Chapter 600: Trading for Grain

The tenth day of the fifth month, high noon.

In truth, Li Zicheng had been planning to continue his advance ever since he entered Fengxiang Prefecture several days earlier.

But his idea at the time was to enter Hanzhong, resupply through the Prince Rui estate, and then seize eastern Sichuan — Sichuan was so vast, it ought to be able to hold both his forces and Gao Yingxiang's.

Marching together with Liu Chengzong's Marshal's Headquarters, the leaders of the Chuang Army's four battalions all felt like they no longer knew how to wage war.

It wasn't that they were willing to fight positional battles against the Ming army — it was simply that moving together with Liu Chengzong imposed far too many restrictions on them.

Liu Chengzong had far too many mules and horses, and the roads heading east from Longxi were only these few; once the Marshal's Headquarters army passed through, not a blade of grass remained by the roadside, and neither bird nor beast was left behind.

Li Zicheng didn't want to fight a grinding positional battle against Zuo Liangyu's lot in Longxi either — the problem was, if he didn't fight a positional battle, where else could he go?

Liu Chengzong breached cities so fast — his main force swept through, and every county in Fengxiang Prefecture surrendered at the mere rumor of their approach. The peasant army followed along behind him into Fengxiang, but they couldn't even get there in time to scavenge the scraps.

The peasant army had always moved by plundering as they went; where there were cities and common folk, they had food.

But once they entered Fengxiang, the countryside was full of wealthy households that the Marshal's army had already stripped of grain, leaving only empty, cavernous mansions — the drip-tiles on the rooftops and the water vats in the courtyards had all been carted off, and the rice jars held nothing but a pitiful handful of rations.

When the great households, their servants all scattered, saw the peasant army arriving from afar, not one of them was alarmed — on the contrary, they were delighted, crowding around to ask Commander Li the Invader whether he would be providing meals.

Every one of them beat his chest and swore he knew both the people and the lay of the land in Fengxiang Prefecture, and offered to guide the way in attacking the various counties of Fengxiang now under the Marshal's Headquarters' rule.

The petty officers of the peasant army had never seen anything like this; one after another they grew excited and reported to their own commanders that popular sentiment could be put to use.

The petty officers had their own insights too — just not very many of them. Everyone figured that with these gentry volunteering their services, why bother specially kidnapping scholars? Taking a few cities, making off with the coin and grain, and heading elsewhere might not be such a bad idea.

This wasn't just a matter of ignorance either — the peasant army had always lived day to day, and if there was no grain now, they simply couldn't survive.

But in the current situation, with order restored in Fengxiang Prefecture, there was simply no living space for them.

The peasant army's organizational structure was built from the ground up on the basis of seeking survival and staying alive; each man followed his leader — all of it a last resort among last resorts under the overwhelming tide of natural and man-made calamities.

But now that "last resort" no longer worked. The tide had turned.

And it wasn't only the tide that had changed.

In Longxi, their nine peasant army battalions had fought side by side, confronting the Ming army along the upper reaches of the Wei River, and every battalion had suffered casualties.

The Chuang Army's four battalions and Zhang Yichuan had always operated together; they knew each other as thoroughly as anyone could.

The four battalion leaders all considered Li Zicheng the overall commander of the five battalions, with the remaining four all on equal footing.

Now Zhang Yichuan had taken up the Marshal's Headquarters' Henan General Command, but the leaders of the Chuang Army's four battalions couldn't change their old habits overnight — besides, they'd all fought their way up through flashing blades and darting shadows; who was willing to bow his head just because of an official title?

So the five colonels under Zhang Yichuan's banner — Conquer Heaven Tiger, Sky-Piercing Pillar, Song Jiang, and the others — had no way at all to speak as equals with the Chuang Army's four battalions; they were treated as nothing more than little brothers.

Nor could Zhang Yichuan possibly tear up his old bonds with the sworn brothers he'd once shared camps with, brandishing a chicken feather from the Marshal's Headquarters as a warrant and demanding they correct their attitude and address him as Grand Commander Zhang.

So when they gathered together, it was painfully awkward, and Zhang Yichuan's five colonels were helpless to do anything about it.

But once they entered Fengxiang Prefecture, the situation changed.

