Chapter 559: The Henan Regional Commander's Five Battalions

Lanzhou, the Marshal's yamen.

Liu Chengzong asked the Yulin Cavalry beside him, "Zhang Yichuan — has he reached Ningyuan County?"

"Yes, Grand Marshal. This is the return report sent by Yiyong."

Liu Yiren presented the letter and then stood waiting at his side for Liu Chengzong's next order.

Liu Chengzong unfolded the letter, glanced over it, and a smile crept onto his lips — then his expression turned stern, and finally settled into bewilderment. After pondering a moment, he wrote a letter and said, "Yiren, deliver this letter to Vice General Wei stationed in Jin County. Zhang Yichuan's six thousand old and weak troops will be moving to Jin County shortly; have him arrange proper settlement. Also send someone to reply to Yiyong — tell that batch of men to learn troop training in Ningyuan."

"Additionally, send a man back to give me a detailed report on Zhang Yichuan's troops."

Once Liu Yiren had taken the order and withdrawn, Liu Chengzong leaned back against his chair and fell into deep thought.

He took Zhang Yichuan's defection very seriously — more seriously even than Li Hongsi's. After all, Vice Commander-in-Chief Li was an empty shell with no troops of his own. Those five thousand surrendered soldiers in Liangzhou could be split into ten battalions by affiliation; once broken up, they posed no threat whatsoever.

Zhang Yichuan was different. He had thrown himself into recruiting southeast of the Marshal's yamen, and then turned right around and submitted to him — three battalions, nine thousand troops, acquired without lifting a finger.

Liu Chengzong's meeting with Zhang Yichuan had come suddenly, but that did not stop the incorporation talks from going extremely smoothly. Although there were a few points where their opinions clashed, in the end Zhang Yichuan accepted everything wholesale: Liu Chengzong was offering far too much.

The Marshal's yamen did not ask for much. First, that he submit to its command. Second, that he prove himself — and the way to prove himself was to fight his way into Henan.

To some extent, when He Renlong said the Marshal's yamen demanded a pledge of loyalty, he was not entirely talking nonsense. A man had to have ability to earn Liu Chengzong's high office and rich rewards. The difference was that Liu Chengzong was generous — he was willing to put up the resources to build a platform where a man could prove himself.

Zhang Yichuan was an office-seeker. The greatest ideological gap between him and Liu Chengzong was this: Liu Chengzong wanted him to be a military commander who expanded the realm, while Zhang Yichuan wanted to be a Minister.

Liu the Lion thought to himself, Is he insane?

In these chaotic times, holding military power is the greatest respect we can show a partner like you — and you tell me you want to be a Minister? You think that's putting you in an important post? That's the treatment the Great Western Emperor got. That's called wariness, you understand?

In truth, Liu Chengzong simply did not know enough. In another timeline, Zhang Yichuan proclaimed himself emperor even earlier than Zhang Xianzhong.

Fortunately, Liu Chengzong was a master pancake-flipper. He painted Zhang Yichuan a glorious blueprint of the Henan Regional Commander post, and brought up the vast campaigns that lay ahead on the Central Plains battlefield. Zhang Yichuan sensed that this Henan Regional Commander seemed, in the Grand Marshal's words, more important than a Minister of Rites, so he held his nose and accepted.

As for fighting his way into Henan — operating on the front lines where the Marshal's yamen and the imperial court were locked in a tug-of-war — Zhang Yichuan did not care either way. He was out of grain anyway; wherever he went was a front line. Heading to Henan at least had the Grand Marshal's backing, which beat going it alone somewhere else.

The only problem was that Zhang Yichuan's troops were truly far too weak.

Zhang Yichuan was quite candid about it. He said he originally had just one battalion, and its fighting strength was passable. In a fight, they had a chance of routing an imperial army chiliarchy, and a high probability of annihilating a company command. — To be honest, when Zhang Yichuan said this, he looked rather proud of himself.

Liu Chengzong did not quite understand. Was he proud of his own candid airing of dirty laundry?

One battalion with a high probability of annihilating a company command — what kind of fighting strength was that?

