Chapter 689: Wang Ji and His Son

Mutiny. Military revolt.

When word reached the Governor-General's yamen, Hong Chengchou and Yu Chongxiao both remained perfectly composed.

Such events happen in Ningxia — they aren't even worth a gasp of surprise.

Hong Chengchou had long been prepared. He raised a hand, unfastened his sash, and shed his round-collared official robe and cap — servants promptly gathered them up. Then, together with the officials, clerks, and military officers in the compound, he slipped out a side gate, took the back lanes, and headed toward the Provincial Governor's Garrison encampment.

The reason the court dares not press too hard on the Ningxia military colonies is simple: the problem is intractable.

Ever since Ye Qi's reform, the government salt monopoly was sold off in bulk to the Huai River merchant houses, bringing the state a million taels of silver annually from the salt merchants and fattening the imperial treasury.

The cost was borne by the frontier garrisons centered on Ningxia — Gansu, Yansui, Xuanfu, and the rest.

Only, the cost came on very slowly. To later eyes, the fault lies with Ye Qi.

But at the time, after the reform, Ningxia's merchant colonies still supplied the various garrisons with rations for nearly thirty years.

A change that gradual — it was very hard, at the time, to see any connection.

After all, the Open-Certificate system had been too successful. It let places like Yansui, which produced almost no grain of its own, use the merchant colonies to drive grain prices down to an astonishing three or four qian per dan. Garrison rations were purchased locally at rock-bottom prices, with almost no need for court-dispatched official silver from the capital.

The merchant-colony fields did not lose their value overnight. Even when they could no longer be traded for salt certificates, they could still sell grain. Grain prices gradually rose, military expenditures steadily climbed, and the empire's finances, in a slow-boil of the frog, worsened by the day.

By the time anyone realized something was wrong, those fields had all become private farmland — people's very livelihood depended on them, and they could not be touched.

The army deteriorated right alongside. Frontier troops began to desert, new recruits were drawn in, the troop rolls stayed the same, but combat strength plummeted.

In this process, it was inevitable that a portion of the officers got rich first. The weeding out of the best and the retention of the dross gave Ningxia's mutinies their own unique advantage.

It is not the same as mutinies and military revolts elsewhere.

Though every garrison has large numbers of hereditary military officers controlling wealth and troops, and all are relatively closed, stratified little societies, and the harsh exploitation from above is the same everywhere — still, the nature of the mutinies differs.

In places like Yansui, the men guard a poor land and go hungry. The soldiers bear little resentment toward the court; when they kick up a fuss, it is for a mouthful of food. More often, knowing there is no food to be had even if they riot, they simply do not riot.

When they truly do riot, it is mostly because of an officer's mismanagement. The soldiers overthrow their superiors, kill their own direct commanding officer, and then flee.

If the commanding officer happens to be a good one, the frontier troops generally skip the detour — they desert outright and take to the hills as bandits!

In Liaodong, they face the enemy's spear-points directly. The immense military pressure overrides everything else; the only way to survive and win is for high and low to bind together, the Liaodong soldiers united as one body.

So in Liaodong, mutinies usually come from the guest armies, because their pay is higher and the court is forever in arrears.

The Ningxia frontier troops, on the other hand, guard a prosperous land and yet go hungry and poor. This environment fills them with blazing fury.

They are a basket of firewood, thoroughly soaked in oil, even rotted through — it takes only a single spark, and it does not matter what that spark is. They just want to raise a colossal ruckus.

During the Bobai Rebellion, the Army Supervisor Mei Guozhen once produced an analysis of the Ningxia mutinies.

From the Hongwu reign to the Jiajing reign, the invaders raided year after year, and we stood guard year after year. The troops endured the toil of battle and defense, but suffered no hardship of embezzlement and exploitation.

From the Jiajing reign to the Longqing reign, peace was negotiated and war readiness was neglected. The troops suffered the hardship of embezzlement and exploitation, but were spared the toil of drill and training.

Now, outwardly we maintain peace while inwardly we seek to fight as well. Maintaining peace means embezzlement and exploitation continue, to fund the appeasement of the raiders. Seeking to fight means there is only the toil of drill, with no hope of earning merit by taking heads.

No compassion is shown them, yet word of embezzlement and exploitation reaches their ears, leaving them no means to make a living and no path to rise in the world.

