Chapter 763: Collecting the Reward

The eleventh day of the sixth month.

On the same day Liu Chengzong won his victory beyond the passes, the victory report from Gao Qiqian, the Guan-Ning Supervisor-in-Chief on the Jinzhou front, was delivered to the capital.

The Jinzhou army had recovered twelve cities — Gaizhou, Yaozhou, Haizhou, and others — their vanguard reaching all the way to Liaoyang.

Gao Qiqian was a young eunuch, and like the other officials rocket-promoted under the Chongzhen reign, his service record was very short.

The first time he left the palace was when Li Jiucheng of Shandong struck a pose of world-conquering invincibility and routed every relief army sent against him.

Chongzhen transferred forty-eight hundred Guan-Ning troops into the interior to suppress the rebellion, and chose Gao Qiqian from the palace — a eunuch who had read books and knew some military affairs — to accompany the campaign as army supervisor.

In four months, Li Jiucheng was killed, and Kong Youde and Geng Zhongming were driven to flight; the massive, surging rebellion was quelled in its wake.

Chongzhen had tasted the sweetness of army supervisors, and thereupon dispatched eunuchs into the camps of every army to serve as supervisors.

As it turned out, every one of them did a terrible job — either embezzling military supplies, or, when battle came, taking the elite troops and fleeing under their protection, while also stripping the generals of their initiative and making them feel that being supervised by such creatures was a humiliation.

Gao Qiqian alone did well; the army had no complaints about his presence.

Thus, by last year, Chongzhen had recalled all the supervisors, leaving only Gao Qiqian still overseeing Guan-Ning.

The court officials, however, had plenty of complaints about Gao Qiqian.

Damn it all, this eunuch never stirred up trouble for the troops he was supposed to supervise — he only made trouble for everyone else.

Other supervisors generally clung to their power and tormented the troops under their watch: embezzling supplies in peacetime, issuing chaotic commands during battle preparations, and being the first to flee when the fighting started.

One who did absolutely nothing — whose presence as supervisor was as if there were no supervisor at all — would be accounted the finest supervisor under heaven, a blessing earned by a general's ancestors through nine generations of goodwill toward others.

Gao Qiqian not only did things a proper human would do, he even threw away all shame in doing them. When he discovered that the Guan-Ning army was short of warhorses, with only fifteen thousand head, he submitted a memorial to the court.

Ordinarily, a decent person facing such a problem would certainly ask the court for funds, or else directly request horses.

Gao Qiqian was different. A eunuch out of the palace, after all — first, he had no shame; second, he understood Chongzhen.

He knew that doing so would only make trouble for His Majesty. Our emperor was no ordinary miser; if a memorial went in and didn't get him cursed out, that was already a good outcome. He was certain he'd never get the horses — the Northwest Herds Administration had been plundered bare by Liu Chengzong; where would the court have horses?

So he asked for neither money nor horses.

He simply wrote a letter to the court.

Begging the esteemed officials to help a child out — donate all your salaries to us, buy warhorses with them, so our Guan-Ning soldiers can ride.

Chongzhen saw that no funds or horses would have to be found, and thought to himself: Marvelous!

An able official!

He immediately forwarded the memorial to the relevant bureaus.

Wen Tiren, that scab among colleagues, was the first to respond, and then everyone's monthly salary was gone.

Utterly vicious.

Now the Guan-Ning army has forty thousand warhorses.

Who wouldn't like a supervisor like that? Not only did he not skim off supplies, he could even bring in equipment from inside the passes.

Gao Qiqian was now very fond of Liu Chengzong as well.

Ever since Liu Chengzong shifted his forces to the outer borders west of Liao, Gao Qiqian had been on twelve-tenths alert, keeping a death grip on watching Liu Chengzong's army.

Of course, his death grip was one thing; Liu Chengzong appearing and disappearing like a ghost on the battlefield, impossible for him to find, was another.

At the time, Gao Qiqian was terrified.

He feared Liu Chengzong would attack Jinzhou.

Therefore, as soon as Zu Dashou forwarded him the letter in which Liu Chengzong told the Guan-Ning army not to move a muscle, Gao Qiqian immediately donned his armor in person, went to the Jinzhou front line, and urged the Jinzhou army to obey.

We shall not move.

Gao Qiqian understood the emperor the way he understood his own vital parts — though both were far away in the Forbidden City, their voice and features would appear before his eyes the moment he shut them.

