Chapter 738: Karmic Ties

Breaking through the Liaodong border wall proved a bit harder than Liu Chengzong had imagined.

The mudflats along the Liao River caused no end of trouble for the Zongren Battalion tasked with breaching the wall.

Fortunately, the reaction from the Daiqing Eight Banners was also very slow.

Over five full days, only two large companies, each under two hundred men, approached. Qian Shisheng guessed they might be two garrison niru.

One company stood atop the wall for half a day, but fled the next morning when cannons fired from the riverbank. The other niru never even mounted the wall. Before the breach, a small scouting party of pond cavalry that had scaled the wall spotted them circling warily on horseback far inside the border, seemingly wanting to defend but not daring to, until the wall was finally breached, at which point they meandered off eastward.

On the twenty-fourth day of the fifth month, in the ninth year of the Chongzhen reign, the pontoon bridge across the Liao River was completed, and the Zongren Battalion surged to the base of the wall and began breaking through.

By the morning of the twenty-fifth, four gaps had been opened in the border wall.

Over thirty thousand troops of the Marshal's Army crossed the river in force, splitting into two columns and charging into the heartland of the Daiqing Empire.

The army's vanguard was over a thousand pond cavalry. Wu Sihu led more than two thousand riders from the Northern Yuan Battalion, and Subadi's seven thousand Mobei cavalry brought the total to ten thousand. On the day of the breach, they crossed the Pu River and swept eastward, plundering forts and strongholds along the way, driving straight toward Shengjing a hundred li distant.

Liu Chengzong, meanwhile, led one brigade and three battalions—over twenty thousand troops—surging southeast the moment they entered the border, crossing first the Pu River and then the Hun River, heading directly for Liaoyang a hundred li away.

This line of advance, as it happened, had something to do with Qian Shisheng.

Liu Chengzong's original plan had also been to split his forces into two columns, but with himself leading the main force toward Shenyang, while Wu Sihu, Subadi, and the others led the cavalry to plunder the Daiqing heartland.

Splitting the army into two columns was very necessary.

Although Subadi's seven thousand Mobei troops had come to aid the fight, they were not, after all, his direct line troops. They were fine for picking up easy spoils, but when it came to the hard fighting of storming cities and seizing strongholds, they were never going to do that for him.

At least in this campaign, they were not going to do that for him.

The only troops capable of assaulting a city were Gao Yingdeng's First Brigade, who carried heavy weapons. But whether they could suppress the defending artillery on Shenyang's walls was another question entirely.

The Marshal's Army's original plan, therefore, was for Liu Chengzong to head straight for the walls of Shenyang. Relying on the speed of a surprise attack, if they could break through, they would loot the place and leave; if not, they would turn around, sweep the outskirts, and withdraw quickly after a fast strike.

With the bridge built and the border wall breached, the army was ready to enter. Old Master Qian Shisheng made one extra remark, and it directly caused Liu Chengzong to change his tactics: a flanking force would advance on Shenyang, while the main force struck directly at Liaoyang.

According to Ming intelligence, the troops garrisoning the frontline of the Daiqing Empire at Haizhou and Liaoyang were not, in fact, the Eight Banners, but the Heaven-Blessed and Heaven-Aided Army directly subordinate to Hong Taiji.

Haizhou was Shang Kexi's fief, and Liaoyang was the fief of Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming; their families and old troops were all there.

The moment Liu the Lion heard it was the fief of the Three Compliant Kings, he immediately gave Wu Sihu and Subadi their orders: they were to lead their troops toward Shenyang, while he himself would take twenty thousand soldiers straight for Liaoyang.

Qian Shisheng, marching with the army, was baffled by this.

He had brought up that the Heaven-Blessed and Heaven-Aided Army's fiefs were in Haizhou and Liaoyang in order to make Liu Chengzong avoid Liaoyang. Kong, Geng, and their lot might be Han troops, but they were different from those Han troops who surrendered after losing on the battlefield.

The Later Jin had many Han troops, most of whom had been forced to surrender after running out of ammunition and food. After switching banners and becoming puppet soldiers, they showed a strong tendency to avoid battle when fighting the Ming, and could not be considered a core fighting force.

The Heaven-Blessed and Heaven-Aided Army was different. Kong Youde had defected to the Later Jin of his own accord after rebelling in Shandong, and therefore they fought the Ming army with the most die-hard ferocity.

Qian Shisheng believed that Liu Chengzong would gain more than he lost by fighting them; even a victory would not weaken the Eight Banners' strength.

To be honest, Qian Shisheng had long grown accustomed to his advice not being heeded.

He had seen it all, and his state of mind was excellent.

