keep an eye on him, Lanzhou cannot be lost no matter what. The rest we can leave for Hong Hengjiu to worry about."

Lian Guoshi understood — Chen Qiyu also believed Yang Yanchang was a problem.

Following this line of thought, retaking Lanzhou became imperative, because Yang Yanchang was useless in Anding. Even if he held Anding, Liu Chengzong could simply go around. Only by taking Lanzhou could they pin Liu Chengzong on the far bank of the Yellow River.

Seeing his expression, Chen Qiyu knew they had a tacit understanding and laughed. "This matter is no secret to us now. Everyone has some opinion of General Yang, but rest assured, Brother Junyu — Hong Hengjiu in Gansu has no opinion of General Yang. Their cooperation will surely be seamless."

Lian Guoshi nodded. That old Hong certainly had no opinion of Yang Yanchang. After all, Cao Wenzhao was Hong Chengchou's trusted favorite general, and the only time Yang Yanchang had ever gone all out to suppress bandits was spurred on by Cao Wenzhao. That battle had been fought with remarkable swiftness.

"Keeping an eye on Yang Yanchang sounds easy, but what if he disregards his family? What other means do we have?"

Chen Qiyu had a well-thought-out plan. "Ren Quan'er, the commander of the Yan'an Guard, will help us watch him."

Lian Guoshi shook his head. Any matter that came with a precondition meant the precondition itself was deeply flawed, and the matter was basically as good as failed.

For example: with enough provisions you can win; with seamless cooperation among the five provinces you can achieve victory; holding Lanzhou can guard against Liu Chengzong; keeping an eye on Yang Yanchang can hold Lanzhou; Ren Quan'er can keep an eye on Yang Yanchang.

"And what if Ren Quan'er cannot be trusted?"

Chen Qiyu gestured with his hand. "Well then, there's still you, Brother Junyu."

Lian Guoshi found this utterly absurd. He spread both hands from beneath his official robe sleeves. "Am I really that reliable?"

Lian Guoshi considered himself extremely unreliable. Never mind Zhang Yingchang of his own Biao Camp — he was a scion of a military family, a loyal and dependable officer with ample experience campaigning east and west, no flaws to speak of.

But his command included the fierce general He Renlong. A military jinshi by background, He Renlong fought with savage ferocity and had his own way of disciplining troops, but his methods were far too unorthodox.

Everyone from his hometown had become roving bandits. The Dashing General Li Zicheng and Hill-Flipping Hawk Gao Jie were both his fellow townsmen. Gao Jie in particular was very familiar with him, and it seemed they'd had dealings back in their courier station days. He'd had a young bandit under his command named Li Hezi deliver letters to He Renlong several times.

Not to mention that whole group of top generals over at the Marshal's Manor — one marshal and two vice brigade-generals had all been packaged and sent over by He Renlong.

In recent years, He Renlong had been promoted very quickly precisely because he was so familiar with the roving bandits. When he didn't want the bandits to provide intelligence, he never lacked bandit intelligence. But when his superiors actually wanted the bandits to provide intelligence, He Renlong suddenly had none.

Lian Guoshi himself already had to have Zhang Yingchang of the Biao Camp keep an eye on He Renlong. And now, to top it off, they were linking up in a chain.

Zhang Yingchang watches He Renlong, He Renlong watches Ren Quan'er, Ren Quan'er watches Yang Yanchang, Yang Yanchang watches Liu Chengzong... with this many preconditions, could this thing possibly succeed?

Chen Qiyu thought it could.

He brought Lian Guoshi to Anding to meet with Yang Yanchang.

The moment Yang Yanchang saw them, he poured out his grievances about the situation. We were told to defend Lanzhou, but before we even got there, Lanzhou was lost. Now the situation is changing too fast, the troops won't stop clamoring for pay, and deserters have appeared. The Supreme Commander and the Grand Coordinator must quickly come and pacify them.

This frightened Chen Qiyu and Lian Guoshi badly. They hurried down to the encampment to conduct an inspection, only to find that the degree of pay clamoring among the troops... was extremely low.

And as for the supposed large number of deserters, when they actually did a headcount, the troop strength was four hundred men over a full-strength battalion.

In front of the soldiers, Chen Qiyu only offered soothing words and said nothing. Privately, he and Lian Guoshi summoned Commander Ren Quan'er and asked, "How is it that deserters appeared, yet the troop count exceeds a full battalion?"

"Reporting to the Supreme Commander, this is all thanks to General Yang's fine work."

Ren Quan'er cupped his fists. "Ever since we marched out from Yan'an, commoners along the road have stuffed quite a few able-bodied young men into our ranks. Once we got here, this humble officer reckons it was birds flying into the woods."

Chen Qiyu and Lian Guoshi exchanged a glance. They both knew what was really going on, so they asked, "Can Lanzhou City be retaken?"

Ren Quan'er first slowly shook his head, then said with difficulty, "Answering the Supreme Commander, this humble officer dares not boast. The Yan'an Battalion alone cannot do it. With two additional reinforcing divisions, it could still be attempted."

Chen Qiyu was satisfied. Immediately, he took hold of Lian Guoshi's arm with one hand while gesturing toward Ren Quan'er with the other. "General Ren, your ambition is commendable! Then we shall treat these desertions as selecting the best from the best. You must retake Lanzhou City!"