Chapter 778: Showing Who's Boss

Liu Chengzong picked up Li Zicheng from Guide Fort and then raced his horse at full gallop; it was already midnight by the time he returned to Yulin.

Fortunately, the central army had prepared a meal at night, sparing Liu the Lion from having to fill his belly with fried flour.

Newly attached to the Grand Marshal's headquarters and eager to earn merit, Li Zicheng stood in the garrison commander's office atop Zhenbei Tower, holding an oil lamp and studying the hanging defense map of Yulin, then presented Liu Chengzong with an excellent but utterly useless siege plan.

The entire plan encompassed six aspects: internal and external, above and below, orthodox and unorthodox.

Internally, maintain contact with mid- and low-ranking officers and soldiers in the enemy army to undermine the defenders' will to fight; externally, dispatch troops to fill moats and cut off rivers, continuously creating pressure.

From above, keep up an unceasing exchange of arrows and bolts twelve shichen a day; from below, cross the city moat and dig tunnels beneath the walls to collapse them.

On the front, strengthen troop numbers to carry out rotating ant-swarm wall-chiseling assaults, while the unorthodox move is to recruit wavering defenders within the city as inside agents, having them seize the chance to start fires.

"At the very least, reinforce the east side of the city to forty thousand men, ant-swarm wall-chiseling — each man brings back one city brick, immediately tearing a breach in the wall. Once the tunnel collapses, the brickless earthen wall will cave in, and the main army can attack through the breach. I estimate that within seven days, we can swiftly take Yulin!"

This was Li Zicheng's hard-won experience from campaigning across the north and capturing dozens of forts and walled cities.

However, when Director Li of the War Office first displayed his talent at the Grand Marshal's headquarters, he clearly sensed that the atmosphere in the main hall of the office was somewhat strange.

The subordinates he had brought with him — whether core followers like Tian Jianxiu, Liu Zongmin, and Dang Shousu, or the joint-force leaders who had been mauled in Yunyang like He Jin, Guo Yingpin, and Tuo Yangkun — all wore expressions of excitement and anticipation.

But the expressions of the Marshal Army's generals and the Yulin Guard attendants keeping them company in the hall were rather off — a peculiar look of wanting to laugh but holding it in, their gazes carrying a hint of pity as they looked at them.

Even Liu Chengzong seemed to be struggling to keep a straight face.

Li Zicheng's tactical plan was excellent, and its characteristic was very distinct, highlighting a ferocious offensive of inexhaustible manpower.

It had just one flaw: it was not applicable to the Marshal Army.

Liu Chengzong spread his hands. To avoid dampening Li Zicheng's enthusiasm, he carefully weighed his words before saying, "Elder Brother, against an opponent like this, I don't need to deploy forty thousand troops on one section of city wall."

Liu the Lion thought to himself, when I fought sixty thousand Later Jin troops, I only used thirty thousand men.

To attack Yulin Garrison City — a Yulin Garrison City with only the old, weak, sick, and crippled left — you want me to array forty thousand troops outside the east wall and charge the base of the wall in dense assault waves to chisel at it?

Are you crazy?

The Ming army up on those walls has the firepower to blast a Zhang Yichuan to pieces with three cannon shots!

But Liu Chengzong knew this was not a problem with Li Zicheng's ability; it was more likely that Li Zicheng had never fought a well-supplied campaign and had a misunderstanding of army composition.

Yet this was precisely the kind of thing that was not easy for him to explain to Li Zicheng in a short time.

"Tonight, all of you have traveled a hundred li and must be weary long ago. Yulin City is surrounded and can't fly away. After you've eaten, rest for now. Tomorrow, after Elder Brother has seen the defensive deployments outside the city, we'll discuss tactics again."

When the officers of the Dashing General's faction heard this, though they said nothing on the surface, they were all deeply resentful in their hearts. Exchanging glances, they all felt that Liu Chengzong had a streak of outward generosity but inward jealousy.

After all, the point of this peaceful merger was to find a better path forward. Even if you didn't let the capable rise and the mediocre fall, you should at least give people a chance to display their talents.

