Chapter 555: The Fate of Liangzhou

Ever since Gao Yingxiang and other chieftains punched through Shaanxi and entered the Qinling Mountains, the Marshal's headquarters had been locked in a standoff with government troops, and the peasant armies — numbering in the hundreds of thousands — had rarely enjoyed such a chance to rest and rebuild.

The peasant armies were not idle during this time, but their movements were relatively small. They spread through Jiezhou and Huizhou in Gongchang Prefecture, as well as the Ningqiangzhou area in Hanzhong Prefecture. Those with money and goods sold off their loot on the spot to trade for provisions and weapons while resting and rebuilding; those without wealth but with muscle occupied county offices, issued orders, and compelled the common folk to support one soldier for every two or three households; those who had taken losses against government troops recruited locally, gathered supplies, and forged weapons.

All in all, in places like Xihe, Liangdang, and Wen County, the government was already gone. The various chieftains divided up the land and opened it for cultivation, taking on the air of carving out separate territories.

The problem was that among these dozens of peasant army bands, the vast majority had no chain of command linking them. Even a great chieftain like Gao Yingxiang had no authority to direct or deploy the other leaders. Whenever anything came up, they had to gather and deliberate — which made for terribly low efficiency.

At the same time, with the chance to rest and rebuild and no external threat, the forces of the chieftains who had once banded together began to fragment once more. In light of this situation, some chieftains began to entertain the idea of following Liu Chengzong's example — establishing a formal headquarters and organizing their personal troops into a regular structure.

The leading figures in this were Li Yangchun, the Fourth Heavenly King, and Zhang the Fatso, the Tidy King. One had occupied Xihe County, the other Ningqiangzhou. They changed their banners and styled themselves as Xihe Regional Commander and Ningqiang Regional Commander, and last winter they set up their own offices in those localities.

Yet the fact that these two dared to establish formal headquarters was not because they were bold — quite the opposite, it was because they were timid.

By any reckoning, neither man's forces were small. After the Fourth Heavenly King Li Yangchun proclaimed himself Regional Commander and reorganized his troops, he formed three battalions. The Tidy King Zhang the Fatso was even more impressive — he formed four battalions.

Never mind whether the troops were crack soldiers or not — over ten thousand men under one's command is not to be taken lightly anywhere. The main reason they established formal headquarters was to give themselves a way to step down gracefully… The peasant army chieftains had held several councils, discussing joint operations with the Marshal's headquarters, but when they sent men to contact the Marshal's front-line officers, no one would pay them any attention.

This was not because the Marshal's headquarters had changed and now looked down on the old brothers who scratched a living from the dirt.

It was mainly because, for one thing, the peasant army chieftains did not dare approach Liu Chengzong directly, and for another, they had no way to approach him directly.

Liu Chengzong had a name among the peasant armies too. People called him the Sky-Sweeping Marshal. His fame was great, but few had actually dealt with him personally. Even those who had met him knew that this Sky-Sweeping Marshal was arrogant and proud, notoriously aloof, with his tail cocked all the way up to the heavens.

Even back when he had only a few hundred men under his command, he had never liked coordinating with others.

Besides, when you are all chieftains yourselves, it is hard to truly submit to someone else.

Men like Luo Rucai and Zhang Tianlin had truly followed Liu Chengzong through life and death, going from being chased all over the map by government troops to chasing government troops all over the map. They had tasted the sweetness of it.

But these chieftains now gathered in the Qinling Mountains had never received any favor from Liu Chengzong. They had kept their bands alive to this day purely by their own skill. Why should they follow you just because your power is greater? To them, power was a very illusory thing — because their lives over these years had been far too thrilling.

Today you might be a minor headman with a dozen brothers; tomorrow you take a village and hundreds follow you; the day after you run into government troops and in the blink of an eye you are down to a hundred men; the day after that you storm a county seat and suddenly you have thousands, even tens of thousands of troops. Fame across the realm could come in a single day.

So although the Marshal's headquarters and the peasant armies were encamped next to each other, there was not much contact between them. This was precisely because Liu Chengzong felt he could not produce enough provisions to co-opt a hundred thousand men wholesale, and the various chieftains also felt that their own paltry forces were not enough to discuss joint operations with the Marshal's headquarters.

So generally, everyone tried to reach out to Zhang Zhen, the Ganzhou Battalion Vice General, known as Bee-Tail Needle.

