Chapter 599: Decapitation Plan

On the evening of the ninth day of the fifth month, eighth year of the Chongzhen reign.

Zuo Liangyu led his troops out of Jiulong Mountain, rode through Jintai, passed the Tang Prince Qin Mausoleum, and rendezvoused with Long Zaitian, a friendly force he had never met before.

This was the third day of Long Zaitian's siege of Baoji City. Luo Rucai stood atop the city wall, gazing down at the layers upon layers of encampments encircling the city, his brow tightly furrowed.

Yunnan native troops were still streaming in waves from the direction of Dasan Pass toward the siege encampments. The Ming forces outside the city swelled with each passing day, while the troops Luo Rucai had at hand to defend the city were pitifully few — just two thousand seven hundred.

His battalion originally had a paper strength of three thousand troops, but Yang Qi had drawn off five hundred when Liu Shizi went to Monan. Then, marching to Longxi, they clashed with Tang Jiuzhou on Liupan Mountain and suffered over thirty casualties. By the time they entered Guanzhong, his strength was only a little over twenty-four hundred.

A few days earlier, they had fought a skirmish with Long Zaitian. Casualties weren't heavy, but after racing ninety li through mountain paths day and night, more than two hundred men had fallen behind.

Fortunately, Zhang Tianlin had been the first to enter Baoji territory to forage for grain, so Luo Rucai was essentially taking over from him. The common folk bore him no particular hatred, and when he brought his troops to exterminate the locusts, he easily recruited over eighteen hundred able-bodied civilians right in the city.

Not only did this bring his battalion back up to its paper strength of three thousand, but he also formed a mixed thousand-man unit of veterans leading new recruits, tasked within the city with overseeing the manufacture of arms, transporting meals, and guarding against unrest.

But even so, defending Baoji City was a challenge for Luo Rucai.

It was just that Luo Rucai himself didn't care.

He knew how to defend a city. Like every officer in the Marshal's Mansion, he could recite the Marshal's city defense manual by heart. It was just that, for a commander of peasant army origins like him, who had followed Liu Chengzong through the northwest and the Kham region, defending a city was something he saw a little differently from normal people.

The previous magistrate of Baoji had been Li Jiayan, who, after surrendering, was promoted by Liu Chengzong to prefect of Fengxiang.

The current magistrate was Yang Mai, a licentiate whom Li Jiayan had recommended to Liu Chengzong before his transfer.

Yang Mai didn't know whether to call himself lucky or cursed. He had never wanted to be an official in the first place.

Because Yang Mai was no impoverished licentiate. His family lived at Wuzhangyuan on the south bank of the Wei River. On the tableland, they owned twenty-four qing of land, leased to thirty-six tenant households who owned oxen. They also had two water-powered mill wheels and an oil press — they were exceedingly wealthy.

Ever since Shaanxi descended into chaos, Yang Mai had built earthen fortifications on the tableland and donated four hundred shi of grain to the county, earning himself an honorary cap and sash.

He had money and grain, and he had social standing. In times like these, why the hell would anyone want to be an official?

With only a licentiate's credentials, official posts in other regions were out of his reach, and locally, the best he could ever hope for was a minor aide. In name, he'd have a bit of power, but when real trouble struck, those yamen runners would be far less reliable than his own tenants.

Better to stay in the countryside as a gentry and raise a local militia.

To be honest, back then, Yang Mai had wanted to organize a militia of able-bodied men and test his mettle against the roving bandits.

But before the roving bandits even arrived, Sichuan troops mutinied in Longzhou. Wang Yuncheng, a Liao commander in the Sichuan army camp, led his troops westward. The remaining small bands of Sichuan soldiers, with no one to restrain them, headed home and, along the way, conveniently burned his family compound to the ground.

It just so happened that Li Jiayan, the magistrate of Baoji, was inviting the local gentry to discuss providing military grain for Zuo Liangyu. That was what saved Yang Mai's life.

After that incident, Yang Mai saw the light. To hell with training some militia of able-bodied men — he was clearly not cut out for great undertakings. He would just stay put in the city and behave!

Then Liu Chengzong showed up, scared Li Jiayan into surrendering, and afterward Li Jiayan recommended him to Liu Chengzong to serve as magistrate.

He had wanted to refuse, but unfortunately, Liu Chengzong made a nasal "Hm?" sound, and just like that, he became the magistrate of Baoji.

Now, when it came to defending the city, to be honest, Luo Rucai handled every aspect of the defense superbly. There was basically nothing for him, the magistrate, to do. But he still felt the city would be very hard to defend.

