Chapter 691: Rebuilding the Post Road

In a side room of the Military Command yamen.

Zhang Yuanheng set down the rolled-up map, and Zhao Jifang brought over volume after volume of illustrated registers, laying out the Marshal Manor's grain supply routes before everyone.

Ever since Liu Chengzong issued the order to prepare for the northern expedition last year, the Marshal Manor's prefectures across Shaanxi, Gansu, and Qinghai had been making preparations for military supplies.

In this regard, thanks to the Marshal Manor's warlord-style high in-kind taxation in Qinghai, collecting supplies was easy — but transporting military provisions was exceedingly difficult.

Because their logistics had to begin with rebuilding the post road.

Post stations were military depots; they served as transshipment nodes for army grain and pay both before and during a campaign, and could also collect stragglers during a march.

But across most of Shaanxi, the Marshal Manor had no post stations.

This was nobody else's fault — although the Chongzhen Emperor had dismissed some post riders in Shaanxi, releasing paramilitary personnel with armed skills back into society, the post road itself had still been functioning well.

The total destruction of the Shaanxi post road could not even be blamed on Liu Chengzong as the instigator — he was entirely the one who single-handedly brought it about, leaving basically no chance for anyone else to imitate.

Marching from east to west, he dismantled the post stations and relay offices of Yan'an, Qingyang, and Pingliang; campaigning from west to east, his troops then destroyed the post relays of Lintao and Gongchang.

The few that were missed by chance — such as the Huichuan Horse Post at Jinglu and the Weizhou Horse Post at Weizhou — Cao Yao tore down; the Chencang Horse Post at Baoji in Fengxiang Prefecture, Luo Rucai did that.

Only the posts of Xi'an Prefecture escaped the lion's jaws unscathed.

However, although those post stations were not destroyed, the post masters and post riders had mostly fled when war arrived.

As a result, the Marshal Manor's Shaanxi post road was virtually a blank slate and had to be rebuilt.

This then gave rise to a new problem: the Marshal Manor had no superior administrative body for post stations.

Post stations had been used for military purposes since ancient times — under the Han they were subordinate to the Grand Commandant, under the Yuan to the Great Khan, and the present day was no exception; they bypassed provincial government and were directly subordinate to the central Ministry of War's Bureau of Equipage.

The Marshal Manor's administrative apparatus had always been shaped by Liu Chengzong's needs.

When he needed weapons manufacture, the Works Office was created; when he needed official selection and appointment, the Personnel Office was created; when he needed to manage vassals, the Rites Office was created; when he needed to disburse funds and grain, the Revenue Office was created.

But he had no need for laws to constrain him, so there was no Punishments Office; still less did he need anyone meddling in military affairs, so the War Office was a crippled department that only handled promotions for low-ranking officers and soldiers.

The Marshal Manor had never been a centralized empire — it was an army that happened to occupy one province, or even three.

In the past, their communications had been handled entirely by the army's internal relay riders.

Only now, under the jurisdiction of the various circuit garrison commanders, had some post stations been restored — but apart from the two prefectures of Xi'an and Kang, no other place had post officials or unified management, only a small squad of soldiers permanently stationed in those ruined post towns, performing the work of post riders in their stead.

In Gansu, of course, there was also the line from Wuwei Post to the three stations of Sancha, Heishan, and Ningbian — because the roads were poor and uninhabited along the way, Cao Yao had revived a Yuan-dynasty tradition, using sheep posts instead of horse posts, employing domesticated antelope, also called Yellow Beach sheep.

Actually, "domesticated" was not quite the word — that kind of animal, which requires vast open land, was never easy to domesticate, but for the post riders who ran back and forth every day, it was no trouble.

They simply tied bells on them and let them forage back and forth between two stations; once trained, they could be used to relay less critical messages. When they delivered, they got a salt block to lick, and they ran even faster than horses.

But when war came, unified management of post stations across the entire domain became critically important.

To oversee post station relay and transport, Liu Chengzong established the War Office's Bureau of Equipage, and the bureau's director was his groom Guo Ruqi — also known as Guo Zhashi.

Under the Bureau of Equipage were five sections: Capital Officials, Dispatch, Horse Administration, Guardsmen, and Fodder.

They respectively managed the mobilization of personnel, horses, vehicles, and boats; the issuance of tallies and verification tallies; the inspection and counting of army horses; the guard rosters of post stations; and the various fodder depots along with revenue and expenditure.