Zhang Zhen had followed many men, so he had old acquaintances everywhere. And as a Vice General, he counted as a high-ranking officer in the Marshal's headquarters who could get a word in.

Among the Marshal's officers at the Vice General level, aside from the Mongol nobles, those of Shaanxi origin were all monsters who had followed Liu Chengzong from the very start of the uprising. Those old fellows held far too high a status in the Shaanxi underworld. Only Zhang Zhen had previously followed Wang Jiayin, Li Laochai, Liu Daojiang, Shen Yikui, Hong Junyou, Wang Laohu, and Yang Qi in succession — his seniority was comparatively low.

In the few months since Zhang Zhen had followed Liu Chengzong back from Gansu, he had already received several waves of fellow provincials from the Qinling Mountains, and he had politely sent every one of them on their way.

It was not that Zhang Zhen was a snob. He thought to himself: My own Grand Marshal is only a marshal, yet you lot — every Tom, Dick, and Harry — come announcing yourselves as this king or that king, and the first thing out of your mouths is a request for tens of thousands of dan of grain. You are putting me in a very difficult position!

So Li Yangchun and Zhang the Fatso went ahead and set up their headquarters. We will change our titles to Regional Commander, and then we will send a note to the Marshal's headquarters.

Of course, outwardly they could not say they were afraid of the Marshal's headquarters. We are moved by the lack of clear command and wish to institute regular management. From now on, brothers, we are the regular troops of the Xihe Regional Command Office and the Ningqiangzhou Regional Command Office.

This was, in truth, also an expedient measure for the two of them to hold this ground, conserve their strength, and build up their forces. They desperately needed a place to serve as a base. Though Xihe and Ningqiangzhou were small, they could gain cover from the Marshal's headquarters and tie down the government troops' attention. For middling chieftains like them, it was a fine roof to shelter from wind and rain.

As for the others — Gao Yingxiang, for example — it was not that he had not considered doing the same. He simply knew full well that he had too many men; even Liu Chengzong could not swallow or feed them. The cramped land on the northern slopes of the Qinling Mountains could not possibly sustain them encamped there for long.

So there was no need even to consider establishing a formal headquarters. What Gao Yingxiang had to ponder was fighting his way out. His target was Sichuan.

It was not that Gao Yingxiang had failed to consider the problem of getting into Sichuan and then being unable to get out. It was just that, for him… whether he could even get into Sichuan was itself the problem. Was it not a little too early to be thinking about getting out?

What was more, he was no longer the young Liu the Lion. He was forty-four this year. How many good years did he have left? If he could not get out, then he would not get out!

The younger generation of chieftains had more drive. The five battalions of the Dashing Army, led by Li Zicheng, had already drawn up a plan to strike into Guanzhong, Henan, and Yunyang Prefecture. However, the Dashing Army's five battalions were also a loose alliance gathered for survival. Case in point: Zhang Yichuan, the Sweeping King, had sent men to find Zhang Xianzhong, hoping he would arrange an introduction to Liu Chengzong.

Zhang Yichuan believed that Liu Chengzong, the true great chieftain of the rebel armies, would certainly be interested in his plan to strike Fengyang Prefecture.

Zhang Yichuan had not originally been such an audacious figure. When he first gave himself this title, he simply wanted to sweep away the filth of the world. But as his power grew and he gathered a number of scholars around him, he came to learn that he was not the only Sweeping King the world had ever seen.

Right there in the Qinling Mountains, there was another Sweeping King of northern Shaanxi origin named Cao Wei.

And among the Red Turbans at the end of the Yuan dynasty, there had been a Sweeping King named Wang Shicheng. During the Zhengde reign, there had been another Sweeping King, Liao Hui. All were worthy forebears in revolution.

"Revolution" was not a new word, and its meaning had never changed. Never mind the "revolution of Tang and Wu" in the Book of Changes — in the memorials of Li Sancai during the Wanli reign, he spoke of rebels coveting the divine vessels and plotting revolution.

The title of Sweeping King, because of all this, filled Zhang Yichuan with an immense sense of mission. He would be the first to step forward, to declare war on the rulers of the Great Ming dynasty, to dig up the ancestral graves of the old Zhu family!

What he never imagined was that Zhang Xianzhong wanted this big job too. That man, with his thick brows and big eyes, actually spoke slander against him to Liu Chengzong and nearly got him shipped off to Siberia to plant potatoes.

