diymy Chapter 30 Jingxiang Bandits
Chapter 30 Jingxiang Bandits
The land reclamation and pilot opening of the sea in the northern border region are on the right track.
Whether the Ming Dynasty's finances will improve as a result is unknown, but Emperor Chongzhen's private treasury will certainly see a significant increase in revenue within a few months.
Meanwhile, in Huguang, a thousand miles away from Beizhili, a blockade and encirclement against Zhang Xianzhong was slowly unfolding.
Let's rewind a bit and focus on Xiangyang City in early March of the twelfth year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign.
In early spring, a warm breeze caresses the banks of the Jianghan Plain, the spring waters ripple, and farmers can be seen everywhere in the fields on both sides busy with spring plowing.
If one ignores the devastation in Shaanxi and Henan, where the land was torn apart and the people suffered, and only visits the scenery outside Xiangyang City, scholars and poets would surely marvel at the beauty of spring in Hubei and Hunan, and how peaceful and happy the people of the south were.
However, the closer they got to Xiangyang, the more they felt a somber and divisive atmosphere brewing within the city.
Its origin lies with the elite Qin soldiers clad in red armor atop the walls of Xiangyang.
After receiving the imperial order to march south at the end of February, Sun Chuanting personally led 10,000 Qin soldiers, traveling day and night, crossing Wuguan Pass, traversing Nanyang, and finally managing to lead all his troops into Xiangyang City by the beginning of March.
The establishment of the Huguang Military Governor's Office quickly transformed Xiangyang from a bustling commercial port into a major military town that rapidly stockpiled various military supplies and provisions.
The 10,000 Shaanxi troops brought by Sun Chuanting were seasoned veterans, among whom the 3,000 cavalrymen, who were expanded by Emperor Chongzhen with special funds allocated from Beizhili, were particularly valiant.
This Qin army was gleaming with armor, its elite troops capable of defeating tens of thousands, and each soldier was well-equipped, clearly a powerful and capable force.
If the battle were to take place in the open field, this force would be inferior to the old Jurchen Eight Banners camp, which had been established for many years and had extremely rich combat experience.
However, compared with the poorly equipped garrison troops in Huguang and the camp troops in various places, they were worlds apart.
On the day the Qin army entered the city, their military discipline was strict. Under Sun Chuanting's strict military law, none of the Qin soldiers, who now receive their monthly pay, harassed the people or looted the streets.
In just one day, the somewhat chaotic atmosphere in Xiangyang was calmed down, petty thieves disappeared from the streets, and the market became orderly.
Sun Chuanting's military governor's office was located directly on the east side of the Xiangyang City government office.
Emperor Chongzhen ordered him to take over the military affairs of the entire Huguang region. This imperial edict directly shocked the entire Jingxiang officialdom and even the Chu Prince's Mansion in Wuchang.
After all, the story of Hong Chengchou's rampant extortion of the Qin vassal state in Guanzhong had already spread throughout official circles.
Judging from His Majesty's silent and tacit approval of this, how could these local officials not know that this was the Emperor's own intention?
The Qin vassal state was quite strange. Logically, it should have made a fuss long ago, but the Qin Prince's Mansion ultimately chose to obediently hand over grain and land, letting the court do as it pleased.
This change is extremely bizarre, and now Sun Chuanting is personally leading a large army to garrison Xiangyang. It looks like he's a second Hong Chengchou, coming to attack the Chu vassal state.
Like the Qin vassal state, the Chu vassal state was a powerful vassal state in its time. However, the term "powerful" did not refer to the power they held, but rather to the wealth they had accumulated over generations.
Zhu Zhen, the first Prince of Chu, was the beloved son of Emperor Taizu Gao. He was enfeoffed in Wuchang for more than two hundred years. His family had occupied the fertile land of Jianghan for generations. Over the dynasties, his land holdings spanned four prefectures: Wuchang, Hanyang, Huangzhou, and Xiangyang. His granaries were filled with mountains of grain and countless gold and silver.
