Chapter 554: The Troop Training Garrison

Three hundred rockets were dispatched. Liu Chengzong thought to himself, his elder brother's trip to the Tianshan Mountains really hadn't been a mistake.

Big Brother is a military fanatic, after all. Before, he'd been worried that instead of getting anything done for the Marshal's Office, his brother would end up used as a pawn by the Oirat and become a capable enforcer for Baatur Khong Tayiji.

Now it seemed his worries had been unnecessary. Big Brother had actually pulled off a spectator's role by the shores of Yamysh Salt Lake. To be honest, this was a bit beyond what Lion Liu had imagined.

Because although the firearms the Marshal's Office sold to the Oirat hadn't arrived by the time the battle started, the firearms of Liu Chengzu's Tianshan Army were fully equipped. The Russians had nothing but a tiny, shabby fort with a few hundred garrison troops by the lake. Never mind his elder brother — even he, Lion Liu, couldn't guarantee he'd have been able to just watch.

He had itchy hands. Fire off a couple of cannon shots, and that fort might just be gone.

Mulei. Two salvos from the Tianshan Army's thousand-jin cannons and Lion cannons, and one wall would have at least six breaches. With breaches like that, the Oirat cavalry could practically leap right in.

Relying on a firearm stronghold, back when Huang Shengxiao was still called Huang Xiao, six penal conscripts had held a beacon tower against thousands of Monan cavalry passing through, let alone a hundred-odd Russian soldiers.

But if the fort actually fell and it came to close combat, the Russians wouldn't have enough heads to be chopped even if each man grew three.

If Liu Chengzu had helped the Oirat take this Mulei, it wouldn't really have been anything impressive — after all, the ones actually charging in to do the killing would still be the Oirat cavalry. But being able to hold back, to refrain from acting and build his own momentum instead — that was very impressive.

This actually made Lion Liu let out a long breath of relief: maybe that strategy of pushing the border to the Ural Mountains, relying on his elder brother, really could be done.

Truth be told, Liu Chengzong hadn't been confident about this before. When he sent the Tianshan Army to the Tianshan Mountains, it wasn't for some grand undertaking like this — he just wanted them to sweep south and pacify Yarkand.

After all, even as Grand Marshal, he couldn't make his subordinates do meaningless things. In the eyes of people of this era, going off to blockade the Ural Mountains was a meaningless thing.

Compared to that, pacifying the Western Regions was a glorious feat.

Now there was no need to worry about his elder brother's side. The only remaining issue was the rotation of the Tianshan Army. After all, Lion Liu had promised the officers and men of the Tianshan Army that frontier duty would be five years at most, three years at least, and then they'd be given a good career path and allowed to come home.

Thinking this, Liu Chengzong turned around and issued an order from the Marshal's Office in Lanzhou, summoning Li Bei of New City Academy, Dalai Tayiji, and the Russian veteran Chiban to Lanzhou.

There was no other reason for summoning the three of them — he wanted them to establish a Troop Training Garrison at Nanshan Fort in Qinghai. To the north was the Qinghai Lake Naval Office, to the south the Heka Grasslands, both excellent training grounds. Li Bei would serve as Seal-holding Commandant, and Dalai Tayiji as Assistant Commandant.

They were to first draw three hundred camp soldiers from Gansu, Xining, and Lintao to serve as officers. Their task would be to conscript soldiers annually from Ü-Tsang, Kangning, Xining, Lintao, and other places, train and instruct them for one year at the Troop Training Garrison, then send them to the Tianshan Army for supplementary rotation and joint defense. After two years of service there, upon return, all government troops would be promoted two ranks.

Unfortunately, Li Bei couldn't do it. Not that he thought the post too low or had any objection to the matter — he was gravely ill. Even teaching at the academy was a struggle, let alone going off to train troops.

Seeing this, Liu Chengzong had no choice but to drop the idea. He didn't even let him teach tactics at New City Academy anymore, sending him straight home to recuperate. He reassigned Zhong Hu as Commandant of the Troop Training Garrison, tasking him with recruiting three thousand soldiers annually and training them.

This order had been issued less than two days when Zhang Xianzhong, Minister of the Ministry of Rites, entered the Marshal's Office.

"Grand Marshal, this Troop Training Garrison — is it going to fight on the ground of those Oirat Tatars?"

Liu Chengzong didn't think too much about why Zhang Xianzhong had come running for this matter. He nodded in answer and smiled. "What, Brother Bingzhong fancies going over for a look around too?"

