Strategy for the Revitalization of the Late Ming Dynasty

Chapter 205 Northern Expedition
The autumn rains fell for several times in a row, and winter soon arrived. The autumn harvest in several major grain-producing areas in the middle and lower reaches of the Yangtze River had already been completed. Even in the Huguang region, the fields in a considerable number of prefectures had ushered in a new round of harvest.

The subordinates of Sun Kewang and Ai Nengqi and tens of thousands of families of the Eastern Dashi Army were all settled in De'an and Huangzhou prefectures, effectively replenishing the population of the two places. The two rebel leaders who had previously been ambivalent were now convinced under Chang Denggui's reorganization.

The old camp soldiers of the Western Army were elite soldiers who had experienced hundreds of battles, just like the old main soldiers of the Dashun Army. However, their equipment was far inferior to that of the Eight Banners armored soldiers, especially their cavalry. After they were supplemented with new equipment, their combat effectiveness increased rapidly.

Of course, the army that Zhu Cilang prioritized for replenishment was still the various units of the Palace Army, followed by the Beijing Camp, the Left Town, the Right Town, and the Loyal Camp. After completing the basic armament replenishment, the remaining units of the Western Army were ranked last in the field army, but before the local camp soldiers.

However, due to the Qing court's two failed southern expeditions, the Eight Banners Army suffered heavy losses, and its ruling order in the northern provinces could only rely on the Green Camp Army and Han military leaders. This also caused local governance to gradually get out of control, and smuggling trade slowly began to become rampant.

As the northern provinces entered winter, the Qing government's heavy taxes and levies on the people in order to raise military supplies came to an end, and the "food war" planned by Zhu Cilang and Li Banghua also began.

Under Zhu Cilang's deployment, Zhou Shixian had already sent hundreds of Jinyiwei secret envoys to contact Green Camp generals in various places, seek cooperation and support from local gentry, and open up smuggling channels to purchase grain from northern provinces.

Although those Green Camp army generals and local gentry elders were unwilling to openly raise their flags in rebellion, they were all determined to smuggle money and expressed their loyalty to the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, Zhu Cilang's strategies were different in different places. In areas close to his control, he would send troops to support and take the food for his troops, thus saving the trouble of transporting food from the south, which would cost countless manpower and resources.

Sun Tzu's Art of War says: Taking food from the enemy is twice as effective with half the effort!

Far away from the war zone, in the heartland of the Qing Dynasty, especially in Shandong and Henan provinces, smuggled grain entered the mountainous areas where the rebel forces were located. In Shaanxi, Shanxi and other places, the grain entered the territory of the Mongols and became Zhu Cilang's bargaining chip in exchange for them not to send troops.

The Eight Banners Army had severely encircled land in northern Zhili. The gentry there had long lost their dominance, and there were no large numbers of rebel troops hiding in the mountains. The Jinyiwei did not take the risk.

You must know that in order to raise more military funds and manufacture weapons, the Qing government continuously increased taxes and corvee labor, especially the grain collection after the autumn harvest, which intensified resistance in various places. This caused the northern provinces, which had already recovered their vitality and productivity due to the reduction of natural disasters, to suffer serious damage again.

The Qing Dynasty's rule had fallen into the vicious cycle of the late Ming Chongzhen period. The continuous increase in taxes and heavy corvee labor created waves of refugees. However, the Qing Dynasty's strict control over the army meant that these refugees lacked organization and had not yet formed a strong enough force.

However, tens of thousands of refugees in the four northern provinces joined forces with the rebel forces that had retreated to the mountainous areas, and soon the rebel forces, which had been suppressed by the Qing government, were revived.
Not only that, after the Qing court could no longer extort money from the people, it turned its attention to the northern gentry. In dealing with these Han people, the Manchu nobles were not at all ambiguous and quickly raised the urgently needed money and food for the army to prepare for war.

However, the Qing court was able to quickly establish its rule within the Great Wall by cooperating with these gentry. Li Zicheng was defeated because he did not join the gentry in plundering the poor, but instead plundered the gentry.

