Chapter 656: A Prince Not to Be Killed

Outside Xi'an Prefecture, in Guanzhong.

The great siege camp remained as clamorous as ever.

Compared to the fighting in Henan, the siege of Xi'an Prefecture seemed almost gentle.

Never mind anyone else — even Liu Chengzong, the commander-in-chief, found it absurd.

A few days ago, Gao Yingdeng reported that the First Field Brigade had finished its reorganization; both Mongol regiments and both Western Fan regiments had been transferred into Guanzhong and incorporated into the camp.

Liu the Lion then went down to the camp to review the troops and discovered that the First Brigade's four generals were quite capable — without making a sound, they had completely re-equipped those two divisions and four regiments.

The equipment level of Mongol and Western Fan troops was something any clear-eyed person understood.

As auxiliary arms, they used captured equipment.

The first tier used gear captured from Ming forces, the second tier used gear captured from the Oirat army, and the third tier used gear captured from the Qinghai Mongols.

Comparatively speaking, if you set aside the firearms in the Western Fan soldiers' hands, the Mongol troops' equipment was actually a bit better — after all, the best-equipped Western Fan soldiers were what the Marshal's headquarters called "Mongol-armed Fanzi."

In short, sheepskin riding coats, red-tasseled helmets, spears that couldn't be straightened, nomadic cavalry hard bows, and wooden clubs with iron heads serving as maces — these were the common regular soldier's arms; the better ones among them might have some protective gear like four-mirror armor, mail, or iron-studded leather armor.

When Liu the Lion organized the army, he hadn't factored in their equipment level at all; the original plan was that after the reorganization was complete, as winter approached, the Lanzhou rear would send winter clothing to the front lines and have the Armory Bureau re-equip them as quickly as possible.

He never expected that the generals, led by Gao Yingdeng, would take care of it right there at Xi'an Prefecture.

When he went down to review the troops, the soldiers of the two battalion headquarters had swapped their sheepskin-lined riding coats for uniform Ming guard-and-battalion regulation battle jackets, and their outer mail had been replaced with purple-flower cloth-faced iron armor.

The red-tasseled helmets on their heads had been exchanged for Ming red-tasseled conical helmets, along with quite a few vermilion-lacquered "Courage" character helmets.

Every piece of equipment was, at a single glance, obviously second-hand.

The battle jackets were generally a bit too large and didn't fit well.

The purple-flower cloth-faced iron armor was neither purple nor flowered — the fabric was simply called purple-flower cloth, and its color was a pale reddish brown.

The armor in particular — everything they wore was infantry armor that had been privately modified.

Infantry armor and cavalry armor differ greatly in form; a knowledgeable person can tell at a glance.

Infantry armor is a full suit reaching to the instep, with armor plates packed from both armpits down to the hips, without needing to account for the effects of crouching and similar movements.

The armor worn by the two Mongol and Fan regiments now, however, was cloth-faced armor of infantry pattern that had been altered: the lower hem was cut short to above the knee, and the armor plates along the ribs from armpit to hip had been removed, replaced with externally attached groin guards, armpit guards, and waist guards, to prevent the plates from jamming up into the armpits and scraping the hips when riding.

Some men had even equipped hanging leg-guards — that is, iron shin guards.

The iron conical helmets went without saying; beneath them they had also hung mail neck-guards.

Even more, every man had a waist saber strapped on; the crudely made maces had been swapped for iron-hafted golden-melon hammers; and the Mongol-style hard bows had all been replaced with Ming regulation large-eared soft bows.

This equipment had clearly all come from the besieged Xi'an Prefecture.

In fact, according to junior officers on the siege front line, armor and weapons were not the biggest items of income in the siege trade.

When Ming soldiers came to the camp to buy food, what they most liked to use was still silver, because prices inside the city were so high that the silver in their hands had already lost its value.

Apart from that, the largest categories of barter goods were expendable odds and ends like gunpowder, lead bullets, iron shot, and arrowheads.

According to the siege camps' tallies, on forged arrowheads alone they had traded over twenty thousand, and lead balls and iron shot were beyond counting.

As for gunpowder — even more.

After Gao Yingdeng's First Brigade finished its reorganization, Wang Wenxiu was appointed Supreme Commander of Longxi Circuit, and he took Li Wanqing and Yang Chengzu with their troops to transfer to Gongchang and Pingliang; when his army departed, it had more gunpowder than when it had entered Guanzhong.

