Chapter 700: Guangwu Encampment

Liu Chengzong felt that Hong Chengchou was playing a kind of round-and-round hide-and-seek game with him.

He had crossed the Yellow River westward from Mingsha Islet and entered the territory of Date Garden Fort; Hong Chengchou led his troops eastward across the Yellow River from Ningxia Garrison City and entered Lingzhou territory.

Lion Liu thought to himself, after all these years of war, every major battle had seen him rack his brains, scattering his troops who had no grain to eat into an encirclement, hoping to keep the supply lines open and conveniently surround the enemy as well.

He had never seen anyone as ferocious as Hong Chengchou, who just dove right into the encirclement himself!

In the current situation, with Zhang Yingchang and Ren Quan'er on the Gold and Silver Sands as the center, to the east were Ding Guodong's six thousand men from Huan County, blocking the Ming relief troops from the Ningxia Rear Guard.

To the west was Wang Wenxiu's Longxi Brigade, currently attacking and seizing Zhongwei and the many forts and stockades along the upper Yellow River.

To the northwest were Liu Chengzong's twenty thousand main-force troops who had just crossed the Yellow River.

Hong Chengchou, holding the garrison city, was originally in the northwestern corner; now, leading his troops toward Zhang Yingchang, he had effectively crawled into a pocket surrounded on all four sides.

But the force he brought into this pocket was somewhat staggering — no one imagined he would turn out in full strength.

With the situation having developed to this point, Lion Liu knew the moment had come to test his strategic ability.

Should he first enter Ningxia Garrison City, let his long-marching troops rest a little, and calm the hearts of Ningxia, or should he pursue Hong Chengchou?

Liu Chengzong had originally wanted to rest briefly on the west bank of the Yellow River, even if only for half a day.

After all, Ningxia was truly far from Xi'an.

In Hong Chengchou's perception, the two sides had been fighting for only four days.

But in reality, Lion Liu's main force had set out from Xi'an Prefecture and had been marching without pause for twenty days.

Although the main-force troops had not engaged the enemy in battle, both men and horses were utterly exhausted and needed rest and reorganization.

But the people of Ningxia hated equally every bastard who barged into their home.

They hated Hong Chengchou, and they hated Liu Chengzong just the same.

First, Sun Zuochang, embracing certain death, lit the beacon fires to warn his allies; then, Commandants Li Xuemu and Wang Fengshui attempted to conspire with the Mongol noble Duo'erzhi Daicheng from beyond the mountains to raise troops, only to be discovered and captured by Güru Taiji.

This affair was a complete clusterfuck.

The whole story was that Li Xuemu and Wang Fengshui had already made contact with Daicheng before Xu Yong of Zuo Liangyu's division had harassed the border wall.

It was not that the two of them had foresight, knowing Liu Chengzong would march north against Ningxia, but rather that these two Commandants believed Hong Chengchou was acting perversely.

They planned to rise in revolt across the various Ningxia guards, expel Hong Chengchou, Zuo Liangyu, and the others by force, and restore clear skies to Ningxia.

Originally, over a dozen guard officers had been in contact to rise together, but when the Ningxia Garrison City mutinied, many who had planned to join them participated in the mutiny first.

By the time the two received word behind the Helan Mountains, the mutiny had already been suppressed, and they happened to learn that Liu Chengzong was invading again, so they simply kept the original plan unchanged, shifting the objective from borrowing troops to expel Hong Chengchou to resisting Liu Chengzong.

Since they were here anyway, they might as well borrow troops from Daicheng.

Daicheng was also very obliging; to the Ningxia border officers' request to borrow troops, he refused none, just like a proper off-the-books Ningxia border officer.

Borrow troops to expel Hong Chengchou, who was causing trouble in Ningxia — fine!

Borrow troops to resist Liu Chengzong, who was coming to cause trouble in Ningxia — also fine!

In truth, this had a hereditary lineage; his father, Zhaolitu Daicheng Taiji, was a famous mercenary. Back then, with a single call from Bo Bai, he led his tribe inside the border wall to help the Ningxia local armed forces fight the Ming army.