Nowadays, the Manchus and the gentry are fighting each other. Many gentry who have weak connections in the court and cannot avoid being plundered by the court, seeing that the situation is not good, have been planning to surrender to and support the royal army in the future. Some gentry even spent a lot of money to find ways to contact the Jinyiwei, saying that they are "in the Qing camp but their hearts are with the Han", and even sent their family members to the south.

In contrast, although Zhu Cilang also needed to levy taxes on a large scale in the south, he relied on the establishment of "garrisons" and "registered citizens" in Jiangbei, Huguang, Jiangxi and other places, and in the collection of autumn grain, he relied on powerful military deterrence to reorganize the local structure and collected more than three million taels of silver in arrears alone.

With the support of a large number of agricultural tools, oxen, seeds and newly repaired water conservancy facilities, production in villages and forts across the country quickly recovered. The villages and forts in Jiangbei even had a bumper harvest. The first batch of villages and forts in Huguang and Jiangxi caught up with the planting of autumn crops and were barely able to be self-sufficient.

Zhu Cilang relied on the disguised restoration of the Wei Suo system. The new system operated at high speed with extremely high efficiency and an organization that was ahead of its time, ensuring the rapid expansion of the army and making the shortage of money and food gradually become a thing of the past.

At the same time, the Dingwu court has accumulated a huge amount of silver through a number of measures such as maritime trade, money shops, commercial taxes, and trading companies. The amount of silver that can be mobilized in the short term in the silver vaults of the money shops alone is more than two million taels.

As for Jiangxi, a major financial and taxation center, after the bandit suppression at the end of the year, the gentry there no longer dared to resist, let alone take their clansmen and servants to occupy land everywhere.

By this time, all the civil and military officials in the court, and even inside and outside the government, from the chief minister Li Banghua to the local gentry, have seen clearly - His Majesty is the kind of person who smiles and tells you not to worry, that he is definitely not targeting you, that it is just an official business and it is inevitable, but in fact he wants to kill you!
But now, hundreds of thousands of field troops are firmly in the hands of Zhu Cilang, and they have no choice at all. As long as Zhu Cilang can win the battle, no one in the world dares to disobey him even if he has to recover the stolen goods and demand payment.

You must know that in the original history, in order to deal with Sun Kewang and the Western Army under Li Dingguo, the Qing court built a southwest defense line and severely extorted money from the south of the Yangtze River. However, in front of the sharp knife, those spineless gentry did not dare to make a fuss.

Now, the situation has completely reversed. Zhu Cilang cannot directly weaken the Qing army on the battlefield in a short period of time, but outside the battlefield, he has countless ways, especially in terms of food and grass.

If a famine breaks out on the battlefields of Henan, Shaanxi, Gansu, and Shandong, and food prices skyrocket, the economic order in the areas currently under the control of the Qing court, which is already in jeopardy due to huge military expenditures, will inevitably collapse rapidly.

Before the troops move, food and supplies must go first. If the Qing court faces a huge food gap, the future Northern Expedition will be much easier to fight.

Of course, Zhu Cilang did not intend to buy out all the grain in the north with more than one million taels of silver. This was simply unrealistic.

But for something like food, if there is a little more of it, the price will plummet, and if there is a little less of it, the price will skyrocket. Coupled with the rumors spread by the Jinyiwei spies, the chaos will surely intensify.

Therefore, along with the grain purchasing activities, the Jinyiwei's more important task was to spread rumors and drive up grain prices. The rumors and the hoarding caused by rising grain prices were enough to cause large fluctuations in grain prices in the areas controlled by the Qing court, causing chaos in various places.

This winter, under the careful planning of Zhu Cilang and Li Banghua, the prices of grain in Shaanxi, Gansu, Henan, Shandong, Shanxi and other places rose rapidly. In the north near the Great Wall and in the south where the Ming army controlled areas were visible, the price even soon exceeded five taels per stone.