Compared to the stingy and miserly Qin prince of today, Zhu Huakui, the Prince of Chu, was even more domineering and greedy. For many years, he relied on his privileges as a prince to monopolize the salt profits and trade in Huguang, and colluded with officials and gentry in the north and south, making him incredibly wealthy.
However, Zhu Huakui, oblivious to his impending doom, dared to secretly collude with the eight major Shanxi merchants, smuggling iron and grain out of the country to supply the enemy and making huge profits.
Previously, after the Shanxi merchants' case came to light, Emperor Chongzhen ordered the sealing of all account books and letters between Shanxi merchants and the princes and officials of the interior.
The evidence of Chu's collusion with the enemy for profit is shocking and irrefutable.
The Qin vassal state being targeted and its grain and land seized was just the beginning. This time, Sun Chuanting's entry into Chu was not only to keep a close eye on Zhang Xianzhong, but also to carry out an imperial decree to attack the Chu vassal state.
After taking up residence in Xiangyang City, Sun Chuanting summoned and subdued officials from all over Xiangyang Prefecture in just five days.
Under the threat of the emperor's edict and the imperial sword, these local officials dared not underestimate Sun Chuanting, the current governor-general of military affairs in Huguang.
They certainly didn't have the guts to tip off the Prince of Chu's residence while under the watchful eyes of the Imperial Guards who had accompanied the army into Xiangyang.
It was another early morning. Inside the governor's mansion, Sun Chuanting, dressed in military uniform, had a lean face and sharp, piercing eyes.
At this moment, he sat upright at his desk, with a copy of the evidence of Chu's crimes, bearing the imperial seal, which was sent by the Embroidered Uniform Guard. Every word and sentence pointed to the crux of the matter.
The civil and military officials stood in formation. Fang Kongzhao, the governor of Huguang, Zou Liu, the prefect of Xiangyang, and the commanders of various garrisons stood with their heads bowed. Most of them looked apprehensive and dared not utter a sound.
These tense local officials almost all had intricate ties with the Chu vassal state, and they all knew that the King of Chu was powerful and deeply entrenched. They were usually careful to curry favor with him and dared not offend him.
But now, looking at the irrefutable evidence in Sun Chuanting's hands, and then at the elite Shaanxi troops standing solemnly outside the courtroom, their hearts were filled with coldness.
Sun Chuanting raised his eyes, his gaze sweeping over everyone, his voice low and cold, devoid of any emotion as he spoke.
"The Chu vassals colluded with the eight major Shanxi merchants to smuggle military supplies and provisions to the Jurchens outside the Great Wall, and their crimes of colluding with the enemy for profit are irrefutable!"
However, His Majesty is benevolent and mindful of the more than two hundred years of ancestral sacrifices of the Chu vassal state. He does not wish to incite a major purge and execute members of the imperial clan, and has specially ordered this governor to oversee military affairs in Huguang, and to command the Chu vassal state to contribute grain and land to atone for its past crimes and to provide relief to the army and the people.
As soon as he finished speaking, he raised his hand and threw a thick stack of account books and letters onto the table. The pages scattered, and the evidence of his crimes was clearly revealed to everyone.
"Issue the order of the Commander-in-Chief to dispatch the Embroidered Uniform Guard to Wuchang to inform Prince Zhu Hua Kui of Chu:"
Within three days, the Chu Prince's Palace must donate a total of 500,000 shi (a unit of dry measure) of rice and wheat to the Huguang Military Governor's Office. Additionally, 100,000 mu (a unit of land measurement) of arable land that the Chu Prince had forcibly seized over the years along the Han River in Xiangyang Prefecture will be allocated to military households for resettlement. The Military Governor's Office will then be responsible for resettling these displaced people and reorganizing them into military households for farming and training.
If the grain fails to arrive by the deadline, or if the grain is of inferior quality or insufficient in quantity, this Governor shall immediately submit a memorial to His Majesty, requesting that His Majesty order a thorough investigation of the entire Chu family for the serious crime of treason and collusion with the enemy, and that all local officials and gentry who have profited by relying on the Chu family be implicated without any leniency!