In times of peace, it is already hard to win their hearts. When the day comes to take up arms, how can their resentment be avoided?

The key word is resentment.

The treatment the Ningxia army has received has filled them with resentment against the whole world. This resentment is not directed at any specific person — it is an equal, all-encompassing resentment against everything.

It is the feeling that they clearly ought to be prosperous, clearly ought to be living well, guarding a land of rich soil, and yet they have made their lives into a pile of shit.

This is why Ningxia's mutinies rarely occur in the various Ningxia guard-battalions; several times they have concentrated in Ningxia Garrison City itself.

On the surface, there are always political demands, but in reality, it is simply that an officer with grievances loosened the reins, and the frontier troops, long eager to raise a colossal ruckus, picked up their blades and started killing.

They do not kill commoners, they do not kill their direct commanding officers — every time, they point their blades at outsiders.

At the least, they strike down the Grand Coordinator; at the most, they raise the banner of rebellion and rally a cloud of followers.

In the Zhengde reign, the Prince of Anhua, Zhu Zhifan, learning of the soldiers' discontent, invited the military officers to drink, granted the entire army one tael of silver per man, raised the banner of rebellion on the spot, styled himself the Old Son of Heaven, and killed the Grand Coordinator An Weixue.

In the Wanli reign, Bobai rebelled, roused the soldiers to demand back pay, and killed Dang Xin.

To serve as Governor-General or Grand Coordinator in a place like this — and in times like these — the likelihood of running into a mutiny is far too great.

There is no need even to mention Hong Chengchou; the Grand Coordinator Wang Ji fled even faster than he did.

Wang Ji had lived through the Ningyuan Mutiny, and inwardly he was originally quite sanguine about mutinies, always feeling he could reason with the troops.

However, last year, a small variable arose.

Wang Ji is a native of Tai'an Prefecture. He has a son named Wang Dechang, who holds the rank of Licentiate.

After the Ningyuan Mutiny, Wang Ji won the Emperor's favor. His son, harboring a desire to serve in the army, also benefited by association and became an officer under the hometown Regional Commander Yang Yufan in the garrison regiment. The year before last, he earned merit suppressing bandits and was promoted to Assistant Commander, with the chance to fill a substantive post as Garrison Commander in Linqing.

Last year, Wang Dechang heard that Tong Pass had been massacred and Shaanxi had fallen. Panic-stricken, he resigned his post, took a dozen household retainers, and set out on the road to Ningxia to find his father.

A very shrewd man.

At the Shaanxi-Shanxi border, they disguised themselves as deserters turned bandits. Through bribes and deception, they entered Shaanxi, telling everyone they met that they were going to join the Grand Marshal. There were even commoners from Yan'an Prefecture who, hearing he was a Shandong man, traveled a thousand li to join him — clicking their tongues in wonder, they provided this fine young fellow with food.

The journey took three months, beset by a thousand perils.

Fortunately, he met his father Wang Ji — Ningxia had not yet fallen.

Wang Dechang then used his advantage of being thoroughly versed in the affairs of a governor-general's garrison to help his father select and transfer Ningxia soldiers to serve as garrison troops.

Essentially, he was doing the job of a Provincial Garrison Brigade General, but without the official rank. Even though Ningxia had already lost contact with the court, Wang Ji did not dare to make an unauthorized appointment of a Brigade General.

It was this role of Acting Provincial Garrison Brigade General, however, that terrified Wang Dechang.

He discovered that Ningxia was truly a raging fire topped with boiling oil. The Ningxia soldiers in that garrison camp had enormous ideological problems — every last one of them was full of blazing fury with no idea whom to direct it at.

Put it this way: it would take only three cups of wine.

To make a Ningxia soldier stir up a mutiny and kill the Governor-General and Grand Coordinator.

Or, without even needing wine, to make that same Ningxia soldier go kill the mutineers.

They simply find no meaning in being alive.

On top of that, Hong Chengchou was clearing up the land holdings, guard-battalion by guard-battalion.

Yes.

Both Wang Ji and Wang Dechang knew that if Hong Chengchou could just hold on until he'd finished tying up loose ends, Ningxia would be completely transformed within a year.

But the father and son knew even better that doing things this way was going to cause a colossal disaster.

Especially given the current state of mind among the Ningxia troops — utterly chaotic, they'd never hold out until the military farmlands were sorted.

