Chapter 571: Longzhou

The main text of Stubborn Bandits, Volume Five, Chapter 563: Longzhou. At Qingyang Prefecture in Longzhou, on the great plateau outside Ningzhou City, the mobile headquarters of the Five-Province Supreme Commander.

The sacrificial altar was already set up. Soldiers placed half-cooked pig heads, chickens, and fish on the offering table, arranged seasonal fruits, and set out candles and an incense burner. Chen Qiyu held thick incense sticks, murmuring incantations before the clay statue of the Earth God.

Military camps dotted the plateau like stars. Ai Wannian, the Gushan Assistant Regional Commander of the Yulin Eastern Route, who had rushed over from Mizhi, stood behind Chen Qiyu with a sallow face, holding his helmet. He looked at the Earth God statue on the altar and sighed silently.

Ai Wannian had fought in Shanxi for several years and contracted severe rheumatism and hemorrhoids. During the campaigns, his entire family in Mizhi had perished. After being promoted to Gushan Assistant Regional Commander, the Emperor permitted him to return to his garrison to recuperate. Barely half a year had passed; the hemorrhoids on his body had healed, but his heart was wounded instead. He would cough up blood at the slightest provocation, and it was clear he had only a few years left to live.

When Liu Chengzong advanced east, he was conscripted again by Chen Qiyu. Mounting his horse despite his illness, he rushed to Qingyang Prefecture to serve as the chief commander of the Ming court's second line of defense. He had assumed the battlefield would soon be pushed here and had already recruited several bands of rebels to garrison Qingyang, but he never expected Chen Qiyu to start laying out fruit and paying respects to the Earth God.

And he performed these rituals every single day.

He even suspected Chen Qiyu had been secretly swapped by some look-alike. How could the dignified Five-Province Supreme Commander believe in such things before a battle?

Chen Qiyu, wholly devoted to his worship of the Earth God, knew that all the commanders under him were baffled by his behavior. He himself did not understand it either, but he truly had no other choice — Tang Jiuzhou had vanished.

An entire battalion of troops had entered Jingfu Mountain south from Huating County and was supposed to emerge at Longzhou to the south. Eight days had passed, and they had vanished as if evaporated from the face of the earth, never reappearing.

In war, a battalion of troops could sometimes be like a handful of sand — it was normal for it to disappear just like that. But the problem was that Liu Chengzong had not made a move. Chen Qiyu had been sending men to monitor Liu Chengzong's movements all along, and that army of tens of thousands was stuck on Liupan Mountain without budging.

Chen Qiyu was baffled.

All his vast learning was of no help at a moment like this, so he could only turn to the Earth God for aid.

After all, the real clash of this campaign had not even begun, yet the metaphysics already favored the Marshal's Manor.

Chen Qiyu pondered: Liu Chengzong hasn't even raised a hand to kill anyone yet, and the city wall took the initiative to kill one of my top generals — that was bad enough. But why are the mountains also giving me trouble? They've swallowed another battalion of my men!

After finishing his worship of the Earth God, Chen Qiyu, as usual, summoned the Camp Defense Commander responsible for monitoring the western battlefield and asked, "Still no news of Tang Jiuzhou?"

The answer was the same as always. Chen Qiyu did not press further, only saying to Ai Wannian, "Commander Ai, please shift your forces to Huating to guard against an enemy raid on Pingliang."

Ai Wannian clasped his fists and accepted the order. These matters had been discussed with him by Chen Qiyu earlier. Originally, when he was transferred to Qingyang Prefecture, the plan was to lead the raider battalion to seize an opportunity to cross Liupan Mountain. Once Liu Chengzong's main force attacked east of Liupan Mountain, he would leap into the rear and strike the second-line troops to cut off their retreat.

However, now that Deng Qi and Tang Jiuzhou of the main-force battalions were dead and missing respectively, whether he would still leap into the rear depended on whether the front line could hold.

In truth, the war situation was not that dire. Tang Jiuzhou had merely entered the mountains and not come out; perhaps something had happened. But Deng Qi falling to his death before the battle began was like a gust of wind snapping the great banner just as the army set out — it shattered the morale of everyone in the Ming army, from the commander-in-chief down to the common soldiers.