Because when Baoji shut its gates, it had taken in a flood of destitute refugees from the surrounding countryside. At best, the grain in the city would only last a month.

This was where Luo Rucai's mind worked differently from others. He thought, "Isn't that still enough to eat for a month? What are you afraid of?"

Liu Chengzong always took cities he could breach with swift, rapid attacks. Luo Rucai had never even heard of a city that could hold out for a month.

So, grain not lasting a month was simply not a problem for him.

On the morning of the tenth, Ai Wannian, who had lagged slightly behind in Longxi, also led his Yansui troops into Guanzhong and quickly joined the siege encampment. The Ming forces massed near Baoji now exceeded twenty thousand.

Zuo Liangyu felt the time was about right, that the intimidation was sufficient. He ordered men to approach the city and call for surrender, while also sending small squads to shoot surrender letters into the city.

He was genuinely willing to recruit defectors and rebels. Liu Chengzong's troops were of decent quality — all veterans and seasoned officers. Once recruited, they could be entrusted with important responsibilities.

But what he never expected was that Luo Rucai had been sleeping up in the gate tower. Awakened by the shouting outside the city, he stormed out of the tower bare-chested, in a towering rage from being woken.

While ordering the Chiliarch on the wall — his own uncle, Luo Daien — to assemble the firearms unit, he strung his heavy bow behind the battlements and peered down at the city's exterior.

The shouting soldier, seeing the commotion on the wall, thought he was about to achieve great merit. He kept shouting as he moved closer, when suddenly he saw the bare-chested Luo Rucai on the wall draw his bow and loose an arrow at him with a hiss.

The Zuo army soldier, terrified, hurriedly dodged, but with a clang, the arrow still lodged in his iron armguard. Before anyone could react, a row of arquebusiers on the wall had already rested their heavy muskets and fowling pieces on the parapets. A single volley cut down every soldier below who had been shouting or shooting surrender letters.

Luo Rucai's battalion had its origins as a Chiliarch's unit from the infantry camp, one of the three great training camps during the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion period.

Building on that foundation, Luo Rucai was promoted to Assistant Regional Commander in Kangning Prefecture, forming a battalion of mixed Han and Tibetan soldiers. The soldiers' origins and their weaponry were both quite diverse.

Even now, the battalion's firearms unit was a mixed "flower musket" unit of three-eyed guns, fowling pieces, heavy muskets, and wall guns. Their combat effectiveness was, relatively speaking, a notch below that of the three great camps.

But the soldiers of this battalion had one very distinct trait: under Luo Rucai, they had cultivated an extremely strong sense of honor.

It was just that their sense of honor was a bit different from that of a normal army.

The Han soldiers in the battalion had once looted the Great Ming's Prince Han's mansion clean; the Tibetan soldiers in the battalion had also thoroughly overthrown the tusi nobles of Kangning Prefecture who had attempted a restoration.

Aside from the newly recruited Baoji soldiers, every last man in the battalion had audacity that feared neither heaven nor earth. They were all the most unorthodox, reckless desperadoes under the sun.

Standing on the city wall, these fellows found the mere sound of the Ming army's surrender pleas grating to their ears: What virtue or ability does your Zuo Liangyu possess, that you think you're worthy of calling for our surrender?

Watching his surrender envoys shot dead beneath the wall by gunfire, Zuo Liangyu ground his teeth nearly to dust, but still did not give the order to attack.

He didn't dare.

Because Zuo Liangyu knew there were Marshal's Mansion troops nearby. Their Ningxia friendly force, Cao Wenzhao, was dispersing his cavalry across the countryside of Fengxiang Prefecture, trying to search for any trace of the Marshal's army.

Cao Wenzhao had not come alone. He had also brought Bai Guang'en, Shen Guangxian, and Bu Yingdi, along with a directive from the Supreme Commander of the Three Frontiers, Hong Chengchou.

Hong Chengchou was still in Yinchuan. When they deployed, their plan was to cooperate with Chen Qiyu as much as possible, to help him execute the strategy of trapping the Marshal's Mansion's main army in Guanzhong.

But at the same time, Hong Chengchou also worried that Chen Qiyu might be more apt to spoil things than accomplish them.

To be precise, what Hong Chengchou worried about was the Ming army's weakness in pitched battles: the battlefield changed in an instant, the various units came from all corners of the realm with no tacit understanding for coordinated operations, and the Regional Commanders refused to yield to one another, making them easy to defeat in detail.