Wang Dechang had urged Wang Ji several times to just resign and return home to Shandong. The road home might be hard, but it was still better than staying in Ningxia.

The way Hong Chengchou was stirring things up, an internal mutiny was more or less inevitable. Hong Chengchou had gone ruthless, and he had plenty of soldiers — they themselves had hardly any. When the mutiny came, they'd be the ones to suffer.

But Wang Ji could never make up his mind, because he knew Liu Chengzong was about to attack Ningxia.

Just last winter, the Lingzhou battalion commander on the opposite bank of the Ningxia Yellow River had submitted a report on a captured spy, which included a defense map of Lingzhou drawn by the spy.

That Lingzhou map stretched from Hongsibu near Zhongwei all the way to Anding Fort and Xingwu Camp by the border wall, covering villages, waterholes, rivers and lakes, roads, and mountain forests — everything you could ask for.

In some places, Wang Ji even found details missing from the official maps and was able to fill in the gaps.

Lingzhou city itself was rendered with particular finesse and detail — the prison in the southeast corner of the city, the storehouse in the northwest, the River-Quelling Pagoda outside the walls, the traveling palace, the parade ground, even the double-barbican layout of the city's north side was depicted with vivid accuracy.

And what they had intercepted was only Lingzhou.

Without thorough preparation, the Marshal's Manor could not have produced such a detailed survey of Lingzhou. If Lingzhou was like this, the other forts and garrisons would be in no better shape.

Clearly, a great battle was imminent.

If he fled now out of fear of mutiny, it would only pile disaster upon disaster for the already fragile defenses of Ningxia Garrison.

So he could only cling to wishful thinking, hoping the mutiny could be delayed until war arrived, while also having his son do his utmost to guard against a mutiny in the standard battalions.

To Wang Dechang, though, guarding against the standard battalions was utterly useless — he couldn't keep an eye on every single man.

A mutiny, a raid on the government offices — it only took a dozen or so men to pull off, and by coercing a few hundred followers, they could throw the whole garrison city into chaos.

So Wang Dechang's attention was never really on preventing a mutiny. Instead, he had inwardly accepted that mutiny was inevitable and had begun preparing his escape for when it happened.

On one hand, he planted trusted men he'd brought from Shandong at various points throughout the city; on the other, he selected men from the Ningxia standard battalions who were both fanatical and loyally dependable.

There was no contradiction in this, because the Ningxia soldiers' fanaticism stemmed from having no path for advancement — they'd kill anyone. Serving the Grand Coordinator offered a meteoric rise, which counted as a path for advancement.

Inside the city, he stationed his trusted men permanently at the Grand Coordinator's compound, prepared many sets of civilian clothes, and parked two carts by the rear wall with ladders ready. He also promoted some trustworthy Ningxia soldiers to guard the nearest city gate.

Outside the city, he bought a cart shop to raise horses, purchased fodder and stockpiled provisions, and sent men to befriend the postmasters and station chiefs at relay stations along the route, as well as the garrison at Qingtong Gorge, mapping out an escape route out of Ningxia.

His preparations were more meticulous than Hong Chengchou's.

So the moment he heard of the mutiny, Wang Dechang sprinted to the Grand Coordinator's compound. Finding the front gate already surrounded by mutineers, he rushed to the rear wall.

Just in time to see his Shandong veterans on top of the wall, frantically passing his old father, bundled in a worn sheepskin coat, out to safety. The whole party took two carts and headed straight for the city gate.

The city was in chaos, people running wildly through the streets and alleys. They made it outside the city through a series of close calls, and looking back, they saw black smoke rising from the Grand Coordinator's compound.

Kept completely in the dark, Wang Ji still had no idea his son was taking him out of Ningxia. He huddled inside the cart, afraid to show his face, calculating how to take refuge in the Grand Coordinator's standard battalions and send his son to negotiate with the mutineers once the storm had passed.

Then he heard the clamor, lifted the curtain — good heavens, they were already outside the city. A group of military officers, all changed into civilian clothes, were changing horses and loading provisions at the cart shop.

Wang Ji was dumbfounded.

Worse, his son's men wouldn't even listen to him. They just silently changed horses and wrapped up provisions, and the moment they were done, armed with bows, blades, and armor, they set off at a gallop.

