Chapter 581: The Melancholy Supreme Commander Hong

Hong Chengchou directed the Ningxia army south to seize territory, and tactically it was a resounding success.

In just seven days, the wolf-tiger fierce Ningxia border troops, led by capable commanders like Cao Wenzhao, Bai Guang'en, Shen Guangxian, Bu Yingdi, and Tu Shixian, retook thirty-two guard posts, cities, battalion forts, and stockades from the Marshal's headquarters, pushing the battle line all the way to Jingning Prefecture.

They recovered all the territory lost after last year's locust plague.

Yet Hong Chengchou could not feel the slightest joy over this enormous achievement — quite the opposite, he was deeply anxious.

Because the Ningxia forces were being held in check by Yang Qi to the east, they dared not redeploy far for a thousand-li maneuver, and as a result could never pin down the main force of the Marshal Army's Gansu Governor headquarters. Every battlefield engagement was nothing but chasing scout riders, raiding camps, and breaking stockades — it was nearly impossible to fight a battle of annihilation.

Not that there were none at all — just days ago, Colonel Bu Yingdi had moved a battalion and, near Half City by the Second Side Wall, annihilated over two hundred men below the rank of Squad Commander of the Marshal Army. But on the Ming side, no one — Hong Chengchou included — could smile about it.

Because those two hundred-plus men, just three shichen before the battle began, had still belonged to the Ming army's Ningxia border force Mobile Corps.

Looking at the battle report, Hong Chengchou even felt like crying, and he made an exception, granting Bu Yingdi's request to forgo taking heads when clearing the battlefield and tally merit by cutting off ears alone.

At first, no one realized the loss that battle had brought him. It had simply been that Bu Yingdi, garrisoning Weizhou, received an alarm: a battalion under Gansu Governor Cao Yao had broken through Red Castle inside the border wall, crossed the Second Side Wall, captured Half City, and then deployed troops to set up camp.

The Ming side realized they intended to launch a raid by way of Weizhou. Weizhou was, after all, the site of Prince Qing's summer retreat and the old burial grounds of the Qing fief, with many princely estates and fief lands outside the city. Bu Yingdi dared not let the Marshal Army reach the outskirts, so he decided to lead his troops out and strike first.

The engagement between the two sides was brief. By the time Bu Yingdi arrived nearby, it was already growing dark, so he set up camp a little over ten li away, planning to fight Cao Yao's subordinate commander the next morning. He never expected that the Marshal Army had no intention of fighting him at all.

That very night, that Marshal Army force launched a feint attack on Bu Yingdi's camp, then, while he was preoccupied with defense, struck camp and left, abandoning Half City and returning south of the Second Side Wall to Red Castle.

Neither side suffered much loss. The Ming had anticipated the enemy's intent and kept Weizhou safe from rebel harm — by all accounts, it could be considered a victory.

But no one expected that at the very same time Bu Yingdi was confronting the Marshal Army, the Ningxia Mobile Corps stationed at Xining Fort near Weizhou would mutiny. Over a thousand border troops, using unpaid wages as a pretext, threw off their headscarves in revolt, seized Mobile Corps General Zhao Guangyuan, set fire to the camp, and swaggered off.

Bu Yingdi, upon receiving the news, hurriedly led his troops to intercept them, catching up with their rear guard at Half City. That was how he achieved the largest single-battle tally against the Marshal's headquarters since the war began in the eighth year of Chongzhen — over two hundred men.

Only after interrogating the prisoners did Bu Yingdi finally learn that what the Ming side saw as two battles over two days was, in the Marshal Army's view, a single battle over two days. Deploying troops at Half City and making a show of attacking Weizhou had merely been a feint by their commander to incite the Mobile Corps to mutiny and seize Mobile Corps General Zhao Guangyuan.

Because the commander leading troops for Cao Yao was named Zhao Guangrui — the former Ming Commander of Jinglu Guard, and the own nephew of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent Zhao Shuaijiao, who had died for the Great Ming at Zunhua.

And the seized Mobile Corps General Zhao Guangyuan was Zhao Shuaijiao's own son.

Until this battle ended — in fact, if a prisoner hadn't let it slip — Hong Chengchou would still not know even now that the entire Jinglu Guard had already been subverted by Cao Yao.