Zhang Yichuan had an organization. Before the Henan Five Battalions had even marched into Fengxiang Prefecture, Yang Chengzu, who was garrisoning Qianyang, had already prepared encampment zones for the five battalions and hired local women to set up stoves and cook.

When those five battalions marched into Qianyang, what they ate was hot food with meat and vegetables.

When the Chuang Army's four battalions entered Qianyang, nothing had been prepared. Yang Chengzu had no idea what to do, so he took three days' rations from his own battalion's troops and gave them a single day's dry provisions, then sent them on toward the prefectural seat of Fengxiang.

On their very first day in Fengxiang alone, over a dozen incidents of robbery and assault broke out — a company commander led his troops to rob a grain convoy heading from Baoji to the Fengxiang prefectural seat, then turned and deserted toward the Qinling Mountains; a centurion led his entire unit to jump ship on the spot, wanting to enlist in the Henan Five Battalions.

The chaos lasted a full two days, and even then it only subsided because Wang Wenxiu, the Marshal's Headquarters' defender of Fengxiang, reacted quickly, promptly establishing contact with the Chuang Army's four battalions, designating encampment zones for them, dispersing the battalions to their posts, and assigning grain convoys to keep them supplied with fodder and provisions.

But there were many things that couldn't be spoken aloud.

A wild wolf turned house dog — having to seek out Wang Wenxiu and beg for grain was bad enough, but the real killer was the fear of comparison.

If everyone gnawed tree bark and drank river water, that was fine; if the Marshal's army ate well and lived well, that was also fine.

Everyone in the peasant army knew that Liu Chengzong's household was vast and his enterprise great — his soldiers not only ate and lived well, their equipment was good too, and they fought fiercely in battle.

But when Wang Wenxiu treated the Henan Five Battalions exactly the same way, the Chuang Army's four battalions couldn't take it.

The resentment arose in a very strange way.

Wang Wenxiu felt: in the past, when you were out plundering cities, you'd rather let gold, silver, and treasure be thrown to the ground while fleeing government troops than send it to Xining; now that we've taken cities, being able to supply allied forces with two thick meals a day is already the height of benevolence.

The officers and soldiers of the Chuang Army's four battalions, for the most part, also felt there was nothing wrong with the arrangement itself — having someone supply army rations and provide a secure encampment zone was far better than sleeping in the open and eating in the wind.

But the taste of living under another's roof — it was hard to stomach.

Who doesn't have a bit of pride?

Li Zicheng, in Fengxiang Prefecture, couldn't stand to stay a single day longer.

Just at that moment, Liu Chengzong's letter arrived, and the letter sketched out a far broader strategic prospect — and for Li Zicheng, this prospect was precisely what he needed.

Of course, he felt this line of advance had both advantages and disadvantages compared to Sichuan.

Whether Henan or Huguang, either way he'd have to go to the front lines and fight to the death.

Moreover, if Liu Chengzong's campaign in Shaanxi turned sour, his own army, having leaped into Henan and Huguang, would become an isolated force, and finding a stable place to rest and regroup afterward would be difficult.

But correspondingly, once the Marshal's Headquarters gained a firm foothold in Shaanxi, they could provide support through Tong Pass and Xi'an Prefecture.

Risk and opportunity went hand in hand.

Geographically sealed-off Sichuan was more secure in terms of the external environment — even if Liu Chengzong were defeated in Shaanxi and fell back to Lanzhou or even Xining, it would be very hard for the Ming army to fight its way into Sichuan and wipe him out.

And correspondingly, it would be very hard for the outside to provide him support, and even for him, once he entered Sichuan, withdrawing again would be difficult.

Even before seeing this letter, Li Zicheng had already been thinking about finding a way out.

Now that he saw this letter, it could only be said to have steeled his resolve, not to have influenced his decision.

Thus, having received the letter on the ninth day of the fifth month, by the tenth he had already given the order for the four battalions to decamp — but before they moved out, he did one more thing.

He sought out Zhang Yichuan and had Zhang Yichuan take the letter from Liu Chengzong and go to Wang Wenxiu to request a batch of army provisions.

What he wanted was not unprocessed raw grain, nor processed finished grain, but the Marshal's army's ready-made field rations.

