Chapter 786: The Empire's Mightiest Garrison

Noon, the twelfth day of the eighth month.

The Marshal's army entered the city from both east and west, yet the Ming troops inside Yulin still fought on.

Zhang Yong, who had entered the city to oversee the battle, maintained a rhythm of sending Feathered Forest riders back to report every quarter-hour, relaying each detail of the street fighting to Zhenbei Tower.

In those consolidated battle reports, Liu Chengzong watched the last elite forces of the Ming Yansui Garrison being worn down and annihilated, one by one.

Dismissed Colonel Li Yingxiao had originally defended the East Gate. After the city fell, he returned home and set it ablaze, then led his wife, children, household soldiers, and some forty companions, all bearing bows and arrows, in preparing for battle. When Ma Xiandu's Ningxia troops came galloping toward the fire, he ambushed them with arrows. Once the arrows were spent, he leveled his lance, spurred his horse into their formation, and was killed.

Cui Chongguan, an uncommissioned commander in Yulin, had long before the battle given away his entire family fortune to recruit volunteer braves, leaving his home with nothing. When the city fell, he did not go home as promised, but gathered over a hundred braves, collected the cannons and firearms abandoned on the walls and in the streets, and made a stand at the Guandi Temple.

Military licentiates Zhang Lianyuan and Zhang Lianjie had originally defended the southeast corner tower. After the city fell, they hurled stones from the breach and wounded Yi Zhangqing, then withdrew into the city with the army. As the soldiers each returned home, the Zhang brothers also went home to bid farewell to their aged mother, wife, and children. Carrying bolts of cloth, they intended to hang themselves at the Guandi Temple but instead joined Cui Chongguan's force.

Ma Mingjie — his father had died in battle at Fushun when he was three. The court supported him for thirteen years with a Centurion's full pay, until he inherited the Centurion post at sixteen.

When the city fell, he returned home, donned his full armor, and led his wife and children to kneel before the portraits of his late father and grandfather in the main hall. He then piled wooden chests and furniture around his wife and children and set them alight. The fire had just caught when he heard the hoofbeats of the Marshal's army approaching his home from the street. He leaped out of the ring of fire, bow and saber in hand, and charged into the alley to fight.

Struck by three arrows and two blades, wounded and spent, he refused all calls to surrender. Fighting as he retreated, he returned to his courtyard, saw the flames inside raging fiercely, and threw himself into the fire to die.

Staff Officer Liu Guangyu rode his horse down the long street with his bow, shooting left and right. Zuo Liangyu had wanted to win him over, but he cursed as he fought — cursing in Chinese when the Changping troops attacked, and cursing in Mongolian when the Batur troops attacked — centering his abuse on Old Master Liu and all relatives within the five degrees of mourning. A Feathered Forest army overseer, unable to stomach it, spurred his horse to meet him and killed him in the street with a short flintlock musket.

Commander Huang Tingzheng, defending the Kaige Tower to the death, refused surrender three times and was blown up by a grenade hurled by Wang Ziqi. His younger brothers Huang Tingyong and Huang Tingbi, blades and lances in hand, charged out of the gun smoke and down the tower to fight hand-to-hand. Both died.

Their last words: "Now we can go down and follow our grandfather."

The three men's grandfather was Vice Commander Huang Yan, who died in battle at Qinhe defending against a Tumed invasion in the first year of the Longqing reign.

Chiliarch He Shikui was somewhat more relaxed than the others. He had been wounded by an iron shot earlier during the artillery exchange and had returned home to recover. When the city fell, he was in the middle of a meal.

Hearing the news of the city's fall from the street, he had his wife serve him another bowl of rice, then had her help him bathe and sorted out his clothes.

He placed his family's hereditary commission documents on the main hall table, burned incense and performed obeisance toward the east where the Emperor resided, folded his armor and official robes neatly and laid them in the courtyard, then together with his wife, née Liu, changed into plain, unadorned deep-robe ceremonial garments and calmly hanged themselves in the courtyard.

The Marshal's army unit responsible for this street belonged to the Second Touring Battalion under Ma Ke's command. The squad leader was called Li Congqian. He entered three residences in a row — all had been burned to ruin.

When he burst into He Shikui's home, Li Congqian took one look at the scene and had his men withdraw. He specially dispatched soldiers to seize a coffin from a coffin shop, selected a few subordinates with passable bearing, and then re-entered the residence with them to pay respects to He Shikui and his wife hanging from the tree.