In truth, however, the officers on the Marshal Army's side also felt that the Dashing General's people were far too reckless.

Altogether just a thousand or so peasant soldiers — if not for being old acquaintances of the Grand Marshal, they'd be worth no more than a squad commander in the Grand Marshal's headquarters.

Having received such heavenly grace, not only did they not keep their tails between their legs, but on their very first day here they acted as if they hadn't had enough of being the boss and came to lecture everyone on how to run things.

That very night, Zhang Xianzhong went to the rear hall of the office and said to Liu Chengzong, "Grand Marshal, I think that Dashing General still needs tempering. If it won't work, just merge him into a garrison brigade and find him a county to be stationed in for a year or so."

Liu the Lion laughed at these words and said with a smile, "Elder Brother, what's this — why are you jealous of him?"

Zhang Xianzhong's demeanor clearly showed jealousy toward Li Zicheng, and even a hint of feeling threatened.

The key was that Liu Chengzong had made Li Zicheng a director in the War Office. Director was a minor post, but in Zhang Xianzhong's eyes, such a move signaled the beginnings of an intention to put Li Zicheng in an important position.

And he knew perfectly well what Li Zicheng was capable of. The day Li the Dashing became Minister of the War Office — wouldn't that just make old Zhang here very unhappy?

The War Office was definitely more important than the Rites Office, after all.

Though his thoughts had been hit dead on, Zhang Xianzhong showed not the slightest embarrassment. He merely explained, "Grand Marshal, I just feel that yellow-faced whelp is not the sort to willingly serve under others. Look at that defiant, resentful look he had today — you've brought a wolf cub into the fold."

"Hahaha!"

Liu the Lion burst out laughing on the spot, then fixed his gaze on Zhang Xianzhong and asked, "He can't long serve under others — can you, Elder Brother?"

"Or in the Grand Marshal's headquarters — Cao Yao, Gao Yingxiang, Zhang Tianlin, Luo Rucai, Zuo Liangyu, Baiyan, Batur, Chuhuur, Subadi, Erinchen — which of them is not a tiger or a wolf? Which of them can long serve under others?"

Zhang Xianzhong was stumped.

The people Liu Chengzong had mentioned —

a galaxy of brilliant generals, a hall full of eminent guests, worthy lords everywhere. This question was truly hard to answer.

Liu the Lion looked at the stammering Zhang Xianzhong and chuckled lightly. "Set your mind at ease. Go to sleep. Tomorrow will be better."

In fact, just as Liu Chengzong had said, by the next morning, once the cannon fire of the siege began to sound, Li the Dashing's entire faction was won over.

Looking at the scale of the besieging army, Li Zicheng even felt a bit embarrassed.

Because in his mind, the reason he had suggested deploying forty thousand troops outside the east wall was that he had a fixed formula for army composition.

These forty thousand troops should have been built around a core of one or two thousand veteran elite bandits, leading four to five thousand peasant army crack troops, conscripting seven to eight thousand scattered and marauding outlaws, and then sweeping up over twenty thousand old and weak — forming a force where each element could perform its own role during a siege.

For a peasant army, this scale was not even particularly huge.

It was just a standard, by-the-book siege force.

Against a small city, the siege would go a bit faster, resolved in two or three days; against a large city, as short as seven or eight days, as long as half a month, and it could also be resolved.

So the moment he heard that Liu Chengzong had deployed only twenty thousand troops on the east side of Yulin, his first reaction was that this force was insufficient.

But this morning, when Li Zicheng followed Liu Chengzong up Zhenbei Tower, held a telescope, and listened to a Yulin Guard report the composition of the twenty thousand troops outside the east wall... what the hell kind of stuff did Liu Chengzong have under his command?

Twenty thousand troops, half of them former Ming regular battalion soldiers. Xu Yong, Wang Yuncheng — both old acquaintances Li Zicheng had fought against in Guangping Prefecture.

The other ten thousand troops were also very familiar: the former forces of the Heaven-Spanning King Wang Jiayin. Zhou Qing and Hui Dengxiang, counting back, were both among the first-generation seniors who had risen up with Wang Jiayin.