With this organization in place, repairing the post road became much easier for the Marshal Manor.

Because establishing a post road had two major difficulties: one was site selection, the other was personnel selection — and for Liu Chengzong, neither was a problem.

The locations of the old post towns were all known; some had been demolished, some battered to pieces, and others simply abandoned — they just needed funds allocated for restoration.

And the personnel for the post stations was even simpler: Tong Pass Garrison had plenty of old post riders from Wei Qian'er's command, and the Xi'an-Kang circuit also had many post soldiers skilled in the work, all of whom could be transferred to Shaanxi to serve as post masters.

In fact, it was not just the War Office — after the Marshal Manor entered Xi'an, all the other offices underwent large-scale personnel expansion as well, because the central authority now directly governed the localities.

Each office added various departments as needed, with Imperial Guard members who had received general education at Liu Chengzong's side serving as department directors; each department then established various sections as needed, drawing veteran soldiers with relevant work experience to serve as commissioners and vice commissioners.

Chengzong sorted the documents and booklets, organized his words, and then cupped his fists. "Brother, for this northern campaign we are deploying seventy thousand troops. Before operations begin, we need three months' supplies stockpiled at the front, plus another three months' supplies in transit — that is three hundred thousand dan of processed grain."

"An astronomical amount of grain and fodder. Guyuan lacks the capacity to handle it. We'll have to temporarily set up a Military Supply Bureau at Qingyang first."

Liu Chengzong, hearing this, actually laughed in the midst of hardship. "Fighting in the interior, and transporting grain is harder than on the frontier."

When the Marshal Manor fought on the frontier, army provisions were, on the contrary, easy — horse fodder was everywhere, and mounts could graze as they went; in each region there were military farms and tribal chieftains supplying meat, saving a great deal of trouble.

But the interior was different — here, grain truly had to be transported. Without transporting grain, there was no fighting a war.

In fact, for this campaign, the main grain storage camp that Liu Chengzong and Chengzong had initially prepared was all at Guyuan.

Because its geographical position was suitable — transporting grain from Lanzhou and Xi'an to Guyuan was both five to six hundred li, eleven stages.

The distances and positions of interior post stations had long been established by regulation, and this was far more scientific than the post stations Liu Chengzong had set up on the Xi'an-Kang circuit or that Liu Chengzu had set up on the Tianshan circuit during his northern expedition to the Celestial Mountains.

From Xining to Kangning, and from Gansu to the Celestial Mountains, they had all followed the rule for military intelligence relay — roughly one station every hundred li.

But the interior post relay network was perfectly laid out; military intelligence was transmitted via express relay stations, and the distances between post stations were set according to the marching speed of infantry and cavalry.

Post stations were set at distances that could be covered from morning departure to evening arrival.

Thus, army grain was divided into segments by post station, transported day and night — eleven stages meant it could arrive in six days.

Speed is the essence of warfare, and the grain route must also be fast. The faster it is, the lower the in-transit consumption, and at the same time, the faster it is, the longer the rations' shelf life.

But the problem with Guyuan Department was that there were no people.

Just like Jingning Department, Liu Chengzong had not established a department magistrate's yamen in Guyuan either; he had merely dispatched a controller-general to manage military and civilian affairs. The controller-general was Yang Sanyuan, a kinsman of Yang Chengzu.

Guyuan had never been a civilian department; there was a large local garrison and very few commoners — so few that even scattered peasant army remnants were unwilling to flee there. As a result, the registered population Yang Sanyuan reported to the Marshal Manor was pitifully small.

In the whole vast Guyuan Department, civilian artisans and miscellaneous laborers together amounted to just over nine hundred households — a wretched four-thousand-odd people.

With a population that small, there were essentially no surplus people capable of handling military grain.

"Regarding the temporary Military Supply Bureaus, my thinking is to set up one each at Guyuan and Qingyang. For the transport of army grain and military supplies, it would be best to advance along multiple routes simultaneously — that's safer. Can the water route from Xi'an to Pingliang be made passable?"

Hearing Liu Chengzong ask this, Chengzong shook his head. "The Jing River boat transport is intermittent. Five stages can use the water route. From Xi'an to Pingliang, we can alternate between cart and boat — in-transit consumption won't be large, but the preparatory work is extensive. The boats, vehicles, mules, and horses have not yet been fully assembled."

