Chapter 735: Eastern River Garrison

Alkaline Field City.

Along the banks of the Crown Prince River, flames lit up the sky.

Over a thousand troops from Pi Island under Eastern River Garrison ran rampant in pillage and plunder; several hundred cavalrymen in full armor cut down anyone they saw.

Shen Shikui, his temples graying, rode his horse along the riverbank. This Commander-in-Chief of Eastern River Garrison, who bore the seal of General of the Vanguard Who Conquers Caitiffs, wore an expression full of reminiscence, utterly out of place amid the brutal slaughter on the battlefield around him.

His gaze passed over the abandoned salt cauldrons and cooking gear, toward the familiar Crown Prince River and the corpses lying strewn along its banks.

Shen Shikui remembered it very clearly. That year at Sarhū, beside cold and damp Alkaline Field City, the banks of the Crown Prince River had looked exactly the same — dead bodies everywhere, blood on both shores staining the green earth and converging into rivulets that dyed the river water crimson.

Shen Shikui was a Liao man, a Liaodong man, registered under the military household of the Ding-Liao Right Guard of the Liaodong Regional Military Commission. He was born in Phoenix Fortress, over two hundred li southwest of Alkaline Field City, which had once been the most remote place in the Great Ming Empire, bordering Uiju County across the Yalu River.

But originally he was not a soldier; he was a licensed broker holding official documents.

Just like the A-jia who ran brokerages in Dajianlu, he was a middleman for bulk goods.

Their scope of business was extremely broad — simply introducing buyers and sellers and acting as guarantors, buying and selling on behalf of merchants, handling payments or storing silver on their behalf, and also arranging transport, warehousing, and safekeeping of goods.

Sometimes, they even collected taxes in advance on behalf of the imperial court.

The Liaodong Regional Military Commission was a military garrison with no counties; large-scale trade was mostly connected to smuggling with Joseon and the various Jurchen tribes, or to procuring military supplies for the garrison.

So just like in Dajianlu, every A-jia had a native chieftain backing them.

In Liaodong, every broker had a general backing them.

Brokers were much like military households — when an elder brother died, the younger brother took over; when a father died, the son inherited the business.

The profession Shen Shikui pursued in his youth, and the social environment of Liaodong at the time, determined that back then he was not a positive figure — it would not even be an exaggeration to call him a bad man.

Because Liaodong had just endured its darkest decade: the mine supervisor Gao Huai, sent by the Wanli Emperor, ran rampant and did whatever he pleased in Liaodong.

A petty mine supervisor who styled himself Grand Defender Eunuch — and because he presented five hundred taels of silver to Wanli, he was actually granted the official post of "Gao, Grand Guardian of the Great Ming State, Imperial Commissioner for the Defense of Liaodong and Coordinator of Shanhai Pass Affairs, Superintendent of Fuyang Shop Tax, Concurrently in Charge of Mining Affairs and Horse Markets."

He meddled in military and political affairs, his power overawing all Liaodong, and even the aging Li Chengliang could only cooperate.

During his tenure, he bled the people dry, bankrupting all forty-seven wealthy households in Liaoyang that possessed assets worth thousands of taels. Ordinary commoners suffered even more, and military households fled in great numbers beyond Fushun Pass to seek survival among the various Jurchen tribes.

Liaodong's military strength, naturally, grew exhausted and feeble.

And the price paid for all this — over an entire decade — was that Gao Huai presented only forty-five thousand five hundred taels of silver to the Wanli Emperor's private treasury.

The emperor did get a little money, but what the empire lost was far more.

Far, far more.

The world says the Liao people have always been fickle by nature; Xiong Tingbi also said the Liao people cannot be trusted.

But a post as important as the Grand Defender Eunuch of Liaodong — a rankless mine supervisor simply claimed the title for himself, and just because he sent five hundred taels of silver to the palace, the vast territory of Liaodong was handed over for him to butcher at will.

What were the Liao people supposed to believe in? What could the Liao people believe in?