No matter what news came from the front, people could not help but associate it with the worst. Someone said Tang Jiuzhou had been carried off by a mountain spirit, and people actually believed it.

After all, no matter how bizarre, could it be more bizarre than Deng Qi being thrown to his death by a city wall?

In comparison, Liu Chengzong actually had more confidence in the Ming army's generals.

Not only did he not believe Tang Jiuzhou had met with an accident in the mountains, he did not even believe the story that Tang Jiuzhou had gotten lost in the mountains.

Having a top general fall to his death before the battle was already coincidence enough. There would not be so many coincidences overlapping in this world. More importantly, Liu the Lion believed in every man's ability to lead troops. Generals of this era would not make the low-level mistake of getting lost.

He was certain he was living in a period of explosive proliferation of fine generals. In these times, anyone leading troops in the field, every last one of them, was a famous general.

After all, the intensity of warfare was different. In the relatively peaceful years of the Jiajing and Wanli reigns, a common soldier who experienced a single campaign might finish it as a Regional Commander. Thirty years of military service might only amount to those few battles.

Because there simply were not that many battles to fight.

And what kind of era was this now?

The conflicts between the Great Ming, the peasant armies, the Northern Desert Mongols, the Southern Desert Mongols, and the Later Jin were intensifying like never before. The flames of war blazed unceasingly year after year. Across the entire land of China, not a month passed without battle. In the mere snap of a finger over these few years, men who had fought in thirty campaigns large and small were everywhere, and generals who had survived a hundred battles were numerous.

Almost every general capable of independently leading a battalion on campaign possessed boundless practical combat experience. To survive by luck in such brutal warfare did not necessarily mean one was truly outstanding, and to die by chance was absolutely not a sign of inferior skill.

The deciding factor, to a large extent, was luck, along with the support and assistance from behind.

So Liu Chengzong never even considered the possibility of Tang Jiuzhou getting lost. At this level, if a man dared to plunge into the mountain forests, would he not know to use local guides to lead the way? Even Li Hongsi back then, who had never taken up his post, upon nearing Suzhou, simply refused to enter because he was unfamiliar with the terrain.

He instead believed that Tang Jiuzhou must have something to rely on to dare enter Jingfu Mountain, which had no official roads or post routes. Circling in the mountains was nothing more than discovering the Marshal's Army relay troops blocking him front and rear, and changing his tactics to lure the enemy within Jingfu Mountain.

Liu Chengzong had always been adept at capturing an enemy general's intent. As long as the enemy general revealed the slightest trace of his intention, he would conduct will-indoctrination on the battlefield centered around that enemy intent. This time was no exception.

Originally, he was determined to annihilate Tang Jiuzhou's force near Longzhou, but the moment he detected Tang Jiuzhou's intent to lure the enemy into the mountains, he immediately stopped being impatient.

Luring the enemy is a tactic to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. In Liu the Lion's understanding, every person's chosen tactics and pre-set battlefield are certainly the result of deliberation, the choice most advantageous to themselves.

For example, strengthening defenses and clearing the fields to hold a city means the defenders certainly believe defending the city is more advantageous than field battle. Those who dare to leave the city for field battle naturally believe their field battle capability is stronger than the enemy's. In this world, anyone who leads troops without using their brain and just charges at whoever they see definitely died back in the second or third year of Chongzhen's reign.

Of course, just because Liu the Lion could understand did not mean the arrogant and fierce generals under his command could accept Tang Jiuzhou's subtext.

At the war council, Gao Yingdeng stiffened his neck and said, "What makes him, Tang Jiuzhou, think he can beat our Western Army in the mountains of Shaanxi with a bunch of Changping brats?"

Zhang Tianlin kept silent on this matter. If there were any way he could fight, he would have been clamoring long ago.

The two main battalions of Gao Yingdeng and Wei Qian'er were both relatively standard mixed battalions, adaptable to various situations. Gao Yingdeng's battalion, in particular, had a heavy arquebusier unit whose guns were loaded with one large and three small lead balls — four projectiles in a single barrel — vicious fighters whose shots were like small cannons.

But Zhang Tianlin's main battalion was different.

