Chapter 586: Attack in the South, Defend in the North

Zhang Xianzhong's plan was to tunnel beneath the city and attack.

First, build a dam to block the upstream river, then use war wagons as cover to dig seven or eight tunnels starting from the very edge of the city wall cannons' range, drain the moat, then stuff a few blasting tubes under the foundation of the southern wall and blast out an earthen ramp.

Minister Zhang's blasting tubes were several trees, each two zhang tall.

He had men split the trunks, hollow out the cores, and pack them full of gunpowder; the two halves were then joined back together, the seams sealed with yellow clay and the whole thing bound tight with ropes, creating blasting tubes nearly as tall as the city wall itself.

During the war council, Minister Zhang painted a vivid picture, spittle flying — he described how once these gunpowder-packed, sealed tree trunks were transported beneath the city wall, a single boom would blast a breach in the wall... That was as far as Liu the Lion listened.

Because by his own calculations, the charge weight of these blasting tubes was nowhere near enough to blow a breach in Qianzhou's walls.

If he hadn't interrupted and let Zhang Xianzhong carry out that plan, four days later the Marshal's Minister of Rites would probably have grabbed his men and fled.

Insufficient charge was one aspect, but the main problem lay in the shape of the blasting tubes. Against a small city with a wall foundation roughly three zhang thick, this tactic could basically blast a breach; but against a major city like Qianzhou, whose wall foundation was a full six zhang thick, undermining the foundation required far more earthwork than Zhang Xianzhong's calculations allowed.

Tunneling to attack a city was no new technique — Yuan Shao used it when he attacked Gongsun Zan.

Only back then there was no gunpowder, so they dug tunnels beneath the city walls, hollowing out the foundation, and as they dug they replaced the foundation with wooden beams and pillars to prevent the wall from collapsing prematurely and burying the tunnel.

Once everything was ready and the tunnel was dug, they set a fire inside the tunnel to burn away the beams and pillars, and the wall would naturally collapse.

The key point of this tactic is: however deep you want the wall to sink, you have to hollow out that much space below — and you even need to remove more earth and stone, leaving a margin.

Now that we have gunpowder, there's no need to set fires underground, but the underlying principle hasn't changed. Against a small city, you can place gunpowder and dig tunnels, using the explosive force to heave a section of wall upward; against a large city, you still use gunpowder to blast apart the support pillars inside the tunnel, so the wall loses its support and sinks under its own weight.

Zhang Xianzhong set a five-day deadline. That time was barely enough to dig the tunnel from beyond cannon range to beneath the city, but nowhere near enough to excavate a cavern two zhang high and several zhang wide under the wall. Relying solely on the explosive force of the gunpowder would not be enough to heave that wall section upward.

It wasn't that it was impossible, just that Zhang Xianzhong's calculations were far too crude for the plan to work.

So, to prevent the Minister of Rites from fleeing to escape punishment, Liu Chengzong refined the plan.

First, he gave Zhang Xianzhong a more generous timeframe — one month — and to prevent Zhang from focusing only on the assault and draining the moat water into the farmland and ruining the fields, he specifically designated the direction of the drainage ditches, channeling all the water into the Qishui River, so that with minor repairs next year it could even serve as an irrigation canal.

At the same time, he drew up zigzag anti-artillery trenches to prevent the assault troops from being cut down by gunfire as they entered cannon range.

And he told him that if the first blast failed to breach the city, he should carefully calculate the distance along the outer face of the wall, pick two or three spots, and dig out caverns one zhang high and two zhang deep beneath them, so that the rammed-earth layer would collapse under the explosion.

This way, even if it couldn't blast a breach in the wall, it would still cause the bricks, stones, and rammed earth atop the wall to slide down, forming a ramp that could be climbed.

In this way, the defenders would have points they were forced to defend. Combined with tube ladders, cloud ladders, and long ladders, after roughly ten days of exhaustion tactics, using a feint-to-the-east-strike-to-the-west ant-swarm assault would make it much easier to achieve results.

After making these arrangements, Liu Chengzong did not lead the main army to wait idly at Qianzhou. Instead, he assigned Xie Erhu to continue advancing southeast toward Liquan, Xingping, Xianyang, and other places, while the three small Gansu battalions, led by Bee-Tail Needle, advanced toward Yaozhou to retrieve the warhorses.

Liu Chengzong himself led the three main battalions to Maoling, between Xingping and Xianyang, with Gao Yingdeng's unit garrisoning the east, Zhang Tianlin's unit commandeering boats along the north bank of the Wei River, and Wei Qian'er's unit felling timber to prepare the construction of a pontoon bridge.

