Chapter 717: Chief Commander Fu

In the fourth month of the ninth year of the Chongzhen reign, beyond the borders of Xuan–Da.

Towering beacon fires blazed from east to west, then rolled back across Shanxi in a vast, surging wave.

The Ming border garrison, acting on Fu Renxi's orders, relayed patrol reports in rapid succession, reporting back on every rustle of wind and stir of grass beyond the frontier.

In fact, Fu Renxi had just had last year's merits recorded this year and was slated for promotion to Chief Commander of Ji Garrison; the Vice Chief Commander post in Xuanfu would be taken by Kong Dengke, formerly a Brigade General of the Central Authority Battalion, while the newly re-formed Central Authority Battalion would be commanded by the former Vice General Zhang Tao.

But before he could take up his new post, the beacon fires came.

At first Fu Renxi didn't take it seriously — he figured Choutu Taiji was grabbing territory beyond the border and had pushed the Later Jin too far, and the two sides were about to throw down out there.

So he merely sent his household troops out on routine reconnaissance, his mind more on enjoying the show, since this mess wasn't really his job at the moment anyway.

What concerned Fu Renxi most right now was how many household troops the court would approve for him; he wanted to bring as many veteran soldiers as possible when he took up his post in Jizhou, to make his work easier once he got there.

After all, he knew his own situation best.

Chief Commander Fu's rise to his present stature could not have happened without the quiet backing of the great bandit chief One Box of Gold.

That unique and enviable advantage would be hard to replicate once he reached Ji Garrison.

He could hardly lead the Ji Garrison troops to mask up and rob Beijing, after all.

So in his heart, he was rather uneasy about taking up the Ji Garrison post.

And right at this critical juncture, things started kicking off beyond the border.

The household troops he sent out were completely in the dark once they crossed the frontier, so the first thing they brought back was a personal letter from Liu Chengzong.

After reading the letter, Fu Renxi was so alarmed he nearly went up in smoke, and hurriedly passed it on to Li Guoliang, the Chief Commander of Xuanfu.

Li Guoliang had not been partnered with Fu Renxi for long, but he relied on him heavily.

There was no helping it — the Great Ming was currently rather wary of generals from Shaanxi, and officers from Northern Zhili, Liaodong, and Shanxi's Xuan–Da region were generally unwilling to have much contact with them.

And Fu Renxi, well — the impression he left on his colleagues, hmm… you couldn't even just say he had unorthodox methods anymore.

He could get a word in with Yang Sichang, the Supreme Commander of the Three Garrisons of Shanxi; with Yang Qi out in the Monan region beyond the border; and with Zhang Zhen in Yanqing, Shaanxi.

The year before last, he had won a victory against the Eastern Slaves inside the border, and Fu Renxi became a red-hot high-ranking general; last year he married the daughter of Sun Chuanting, a member of the local gentry from Daizhou.

That brilliant victory against the Eastern Slaves the year before last, in which Fu Renxi recovered two thousand seven hundred people, had been fought right in Daizhou — two thousand seven hundred people meant two thousand seven hundred families, so his prestige there was like that of a living bodhisattva, and everyone was full of gratitude.

After the battle, some gentry invited him to send instructors to drill the local militia and teach them firearms.

Some common folk even secretly molded clay statues of him in their homes and offered incense day and night.

Later, he was betrothed to Sun Chuanting's daughter.

And then at the wedding, not only did Yang Sichang, Supreme Commander of the Three Garrisons, attend in person — even the Northern Slaves beyond the border sent a few garrison soldiers to deliver twenty-seven horses, twenty-seven head of cattle, and one hundred thirty-five sheep.

The gifts were not lavish, but the gift list was a long string of names, from the Monan dignitaries — Monan Commander Yang Qi, He Huchen, Wang Cheng'en, Choutu Taiji — to Elinchen, Sachang Taiji, the Shunyi Prince Omubu, and every one of the twenty-three myriarchs.

The household troops loudly intoned the gift list outside the mansion gate; the guests whispered among themselves in the courtyard; inside the residence, Yang Sichang wore a complicated expression, while Fu Renxi, by contrast, drank until his face glowed red.

He even failed to catch the sarcasm in his venerable father-in-law's words when Sun Chuanting remarked, "Only the Simple Khan hasn't sent you a gift."

Fu Renxi, wine cup in hand, waved grandly: "Ah, Father-in-law, you don't know — that's only because your son-in-law didn't notify him."