Liu Chengzong prepared a surrendered deputy general for Wang Wenxiu as well, a man named Ouyang Gun.

Ouyang Gun was from Ganzhou; he had just received transfer orders promoting him to Deputy Regional Commander of Lintao when Liu Chengzong attacked Gansu.

He helped Yang Jiamo form two Ganzhou battalions, and then Liu the Lion had him penned up in Liangzhou like a prisoner until he surrendered along with Li Hongsi.

The Marshal's headquarters was even more at ease using this man than using Li Hongsi.

Because Li Hongsi was from Shaanxi, while Ouyang Gun was from Gansu — when it came down to it, it was a matter of native place.

His homeland had already become territory under the Marshal's governance; the Great Ming was too far away and Xining was too close, and a man has to eat, so not long after he surrendered, the Old Master hired him as an instructor at New City Academy, where he specialized in researching cavalry tactics.

Later, he also worked alongside Dalai Taiji at the training camp.

And the reason Wang Wenxiu was transferred to Longxi was that Liu Chengzong wanted to recall Ren Quan'er to Guanzhong to form the Marshal's headquarters' Second Field Brigade.

With the experience from forming the First Brigade, the Second Brigade's affairs went much more smoothly, allowing Liu Chengzong to devote more energy to the Henan front.

The person at the Marshal's headquarters most concerned with developments in Henan was Zhang Tianlin.

The moment Zhang Yichuan captured Yongning, Zhang Tianlin coordinated with his forces to open a courier route between Tong Pass, Hong Pass, and Yongning County.

After all, western Henan was still under the threat of plague; with their capabilities, Henan was beyond their reach, yet intelligence was indispensable, so they could only weigh two evils and select soldiers to venture out from the pass, forming a rapid channel for transmitting information.

Liu the Lion was very pleased that Henan and Guanzhong had established contact.

In the command tent, he chatted idly with Zhang Xianzhong, the Prince of Han, and the other Ministry of Rites grandees, smiling as he leafed through the letters, and even lavished praise on Zhang Yichuan.

The several field battles the Henan Five Battalions had fought in western Henan had all been quite brilliant.

Western Henan has many mines and has always produced plenty of desperate men; recruit an army with mountain miners as its backbone, fight a few hard battles, and the quality of Zhang Yichuan's army would improve enormously.

At the same time, the thinking of taking Yongning first and then attacking Luoyang was also very sound; having a rear base could maximize the besieging army's morale.

In the worst-case scenario, the army would not panic too much when facing setbacks; at the very worst, they could fall back to Yongning County, and if even Yongning couldn't hold, they could withdraw directly into Tong Pass.

But just as his words of praise faded, he saw Zhang Yichuan write in his letter that after breaching Yongning County, he had killed the Prince of Wan'an Commandery, Zhu Caiqing.

This made Liu Chengzong's face instantly darken to an iron blue.

The Prince of Han, sitting in the command tent and carefully reading expressions, saw Liu Chengzong's smile freeze and asked, "Marshal, what's the matter?"

"Zhang Yichuan — after taking the city, he killed a commandery prince."

The Prince of Han's smile froze as well; he paused a moment before recovering his composure and said, "The commandery prince in Yongning would be the Prince of Wan'an, a cadet branch of the Yi line of descent. Killed is killed, Marshal; that branch of his family has no good men."

Liu Chengzong did not commit one way or the other.

"Punish him, Marshal!"

Minister of Rites Zhang Xianzhong clearly understood ritual law better; his eyes blazed with fury. "That Zhang Yichuan — he captured a commandery prince and should have sent the prisoner under escort to Guanzhong, yet he took it upon himself to kill him in Yongning County. Was that his to kill?"

Liu the Lion lifted his eyelids and looked helplessly at the Minister and the Secretary of the Ministry of Rites; neither had hit the point.

He cared neither whether the executed prince was a wicked prince or a virtuous one, nor that Zhang Yichuan, a former bandit chief, lacked a subordinate's awareness.

What bothered him was that Zhang Yichuan had done this thing without using his brain.

Just like Zhang Tianlin's fondness for wrecking Buddhist temples — it was a meaningless act.

Those imperial princes and commandery princes of the Great Ming held no meaning for the Marshal's Headquarters, nor for the roving bandits.