Liu the Lion recalled that during the Battle of Ganzhou, in Zhang Tianlin's main battalion there was a centurion called Mountain Red. On the battlefield, he lost contact with his chiliarch. Panicked at losing his commanding officer, he ran into the equally panicked Ming chiliarch Wang Huaizhong. The two forces met and both fled at once. Mountain Red was the first to come to his senses, turned and charged the enemy line, and captured him in a single engagement — he had caught himself a commanding officer, and his panic was gone.

So Zhang Yichuan's one battalion was roughly equal to Mountain Red's one centuria?

Put that way, he had to be underselling himself.

Liu Chengzong felt that men like Liu Guoneng, Li Wanqing, and Liu Jiusi had not been strong before joining him either, and now every one of them could hold his own. With the Marshal's yamen's help, Zhang Yichuan's troops ought to improve their fighting strength quickly. After all, after so many years as roving bandits, the veterans who had survived were absolutely no ordinary men.

Now, after a winter of recruiting in southern Shaanxi, Zhang Yichuan had already expanded to three battalions. He controlled a population of over fifteen thousand, more than half of whom were encumbrances — women, children, and the elderly. It was precisely because of these encumbrances that Li Zicheng was not too keen on merging camps with him.

After all, no one had grain. Li Zicheng was the leader of the Chuang Army's five battalions; everyone came to him for grain, and he could not conjure it out of thin air either.

Crucially, because the Marshal's yamen was crouching in the northwest, the imperial army had the roads into Guanzhong sealed tight. At a moment like this, no one wanted to be the first to jump out and take a beating. The situation was deadlocked, and the Chuang Army's five battalions had all begun going their separate ways.

Liu Chengzong's demands of Zhang Yichuan were not high. Settle the five or six thousand old, weak, women, and children in Jin County, Lanzhou. That area had plenty of land and few people; spring plowing was about to begin and they needed hands. The territory was also very safe. Once the soldiers' families were all settled, the remaining nine thousand troops would be marched to Ningyuan County in Gongchang Prefecture for reorganization and training.

The method was to reorganize them into five small battalions of two thousand men each. The Marshal's yamen would provide him with training officers, a corps of commanders, and a long list of supplies. Ningyuan County would be their garrison. They would train for a month or two with ample provisions, then be pulled east to open hostilities — enter Guanzhong first, and deal with what came after later.

The reason for this was that Zhang Yichuan's original force had three battalions, three thousand men each. He personally led one; the other two were led by chieftains nicknamed Sky-Conquering Tiger and Sky-Piercing Pillar.

Sky-Conquering Tiger was an old name. As far back as Liu Chengzong's uprising in Yan'an Prefecture, Sky-Conquering Tiger had already been Wang Zuogua's right-hand man campaigning across northern Shaanxi. Later, when Wang Zuogua chose to accept amnesty, Sky-Conquering Tiger joined camps with Sweeping King, who was causing trouble in Suide. At the time, it was hard to say who followed whom between Zhang Yichuan and Sky-Conquering Tiger — the former had numbers, the latter had fewer but crack troops. They were just sharing a roof.

But when the great mass of peasant armies was besieged in Shanxi and the Taihang Mountains, Sky-Conquering Tiger was wounded by imperial cannon fire. The situation was dire. To let Zhang Yichuan lead the other brothers to safety, he took the rear-guard mission upon himself. Even as he was dying, he played one last trick on the imperial army. His final words to Zhang Yichuan were: once the imperial army had taken his head and claimed their reward, keep making trouble under the name Sky-Conquering Tiger, to create the effect of false battle merit claims.

The current Sky-Conquering Tiger was the second generation, a Shaanxi native, and counted as Zhang Yichuan's trusted man.

Sky-Piercing Pillar was originally a bandit from the Lüliang Mountains in Shanxi, entrenched in Xiaoyi for years. When the roving bandits swept south into Henan, he had not wanted to leave home at first, but Zhang Yichuan swept him along southward. Still, it could be counted as good luck — if he had not been swept away, staying in Shanxi would have meant certain death.

