Chapter 782: A Land Contested on All Sides

Xing'an Prefecture.

Where the three provinces of Shaanxi, Sichuan, Huguang meet, it governed three passes, six counties, and four patrol inspectorates.

A three-hundred-li mountain valley cut through by the Han River.

Here in the ninth year of Chongzhen, there were two prefects, thirteen county magistrates, and four columns of troops dividing the territory, deploying defenses, and galloping to and fro — the most chaotic place under heaven, second to none.

At the Marshal's Manor, it was a directly administered prefecture of Shaanxi, and the prefect was named Yuan Tao.

But in the Great Ming, it was an exclave wedged into Shaanxi, and the prefect was named Jin Zhichun.

The Yunyang Ming army under Lu Xiangsheng advanced westward; their vanguard had already occupied Baihe County at Xing'an's easternmost tip to hold a defensive position, serving as a salient to bypass Tong Pass and retake Shaanxi.

But the Ming army's move into Baihe County was also detected by Zhao Zhirui, deputy commander of the Marshal's Manor's Guanzhong Brigade, who immediately dispatched the guerrilla battalion under Ying Shanhong to seize Lü Pass before the Ming army could advance further, splitting his forces to garrison Sancha, blocking their northward route and threatening the Xun River valley.

The Daba Mountains and Yanchang Pass in Xing'an's southwest were occupied by Yao Zhangru — that is, the many Yao-Huang bandit bands who had once sought to join the Marshal's Manor but were rejected, and later allied with Gao Yingxiang.

And its western region bordering Hanzhong — Fangshan Pass, Shiquan County, and other places — was occupied by several guard-soldier units who had fled Hanzhong, stewards of the Rui Prince's household, and armed groups of Hanzhong commoners; if the time ripened, new roving bandit bands would gestate among them.

From all directions, the forward scouts of every force came and went through this narrow river valley — the situation was terrifyingly chaotic.

The Marshal's Manor's registered prefect, Yuan Tao, was an opportunist.

Yuan Tao, styled Contending Heavenly King, was originally from Mian County in Hanzhong. In his early years he turned outlaw as a bandit because he was exposed for contending with his uncle over his aunt — he truly was quite good at contending.

Later he joined Hu Jiusi's band and raised troops in rebellion. Though a junior in the greenwood, his methods were ruthless and he was fierce and skilled in battle; even among the Yao-Huang bandits, he was a first-rate unruly figure.

As early as when Yao Zhangru sent his adopted son Qin Keduo to Hehuang to present the head of a Ming garrison commander, Yuan Tao was already among the fifteen great chieftains who jointly signed the letter.

It was just that the joint pledge of allegiance that year failed to succeed. Not only did it fail to leave a good impression on Liu Chengzong, but because thirteen of those fifteen men were kings, it made Liu Chengzong postpone his own plan to declare kingship.

Afterwards, they did not press their warm faces against a cold backside and made no further contact with the Marshal's Manor.

They waited until Liu Chengzong seized Xi'an Prefecture, took most of Shaanxi, and truly became the dominant power in the northwest, then sent troops into Hanzhong to deliver proclamations everywhere.

When Liu Chengzong's envoy entered Xing'an Prefecture, it was just when Hu Jiusi of the Tenth Line was leading Ma Chao of the Sixth Squad and Yuan Tao in besieging the Xing'an prefectural seat.

Although Prefect Jin Zhichun, sword at his side, ascended the walls, recruited able-bodied men, and deployed weapons, in the end his troops were few and his officers scarce; once the moat was filled and a breach torn in the wall, the city seemed likely to fall at any moment.

Hu Jiusi's attitude toward the Marshal's Manor envoy was outwardly warm but inwardly cold; he merely entertained the envoy with wine and meat but said not a single word about pledging allegiance.

Yuan Tao held a different opinion. That very night, he turned on Hu Jiusi of the Tenth Line in an internal feud, killed him, annexed his forces, accepted the Marshal's Manor envoy's proclamation, and wrote back to Liu Chengzong in the capacity of Xing'an Prefect — presenting maps, offering tribute, recording troop strength, and submitting a memorial of allegiance.

By the time Ma Chao, who was encamped east of the Xing'an prefectural seat, led his troops over, the die was already cast. The two armies treated the prefectural soldiers as if they did not exist and faced off across the city for four days.

Regarding Yuan Tao's pledge of Xing'an Prefecture in allegiance, the envoy brought the news back to Xi'an, and Liu Laoye, who was governing Xi'an, wrestled with it a little in his mind.

Because this Yuan Tao's character... even by the standards of the Marshal's Manor, where villains gathered thick as thieves, his inhumanity was beyond the pale.

