Chapter 472: Roughly on Par

There was a man named Li Hongsi.

He held the official post of Gansu Deputy Regional Commander, tasked with defending the Suzhou defense sector — but he had no Suzhou troops under him, because this man was born to a life of toil.

The early part of Li Hongsi's military career was fairly normal: at seventeen he was recruited into the camp, fought fiercely and stormed strongholds to become a squad leader, was granted the rank of Probationary Centurion for battlefield merit, rose through a series of posts like Assistant Chiliarch, and then got an assignment as a fortress garrison commander in Yansui Garrison.

By the Tianqi reign he was already a Mobile Corps General in Yansui Garrison. Yansui had four Mobile Corps Generals, who by regulation rotated to guard the capital region in spring and autumn shifts, so this post was also called the Yansui Capital Guard Mobile Corps General.

Li Hongsi led the Yansui troops into the capital guard and caught a major event — the Battle of Ningyuan. That winter, before his troops were even transferred back to Yansui Garrison, he was promoted to Regional Commander of Ningsai Camp in his home garrison.

Ningsai Camp produced heroes in droves. Li Hongsi's predecessor as Regional Commander was named He Huchen. Among the camp's officers who later became notorious in the second and third years of Chongzhen were the turncoat rebels Shen Yiyuan, Shen Yikui, Red Army Friend, Ru Chengming, Du San, Yang Laochai, and others — as well as Gao Yingdeng, now a Regional Commander in the Left Battalion of the Marshal's Mansion's Right Brigade.

But Li Hongsi never actually took up his post at Ningsai Camp. When he returned to Shaanxi in the seventh year of Tianqi, his rank was still Regional Commander, but the court reassigned his station, sending him to another place that produced heroes in droves — Guyuan Camp.

While he was in command, Guyuan Camp sailed smooth. The moment he was promoted to Gansu Deputy Regional Commander, his old subordinates mutinied, producing a large crop of outstanding talents for the Marshal's Mansion — men like Brigade Commander Yang Yao and Wang Wenxiu, Regional Commanders Hu Sanhuai and Wu Yangchen, and Chiliarchs Han Shipan and Han Shiyou.

In the Shaanxi uprising that swept half the realm during the Chongzhen years, the backbone forces fell into two groups: one group was rebel troops, the other was civilian troops.

The rebel troops further split into three factions, all rising from Yansui Garrison. One was Liu Chengzong, whose backbone force was the Guyuan and Ningxia border troops; one was Shen Yiyuan, mainly from the western route of Yansui Garrison and the eastern route of Ningxia; the other was Wang Jiayin, mainly from the eastern route of Yansui Garrison and Hequ in Shanxi.

It can be said that in Li Hongsi's military career before he took up the post of Deputy Regional Commander Defending Suzhou, virtually every figure who later rose to prominence among the rebels had served under his command at some point.

And after he was promoted to Suzhou Deputy Regional Commander, Li Hongsi, by imperial order, fought his way through the other batch of the rebel army all across Shaanxi.

In fact, since assuming the post of Suzhou Deputy Regional Commander in the second year of Chongzhen, in five years Li Hongsi had been stationed in Gansu for only five months — and those five months weren't even spent in Suzhou, but at Gulang Gorge, where Hong Chengchou had transferred him to supervise the troops. The remaining four and a half years he spent campaigning across Shaanxi suppressing the rebellion.

By all rights, even if he had no great achievements, he had endured great hardships, and Li Hongsi should long ago have earned the title of Regional Commander. But his misfortune lay in this: he had the heavenly timing to lead troops in suppressing the rebellion, but lacked the advantages of terrain and human support.

When he was ordered to assist in mopping up the rebels, he had just been promoted and transferred from Guyuan and hadn't even reached Suzhou yet; he was also the former superior officer during the Guyuan mutiny, so the court sent him to lead troops to quell the chaos. But at the time, no one imagined the Guyuan mutiny was only the beginning — this rebellion had no end.

Compared to the other Shaanxi local Regional Commanders, Vice Commanders, Regional Commanders, and Mobile Corps Generals, his official rank dictated that he was merely a guest army here to help. Even though Li Hongsi chased the peasant army all over the map like a giant rat, no one appreciated it — some even thought he was stealing their glory.