Jinglu Guard was Zhao Shuaijiao's home region. The troops of that guard were quite capable fighters, and Commander Zhao Guangrui had previously been keen and enterprising. As early as last year when the locust plague struck, he had written a special letter to the Ministry of War, warning them to guard against an eastern incursion by the western rebels. He had also sent documents to the Shaanxi Regional Military Commission, repairing castles and organizing arms at Jinglu Guard city.

After all, as the descendant of a loyal martyr, he would rise quickly with just a little merit. Fight a couple of battles with the Marshal's headquarters, and the ranks of Colonel and Vice Regional Commander were within reach — a bright future ahead. No one could have imagined Zhao Guangrui would surrender without a fight.

And not only surrender, but then directly lead troops for the Marshal's headquarters as a vanguard general.

But as the post-battle interrogation of prisoners and surrendered troops proceeded, the full picture gradually unfolded before Hong Chengchou. This Supreme Commander of Three Frontiers — no, Two Frontiers — of the Ming court not only felt like crying, he even felt like vomiting.

A purely physiological disgust.

If this Cao Yao had strong soldiers, sturdy horses, and wielded troops with divine skill, and had beaten Jinglu Guard into submission, that would be one thing. In fact, it was the complete opposite.

Under this so-called Gansu Governor, even if you counted the horse bandits from beyond Jiayu Pass and the tribal fighters within the pass as regular troops, his total strength barely exceeded twenty thousand. Not a single one of Liu the Bandit's well-known trusted generals was under his command — the most famous officer he had was named Hei Chengyin.

Formerly a Chiliarch of Suzhou Guard.

It was a case of a nameless commander leading a mob. The intelligence made Hong Chengchou and the others' heads spin; they puzzled over it all night and still couldn't understand why Zhao Guangrui, who had spent half a year repairing city walls and fortresses and sat behind strong walls with crack troops, had surrendered to this bunch of riffraff.

It was not until Tu Shixian, searching the burned ruins of the Mobile Corps camp, found secret letters between Zhao Guangrui and the officers and men of the Mobile Corps that the truth came to light.

Cao Yao hadn't used heavy cannon to breach the city. He had simply started by tossing three hundred little lambs into Jinglu Guard. The guard troops broke down on the spot, tied up Zhao Guangrui, who had come down to inspect the troops and horses, and delivered him straight to Cao Yao.

Shaanxi had been hard to live in for years, and last year's locust plague made the year-end even harder. Now, in the lean season when the old grain is gone and the new hasn't come, the guard troops had pawned all their possessions to borrow seed grain. What kind of devastating power did a dozen jin of mutton have?

And the key point was: as long as Grandpa joined the Grand Marshal, he could turn right around and kill the creditor — then the borrowed money and grain wouldn't have to be paid back, and the daughters and wives who'd been sold off could be brought back home openly and honorably!

In this matter, no matter how much we guard troops respected Grand Guardian Zhao, no matter how close we were to Lord Zhao, we weren't as close as we were to our own wives. So: let's tie up General Zhao.

Zhao Guangrui, determined not to disgrace his ancestors, had originally been set on death. The moment he saw Cao Yao, he opened his mouth and cursed, picking the ugliest words he could find.

Had this been Liu Chengzong, he might well have drawn his bow and shot him dead: an affront to decency.

But that old scoundrel Cao Yao was a rogue who had crawled and scrabbled his whole life through filth and mire — utterly shameless. He even said with a face full of mockery: "General Zhao, you don't know Cao. Shut your mouth — allow me!"

Then he grandly and frankly dissected himself, starting with his disloyalty as a deserter at Sarhu, his unfilial absence from home for twenty years without serving his parents, his heartlessness in watching people freeze and starve without lifting a finger, his unrighteousness in exploiting someone's desperation to trick an eleven-year-old girl into bowing to him in marriage — putting on a performance of "I curse myself."

Zhao Guangrui was stunned into blankness.

The most absurd part was that afterward, Cao Yao simply let Zhao Guangrui go, telling him plainly that a secret letter reporting his collusion with the bandits would be delivered to Hong Chengchou in three days, and giving him two paths to choose.

Jinglu Guard was certainly lost — the guard troops all wanted to revolt. He could go to Hong Chengchou and wait to be transferred away from Jinglu Guard. He could leave, but the entire Zhao clan could not. Cao Yao would kindly care for all his clansmen, ensuring that he, just past thirty, would stall here for the rest of his life, never again trusted by the imperial court.