His objective was to cross the river and directly threaten Xi'an Prefecture from the south bank of the Wei.

Soon, Bee-Tail Needle Zhang Zhen left his troops behind and raced all the way back from Yaozhou.

"Marshal, your subordinate, relying on the garrison eunuch's seal of authority, successfully obtained the warhorses — though not over four thousand, only three thousand seven hundred seventy. In addition, we also swept up over forty horse-administration officials from the horse bureau." As he recounted these matters, Zhang Zhen's face lit up with excitement. "Furthermore, Liangzhou Adjutant Mi Layin, bearing a letter stamped with the garrison eunuch's seal, tricked open the gates of Yaozhou yesterday. At present, the Liangzhou Battalion has seized the pass defenses and garrisoned the city."

But Liu Chengzong's face showed no delight. He merely asked, "You abandoned your army and ran back here just to report your achievements?"

"How would your subordinate dare!"

Zhang Zhen said this, then glanced left and right. Seeing that only personal guards from the Tiger Guard Battalion were nearby, with no newly surrendered officers or allied rebel troops, he then said to Liu Chengzong, "Your subordinate came back because I encountered a government army spy in Yaozhou. He said Yaozhou cannot be held, and told me to get word to you, Marshal, as quickly as possible — the government army is coming down from Qingyang."

"Your subordinate feared the news might be true and needed to be delivered quickly; yet also feared it might be false and would disrupt morale if sent. That's why I had no choice but to leave Yaozhou on my own authority and race back."

The government army coming down from Qingyang Prefecture?

Liu Chengzong furrowed his brow and asked, "Did that man say who he was?"

"He did not." Zhang Zhen shook his head, drew a goose-feather arrow from his bosom, and presented it, saying, "But he said that upon seeing this, you, Marshal, would know who he is. He also said this information is worth one hundred fifteen taels, four qian, and three fen of silver."

Zhang Zhen finished and then laughed. "Down to the last fen — Marshal..."

His laughter stopped halfway when he noticed Liu Chengzong had taken the goose feather and sunk into deep thought.

Liu Chengzong of course knew who it was. It was his old informant, He Yong, the head of the household troops under He Renlong. One hundred fifteen taels, four qian, and three fen — that was the back pay the court owed him from that year.

Liu Chengzong had made an agreement with He Yong: as long as a piece of intelligence proved useful, he would pay him the full amount the court had withheld.

The last time they attacked Xigu, He Yong had sent him a warning. That warning had been immensely helpful, allowing the Marshal's army landing at the river mouth to avoid a minefield and a government ambush. So Liu Chengzong had given him the Yuan dynasty third-rank prince's seal seized from the tusi.

Comparatively speaking, Liu Chengzong felt that if the man who sent this message was He Yong, then the intelligence carried a certain degree of credibility.

Liu the Lion no longer begrudged Zhang Zhen for returning on his own authority and pressed, "Did he say who is commanding the government troops coming down from Qingyang Prefecture?"

"He did. The vanguard officer He Renlong leads the Yansui Battalion; the central army Zhang Quanchang leads the Grand Coordinator's elite troops; the left wing Yang Yanchang leads the Yan'an Garrison troops; the right wing Ren Quan'er leads the Yan'an Guard banner troops; the rear guard Cao Bianjiao leads the Pingliang recruits. These five great generals lead five route armies southward, with a strength of roughly twenty thousand."

Zhang Zhen cupped his fists. "Suzhou Adjutant Ding Guodong has already sent men north to investigate. If the situation is confirmed, intelligence will be relayed back the day after tomorrow."

As soon as Liu Chengzong heard the names of these five great generals, he laughed, which made Zhang Zhen stare wide-eyed.

He thought to himself, the Grand Marshal truly is the Grand Marshal — five route armies are descending from the north, and he can still laugh!

Their three small Gansu battalions had just over six thousand troops. Even adding the Mongol brigade, they would still struggle to withstand such a government grand army. Clearly, only Liu Chengzong personally leading the Tiger Guard and the three main battalions from the Marshal's headquarters could match them.

But in Liu the Lion's eyes, this army — assembled by some unknown genius — was clearly not that fearsome.

Admittedly, times had changed, and with all these years in between, Liu Chengzong could not claim to trust those old superiors, former unit veterans, or clan blood-kin deep down, and he believed their view of him was likewise.

But no matter what, even speculating from the worst possible angle, as long as these men were leading troops, they could not possibly be coming with the intent of fighting a bitter battle against him. Even if they intended to fight, they would certainly scheme to make him lower his guard first.