This included parched flour mixed with sugar, salt, oil, and locust powder; a small amount of salted dried fish, dried meat, and dried carrots; as well as oil-press byproduct bean cakes to serve as supplementary feed for the army horses.

To be honest, Wang Wenxiu was extremely reluctant to provide this standard field ration to Zhang Yichuan's Henan Five Battalions.

Fengxiang Prefecture, as the great grain-storage camp for the Marshal's Headquarters' eastern expedition army, had scoured every Ever-Normal Granary in the prefecture and gathered the harvests from grain seizures across the region — it truly was not short on grain.

But no matter how abundant the provisions and fodder were, Wang Wenxiu was not happy to supply army rations in this way.

If Zhang Yichuan hadn't known the ropes so well and specified exactly these supplies, Wang Wenxiu would have just allocated him two thousand dan of white flour no matter what — dump the grain on him and be done with it, let him steam his own mantou. Six a day, you won't starve.

But however you looked at it, Zhang Yichuan was still a Chief Brigade Commander of the Marshal's Manor, and now they were being transferred east to attack Tong Pass. He was asking for one last month's worth of army rations, and he'd specified the Marshal's Manor standard marching field rations.

Wang Wenxiu held his nose and allocated them.

He thought to himself: This bunch of rice buckets, at best four or five Company Commanders' worth of fighting strength, yet they want to eat the rations of nine thousand fucking men. Hurry up and roll east.

He'd barely finished seeing Zhang Yichuan off when Li Zicheng sent Tian Jianxiu over with Liu Chengzong's letter to demand grain.

This time Wang Wenxiu wasn't going to indulge them. He allocated five hundred dan of white flour and three thousand dan of millet flour directly based on the troop strength of the Chuang Army's four battalions, and sent Tian Jianxiu packing.

He was even especially warm, telling Tian Jianxiu they were all friendly forces, no need to stand on ceremony — any armor or weapons in the army that needed repair could all be fixed up in Fengxiang Prefecture before they left.

Tian Jianxiu thought to himself, repair armor and weapons, my ass. With this measly bit of grain, the armor and weapons would be fixed just in time for everyone to fucking starve.

Wang Wenxiu had it all figured out in his mind. Zhang Yichuan was one of their own, had no fighting strength, so naturally he had no human rights — one soldier counted as half a person.

The Chuang Army's four battalions, on the other hand, were outsiders. Outsiders were outsiders, whether they had fighting strength or not.

What he never expected, though, was that the moment this vast, sprawling peasant army of twenty thousand marched out of Fengxiang Prefecture, they chased off the Mongol cavalry grazing their horses on the grave mounds atop the loess plateau. While feeding horses and cutting fodder, the two divisions and nine battalions voluntarily exchanged their marching rations.

Zhang Yichuan traded most of his standard marching rations for most of Li Zicheng's millet flour.

The reason was simple. Li Zicheng told him: I don't plan to enter Henan, so I'll take the Shangluo Road, strike Wu Pass, and enter Huguang. Tong Pass you'll have to handle yourself — and you'll have a very hard time taking it.

So we might as well advance together. Give me the good marching rations, and I'll fight the tough battles along the way, until you enter Henan.

Li Zicheng had weighed the situations in Henan and Huguang, and combined with the strategy Liu Chengzong described in his letter, he judged that Huguang was the better place to rest and rebuild.

For one thing, he didn't know Huguang's situation, but he knew Henan's. Henan had suffered severe drought these past two years — easy to recruit soldiers, but hard to find grain.

For another, back in his early days he had fought his way through Shanxi and charged into Hebei. He knew the Chongzhen Emperor had an extremely strong sense of distance, and the entire Ming court was highly sensitive about the Henan-Hebei region.

Striking into Henan meant inevitably facing counterattacks from government troops out of Shanxi, Northern Zhili, and even Shandong.

By comparison, Huguang's position was better, and it didn't seem to lack water — it should be a better territory.

So he planned to lead his troops, break through Wu Pass, fight his way down through Nanyang Prefecture, smashing cities and recruiting soldiers as he went, until he entered Huguang and seized a stretch of territory the way Liu Chengzong had done in Qinghai.