At the same time, the rapid rise in food prices and the Qing government's extortion and plunder led to more and more people joining the ranks of refugees. The rebel army became more and more powerful. Central Shandong, Jiaodong area, southern Shandong, northern Shanxi, western Henan, western Shaanxi, and northern Shaanxi, and the mountainous areas of various provinces were soon occupied by the rebel army. They attacked everywhere and forced the people to plunder the Qing army's grain and grass warehouses in various places.

Because food prices were too high at that time, the Green Camp army's military pay and food supplies had begun to be in arrears, and complaints were widespread. In some places, the Green Camp even rebelled and joined the rebel army, which was exactly the same as the Chongzhen period.

The Qing rulers weren't actually that much more brilliant. Their superiority over Chongzhen was simply their solid foundation, a formidable army even in the dire situation of the late Ming. The myths about their genius and strategy are nothing more than forced causation and a futile attempt to find a solution.

After all, in the 17th century, the Qing army had more advanced and powerful muskets and artillery than the Ming army three hundred years earlier, so the ethnic groups on the grasslands were naturally able to sing and dance well.

Times have changed, productivity has changed, and the implementation of any policy is based on the range of strength. It is just icing on the cake, not the essence.

Zhu Cilang was a later generation who had read all the history books of these periods. Naturally, he had a very good understanding of this and was quite confident in himself. He believed that what he would do in the future would definitely be better than a backward and barbaric regime.

Back to the present, with the increasingly fierce civil unrest and military riots in the northern hinterland, the water transport on the Grand Canal was also greatly threatened. Dorgon had to send the Eight Banners Army that was being trained in Beijing in advance to guard the canal.

This is the true meaning of "defeating the enemy without fighting". Before Zhu Cilang's Northern Expedition even began, the Qing court had already thrown into disarray.

If the "food war" had been effective, the Northern Expedition Army would not only have saved 10,000 or 20,000 soldiers and ended the war a month or two earlier, but the entire war situation would have been very different.

As January came, Zhu Cilang set out from Nanjing and went to the temporary palace in Yuezhou to prepare to command the first phase of the Northern Expedition.

Although there are differences in the supplies and armaments of the Palace Army, Beijing Camp, Left Town, Right Town, and Loyal Camp, they are all strictly implemented in accordance with the newly released field army training standards. Even the local camp soldiers and peasant soldiers are trained according to the low-level version.

This also made it easy for the new recruits, most of whom were recruited from local camps and farmers, to integrate with the veterans during training, and the coordination and combat between the various units was also very smooth, so the verification was completed.

After arriving in Yuezhou, Zhu Cilang began his pre-war inspections. This was his way of warning the generals and ensuring his control over the army, while also ensuring his understanding of the front-line military situation.

Of course, under the combined jurisdiction of the Training Corps, the Military Affairs Department, and the Embroidered Uniform Guard, Zhu Cilang had already received intelligence on various local and regional armies before he arrived at the army, giving him a clear understanding of their general movements. Although Zhu Cilang had vigorously developed the Embroidered Uniform Guard's External Affairs Department to strengthen its ability to spy on the Qing court's military intelligence, the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Internal Affairs Department was equally important. Over the past two years, it had already infiltrated the southern provinces, ensuring that Zhu Cilang would not be deceived by court officials or local officials. By comparing the intelligence from both sides, he would know which side was lying.

This time, in order to deceive the Qing army, Zhu Cilang did not immediately transfer the main force of the Nanzhili army to Huguang, but planned to dispatch them in batches, and then launch a surprise attack on Nanyang in the early spring.

By that time, the Qing army would definitely be caught off guard. By the time Dorgon mobilized troops from Beijing to the south, it would be late spring and the climate would soon become hot and humid, which would be extremely unfavorable for the Qing army.

Zhu Cilang carried out meticulous operations in all aspects of these battles and military strength with the assistance of various departments and offices in the court.