So long as the emperor was not made to pay out real gold and silver, all things were permitted.

Battles could be skipped, golden opportunities could be missed, but there must be no losses.

Yet it was this same man who, upon discovering that Liu Chengzong bore no ill will toward Jinzhou and had instead thrown Liaodong into utter chaos while drawing the Eight Banners' main strength toward the outer borders, immediately formulated a counteroffensive plan with Zu Dashou.

Counteroffensive in name, it was in truth only a small-scale clash — riding out to stake a claim on the lands Liu Chengzong had trampled through.

The operation was extraordinarily successful.

In just two days, they pushed the battle line all the way from Niuzhuang to Liaoyang, and upon discovering that even the city bricks inside Liaoyang had been scorched red and the city was entirely uninhabitable, they decided to garrison the eastern and western suburbs of Liaoyang and await the Eight Banners' counterattack.

Only after Jirgalang and Shang Kexi had joined forces and pushed their troops back toward Liaoyang did the Jinzhou army withdraw in good order.

To make things convenient for others is to make them convenient for oneself.

To maintain a long-term standoff, one must leave the other side some face, control the scale of the campaign, and do everything possible to avoid an escalation of the war before adequate preparations are made.

It was not until he and Zu Dashou led the army back from Liaoyang and garrisoned at Haizhou that Gao Qiqian sent his victory report to the capital, also mentioning that the Guan-Ning army's cannons were not very good.

This was a preemptive shot.

Gao Qiqian planned to beg the esteemed officials in the capital again next year, to have them donate and cast some red-barbarian cannons.

This year, he could beg no more… with Guan-Ning buying horses, Fengyang repairing the imperial tombs, and the capital building its walls, the officials in the capital had not seen their salaries all year long.

If he begged again, those corrupt officials would gain a fine reputation, while the honest officials would be left drinking the northwest wind — they'd probably kill him for it.

In any case, Gao Qiqian was very happy this year.

Though others could not help but curse him in their hearts, it didn't matter — let them curse, he couldn't hear it anyway.

Thanks to the esteemed officials in the capital, the army had warhorses, its support capability had soared, and he had firmly won over the troops' hearts; now every officer in Liaodong saluted him with genuine feeling.

Thanks to Liu Laoye beyond the border, he had recovered twelve forts without the slightest effort, pushed the battle line east of the Liao River, and earned himself merit as well.

The key was Zu Dashou.

What sort of man was Zu Dashou? A hardened veteran who had lived through Gao Huai's time. Good heavens — when he saw a eunuch like Gao Qiqian who still had a few traces of humanity, he held him up high, deathly afraid the court would send another one with no humanity at all to replace him.

As for merit — forget fighting over it, he'd hand it all to you; it was fine if the victory report didn't even mention Zu's name.

Ah, people!

When fortune comes, nothing can stop it.

Gao Qiqian's life of ease in Liaodong was even sweeter than having a bird.

Blissfully sweet!

Barely two days after the victory report was sent out, an imperial edict arrived from the capital.

It issued five hundred merit commendation plaques and ordered him to shift his troops inside the passes to suppress the caitiffs.

During the Yongle reign, battle merits were refined into three grades: extraordinary merit, first merit, and second merit — essentially special merit, first-class merit, and second-class merit.

By the time of the Yingzong Emperor, they began casting merit commendation plaques for three grades of merit: extraordinary merit, head merit, and joint effort.

They were essentially medals of honor.

Only they were not medals, but waist plaques cast in gold, silver, bronze, or iron.

Gao Qiqian found these waist plaques superfluous; their battle had been especially easy, and there were not even five hundred soldiers who had earned merit. Only after racking his brains did he manage to hand out just over three hundred merit plaques. He then promptly selected six battalions of the Guanning Army and led seven thousand cavalry into the passes.

He had to let the officials and lords in the capital see that their salaries had been put to good use — every last Guanning stalwart was mounted!

The day Gao Qiqian entered the passes, the land inside was already ablaze with beacon fires everywhere.

Ajige had failed to break out through Lengkou Pass, wasting precious time and army provisions. Turning back south to fight, he split his forces to attack Laishui, Bao'an, Gu'an, and Bazhou, desperate to seize supplies.

But none of those cities fell quickly.