And then there was that battalion bringing up the rear — looked like just over two thousand men, no firearms or cannons, carrying only bows, long sabers, and long spears. They looked like military inspectors.

The Yulin Guard did not introduce this battalion. Li Zicheng had just turned his eyes toward the Grand Marshal to ask Liu Chengzong what the deal was with that gleaming, glittering battalion, when a messenger cavalryman came galloping back from that direction first to report the siege progress.

The moment Li Zicheng saw this messenger, he knew this battalion was definitely even more outrageous.

The way their armor was worn was like that of northern barbarian elite troops — armor plates all hung on the outside, dazzling and terrifying to look at. But when they opened their mouths, they spoke Han Chinese, albeit with a thick rustic accent.

The helmet came off — ha! Damn it all, Liaodong fake Tatars!

Only after hearing Liu Chengzong explain did he learn that this battalion's colonel was called Sun Long, and the entire battalion was made up of rag-picking Liaodong soldiers — a battalion assembled from a pile of eastern barbarian helmets and armor scavenged on the battlefield.

Li Zicheng was a leader himself. This deployment posture — something was off.

Something was very wrong.

The Militia Army, the Ming Army, the Eastern Army — every force in the entire north apart from the Marshal's Army was right here.

Making them assault the city — wasn't this just a naked purge of dissenters?

Li Zicheng did not understand, but he was deeply shaken.

Really, in his view, setting aside Hui Dengxiang and Zhou Qing's ten thousand militia for the moment — just looking at Liu Fangming, Xu Yong, and Wang Yuncheng's ten thousand former Ming troops, if he had them in his hands, why would he still be butting heads against this broken Yulin city?

Add Zhou Qing and Hui Dengxiang's ten thousand elite militia, and Li Zicheng now did not think the forces outside the eastern wall were too few at all — he even thought they were far too many.

Li Zicheng could not help but sigh with envy under his breath: "Ten thousand armored warriors with warhorses — where under heaven could you not go?"

Liu Shizi did not mock Li Zicheng's plan to "add forty thousand troops" any further. He merely nodded slowly and said, "Zhou Qing and Hui Dengxiang's two battalions also have quite a few Yansui border garrison soldiers. For a battle like this, they are more than sufficient."

By now, Li Zicheng's indignation from the night before had completely vanished. He just nodded, raised his telescope, and fixed his gaze on the Yulin battlefield not far away. His eyes were first drawn to the artillery duel outside the eastern wall, but then immediately shifted to the opposite riverbank beyond the western wall.

Over at the eastern wall, the assault by Liu Fangming, Ma Xiantu, Xu Yong, Wang Yuncheng, and the other former Ming surrendered troops was ferocious. At Shafeng southeast of the city, they had massed a Great General Cannon battery and, from several hundred paces out, launched a savage attack on a corner of the battlements.

The cannons boomed, but that was already beyond what could be seen from Zhenbei Tower. On the northern section of the eastern wall, which they could see, there was nothing outside but a crisscrossing maze of trenches — merely a diversion to scatter the defenders' attention. There was really nothing worth watching.

Outside the western wall, however, it was different. Ren Quan'er's assault position was truly deployed according to the Marshal's Army's siege doctrine. In front, three chest-high earth ramparts ran between the trenches; behind, two artillery positions at far and near range; and sandwiched between them, over a dozen earthen mounds arranged in a triangle formation, their height matching the city wall, with heavy arquebusiers and wall-gun marksmen firing continuously at the defenders on the ramparts.

Although the gunfire was not particularly dense, the layered firepower directed against the defenders still delivered an immense shock to Li Zicheng.

It had simply never occurred to him that a siege — or rather, a confrontation with the Ming army — could be fought by completely overwhelming them in range, power, and volume of firepower.

To Li Zicheng, this was a novel and formidable tactic.

Watching Li Zicheng's solemn expression as he intently observed the battle, Liu Chengzong could not suppress a fleeting smile: ever since Yellow Baby Brother arrived, it had been nothing but one show of force after another.

In truth, he knew even better: the capability Ren Quan'er's Second Brigade was displaying on the western side far exceeded the Marshal's Army's siege performance under normal conditions.