Taking advantage of the opportunity to inspect various places, Zhu Cilang did not forget his relationship with the locals. Every time he arrived in a provincial capital, he would summon local clans and even ordered them to send their descendants to the newly renovated academy in Changsha to study, take part in the imperial examinations, and seek a good future.

Since the emperor of the time had spoken personally, these so-called local elders naturally no longer dared to act pretentiously. They all kowtowed to express their gratitude and even began to compete to show off.

These old foxes know very well who has real power and what real power is.

These prominent families were local clans with centuries of history, very low-key, with extraordinary local connections and industries. They were the ones who could truly influence the gentry in Jiangnan, and even in the north.

Of course, even though these big families present have not produced any Jinshi in the past two or three decades, there are still a lot of Xiucai and Juren. They have accumulated hundreds of years of experience and their influence in the local area is still enormous.

However, those families that had not produced a high-ranking official for many years were indeed anxious. If they only produced a group of scholars every year, or even fewer juren, the family's property would soon be swallowed up.

Zhu Cilang grasped this point and summoned them whenever he inspected a place.

By the time Zhu Cilang finished inspecting the various prefectures in Huguang, and even visited Jiujiang and Nanchang, and returned to Yuezhou Prefecture to take command, it was already late February.

At this time, the Ming and Qing sides were constantly fighting in Nanyang, Xiangyang, Baoning, Shunqing, Xuzhou and other places. Both sides sent scouts to harass each other and disrupt each other's preparations for spring plowing. Dozens of soldiers died on the battlefield every day.

These scouts who penetrate deep into enemy territory are the military spies of this era. They emerge from all kinds of unexpected places, sneak in, and attack, constantly testing the enemy's military deployment to determine the enemy's strengths and weaknesses, while waiting for opportunities to sabotage and undermine the enemy's military morale.

Although the intelligence of the Palace Front Army and the Heavenly Cavalry Army could rely on high-intensity training and sophisticated equipment to surpass the Eight Banners elite of the Qing Army in combat effectiveness, there was almost no gap between the two sides in the scouts, a type of military force that relied on experience and personal bravery. They just kept exchanging casualties in the confrontation.

At the same time, the various armies that were originally resting gradually arrived in Huguang. The Tianwu Left Camp where Zhao Zhengdong and Gu Defu were located set out from Nanjing by boat, went upstream all the way to Huguang, and prepared to participate in the first Northern Expedition of the Dingwu Dynasty.

The ship carrying the first batch of officers and soldiers stopped at major garrison cities in the south of the Yangtze River, such as Jiangpu, Zhenjiang, and Nanjing. During this period, officers and soldiers continued to board the ship. By the time it left Nanjing, the ship was already full of officers and soldiers.

The troops to which these soldiers belong have basically all performed well and made great contributions on the battlefield before. They have led the new recruits to complete all the necessary training before going to the expedition, including military formations, weapon skills, actual combat exercises and other detailed training. These veterans and officers are very good at it.

Gu Defu still remembers the scene half a year ago when he led more than a dozen elite veterans to a group of dozens of new recruits, took over the military roll from the officer of the Military Affairs Department, and began to call out the names one by one. Everything seemed to be right in front of him.

At that time, the army was on leave, and many veterans had returned home. He led the veterans who had not yet taken leave to complete the first round of intensive training for the new recruits. Most of these recruits were not strictly speaking new recruits, but they were far from meeting the requirements of the field army, so training them was not difficult.

After all, the veterans he brought with him were the best in battlefield performance, discipline and ethics, and were almost impeccable in every aspect.

You must know that the veterans who were selected as instructors at the beginning by Instructor Zhu Cilang of the Teaching Corps had no problems in all aspects. Those veterans with poor discipline could not obtain this qualification at all.

Otherwise, once those old soldiers sneak into the instructor team, it will be easy to spoil the atmosphere in the army. The atmosphere of these local camp soldiers and farm soldiers is not very good to begin with. If the two sides are combined, even if they want to change it, it may not be possible.

The army is always boring and inhumane, especially the army of this era. Zhu Cilang has long realized this, so he pays special attention to the establishment and management of the army.