Qian Shisheng had become a disciple of Gu Xiancheng at the age of twelve, personally participated in the rebuilding and establishment of the Donglin Academy, studied the Great Learning under Gao Panlong, had Qian Longxi as his patron examiner, and counted Wei Dazhong, Wen Zhenmeng, and others among his closest friends.

He placed first in the palace examination at forty-two, but after only a few years in office, the factional strife grew so fierce and the situation so perilous that he resigned and returned home to live in seclusion for ten years.

It was not until Chongzhen ascended the throne and issued an edict appointing him to head the Nanjing Hanlin Academy and serve as chief compiler of the Veritable Records that he truly felt Chongzhen was a sage emperor sent by Heaven.

Overjoyed, the then-over-fifty Qian Shisheng submitted a memorial to Chongzhen.

Although he had spent half his life in the Donglin Academy, he still told Chongzhen that the court had just suffered a great calamity and the realm could not withstand drastic, sweeping reforms. Therefore, in employing men, one should not rigidly distinguish between gentlemen and petty men; a petty man with talent might well be put to great use. This was something only a sovereign of great heroic spirit and stature could accomplish.

The implication was that even for the eunuch faction, the court should employ men according to their abilities.

He submitted his memorial from Nanjing, while the Emperor in Beijing issued the verdict on the anti-eunuch case. From filing to judgment, it took only forty-nine days to purge over two hundred Ming officials.

For the first time, Qian Shisheng felt that something was not quite right with this emperor.

Just then, Yuan Chonghuan was executed. Qian Shisheng's patron examiner, Qian Longxi, was attacked as a factional conspirator for having recommended Yuan Chonghuan. Originally sentenced to death, his punishment was later commuted to exile at Dinghai Garrison.

Qian Shisheng escorted him the entire way, caring for him along the journey, all the way to Pingjiang Prefecture. He then submitted a letter to the court, saying he was ill and wished to resign.

Yet, precisely because he had escorted his teacher, Chongzhen saw him as a man of gratitude and promoted him instead.

Then the refugees rose up, and the Emperor grew troubled by the roving bandits.

He submitted a memorial suggesting the reduction of old, unpaid taxes and the recruitment of refugees for widespread land reclamation. The Emperor was very pleased, promoted him again, brought him into the Grand Secretariat, and then began levying new military surtaxes.

Upon arriving in Beijing, he submitted a memorial to the Emperor, stating that suppressing the roving bandits was not difficult; the difficulty lay in eradicating them at the root. The greatest calamity for a state is none other than its people becoming refugees while those above show no compassion.

In his three years in the Grand Secretariat, he wrote letters to various governors-general and grand coordinators, repeatedly emphasizing with gravity that to pacify the refugees, one must properly distinguish and resettle them—distinguish who were true rebels and who were coerced refugees, decide where to disperse and settle them, and determine where their food and clothing would come from. If this work was not done, those people would ultimately rebel again.

This line—"The greatest calamity for a state is none other than its people becoming refugees while those above show no compassion"—appeared verbatim twice in his memorials to Chongzhen.

This was, in effect, no different from pointing at someone's nose and cursing them.

It was from this point on that Chongzhen began to dislike him.

And Qian Shisheng had long since come to dislike Chongzhen.

He felt the Emperor's handling of the refugee problem was frighteningly rash: executing old bandit chieftains and pacifying old bandit followers on one hand, while increasing surtaxes and levies on the other, thus creating new refugees.

Are you recruiting soldiers here or what?

He could not dissuade him; there was nothing to be done.

The Emperor fretted daily over money.

Qian Shisheng studied Beijing's canals. Between the Qihua Gate and Tongzhou, there was a canal called the Tonghui River, a small waterway built by Guo Shoujing during the Yuan dynasty.

This river was dedicated to transporting tribute grain. Every year, four million shi of southern grain was shipped north and stockpiled in Tongzhou. Of that, some one million six to seven hundred thousand shi was transported from Tongzhou into the capital, and it traveled via this very Tonghui River.

Shipping by boat cost next to nothing, but if transported overland, the porterage fees for this grain became exorbitant.

By the Ming dynasty, it had silted up during the Yongle reign for lack of water locks. During the Zhengtong reign, locks were built, but then the water source became a problem. In the Jiajing reign, the water source was solved, but then feng shui became an issue.

Fortunately, Jiajing did not believe in feng shui. As a man who, while bearing the title of Grand Master of the Five Thunders, had three main halls of his palace struck by lightning, he could write "An Inquiry into the Fire Alarm" urging the people not to believe in the Heaven-Man correlation nonsense—so how could he believe in any feng shui?

Besides, what did a feng shui master know that he, an immortal, did not know better about feng shui?