The party crossed the Yellow River and made straight for Qingtong Gorge via Shajing and Shigou. In three days and nights, they fled nearly six hundred li, entering the borders of Huan County in Qingyang Prefecture.

Only then, camped among the crumbling walls of a barren, treeless ridge, did Wang Dechang finally have the chance to soothe his panic-stricken, office-abandoning old father.

But he didn't have much time.

Because very soon, their party of sixteen was captured by registered troops of the Marshal's Manor's Yanqing Circuit.

Their timing was unfortunate.

For one thing, Ding Guodong, who was garrisoning Qingyang Prefecture, was in the midst of urgently downsizing his overstrength army and holding winter drills to weed out the old and weak — precisely when his troop numbers were at their peak.

For another, Zhang Zhen, the Yanqing Circuit Regional Commander, had just ordered Ding Guodong to tighten defenses in Huan County against border troops moving south.

Ding Guodong needed to cut troops because the Yanqing Brigade's garrison was overstrength.

The Marshal's Manor's authorized garrison strength for each brigade was one circuit split into a main and a deputy prefecture. The prefecture where the Regional Commander was stationed had one large and one small battalion, totaling seven thousand men; the prefecture where the Vice Regional Commander was stationed had one standard and one small battalion, totaling five thousand men.

But the Yanqing Brigade, because local volunteers from Yan'an Prefecture had brought their own provisions to enlist, was overstrength by two thousand. Its organization consisted of one large camp of five thousand men and three standard camps of three thousand men each.

But this changed again once Ding Guodong took up his post in Qingyang Prefecture.

Qingyang had many peasant armies, mainly because several major battles had been fought there before. Local figures like the Liu brothers Jianghai, the Shen brothers — all ruthless characters who had rallied tens of thousands. After being routed and disbanded, many simply hid in the mountains on the spot.

Prefect Ju Sirang's forces already had over ten thousand peasant soldiers incorporated among them; when He Renlong arrived, he'd wanted to fight them immediately.

At the same time, plenty of peasant soldiers who hadn't been incorporated were still hiding in the mountains, living by their own means.

Ever since Qingyang Prefecture changed banners and submitted to the Marshal's Manor, as soon as the peasant armies learned the Grand Marshal was Liu Chengzong, every single leader wanted to enlist.

And they all talked tough, too — the first thing out of their mouths was how they'd joined camps with Grand Marshal Liu, besieged cities with him; some even claimed to have made shoes and socks for Liu Chengzong.

Ding Guodong simply couldn't refuse them. When he asked Liu Chengzong, Liu Chengzong confirmed it was true and told him not to make things difficult — just take them all in for now, let them farm as they should, and gradually weed them out through drills.

Liu the Lion also wanted to strengthen the Yanqing Brigade's military power. This brigade had always been weak; its only elite forces were the two or three thousand Gansu veterans under Ding Guodong and Mi Layin.

Using this opportunity to pick out the elite elements from the scattered peasant armies and pull them into the regular forces, while leaving the old and weak in the countryside for Ju Sirang to help them recover and rebuild — that was no bad thing.

So he sent Ding Guodong eight words: "In recruiting, value numbers; in selecting, value quality."

As for Zhang Zhen telling Ding Guodong to pay attention to Huan County's defenses, it wasn't because Zhang Zhen had prophetic foresight and knew Ningxia was in mutiny.

In fact, it was because trouble had broken out in Yansui Garrison.

Yang Qi of the Monan Commandery Governor's Office — who knows what got into him. First, Sacang Taiji led several hundred Wushen cavalry to breach the Yansui border wall, then they scattered toward the surrounding forts and stockades, rolling rapidly southward.

The chaos lasted barely two hours. The Wushen cavalry that had breached the wall returned through the same gap to the Mu Us Desert, vanishing into the vast desert wastes.

Seizing this moment, Commandery Governor Yang Qi, leading a dozen riders each driving four or five horses, changed mounts only at various points in Yan'an Prefecture and raced toward Xi'an at a speed of four hundred li per day.

The troops along the way dared not stop him. By the time Zhang Zhen received word, there was no time even to question him — his old superior had already galloped out of Yan'an Prefecture.

Ding Guodong had no idea what exactly Zhang Zhen wanted him to guard against, but since he had plenty of men on hand, he'd just guard against everything.

And that was how he caught Wang Ji and his son, who had bolted right into Huan County, red-handed.