Fortunately, neither Zhang Yichuan nor Liu Chengzong knew Zhang Xianzhong's true thoughts. When a minor clerk from the Marshal's Ministry of Rites, clad in helmet and armor, rushed to the Sweeping King's encampment and told him the Grand Marshal wished to see him, Zhang Yichuan was overjoyed. He ordered his subordinates to guard his assets and immediately set off for Lanzhou with a squad of household guards.

On the other side, Wang Ziyong received the news even faster than Zhang Yichuan, and his excitement was even greater. Almost the moment he received the order, he rushed toward Lanzhou without stopping.

During this period, however, for Liu Chengzong in Lanzhou, the most interesting matter was none other than Li Hongsi of Liangzhou sending him letters.

And not just one letter.

Starting from New Year's, Li Hongsi first sent a man with a letter of New Year's greetings, then sent another with congratulations for the Lantern Festival. After that, it became one letter every five days, and by now it was one letter every three days.

At first, the tone of the letters was rather stiff, saying strange things like "the Qinghai Marshal's headquarters exists only by the Emperor's grace." Liu Chengzong simply ignored him. By now, the wording in the letters could no longer be stiff; it was exceedingly deferential, and the talk was all of the bonds between Shaanxi provincials.

As for Li Hongsi, that last diehard remnant of the Ming army commanders in Gansu, Liu Chengzong knew why his mindset had changed — Liangzhou had run out of grain.

If this had been three months earlier, the moment Li Hongsi showed the slightest inclination to open his gates and surrender, Liu Chengzong would have had a good long talk with him and kept a full Regional Commander's post with real military authority open and waiting.

But now, times had changed. Liu Chengzong did not even personally receive the messenger who delivered Li Hongsi's letter. He even specifically told the Ministry of Rites that not even Zhang Xianzhong was to receive him in person — having Zhang Kewang receive the envoy was enough.

The circumstances were different now.

The city of Liangzhou itself was extremely important to Liu Chengzong. The Wuwei Oasis, where the city lay, was stuck right at the Marshal's headquarters' most vulnerable spot. As long as this city had not surrendered, the Marshal's headquarters could not fully digest the gains of the northern Gansu campaign. North and south could not link into a single whole, and Gansu could not become the headquarters' secure rear area.

But under the wider circumstances of the locust plague ravaging the entire northwest, Liangzhou was no longer so important to Liu Chengzong.

Originally, Liu Chengzong's purpose in farming the Wuwei Oasis while besieging Liangzhou was to trade space for time — to drag things out for three months, negate the scorched-earth gains of Hong Chengchou, let the Wuwei Oasis produce grain, and force the Liangzhou garrison, once their provisions ran out, to face him in a field battle.

This was an open plan. Li Hongsi could see it too, but he was helpless. The soldiers and civilians of Liangzhou had to leave the city to harvest that grain — which is to say, a field battle that would decide Liangzhou's fate had long been inevitable.

But as it happened, this locust plague that swept the northwest utterly ravaged the grain on the Wuwei Oasis. Liu Chengzong lost the magic weapon that would lure the Liangzhou garrison out for a field battle, and with it, his desire to take Liangzhou.

After all, it was not an empty city. There were forty thousand soldiers and civilians inside. If the grain planted outside the city had been successfully harvested, and the Ming army crushed in a field battle, then accepting the surrender of Liangzhou would have allowed that grain to feed the city's soldiers and civilians. Everything would have gone smoothly.

Now that grain had gone to feed the locusts. Cao Yao's Gansu Governor's Office was barely self-sufficient on sheep transported from the Tianshan Mountains. After a locust plague, the Hexi Corridor had no surplus grain either. Besides, Liu Chengzong was used to relaying messages through the Qilian Mountains, and for the time being he did not need Gansu to provide support.

Taking Liangzhou now had many drawbacks, but only one advantage: it would make the Marshal's headquarters' territorial map look a little nicer… To be honest, not much nicer. Without having taken the Western Regions, the headquarters' territory was ugly to begin with.

This left Li Hongsi in an exceptionally awkward position in the standoff.

It was no longer up to him whether he wanted a field battle or not — even if he wanted one, there was no one left to fight him.

Most awkward of all was that Liu Chengzong did not attack the city. In fact, Li Hongsi's initial reason for writing to Liu Chengzong was nothing else — he just wanted Cao Yao to stop running his mouth at Liangzhou.