When Shen Shikui was young, children in the streets sang a nursery rhyme. That rhyme went like this: The Liao people have no brains, for Gao Huai gouged them all out; the Liao people have no marrow, for Gao Huai drained it all dry.

In truth, it was not Gao Huai they wanted to sing about — the adults all knew that. It was just that they could hardly say the Liao people's brains were gouged out by His August Majesty the Emperor, could they?

By that time, Gao Huai had long since fled. Nurhaci was campaigning east and west beyond Fushun Pass, and the Liaodong soldiers who had fled took Jurchen names and made a living under his command.

Shen Shikui, meanwhile, in a small town on the empire's frontier, led his brokerage's transport teams back and forth around the Liao Garrison, sometimes smuggling goods into Joseon's Uiju County, sometimes traveling to the various Jurchen tribes. Life was not bad.

In his hometown of Phoenix City, there was a river called the Ai River. Following the Ai River northeast for over a hundred li, one reached a place called Aiyang.

The Great Ming Empire's border wall for defending against the Jurchens had a fortress and a pass built at Aiyang, with a garrison commander stationed there — the highest-ranking military officer in the area.

Shen Shikui inevitably had dealings with that officer.

Before the war came, the Aiyang Garrison Commander was a young man of boundless promise.

His ancestral home was in Shanxi; his grandfather was a salt merchant, his father a government student, his mother came from a great clan of Hangzhou, his maternal uncle was the Provincial Administration Commissioner of Shandong, and his paternal uncle held the hereditary post of Hundred-Household Commander in Haizhou Guard.

A family of illustrious prominence.

He was born in Qiantang County, Hangzhou Prefecture. His father died when he was young, and he studied literature and martial arts and learned military strategy under his maternal uncle. When he grew up, he returned to his ancestral home in Shanxi, and on his aunt's recommendation, went to his paternal uncle in Haizhou Guard in Liaodong and became a Liaodong soldier.

His uncle had no heirs. After his uncle passed away, the court granted him the post of Hundred-Household Commander of Haizhou Guard. He was subsequently recommended by the Ministry of War to the Liaodong Supreme Commander Li Chengliang, and because he was accomplished in both civil and martial arts, he was appointed as a Chiliarch of the household troops.

That was in the thirty-third year of the Wanli reign; he passed the Liaodong Military Examination, placing sixth.

The name of this Aiyang Garrison Commander was Mao Wenlong.

Later, the war came.

The world is ever unpredictable.

In his youth, Shen Shikui was just a broker doing gray-market business on the border — no good man, and he himself had even been hunted and driven out by the elders of his hometown.

Because at that time, Nurhaci raised his army to attack the Ming, breaking through Fushun Pass, winning decisively at Sarhū, smashing through Tieling Guard, and capturing Kaiyuan Guard in succession.

In that moment, Nurhaci seemed like a hero — or rather, at that time, attacking Liaodong, which was like a pile of firewood drenched in boiling oil, history had given him the chance to be a hero.

On the eve of attacking Liaoyang, Nurhaci shouted the rebel slogan: "Houses to share, grain to share, fields to share."

The Liao people believed it.

Or rather, the Liao people who remained believed it.

After the great defeat, most of the Liao people whose hearts still leaned toward the Ming or who were unwilling to scrape out a living in the Later Jin state fled west as refugees.

This was also why the Ming court later distrusted the Liao people.

The Liao people who stayed behind just wanted to live their lives; they did not care who was emperor, and they truly believed no one could possibly do worse than the Wanli Emperor.

The Jushen beyond the pass — they were familiar with them; Nurhaci — they had heard of him; even the rebel slogans sounded no different from Chen Sheng and Wu Guang.

So what was there to resist? Give their lives for an emperor who could be bought off with five hundred taels of silver and would hand Liaodong over to a eunuch to butcher?

Thus, when the government sent envoys to defend the cities, even though they moved people with their weeping, the Liao people were not swayed.

In the month that followed, Shenyang and Liaoyang fell one after another. Within days, Jinzhou, Fuzhou, Haizhou, Gaizhou, and the other guards surrendered at the mere arrival of a proclamation. Households were counted, fields were distributed, and they were registered as civilian households of the Jin state.