These military orders resounded like thunder throughout the hall!
The phrase "implicate others" in particular terrified many officials from Hubei and Hunan provinces, causing them to tremble and break out in a cold sweat.
Their faces were deathly pale, yet none of them dared to plead for the King of Chu.
Everyone understands that the Shanxi merchants' treason case has shocked the entire country and had a very negative impact. Moreover, His Majesty's attitude is resolute. Now that imperial power has been restored and Sun Chuanting holds a large army, anyone who dares to protect a treasonous prince is courting death.
The King of Chu is definitely doomed this time, but they don't want to die with him. They repeatedly expressed their support for Sun Du, saying they would definitely punish the Chu vassal state on behalf of the emperor.
However, the Chu vassal state had been entrenched in Huguang for over two hundred years, dominating the local area, with officials fawning over them and gentry relying on them. They had long been accustomed to acting arrogantly and domineeringly.
Therefore, when he received the order from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Prince Zhu Hua Kui's first reaction was not fear, but anger that caused him to smash all the jade artifacts on the table and roar in fury.
Since he took office, he has always been the one exploiting the local people and extorting money from the government; he has never been coerced like this before.
Making him hand over 500,000 shi of grain and 100,000 mu of fertile land is tantamount to tearing out his heart and flesh!
But when his advisors presented the list of crimes that Sun Chuanting had listed one by one, and he learned that the court had fully grasped his secret of smuggling and funding the enemy for many years, Zhu Huakui instantly felt as if he had fallen into an ice cave. All his anger vanished, and only fear remained on his face.
He wanted to resist and defend himself, but now the evidence was conclusive, and it was a serious crime of treason. If he dared to disobey orders, what awaited them would not be a simple reprimand.
Instead, it was a catastrophe of confiscation of property, extermination of the clan, and the abolition of feudal lords and ancestral rites!
The anger, resentment, and heartache in their hearts ultimately turned into helplessness in the face of the need to save their own lives and the future wealth of the royal family.
Zhu Huakui had no choice but to grit his teeth and order the mobilization of grain from the government's granary, the inventory of his fertile land, and the timely delivery of the grain, daring not to delay or withhold any grain.
Within just three days, Wuchang and Xiangyang were bustling with activity. The Chu vassal's grain ships sailed upstream along the Han River, and the 100,000 mu of fertile land that the Chu vassal had forcibly seized in Xiangyang Prefecture was all handed over to the Huguang Military Governor's Office.
With hundreds of thousands of bushels of grain stored up and 100,000 mu of high-quality farmland incorporated into military settlements, the grain reserves and agricultural foundation of the Huguang New Army were instantly stabilized.
After temporarily subduing the Chu vassal, Sun Chuanting immediately took swift and decisive action to reorganize the rotten garrisons in the northern border region of Huguang.
After a century of peace in Huguang, the garrison system had long since become corrupt and defunct, existing in name only.
Although it was better than the garrisons near the northern border of Beijing, it was still common for garrison officers in Huguang to embezzle military farmland, receive salaries without working, and enslave military households.
Although there are tens of thousands of registered soldiers, most of them are old and weak, with few able-bodied men. Most of the military farmland has been embezzled and hidden by garrison officers and local gentry.
The remaining barren lands were left uncultivated and desolate. With such military equipment, let alone suppressing bandits and defending against enemies, even the defense of the city was a luxury.
This can be considered the fundamental reason why Zhang Xianzhong, who occupied Huguang and caused numerous rebellions, was always difficult to eradicate – the local military was in disarray and had no power to suppress the bandits.
Sun Chuanting acted swiftly, directly dispatching a large army and the Embroidered Uniform Guard to issue orders for military reorganization and land clearing to various garrisons.
Based on the imperial military order, he demarcated the boundaries of the garrisons in the northern part of Huguang and dispatched Shaanxi cavalry to be stationed in various prefectures and counties to supervise and inspect the entire process.