Zhaolitu's tribe, back among the Right Wing Dolo Tümed tribe seventy or eighty years ago, had been a name of some account.

But just like Huoluochi, in that era when strongmen emerged one after another, they could not rank and could only suffer constant bullying.

They had originally been stationed in Tümed Plain, then were violently beaten by Anda and migrated to Song Mountain, encamping between Zhuanglang Guard and Jinglu Guard, then engaged in mutual slaughter with the Oirats, and finally were called into Ningxia by Bo Bai, only to suffer another vicious beating by the Ming army.

Just these three opponents and three campaigns, their footprints covering the entire northwest, getting beaten in circles — enough to reduce a great tribe that bestrode the steppe to a petty chieftain with only a few thousand troops.

Add to that the fact that three of his five sons were now dead, and the tribe's frail strength no longer had the capacity for independent decision-making.

Their food and clothing depended on the Ming court's border markets, and their dealings were with the Ningxia border officers, so naturally, no matter whom Li Xuemu, Wang Fengshui, and the others were fighting, Daicheng had to back them up.

When Güru Taiji sent his jaisang to report the details to Liu Chengzong, Liu Chengzong nearly laughed aloud.

This was luck, and also Güru Taiji's merit.

Liu Chengzong's original idea had been to have Güru Taiji bring Daicheng and Chaotu along to play together.

The beauty of it was that Güru wanted to hog the whole prize, and would rather sell the pot and smash the iron than tell anyone else this good news.

Otherwise, those two of the Dolo Tümed tribe would certainly have leaked his plan to march north to the Ming army.

His supporters for the Khanate were, first, the Oirats; second, Ü-Tsang; and third, the Southern Desert Mongols.

Among them, both the Oirats and the Tümed tribe of the Southern Desert had blood feuds with those two fellows of the Dolo Tümed tribe.

It would be perfectly normal for them to help the Ming army and oppose him.

But the wonderful thing was that Güru Taiji came from the Ordos and was not of the same family as those two.

Upon receiving word that the two men were trying to pull him into raising troops against the Marshal's Manor, Güru Taiji immediately led his troops to a confederation meeting, and at the banquet seized both men; among them, Chaotu Taiji was killed for resisting, while Daicheng Taiji was captured together with Li Xuemu and Wang Fengshui.

Reading the letter sent by the Mongol noble, Liu Chengzong was actually extremely troubled.

Because the rate of duplicate names was far too high.

This dead Chaotu Taiji shared the same name as the Chahar's Chaotu Taiji; Güru Taiji shared the same name as Ü-Tsang's Guru Taiji.

As for surnames, they were basically useless — all were Borjigin.

In most cases, what distinguished them was the tribal name, but as luck would have it, Ü-Tsang's Guru and Alxa's Güru both came from the Dolon Tümed tribe, which is what the Great Ming side called the Dolo Tümed.

Which is to say, Lion Liu distinguished these two men mainly by guessing from the location: a letter from the southwest was Guru, a letter from the northwest was Güru.

The great army entered Guangwu Encampment west of the Yellow River, and there, just as at Mingsha Islet Fort, seeing the Marshal's army winding its way toward them, the battalion commander guarding the fort surrendered at the mere rumor of their approach, ordering the camp officers to prepare wine and slaughter sheep to arrange an evening banquet.

At last, a place to rest for the night.

They had to rest, too; while the troops at the front were entering Guangwu Encampment, the troops at the rear were still finishing up work at the Yellow River pontoon bridge at Date Garden Fort.

Liu Chengzong issued tasks to the officers of the Tiger Guard Battalion, ordering them to select soldiers proficient in Uyghur-Mongol script and compile bilingual editions of the Three Character Classic, the Hundred Family Surnames, and the Thousand Character Classic — two sets.

One set to be sent to Güru Taiji, the other set to be sent to Lanzhou, carved onto woodblocks and printed into volumes, to be widely distributed among the various tribes.

That evening, the banquet prepared by the Guangwu Encampment officers was grand, but Liu Chengzong did not permit wine to be served.

To be precise, the surrendered officers could drink, but the officers of his own command could not drink and were only permitted to eat meat.