Gao Jie, that sort who stole his sister-in-law, was already considered among the greenwood brothers a man who disregarded ethics and propriety; Yuan Tao went a generation further — he stole his aunt.

He stole his aunt and turned outlaw; Hu Jiusi took him in and accepted him, and now, because of a disagreement over joining the Marshal's Manor, he repaid kindness with enmity and killed him in a surprise attack.

If Liu Chengzong had been in Guanzhong, he would certainly have looked down on Yuan Tao, but he would also have disdained exploiting his forces for that reason, and very likely would not have accepted his allegiance.

But when Yuan Tao pledged allegiance, Liu Chengzong was away commanding the main army. The official in charge of the Personnel Office was his father Liu Xiangyu, and the one holding Guanzhong's military power was the senior general Zhang Tianlin.

In Liu Xiangyu's view, accepting Yuan Tao would bring the little lion more trouble than having one more enemy like him.

After all, if he were one more enemy like this, you could just kill him outright and be done with it; but having one more subordinate like this meant you would constantly have to expend energy guarding against him.

But Zhang Tianlin's advice was to accept Yuan Tao.

At this critical juncture, with Liu Chengzong not yet returned, Zhang Tianlin's main defensive focus was Henan. He could not spare enough men to wrestle with the Yunyang Ming army and preferred to use Yuan Tao to tie down Lu Xiangsheng's Ming forces.

In short, never mind what kind of creature this Yuan Tao was — take Xing'an Prefecture first. Having more troops to guard the flank would ease the defensive pressure on his Guanzhong Brigade.

Zhang Tianlin had been doing this all along.

Liu Chengzong had entrusted the defense of Guanzhong to him, so he dared not take it lightly. He had repeatedly sallied forth to do battle with the Ming court's Henan Regional Commander Zhang Renxue. Between victories, he focused on infiltrating east of Tong Pass toward Lingbao, Shanzhou, and other places, even opening the pass to let merchant caravans through and trading with the strongmen and local bandits in the fortified stockades.

All this was to reduce the defensive pressure on the main front.

When Liu Chengzong had been stationed in Guanzhong, the two central field brigades had been there to hold the line, and the Guanzhong Brigade had done the easiest work — merely guarding the two passes of Tong and Wu, eating grain and grazing horses, living a life of pure ease.

But once Liu Chengzong left, the Guanzhong Brigade's defensive pressure shot up at once, and even their troop strength seemed stretched thin.

Zhang Tianlin himself had to shift his headquarters to Xi'an, leaving Zhao Zhirui to command two battalions in charge of the Tong and Wu passes. Fearing that trouble might break out in the northwest with no time to move troops, he also had to station a battalion at Qianzhou on the north bank of the Wei River.

The great city of Xi'an had a garrison of just over five thousand, yet it had to hold down five counties across a hundred li on the south bank of the Wei River. The military pressure was not great, but the toil of rushing troops back and forth at every alarm was heavy.

Liu Xiangyu was also well aware of the Guanzhong Brigade's hard toil in the spring and summer of this year. After long discussion with Zhang Tianlin, he ultimately issued the Personnel Office's letter of appointment, ordering office subordinates to carry the official seal and robes and appoint Yuan Tao as Prefect of Xing'an.

Yuan Tao, however, was no pious soul, and the Marshal's Manor was no pushover either.

Liu Xiangyu had asked the earlier envoy to Xing'an for the real name of Ma Chao of the Sixth Squad, but no one knew it. So along with Yuan Tao's letter of appointment as Prefect of Xing'an, he issued another letter appointing Ma Chao of the Sixth Squad as Assistant Regional Commander of the Xing'an Battalion.

Compared to appointing Yuan Tao as Prefect of Xing'an, Liu Xiangyu felt far more comfortable appointing the little-known Ma Chao as Assistant Regional Commander.

For one, this man Ma Chao was loyal to his principles. Faced with Yuan Tao's murder of Hu Jiusi, he had at least put on the posture of being ready to clash with him, troops and all.

For another, Ma Chao's record was clean. A man of Yan'an Prefecture, he had joined the great chieftain Bu Zhan Ni's band in his early years and was placed under the Sixth Squad leader, World-in-Chaos King Guo Yingpin.

After Bu Zhan Ni died in Shanxi, several squads were led by the Dashing General Li Zicheng across the Yellow River through Henan back to Shaanxi. Ma Chao broke away from the group at Yunyang and joined the Yao-Huang army of Yao Zhangru and Huang Long.