He forced the construction through, and in the very first year the canal was open to boats, they saved one hundred ten thousand taels of silver in porterage fees.

By the Wanli reign, this waterway was blocked again.

During the Wanli years, it was no surprise that even the Grand Canal was blocked, let alone this little forty-li canal.

The blockage lasted all the way into the Chongzhen reign. Every year, the grain and fodder shipped into the capital from Tongzhou cost anywhere from tens of thousands to over a hundred thousand taels in transport fees alone.

Qian Shisheng thought to himself, isn't this just throwing money away every year for nothing?

He wanted to re-dredge the Tonghui River. By his calculations, it would only cost a few hundred taels of silver and take two months to finish. With the money saved on shipping every year, what couldn't they do?

The feng shui masters in the capital came out again, saying that diverting water from Baifu would harm the imperial tombs.

The feng shui masters whom the Dao Lord Emperor never cared about, the daily poverty-lamenting Chongzhen Emperor did care about. So it couldn't be done.

By this point, Qian Shisheng had already despaired of the imperial court.

Over seven or eight years, he had presented the emperor with countless grand and minor strategies — leniency, tax reduction, pacifying the people, quelling bandits, increasing revenue, cutting expenses — and not a single one was ever fully adopted and vigorously implemented by the emperor.

The emperor read every single one, praised every single one, and constantly promoted him, but as for those practical suggestions, none were ever used.

There was nothing left to do. Qian Shisheng planned to go home. Holding a post and eating idly all these years, he had astonishingly failed to accomplish a single concrete thing.

Chongzhen had shown him the grace of recognition and patronage. The bond between sovereign and subject has its boundaries, so he could not point out that these failures were due to the emperor's excessive impatience and flaws. He could only search for the cause within himself — that he himself was useless.

So he presented Chongzhen with the "Four Admonitions": "Govern the masses with leniency, oversee subordinates with simplicity, hold one's heart with emptiness, and issue policy with equanimity." The idea was for the emperor to take these words to heart and heed them; then his own efforts would not have been in vain.

The meaning of these four phrases was simple: he wanted Chongzhen to be more forthright, more tolerant and even-tempered with his ministers, to stop jailing and killing people at the drop of a hat, and to conduct affairs with gentler political methods.

All policies under heaven are like medicine — three parts poison. The realm cannot bear the negative impact of any policy not deeply and thoroughly considered.

Just after he presented the Four Strategies, it happened that the military cadet Li Jin submitted a proposal to plunder the great houses of Jiangnan.

Qian Shisheng was determined to have Li Jin thrown in prison because he was afraid, but not because he himself was from Jiangnan and feared his own property would be confiscated in the future.

Rather, in his early years of study, he had not planned to rely solely on the imperial examinations to make a living, and had learned a great deal of economic knowledge.

Now, Qin, Jin, Chu, Yu, and Jiangbei already had no peaceful territory. Sichuan and Guizhou had been at war for years. Liangguang was remote and peripheral. Northern Zhili was under direct threat from the Eight Banners. The Great Ming looked vast and strong, chastising the foolish bandits in the west and holding off the Jin caitiffs in the east, but in reality, the only stable places left were the half of the realm south of the Yangtze and a single Grand Canal.

Never mind whether Jiangnan is poor or rich, or whether the gentry are good or bad — at least several million shi of tribute grain can genuinely be shipped to Tongzhou every year. This is a capability no other place in the realm possesses.

That grain, Beijing can see and touch. The troops in Ji and Liao can eat it.

If you really want to confiscate property, confiscate from the imperial relatives right at the foot of the imperial city walls. That increases revenue without destabilizing the realm's situation, and Jiangnan's tribute grain can still be shipped in — at least that counts as increasing revenue.

If you plunder yourself and collapse Jiangnan, the only region that is still somewhat stable, the gentry will arm themselves and rise up against you, and the tenant farmers and household slaves won't feel grateful for your kindness either.

Once both sides start fighting and rioting, and the Grand Canal is cut off, how is the Great Ming supposed to keep singing this opera?

If the emperor doesn't understand such a simple principle, does Wen Tiren not understand it either?

Chongzhen said that Qian Shisheng spent all day thinking about currying fame, and he was not wrong.

Because Qian Shisheng wanted to shift the blame. He truly lacked the talent and energy; he could not assist the emperor, nor could he prop up a great edifice on the verge of collapse. So he had to leave some words behind, to prove that it wasn't that he wanted to do nothing, but that he wanted to do many things, and they simply wouldn't listen.

He had no way out.

And Liu Chengzong... Liu Chengzong's obstinate self-righteousness surpassed even Chongzhen's, making it even more impossible for him to listen to his words.