However, he did accept the wine, and promptly had it sent, together with the transcribed Three-Hundred-Thousand primer texts, to Güru Taiji.

Along with them were sent a letter of encouragement and a commission, ordering him to receive the forces of Chaotu and Daicheng on the fifteenth, assume the post of Mobile Corps General of Blackwater Camp, and escort the baggage train on the campaign.

Blackwater Camp is the Han-language name; in Mongolian it is called Khara-Khoto.

Just as Hohhot means Blue City, khara means black and khoto means city — hence, Black City.

The origin of this name is the Blackwater Suppressing Yan Army Command of Western Xia. The Yuan dynasty kept the name, calling it Khara-Khoto. Later it was breached by Ming forces; after Blackwater City was abandoned, it was swallowed by windblown sand.

Blackwater City was not at Guru Taiji's station. To be precise, Liu Chengzong had enfeoffed to Guru Taiji the entire expanse of desert and gobi west of the Helan Mountains to the north of Ganzhou, as reward for his provision of grain and fodder, intelligence, and rebellion suppression in this campaign.

It was hundreds of times larger than his original territory, comparable in scale to the entire Ordos.

Of course, the land actually suited for grazing and farming was not that extensive, but the geographical environment was much the same as the Ordos — all grassy flats where desert meets gobi.

After all, Guru Taiji's original territory was very small, just that patch of land at Changliushui behind the Helan Mountains.

Moreover, the several former Northern Yuan jasagh advisors in the Tiger Guard Camp at Liu Chengzong's side analyzed that a reward this immense would drive Guru Taiji wild with excitement.

Because its greatest significance was, in effect, allowing him to annex the territories and followers of the two taijis of the Dolon Tumed. Compared to the gobi desert, the land behind the Helan Mountains was a proper good place where people could actually live — that alone was already sufficient as a reward.

As for that whole stretch of desert itself, the truth was that Liu Chengzong could not be bothered to send men to survey it. Since it was just sitting there idle anyway, he might as well enfeoff it to Guru Taiji and let him do the thorough surveying.

Grass flats, rivers, lakes, water sources, oases, and of course the saline-alkaline lands on the gobi flats.

There is no place that cannot be put to use. Saline-alkaline land also yields output; it simply cannot grow grain, and it requires even more labor than growing grain.

Through the several steps of scraping the earth, leaching, and steaming and sun-drying, it can produce salt, alkali, saltpeter, and bittern.

Bittern can be used to coagulate tofu and can also serve as fertilizer for silted fields.

It was just that Liu Chengzong had far too many saline-alkaline lands, livestock farms, and abandoned cities. Yan'an Prefecture and Qingyang Prefecture were both places rich in saltpeter earth.

Of course, because it was earth saltpeter, "rich" only meant relatively abundant compared to the Central Plains.

Fire saltpeter is divided into three types by extraction method. Scraping earth and leaching saltpeter — that is, earth saltpeter — has the fewest raw materials, the lowest yield, and is the hardest to produce. It relies on aridity and moisture, gathering up whatever efflorescence the land brings forth each year.

Much like the farmlands of the north, it is a matter of wide sowing and meager reaping.

Cave saltpeter in the southwest is produced by the same method of scraping earth, but the raw material is far more concentrated, because it is the accumulation of bat, bird, and wild beast droppings over thousands of years inside caves that has altered the soil. One saltpeter cave worked for a month or two accomplishes what ten thousand mu of saline-alkaline land in Shaanxi does in a year.

The stuff in the northwest gobi is called saltpeter ore. It needs no artisanal refining — large chunks of ore, essentially pure... the difficulty lies in finding it.

Once found and properly identified, it can be used directly.

After all, the accumulation is measured in units of tens of millions of years — the heavens have long since taken care of the purification.

Apart from pure crystalline ore, fire saltpeter, water saltpeter, and alkali all follow the same principle. Whichever one is needed, the corresponding boiling and extraction method is used to precipitate it, and what remains at the end is salt and bittern.

Of course, as far as gunpowder consumption in warfare of this era goes, if one were only firing arquebuses, never mind boiling earth saltpeter — even getting someone to boil urine saltpeter would suffice.