Or, within three days, he could lead troops to attack Red Castle. Take it, and he would receive a Marshal's headquarters rank of Colonel, along with the establishment and pay of the Jinglu Battalion.

Cao Yao said he was letting Zhao Guangrui consider it himself, but in reality, he had made two preparations. He summoned from Lanzhou Vice Regional Commander of Gansu Wang Xingshan, who had been captured alive by Hu Zhishen during the Gansu campaign. This man was also a native of Jinglu Guard and could replace Zhao Guangrui's role in the army.

He wasn't afraid of Wang Xingshan playing tricks, because Wang Xingshan's only son, Wang Yongji, was currently serving as a Feathered Forest Guard at Liu Chengzong's side.

On the other hand, there was already a batch of young officers in Jinglu Guard who had gone over to the Marshal's headquarters — men like Hua Shoudeng, Li Shoukui, Bai Yingju, and others — all promised posts such as Brigade Commander and Squad Commander. Add to that the guard troops already routed by the little lambs — Cao Yao was determined to take Jinglu Guard.

No matter what Zhao Guangrui chose, it would not affect the overall situation.

In fact, the moment Cao Yao received word that Zhao Guangrui had returned to Jinglu Guard, he knew this vanguard guard had already been taken.

But he hadn't expected Zhao Guangrui to be far more ruthless than he'd imagined. It took him only one day to make his choice. After a brief reorganization of the guard's subordinate troops, he immediately mustered his forces, captured Red Castle that same day, and made a show of attacking Weizhou. While luring the relief battalion out of the city, he sent men to incite the Mobile Corps to mutiny.

The guard troops had kidnapped him, and he in turn had the camp troops kidnap his younger brother Zhao Guangyuan, to spare them from fighting each other to the death later.

The mental state of those Ningxia camp troops was even worse than the guard troops — after all, they were recruited from the guard troops.

Back home, they at least had a military land allotment. Once they became camp troops, the land was gone. Unpaid wages were one thing, but the key was, as part of the circle trade, they damn well had to haul silk shipment after shipment for the Tartars beyond the passes.

After hauling the silk, the Tartars didn't even thank us — they even went crazy and attacked us. To the north, we had to guard against the Tartars going crazy again. To the east, we had to be ready for Yang Qi's petty treachery. To the west, we chased Cao Yao and couldn't catch him. To the south, Liu Chengzong's banners fluttered everywhere. Either this general's camp erupted in a riot, or that general got cut down by a city wall.

Day after day, pent-up evil fire burned in their hearts with nowhere to vent. A little incitement and they mutinied.

In the end, when Hong Chengchou tallied it all up, Bu Yingdi's battle was a pure loss. One Mobile Corps had half its officers killed or lost in the mutiny, and the remaining thousand-odd men had lost all combat effectiveness. The relief battalion had fought a victorious battle, but in the end, every last corpse was one of our own, and on top of that, over eight hundred mobile troops had defected to the enemy.

If you wanted to say they'd won a castle — well, the castle was ours to begin with. Lost and regained, missing a wall, and on top of that, the troops inside were gone.

Now Bu Yingdi's entire relief battalion was eagerly waiting for him to report their merits, but the memorial for reporting those merits was simply too shameful to put brush to paper.

Supreme Commander Hong was very melancholy.

Even more melancholy was that Chen Qiyu in Xi'an Prefecture kept giving him difficult problems.

Under the current circumstances, the best strategy for Hong Chengchou was to take advantage of Liu Chengzong's massive eastern campaign and use the strength of the Ningxia border troops to retake Gansu, severing the link between Lanzhou and his main army, turning the Supreme Commander of Two Frontiers back into the Supreme Commander of Three Frontiers, and incidentally rooting out the Marshal's headquarters' main base.

If nothing else, the Marshal's headquarters' stockpiled grain, warhorses, and arms alone could make the Northwest Three Frontiers shine anew, becoming the most powerful force among the Great Ming's Nine Frontiers. If he could pull this off, given just two years, Hong Chengchou felt that leading the northwest border troops out past the passes, he could very likely sweep away the eastern caitiffs in one wave.

