Wind Rises in North America 1625

Chapter 221 Gradual Change
Since the establishment of the Ming Dynasty, only garrisons were set up in Liaodong, and no prefectures or counties were set up. The dynasty attempted to slowly incorporate this frontier area into its territory through this model.

When the Wei Suo system collapsed and the region fell into the quagmire of endless war, the cost of military operations had to be entirely supported by the court.

During the Hongwu and Yongle periods, centralization of power was unprecedentedly strengthened, which meant that any minor border crisis had to be resolved with the entire country's efforts.

Liaodong is further north than the north in a broad sense, and is more economically backward. During the increasingly large and frequent Ming-Later Jin War, it was impossible to supply the various troops gathered in Liaodong, and logistics support became an extremely difficult problem.

Grain from the south had to be transported to North China first, and then transported to Liaodong by land or by sea via Denglai, which was very costly.

"For grain transported to the frontier, one dan costs more than one liang of silver. In a good year, eight or nine dan of grain are needed to exchange for one liang. For silk, cotton, and cloth transported to the capital, the fees paid are more than the amount transported. In the south, grain transported to Tongzhou costs three or four dan to one dan."

In other words, the transportation costs of materials imported into Liaodong accounted for one-third to one-quarter of the value of the goods transported. Grain is large in volume and low in value, so transporting grain to Liaodong is obviously extremely uneconomical.

Therefore, a certain "knowledgeable person" suggested to the court that small but high-value silver should be directly imported into Liaodong, so that the towns in Liaodong could solve part of the military food problem on their own.

However, this action, which was obviously lacking in economic common sense in the eyes of later generations, immediately plunged the entire Liaodong into a huge trouble.

inflation!

From the 1618th year of the Wanli reign (1620) when the various Ming troops participating in the Battle of Sarhu gathered in Liaodong, to the th year of the Wanli reign (), in less than three years, the Ming Dynasty transported up to million taels of various materials and military pay to Liaodong, most of which was silver from the south.

The huge amount of silver poured from the south into Liaodong, a sparsely populated area with extremely depleted industry and agriculture, caused catastrophic imported inflation.

By the first year of the Tianqi reign (1621), when the Later Jin conquered Shenyang, the price of grain in Liaodong had skyrocketed six times compared to before the Battle of Sarhu. The huge amount of silver did not solve the soldiers' livelihood problems, but instead put them in a situation of "dying with gold in their arms."

"...The problem in Liaodong today isn't a lack of silver, but a lack of places to use it. Why? Since the Liao war began, the price of rice and millet has skyrocketed. Add to that the drought, and a stone of rice costs four ounces, and a stone of millet costs two ounces."

"...One dan of grain is less than four dou of grain in Shandong. A total of one million yuan was spent on a 150,000-man army, and each soldier received about six taels of silver, which is not a small amount of silver. However, these six taels can only buy one dan and five dou of rice. Even a wealthy man would starve to death with his gold!"

Even worse off than the soldiers were the Liao people. Not only were they also affected by imported inflation and had difficulty making a living, they were also robbed by the hungry soldiers. In order to survive, the rich fled to the interior or to the Shandong Peninsula by sea. Middle-class families fled to the Liaohai Islands or to Korea.

The poor could only sit and wait for death, or simply surrender to the Later Jin and become slaves to the Jiannu in order to survive.

Before Yuan Chonghuan, some had advocated "letting Liao people defend Liao territory" to reduce the burden on the court. However, Xiong Tingbi, who was familiar with Liao affairs, pointedly asked the question in response to the large number of Liao people who fled due to livelihood pressure: "The idea of ​​using Liao to defend Liao sounds very good, but how many Liao people are left?"

The Ming Dynasty's wavering policy in Liaodong always put it in an awkward position where it could neither fight nor make peace. The repeated increase in Liaodong tribute not only harmed the Liao people, but also gave rise to wave after wave of refugee riots.

The Ming Dynasty struggled to survive by exporting silver to the outside of the Great Wall every year, making Liaodong like a black hole that sucked in silver, continuously absorbing the vitality that the Ming Dynasty gained from the Age of Discovery, and finally gradually shrinking and withering.