And this was a problem Hong Chengchou could not solve. After all, he was not the Supreme Commander of Shaanxi and the Three Frontiers of Shaanxi. He could only ensure that these four battalions of the Ningxia frontier army obeyed Cao Wenzhao.

As for the Shaanxi native troops and the various guest armies that had rushed here to aid in the suppression, Hong Chengchou had no authority over them.

So he could only offer Cao Wenzhao one piece of advice for securing victory should the unexpected occur: decapitation.

Hong Chengchou had compiled all intelligence on the Marshal's Mansion, collating the service records of commanders from every route and the organizational state of civil offices at all levels.

Upon careful analysis, he concluded that the Marshal's Mansion's greatest weakness was Liu Chengzong.

The Marshal's Mansion was not the Great Ming or the Later Jin; it lacked deep reserves of talent. Whenever there was a pitched battle, Liu Chengzong would inevitably take the field and command in person.

For the Ming army, a loose assemblage of units with no overall commander, to engage in a pitched battle against the Marshal's army commanded by Liu Chengzong was to pit their own weakness against the enemy's strength — the losses would outweigh the gains.

Therefore, should the plan to trap them in Guanzhong fail, Cao Wenzhao was to do his utmost to lure Liu Chengzong into a pitched battle, disregarding the gains or losses of any single city or territory, disregarding victories or defeats in field battles or city defenses, and even disregarding the Marshal's Mansion's entire war situation across Shaanxi, the Three Frontiers, and even the entire northwest.

They must find an opening to force a decisive battle, and in that battle, at the cost of several battalions, pin down the Marshal's Headquarters main force, then use elite troops to strike and kill Liu Chengzong on the spot.

As long as Liu Chengzong falls in battle, none of the fathers or brothers left in the Marshal's Headquarters can command the various factions. None of the brigade commanders or colonels from the different divisions have the prestige to rally everyone. By then, it will be a scattered corps against a scattered corps.

And at that level, the Ming army and the Marshal's army are evenly matched. They could then rely on a broader territory and stronger reserves to grind them down completely.

Zuo Liangyu and the others all agreed to this plan, and not just because Cao Wenzhao had brought the most troops.

The bigger reason was that the Sichuan Regional Commander, Hou Liangzhu, was originally supposed to cross the border to complete the encirclement. Halfway there, he made contact with Zu Dale to the east and learned that the Huguang army had been wiped out in a single day. Hou Liangzhu simply stopped advancing.

Compared to young men like Cao Wenzhao and Zuo Liangyu, Hou Liangzhu was a veteran of the old guard.

Back in the first year of the Tianqi reign, he was already the Vice Regional Commander of Sichuan. Yang Zhengfang of the Zhen'gan Army was practically a nephew to him, and even the Huguang Regional Commander, Xu Chengming, would have to call him elder brother.

Hou Liangzhu had initially looked down on Liu Chengzong as well. After all, there was the precedent of Feng Shuangli leading his troops down from the mountains at Kangning Prefecture, only to be easily routed by Long Zaitian near Chengdu Prefecture.

But now, after contacting Zu Dale and learning that Yang Zhengfang had led the Zhen'gan troops to defeat on the north bank of the Wei River — his entire army shattered — Hou Liangzhu began to have second thoughts.

Hou Liangzhu thought to himself: When we put down the She-An Rebellion, those Zhen'gan Miao warriors ran rampant across the Sichuan-Guizhou battlefields. Their front ranks fell in battle, and the rear ranks pressed on — utterly fearless. The Liaodong cavalry were also an unmatched force under heaven in mounted combat. How could they be defeated head-on by Liu Chengzong in a pitched battle?

He didn't know about Zu Kuan looting before the battle. Zu Dale didn't mention it either, only saying that Zu Kuan had led his cavalry in a charge and was killed by random gunfire.

Hou Liangzhu himself was an old general of extraordinary experience. After mulling it over briefly, he imagined a battle in his mind: two armies clashing head-on, no surprises at all, the Marshal's army smashing through the Huguang coalition in a straight-up, hard-fought decisive engagement.

The old general wondered, Are these northwestern Tatars really that fierce?

It must be the terrain. The Guanzhong Plain is too flat — it gave the Zhen'gan troops no chance to show their strength. They lost because of the terrain.

Forget it, forget it. Our Sichuan army also excels at mountain warfare. We'll just hold the strategic passes in the mountains and not go out to fight them recklessly.