They would naturally face counterattacks from government troops then too, but Li Zicheng believed the counterattacks from the Huguang direction would be easier to bear.

After all, in terms of strategic position, Huguang had Zhang Yichuan to its north sharing the pressure, and at its back were Liu Chengzong's Shaanxi and the Sichuan that Gao Yingxiang had stormed into and was raising hell in.

The only thing to worry about, aside from Huguang's own local troops, was the garrison of Southern Zhili.

At least in Li Zicheng's subconscious, the Southern Zhili garrison had enjoyed peace for so long that even if a great army invaded Huguang, he could probably hold them off for a while.

Most importantly, he truly had no ambition to contend for supremacy.

If he were standing next to Zhang Yichuan and couldn't keep him firmly a head shorter, then he wouldn't accept it.

But put him next to Liu Chengzong… Li Zicheng felt the two of them shouldn't be put together. The gap was too vast.

The surging tide of frontier soldiers and bankrupt peasants rising in revolt across Shaanxi was the great momentum born of natural disaster and human calamity. People like them were all just pushed along by that momentum.

But Liu Chengzong's Marshal's Manor, after lying dormant in Qinghai, had charged into Shaanxi like a tiger descending the mountain.

Elite battle cavalry, cannon and musket war wagons, provisions and baggage — everything in abundance. Every kind of experience was also thoroughly perfected. There were army medics on the battlefield, and once they occupied a single prefecture's territory, they could rapidly process grain into lighter, standardized military rations.

Compared to the Marshal's Manor's dozen-plus fully formed, fully armed regular battalions, the peasant armies with petty kings popping up everywhere looked like child's play.

From the moment Liu Chengzong launched his eastern campaign, every single rebel leader in the northwest had no fate but to be swept up into the torrent. No one could contend against the great momentum.

They were the great momentum itself.

Zhang Yichuan, for his part, didn't think nearly that much. He had wanted to strike Fengyang all along. Now there was a chance to enter Henan — once there, recruiting soldiers and fighting battles would be easy.

Trading top-quality army rations for Li Zicheng to do the fighting on his behalf — a good deal.

Although the Marshal's Manor's standard army rations had a huge impact on a soldier's fighting strength — rich and satisfying, tasty and filling — his army eating such rations for a month still wouldn't see much increase in fighting strength.

When it came time to fight, they'd still be what they'd always been. Whether through Tong Pass or Wu Pass, in the end they'd still have to trade soldiers' lives for a road into Henan.

Li Zicheng's army, on the other hand, had stronger fighting strength. Supplying them with better army rations would let them maintain that fighting strength better.

And for the Chuang Army's four battalions, being in better fighting shape meant having soldiers, having money, having grain.

And you know, it's actually true — Zhang Yichuan valued and cherished his veterans and battle-hardened soldiers more than Liu Chengzong, Li Zicheng, Zhang Xianzhong, or any of those men.

Because he only had that handful of veterans and battle troops. Entering Henan was one hurdle; going from Henan into Fengyang Prefecture was another.

He was counting on these veterans in his hands to help him build an army in Henan capable of striking into Fengyang Prefecture.

To others, these veterans might just be veterans. But in his eyes, every single one was a future Centurion, Company Commander, Battalion Commander, even Regional Commander.

Truly, if he were short even one man, he'd know exactly who was missing.

Li Zicheng was different. After leaving Fengxiang Prefecture with Zhang Yichuan, hearing the distant booming cannon fire from Qianzhou City, he sought out the Mongol cavalry and had them guide him to a city the Marshal's Manor hadn't yet taken.

The Mongol cavalry naturally led him south of the Wei River. Twenty thousand peasant soldiers followed a few Mongol cavalrymen, crossing the Wei River in a vast, sprawling column, and entered Zhouzhi County.

They didn't attack the city, though. They merely made a sweep through the wealthy estates outside the city that the Marshal's Army hadn't yet foraged, then continued their eastward advance. That very day, they scared Zu Dale into fleeing toward Hanzhong, charging all the way onto the Shangluo Road.

In the course of this, a small incident occurred.

It took Li Zicheng a full three days to realize he was short five hundred veterans.

Gao Jie and Li Chengdong, and… his wife was gone again!