"For the eleven stages, we estimate purchasing eighteen hundred donkeys and mules, nine hundred double-team carts, seven thousand carters, laborers, and guards, plus we need to requisition four hundred and thirty civilian boats of various sizes. Apart from that..." Chengzong paused, then asked Liu Chengzong, "Will this route be used in the future?"

Liu Chengzong furrowed his brow and asked, "What difference does it make whether we use it in the future?"

"If it still needs to be used going forward, we can invest more silver and open up the sections of the river that are difficult to navigate. Then the expenditure allocated to the Waterways Office would be considerable — the first batch of investment would need to be around forty-five thousand taels. If it won't be used in the future..."

At this, Chengzong smiled. "We have plenty of army mules, and carts and boats can all be requisitioned. Allocating thirty thousand taels would suffice. We can also assign the nearby farmland to each post station — thirty to fifty qing per post, let them reclaim it as they see fit, and that should be about enough. Once transport begins, at most forty-eight thousand dan can be moved to Guyuan per month, though the in-transit consumption for conscripted laborers will require an additional seven thousand-odd dan."

"That works out to roughly forty thousand dan delivered per month."

Liu Chengzong laughed along. "It just means the preparations were rushed this time, so we'll have to muddle through a bit."

There really was no helping it — of course one always wants everything to be perfect.

But more often than not, for a Marshal's Headquarters starved of time, it can only be one stopgap measure after another.

After all, even if the Jing River channel were overhauled, with waterway construction starting in early spring, the river sections were uneven, boats for each stretch had to be newly built, and the channel had to be repaired — waterway transport could not possibly be used in this year's campaign.

The forty to fifty thousand taels of investment was only the first batch of the budget, and that sum, given one tael to every soldier in the campaign army, could even make men endure a day of hunger with high morale.

"This river is critical. Add another ten thousand to the post road budget beyond the thirty thousand. Transporting large quantities of army grain will kill quite a few mules and wreck many carts — they'll need timely replacement."

"Beyond that, set a preliminary budget of fifty thousand taels for the river channel as well, but don't disburse it yet. Have Chen Qiyu go survey the Jing River first. It's not just about navigation — also the irrigation and water-power repairs for all the counties along the route. We'll decide after he reports back with an estimate."

"Anyway, keeping the silver won't make it breed. The eastern route will just have to be muddled through like this for now."

At the mention of the word "muddle," Liu Chengzong smiled, then asked Chengzu: "And the western route — how will that one be cobbled together?"

"Ha, brother, the western route needs no cobbling."

This touched on something Chengzu was rather proud of. Xining was the Marshal's Army's old base of operations. The Hehuang line had rail tracks with decent transport capacity, able to swiftly deliver munitions to Lanzhou.

"Lanzhou has already mobilized over eleven thousand pack horses and pack mules, distributed across eleven stations along the route. In addition, three thousand pack mules and fifteen hundred double-team carts are in reserve. The mule train can deliver nine hundred to a thousand pack-loads of military supplies to Guyuan daily."

Chengzu explained: "If the eastern route's grain transport suffices for army use, then the western route will primarily handle military supplies. Lanzhou sent word the day before yesterday — over forty thousand pack-loads of various military supplies have already been stockpiled."

"Among them: ten thousand pack-loads of salt, five thousand of oil, forty-two hundred of malt sugar, sixty-seven hundred of dried meat and salted fish, five thousand of pickled vegetables, sesame, and peanuts, twelve hundred of vinegar cloth, twenty-four hundred of gunpowder and shot, two thousand of arrowheads, arrow shafts, and armor plates, four thousand of fire arrows, plus over ten thousand pack-loads of miscellaneous items like felt blankets and bowstrings."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly. The old base was so much better — none of the hassle they had with Pingliang, Qingyang, and Xi'an.

He asked: "What if we need them to provide grain and fodder?"

"Lanzhou has already stockpiled four hundred thousand shi of raw grain — wheat and beans — ready to be processed and shipped at any time."

Chengzu added: "Also, Mr. Yang and Dalai Taiji from the Bureau of War are asking — should we enroll a batch of workers skilled in making roasted flour and dried noodles into the military register and send them to Guyuan to set up a factory?"

"Send them. Send as many as can be sent."

Liu Chengzong's two grain supply routes, east and west, were simple, but he knew very well that this was only the first step of this northern expedition.

One shi of raw grain in Lanzhou or Xi'an, after processing into flour, went from a hundred and fifty jin to around a hundred jin of finished grain. Transported to Guyuan as soldier rations and military supplies, it still required a second transfer to the front lines, or on-site processing before being sent forward.