Because before taking his own life, He Shikui had also tidied up his household's valuables and grain stores very neatly.

To the Marshal's army, this was one of the rare officers who had properly settled all his affairs, both in life and in death.

As for those commanders who burned their family property and grain stores to ashes, they clearly did not receive such treatment — no one even collected their bones.

For most people, even the circumstances of their deaths could only be learned by Feathered Forest riders going door to door along the already-garrisoned streets, questioning those civilian households that had not resisted.

Such was the case with Centurion Yang Kun's wife, née Liu. Her husband had fallen in battle outside the city, and she completed his unfinished work at home — setting the house ablaze and hanging herself.

The students and licentiates of Instructor Xu Kezheng all mounted the walls to defend them. He himself was already old and too feeble to guard the city, so he took his wife, née Pan, to the Confucian Temple in the north of the city and hanged himself there.

Vice Military Defense Commissioner Qiao Guoyun had led troops out of the city just as the siege began and was killed. His wife, née Liu, received the news at home inside the city and took her own life to follow him in death.

Even after the Marshal's army controlled the streets, there were men like Suide Garrison Commander Zhong Maoxian, who had been disabled by wounds while suppressing a rebellion years earlier and could not defend the city, so he simply stayed at home.

Of his two sons, one died in the battle sallying out of the city, and the other was killed on the wall by a cannonball.

Zhong Maoxian did not burn his house either. He prepared wine and food to feast the troops, but concealed a dagger and, while a man was eating, stabbed a squad leader of the Second Brigade to death. He was then killed.

There was an old woman of eighty, née Yang, the widow of the late Wu Shouzhong, Prefect of Guangping. She had managed the household for many years and possessed considerable wealth. From the start of the siege, she had urged every son and grandson in the family over fifteen to take up lance and bow and mount the city wall, while she herself baked flatbread and steamed buns day and night, leading the household women to deliver food to the defenders on the wall.

When word of the city's fall reached the household, the old woman, leaning on her cane, walked without a word to the well and went down it.

Staff Officer Liu Yongchang fought a bloody battle on the wall until the very last moment. Only when the inner city gate was blown open by the Changping troops did he run home. He had not wanted to fight anymore and planned to flee with his wife and children, but he never expected that his wife, née Gao, had already taken her own life before him. With no choice, he turned back and charged headlong at the Marshal's army entering the city.

And there were officers of every rank, hereditary garrison commanders, civil officials and military subalterns, licentiates and stipend students — inside the city, they fought hand-to-hand, staged ambushes, or hanged themselves, swearing irreconcilable enmity with the Marshal's army, unable to share the same sky.

When it came to the merchants and commoners, those who held no office and drew no state salary, there were far fewer who fought to the death. Most had earlier answered the call to defend the city, and once it fell, they each went home and hid.

If they encountered the Marshal's army and the soldiers tried to rob them, they would fight to the death.

If they met troops with good discipline, they would honestly register their names — though the wisdom of the common folk was not lacking, and many registered under false names they made up on the spot.

They feared that if the Ming army inside the city somehow drove the Marshal's army out, they would face retaliation.

A few commoners also possessed a loyal heart ready to die. For example, a stonemason named Tai Yuan, a man from Yan'an who had worked on the Glazed Pagoda in Yan'an Prefecture and later drifted to Yulin and settled there.

He carried two stone locks, climbed onto the festooned gate of an empty compound, and hid on the inner side, waiting to crush a Marshal's army soldier when they entered the courtyard.

In the end, his neighbors, afraid of being implicated by him, ganged up, tied him up, and locked him in his home.

The Marshal's army's situation was no better.

Seeing the Feathered Forest riders' reports of Yulin's hereditary officers fighting desperately to the death, Liu Chengzong had a clear sense of his army's discipline in this battle — it could not have been much better.

In a proper battle, even the discipline of surrendered troops could be guaranteed, but the situation in Yulin was far too chaotic. The city had fallen and the battle was lost, so they fought with their dying breath to drag you down with them; there were even those who first surrendered and feasted the troops with wine and food, then suddenly stabbed them.

This motley army under his command was being treated by the Yulin officers like Tartar raiders. Forget maintaining discipline — the fact that Yulin was not burned to ashes and an even greater disaster averted was entirely thanks to the Feathered Forest riders' efforts on the front lines.

Only Ren Quan'er's Second Brigade, after marching into Yulin, showed barely passable discipline and behaved somewhat like a proper army.