Zhang Xianzhong shook his head like a rattle-drum, thinking to himself, that godforsaken land of the Oirat Tatars — go there and you'd damn well never come back. I'm no fool; I'm not going anywhere near that place.

Still, he smiled sheepishly and said, "Grand Marshal, three thousand troops — why not send them somewhere better? Why send them there?"

Liu Chengzong raised a hand and pointed lightly at him, then turned to search for a map on the bookshelf, smiling. "You don't understand. Let me explain it to you."

He searched for the map but couldn't find it, so he simply spread a sheet of paper on the official desk, picked up a brush, and sketched out an outline, beckoning Zhang Xianzhong over. As he drew, he said, "Look, this is the Great Ming. The Marshal's Office is in the northwest. Monan is to the north. The Oirat are northwest of the Marshal's Office... You know of the Tsardom of Russia."

Zhang Xianzhong's heart tightened. His face impassive, he nodded with a simple grin. "I've heard of it, I suppose, but your subordinate is dull-witted and doesn't know where that country is."

When Feng Shuangli led troops to Kangning and passed through Xining Prefecture, it was like visiting a zoo. He brought his brothers of the Western Camp soldiers to gawk at the academy's Russian language instructor Chiban, and later wrote Zhang Xianzhong a letter recounting what he'd seen and heard.

He'd only heard of the Tsardom of Russia in that one letter. Now, seeing Liu Chengzong so certain that he knew, he immediately felt that he was surrounded by informants.

But that was overthinking it. Liu Chengzong had no time to bother with the correspondence of his few Western Camp officers. The Western Camp and the Marshal's Office weren't even on the same order of magnitude — there was no need for such caution. He was simply judging others by himself, assuming Zhang Xianzhong knew.

"It's a great power, roughly in this area. Its territory is even larger than the Marshal's Office. You know our situation — any state with a larger territory than ours is definitely far stronger than we are."

Zhang Xianzhong nodded at this. It wasn't Lion Liu being self-deprecating or dampening his own morale, but an objectively existing law.

The Marshal's Office's territory was vast and bizarre — it could be called the king of Asia's worthless lands.

After last year's chaotic war in Monan, the Later Jin had suffered some losses in Monan. Their return march to Shenyang was exceptionally ragged. The tribes beyond the passes also fled north under Ming pursuit. Yang Qi's Commandery not only survived in Monan but, leveraging the immense military strength of the three Khalkha Khans, swept through the entirety of Monan with the momentum of a whale swallowing the sea.

As of the first month of the year, Yang Qi had sent a treaty of alliance, maps, and local products from various tribes. The grazing lands of the tribal chieftains requesting submission extended as far as beyond Zhangjiakou.

Of course, that was disputed territory. The Later Jin wouldn't let it go. Once spring came and the Liao marshes thawed, Hong Taiji would certainly have to come out from the Khorchin grasslands again. But at least for these two months, the Marshal's Office's nominal territory already encompassed the entire Monan grasslands.

Zhangjiakou, Lanzhou, Chamdo, plus Lhasa, which Huoluochi was currently besieging — connect these points on a map, and the line almost perfectly coincides with the 400-millimeter isohyet.

Beyond that line was all Lion Liu's turf.

If he expanded just a little more, it would be the Heihe-Tengchong Line, China's geographical population dividing line. Four hundred years later, ninety-four percent of the population would live south of this line, and only six percent to the north.

In fact, the population ratio in this era was about the same. The Oirat and Ü-Tsang, the two regions combined, had at most 1.8 million people. The territory Lion Liu himself controlled — Lintao, Gongchang, Xining, Kangning, Gansu, Monan — had only two million.

His domain was nearly half the realm in breadth, yet its population accounted for only six or seven percent.

A monster stitched together from such territory and population could not stand long among the nations of the world. It was destined to be a fleeting flash in the pan, sooner or later unable to escape the fate of fragmentation and annexation.

Based on this bizarre territory, the consensus within the Marshal's Office was that any power with a third of our territory must have military strength superior to ours.

Zhang Xianzhong looked at the map Liu Chengzong casually drew, secretly astonished. The Grand Marshal's casually sketched territorial map — just the outline of the Great Ming alone felt more detailed than any map he'd ever seen before. This, in turn, lent greater credibility to the unknown regions to the northwest.

This was a man of vision who could point to the heavens and draw on the earth.

He carefully studied the map, pondering the distance between the Tsardom of Russia and the Marshal's Office, and asked cautiously, "Are we going to war with them?"

