Chapter 522: The Chijin Guard's Macaque

The Aji Khan of Turpan once suspected that his own blood brother, the Fifth Prince, had truly surrendered to Liu Chengzong.

Why else would he keep tricking him into shipping supplies east? He had kindly sent five hundred horses to support Hami, and then—slap—a letter came flying back, quick as could be, saying the horses had been robbed by horse bandits.

Aji Khan thought, didn't you just say there was only one horse left in all of Hami? Where did horse bandits come from? Unless these so-called horse bandits aren't bandits who ride horses, but bandits who specialize in robbing horses?

After that, the correspondence between Turpan and Hami became a one-way channel. Every time Aji Khan wrote to Hami, it was as if the Hami side never received it—like a stone sinking into the sea. Even the messengers sent to deliver the letters never returned.

On the other hand, letters from Baba Khan in Hami came one after another, whoosh-whoosh-whoosh, racing toward Turpan without the slightest hindrance. Opening the letters, they were all just him talking to himself—one moment asking for horses, the next for equipment, then saying many strange people had appeared outside Hami city.

He would also frequently blame Aji Khan for not replying, and in a fit of shame-fueled rage, demand, "The Marshal's Manor has already sent reinforcements to Hami—why haven't you sent troops? They've placed me under house arrest!"

Aji Khan could only feel that the strangest thing on this land was this younger brother of his, Baba. It was as if he were a man who had been dead for two months, all his letters written before his death, utterly indifferent to anything that happened afterward.

Having figured this out, Aji Khan understood: most of the letters coming from the east were fake. His family's Fifth was probably already gone. Whether truly gone or not, the Fifth being gone at this moment was better for him.

Because his territory was in Turpan, and Turpan was only three hundred li from the Oirat's Urumqi, separated only by a daban pass in the Bogda Mountains.

Daban is a word in the Oirat Mongol dialect, dabaya. Because the Oirat Mongol population is large, in some places it is also called davaa. Both mean the same thing: a mountain pass or col.

Among the Southern Desert Mongols, however, this word means a mountain ridge.

This is probably due to the different living environments of the Oirat and the Mongols. The Southern Desert Mongols have no need to cross mountains—a ridge is just a ridge, you simply go around it. But the Oirat Mongols live in a region dense with high mountains; they often need to traverse passes.

Aji Khan of Turpan had already learned that the Oirat were amassing military supplies, establishing twenty otogs—that is, chiliarchies—while the Eastern Khan of Yarkand was also preparing for internal strife against the west. Turpan needed to focus all its energy on defending the daban to prevent the Oirat from pushing south; it simply had no energy to spare for Hami.

After all, from the Flaming Mountains to Hami city lay over seven hundred li of Gobi desert. Rivers flowing down from the mountains would be dried up by the sun before traveling far. Only the hardiest plants could grow on this land. Even if the Han army wanted to come, they would have to bring their own water—there was no need to worry at all.

But over in Hami city, Baba Khan was indeed seething with frustration, because Hami city had already been occupied by the Chijin Guard coming from the south.

He Chong'an, the Chijin Guard Assistant Commander, was on edge. Cao Yao, a Grand Commander, granting official posts was normal enough, but He Chong'an never dreamed he would be threatened—told that if he didn't keep military discipline in check, he'd be killed.

A complete bandit.

For the Chijin Guard, little bandits being restrained by a big bandit—you could say it was a perfect match of profession.

He Chong'an understood military discipline, but he didn't understand the Marshal's Manor's military discipline, much less what standard Cao Yao meant by "doing well" versus "doing poorly."

For this, he specifically consulted the three hundred Marshal's soldiers Liu Chengzong had left with the Chijin Guard, to see what the Marshal's Manor's military discipline was like. These men were all former Ming soldiers, and among them were even several fellow townsmen from Ningxia, making it easy for He Chong'an to carry out his work.

But the answers he got did not satisfy him, for they were blunt yet abstract. The veterans said the Marshal's Manor's laws were basically copied from the Great Ming Code, and the military law was the same as the Ming army's.

He Chong'an frowned at this and said, "Don't give me useless talk. The military law is there on paper, but if you don't provide rations or pay, and only talk about military law, isn't that making unreasonable demands?"

The Ming army's military law was strict, but that required ample logistics to guarantee. With enough grain and sufficient pay, even if the men under him were a gang of horse bandits and robbers, He Chong'an was confident he could use money and food to steady most people's minds first. In a few months, after executing a few dozen men, he could straighten out military discipline.

But right now, with nothing to work with, what could he use to enforce discipline? The army hadn't broken into open plunder only because no one had started it. Once someone did, if he didn't control it, everything would fall into chaos. This Hami city would be swallowed alive and flayed by several thousand bandits. If he did control it, Liu Chengzong's Chijin Guard might be lost.

Of course, by that point, whether the Chijin Guard still existed or not would have little to do with He Chong'an. If a mutiny erupted, the first person the horse bandits would kill would be him.