But they were also the most muddle-headed. What angered Liu Chengzong the most was that squad leader who was stabbed to death — his superiors, Colonel Ma Ke and Chiliarch Li Fengji, were punished by collective responsibility and flogged right in the city: drinking on duty, and drinking the enemy's wine at that.

Wasn't that just asking to die?

As for the other units — Xu Yong, Liu Fangming, Ma Xiandu, Zhou Qing, Hui Dengxiang, and even the smaller detachments of Zhang Tianlu and Zhang Tianfu — their discipline was all poor. They had all fought until their eyes were blood-red.

The fewest military law violations came from Ma Xiandu's mobile brigade, roughly a thousand men in total, who handed over two severed hands.

This was the Feathered Forest army overseers handling things with a light touch. As long as it was not something the Grand Marshal himself had explicitly forbidden — "killing the surrendered, burning houses, abusing soldiers or civilians, embezzling spoils" — minor offenses like grabbing things on the side were stopped with a verbal reprimand and nothing more.

Because they knew very well that Liu Chengzong's purpose in sending them as overseers was not to kill people and chop off hands, but to make the soldiers understand that violating military law would get their hands chopped off, would get them killed — and thereby to tighten discipline.

Even the owners of those two severed hands had committed capital crimes. Ma Xiandu pleaded for them and got the sentence reduced to hand-chopping, but the two men refused to accept it and drew their blades on the Feathered Forest riders.

It nearly scared Ma Xiandu to death. He immediately ordered his bodyguards to cut the two down and nail their corpses in the street as a warning to others, then had their hands removed and sent away with the Feathered Forest riders.

The situation in the other units was much the same. In the first moments, some men used the chaos of battle to run wild. The Feathered Forest riders, acting as military judges, chopped off the hands of those who deserved it and killed those who deserved killing. The rest then became clear-headed and rational.

There was only one exception, which Zhang Xianzhong personally ran back to report.

"Grand Marshal, disaster — that Chiliarch Zhang Tianlu and Squad Leader Zhang Tianfu burned down four civilian homes, then attacked Liu Fangming's and Hui Dengxiang's units, and hacked to death a Commandant and a Vice Commander who had been captured in the battle, and wounded another Vice Commander."

Liu the Lion blinked. He thought he had misheard.

In his mind, he had a rough estimate of the army's discipline — disturbing the civilians was unavoidable.

After all, they were fighting a battle, and street fighting with open blades and hidden arrows at that. The soldiers were all on high alert. It was not strange if they grabbed a few things or even mistook civilians for the enemy and accidentally hurt someone.

As long as it was not deliberate, cold-blooded murder, he could understand some property damage and unintentional harm that could be recovered from.

But attacking an allied unit, hacking to death surrendered captives — and those captives being high-ranking officers like Regional Commanders and Vice Generals?

This is genuine madness.

Liu Chengzong said, baffled: "The city is crawling with Regional Commanders and Vice Generals. These two bastards wanted to go capture some themselves — so what's the point of hacking up someone else's captives?"

He was so exasperated he laughed: "Where are these two brothers? Daring to assault an allied unit — I'd say they're tired of living! Did Liu Fangming and Hui Dengxiang just stand there and let them charge?"

Liu Shizi had an impression of these two brothers. After all, with a Zhang Tianlin at the Marshal's headquarters, it was hard not to have a strong impression of names like that.

But Zhang Tianlin had nothing to do with these two. They were Yulin men. In the final stage of the Ningxia campaign, after Ding Zizhen died, they had led routed troops in their capacity as Battalion Commanders, forcibly taking along Hong Chengchou, Ding Qirui, and others, and surrendered to the Marshal's army.

It counted as a battlefield defection. By the Marshal's headquarters' rules, their ranks remained unchanged — one was still a Battalion Commander, the other a Squad Commander.

In truth, though, Zhang Tianlu and Zhang Tianfu had originally reached the rank of Regional Commander in the Ming army system as far back as the He-Huang campaign. It was only because they lost a battle and fled back, were stripped of rank but kept in service, and spent a few more years suppressing peasant armies and roving bandits that they had only recently been promoted again.

Zhang Xianzhong said: "It was fine at first. Sun Long of the Liaoyang Battalion had them seized and detained, saying he would escort them to Zhenbei Tower for the Grand Marshal to decide. But after they went over, Liu Fangming was all right, but Hui Dengxiang kicked up a fuss, demanding the two be killed inside the city."