Cao Yao was a thoroughly irreverent man. Now he held high office and wielded authority over Gansu, but truth be told, if you took the Wuwei Oasis out of Gansu, the entire province's population combined equaled that of a single county in Northern Zhili. It was simply vast in territory. If not for this business with the locust plague, his daily work would have been no different from any other Regional Commander's.

But he didn't covet Liangzhou one bit. Ever since the locust plague broke out, he had been sending men every few days to shoot letters into Liangzhou city, using the name of the Marshal's Office's Gansu Governor to say he bore no ill will toward the soldiers and civilians of Liangzhou — that the Marshal's Office acted with openness and honor, and would never kick someone when they're down during a locust plague.

They were all fine-sounding words, but in truth he was cursing them out, because there was no grain outside Liangzhou city. The locust plague hadn't affected them at all — in fact, when the locusts passed through, they even added a meal for the soldiers and civilians of Liangzhou. It was Ganzhou and Suzhou, with their land and grain, who were the ones suffering from the plague.

By saying this up front, his meaning was: if you send troops to attack Ganzhou right now, you're kicking us when we're down.

Words like that don't mean much in the face of war, but Li Hongsi had only about ten thousand men under him. Leave half to hold the city, and five thousand troops couldn't fight their way through anyway.

In reality, Li Hongsi didn't even have that many men. Last year in the twelfth month, Liangzhou city had gone through an internal strife, and Cao Wenzhao's army had been driven off to Ningxia.

Originally, as grain grew scarcer, the Gansu troops under his command had already been grumbling about Cao Wenzhao's outside army from beyond Gansu. If they'd known they'd starve like this inside Liangzhou city, they'd have been better off following Commander-in-Chief He to Monan to fight the eastern caitiffs. The man came to the city walls and spoke reasonably — you reckless fool, why did you have to shoot at him?

But there wasn't much to say about it. Anyway, at the time, everyone in the city — soldiers and civilians alike — could see that the grain Liu Chengzong had planted outside the city was growing lush and green. It looked like they'd soon be able to replenish their supplies.

Until the locust plague arrived. Liangzhou wasn't like other places, where commoners' homes were in the rural farmsteads outside the city. Here, soldiers and civilians were all inside the city walls. The locusts came roaring in — there was no time to react. In a single shichen, the grain fields were nearly destroyed. Everyone was dumbstruck.

Later, conflict erupted when the outside army forcibly seized grain inside the city. The wealthy households had already lent out a great deal of grain during the city's defense, and ordinary commoners had kept only enough rations for themselves. Now, with the grain outside the city gone and no sign of relief troops, the army still wanted to forcibly seize grain. People flocked to Li Hongsi, their local commander, to plead and air their grievances.

Li Hongsi couldn't offer any real answer. If he didn't seize grain today, the starving troops would slaughter him tomorrow. Left with no choice, he could only let Cao Wenzhao take his troops to Ningxia to seek out Hong Chengchou. Of course, the words were spoken politely — sending General Cao to fetch reinforcements — but everyone knew there were no reinforcements to fetch. The locusts had come from the east; Ningxia was stricken too.

What's more, the people of Liangzhou now believed their hardship and hunger had all been brought by these grand coordinators, commanders-in-chief, and regional commanders of the Great Ming. But Li Hongsi and his men knew that in truth, it had all been brought by Liu Chengzong!

Because no matter how you put it, the commoners of Gansu might have been able to feed themselves, but the Gansu border troops had no such ability. They had always relied on Lanzhou for military grain supplies. Now that Lanzhou's military grain had been diverted by Liu Chengzong to feed the Marshal's Office troops, Li Hongsi's army simply had no way to find a second person who could supply them with provisions.

To be honest, if he'd had a choice, Li Hongsi would rather have led his troops himself to seek out Hong Chengchou than write a letter begging Liu Chengzong. But the problem was, he was the Gansu Vice Commander-in-Chief. If Gansu was gone, what use was a Vice Commander-in-Chief?

Now, inside Liangzhou city, the warhorses, donkeys, mules, cattle, sheep, and livestock were nearly all slaughtered. The forcibly seized grain in the city was about to hit bottom. Over thirty thousand soldiers and civilians were cut off from provisions — the old, the weak, women, and children surviving each day on just a few locusts and a paste of leaves and flour.

Liu Chengzong was the only man on this land who could save them.

Good evening!

(End of chapter)