Over seventy fortresses and castles in Liaodong all fell into the hands of the Later Jin.

When the fighting ended, the markets and streets in Liaoyang City opened as usual, and business went on as usual.

It was also at that time that Shen Shikui was driven out of his hometown by the impoverished soldiers, miners, and masses who had risen up in arms.

Everyone was rising up, after all. Who could blame them — he was a wealthy man who did business, and not a good man at that.

But Nurhaci betrayed the Liaoning people.

When the Eight Banners army entered Liaoyang, they quickly forced the Liaoning people to shave their heads, forcibly relocated the Han people of Liaoyang to dwell in the north of the city, gave the south of the city to the Eight Banners, and started the practice of segregated Manchu-Han living.

Soon, drought came.

Nurhaci made his choice, completely abandoning the policy of recruiting Han people, systematically eliminating the old and weak among the Han, dividing people into those with grain and those without, and marching away entire households of those without grain to slaughter them all.

Afterward, the "Jin State Households" who had been given land under the field-allotment system were subordinated to official manors, and the manors were granted to the nobility.

The promises of sharing houses, sharing grain, and sharing fields were all torn to shreds.

As for another man, the pre-war Aiyang Garrison Commander Mao Wenlong, over a hundred of his kin who had stayed in Anshan were all captured and killed by the Eight Banners during the war, while he fled to Liaoxi with his remaining family.

That year, Mao Wenlong was already forty-five. Having suffered a crushing defeat and been shaken by the sight of Liaoning people scrambling to defect to the Later Jin, he believed he would never have the chance to achieve unparalleled merit in this life. Disheartened, he wanted to return home and serve his elderly mother.

On the road, he heard that the newly appointed Liaodong Grand Coordinator Wang Huazhen was seeking military talent, and gave him a small, somewhat risky mission.

He was ordered to lead four flat-bottomed transport ships and two hundred soldiers to reconnoiter the situation in the fallen Liaodong region and, when the opportunity arose, seize Zhenjiang Fort at the mouth of the Yalu River to serve as a landing point for the recovery of Liaodong.

After two months of sailing at sea, when Mao Wenlong led one hundred and ninety-seven officers and soldiers to land on the Liaodong Peninsula, the resistance of the Liaoning people was intensifying as Nurhaci tore off his mask.

From resisting head-shaving by gathering for self-defense, to rising up in revolt and capturing defending officers, armed Liaoning civilians formed groups and fled toward the Ming. The scale was so large that the Eight Banners soldiers could only watch from a distance, not daring to approach.

Even in Xiuyan, over a thousand Liaoning people built eight wooden ships and fourteen dugout canoes, sailed upstream, and bombarded Later Jin watchtowers, before being besieged and massacred by the Eight Banners.

At this point, the Liaoning people had transformed from those who could not be moved to defend the city even by Xiong Tingbi's weeping envoys, into civilians who all vied to kill the enemy first, to vent the fury of their fathers and grandfathers.

The flat-bottomed ships sailed to Zhenjiang Fort; the waters of the Liaodong Peninsula pushed Mao Wenlong to the crest of the storm.

Mao Wenlong was the only legitimate Ming general on the Liaodong Peninsula.

He led one hundred and ninety-seven Ming troops to land on the peninsula, fought a surprise campaign for half a month, and ultimately mustered ten thousand troops, escorting thirty thousand Liaoning civilians from the fallen Liaodong region into Joseon.

An obscure guerrilla general, on a chance mission, rescued thirty thousand Liaoning civilians whom the Ming court did not trust, rallied over a dozen bands of righteous fighters from various places, and cobbled together a newly formed army of ten thousand built around eight hundred old Liaodong soldiers, then hid in Joseon, a vassal state of the Ming.

Joseon could not afford to supply them with provisions, the Ming was unwilling to resettle them, and they were even less willing to return inside the pass. In the end, Joseon carved out Jia Island and gave it to Mao Wenlong to station his troops and settle his people.

Because his surname was Mao, Mao Wenlong took the meaning from the saying "If the skin does not exist, what can the hair cling to?" and renamed it Pi Island.