Ajige was path-dependent. The Lengkou area and other places he tried to exit through were the very passes Huang Taiji had broken through during the Jisi Incident. The county towns he split his forces to plunder were likewise ones that had been breached during the Jisi Incident.

Back then, the capital region was heavily defended but had seen no war for years, so it was caught completely unprepared when the attack came.

The officials of the Great Ming were not without memory. Since the Jisi Incident, it had become common consensus that the capital region was no longer secure. Everywhere, local militias were being drilled, city walls repaired, moats managed, and arms and equipment readied.

Take Gu'an County alone — the magistrate was named Huang Qiyu.

Huang Qiyu was a native of Chaozhou Prefecture. His family had been poor since his childhood; his father farmed but spent most of the year working away as a laborer. Huang Qiyu was filial from a young age and was responsible at home for gathering and piling manure.

Like Hong Chengchou, because of poverty, he stood outside a private school to listen to lessons until he was allowed to attend for free. He passed the imperial examination and became a presented scholar in the first year of the Chongzhen reign.

Upon passing the examination, a presented scholar received four months of home leave. Because his father worked away all year, Huang Qiyu searched for him for the entire four months without finding him. He returned to the capital to await an official appointment, but before he received a post, he was shocked to hear that his father had died in a strange land, so he returned home to observe the mourning rites.

Not until the fourth year of Chongzhen did he return to the capital to await reappointment.

A vacancy had opened up in Gu'an County.

When the Wanli Emperor ruled, officials wanted posts but could not get them; when the Chongzhen Emperor ruled, many simply did not want to be officials at all.

Take this very Gu'an County — of its two previous magistrates, one was thrown in prison and the other was demoted.

But Huang Qiyu's family was poor, and he had already spent three years in mourning, so he accepted the vacancy and became the magistrate.

From the very start of his tenure, Magistrate Huang began preparing for war.

First, he removed the county's powerful clerks and their yamen runner accomplices who extorted money, harassed the people, and framed innocents as bandits. After that, he repaired the city walls, compiled the county gazetteer, drilled the local militia, and manufactured weapons.

By the seventh year of Chongzhen, Huang Qiyu had already completed his term evaluation and was due for transfer, but the city walls were still unfinished that year.

For the sake of repairing those walls, Huang Qiyu specially submitted a memorial to the court, asking to serve another term so he could raise the walls higher and dig the moat deeper.

When Ajige's troops reached Gu'an County, what awaited them was a Gu'an city with repaired walls, a moat dug deep and wide, eight hundred militia on the walls fully equipped with swords, spears, bows, arrows, firelocks, and gunpowder, and an abundance of ten-thousand-man bombs, Frankish cannons, and Great General cannons.

Forget about assaulting the city — the moment they drew near, they were met with cannon fire.

At the same time, the Shanxi Xuan-Da Army was closing in from the west, and Gao Qiqian was entering the passes from the east. Ajige could only flee south in panic.

Along the way, he plundered the countryside, running at the mere sight of Ming troops. He even began using a silver bullet offensive: whenever garrison troops blocked his path, he would first send someone to offer a little silver to borrow the road.

This created a bizarre situation in the capital region: the Capital Army and the Xuan-Da Army chased from behind while Ajige robbed and ran ahead, unstoppably fierce. The countryside was plundered everywhere, and any blocking force that encountered him was routed.

Gao Qiqian's Guanning Army was originally supposed to join this pursuit, but before he had gone far, he received another imperial transfer order, commanding him to garrison Miyun and guard the north.

Because on the twenty-second day of the sixth month, an urgent report came from the Miyun direction: Liu Chengzong's cavalry had been circling along the Chao River outside Gubeikou Pass.

The entire court, high and low, feared that Liu Chengzong would follow the eastern caitiffs' example and break through the pass, so they urgently redeployed Gao Qiqian's Guanning Army to assist in the defense.

As it turned out, the very day Gao Qiqian reached Miyun, the Marshal Army's cavalry knocked at the pass.

Just three riders, bearing a large white banner with the words "Claim Reward" written on it. They swept horizontally past the gate of Gubeikou Pass, tossed out two round objects, and spurred their horses north.

"By order of the Grand Marshal, troops of Ji Garrison, come out of the pass to claim your reward!"

The garrison troops outside the Gubeikou gate were utterly baffled, staring at each other in bewilderment, having no idea what these people had come for.

Shortly after the riders left, the garrison commander on the gate tower led his troops out on horseback. They advanced cautiously for several hundred paces, and only after seeing no ambush did they proceed.