The only meaningful things in a princely estate were the mountains of piled-up wealth and the people who had received some education.

The former could fill out financial and material resources; the latter could be dispatched to the barren, bitter-cold Tianshan Mountains, where they could use their useless bodies and limited talents to do something meaningful for the world.

As for the imperial princes and commandery princes themselves, once separated from their estates, leaving them alive wasted grain, and killing them wore out blades — to put it bluntly, they were useless men.

"He killed the Commandery Prince of Wan'an purely to indulge a moment's impulse, heedless of the consequences. A prince should not be killed. This matter is my fault — I didn't tell him beforehand."

Liu Chengzong shook his head with some vexation. "These princes have enjoyed wealth and rank for generations. When faced with the peril of a city under siege, they stand aloof like lambs awaiting slaughter. First, because they rely on the restraints of clan law; second, because no prince has ever been executed before. Even when a city falls, they simply don't feel their death is near."

He didn't say what came next, but the meaning was already very clear.

In the past, princely estates did nothing when besieged because there had never been a case of a prince being killed after a city was breached. In the end, the roving bandits and armies outside the walls were not as terrifying as the imperial clan law hanging over their heads, which could demote them to commoners or abolish their kingdoms at any moment.

Now that the Commandery Prince of Wan'an had set this precedent, the princes in their estates would fear for their lives in the future. When a real crisis came, they might very well unleash their money power, offering heavy bounties to recruit soldiers.

And the key point was that Zhang Yichuan was right there in Henan Prefecture, with Luoyang right before his eyes.

The biggest reason Liu Chengzong disapproved of this matter was that Luoyang, the prefectural seat of Henan Prefecture, held the Prince of Fu's estate — the most famously wealthy prince in all the realm.

If you, Zhang Yichuan, truly wanted to kill a prince, you should have spared the Commandery Prince of Wan'an's life, sent him to the walls of Luoyang to shout at the Prince of Fu, telling him not to act rashly inside the city, sapping Ming army morale, then taken Luoyang and killed the Prince of Fu.

Now Luoyang hasn't been taken, yet the Commandery Prince of Wan'an, right next door, has been killed. How could the Prince of Fu not be terrified?

And the crucial point is, an imperial prince isn't a general. Even if he's terrified, he can't abandon the city and flee — he can only throw money at the problem with desperate abandon.

Thinking of this, Liu Chengzong shook his head, raised a hand to summon a Feathered Forest rider, and said: "For Zhang Yichuan's merit in capturing Yongning, have the Bureau of War produce a merit commendation plaque to encourage the troops to press on. Once the plague in Henan subsides somewhat, further rewards will be conferred — send that over first. Then the Bureau of Rites: transmit a circular to all officers and ranks throughout the army."

Zhang Xianzhong was unable to reply immediately.

Liu Chengzong's view of the imperial princes stirred many feelings in him.

Once again, he fell into an obsessive, trance-like study of Liu Chengzong.

But this time, it was mixed with a little new inspiration.

He felt that although Zhang Yichuan was cruel toward imperial princes, he clearly treated them with more respect than Liu Chengzong did.

At least in Zhang Yichuan's eyes, a Great Ming imperial prince was a foremost enemy worth killing, and even worth boasting about after killing.

This was basically the same as Zhang Xianzhong's own view. For any leader who had risen from roving banditry, executing an imperial prince brought an immense sense of inner satisfaction.

But he discovered that Liu Chengzong clearly did not see it this way. Liu Chengzong truly, from the marrow of his bones, held not the slightest respect for imperial princes. He didn't even regard them as people. Without any admixture of good or evil, joy or anger, he simply treated them as tools — like fish on a chopping board, or flies and mosquitoes.

It was precisely this view that moved Zhang Xianzhong so deeply — back at Zhuanglang Garrison City, when he had tried to stop a chariot with a mantis's arm, Liu Chengzong had looked at him the exact same way.

When Liu Chengzong furrowed his brow, the Prince of Han nudged Zhang Xianzhong with his elbow. Only then did he snap back to attention and hurriedly accept the order: "Yes! What does the Grand Marshal wish this humble officer to transmit?"

"What is there to transmit!"

Liu Chengzong was somewhat displeased by his dazed distraction. "Transmit the method for handling imperial clan members, princes, and commandery princes. Just as you said earlier: when capturing imperial princes, uniformly collect records of their merits and faults in their fiefs, then escort them to the central army of the Marshal's Headquarters. They are not to be executed on the battlefield."