The Ming felt that Pi Island was at the rear of the Later Jin state and could be advantageous for the recovery of Liaodong, so by the following year, Dongjiang Garrison was officially established.

In reality, it is hard to say that the Ming truly regarded it as a military garrison.

The Liaoning people on the island trusted no one, and the world outside the island trusted no Liaoning person.

Even Mao Wenlong himself did not dare trust his subordinates in Dongjiang Garrison.

The composition of troops on the island was far too complex, and Mao Wenlong's own trusted forces were too few; keeping the island troops in check was no easy task.

In those earliest days, they lacked clothing and food, and the Ming was stingy with supplies. That they avoided internal chaos was already a blessing to be thankful for.

Shen Shikui, displaced by the war, boarded Pi Island to seek refuge with Mao Wenlong and later resumed his commercial activities.

He smuggled goods between Joseon, the Later Jin, and the Ming, securing supplies for the Pi Island army.

But Joseon was impoverished to begin with; even emptying its national treasury could only support twenty thousand troops by Ming standards, so it was impossible to provide Pi Island with more supplies.

For this ragtag militia of Dongjiang Garrison to snatch food from the Later Jin's mouth was even more absurd. Every landing meant entering a trap-ridden territory in fear and trembling. Losing troops and officers was a minor matter; once encircled, it meant total annihilation.

Over time, Dongjiang Garrison believed they deserved rewards for raiding the weak and tying down the Later Jin, while the Ming court believed Dongjiang Garrison was incapable of guarding against the Jurchens, useless for major tasks, and was unwilling to let the refugees return to Shandong.

The relationship between the two sides did not grow closer with the establishment of Dongjiang Garrison; instead, they grew further apart in spirit.

Fortunately, Dongjiang Garrison itself was still relatively united. Even if others did not submit to Mao Wenlong, even if there were several officers of Liaoning origin in the garrison and leaders who had gathered over a thousand miners, none had greater prestige than Mao Wenlong.

In this process, Shen Shikui gained military merit and became a commander. He married his daughter, said to be a peerless beauty, to Mao Wenlong, and was called Grand Elder Shen on the island.

The situation did not actually improve as life in Dongjiang Garrison got better.

Though the name Dongjiang Garrison was grand, its living space was very small. Caught in the cracks between three states, yet possessing no territory or produce, every grain of rice and every grain of salt the island troops ate was forcibly extracted from the three surrounding states.

This made it a problem.

Mao Wenlong had been a problem for the Later Jin from the very beginning, and as he shielded Liaoning civilians fleeing into Joseon, he also became a problem for Joseon.

Joseon did not wish to provoke the militarily formidable Later Jin, but Mao Wenlong was a general of the suzerain state, shielding its subjects as they entered Joseon. Faced with Later Jin's pressure and demands, the Joseon king could only stubbornly resist, caught in a dilemma.

Later, when Mao Wenlong relocated to the island, the situation did not improve by half a measure; it even worsened.

After all, even after landing on the island, they still had to eat.

With the overthrow of King Gwanghaegun of Joseon, who had pursued a policy of neutrality, the new king, having gained the throne through an irregular deposition, desperately curried favor with Mao Wenlong to secure his investiture. He agreed to let Pi Island open farmland and boil salt in Joseon, so that Mao Wenlong would memorialize the Emperor to confirm his succession.

The closer proximity led to constant clashes between the Liaoning people and the Joseon populace. Mao Wenlong also frequently ambushed and killed envoys the Later Jin sent to Joseon, making the relationship between the new Joseon king and Dongjiang Garrison awkward.

Joseon was very afraid of Mao Wenlong and the Pi Island troops.

Dongjiang Garrison had many troops, though they were utterly incapable of withstanding a single blow from the Eight Banners' regular army.

Yet they kept rescuing Liaoning civilians from the Liaodong Peninsula, launching massive military expeditions. They would land on the island with ten or twenty thousand troops at a time, and when looting, they would even "spill over" into Joseon.

Actually, sometimes it was intentional.