The defenders were limited in number, would not sally forth for field battle, and would not fight with their backs to the city, while the Second Brigade had ample time to set up its positions.

It was a battle under absolutely ideal conditions, approaching a drill.

But precisely because of that, what Li Zicheng was watching was the Marshal's Army's most standard siege methodology.

He realized that the essence of the western city siege was this: although the Ming troops on the western wall were numerous and their cannons many, nearly all of them had been silenced.

The Ming cannons had not been suppressed in a direct exchange of artillery fire with the Marshal's Army's cannons.

It was the Marshal's Army's firearms.

It was the heavy arquebuses and wall guns on those dozen-plus earthen mounds arranged in a triangle formation — with their terrifying length and caliber for individual weapons, firing from a height nearly level with the city wall, at a range far exceeding that of bird guns, they were killing the artillerymen on the ramparts with dense and precise fire. So much so that no defender dared lift the heavy breech blocks of the Great General Cannons, silencing the defenders' artillery.

This left the Marshal's Army's heavy cannons outside the city like beasts of prey with no natural enemies, calmly and deliberately firing from north to south, clearing a stretch of battlements over a hundred paces wide, then shifting the artillery position a little southward and continuing to pour dense fire onto the battlements.

This was an assault so powerful he would never have dared to imagine it.

And it was precisely this scene that made Li Zicheng truly realize just how absurd the plan he had proposed the day before had been.

He had always felt that the difference between him and Liu Chengzong was just a two- or three-year head start.

Only now did he discover that they were not walking the same path at all. The gap was not merely in the superficial things — troops, grain, supplies, territory.

It was that Liu Chengzong's army seemed to have been genuinely built with the goal of beating the Ming army to a pulp.

Among the peasant armies, who could have such ambition?

No one.

Of course, this was not because leaders like Li Zicheng or Wang Jiayin were weak. Quite the opposite — a proper peasant army had to, through mobile warfare, gradually temper a mob of displaced refugees into a Ming army. That itself was an exceedingly high standard.

The mightiest army anyone could encounter was the Ming army, and the goal was likewise to temper one's own troops into the most powerful force among the Ming armies they had seen.

The anomaly was Liu Chengzong. From the very start, he had set out to build an army that could beat the Ming army to a pulp.

Just as Li Zicheng was watching with rapt attention as the Second Brigade used heavy cannons to sweep the battlements flat, several riders bearing command flags galloped outside the city from the east, racing all the way to Zhenbei Tower.

Soon, a Feathered Forest Guard hurried up the tower and reported to Liu Chengzong: "Grand Marshal, General Zhou Qing of All Over the Sky has led his troops to fill in the southeastern city moat, breached the barbican wall, and seized the Haichao Temple beneath the southeastern wall."

Liu Chengzong nodded slowly.

Haichao Temple lay between the southeastern wall of Yulin and the city moat. A large building complex should never have been there, but after long years of peace, even a defensive stronghold like Yulin had grown lived-in, and it had become the best position for digging tunnels.

With Haichao Temple taken, Zhou Qing and Hui Dengxiang's two units had already begun digging tunnels from the temple grounds.

Liu Chengzong was no expert at tunneling, so he did not interfere in the matter, leaving Zhou Qing to handle it.

Once the wall was brought down, Liu Fangming and those surrendered Ming officers would have their pledge of allegiance, and then they would be true generals of the Marshal's Army.

"Haichao Temple has been taken. The fall of this city is only a matter of time now."

Liu Chengzong clapped his hands and said to Li Zicheng, "Once Yulin is taken, you, elder brother, as head of the Military Office, will be busy. First, register the troops of those battalions outside the city and record their battle merits, then assign garrison territories for each battalion..."

Liu Shizi shook his head as he spoke. This eastern campaign had added several more battalions. Now that they had entered the interior, where would they find so many garrison territories?

"As for Li Guo's battalion, station them in Guyuan for now to deal with the bandits along the roads. This time, when we return to Xi'an Prefecture, we should also clear out a few trade routes in Shaanxi."

Good morning!

(End of chapter)