This is also why, ever since firearms emerged and spread, there are records of gunpowder shortages everywhere in the world — in many places gunpowder was perpetually short — yet the Central Plains has no record whatsoever of such a thing.

Under the dissemination of alchemy and medicine, this chemical purification technique had long since spread everywhere, to the point that saltpeter could be obtained anywhere. It was widely present in every trading market; the stuff was not the least bit rare.

Only those who hold their breath become aware of breathing.

Liu the Lion could not even spare attention for the lands within the borders, much less direct his concern beyond them.

Guru Taiji's commission was easy to handle; the surrendered troops of Ningxia, however, were a difficult matter.

Because the former had his own fixed territory and also had shortcomings in subsistence techniques, complementing the Central Plains' farming and herding. Cooperation was itself a win-win; for Guru, it was merely a question of whom to cooperate with.

But the surrendered troops of Ningxia were different. To use them in battle, they had to be incorporated and reorganized, yet incorporation and reorganization required time. At the same time, the loyalty and righteousness toward the Great Ming displayed by the Ningxia licentiates and officers made Liu the Lion feel that this was a thorny problem.

People like Sun Zuochang, Li Xuemu, and Wang Fengshui — by origin, they were either licentiates or military officers.

Had they been in Guanzhong, these men opposing him would have raised landlord militias; in Gansu, they would have been frontline commanders leading troops.

Loyalty and righteousness aside, to a large extent they would have that sense typical of officers and scholars — that they were already men above other men, and that raising troops was for the pursuit of rank, fame, wealth, and patriotic sentiment.

Liu Chengzong did not fear opponents like these. Defeat them, and the vast majority who bore no personal grudge would surrender when they should. Those who did not surrender and fled were nursing wounded pride; those who committed suicide for their country were partly out of loyalty and partly out of spite.

All perfectly normal.

Only the military officers and scholars of Ningxia truly made Liu the Lion feel a twinge of dread in his heart.

Take Sun Zuochang — a perfectly fine licentiate with boundless prospects, yet the moment the beacon fire was lit, he drew his blade and cut his own throat, heedless of others, heedless of the battle's outcome, heedless of whether reinforcements existed, and heedless of consequences or his own end.

Then there were the two commanders Li and Wang, regional commanders of quite high rank. When Hong Chengchou stirred up trouble, they wanted to expel Hong Chengchou by force; when Liu Chengzong marched north, they wanted to resist Liu Chengzong by force.

Using untenable reasons, without meticulous planning or proper deployment, disregarding gain and loss and consequences, they went about doing unreliable things.

Liu the Lion was all too familiar with this pattern of behavior.

Desperadoes.

It fit perfectly with the temperament of Ningxia under an era when agricultural policy, salt law, and military system were all in utter ruin.

Liu the Lion knew desperadoes well, and knew even more clearly that desperadoes must not be left idle.

Because a desperado's way of thinking is hard to predict. Left idle, they are certain to go mad — or rather, going mad is itself the inevitability of having nothing to pursue when idle.

This was also the reason Liu Chengzong did not decline the banquet invitation from the defending general of Guangwu Camp.

At the banquet, he announced the appointment of Mobile Corps General Liu Fangming, who had earlier fled to Red Castle Fort to submit, as Regional Commander, and Vice-Magistrate Ma Xiantu as Mobile Corps Commander.

He ordered the two of them to lead the officers and soldiers who had submitted alongside them to form two battalions, gather and organize the surrendered officers and troops along the way, and follow along in dealing with Hong Chengchou.

Liu Chengzong did not expect these two newly formed battalions to fight. In his heart, his estimate of the combat effectiveness they could bring to bear was zero.

He simply wanted these two battalions not to be idle while he himself fought. They were to follow the march; if they could fight, they could pounce forward and strike a couple of blows; if they could not, they were not to stop either — just keep moving.

Because if they were not organized into an army, even if their fighting capacity could not resist the main force and staying behind in rebellion had no chance of success, many people would still stir up some trouble all the same.

In the end, what Liu Chengzong absolutely never expected was that on this very night before the army reorganization, at the Guangwu Camp banquet —

someone, stripped of their weapons, actually launched an assassination attempt against him.