The first step was to thoroughly investigate the military farmland, to investigate and recover all the farmland in the garrison that had been embezzled, concealed, or resold, and to uniformly classify it under the military farm system of the governor's office and register it.
If local officials and gentry wanted to intervene, they first had to ask him about the imperial sword in his hand and the more than 10,000 elite Qin soldiers.
Furthermore, the military farms of the garrisons were a national policy of the imperial court, and how to dispose of the military farms of the garrisons was naturally up to the central government.
In the past, they secretly colluded and embezzled land, and the court was powerless to deal with it. But now the court directly sent a large army to clear the land.
At this point, anyone who dares to oppose him will be a traitor to the country, and Emperor Chongzhen will be able to openly and legitimately send troops to suppress him, exterminate his family, confiscate his property, and leave no future trouble.
As for the soldiers of the garrison, Sun Chuanting adhered to the ironclad rule of eliminating the weak and retaining the strong, and relocating them to different places. He made them honestly register their household registration in the garrison and assign them to lead troops to cultivate land.
All able-bodied men under the age of forty and over the age of fifteen, who were physically strong and had no bad habits, were selected and incorporated into the Huguang New Army and placed under the command of Sun Chuanting.
With unified training, unified pay, and unified distribution of armor and weapons, Sun Chuanting will gradually reorganize and expand the army according to the 30,000 troops appointed by Emperor Chongzhen, to supplement the field forces in the northern border of Huguang.
Soldiers aged 40 and above and those under 15, including the elderly, weak, wounded, and disabled, were all discharged from the army, exempted from military service, allocated military land, and resettled in centralized locations to form farming households dedicated to cultivating grain.
Sixty percent of the grain produced belonged to them, while the remaining forty percent went to the military governor's granary to support the new army and provide relief to displaced people.
In just ten days, the atmosphere in the garrisons and military posts in northern Huguang changed dramatically, especially in the Xiangyang area, where the investigation was extremely thorough.
Those garrison officers who used to act arrogantly and seize military land were all spared. Anyone who dared to obstruct the investigation, conceal land, or cover up private corruption was arrested, detained, and interrogated on Sun Chuanting's orders.
Not only were all the embezzled land properties confiscated, but the individuals themselves were also punished according to military law, either by dismissal and exile, or by caning and removal from the list of officials, without any leniency.
With such ruthless methods and the deaths of hundreds of people, no one in the officialdom of northern Hubei and Hunan dared to defy Sun Chuanting's ruthlessness.
This military commander had been suppressing bandits in Shaanxi for many years and was most skilled at reorganizing military affairs, cultivating land and training troops. He dealt with the long-standing problems in the army and local bad habits, and he always only dealt with them by killing and rectifying them, never by tolerating or condoning them.
In addition to the elite Shaanxi army under his command, there are now more than 10,000 military households' sons from Huguang and young men from various prefectures who have been incorporated into the army.
With over 20,000 troops under his command, Sun Chuanting suppressed the local gentry in the surrounding prefectures of Xiangyang, who dared not even breathe and could only obediently follow his military orders.
With another batch of one million taels of military funds from Emperor Chongzhen arriving in Xiangyang, Sun Chuanting, now emboldened, intensified his efforts to implement the new policies.
Tens of thousands of hectares of military farmland discovered in northern Huguang were all nationalized. More than 10,000 able-bodied soldiers were reorganized, and more than 10,000 elderly and weak households were resettled. The century-old malpractices of the military garrisons were thus forcibly rectified by Sun Chuanting with thunderous measures, with remarkable results.
After settling his internal affairs, Sun Chuanting finally turned his attention to Zhang Xianzhong's forces, who were entrenched northwest of Xiangyang and whom the emperor had long since determined to be feigning surrender.
At the end of the eleventh year of the Chongzhen Emperor's reign, Zhang Xianzhong was defeated and exhausted, and was forced to surrender to the court, feigning submission and retreating to Gucheng.
However, although he was nominally granted amnesty by the imperial court, he actually held military power and harbored ambitions.