Sun Chuanting's face went green at that. This son-in-law certainly had a way with leading troops, but when he drank, he lacked humility and loved to boast.

Still, for Sun Chuanting at the time, it was a double blessing: not only had he found a fine husband for his daughter, but after living at home for ten years, his own official career had also advanced.

The court reviewed merits and reported Sun Chuanting's achievements while at home — repairing city walls, rewarding soldiers, leading his household troops to suppress bandits and protect the countryside. Others feared being selected by the Emperor as frontier talent; Sun Chuanting alone did not, and was promoted by skipping ranks to Vice Prefect of Shuntian Prefecture.

What Sun Chuanting had no way of knowing was that Fu Renxi's greatest virtue was his humility.

If he were willing to open the passes, not only would gifts come — Liu the Lion himself would personally bring gifts to the ceremony, host the wedding and entertain the guests for him, and call him "Elder Brother" at every turn.

After his wedding was over, quite a few people impeached him, but Yang Sichang blocked it all — and even more people impeached Yang Sichang.

That was also why the court wanted to transfer Fu Renxi to Ji Garrison: to put some distance between this meritorious man and his old friends.

Yang Sichang went to the capital to present strategies to the Emperor. Not long after, his stepmother née Ding passed away, and his father Yang He also fell ill, so he returned home for the mourning period to observe filial duties and care for his aging father.

The man now succeeding as Supreme Commander of Shanxi's Xuan–Da region was named Liang Tingdong — a name that paired nicely with Li Guoliang, Chief Commander of Xuanfu: one was a Beam of the Court, the other a Pillar of the State — two great columns in the house, in any case. Very splendid.

Liang Tingdong was also a formidable man. In the third year of Chongzhen, when the Liaodong surtax was added, it was he who, facing insufficient military funds, suggested that Chongzhen add three percent on top of the existing nine percent silver levy.

At the time, the court officials were all unwilling to raise taxes, saying the common people were already impoverished and would not survive any further levies.

Liang Tingdong told Chongzhen: they're farting.

I have tallied the troops of the Nine Border Garrisons — no more than five hundred thousand soldiers, no more than fifteen million taels in pay. How could the court possibly be unable to support this many troops?

The people's poverty has nothing to do with the piddling Liaodong surtax; it's because the officials are too greedy. I'm an official myself — don't I know it?

Court audiences, merit evaluations, appointments, promotions — each one costs at least five or six thousand taels a year. Circuit inspections, audits, investigations, gifts, and thank-you gratuities can reach as high as thirty thousand taels.

One circuit around the realm, and that's several million taels gone.

If this culture of corruption and graft is not rooted out, the common people's lives will be bitter even without the Liaodong surtax.

So the court's problem right now is not whether to impose the Liaodong surtax — the money is insufficient, so it must be imposed. The primary contradiction is to eliminate the middlemen, so the people pay less and the state collects more.

Chongzhen was delighted. Now this was a capable official who got things done! It couldn't be that every time We proposed something, the courtiers said this couldn't be done and that couldn't be done. You're high ministers — shouldn't you be figuring out how to do it? Was the realm just supposed to rot?

Because of this proposal, Liang Tingdong offended a great many people.

They were all officials; these customary fees had always been handled this way. As long as no one exposed the unspoken rules, outsiders who didn't know would never find out — the Emperor, for example.

The moment you spoke up, the Emperor thought every last one of us was corrupt, and only you, Liang Tingdong, had washed your hands clean. Traitor. A bastard who harms others to benefit himself.

In the end, things did not go as Liang Tingdong had imagined, and the culture of greed was not curbed.

His original intent was to increase revenue and reduce expenditure, but he was somewhat naive.

At root, it was simply that his own status and position no longer required merit evaluations for advancement, so once he climbed up, he pulled the ladder away.

The matter was not easy to handle. The court could hardly stop evaluating merits. By Liang Tingdong's logic, the court should just temporarily stop appointing officials — since those selected would just be a bunch of trash anyway — and use that public expenditure to support the troops instead.

The key problem was that this locally apportioned money was never on the court's books in the first place; it never entered the national treasury. Even if the localities stopped that apportionment, no new revenue would be generated.

Yet curbing the culture of corruption required the court to support an additional cohort of people — whether inspectors or investigators — which would mean more expenditure from the national treasury, i. e., opening up a new outflow.