Yet Li Hongsi considered himself a local Shaanxi officer and never had the self-awareness of a guest army. Although he was the Suzhou Deputy Regional Commander, under his command he had — never mind Suzhou troops — not even a single Suzhou horse. Every last man was of Shaanxi stock.

As for the lack of human support, that was because all those grand coordinators and governors had their own subordinate generals. The only high official at the time without his own men was Hong Chengchou, and Li Hongsi had once spoken out against a resolution to execute prisoners at a military council — so he had no patron above him and no one to speak on his behalf.

But the Elite Strike Battalion under Li Hongsi's command could fight.

In the Ming dynasty's garrison battalion system, there were four grades of generals and four types of troops: the Regional Commander's five-thousand-man Main Battalion, the Deputy Regional Commander's three-thousand-man Elite Strike Battalion, the Regional Commander's three-thousand-man Reinforcement Battalion, and the Mobile Corps General's three-thousand-man Mobile Battalion.

On this basis, each garrison had one Regional Commander, and each route had one Deputy Regional Commander and one Regional Commander. At the same time, a garrison typically had four to five Mobile Corps Generals: the Left Camp Mobile Corps General, the Right Camp Mobile Corps General, the Capital Guard Mobile Corps General, and the Command Mobile Corps General.

The Left and Right Mobile Corps Generals led mobile troops back and forth in defense, commanding three thousand men. The Capital Guard Mobile Corps General went to the capital each year with the Rotation Commander to serve in the imperial guard, commanding three thousand men; the Rotation Commander led the guard unit troops, forming the Ming dynasty's rotation army. The Command Mobile Corps

General was subordinate to the Supreme Commander or Grand Coordinator; this force was relatively small, generally commanding around a thousand men or so.

Li Hongsi's Elite Strike Battalion was somewhat unusual. His subordinates should have been Suzhou troops, but when he received the transfer order he hadn't yet reached Suzhou, so half were mobile troops conscripted on the spot from the Ganzhou and Liangzhou area, and the other half were Guyuan troops.

Among these, the Guyuan troops were the superior force. Although these Guyuan soldiers had nearly starved back in the day, they were genuine veterans, and so in the early stages of suppressing the rebellion they were extremely effective.

But as the war dragged on, after five years of fighting, not one in ten of those veterans remained... not because they all died — not many died, really. Some scattered, some ran off.

Now his Elite Strike Battalion had two thousand seventy-nine combat troops, one thousand five hundred twenty-four warhorses, and five hundred fifty-four mules. Though the manpower was low, compared to newly recruited armies everywhere they were rich in experience, and their equipment could be called luxurious.

You could tell just from the man-to-horse ratio that this Elite Strike Battalion was not a proper outfit.

Because a proper northern Ming army's configuration was three horse to seven foot. Li Hongsi's was seven horse to three foot — all acquired through slacking off and extortion.

Actually, when he first joined the suppression campaign, Li Hongsi's army was large but dirt poor. He worked tirelessly and followed every rule — but following every rule did no good. He constantly swallowed indignities, and the old brothers who fought alongside him died or were maimed, and those who survived still shed tears.

Li Hongsi thought to himself: following the rules shouldn't be a pejorative.

If you do that and get no good result, it can only mean one thing — the rules have changed.

Once he figured that out, Deputy Regional Commander Li gradually let himself go. He never lost another argument with a colleague. He tentatively stashed away spoils of war and seized warhorses, and found it was exactly as he'd thought — no one would report him behind his back, because those people still needed him to keep fighting.

In the end, he discovered the key thing constraining him: those people genuinely believed that dangling the Regional Commander title in front of him like a carrot on a stick would keep him in check.

Li Hongsi became a slacker and a crafty old hand, exclaiming that the ancestors didn't lie — what does "without desire, one is unyielding" mean?

"Without desire, one is unyielding" means that as long as he didn't want to be Regional Commander, with this hard-hitting Elite Strike Battalion in his hands, he could live happily every day, and in attitude he was even more formidable than a Regional Commander.

As the bandit-suppression war went on, he raked in spoils hand over fist, and the soldiers who followed him on campaign were comfortable too. Their weapons and equipment got better and better, one outdoing the next. After each battle they could send money home, and now and then they'd rescue some young widows from the roving bandits — a fine and happy life.