He knew his own household's affairs. Fighting Tang Jiuzhou in the mountains truly offered him no advantage. After all, his force was entirely cavalry. Not only did he lack heavy cannons, his firearms were somewhat lacking as well. His strength lay in rockets, which performed very poorly in mountain forest combat.

As for Wei Qian'er, he also said nothing, merely stating his stance that he would strike wherever the Marshal pointed.

He knew that Liu Chengzong actually did not place that much importance on Tang Jiuzhou's force, because just when Liu Chengzong first learned of Tang Jiuzhou's southward march from Huating, Zhang Xianzhong had come to see him.

The Minister of Rites was the most hot-tempered person in the Marshal's Manor. At the time, he sought out Wei Qian'er and stated plainly that he had no troops at hand but wanted to deal with Tang Jiuzhou. So he came to conspire with Wei Qian'er, asking him to request battle from Liu Chengzong — not to enter Jingfu Mountain, but to advance rapidly along the western foothills of Liupan Mountain, strike from the west while Huating was undefended, and bottle up Tang Jiuzhou from both ends, suffocating him in the mountains.

Wei Qian'er did not agree to Zhang Xianzhong's proposal, but immediately afterward went to find Liu Chengzong: Your idea is quite good. It now belongs to Lord Wei.

But Liu Chengzong said at once that it was unnecessary.

It was the same now. Liu the Lion merely laughed at this and said, "Why vie with him for temporary superiority? Since Commander Tang believes his strength is in the mountains and my weakness is in the mountains, then let him keep his strength for now."

He pointed to the map and said, "In the north, Tang's force is hiding in the mountains trying to lure the enemy, so they cannot move south. We will continue marching south. As long as we leave one battalion to set up defenses at the southern exit of Jingfu Mountain and bottle him up, that will suffice. This task... let General Gao handle it."

In truth, Wei Qian'er's plagiarized plan from Zhang Xianzhong to bottle up both ends was quite tempting to Liu the Lion, because at the time it had indeed been feasible.

The mountain path Tang Jiuzhou took twisted and turned, while the western foothills of Liupan Mountain were much easier to traverse. If a main battalion had charged through at that time, the lightly defended Huating likely could not have held, and Tang Jiuzhou in the mountains would not have had time to return to defend it. The two-ended trap would have succeeded.

It was just that the north was not Liu Chengzong's main axis of advance. If Wei Qian'er's force happened to collide with follow-up Ming relief troops garrisoning Huating, it would instead increase the difficulty of commanding the subsequent campaign. So the matter seemed unnecessary.

Compared to Tang Jiuzhou in the mountains, Longzhou and Guanzhong were the more critical locations.

Wang Wenxiu had not yet arrived. Liu Chengzong left Luo Rucai, Yang Chengzu, and Li Wanqing's three battalions at the western foothills of Liupan Mountain to provide support, then immediately ordered the remaining forces to descend the eastern foothills in sequence.

Gao Yingdeng's main battalion was to garrison the southern exit of Jingfu Mountain north of Longzhou. The great army then spread out, with the remaining two main battalions as the main force. Zhang Tianlin's force was to strike directly at Baoji, while Wei Qian'er's force rushed to the seat of Fengxiang Prefecture to open the passage to Guanzhong and seize the government army's provisions and forage.

As for the remaining several battalions, they were to encamp near Longzhou and prepare to assault Longzhou City.

Longzhou was a small city with a strategically critical location, built at the confluence of the North River, the Gan River, and the Mercury River. Surrounded by rivers on three sides, it was easy to defend and hard to attack. There were only two ways to breach this city: either by water, or by assaulting the western city wall alone.

With only one side facing the enemy, such terrain undoubtedly gave the defenders an enormous advantage.

Precisely for this reason, even though the city only had stout walls a single zhang high, despite suffering repeated harassment from peasant armies over the years, it had never fallen.

But times had changed. With the garrison mutiny, Deng Qi's fatal stumble, and the Sichuan troops fleeing south to Baoji, all that remained inside Longzhou were a few hundred local militia and able-bodied commoners trained by Magistrate Hu Erchun. Facing his personally led army crossing the border, the city's defenders had long been jittery and panicked.