Both of these men had lived through the bitter years of being besieged by the Ming army in Shanxi. They were long-tested in the ranks and possessed deep foundations of prestige.

But Liu Chengzong had to consider: if I give you ample supplies, armor, weapons, and equipment, what if you take the goods and run? So a thorough reorganization was necessary.

Therefore, after Liu the Lion reviewed the service records of Zhang Yichuan's various minor chieftains, he retained Sky-Conquering Tiger and Sky-Piercing Pillar as vice generals, and promoted from within the ranks three more vice generals: One Peck of Grain, Three Dragons, and Song Jiang.

These three all had very shallow roots in the force, and their backgrounds were complicated. One Peck of Grain and Song Jiang were Henan natives. When the peasant army broke out of Shanxi and poured into Henan en masse, local bandits and strongmen rose up in response like swarming bees.

The former had stormed a county seat to rise up, answering the peasant army; the latter had fortified a stockade to defend himself, answering the imperial army.

Both One Peck of Grain and Song Jiang had opened county seats and answered the peasant army. Both were minor figures who, the moment they rose up, were chased and beaten by the imperial army and could only follow the peasant army into exile far from home. They had not yet formed their own styles or names. One Peck of Grain gave a peck of grain to whoever followed him; Song Jiang was Timely Rain — whoever needed help, he helped.

As for Three Dragons, he was a scholar from a landlord family in southern Northern Zhili.

That year, the peasant army had burst out of the Taihang Mountains and fought great battles with the imperial army in Guangping Prefecture, Zhangde Prefecture, and elsewhere.

The capital garrison troops came as reinforcements. There was a small Liaodong battalion of over eight hundred men, all hardened veterans, whom Wang Wei had exploited excessively. When they were transferred to Zhangde Prefecture, they mutinied on the spot.

In the chaos of battle, this incident was hardly worth mentioning. But Three Dragons' entire clan was nearly wiped out by the mutinous troops. Consumed by rage, he led the fathers, sons, and brothers who had survived the mutiny to form a righteous militia, seeking revenge against the mutineers. Everyone knew Three Dragons was a scholar who had studied at the Nanjing Imperial Academy, and his ordeal was tragic enough, so they elected him leader of the righteous army.

In the end, no one knew quite how it happened — perhaps the imperial troops looked too much like his enemies, or perhaps they looked too much like peasant soldiers. In any case, the imperial army pounded them all the way into the Taihang Mountains, where Zhang Yichuan picked them up, absorbed them, and brought them along to Shaanxi.

Liu Chengzong had a sharp eye. Amid a pile of minor chieftains' records, he spotted this man at a glance. He figured that this man and the Shaanxi peasant army leaders would never see eye to eye. He could not possibly be taken as a trusted confidant, and as a Northern Zhili man, it would be very hard for him to recruit troops in Shaanxi and accomplish anything great.

He could focus on cultivating him as the Marshal's yamen's trusted man in the Henan Regional Command.

Zhang Yichuan was rather averse to this. Not that he was unwilling to obey after being absorbed — it was mainly that his force had men from everywhere. With so many people came the closeness and distance of regional factions. He had expended enormous effort to weld the force together and ensure that no vice general could threaten his position as leader.

Besides, by peasant army tradition, even if vice generals were to be appointed, the men had to be genuinely convinced. How could it be like now, where Liu Chengzong waved his hand and wrote down three names, and three minor chieftains with neither ability nor prestige rose to glory overnight, placed on equal footing with great chieftains like Sky-Conquering Tiger and Sky-Piercing Pillar?

Liu Chengzong's reasoning was ample. The troops under the Henan Regional Commander were weak. With a mere three battalions of less than ten thousand men — never mind controlling Henan — they would likely be wiped out by the imperial army before they even touched Tong Pass. Therefore, before advancing on Tong Pass, they had to expand to at least five full-strength battalions in Guanzhong.