So in the court's eyes, this policy could only be counted as half successful: could the Liaodong surtax be collected or not? Fine — Liang Tingdong said it should be collected, it must be collected.

It was much the same as Yang Sichang's proposal targeting the Eastern Slaves and Western Bandits — a whole series of divide-and-rule and containment policies like enfeoffing Yang Qi as a prince, negotiating peace with Liu Chengzong, and stationing troops in Korea.

By the time it reached Chongzhen, all he could do was enfeoff a King Yang Qi — and he acted with tremendous decisiveness, getting it done at once.

After all.

Peace talks lose face; Chongzhen might not be incapable of losing that face, but many court officials could not let Chongzhen lose face.

Stationing troops costs money; Chongzhen might not be incapable of spending that money, but many court officials could not let Chongzhen spend that money.

Only enfeoffment — which merely consumed one bronze seal and one envoy — was something everyone could accept.

It even unexpectedly consumed one golden seal and one envoy from the Later Jin.

Not only did it make us spend less, it also made the Later Jin spend more — wasn't that a win-win?

Although Liang Tingdong's proposal was not properly carried out, he was bound to earn Emperor Chongzhen's favor. During the Jisi Incident he succeeded the suicided Grand Coordinator Wang Yuanya, and now he succeeded Yang Sichang, who had returned home for mourning, rising in one leap to become Supreme Commander of the three garrisons of Xuanfu, Datong, and Shanxi.

Fu Renxi's intelligence reached Liang Tingdong, and only then did the new Supreme Commander discover that there was such a supernaturally capable figure in Xuan-Da.

He raised a hand and submitted a memorial to the court, requesting to retain this man in Xuan-Da with the official post of Supreme Command Brigade Commander.

Liang Tingdong was an exceedingly shrewd man; with one look at Fu Renxi's circle of friends, he saw through Fu Renxi's true identity.

The logic was very simple. What was the duty of the Supreme Commander of Xuan-Da-Shanxi? It was the defense and warfare of the three garrisons; he had no duties like retaking the Loop or attacking Shaanxi — just guarding the three garrisons well was enough.

To the east and south were our own people; to the west and north were all his friends.

Fu Renxi here was an invincible man.

A creature like this — if you transferred him to Ji Garrison and he got himself killed in a couple of days, wouldn't that be a loss to the nation?

Of course, Liang Tingdong was also on guard against him, so the post he offered was Brigade Commander of the Supreme Command Brigade, kept close at hand to watch carefully — able to use his influence while preventing him from doing anything major.

Fu Renxi was delighted with the new appointment. He drew household troops from the local area and also recruited many of the gentry militia he had trained from Daizhou, scraping together two thousand men for the Supreme Command Brigade.

Originally, Liang Tingdong intended the newly formed Supreme Command Brigade to recruit widely, but Fu Renxi felt that with the Later Jin and the Marshal's Headquarters already pushed beyond the border, they might charge in at any moment — there was no time to train troops.

Better to draw troops first, however many they could get, and actively prepare for battle; as long as they could fight, that would do.

His intuition was correct.

In fact, at the very moment he was appointed Supreme Command Brigade Commander and was drawing troops to build his brigade, the Later Jin army had already broken through the border wall east of Yunzhou in Xuanfu Garrison and was infiltrating inside the border.

Even with Liu Chengzong reporting the military situation beyond the border, they could not keep pace with the Later Jin army's marching speed.

In the area of Yunzhou and Longmen, beyond the border lay the western mountains of the Yan Range; Ajige and the other Later Jin commanders knew that area extremely well.

In the seventh year of Chongzhen, they had already broken through there.

This year was no exception; Ajige's most confident point remained the eastern part of Yunzhou.

Thick-backed chopping blades cleared the path, hooked ropes scaled the mountains and crossed the walls, steel chisels broke open the border wall, troops attacked the pass garrison from atop the wall, then opened the gates and let the cavalry pour through.

The entire process took only two double-hours. Several watchtowers and forts were overrun, and the main army immediately drove straight through the breach without scattering to plunder — merely dividing into several columns and racing straight for Yanqing Prefecture.

Because this area had already been plundered the year before last, to Ajige the forts were ruined and there was nothing much worth taking; it was also easy to alert the enemy and get trapped. So he wanted to advance in separate columns, strike Yanqing Prefecture at top speed, and raid the still-unprepared Juyong Pass — only then could he successfully break the border.

Of course, it was a fine plan.