Taking this city meant the Liupan Mountains would be completely opened up — troops could be shifted from the mountains' west to their east, or retreat from east to west, with a crucial stronghold either way.

Liu Chengzong's great army arrived beneath the walls of Longzhou. His forces set up a sprawling encampment west of the city and on the far bank of the river to the south. He sent men to ask the local gentry and commoners about Hu Erchun's background, and they actually turned up something quite interesting.

Hu Erchun's post as Longzhou magistrate had been obtained through connections.

What made this interesting was that, with peasant armies rising in swarms and years of drought, the mortality rate among Shaanxi officials was so high that the positions had become despised. Many places had no presiding official at all — no one was willing to come and take office.

Rank-four and rank-five posts were just lying on the ground, left vacant for years with no one coming to fill them.

Hu Erchun, however, had placed third among the provincial graduates, earning the title of "Classics Champion." He was a man of some ability. He had arranged a marriage alliance between his children and those of his fellow townsman, Vice Minister of Rites Zhang Sizhi. Through this recommendation, he obtained the Longzhou magistracy.

From Liu Chengzong's inquiries, Hu Erchun had done nothing major in his three-plus years at Longzhou. The only things worth mentioning were training over three hundred militia and local braves and repairing the city walls. But precisely because he had accomplished so little, Liu the Lion felt the man was not half bad.

In Shaanxi these years, with great droughts and locust plagues, what sort of official achievements could anyone have?

No achievements, yet no major disasters either — training troops against bandits so that small bands of outlaws could not enter: that was already the greatest achievement possible.

Even more interesting, before Liu Chengzong could send a surrender demand to Longzhou, Hu Erchun inside the city had already written to him first.

The letter's tone was unremarkable, but its meaning was clear: the people of Longzhou had suffered greatly these past years; Longzhou was a small city with little wealth and not worth attacking. He hoped Liu Chengzong would promptly lead his troops away and not disturb the region.

Liu the Lion thought to himself that it was true Longzhou was a small city with little wealth, but to say its geographic position was not worth attacking was a barefaced lie. Still, he did not make things difficult for Hu Erchun. He simply wrote back: "Longzhou must be taken. An assault will inevitably bring civilian casualties. If Magistrate Hu wishes to avoid the scourge of war, he would do well to open the gates and surrender. I guarantee my men will not harm a single hair."

Hu Erchun proved quite resolute. He simply stopped replying. A short while later, Ding Guodong, encamped west of the city, sent a man to report: "Commander, the Longzhou militia are adding many defensive engines to the western wall. It seems they intend to defend to the death. The three Gansu battalions are ready for a forced assault."

On the earthen rampart south of the city, Liu Chengzong glanced once more at Hu Erchun's letter and sighed, "What a pity." Then he waved to the messenger and said, "Tell General Ding to advance."

Against a city like this, surrounded on three sides by rivers and perilous terrain, there was no approach but a direct assault. He could hardly fill in the rivers. Only the western wall could be attacked. The faster the assault, the fewer men on both sides would die in the siege.

Moments later, battle flags unfurled and war drums thundered. Feng Weizhen, the Ganzhou Battalion's Adjutant Colonel, was first to bring his cannons into the field. He set up the thousand-catty cannon position four hundred paces out. Amid the roaring barrage, they opened fire on the western wall's battlements, suppressing the few cannons on the ramparts.

The Suzhou and Liangzhou battalions, commanded by Ding Guodong and Mi Layin, advanced together. Shielded by musket wagons, they used mules, horses, and carts to haul door planks, earth, and stone, constructing breastworks a hundred-odd paces from the wall. This further intensified the spray of lead balls and iron shot against the ramparts while they began filling in the western moat.

Inside the city, beneath the western wall, Magistrate Hu Erchun clutched Liu Chengzong's surrender letter and listened to the roaring outside. He glanced at the figure beside him in the plain-gauze python robe, and at the Embroidered Uniform Guard enforcers with their hands on their swords. His heart filled with bitterness.

It was not that he lacked the will to surrender. But the Shaanxi Garrison Eunuch was standing right beside him. How could he possibly open his mouth to speak of surrender?