"Therefore, the best way to deal with the high price of grain and low price of silver in Liaodong is to import grain from the south on a large scale by sea, rather than blindly bringing in gold and silver that the hungry cannot eat and the cold cannot clothe them."

On September 1632, 9, when Shang Kexi, who was about to return to Lushun by boat, saw two Fujian ships loaded with southern rice entering the slightly simple pier of Ku Niang Island (now Haiyang Island), he immediately told Zhong Minghui that he wanted to buy 28 dan of grain first to feed his officers and soldiers in Dongjiang Town.

Although the imperial court paid the Dongjiang Town more than seven months' worth of military pay, only about 40% of it was lost, bringing the total amount to more than 86,000 taels.

However, most of these food and wages were paid in silver, and natural grains such as rice, wheat, millet, sorghum, and beans accounted for less than 40%.

Under such circumstances, the poor Dongjiang Town had to find ways to use the money to purchase food, cloth and other daily necessities needed by the officers and soldiers.

Based on the grain prices in Liaodong during this period, one dan of rice cost 10-12 taels, wheat cost 6-8 taels, and millet cost 4-5 taels. The more than taels of salary issued by Dongjiang Town could only buy more than dan of rice, or more than dan of wheat, or dan of millet.

How could this food be enough to feed the tens of thousands of officers and soldiers under his jurisdiction, let alone the more than 200,000 Liao people in the territory.

It is a miserable situation to say the least. During the Mao Wenlong period, Dongjiang Town had food and fodder supplies from the nearby Denglai area, and occasional "levies" and "subsidies" from Korea. Although hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians lived a difficult life, they were basically able to eat and did not suffer from widespread starvation and freezing.

However, with the killing of Marshal Mao, the food and wages of Dongjiang Town were transferred from Denglai's "direct supply" to the Liaodong Salary Bureau, and the loss was even greater. The miserable days of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians in Dongjiang began.

In addition, the military leaders of Dongjiang Town often caused mutiny, killed their commanders, colluded with slaves, and committed many other vile things, which caused the imperial court to frequently cut off their food and salary supplies, making the lives of the Dongjiang soldiers and civilians even more difficult, and even facing a situation where they could not survive.

Although Dongjiang Town was doing a thriving smuggling trade, the largest amount of goods flowing into the area was still silver and a large amount of military equipment.

As for grain, the scale of import was not large because the trade profit was too low and merchants were unwilling to waste precious shipping space to transport grain that was not very "valuable".

In order to make money, the military leaders in Dongjiang Town naturally had no intention of engaging in large-scale grain trade.

For them, as long as the soldiers under their command could barely fill their stomachs and did not cause trouble due to pay, everything would be fine. Then they would happily sell bundles of furs and ginseng to smugglers in exchange for ingots of silver.

Moreover, since the seventh year of the Tianqi reign (1627), the Later Jin Dynasty gathered troops and invaded Korea, forcing Korea to sever its relations with the Ming Dynasty.

Although Korea still secretly maintained a vassal relationship with the Ming Dynasty after this war, it was wary of the brutality of the Later Jin Dynasty and reduced its food and fodder aid to Dongjiang Town accordingly, making the food imported into Dongjiang even scarcer, further exacerbating the famine in the jurisdiction and subsequently pushing up food prices.

The price of grain in Liaodong is nearly ten times that of inland prefectures and counties, and the price of grain in Dongjiang is even higher than that in Liaodong.

It is ridiculous to say that the food supply in Dongjiang Town has increased slightly and the food price has dropped slightly in the past two years, but this happened only after the arrival of the Xinzhou people.

In order to gather refugees from Liaodong, the people of Xinzhou would send one or two Fujian or Guangdong ships loaded with grain to Kunniang Island almost every month, and then indirectly transport some of the grain to Pi Island, Changshan Island (now the Big and Small Changshan Islands in Liaoning), Guanglu Island and other places under the jurisdiction of Dongjiang Town.

At the same time, in order to reduce its own burden, Dongjiang Town was also very proactive in sending the Liao people under its jurisdiction to the Ku Niang Island controlled by the Xinzhou people, so that this once deserted island gathered more than 5,000 hungry young refugees in less than a year.