He thought he could be happy forever — until dusk on the seventh day of the third month this year, when Li Hongsi was struck by a bolt from the blue: the beacon fires of Jiayu Pass had reached Gulang Gorge.

Five years. Only now did Li Hongsi recall that his full official title was Deputy Regional Commander Defending Suzhou.

Heavens above — he had led his troops to Gulang Gorge to lie in wait with weapons ready for Liu Chengzong. How had this fellow gone and attacked Jiayu Pass?

The Elite Strike Battalion packed and stood ready on the night of the seventh. Li Hongsi met with Hong Chengchou once, and on the morning of the eighth they marched west. En route they passed through Ganzhou and conferred with Gansu Regional Commander Yang Jiamo about racing to relieve Jiayu Pass. Then they pressed on at top speed, covering seven hundred sixty li in eight days, and on the fifteenth of the third month reached the Gaotai Chiliarch Station, two hundred fifty li from Suzhou.

Reaching Gaotai, he dared go no further west.

Because after all that desperate haste, he finally encountered, at the desolate Gaotai Camel City, refugees fleeing from Jiayu Pass. People vied to relay to him the words of Jiayu Pass Mobile Corps General Ding Guodong, urging the common folk to head east — Jiayu Pass could not be held.

"How can Jiayu Pass not be held?"

After Li Hongsi posed this soul-searching question, a dispatch rider under the Regional Commander's command, hurrying from the direction of Ganzhou, brought him another shocking piece of news: the rebel army had breached the border wall at Jiayu Pass, and Suzhou Regional Commander Zhao Zhirui had been defeated at Malian Beach.

This news gave Li Hongsi one headache after another. His two thousand men had come to relieve Jiayu Pass, not to go charging out and fight a field battle against Liu Chengzong's main army.

Besides, the biggest problem before him wasn't that Zhao Zhirui had lost — it was that he didn't know the roads.

One step past Gaotai to the west was his defense sector, yet in five years on the job he had never once set foot in Suzhou. Had Liu Chengzong not breached Jiayu Pass, Li Hongsi could still say their familiarity with this land was roughly on par.

Now

that Liu Chengzong had broken through the pass, the iron hooves of his warhorses already trampling the soil of Suzhou, Li Hongsi alone was a stranger to both the people and the land of this desert.

He didn't even know where there was water — what the hell was there to fight about? Even if Yang Jiamo and Hong Chengchou ordered him to advance, he wouldn't take one more step west. He immediately sent men to search the area for a suitable campsite, dispatched troops to contact the surrounding forts and stockades, and prepared to dig trenches.

Fortunately, Regional Commander Yang Jiamo understood his situation perfectly, and the dispatch rider's message was precisely an order to halt the advance, construct field fortifications on the spot, and prepare to fight a step-by-step positional battle against the Marshal's Mansion along the Hei River.

Hearing this, Li Hongsi's heart began to mutter — not because he thought positional warfare wouldn't work. In fact, the Ming army's greatest advantage had always been positional warfare; the whole Regional Commander, Deputy Commander, Regional Commander, Mobile Corps General military system was designed precisely for positional warfare, where the main force held and the elite force won.

He just thought he himself couldn't do it. First, because the Suzhou defense sector's army had already been written off by the Marshal's Mansion, leaving only his understrength Elite Strike Battalion.

Second — well, he knew his own household best. In five years, the soldiers under him had turned over more than once. They had fought only one positional battle, three years ago. The rest of the time had been spent relentlessly chasing roving bandits, pursuing hard and striking hard, with no time for organized training. Dealing with low-quality roving bandits was a breeze, but against the relatively regular forces of the Marshal's Mansion, he feared they'd come out the worse in a head-on fight.

But Gansu Grand Commander Yang Jiamo, who had come up from the rear as reinforcements and bore the Seal of the Pacifying General of the Qiang, had an exceptionally clear grasp of the situation. In his first dispatch to Li Hongsi, he had already sent two newly recruited Ganzhou battalions marching west, while he himself changed horses along the way, covering three hundred li a day to rush to Gulang Gorge and meet Hong Chengchou face to face.

His attitude was extraordinarily resolute. He told Hong Chengchou bluntly: the Gansu army must fight a positional battle against Liu Chengzong at Gaotai.