In reality, the twenty-two banner units that entered the border scattered and ran wild the moment they split up, looting everywhere.

No one understood the Later Jin army better than Emperor Chongde, Hong Taiji.

The discipline he repeatedly and emphatically ordered was the ideal state of the Eight Banners army in his mind.

But the very fact that he reiterated discipline so often precisely showed the enormous gap between ideal and reality.

It was like a mess hall posting a sign saying "No Beating Customers" — it looks absurd, but the fact that it was posted means someone must have done the beating.

When the troops set out, all that military discipline Hong Taiji lectured Ajige about — if you listened to it in reverse, that was the real state of the Later Jin army when Hong Taiji ignored discipline and did not use punishment to terrorize the Later Jin nobles.

Marching noisily, leaving ranks without permission, stripping clothes off travelers and killing them, people resisting and fleeing, captives who submitted being killed, separated couples being violated, making captives guard horses and then the horses running off, seizing provisions without authorization and then being killed, eating Han people's cooked food, drinking Han people's wine, and finally being poisoned to death by Han people.

All of it had happened — that was why Hong Taiji had such words born of experience.

By the time the Xuan-Yun Ming army received the Supreme Commander's order to defend to the death, beacon fires were already spreading everywhere from Yunzhou to Yanqing Prefecture.

At the same time, the troops guarding the border wall were also reporting that tens of thousands of cavalry from Monan were pouring out of Jining and spreading eastward along the border.

So much so that Li Guoliang of Xuanfu and Wang Pu of Datong were on high alert as if facing a great foe.

Although Liu Chengzong, beyond the border, had already written a personal letter and had the Tiger Guard Battalion copy it over a hundred times, dispatching relay troops to deliver it along the border, informing the three garrison commanders that his army's advance held no ill intent toward the Ming border and was meant to back Yang Qi of Monan.

Li Guoliang believed it.

But Liang Tingdong and Wang Pu dared not believe it.

After all, if the Later Jin struck Juyong Pass and entered Northern Zhili, the three central border garrisons would certainly be summoned to aid the throne. When the time came, going into Northern Zhili to fight was one thing, but at least the responsibility would not fall on Wang Pu of Datong.

But if you, Liu Chengzong, entered the border, you would certainly strike Shanxi and Datong.

What was more, the Later Jin were wolves that entered the border, plundered, and ran; you, Liu Chengzong, were the tiger that charged into the house to make a den.

That said, Liu Chengzong at this moment truly had no intention of entering the border. His army was busy chasing the Bordered Blue Banner.

This northern expedition was already wrapping up.

Ningxia had been taken, and Yulin over there could not stand alone either. At present, it was surrendering on a large scale; Ren Quan'er and Zhang Zhen had led their forces into the siege phase targeting Yulin city itself.

Reports from frontline commanders all said that Yulin city's will to resist was extremely resolute, and recommended using encirclement without assault to resolve the problem — forcing the Ming army out of the city for field battle to decide victory in one blow.

This was something Liu Chengzong could understand.

A single Yang Jiamo of Gansu Garrison, with hereditary rank and hereditary stipend, had dared to fight him through fire and water.

Then in Yulin city, the retired nobles and old officers living there were beyond counting; for generations, from birth to death, they had eaten the Great Ming's stipends.

Growing up eating stipends was not the same as growing up eating soldier's pay. The Great Ming had cut off soldier's pay before, but stipends had never been cut off. Every last one of these people would count as disloyal if they did not shed their last drop of blood for the Great Ming.

So at this moment, Liu the Lion's mind was free of cares, his whole body at ease.

He led his troops east only to curb the Later Jin's expansion. It did not matter if their main force entered the border; as long as they did not run back out, the Ming army was enough to deal with them.

He, Liu the Lion, would just seize on the support troops outside the border wall and beat them.

Whoever stayed behind, he beat; whoever came to support, he beat.

In fact, Liu Chengzong was currently busy sending messages to Yulin, Ningxia, and other places, ordering the newly surrendered military smiths to forge steel arrowheads and spearheads and ship them to Guihua City.

If an opportunity arose, he planned to take advantage of this great chaos to dispatch a flanking force to fight through the Greater Khingan Range, test his strength against the Khorchin, and open a passage.

Send the tiger from the Heizhen tribe beside him back to his old home, and let the Heizhen and Solon people, armed with steel arrowheads and steel spearheads, stir up some trouble in the rear as well.

Can't let them have grown those big frames for nothing.