Hou Liangzhu chose a more cautious tactic. He also sent word to Long Zaitian and Zuo Liangyu, warning them that the Marshal's army from the northwest was formidable and had already finished off the Huguang army. He advised them to wait until Liu Chengzong besieged Xi'an Prefecture, then close the encirclement and attack together.

This was also tied to Hou Liangzhu's personal experience.

Back when they were putting down the She-An Rebellion, Hou Liangzhu and Xu Chengming faced off against over a hundred thousand troops under She Chongming and An Bangyan. Hou Liangzhu advanced under the cover of morning fog, frightening the enemy into a rout. Xu Chengming charged down from the mountain, and in a single battle they beheaded She Chongming and An Bangyan, taking several thousand captives alone.

At the time, Xu Chengming was still the Guizhou Regional Commander. After the battle, the Sichuan Grand Coordinator submitted a memorial for merit but didn't mention Xu Chengming or the other Guizhou officers. Xu Chengming then submitted his own memorial disputing the credit, claiming She Chongming wasn't dead yet and that the Five-Prefecture Supreme Commander, Zhu Xieyuan, was favoring the Guizhou officers.

Later, Sichuan officials impeached him. Zhu Xieyuan submitted a memorial defending himself and strenuously requested resignation, but the Chongzhen Emperor strenuously urged him to stay.

The two of them were on good terms, but as a result, the rewards for the officers who put down the She-An Rebellion were left unresolved.

Old Master Hou nearly died of rage. Afterward, he quarreled with Zhu Xieyuan every day, refused to obey him, and was eventually dismissed from his post.

It wasn't until last year that the court finally recognized the merits of putting down the She-An Rebellion and gave Hou Liangzhu the post of Sichuan Regional Commander.

Now another Supreme Commander, Chen Qiyu, had popped up. Hou Liangzhu had suffered from disputes over merit before, so he had no intention of putting in real effort to begin with. That Supreme Commander Chen surely had his own people he wanted to promote — this merit would never fall to us Sichuan officers.

Unless Xi'an Prefecture itself came under attack and our Sichuan army went to break the siege, making a grand showing beneath the city walls — otherwise, why should we rush over, fight a life-and-death battle against a powerful foe, and end up with no credit? What would be the point?

Not to mention anything else, the Emperor still hasn't awarded merit to Deng Qi, who fell to his death.

And Supreme Commander Chen is currently out of contact. Why wade into these muddy waters?

Chen Qiyu truly didn't want to be out of contact. He had sent out over a dozen messengers from Xi'an Prefecture, all of them capable and skilled men.

He didn't dare write letters at all, terrified that his strategy and tactics would be intercepted by Liu Chengzong. So he used only tokens and verbal messages — a task no ordinary man could handle.

But every messenger vanished without a trace, like stones sinking into the sea. Not a single one managed to deliver the verbal message.

In fact, forget delivering the message — of all the messengers, only one man made it back alive.

That messenger had reached the outskirts of Hu County and spotted Zu Dale's camp from across the riverbank. But before he could cross the river, he was driven off by cavalry from Wei Qian'er's unit, who had crossed first and closed in on him.

That might not sound like much, but that cavalryman chased him all the way to the walls of Xi'an Prefecture — a distance of a full forty li.

He was a lone rider. Along the way, a few passersby tried to help him, but the cavalryman pursuing him was alone too. Whenever anyone tried to block his path, he loosed an arrow. When his arrows ran out, he drew his saber and chased with blade in hand, relentlessly pursuing for forty li without a care for anything else.

Along the way, they passed a battalion post under the Xi'an Left Guard. The banner troops working the fields swarmed out to watch the spectacle, their eyes following the two as they vanished into the dust.

The most absurd part was that after the messenger entered the city, this pursuing cavalryman stood outside the walls, pointing at the battlements and cursing. Only when he saw the garrison troops about to charge out and beat him did he hastily flee westward.

He ran off, but after a short while, he doubled back. He slipped into the mule and horse market outside the west gate, bought a horse with silver, purchased three arrows from the banner troops, and only then rode all the way back.

Before this messenger returned to the city, plenty of people had been willing to carry messages for Chen Qiyu. But after this man came back, Chen Qiyu couldn't find anyone to deliver his messages anymore.

They were scared out of their wits. What kind of enemy were they even fighting?

It was against this backdrop that the commanders of the western route armies reached a tactical consensus: besiege a point to strike the reinforcements, lure Liu Chengzong into a decisive battle, and during that battle, launch a surprise assault on Liu Chengzong's main camp.