And after advancing into Henan? In a vast Henan, serving as the front line in the tug-of-war between the Marshal's yamen and the imperial court, ten battalions — thirty thousand troops — might not even be enough. With a mere five battalions, if they were to maneuver and control territory in Henan, they absolutely could not all be outside troops from Shaanxi, Guanzhong, and Shanxi. Only by relying on local troops could they adapt to local conditions and defeat the imperial army.

Therefore, of these five battalions, at least two had to be led by Henan natives. That was the reason One Peck of Grain and Song Jiang, those two minor chieftains, were promoted to vice general.

And this was indeed his sincere thought. Liu the Lion did not want to seize power. Mixing in sand was only to have a guarantee — but it could not all be sand. If it were all sand, the army would be ruined. The wasted supplies aside, the weapons and armor would all go to arming the enemy. Better not to absorb them at all.

Liu Chengzong laid it out plainly. He said Three Dragons was the only chieftain under Zhang Yichuan who came from a scholar background. I am a scholar too, and I am willing to give this kind of highly educated talent a chance.

Zhang Yichuan turned it over and over in his mind but could not figure out whether Liu Chengzong intended to mix sand into his army. At first, he thought these three extra vice generals were all sand Liu Chengzong had mixed in to seize power. But after mulling it over, they did not seem to pose any threat to him either.

And the reasoning was indeed quite sound — it convinced him. To enter Henan, how could he not have commanders of Henan origin? Sooner or later, they would have to be promoted anyway.

Distant or close, they were all his subordinates — closer to him than to Liu Chengzong, at least.

He had originally thought the Marshal's yamen would just parachute in two vice generals.

And as for Lion Liu, giving you two regional commanders — isn't that just wishful thinking? The Marshal's headquarters values talent far more than weapons and armor. With your camp's fighting strength roughly equal to a single centenary battalion, even if I gave you two regional commanders, you couldn't protect them properly.

Having established the five-camp system, Liu Chengzong assembled a hundred-man squad.

The hundred-man squad was led by Liu Yiyong of the Plumed Forest Cavalry as centurion, accompanied by five Plumed Forest Cavalrymen serving as staff advisors to the Henan Regional Commander and as liaison officers with the Marshal's headquarters.

Beyond them, there were Marshal's headquarters veterans responsible for training in the four branches of infantry, cavalry, artillery, and engineering; armorers to maintain weapons; village braves to drill the militia; several specialized reconnaissance riders; and even twelve Mongol cavalrymen tasked with staff security — all carrying out reorganization and weapons distribution in Ningyuan County.

They transported a large batch of second-hand arms, issuing to each camp's centenary battalion ten bird-beak muskets, twenty triple-barreled guns, twenty waist sabers, twenty bows, ten cloth-faced armor sets, two flying thunder cannons, and two gushing-bead cannons.

At the same time, each of the five camps received two large Frankish cannons, two hundred horses, as well as gunpowder and shells for training, plus two months' provisions.

In Liu Chengzong's thinking, once this shipment of equipment arrived and was distributed among the camps, supplemented by Zhang Yichuan's existing weapons and horses, the entire army's combat effectiveness should quickly see a major boost.

Yet the intelligence Liu Yiyong sent back from Ningyuan County was nothing like what he had imagined.

First, Zhang Yichuan's forces were extremely complex in composition. In pitched battle they were indeed very weak — the soldiers had almost no firearms training, virtually no large-scale formation drills, over seventy percent knew nothing of operating guns and cannons, ninety percent could hardly fight in armor, and on the whole they were remarkably unfamiliar with military formations.

To Liu Chengzong, this was an assessment he could scarcely imagine — he found it hard to believe this described a peasant army that had fought its way across several provinces.

How could they be so remarkably unfamiliar with military formations?

But that alone was not enough to baffle Liu Chengzong. What truly puzzled him was the other half of Liu Yiyong's evaluation of Zhang Yichuan's forces in the letter:

Their troops excelled at ambushing foreign barbarians. Under specific conditions, Zhang Yichuan's forces were extremely formidable — even a Marshal's headquarters field camp of equal strength could potentially be routed by them!

Good morning!

(End of chapter)