On closer inspection, they were two caitiff heads with queues.

"Centurion, there's something tied to the queues!"

Strips of cloth with writing on them.

The same scene played out outside every single pass along the western sector of the Ji Garrison's border defense line.

The reason it was only the western sector was that the fire Fiyanggū had set was still burning. The central and eastern sectors were too hot.

Gao Qiqian was in the main camp outside Miyun County town, wringing his hands and sighing, feeling that he had lost the chance to strike at Ajige and missed out on merit.

Suddenly, he saw his subordinate, Vice General Chen Chaochong, running over. "Lord Gao, handed over by the Miyun troops."

Truth be told, Gao Qiqian had initially refused this form of address.

But everyone called him that, and many officers and soldiers would give him a military salute the moment they saw him, so he had no choice.

This was actually an order from Zu Dashou.

The most important thing when cooperating with eunuchs was to give them face. If you gave them face, even a bad one might not necessarily harm you.

If you did not give them face, they would remember it for a lifetime, and even a good one would find a chance to harm you.

Because you were already enemies — who told you to have a bird?

But Gao Qiqian had no idea this order existed. He simply felt that the Liao troops all respected him, that the Liao troops were all good men, and that being on the Guan-Ning-Jin defense line was just like being at home — incredibly warm.

Gao Qiqian, his face full of bewilderment, frowned as he took the cloth strip. The instant he saw the words on it, his eyes bulged wider than cannonballs!

On the cloth strip was clearly written: "Chongzhen bingzi year, sixth month, eleventh day. Liu Chengzong inscribed stone on the Xing'an Range, shattered sixty thousand Jin troops at the Laoha River. Frontier troops, each come out of the passes and collect caitiff heads to exchange for reward money!"

Gao Qiqian could not help but leap up and cry out, "What in the world is he trying to do!"

In that instant, he thought Liu Chengzong meant to lure all the Miyun troops beyond the border and then destroy the wall and charge in.

But as he stood up, his shrewd intellect reasserted itself. Gao Qiqian paced and shook his head. "No, he doesn't mean to attack the pass."

He's having soldiers collect enemy heads for reward. If he took the pass, wouldn't the Miyun troops just come to him to exchange for rewards?

Who'd be that foolish — kill eastern slaves himself, give the heads to someone else, then let that someone else come to him for reward money?

At that very moment, a huge problem suddenly dawned on Gao Qiqian.

The reward for eastern slave heads had always been high, because heads were hard to come by. Liu Chengzong had just routed an army of sixty thousand in one stroke. If it wasn't a fabrication, how many heads would that be?

If the soldiers really took them to exchange for rewards, even just six thousand heads would cost three hundred thousand taels of silver.

What if His Majesty couldn't produce the silver?

"Quick, quick, quick — issue orders at once to all forts, stockades, and passes along the Ji Garrison. Frontier troops are forbidden to leave the pass without authorization! Anyone leaving without authorization shall be… damn it all, if too many leave the pass, beheading them wouldn't be appropriate either."

In an instant, Gao Qiqian was as frantic as an ant on a hot pan. Even Deputy Regional Commander Chen Chaochong, standing beside him, found the sight unbearable and couldn't help asking, "Lord Gao, this foo… if Liu Chengzong's battle is real, why don't we in Guanning just go out of the pass first and take the heads? Wouldn't that settle it?"

"This isn't about the heads — it's about the silver, the silver! His Majesty has no silver. Must I not share His Majesty's burdens?"

Gao Qiqian urged, "Quick, quick, quick! Commander Chen, send someone with the order at once. If we delay, it'll be too late!"

In truth, it was already too late.

At the various forts of the Ji Garrison's Western Sector, having already had the experience of receiving two enemy heads the first time, when the Marshal Army cavalry drove their wagons over a second time, every officer led their troops out of the pass. While keeping a wary eye on the Marshal Army, they lined up to collect heads.

"Come, come — take the heads. This is the Grand Marshal's reward for guarding the border. Also take the stone tablet rubbings and the casualty roster that our army has imprinted. This battle spread the nation's might far and wide — take them back and pass them around to read… And fetch your highest-ranking officer here. The Minister of Rites, Elder Qian of the Grand Secretariat, is preparing to return to the capital. Make ready to receive him."

Good evening!

(End of chapter)