Before the Supreme Commander's field tent, Yang Jiamo — his thighs rubbed raw and bloody by the saddle — clasped his fists and begged forgiveness, then had his bodyguards carry his sitting couch over to the Gansu map spread on the ground. Pointing with a wooden switch, he said, "Victory in this battle does not rest with the Gansu army, but with you, Supreme Commander. Ganzhou and Liangzhou have hastily mustered barely over ten thousand troops; the rebels at the pass number in the tens of thousands. The moment they are allowed past Gaotai, the entire Hexi Corridor will fall imminently."

To be honest, Hong Chengchou was losing a bit of face at this moment.

Just days ago he had been brimming with smug satisfaction, turning a blind eye to the Mongol-Tibetan allied forces rampaging through the Zhuanglang River Valley, his mind wholly occupied with his own brilliant stratagem — that the Marshal's Mansion's great army would sooner or later have to come tumbling over the Qilian Mountains frozen stiff like icicles.

Never in a thousand years did he expect to guess the beginning right but the ending wrong.

These three months had been far too intense for him — one moment Lanzhou was lost, the next a swarm of Tibetan scouts was pouring out of the Zhuanglang River, then Liu Chengzong's commander-in-chief banner appeared at Zhuanglang Garrison, and then another army came over the Qilian Mountains.

Was there anything in this world more satisfying than watching the enemy's schemes unfold exactly according to one's own script? Nothing at all.

Right up until the moment before the beacon fires lit up at Jiayu Pass, Hong Chengchou had believed himself to be Zhuge Liang reborn.

Never in a thousand years did he expect Liu Chengzong to slip through the shadows right under his nose, executing a sweeping maneuver of over two thousand li — calling it burning the boats would hardly be an exaggeration. What audacity.

Before this, Hong Chengchou had always believed Liu Chengzong owed his success to a steady, methodical approach that no other chieftain possessed — he never imagined that Lion Liu was a man who gambled harder than anyone.

If the Marshal's elite troops were to stall outside the pass, the Hehuang Valley would inevitably be retaken by the court, and they would truly be reduced to living like savages.

In truth, this matter did not greatly affect Hong Chengchou's mood, for there was no time to wallow in shame and fury — something even more absurd than Liu Chengzong bypassing Jiayu Pass had occurred: Jiayu Pass had been breached.

Had Jiayu Pass possessed just three thousand more soldiers, or had Zhang Tianlin not emerged from the Qilian Mountains, that mighty stronghold would never have fallen.

But now that things had come to this — his original plan had been to use the complex terrain of Gulang Gorge to stall the Grand Marshal's army, wear them down until they were helpless, and let Gansu and Lanzhou form a pincer against the Grand Marshal's forces.

Now the entire battlefield situation had reversed with Liu Chengzong's appearance at Jiayu Pass. Gulang Gorge, once advantageous to them, had instead become a natural barrier blocking their own advance south.

All of this made Hong Chengchou set aside every shred of pride. Humbly, he turned to Yang Jiamo and asked, "Commander Yang, are you suggesting I allocate another ten thousand elite troops to you, to face the bandit Liu in battle?"

Seeing that he was receptive to counsel, Yang Jiamo's urgency eased slightly.

He first shook his head, then pointed to the border wall line between Suzhou and Gaotai on the map and said, "The reason I said we must stop the enemy at Gaotai is precisely because there lies a two-hundred-li desert. All the water sources capable of sustaining a large army lie along the Hei River by the Gaotai border wall."

"And that border wall line is the lynchpin of our defensive fortifications — ten dam-forts linked in a chain. If our troops hold it to the death, the rebels will find no quick victory." Having said this, Yang Jiamo shifted tone: "However, their forces include a great many Mongols, Tibetans, and tribal fighters. At present, the Imperial Army's sole advantages are the Military Commander's disciplined command and our seasoned officers. The rebels' weakness, likewise, lies in the vast distance separating their northern and southern forces — they are vulnerable to being defeated piecemeal."

Yang Jiamo clasped his fists and declared, "Military Commander, I shall defend Gaotai to the death for three months. I implore you to dispatch Cao Wenzhao and Bai Guang'en south to Gulang Gorge at once — attack in the south, defend in the north — annihilate the Mongol and Tibetan rabble, sweep through Hehuang, and drive them into exile beyond the frontier!"