In order to open up the situation and to improve relations with Dongjiang Town, the people of Xinzhou set the price of grain trading at a low level, even 20% lower than that in western Liaoning. This made Ku Niang Island the largest grain trading center in the entire Liaodong region in a very short period of time.

It was precisely because Ku Niang Island had a large amount of food reserves that it attracted the attention of Mao Chenglu, who rebelled a few months ago and sent thousands of troops to attack the island.

More than ten days ago, Shang Kexi, under the order of General Huang Long, came to the island with 20,000 taels of silver to purchase grain, but was told that the grain reserves were insufficient and could not provide the necessary food needs for Dongjiang Town.

Initially, Shang Kexi believed the enemy was deliberately withholding grain out of spite due to a conflict between the navy officers and the imperial envoy in Lushun. However, upon seeing the empty granaries on the island, his suspicions were immediately extinguished. Over a month ago, after assisting the Dongjiang navy in a surprise attack on the water city of Dengzhou, several Xinzhou gunboats returned to Ku Niang Island, commencing their annual migration.

The four large ships not only carried more than 1,700 immigrants, but also took away nearly 60% of the stored food and headed for their base on Hokkaido Island.

Prior to this, the normal grain trade and transportation was interrupted for several months due to the rebellion of Chen Shiyou and Mao Chenglu in Liaohai, so that the grain reserves on Ku Niang Island have been reduced to an extremely low level.

Shang Kexi was greatly disappointed and was about to return to Lushun to report to Huang Long, but he accidentally saw the people of Xinzhou training their troops and practicing firearms arrays. He was immediately attracted and stayed on Ku Niang Island to observe how the people of Xinzhou trained their troops.

The people of Xinzhou were able to train a group of Liaodong refugees with no military experience into an army with considerable combat effectiveness, so that when facing the siege of thousands of troops led by Mao Chenglu, they not only managed to protect the island but also inflicted heavy damage on the rebels. They must have had their own unique experience and methods.

You should know that the Guanning Army has always been known as the powerful army of the Ming Dynasty. It also possessed firearms such as cannons and muskets, and the cities it defended were also more solid and more majestic. However, when facing the siege of the Jiannu army, it was either beaten and forced to retreat, or was wiped out by the Jiannu in a crushing manner, and rarely won.

Shang Kexi asked himself, if he used thousands of Liaodong refugees to defend Ku Niang Island, he might not be able to withstand Mao Chenglu's attack, and would most likely be defeated by the enemy and end up with his entire army annihilated.

During the few days of observing the Xinzhou people's military training, he found that they attached great importance to the discipline of the soldiers during the training process, and used almost perverted and harsh methods to teach every soldier to obey any instructions from the officers.

Even if there are cliffs, mountains of swords and seas of fire ahead of the team, the soldiers must move forward without hesitation or resistance.

What surprised Shang Kexi even more was that the people of Xinzhou actually taught officers at all levels to read and write!
The army on Weeping Mother Island was not large, with a total of about 400 people and only more than 30 officers.

But even these more than 30 officers still have to spend an hour on "cultural learning" after finishing a day's training.

The learning contents include reading and recognizing characters, explaining battle formations, battlefield simulations, military strategies and tactics, as well as changes in current affairs. It is like training a martial arts champion (there was a martial arts examination in the Ming Dynasty, but there was no palace examination for martial arts, so there were only martial arts candidates, but no titles of martial arts jinshi or champion).

The Xinzhou man who was called "Marshal Zhong" by the Liao people on the island said that an army was like a big tree, and officers at all levels were the branches of the tree, and they were needed to support the trunk and branches of the entire tree.

Officers are the concrete manifestation of the army's command level and combat effectiveness. Paying attention to and training officers is the most important link in the army's construction and organization.

The purpose of officer training is to improve the army's command and confrontation capabilities on the battlefield, so that they can maximize and exert the combat effectiveness of the entire army on the premise of mastering more professional military skills.

Fighting is actually a very delicate technical job. In addition to slowly learning it through life-and-death battles on the battlefield, it can also be mastered through systematic learning and training.