Never mind now—even back during the Wanli Korean campaign, when Korea said they had military provisions ready and agreed that the Great Ming would provide the men to fight while they provided the rations, the result was the Heavenly Troops marched in and found nothing. The entire country was as clean as if licked by dogs.

When they first set out on campaign, who wasn't a son of a good family? They went over, gnawed on pine-needle dough balls, and beat the hell out of the dwarves. But domestic supplies couldn't be delivered, and the foreign vassal was hiding military provisions and weapons—so what could be done?

Naturally, they sourced supplies locally. Enraged soldiers beat foreign vassal officials. Hiding military provisions was treated as collusion with the enemy—those who deserved killing were killed, those who deserved confiscation were confiscated.

Now, he was asked to maintain military discipline while being given nothing. This was the problem He Chong'an faced. The Chijin Guard was a powder keg, and he was sitting right on top of it—and this powder keg was entirely created by the Marshal's Manor's policies toward them.

He Chong'an believed that the strategy the Chijin Guard most needed to implement right now was not garrisoning Hami, but sending troops westward. Since their mission was to not let a single bird fly over from the west, then they should go west and kill all the birds.

When the dynasty's founding emperor, the Taizu Emperor, crossed the river, he faced a similar shortage of grain. He issued an order to the army: Whenever entering enemy territory, allow organized grain requisition. If a city resists when attacked, let the officers and men search and plunder at will, taking as their own property. If it surrenders, immediately pacify the people and take nothing.

It meant that upon entering enemy territory, carry out organized and disciplined grain requisition. If an enemy city surrendered outright, pacify the people and requisition grain in an organized, disciplined manner, but without looting. If it didn't surrender and was stormed, then order organized and disciplined looting—that is, inspection and ransacking.

The veteran laughed when he heard his idea. The Grand Commander didn't give you rations or pay, but he gave you an official post. You were just a squad leader before—basically equivalent to a centurion. How many ranks did he promote you at once? Straight to Assistant Commander, a full fourth-rank official. Isn't this a test of your ability?

The opportunity is placed in your hands. If you have the skill, do it. If you don't, drop your burden and leave. But if you choose to do it and still do it badly, then you can only die.

He laughed and said, "With that idea of killing birds, the Grand Marshal would certainly like you. But Commander Cao governs Gansu and won't support starting a war westward. The Marshal's Manor does have its own orders for grain requisition, but it's not requisitioning from the common people—it's from the nobility."

"What the Commander meant by doing well or poorly is whether you can control the degree of your army's grain requisition."

With this hint, He Chong'an felt relieved. He first reorganized the Chijin Guard slightly outside the city, inserting Marshal's Army veterans into each centurion unit and agreeing on military discipline and law.

Of course, their way of agreeing on military discipline and law was a bit different from that of a normal army.

He Chong'an had always drifted with the current. Whether as a squad leader in the Ming army, a common soldier among the Chahar, or rejoining the army as a squad leader in Gansu, he had never once thought about what he should do, or what long-term plans he should make for his life.

He rarely used his brain. Within the grand framework of the Ming army, the life of a mere military man like him didn't require using his brain anyway.

No matter what problem arose in life, under the severed-head merit system, as long as he chopped off a few other people's heads, everything would get better.

But as an independent minor leader stranded in the Gobi, he very much needed to use his brain. At this time, He Chong'an was not only a low-ranking officer familiar with the mentality of common soldiers, but also an experienced horse bandit chieftain.

He knew very well that using the army's method of reading out military law articles was useless with these horse bandits.

An army's military law targets recruits; its purpose is to establish the commander's supreme authority. So, often, nothing is said or explained—only obedience is demanded.

But these horse bandits—those with military service records were all crafty old veterans from various armies; those without military service records were hands-on experts with rich plundering experience on the Gobi wastes. Expecting them to obey like recruits was a fool's dream.

He had to put himself in their shoes and tell the entire Chijin Guard: even if Hami were looted down to its last coin and the city massacred, the things inside the city couldn't supply their garrison in the long term. So their long-term meal ticket still had to be the Marshal's Manor—there would be a big job in the future.

For the sake of the future big job, this time they would first confiscate the city's nobles. During the confiscation, there must be organization—no one could hide anything for themselves. With discipline and no private stashing, they could ensure the entire Chijin Guard ate their fill. Whoever hid anything for themselves, don't blame him for turning ruthless and disowning them.

Once everything was agreed upon, using various scripts and drawn circles to sign the pact, He Chong'an finally began preparing to enter the city... He wasn't stupid enough to talk about good faith with a gang of bandits. Given the Chijin Guard's population base, it was perfectly normal for a few dozen bandits to treat promises as nothing.

He brought out the pact precisely to seize the moral high ground for killing people.

Moral high ground is the ethical summit that people, even if they temporarily disagree due to inner selfish desires, dare not openly oppose.

For the Chijin Guard, letting everyone eat their fill was the absolute moral high ground.

Clutching this weapon of moral high ground, as long as someone broke the law, he could kill to establish his authority.