What was processed was, naturally, the Marshal's Headquarters' famous field ration: emergency army grain — roasted flour.

The reason Yang Dingrui had prepared so much salt, oil, sugar, sesame, peanuts, and the like in Hexi was precisely so Liu Chengzong could process roasted flour in Guyuan.

This also meant that although Yang Dingrui held reservations about Liu Chengzong's plan to campaign beyond the southern desert, in terms of the military supplies supporting the war, he had already made preparations to back the southern desert campaign.

Because if it were merely for the northern expedition against Ningxia and Yansui, there would be no need to produce that much roasted flour. They had a well-established rear-area grain route and the protection of a border wall.

Frontline troops could use the border wall as a boundary and enjoy ample military rations, carrying a portion of raw grain to prepare fresh food with a shorter shelf life at camp.

Things like baked buns, guokui flatbread, dried noodles, or even cutting dough to boil noodles were all feasible.

Roasted flour was merely an expedient supplement — a small snack and emergency army grain.

But if they were to campaign deep into the southern desert, they would need to produce large quantities of roasted flour with a longer shelf life.

The two brothers were discussing the expedition's army grain at the government office. Zhang Xianzhong, Minister of the Bureau of Rites, had been unable to get a word in for quite a while.

By all rights, on military matters, he ought to have unique insights, yet when it came to logistics, post roads, army grain, and all that messy stuff, the Eighth Great King knew absolutely nothing.

This crap sounded chaotic just hearing about it — and they had to specially prepare tens of thousands of mules.

Zhang Xianzhong clicked his tongue, looking utterly bored. "Commander, the conscripted laborers from the east and west routes number in the tens of thousands. Feeding them for nothing, the travel attrition is too great."

Liu Chengzong raised an eyebrow. "Does Minister Zhang have some way to reduce travel attrition?"

"In the Western Brigade, there's a Fushi hometown fellow named Wang Yinglong, a bowyer by trade. He used to repair my weapons and manage the baggage train. The men under him are all top-notch muleteers — one man can handle twelve mules."

"Why don't we just use the mules as army grain? Have them carry the blades and guns on their backs and walk themselves to camp. For seventy thousand troops, we'd only need two thousand muleteers to drive twenty thousand mules — more than enough to lay the Ningxia garrison flat."

Liu Chengzong nearly burst out laughing. With an odd expression, he asked: "And what about Yansui?"

"We sack Ningxia first — might end up with even more mules. Then drive everyone from Ningxia to attack Yansui, and sack Yansui too." Zhang Xianzhong's eyes lit up as he spoke. "Then drive the surrendered troops from both garrisons into the southern desert to hit the eastern caitiffs, chase them all the way to Shenyang, and seize back all their mules and horses. Right — and the gold and silver too."

The logic loop was closed.

Liu Chengzong gave a thumbs-up. Excellent — pure desperado, chaos-realm-roaming spirit.

He did not ask what they would do if the grain ran out, or if a grain and fodder shortage led to defeat. Asking that would be superfluous.

Even less need to tell Zhang Xianzhong about how the eastern route's Jing River repairs could irrigate the fields of several prefectures along the way; or how the western route's mule train, delivering supplies to Guyuan and opening an army grain processing factory, could also let the Guyuan common folk, caught in the lean season, earn a bit of coin to hold out until the grain ripened.

Because when it came to matters of governance and construction, to Zhang Xianzhong, those were also superfluous.

However, Zhang Xianzhong had indeed reminded Liu Chengzong of something on the tactical level, making him think of a few things — for instance, that the best defense is offense.

Just then, a Feathered Forest Guard strode swiftly into the hall and presented a letter marked with the Yanqing Circuit. "Commander, urgent report."

Unfolding the letter, it was written by Yanqing Regional Commander Zhang Zhen. The letter said that reconnaissance had recently discovered that Yansui Garrison Regional Commander Yu Chongxiao was not in the garrison but had gone to Ningxia, and that Ding Guodong, stationed in the Huan County direction, had captured the Ningxia Grand Coordinator Wang Ji and his son, who had fled into Qingyang.

Liu Chengzong pressed down the letter and looked at Zhang Xianzhong and Chengzu. His eyes lit up involuntarily, and the fine hairs on his neck stood on end with excitement. "Ningxia — mutiny!"