This "Marshal Zhong" also ruthlessly criticized the current situation of the Ming Dynasty's official army, believing that while the status and dignity of Ming Dynasty soldiers were becoming increasingly low, their military talents and cultural levels were also becoming increasingly unbearable.

The generals of the Ming army simply did not have the ability to command large-scale confrontations between two armies like in the early days. Instead, they often relied on personal bravery and commanding small-scale, flexible and elite troops to conduct long-distance raids.

With the complete collapse and corruption of the Wei Suo system, raising elite servants became a trend in the Ming army.

When this master-slave model army fights, the slave soldiers only follow their masters, obey their masters' orders, and fight to the death only to protect their masters.

The lord often needs to lead the army in person to carry out raids and siege operations, and the general's personal bravery and martial arts become the key factors in determining victory or defeat.

In this case, once the main general is killed, the army will be defeated and destroyed in an instant.

For example, the deaths of Liu Ying and Du Song in the Battle of Sarhu are the most representative.

The process of their deaths in battle was nothing short of heroic. When they were surrounded by the Jiannu, they both led their troops to charge forward personally in an attempt to lead their troops to fight their way out.

But their death is just a microcosm of the overall deterioration of the military quality and ability of the Ming army generals. As senior generals, they only possessed the qualities of low-level military officers - bravery and tenacity, and they eventually died in the form of low-level officers.

Historically, if two armies of similar strength fought each other for years, their ideas, tactics, and equipment would inevitably influence each other, and the relatively weaker side would passively converge with the stronger side.

However, if the stronger party lacks a sense of crisis or even a proactive attitude, it may sometimes evolve into the weaker party.

As the Ming Dynasty continued to weaken Mongolia, the Ming army gradually lost the opportunity to engage in large-scale battles like the one against the Northern Yuan Dynasty in the early Ming Dynasty. In the high-frequency battles with smaller and smaller scales and lower intensity, the Ming Dynasty's cavalry corps became more and more like the degenerated Mongolian army, losing its organization and discipline, and instead one-sidedly pursuing flexibility and maneuverability. It was good at fighting small battles with favorable winds, but had difficulty fighting hard in large-scale frontal field battles. It would flee at the slightest disadvantage in the battle, leaving its infantry to be slaughtered by the enemy.

Back then, when the Ming army wiped out the Northern Yuan forces entrenched in Liaodong, the Ming army was able to "keep the troops still and act as if no one was around."

However, by the Wanli period, this discipline no longer existed.

For example, in the first battle of the Imjin War, Zu Chengxun attacked Pyongyang at dawn and was suddenly met with Japanese pirates. "The horses fell down in fright and neighed, the soldiers were panicked, and the ranks were in chaos."

It can be said that the overall performance of the Ming army was no different from that of a low-level nomadic army.

As the Ming army's combat effectiveness declined, its discipline became increasingly unregulated, and it inherited the Mongolian cavalry's tradition of excessive plundering.

On the Korean battlefield, "heavenly soldiers were often sent to collect horse fodder, and they would spread out into the streets, looting property, and raping women. People from far and wide would flee when they heard the news. Within a radius of thirty or forty miles, every house would be deserted. The sight was extremely horrifying."

A few months ago, in the defense of Ku Niang Island, Mao Chenglu led thousands of soldiers, including his elite family servants and personal guards. However, on the battlefield, apart from the tactics of blindly attacking and charging, he had no other effective means. Under the tight volleys and artillery fire of the island guards, a large number of brave men were killed, and then they could not fight again. After a slight setback, they scattered and were defeated, and then hesitated to move forward.

Shang Kexi was greatly shocked by the remarks of this "Marshal Zhong".

Although he still expressed some dissatisfaction, he subconsciously agreed with what he said.

It seems that the Ming army has reached a point where it cannot display its due combat effectiveness on the battlefield without rigorous training.

As a military commander, one does need to undergo systematic "learning" and "training" in order to adapt to the various complex and changing situations on the battlefield.

With the arrival of the Xinzhou people, they not only brought precious food to Dongjiang Town, but also brought some new ideas and methods, which in turn had a subtle impact on it.

Perhaps, these influences will more or less change the declining Dongjiang Town, and even the entire Liaodong.

(End of this chapter)