"Sun Long's Liaodong soldiers under his command were protecting them. Zuo Liangyu tried to mediate but couldn't untangle it. Right now the fear is it'll blow up into a four-battalion melee. That's why I rushed over here — to request a written order from the Grand Marshal."

The more Liu Shizi listened, the tighter his brow furrowed.

At this point, the matter of Zhang Tianfu and Zhang Tianlu was no longer the important thing.

"Elder Brother, you're saying the Ming troops inside the city haven't been mopped up yet, and these several Regional Commanders have their soldiers facing off against each other — are they all tired of living?"

Liu Chengzong ignored Zhang Xianzhong. He turned to his attendant Yue Wenkui and said: "Take my transfer order, enter the city at once, find Brigade Commander Ren, and transfer the Second Brigade to take full control of the frontline defenses. Have all those rabble march out of the city. A four-battalion melee isn't nearly enough — pull the First Brigade over too. I want to see exactly how they plan to fight!"

"Grand Marshal, calm yourself, calm yourself — it hasn't come to that."

At these words, Zhang Xianzhong was so alarmed he hurriedly explained: "One written order from the Grand Marshal, and none of them would dare make trouble..."

The truth was, by this point Liu Chengzong had already figured it out. Zhang Xianzhong was afraid the situation would blow up, had no troops of his own in the city, and so had used delivering the news as an excuse to run back first.

Just then, a Feathered Forest Guard ascended the wall and reported: "Grand Marshal, an urgent report from General Sun."

"Speak!"

"Your humble servant prostrates himself. For the Grand Marshal's clear discernment: the matter within the city of Battalion Commanders Zhang Tianlu and Zhang Tianfu attacking an allied unit and hacking captives to death is now clear. These brothers are Yulin men and have a younger brother, Zhang Tianxu, serving at Yulin Guard. Upon entering the city, Zhang Tianlu immediately returned home to find his brother."

The Feathered Forest Guard held Sun Long's letter and read: "When he returned home, his younger brother Tianxu, under orders, had already set the family home ablaze and, before his eyes, leaped into the flames. Tianlu and Tianfu, driven mad by this, vented their fury on the four neighboring households for not stopping him, and let their soldiers loose to destroy the houses of four families."

"It was later learned that their younger brother, defending the city, was under the command of the late Tianjin Regional Commander Wang Xueshu and had been ordered to burn the family property by prior agreement. Wang Xueshu was captured by General Liu Fangming and was being handed over to the Liaoyang Battalion together with General Hui Dengxiang. Hence, they attacked the escort column and hacked Wang Xueshu to death to vent their rage. During this, General Hui's captive, Vice General You Zhaïwen, was killed by mistake, and captive Vice General Hui Xian was wounded by mistake."

"The two brothers have now been seized and detained in the Liaoyang Battalion. The seven hundred and thirty soldiers of their unit have also been separated and placed under guard. The mistakenly wounded captives have received medical treatment. How to proceed — the Grand Marshal's instructions are requested."

As Liu Chengzong listened to the report Sun Long had sent, his brow slowly relaxed.

This was clearly Sun Long, a man accustomed to being a subordinate — he had resolved everything he could, and for what he couldn't, he had them secured in his own battalion awaiting further orders.

Director Zhang still had much to learn.

Liu Chengzong patted Zhang Xianzhong and asked the Feathered Forest Guard overseeing the Liaoyang Battalion: "Hui Dengxiang wants those two brothers dead — did Liu Fangming make any unusual moves?"

The Feathered Forest Guard nodded and said: "Yes. During the attack, many of General Hui's subordinates were injured. He insists there must be an accounting."

Having heard the full story, Liu Chengzong now had a clear picture.

This was no major affair.

"Leave the First Brigade where it is. The Second Brigade will still take over the defenses. Zhang Tianfu and Zhang Tianlu are stripped of rank. They will atone for their crimes by serving in the Second Brigade — go capture two Regional Commanders yourselves to compensate Generals Liu and Hui. Their former unit's military horses: compensate Liu's and Hui's battalions three hundred each. The soldiers will be absorbed into the Liaoyang Battalion."

"If their unit's military horses are insufficient, substitute with full sets of armor and equipment."

"Additionally, the merit for the captives will be recorded for Generals Liu and Hui as usual. Furthermore, disburse forty taels of silver from the central army to compensate the four neighbors whose houses the Zhang brothers burned down."

Liu Chengzong thought to himself: Liu Fangming kept silent when this happened because he's trying to dodge the fame and credit of capturing a Regional Commander.

Don't think you can slip away.

?? Good morning!