In truth, even ambushing Later Jin patrol squads, village folk, or even fisherwomen and hunters was a risk for the island troops; they might even mess up and get killed by the women.

Among all the targets they could raid, Later Jin diplomatic missions bearing gifts were the most valuable.

But for the Joseon kingdom, where righteous armies could go three-to-seven against Japanese soldiers and the official army was a mere circus, the tens of thousands of island troops under Mao Wenlong... were terrifying.

On this basis, the Joseon courtiers always felt that their kingdom was an even more profitable target for General Mao than the Later Jin diplomatic missions.

This worry was not without reason, because Joseon itself feared everyone. They dared not offend the Later Jin, still less the Ming, and also dared not offend Mao Wenlong.

So when they suffered grievances at the hands of Ming envoys, they complained to the Later Jin envoys; when they suffered grievances at the hands of Later Jin envoys, they complained to Mao Wenlong; when they suffered grievances at Mao Wenlong's hands, they complained to the Ming.

To the Ming court, Mao Wenlong's merits were old news, already rewarded to the fullest, yet the troubles he stirred up grew ever more numerous, and he showed no sign of repentance.

He acted with impunity overseas, beyond control, exaggerating minor achievements, wasting provisions and pay without recovering an inch of land, plundering merchant caravans and raiding a vassal state. He was becoming more and more like... or rather, from the very beginning, when Mao Wenlong saved those tens of thousands of Liaoning civilians, they were already an independent kingdom.

All the passion of the Liaoning people was directed toward returning to their homeland; few were willing to go to Shandong.

Because the Liaoning people had fled to Dongjiang Garrison in stages, and Mao Wenlong's earliest troops were all selected from among the Liaoning people — they had all shaved their heads.

So when Dongjiang was first established as a garrison, Dongjiang Garrison actually resembled the Later Jin state even more than Jianzhou did.

Even to demand pay and provisions, Mao Wenlong told the court that Dongjiang Garrison had one hundred and fifty thousand troops.

The year Chongzhen ascended the throne, the whole empire was cutting military numbers. Mao Wenlong claiming Dongjiang had one hundred and fifty thousand troops was enough to anger Chongzhen to death.

The troop count was audited — the official quota was set at twenty-eight thousand. Everyone beyond that was classified as refugees and could not be counted as part of the army.

Mao Wenlong was certainly not happy about that.

The most dangerous moment came when the Ningyuan Mutiny erupted in Liaoxi just as the Later Jin, hearing the news, dispatched their forces. Only thanks to Zu Dashou's single battalion of Liao troops, which did not break, did they sally forth to Huangniwa and drive back the Later Jin probing attack.

And while the Later Jin were invading Liaoxi, Mao Wenlong led his troops ashore at Dengzhou, demonstrating to the imperial court over the troop reduction.

So much so that Ming, Jin, and Joseon finally reached a consensus — all three considered Pi Island a problem.

On the scales, the trouble Mao Wenlong's existence brought now outweighed the benefits.

That was why the Ming court moved against Mao Wenlong.

The quota troops were twenty-eight thousand. The Ministry of Revenue and Ministry of War set their pay and provisions at two hundred thirty thousand.

Mao Wenlong disagreed.

Yuan Chonghuan regarded the Dongjiang Garrison as a vital force and proposed they receive the same pay as the Guanning Army — four hundred seventy thousand.

The Chongzhen Emperor disagreed.

After three months of negotiation, a compromise was reached at three hundred fifty thousand taels.

Mao Wenlong then yielded and went to Ningyuan to collect the pay. The following month, Yuan Chonghuan landed on the island to issue pay to the Dongjiang Garrison and killed Mao Wenlong.

Without benefit, his head was parted from his body.

After Mao Wenlong's death, the court reorganized the Dongjiang Garrison, dividing the troops into four commands.

They were led by Chen Jisheng, Mao Chenglu, Liu Xingzuo, and Xu Fuzou.

Chen Jisheng was a Liao militia leader from a Liaodong merchant background.

Mao Chenglu was Mao Wenlong's adopted son, a Mao-faction militia leader.