Therefore, after Gu Defu completed the roll call and confirmed that all the recruits were present, he began the obedience test. As the most powerful army in the world, the requirements for the Palace Army were quite strict, even for the initial training.

Of course, the obedience test in the Palace Army was not complicated. Zhu Cilang only wanted the soldiers to obey his orders absolutely, so beatings and punishments were absolutely indispensable.

After all, the most important thing in the military is absolute obedience to orders, and absolute hierarchy is required in actions. War is a matter of life and death, and military orders on the battlefield do not allow for any discussion or hesitation.

Therefore, before these soldiers undergo other more in-depth training, the most important thing is to complete the obedience test - using beatings and punishments, through high-intensity physical training, to drain the soldiers' energy to resist, making them lose the ability to think, and become war machines in the army that only know how to obey orders.

But what Gudefu has done during this period is not limited to this.

With the further expansion of the Officers' Academy, he had followed Zhao Zhengdong to participate in the temporary officer training camp in Nanjing City. He completed his studies in just two months, and finally passed the assessment and officially became a general reserve officer.

Due to the lack of instructors, these newly established officer schools do not have many assessment items, which are mainly divided into officers' basic qualities, comprehensive abilities and literacy tests. They adopt a crash training method, mainly to cultivate and improve the military command, military tactics, battlefield response, weapons knowledge and other abilities of officers at the rank of lieutenant colonel and above.

Of course, the teaching materials they used for the crash training were all from officers of the various departments of the Five Military Governor's Office. They were the result of two years of practice and demonstration analysis, and had been substantially revised and optimized twice. They were of great significance for practical guidance.

Gu Defu received a lot of guidance from Zhao Zhengdong on a daily basis. He also had some talent in military strategy and tactics. In addition, he was willing to work hard, so he ranked among the top in the assessment of basic qualities and comprehensive abilities of officers, but his literacy was a little poor.

However, everyone was the same. Except for a few who could recognize words quickly and liked this test, everyone else was unwilling to learn to read. In the end, in order to get promoted, they had to grit their teeth and persevere. Their scores in this area were just barely passing.

Although Goodfu ranked low in the literacy test, his performance in other subjects was excellent. When the total score was finally converted, he ranked third among the officers and was rewarded with fifty taels of silver.

As for those who failed the assessment and were originally at the same level as him, they need to complete the verification during the next assessment. Otherwise, they can only get the same opportunity as them if they have made military achievements in the Northern Expedition.

But the problem is that their military proficiency at this point has lagged behind that of the officers who passed the assessment, and their performance on previous battlefields has not been as good as theirs. In this situation, it is basically impossible to overtake them.

After Zhao Zhengdong and Gu Defu brought their soldiers to Yuezhou City by boat, they quickly settled in a barracks about three miles southeast of the city.

This military camp was newly built, with high walls on all sides, chevaux de frise in front of the gate, and arrow towers on both sides. In addition, there were more than a dozen soldiers guarding the east gate of the camp. The security was very strict. It was originally the training ground for the Youzhen army.

With the arrival of the army, the barracks soon became noisy. The military law team, consisting of six people in a row, began patrolling everywhere since the army arrived at the barracks. The new recruits knew that this was a transit station before the expedition, and it looked very novel to them. Gu Defu felt that he had returned to an extremely familiar scene, and in an instant he felt that the familiar atmosphere of the previous expedition had all returned.

Soon, countless soldiers began their daily training on the spacious training grounds of the barracks. This was a strict requirement of military discipline. They usually trained every two days and the training session lasted for more than three hours.

As usual, thousands of soldiers were conducting simple formation training on the parade ground, or exercising their physical fitness and personal martial arts. After more than half a year of field army training, they were already very familiar with various training programs, and were proficient in mastering and distinguishing basic bugle calls and drums and combat orders.

At this moment, the soldiers of various units of the Palace Army are waiting for the start of the Northern Expedition!
(End of this chapter)