Now, at this time, Li Zicheng, Guo Yingpin, and the others had all taken office in the Marshal's Manor. For a junior like Ma Chao, Liu Xiangyu felt much more at ease conferring an official post, and he could also exploit the rift from Ma Chao's standoff with Yuan Tao to check Yuan Tao's power.

In truth, Liu Xiangyu himself felt this was not entirely proper.

Because the old Sixth Squad leader Guo Yingpin, who had pledged allegiance alongside Li Zicheng, held a post only as a battalion commander of the Dashing General Battalion.

When Li Zicheng pledged allegiance, he had many officers but few troops — his whole battalion was barely a thousand men. But whether Yuan Tao or Ma Chao, both men commanded a solid three to five thousand troops in Xing'an Prefecture.

Of course, as to who would win in a fight between that one thousand and five thousand — in Zhang Tianlin's view, it was hard to say.

After weeding out the old and weak, the Xing'an Battalion might well end up with fewer men than the Dashing General Battalion.

But at this moment, without offering an Assistant Regional Commander post, it would be very difficult to make use of Ma Chao's strength.

By the time the Personnel Office clerk from the Marshal's Manor, bearing the letters of appointment, official seals, and robes, returned to Xing'an Prefecture, four days had already passed, and Yuan Tao and Ma Chao were still there facing off across the city.

Only when they met the Personnel Office clerk and received the documents and official robes did each withdraw his troops — but they still camped separately at the prefectural seat, each attacking on his own, filling in the moat.

And it was precisely this affair that made them miss their chance. Just when success was within reach, a long drought met rain overnight; the Han River swelled, and the moat rose violently with it, turning Yuan Tao's hope of entering the Xing'an prefectural seat into a fleeting illusion.

Left with no choice, Yuan Tao could only lead his army in retreat, then turn around and, under the banner of the Marshal's Manor's Prefect of Xing'an, march bloodlessly into Pingli County to the south.

Ma Chao led his army west, encamping in the outskirts of Hanyin County.

Actually, Ma Chao had originally wanted to station troops in Xunyang County to the east. Psychologically he felt closer to the Marshal's headquarters, and he also planned to use the troop-stationing opportunity to have the Marshal's headquarters allocate a batch of weapons, armor, grain, and pay.

Unfortunately, while the two of them were facing off outside Xing'an City, the Ming army hadn't been idle either. Zu Dale's infantry and cavalry had already advanced westward along the mountain ridges and valley floors.

Before Ma Chao even reached Xunyang, his scouts saw the Ming army encamped in the river valley, faced with rising waters, desperately scrambling up the mountain. He simply left Xunyang alone, led his troops west, and kept going until the floodwaters receded, only then setting up camp at Hanyin.

And because of this sudden torrential rainstorm, Jin Zhichun, the legitimate prefect of Xing'an under the Great Ming, was spared his life.

Jin Zhichun was a Huguang man, a provincial graduate by background, who had served one term as an instructor in Henan. He did well and was promoted to Prefect of Xing'an — that was just two years ago.

He was rigid and upright by nature. Upon being promoted to prefect, he too wished to serve the place and bring benefit to its people.

When he first took office, the officials of the six subordinate counties lined the roads to welcome him and presented the customary silver, but he rebuked them, saying: "When the prefecture takes from the counties and the counties take from the villages, the common people will suffer unbearable misery."

Immediately after, he conducted undercover inspections in plain clothes, struck down lawless and criminal local strongmen. His personal conduct was beyond reproach — every day he held court at sunrise and only ate after sunset, so that the prefecture had no backlog of cases and culture and education flourished.

But the years when he came to Xing'an as prefect were no longer good times.

Li Zicheng and Yuan Tao had attacked Xing'an Prefecture one after another. The prefecture lacked troops, and Shaanxi was being attacked by Liu Chengzong. Arrogant Ming armies marched north one after another, and after being beaten into routed troops, they fled across the territory in wave after wave.

The large bands of roving rebels and renegade troops could not be provoked, while the small bands of bandits and disorderly soldiers kept popping up like whack-a-mole.

Jin Zhichun, a prefectural official from an instructor's background, in the midst of such violent storms and raging waves, facing enemy troops besieging the city, took up his sword and ascended the walls. All he sought was to die for his country.

It was entirely thanks to the violent wind and torrential rain saving his life that he twice survived under Li Zicheng and Yuan Tao, holding out until Lu Xiangsheng from Yunyang sent relief troops to break the siege.

For a long time, Jin Zhichun had maintained extensive contacts with the Ming armies in Yunyang and even throughout Huguang.

Until this year's flooding disaster.

After the heavy rains receded, Xing'an Prefecture was swamped with affairs. Outside the city, there were reservoirs to repair, famine victims to relieve, and corpses of those who died from disease, battle, or drowning to collect.