Under Liu Chengzong's rule, there were no landlords or gentry. The deadweight assets of Gansu, Xining, Lanzhou, and Longxi — once washed clean in Liu the Lion's hands — would all be positive assets if the Ming court recovered them, enough to support a campaign to plow courtyards and sweep lairs. Even if they lost, it would be a Sarhu that didn't wound the foundations.

But this fellow Chen Qiyu… Hong Chengchou thought he was truly useless.

A grand Five-Province Viceroy, holding a hundred thousand government troops, yet he didn't even have the nerve to pin Liu the Bandit's forty-thousand-strong rebel main force inside the Four Passes — and he still had the gall to send word to Ningxia, asking the Ningxia border troops to push south to the Longzhou–Qinzhou line and coordinate with the interior armies to seal the two secondary passes.

Hong Chengchou just mulled it over: you've already transferred away every battle-worthy general from Yansui Garrison you could; if my single Ningxia Garrison had the ability to punch out Gansu's Cao Yao, kick down Lanzhou's Yang Yao, and do the splits to stop Grand Marshal Liu Chengzong all at once, then what would the court need you, the Five-Province Viceroy, for?

Grumbling aside, the job still had to be done — because Chen Qiyu's plan was actually quite good.

Given the current situation, Chen Qiyu's present deployment was to use the Qinchuan plain within the Four Passes to build a cage, smoothly guiding Liu Chengzong, this ravenous tiger, into it; Xi'an Prefecture was the most enticing, delectable piece of meat inside that cage.

He was already having men transport grain, fodder, wealth, and goods toward Tong Pass.

In truth, Hong Chengchou knew perfectly well that those battles for the cities along the secondary border wall in southern Ningxia were all a sham — the Marshal's Army got the real benefit of population and provisions and withdrew safely, leaving the southward-marching Ningxia border troops to reclaim lost ground and earn merit here. It was a case of everyone playing the court for a fool.

But that was the broader situation. Hong Chengchou needed to lead the border troops to retake the Three Frontiers, and even more, he needed to seize the stockpiled grain and silver in Xining, the Marshal's Mansion's core region; add in that vast unclaimed land, and the enormous wealth would be enough to rally the weakened Three Frontiers of the northwest.

After all, the situation in the northwest was what it was.

The court saw Shaanxi as a godforsaken place that couldn't even collect half its taxes, so poor they had to pawn their pants; in Liu Chengzong's eyes, it was a piece of Tang Monk meat — one bite and you'd be back to full strength.

Liu Chengzong felt his own territory was so poor it couldn't possibly get any poorer, and that he had to wage an eastern campaign to seize population and land just to keep the Marshal's Mansion alive; yet in the court's eyes, it was a land of geomantic treasure that could let Shaanxi rally and recover.

The generals of the northwest were indeed fine generals — it was just that the roving bandits had worn them ragged, and they were generally unwilling to fight Liu Chengzong. Half of those now happy to wrestle with the Marshal's Army had come from Changping.

So Chen Qiyu made a suggestion to the Emperor: send a batch of the northwest army to the Guan-Ning and Ji Garrison lines; and send a batch of the Guan-Ning and Ji Garrison troops to the northwest.

In fact, the court was already doing this; Chen Qiyu just felt the scale was still a bit small. Most importantly, those northwestern old hands needed to go have a taste of the army rations on the Guan-Ning defense line too — keep tangling with Liu Chengzong like this for another two years, and generals and soldiers alike would all be ruined.

They had to be sent to Liaodong to fatten up, then brought back to fight Liu Chengzong.

Precisely for this reason, the Ming court's high frontier officials in the northwest all knew very well: this plan to use Xi'an Prefecture as bait, trap Liu Chengzong the ravenous tiger inside the Four Passes, and beat the dog behind closed doors was a golden opportunity that came once in a thousand years.

Even if Hong Chengchou was utterly unwilling in his heart to risk dividing his forces, he could only send men south.

With his order, the Ningxia border troops spread out like a vast cast net, splitting into two routes.

One route, under the command of Mobile Corps Commander Tu Shixian, followed the Great Wall straight for Lanzhou; the other, under the command of Liu Chengzong's old adversary Cao Wenzhao, spread southward from north to south, swooping down on Longxi County in Gongchang Prefecture.

The objective was to sever the link between Liu Chengzong's main force and his rear base camp.