Liu Xingzuo had defected to Jianzhou even before Nurhaci founded his state, under the name Liu Aita. He had once been the third-ranking Han official in Jianzhou. After the Later Jin state was founded, he faked his death and switched sides, bringing his brothers and nearly a thousand Jurchen troops to the island.

Xu Fuzou was also a Liao soldier, but he was Yuan Chonghuan's trusted man, on bad terms with Mao Wenlong, and belonged to the Guanning faction.

Four commands of troops and horses, four factions.

The Ming court no longer had to worry about the Dongjiang Garrison's independence.

The false stability on the lonely island collapsed the instant Mao Wenlong died, plunging it into an era of turmoil like a battle royale.

First was Liu Xingzuo. During the Jisi Incident, he led his army to reinforce the capital. His force alone took over six hundred heads along the way. But while escorting the Jin soldiers' heads to Yongping for verification, he encountered a Jin army on the road and was killed by Jirgalang.

Then Hong Taiji used the captured Liu Xingxian to write a letter to Liu Xingzhi on Pi Island, urging him to surrender.

The Ming court believed Liu Xingzhi had not died but had surrendered to the Jin state. When word reached Pi Island, Chen Jisheng grew wary of Liu Xingzhi. The terrified Liu Xingzhi struck first — using the occasion of a Buddhist rite to summon Liu Xingzuo's spirit, he killed Chen Jisheng and the other leaders of the Liao militia faction.

Shen Shikui also belonged to this faction. He survived solely because he was always smooth and adaptable, and had given his daughter to Liu Xingzhi.

Soon, another mutiny erupted on Pi Island. Shen Shikui allied with Zhang Tao, killed Liu Xingzhi, and slaughtered every member of the Liu clan on the island.

Next was Xu Fuzou. He was Yuan Chonghuan's trusted aide. After Yuan Chonghuan's death, the Pi Island generals all denounced him as the one who had caused Mao Wenlong's death. Only through Sun Chengzong's repeated, strenuous protection did he escape with his life, but he also withdrew from the Dongjiang Garrison stage.

Then came Mao Chenglu. His case was much simpler. After Yuan Chonghuan died, he petitioned the Ming court to clear Mao Wenlong's name. The Chongzhen Emperor ignored him, and his loyalties grew unsettled.

The man was dead anyway. If his name were rehabilitated, it would mean the living were clean. Without rehabilitation, it meant he was the son of a convicted minister.

So when Mao Wenlong's followers in the younger generation — Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming — launched the Wuqiao Mutiny, their elder uncle Mao Chenglu immediately mobilized seven thousand island troops to answer the call. In the end, he was crushed at Shuang Island by Dongjiang Regional Commander Huang Long and escorted to Beijing for death by slow slicing.

By this point, all four original leaders were gone. The Dongjiang Garrison's regional commander was Huang Long.

Huang Long then led his troops out and died at Lüshun.

Mao Wenlong had built the Dongjiang Garrison and held power for eight years. That whole time, their refugee gang had been making trouble for everyone else.

After Mao Wenlong's death, it took only four years for all four second-generation Dongjiang Garrison leaders to die unnatural deaths.

Of the older generation, only Old Master Shen remained.

The troops and soldiers, too, had gone from flourishing numbers in Mao Wenlong's era — still twenty-eight thousand even after the cuts — to the present: over fifty thousand Liao refugees across the islands, with a quota force of twelve thousand.

Their power had greatly diminished.

But now, the Dongjiang Garrison troops were somewhat more battle-worthy than before, and indeed, as the court had wished, they could accept redeployment.

All Dongjiang Garrison affairs were now decided by Shen Shikui alone. His official title:

Imperial Commissioner Defending Dengzhou, Liaodong, Dongjiang, and Coastal Areas, Specially Managing Recovery and Extermination Affairs, Bearing the Seal of General of the Vanquishing Caitiffs, Regional Commander, Left Army Chief Commissioner's Office Vice Commissioner-in-Chief, Shen Shikui.

?? Good afternoon!

? (End of chapter)