"It hardly counts as going to war. The north isn't that dangerous. Though the Tsardom of Russia is strong, their country is in the midst of chaotic warfare. In the west, the Westerners have beaten them back, costing them land. In the south, the Tatars have beaten them, costing them face. They are, however, expanding eastward, along this line."

Liu Chengzong drew a line across the north of the map, extending all the way to the northern part of Liaodong. He tapped it heavily and said, "Chiban told me that three years ago they built a fort here, called Yakutsk, established a voivode, and garrisoned fifty troops — they get around, don't they?" Zhang Xianzhong looked at this line and nearly swallowed his tongue — not because of the distance, nor the comical 'garrison of fifty,' but because the line Liu Chengzong drew on the map went from the north of the Oirat to the north of Khalkha, and finally to the north of the Later Jin. Along the entire route, Liu Chengzong had drawn nothing — it was completely unknown territory.

Common sense said the further north, the colder; the further north, the more desolate. Monan was already uninhabitable now — Mongols in large and small groups were knocking at the passes begging for internal resettlement. Yet Liu Chengzong was telling him that a great power was now expanding eastward in large numbers from the northernmost wastelands.

Zhang Xianzhong was dumbfounded. What kind of demons were these people?

Had popsicles become spirits?

But after a brief moment of shock, Zhang Xianzhong's eyes regained their clarity. Very earnestly, he said to Liu Chengzong, "Grand Marshal, you don't need to worry about them."

Liu Chengzong: "Oh? Tell me your thoughts."

"From here, to here." Zhang Xianzhong raised his hand and pointed to the north of the Oirat, then to Yakutsk. "It's farther than from Ü-Tsang to the capital. Even if you set up thirty-six relay stations the whole way, you couldn't cover it in ten days. Besides, the north is a frozen wasteland. If something happens in the east, the west won't know for a month. They can't control it."

"Your subordinate estimates that the Grand Marshal is worried they'll threaten Monan. But even if their troops reached Monan, after a three-thousand-li march, their troops would be weary and their horses spent. Our forces, waiting at ease, could annihilate them without the slightest effort."

Liu Chengzong glanced at Zhang Xianzhong with appreciation. Not simple.

He praised him: "Insightful. You're right."

Zhang Xianzhong was completely correct, and had even given the enemy the benefit of the doubt. Not only had he not underestimated the difficulty of marching through Siberia, he had actually overestimated it. If an army began its march from Moscow and walked to Lake Baikal, it wouldn't just be a case of weary troops and spent horses — they'd have run out of provisions and collapsed in rout seven or eight times along the way.

But it was useless.

That place was a frozen wasteland with no normal marching environment at all. It was like two armies facing off — when casualties reached a critical point, the army would rout and flee. But if that army was surrounded with nowhere to run, and the victor refused surrender, the defeated side would most likely fight to the last man.

Siberia is exactly that kind of situation — wherever you run, you die. Go back the way you came, you die. Wander the ice plains, you still die. Reach the objective and fight a battle, and that actually gives you the best odds of survival.

"But I'm not worried about them threatening Monan."

Liu Chengzong shook his head with a smile, then raised his hand and laid it over the boundless unknown lands north of the sketch map: "What I want is this land — an inexhaustible supply of furs. A hundred years, two hundred years, we may not need to use them, but we cannot simply hand them over to others. Blockading the Ural Mountains — that is a true grand enterprise!"

Zhang Xianzhong's eyes went wide. There were so many things wrong with that statement he didn't even know where to begin, and he could only conclude that Liu Chengzong had lost his mind.

He had been attached to the Marshal's Manor for some time now. As a high-ranking officer, he understood the Manor's actual situation better than many long-serving Regional Commanders.

Never mind how petty it was to start a war over a bit of fur — the single biggest product on the Marshal's Manor's current map was, damn it all, fur. Kangning Prefecture, which produced furs locally in abundance, basically consumed them all on the spot because the roads were so distant and the mountain passes snowed shut. Even so, the moment the Oirat furs arrived, they directly crashed the leather industry in Xining Prefecture.

And with all that, he still thinks there aren't enough furs?

What do you need that many hides for?

Zhang Xianzhong looked utterly baffled, thinking to himself that this Liu the Lion wasn't a particularly money-grubbing man. And even if he were, why not just take Hanzhong Prefecture — what wouldn't they have then? Why fixate on the barren wastes of the north?