They disobeyed the imperial court's orders, refused to surrender the bandits' weapons, and refused to dismiss their private armies. Instead, they secretly recruited desperate men, stockpiled grain and fodder, and forged weapons, accumulating strength day and night, waiting for the right moment to rebel again and sweep across Hubei and Hunan.
Many officials, both in and out of the court, were deceived by his feigned submission, believing that the banditry in Huguang had been quelled, and repeatedly submitted memorials requesting appeasement and leniency.
Fortunately, Emperor Chongzhen had already seen through the crux of the matter, so he specially issued an edict ordering Sun Chuanting to lock down his development space, cut off his foundation, and strangle his wings after entering Hubei, so that he would never have the power to rebel.
Sun Chuanting was well aware of the emperor's intentions and understood the root cause of the bandit rebellion.
The reason why the bandits in Shanxi and Shaanxi were repeatedly suppressed was that they were able to plunder grain and recruit refugees to continuously replenish their strength.
To completely crush Zhang Xianzhong, there's no need to rush into battle. Simply cut off his food supply, resources, and routes, and he'll be trapped in a corner, left to fend for himself.
Immediately, a secret order was issued from the military governor's office in Huguang and spread throughout the entire region.
Sun Chuanting dispatched two thousand elite cavalrymen under his command, supplemented by reorganized Huguang New Army scouts, divided into dozens of teams, to patrol in all directions and completely blockade all the key roads around Gucheng, which was occupied by Zhang Xianzhong.
All the official roads, ferry crossings, mountain paths, and dangerous passes extending outward from Gucheng were marked with checkpoints and sentries, forming a dense network with no gaps.
Scouts took turns patrolling day and night to prevent thieves from going out to plunder or recruit refugees, and also to prevent outsiders from entering or leaving Gucheng without permission.
At the same time, the entire Hubei and Hunan provinces issued a decree to seal off the supply of goods to Gucheng, imposing extremely strict controls.
Under the lockdown order, all prefectures, counties, cities, and towns in Huguang Province were strictly prohibited from sending merchants and ordinary people to Gucheng with more grain than needed for daily life.
Important materials such as saltpeter, gunpowder, and iron were all listed as prohibited items, and violators would be punished as serious crimes of treason.
As a result, the merchants and gentry who had previously secretly traded with Zhang Xianzhong for profit all fell silent, and no one dared to harbor any illusions about colluding with the traitor.
The checkpoints in various places were heavily fortified, and the Shaanxi Army's iron cavalry patrolled back and forth, acting decisively and ruthlessly. Anyone found illegally transporting supplies was immediately executed on the spot as a warning to others.
Zhang Xianzhong, who was in Gucheng, was thus completely imprisoned.
His private army of over ten thousand men consumed enormous amounts of food and provisions daily, and in the past, they were able to maintain operations by smuggling and plundering.
Now that all external supply lines have been cut off, military resources are completely cut off. We can neither go out to plunder and expand our food supply, nor purchase ironware and gunpowder to forge weapons, nor recruit local refugees and able-bodied men to expand our army.
The entire valley city instantly became an isolated island surrounded by layers of walls.
Zhang Xianzhong also sensed the overwhelming sense of crisis and suffocation.
Outside the city, Ming scouts and cavalry were stationed in all directions, keeping a close watch and making it impossible to move an inch.
Supplies within the city were becoming increasingly scarce, food prices were soaring, and the repair of military equipment could not be sustained. The bandits under his command were filled with anxiety, and their morale was declining day by day.
He repeatedly sent people disguised as commoners and merchants in an attempt to sneak out of Gucheng to contact his old subordinates and purchase grain and military supplies.
However, all these scouts were discovered by the Shaanxi cavalry patrolling the perimeter. Those who went out were either killed on the spot or detained and interrogated; none escaped.
At this moment, Zhang Xianzhong finally truly felt the ruthlessness of Sun Chuanting's methods.
What he didn't know was that behind Sun Chuanting, an emperor had already laid a trap, waiting for him to rebel and fall into it, so that he could be annihilated in one fell swoop.