"Not only transmit this to the entire army, but also send it into Henan, Hanzhong, and Monan."

Henan was Zhang Yichuan; Monan was Yang Qi; Hanzhong was Gao Yingxiang.

Gao Yingxiang's dispatch of troops this time had truly been the worst of rotten luck.

Everyone had set out together. Liu Chengzong swept through Guanzhong irresistibly; Li Zicheng charged into Huguang, advancing triumphantly. Only Gao Yingxiang was trapped in the mountains between Jialing Valley and the Han River, unable to advance or retreat.

What Liu Chengzong had encountered was a locust plague. On Gao Yingxiang's side, just as he had thrust into Hanzhong and fought only a few battles, capturing merely the two cities of Feng County and Lueyang, the Hanzhong Basin was hit by torrential rain that fell for forty days straight. Mountain floods surged, and everything was inundated.

A few days ago, the roads had just reopened. Gao Yingxiang even sent a letter over, frankly admitting that he was farming up in the mountains, and would come down to attack Hanzhong once the harvest was in.

When Liu Chengzong saw the letter, he laughed until his stomach hurt and immediately indicated he could support them with a batch of gunpowder.

Master Gao was truly a seasoned hand at construction work — the title of Farming King was well-deserved. He farmed in northern Shaanxi, and now he was farming in southern Shaanxi too.

Liu Chengzong first had the Bureau of War issue encouragement to the troops and confirm post-battle rewards; then had the Bureau of Rites issue regulations to all divisions, establishing the system for handling Great Ming imperial clan members going forward.

Finally, he personally wrote a letter to Zhang Yichuan in his own hand.

The letter made no mention of punishment for Zhang Yichuan's unauthorized killing of the Commandery Prince of Wan'an. It merely told him the reasons why imperial princes should not be killed, and reminded him to dispatch troops to attack Luoyang as soon as possible, while simultaneously sealing off information — under no circumstances should he use the killing of imperial princes as a propaganda tool to spread fear.

But Liu the Lion himself knew that this letter of his was most likely firing a cannon after the horse had already bolted — by the time it reached Zhang Yichuan's hands, it would probably be too late.

So he didn't belabor the point. There wasn't much meaning in it.

He simply ordered Zhang Yichuan to send the topographical maps of Henan Prefecture and Nanyang Prefecture, along with his division's troop deployment map for besieging Luoyang, to the interior of the passes.

Liu Chengzong reckoned that Zhang Yichuan was about to lose a battle.

Not only because Zhang Yichuan's killing of an imperial prince might cause the Prince of Fu to spend his family fortune, offering heavy bounties to recruit soldiers and boost morale.

But also because he had not heard any news of Zhang Yichuan capturing Mengjin, Sishui, Xingyang, or other such places.

Throughout history, strong cities had been difficult to defend precisely because, before attacking the strong city itself, the besieger had already eliminated the key strongpoints outside it, and in most cases a large-scale field battle would have erupted in the open.

For example, before Liu Chengzong attacked the prefectural seat of Xi'an, he had smashed through an encirclement of tens of thousands of Ming troops on the Xianyang tableland.

By the time he attacked Xi'an, inside there were no troops or provisions, outside there was no relief. With only over ten thousand starving soldiers and a strong city, they had no ability to sally forth and fight in the field. Besieged long enough, the city simply lost its defensive capability.

But the situation in Henan Prefecture was not like that. Zhang Yichuan had not cleared out Henan Prefecture's key strongpoints, nor had he severed the ancient Xiao Pass road south of Sishui, which linked to the Song peaks and bordered the Yellow River to the north. Likewise, he had not taken Mengjin County, which would cut off the route from Shanxi.

In attacking Luoyang, Zhang Yichuan could only achieve a rapid victory. Otherwise, he would most likely suffer defeat when Ming court relief troops entered Henan Prefecture.

Of course, for Liu Chengzong, it would be best if Zhang Yichuan could win. But if he could not, then he needed to prepare to receive his division's defeated troops.

"Summon Zhang Tianlin. Find out how many of the plague survivors among the troops under his command at Tong Pass have recovered. Form them into units and garrison Hong Pass, east of Tong Pass. If the frontline battle situation turns unfavorable, the five Henan battalions can be ordered to withdraw into Hong Pass."