After this, He Chong'an made a plan: he pulled the troops up onto the city walls, selected several centurion units to seal off Hami city—allowing entry but no exit—requisitioned over a dozen civilian houses, and dragged all the nobles there to be placed under house arrest.

Immediately after, he sent men to seal and search the nobles' mansions and estates both inside and outside the city. All goods and materials, whether useful or not, were inventoried and requisitioned.

In the end, they didn't get much grain, but they did confiscate a huge pile of utensils, goods, and valuables. As for the soldiers who hid valuables for themselves, He Chong'an didn't kill them all—he only chopped off six heads and cut off four hands.

Regarding the punishment for private stashing, He Chong'an had carefully calculated the amounts warranting execution. He protected most of those without backing and those with backing but little influence. Of the six killed, four had powerful backers and needed their prestige reduced; the other two had no backing but had stashed particularly large amounts.

The rest, after handing over their hidden valuables, were all pulled out and organized into a hundred-man vanguard company, told to atone for their crimes through meritorious service.

However, He Chong'an's actual thinking was that those with backing could have their wings clipped, and those without backing were even better—they could give him opportunities to bestow favors.

After this whole series of procedures, he finally had the Chijin Guard's banner troops distribute the limited wine, meat, and grain. Morale soared, and they began to take on the initial appearance of an army.

As for the valuables and goods, Kang Liangfu sent men to contact Song Xian of Suzhou Guard to discuss whether they could be sold in Suzhou.

Song Xian beamed at the news — he had been fretting over exactly this. Suzhou's situation was different from He-Huang. Not only was land distribution largely ineffective here, but the Marshal's headquarters' policy of equalizing fields and purchasing taxes couldn't be implemented here either.

For one thing, Suzhou simply didn't have that much silver to buy grain. For another, with the Suzhou Guard's current funds, they couldn't even purchase enough provisions to supply the Marshal's headquarters' main army.

The Grand Marshal had also ordered Song Xian to requisition grain in Suzhou to supply military needs. After mulling it over, Song Xian ultimately decided that Suzhou would still use the guard-battalion system — meaning the guard-battalion would take half of all grain grown.

Even if guard-battalions everywhere else under heaven were failing, its land policy was still the very best policy in Hexi. Because the Hexi guard-battalion system wasn't first implemented in the early Ming — it was already in place during the Han dynasty, only back then it was called military agricultural colonies.

It's essentially the same concept: land belongs to the state, each soldier household is allotted fifty mu, they hand over half the grain they grow, and keep the other half for themselves.

This policy was rolled out in every dynasty for use on the frontiers, because frontiers have few people and much land. It was only as the intensity of dynastic-change warfare escalated that the devastated interior also became an environment of few people and much land.

By the late Yuan and early Ming, the Han people — who had long since substantively split into the two ethnicities of Southerners and Northerners — fused and reshaped themselves in the Jiang-Huai river basins. Under Zhu Yuanzhang's leadership, they launched a whirlwind campaign, reconquering the lands of Yan-Yun, Guan-Shaan, Yun-Gui, and Liang-Guang, so that guard-battalions spread across the entire realm.

This was itself the product of a specific historical environment, when the Northern Metropolitan Region plus Henan together had only four million people.

The Great Ming's population multiplied, and policy both conformed to society and reshaped it. By this present moment, it seemed as though Song Xian had done nothing at all — merely brought out that old ancestral guard-battalion system — yet the Suzhou Guard's granaries were immediately full.

It was simply because, during the Suzhou infighting when Liu Chengzong entered the pass, a batch of people died. The Suzhou that remained was like a blank sheet of paper, and applying the guard-battalion system to it worked exceptionally well.

Now the soldiers and civilians of Suzhou had handed over their grain, yet every household still retained large surpluses. Song Xian couldn't requisition any more, the people couldn't finish eating it all, and they couldn't sell it either — he was fretting over exactly this when suddenly Chijin Guard got hold of a batch of goods, which absolutely delighted Song Xian.

Within just a few days, a batch of grain and fodder was transported to Jiayu Pass. Chijin Guard sent their own men to collect it, and the remaining goods Song Xian would sell off slowly, paying them as the sales came in.

In one stroke, the urgent needs of both sides were resolved. Suzhou's military households even reported to Song Xian that the commodity they needed most desperately was, in fact, night soil.

Suzhou was currently implementing Liu Chengzong's Cherished Land Law. This year the common people had all tasted the benefits of the Cherished Land Law, and they urgently needed more fertilizer to apply to the other plots, to enrich the soil.

But just as he was mobilizing manpower, planning to build the first fertilizer composting kiln outside Jiayu Pass, beacon fires from the east shattered Suzhou's tranquility. Although beacon fires couldn't convey precise military intelligence, the Suzhou Guard, short on troops as it was, still immediately entered a state of alert, making preparations to either resist an enemy from the east or transport supplies.

Soon after, Cao Yao's letter reached the Suzhou Guard. The Yongchang Guard's defense line had been breached — it was Cao Wenzhao!