And in the best-case scenario, of the five route armies, four were rebels, with Zhang Quanchang the sole loyalist mole mixed in among them.

The army hadn't even left Qingyang Prefecture, and already He Yong, under the vanguard officer He Renlong, was the first to send him warning. Yang Yanchang and Ren Quan'er went without saying, and Cao Bianjiao, serving as the rear guard, was leading Pingliang recruits.

If Liu the Lion remembered correctly, that seemed to be the place where he had settled his wounded soldiers back then.

To be honest, hearing the Ming army lineup Zhang Zhen described, Liu Chengzong instinctively felt a moment of dazed disbelief... Even if he were to personally arrange the Ming army's battle formation, the lineup he'd come up with would probably look about the same as this sorry lot.

But before he could decide how to deal with the Ming army descending from the north, a guard from the central army's command tent ran in and presented a report from the southern camp's Adjutant, Zhang Tianlin.

Liu Chengzong took the letter and scanned it. The south had encountered the enemy as well.

Zhang Tianlin's mission was to commandeer boats along the north bank of the Wei River, but because of the Marshal's headquarters' eastern campaign, the riverboat families had all fled to the south bank of the Wei. Even the wealthy households and commoners of Xingping County had taken boats and fled to Hu County on the south bank of the Wei.

Zhang Tianlin therefore had no choice but to act somewhat aggressively, sending cavalry detachments across the river to the south bank to requisition boats.

Fortunately, although Zhang Tianlin was bold, his conduct was rather cautious. The first to cross were reconnaissance cavalry, followed only then by the regular troops. Once across, the reconnaissance cavalry spread out to screen and patrol an area of several dozen li, and quickly discovered movements indicating over ten thousand Ming troops were assembling on the south bank of the Wei.

In Zhang Tianlin's report, he mentioned that veterans in his unit had identified the Ming forces massing south of the Wei as including Mao-gourd troops and Liaodong cavalry.

These were both units with highly distinctive uniforms and equipment, very easy to recognize. The Liaodong army's cloth-faced iron armor was heavier, also called blue armor, and was mostly indigo in color; the Mao-gourd troops were mountain soldiers from southern Henan, who carried arrows in compression-style quivers made of wild animal hide that squeezed the shafts from the inside — very small quivers, with most of the arrow shaft exposed.

The discovery was, of course, mutual.

At the same moment Zhang Tianlin spotted the Ming army, the Ming army spotted him. Moreover, the camp's scout cavalry numbered only a single battalion — nowhere near enough to screen the main force's movements on the south bank of the Wei River. So the letter said that, barring any surprises, by the time Liu Chengzong read it, he would already have withdrawn back to the north bank.

Returning to the north bank with him were twenty-six ferry boats and fishing vessels commandeered on short notice. With a large Ming force appearing at Weinan, that number of boats essentially spelled the failure of Liu Chengzong's river-crossing plan.

Relying on just over twenty boats, they could only ferry troops across battalion by battalion against a Ming-held riverbank — an absurd notion that would be nothing short of throwing away lives.

Zhang Tianlin had sent this letter now precisely because, with the plan impossible to carry out, he was dejectedly requesting further orders from the central command.

But from Liu Chengzong's perspective, with his grasp of the overall intelligence, the situation was starting to look rather interesting.

What he knew so far was this: to the north were twenty thousand troops under five commanders including He Renlong; to the south, over ten thousand had now been spotted — Liu Chengzong estimated these were men from Lu Xiangsheng's Yunyang Prefecture force, which he could also count as twenty thousand; add the twenty thousand Ningxia border troops marching south from the northwest, plus Hou Liangzhu's Sichuan army to the southwest, and his own force was being hemmed in on the Guanzhong Plain. The overall picture was basically one of being wrapped up like a dumpling.

With simultaneous stirrings north and south, Liu Chengzong saw this as a clear sign that the Ming forces were advancing in concert under unified command, aiming to catch him in a pincer attack.

So the moment he reached this conclusion, he dispatched riders at full gallop to deliver his analysis to Li Zicheng and Zhang Yichuan in the west, ordering them to pull back into Fengxiang Prefecture first and hold Longzhou, Baoji, and San Pass along the Liupan Mountains line, lest they be devoured by the Ming grand army out in the open.

With the west taken care of, Liu the Lion finally turned a cautious mind to pondering the current north-south pincer situation.

His own state of mind remained fairly calm, but Zhang Zhen was already growing restless. Twenty thousand to the north, twenty thousand to the south — the peasant army in the west certainly couldn't hold off the Ningxia and Sichuan government troops for long, and no one even knew if there was an enemy to the east. They were already surrounded.