From what Qian Shisheng understood, if you placed a mirror between Liu Chengzong and Chongzhen, it would reflect two tyrants of the same age.

The journey from the border walls to Liaoyang had jolted Qian Shisheng to pieces.

He racked his brains but could not understand why Liu Chengzong was so hell-bent on attacking Liaoyang. Finally, when they stopped to rest the troops and make camp thirty li from Liaoyang, he asked.

Liu Chengzong laughed as soon as he heard it. "Even Elder Qian has things he doesn't understand? Attacking Kong and Geng's city indeed cannot harm the Eight Banners, but it can harm Hong Taiji. Besides, they aren't that hard to deal with."

Whether to attack Shenyang or Liaoyang, Liu Chengzong had given it deep and thorough consideration.

Daiqing's livestock and people had all been pulled back to the outskirts of Shenyang. Even if he could besiege Shenyang before Hong Taiji arrived, the city's troop strength was ample, time would be tighter, and he would have to withdraw the moment reinforcements came.

Of course, the advantage was that if he breached Shenyang, the benefits would certainly be enormous.

Liaoyang's wealth might not be much; breaching the city might not even yield as much as plundering the outskirts of Shenyang.

But the advantage was that once taken, it could shake Hong Taiji's rule.

Because Kong and Geng's troops, within the Later Jin's ecological niche, were not a main combat force. Rather, like Liu Chengzong's Mongol corps or Zu Dashou's Yi soldiers, they were an internal deterrent force directly subordinate to the ruler.

If this force were snapped, Hong Taiji's rule would certainly be shaken.

Qian Shisheng was exceptionally intelligent. Initially, he simply hadn't thought in this direction, but the moment Liu Chengzong said it, he caught on.

"The Grand Marshal attacks Liaoyang to sow internal strife among the eastern caitiffs?"

Liu Chengzong first nodded, then shook his head. "Internal strife, not to that extent. Just to make his rule more troublesome."

The Eight Banners were feudal nobles. Losing the Three Compliant Kings' army, the power Hong Taiji held in his hands would be roughly equal to the other great nobles, naturally introducing more variables into his rule.

Hearing this, Qian Shisheng's face still bore worry, as if he still felt Liu Chengzong's plan to attack Liaoyang was inappropriate. He said, "But the rebel generals like Kong and Geng are fierce and valiant. They will surely defend the city to the death. I fear..."

"I wouldn't be so sure."

Before Qian Shisheng could finish, Liu Chengzong cut him off, shaking his head. "That's against Ming troops. Elder Qian also said they are rebel generals. They defected to the eastern caitiffs and shaved their heads. Against government troops, they naturally fight to the death, or else their heads won't stay on their shoulders."

Liu Chengzong raised a hand and gestured around the camp. "These are also rebel troops. In this army, there are many Tatar soldiers with shaved pates and little queues. I'm not punishing them for the crime of rebellion and surrendering to the caitiffs, so what are they afraid of?"

"This..."

Qian Shisheng was momentarily speechless. It did seem to be the case.

Just then, rapid footsteps sounded outside the tent. Zhang Xianzhong led a messenger inside and said, "Commander, urgent report from the First Brigade."

"Bring it."

Liu Chengzong took the letter and saw it was Gao Yingdeng's handwriting. It said the First Brigade's mounted scouts on night patrol had captured scouts sent out from Liaoyang.

Under interrogation, they learned that Liaoyang had two cities. On the west bank of the Taizi River was the old city of Liaoyang; on the east bank was the Eastern Capital City built by Nurhaci, which contained the Khan's palace. East of the city were also the ancestral tombs of Daiqing.

At present, only Kong Youde was garrisoned in Liaoyang with troops. The city's defenses were depleted. The Han troops had first been drained of soldiers by Shi Tingzhu, and subsequently Hong Taiji had summoned Geng Zhongming and the artillery units. Only three thousand troops remained in the city.

Gao Yingdeng's letter inquired whether, upon reaching Liaoyang the next day, they should separately attack the Eastern Capital City across the river.

"Geng the Second isn't here. Taking care of Kong Youde first works just as well."

Liu Chengzong turned his head and said to Zhao Jifang, "Write a reply. Attack the old city of Liaoyang first. Be cautious and on guard; don't let them sally out and strike you."

Having said that, he then said to Qian Shisheng, "Attacking Liaoyang has another advantage. It can draw Hong Taiji's main Eight Banners force over, allowing our flanking detachment heading to Sarhu to stab all the way into his old home in Jianzhou!"

As he spoke, Liu Chengzong could not help shaking his head. "The ancestral graves and the old home aren't in the same place, and I've managed to find both. This is fate!"

?? Good morning!

? (End of chapter)