But speaking of which, Old Zhang suddenly remembered what he had come here for. Immediately, without caring whether he had grasped Liu Chengzong's spirit or not, he straightened his expression, cupped his fists, and said: "Marshal, regarding sending troops into the Oirat Tatar territory, I have a plan that can save a year of troop training time."

"What plan?"

"Sweeping King Zhang Yichuan — has the Marshal heard of him?"

Liu Chengzong nodded. He had some impression — a rising star among the rebel forces.

Back when they held the Qingjian Alliance and set the strategy of advancing into Shanxi by four routes, Zhang Yichuan had been a minor chief with only a few hundred men, not even qualified to enter the room. He had thrown in his lot with Gao Yingxiang, who held the third seat.

But later, when Wang Zuogua surrendered and accepted amnesty at Suide, a chief under him named Ketianhu joined Zhang Yichuan, which gave him the capital to build his own force. After raising a great ruckus through Suide, he made a name for himself and became a second-tier chief on par with men like Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong.

Liu Chengzong asked: "I recall he's a chief who joined camps with Brother Li — they call themselves the Five Battalions of the Chuang Army, right?"

"Right, that's him — joined camps with Huang Wazi." Zhang Xianzhong nodded, greatly excited. "He sent someone to find me. Can't hold out in the mountains anymore, wants something to do. He's got a few thousand men, solid and reliable. Send him to the Tianshan Mountains."

Liu Chengzong thought to himself: You said you'd save troop training time — I thought it was some brilliant plan. This is it?

The "troop training time" in his mind was actually the two years after redeploying to the Tianshan Mountains. The one year new recruits spent in the Training Guard was mainly for learning languages and ice-plain survival techniques. Even if Zhang Yichuan came, they'd still have to learn all that.

On the contrary, Zhang Yichuan's unit's battle-hardened combat skills would be completely useless in the north.

In Liu Chengzong's mind, the Tianshan Army and the eastward-expanding Russ troops would never fight a pitched battle. The real Russ warriors would all die in their succession wars; they wouldn't run off to Siberia to imitate fox calls and watch shamans perform spirit dances.

The Russ relied on rivers to move, so the Marshal's Manor's Tianshan Army would also rely on rivers to move. The Russ built forts at key river junctions, so the Marshal's Manor's Tianshan Army would also build forts at key river junctions. It was simply a contest of technology, troop strength, and munitions capability — who was afraid of whom?

Build fortresses along the strategic passes of the few essential rivers, directly sever the east-west thoroughfare from the middle — no matter how fiercely you expand in the east, what can you do about it?

As long as the Tianshan Army could hold firm in the west, Liu Chengzong could simply outlast every Russ soldier who had pushed deep into the Far East — outlast them until they became Mongols.

Fight what pitched battle, and against whom?

What was the point of sending Zhang Yichuan with troops up there? Better to leave him in the Central Plains to tie down government forces.

Every year, three thousand troops would learn fishing, boating, fort-building, and languages, then serve two years garrisoned in Siberia. They might well return without ever fighting a single battle. That still counted as three years of frontier service, and when they came back they'd be veterans ready for the Central Plains theater — able to handle both army fort-building work and navy small-boat operations. That was Liu Chengzong's calculation.

Seeing that Liu Chengzong had no interest in his proposal, Zhang Xianzhong grew inwardly frantic.

His recommendation of Zhang Yichuan was, of course, not made with good intentions. He had received word that this Zhang Yichuan fellow was planning to fight his way into Fengyang Prefecture and dig up the old Zhu family's ancestral graves — that was something he, Zhang Xianzhong, wanted to do! He absolutely could not let Zhang Yichuan take that prize first. It just so happened he'd heard that Liu the Lion was recruiting for the Tianshan Army, so he had rushed over in a blaze of urgency to make this recommendation.

"Marshal, you really should meet Zhang Yichuan. He wants to fight his way into Henan! You can't let him go — if he goes into Henan, where does that leave the Marshal's Manor's face?"

"He wants to go into Henan?"

Liu Chengzong was inwardly delighted. Going into Henan was excellent — they could go in together. He immediately beckoned a Plumed Cavalry rider over and said: "Ride swiftly to Gansu. Transfer the Three Tribulations Battalion south. Have Wang Ziyong come see me."

As he spoke, he turned his head to Zhang Xianzhong and said: "Tell Zhang Yichuan to come see me. Ask him — firearms, cannons, bedding, clothing, weapons, armor, carts, horses — whatever he lacks, I'll provide it!"

Good evening!

(End of chapter)