After much careful thought, Zhang Zhen cautiously offered his counsel to Liu Chengzong: "Commander, what if we… pack up the treasure, grain, and horses, and fall back to Longxi?"

Liu Chengzong's eyebrows rose involuntarily. He looked at Zhang Zhen and asked, "Tell me your reasoning. You think withdrawing now is the right move?"

In the vast Marshal's headquarters, the twenty-some Regional Commanders were indisputably the core circle. Liu the Lion cared deeply about their opinions, and Bee-Tail Needle had a real knack for judging battlefield situations, so he was more than willing to settle down and hear his views.

Besides, even if he didn't want to listen, if Zhang Zhen wanted to speak, he wouldn't get angry.

Liu the Lion would never forget: back in the day on the Heka Grasslands, locked in bitter combat with the State Preceptor Khan, it was Zhao Kebian and Bee-Tail Needle who had led troops charging into the enemy lines and turned the tide of battle.

Zhang Zhen thought to himself: It's not that I want to retreat — I'm just afraid you're trapped by the situation, wanting to retreat but afraid of losing face. That's why I spoke up.

He gathered his thoughts briefly, then began: "This humble officer sees it like this. In open-field combat, our Marshal's Army troops surpass the government forces in soldier quality, morale, armor, weaponry, and supply by a notch. With you, Marshal, directing operations from the center, that advantage grows by another three-tenths. Six thousand of our men can match ten thousand government troops."

The boast was so grand it made Liu Chengzong almost embarrassed.

Fortunately, Zhang Zhen soon shifted his tone: "However, this campaign also includes seven thousand Mongol Luda soldiers, three thousand newly surrendered turncoats, and three thousand banner troops from the Lintao Brigade. The Luda troops excel at skirmishing but cannot endure pitched battle; the Lintao Brigade has complicated internal dynamics and is unreliable in a major fight; and the newly surrendered turncoats may not withstand a bitter struggle… Therefore, this humble officer believes our army cannot afford to be encircled in Guanzhong and have its morale sapped away."

Liu Chengzong nodded slightly. "Our army is strong, but perhaps not as strong as we imagine — is that what you mean? What you say makes a great deal of sense."

"So the urgent task is to prevent the Ming forces from completing their encirclement. If they want to advance north and south together, we'll make their north and south lose contact with each other."

As Liu the Lion spoke, his relaxed expression gradually tightened: "Whether the intelligence is true or false, the three small Gansu battalions will first garrison at Yaozhou. If it really is a five-battalion allied force marching south, send them an envoy to parley. I'm putting this matter in your hands."

"When Yaozhou was breached, how much gold, silver, and valuables were seized?"

"Reporting to the Marshal, the spoils are still being inventoried. Commander Mi is assessing the wealthy households according to regulations." Zhang Zhen had come in a hurry, so he added, "There will be results soon."

Liu Chengzong nodded and said, "Divide it into three portions. One portion to reward the troops, one to the central command, and the remaining portion you will retain for use within your forces."

"He Renlong, Yang Yanchang, and Ren Quan'er — these three commanders all have past ties with me. Pull strings where you can, bribe where you can. If all else fails, negotiate a truce with them, or feign surrender. Use the back-and-forth of exchanging intelligence to pin them down in the north."

Zhang Zhen clasped his fists and accepted the order. Liu Chengzong then waved over a Feathered Forest rider: "Ride at once to Zhang Tianlin. Order him to lure the Yunyang army into crossing the river to give battle. Engage their vanguard briefly, then feign defeat and retreat north, letting their main force cross the river."

In truth, under normal circumstances, such a baiting tactic would rarely hook anyone.

But with twenty thousand government troops lying prone to the north, it was a different story. That was precisely what Liu Chengzong was counting on for his strategy of attacking in the south while defending in the north. The government forces believed there were twenty thousand of their own men both north and south, but in reality, only the south had twenty thousand government troops. Men like Yang Yanchang and Ren Quan'er, standing on the Ming side, were actually more useful than if they had been directly recruited to surrender.

Let them eat the Ming army's grain and draw the court's pay, making their allies believe twenty thousand helpers were at their flank — only to do absolutely nothing useful on the battlefield. That was the optimal choice.

"Don't worry. Just station yourself at ease in Yaozhou." Liu Chengzong turned back to look at Zhang Zhen. "Once I've annihilated this Yunyang army — or if they simply refuse to take the bait — I'll head north. Though our total troop strength doesn't match the government forces, our mobile elite troops at this moment far outnumber theirs!"