Just in the vicinity of Xing'an Prefecture's city, to bury the dead, a mass grave twenty zhang long and wide was specially dug to inter them.

Under the scorching sun, unable to eat or sleep in peace all day, Jin Zhichun contracted a plague in the process and fell gravely ill, unable to rise.

At precisely this critical juncture, the two brothers Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing, who had risen up in Huguang a few years earlier, led their troops to Xing'an Prefecture and once again besieged the prefectural city.

Jin Zhichun could not ascend the walls to hold the defense. He was going to die.

But the more than two hundred thousand people of Xing'an Prefecture still had to live on.

According to Jin Zhichun's thinking, they should naturally request troops from Lu Xiangsheng, the Supreme Commander in Huguang, to come to their aid. The people of the prefecture were also willing to follow his thinking.

But now that his days were numbered, the able-bodied men's leaders and hereditary military officers within the city began to have ideas of their own.

People counseled him one after another: although Ming reinforcements from the Huguang direction were effective, they were ultimately guest armies that could not be permanently stationed. Every time they scared off the rebel forces, the slightest stirring on the northern slopes of the Qinling Mountains would send them withdrawing back to Huguang, never with any intention of holding the ground long-term.

Moreover, being all guest armies entering Shaanxi territory, their troops lacked discipline. If Jin Zhichun were no longer here, they feared Xing'an Prefecture would become a back-and-forth battleground.

Most people advocated surrendering to Yuan Tao, the Xing'an Prefect outside the city.

Because surrendering to the two brothers Wang Guangchang and Wang Guangxing outside the city was meaningless.

Just from what they could see on the walls, in the few days the Wang brothers had besieged the city, messengers had repeatedly entered their camp from Hanyin to the west and Pingli to the south — clearly Ma Chao and Yuan Tao were each setting conditions to recruit them.

And between Yuan Tao and Ma Chao, Yuan Tao's power was somewhat greater.

Handing the city over to Yuan Tao would at least spare them the worry of greater chaos erupting next.

Only Luo Dehong, the head of the local militia in the city, disagreed.

Luo Dehong's father, Luo Shiji, was a presented scholar from Pingli County in Xing'an Prefecture. He had once served as an instructor in Mianchi. Three years ago, when Li Zicheng and others crossed the Yellow River from Shanxi, they stormed Mianchi, captured Luo Shiji alive, and wanted to coerce him into surrendering.

But Luo Shiji refused to submit at the cost of his life and was ultimately killed.

For this reason, Luo Dehong had always looked down on the roving rebels. Since he began drilling the local militia, he had repeatedly relied on firearms to sally out of the city and raid Yuan Tao.

But his militia was small in number. Although their raids achieved some results, they could never accomplish the great feat of expelling the rebels.

Yet at this moment, the people with a voice in Xing'an Prefecture's city had no other options.

Either surrender to Prefect Yuan Tao of the Marshal's headquarters outside the city, or surrender to the Huguang roving rebel Wang brothers outside the city, or have the Huguang Ming army fly over. Relying on themselves, they absolutely could not hold this city.

Luo Dehong obstructed with all his might, but he could hardly produce a solution to the crisis.

In the end, the assembled gentry of Xing'an Prefecture pooled their wisdom and decided to exploit a time gap. Taking advantage of the fact that Yuan Tao had just made contact with the Marshal's headquarters, the prefecture would pretend not to know about it and seek aid from Luo Rucai, who had just captured Hanzhong Prefecture, intending to welcome a main-line force of the Marshal's headquarters into Xing'an.

As for whether this main-line force, once it entered Xing'an Prefecture, would fight or make peace with the chaotic assortment of various armies in the prefecture — that was no longer their concern.

In any case, Xing'an Prefecture was already chaotic enough; no one feared it becoming more so.

Besides, Luo Rucai's reputation was not bad — this fellow was different from Zhang Xianzhong. Before Zhang Xianzhong submitted to Liu Chengzong, he had already punched through the county towns of northern Sichuan and southern Shaanxi.

Luo Rucai, on the other hand, had used a false name when he captured the Han Prince's estate, and capturing the Rui Prince's estate was a recent affair, so his notoriety hadn't spread that far yet. People only knew that this man had suddenly become a brigade commander, with no understanding at all of his specialty in large-scale engineering.

Even so, however, matters did not proceed as smoothly as the power-holders of Xing'an Prefecture imagined.

Luo Rucai indeed, like a cat scenting fish, mustered his troops and charged into Xing'an. But on the other side, the Ming army had not been idle either.

Zu Dale had entered the mountains.

?? Good morning!