The Puzzle Falls Into Place
"My lord, a report has come in from General Seok in Ningde County."
I took the letter Gaeddongi brought and broke the seal.
The enemy shut up in the mountain fort could not withstand the matchlock fire, and they broke.
Their ringleader, Li Qi, was shot dead. The rest failed to escape and were taken prisoner to a man.
Dolswe had marched on Ningde at the head of the Tiger Hunting Army's 1st Division, and the 2nd Division had come up behind him. In less than a fortnight he had settled a problem the Fujian Branch Secretariat had left to fester for thirteen years.
A month had passed since we shattered Fu Guijing's peasant army at the city of Funing, and in that time my forces had not stood still. While they scoured away every last remnant of Fu Guijing's peasants and of the beaten men who had fled Zhang Ziwen's Anning Society, they also swept the bandits who had dug into the deep hills and lived by plunder.
Dolswe's Tiger Hunting troops already had long experience hunting brigands through the mountains and forests between Wenzhou and Funing. Garshakan's Jurchens, men who lived and breathed the hunt in hill and wood, served as the hunters, while the followers of Lin Tiansheng and Yuan Tianlu, who knew the ground, guided them. She tribes that had sided with Fu Guijing, and those that had instead cooperated with Zhang Ziwen, met the same choice: those who resisted died, their families were dragged in, and the rest came running to swear submission. Call it the result of making the balance of force unmistakable.
Once most of Funing was pacified, from the directly governed lands through to Fu'an County, only Ningde County remained. Li Qi, chieftain of the peasant army, had raised his rebellion in Ningde thirteen years before. His elder brother, Li Liu, had fallen in battle, yet Li Qi had shut himself in a mountain fort and clung to it with grim stubbornness. I had sent Dolswe to root him out.
It was a great help that Yuan Tianlu, commander of the righteous army, won over the local militias.
Surrendered She chieftains also served as guides and found the side paths up to the fort, and thanks to that we netted them with little trouble.
Commit a force too lightly, and if the enemy slipped deeper into the ranges, the trouble would only multiply. I had thrown in two divisions—twelve thousand of the Tiger Hunting Army—together with every man of Yuan Tianlu's righteous army, and through Makdong's navy I had sealed the sea lanes completely.
"My congratulations, Your Grace. Funing, turbulent for more than ten years, is pacified at last."
"You've all worked hard."
"A suppression ought to have been done properly the first time it was attempted. How they managed to drag out so long a matter that could be settled this simply..."
Liu Ji shook his head and let out a long sigh. His home of Chuzhou lay hard against this country. Whenever the flames of rebellion burned high in Funing, countless bandits had poured into Chuzhou and Wenzhou alike, so he had every reason to be sick of it.
In truth, this was the plan I had laid last year. Rather than leave the embers smoldering, I would commit overwhelming force and stamp the middling sort flat. The only change was that the scale had grown somewhat past what I first intended. Twelve thousand sailors under Makdong, twelve thousand of Dolswe's Tiger Hunting Army, and six thousand of Fang Guozhen's Garrison Army besides—thirty thousand men in all, and not even aimed at Fuzhou, but piled onto a single northern frontier prefecture. How was anyone supposed to hold against that?
"How goes the work of reorganizing the righteous armies?"
"We are sending Garrison Army troops out to every locality to see it done. Of the twelve thousand righteous troops in all, nine thousand have been entered on the rolls as militia and sent home."
Fang Guozhen, called out for this campaign, went on with his face drawn tight.
"We have kept back three thousand of the able-bodied and useful, and their recruit training is underway. The young men who show promise will be taken into the Garrison Army. The older men with families will be formed into the Patrol Army and posted to the counties and prefectures."
Through the raising and training of the Garrison Army in inland Zhedong, Fang Guozhen had been schooled all over again, remade from a merely brave vanguard captain into a proper general. He had not only hammered the troops under him into something like an elite, but had also earned high regard for his part in training and posting the newly raised Patrol Army. Unlike the other Garrison commanders, he had himself raised a rebellion and fought a long guerrilla war, and he knew the sea. For the pacification of Fujian—harsh mountains running down to the water—he was the right man. The righteous armies, swollen past any use, were being broken up, and from among them we were picking out those with nowhere else to go, or those whose blood still ran too hot, and reshaping them into Garrison and Patrol troops.
Disbanding the righteous armies, however, did not end the trouble.
"How is the resettlement of the prisoners proceeding?"
"For now we are settling them, together with their families, on abandoned state fields. But the country here is steep, and the arable land is narrow and poor, so..."
Zhang Yi, who had been assisting Governor-General Jin Gao in his native Chuzhou, had been pulled out in haste and given charge of Funing's civil administration. Shepherd of the people was the title. The work that could not wait was the mass of prisoners—Fu Guijing's rebels, Zhang Ziwen's righteous troops, and the bands of mountain bandits taken in every corner. Those who had committed vicious crimes, or whose guilt was more than could be borne, had already lost their heads. What to do with the countless who remained was the headache. The homes they might have returned to were burned or abandoned, and many had nothing to eat. Turn them loose, and the odds were high they would vanish back into the hills and begin the same work again. Nor could I simply kill them all.
"Very well. We can hardly starve them to death, so we will make salt pans."
"Salt pans, Your Grace?"
"I have it from Huang Guan that the salt works of Funing once flourished. The rebellions ran on so long, though, that aside from the handful still producing salt, the rest were abandoned, and the shortage has grown severe."
The state-run salt works had burned. The salt households, with no way left to live, had fled or joined the rebels long ago. Famine had been followed by deaths and wasting from the want of salt, and so I was already having great quantities shipped up from Wenzhou.
"We have grain enough to feed the prisoners for the present, so pay them a wage and set them to work. While the pans are laid out, it would be as well to build a new breakwater and wharves, somewhere ships can lie conveniently."
"I will see it begun at once, Your Grace."
"That will put out the fire in front of us, but salt-pan labor will not take them all. Over the long term we must restore the other trades that now lie abandoned."
Zhang Yi had been singled out because his gifts as a civil administrator were exceptional, and because, as a man of Chuzhou, his name and character were already known to some degree in Fujian. I had not charged him with resettling the prisoners merely to quiet Funing, this rural corner at the northeastern edge of the province. This was, in effect, a trial run before the pacification of Fujian as a whole—and Fujian, as it stood, was a shambles.
"Once we pacify Fujian, we will be awash in people who have no way to eat tomorrow. Beating them in battle will not be difficult. Fail to settle them properly, though, and a victory or two will not be the end of it."
"You mean to stamp out even the spark of rebellion?"
"Yes. Exactly that. This disorder ends only when they can live in peace with their families."
I had looked into Fujian's circumstances beforehand, and I had talked at length with Huang Guan, a scholar of Funing.
Fujian is not rich in grain. Its fame rests on other things: sugar boiled from cane, dye drawn from indigo, iron cauldrons and farm tools, tea, cotton cloth, and precious embroidered silk.
If Your Grace would pacify Fujian and make it secure, you must restore the trades laid waste by long years of war, so that the people may find their food through them.
It was precisely what I wanted. If Fujian did not settle quickly, I would have to commit elite troops I could ill spare, and wear them out stamping on petty risings that sprang up here and there rather than fighting one decisive battle. I would also have to keep hauling grain and supplies out of Zhedong and pouring them in. Far from enlarging my base, the province would become a burden that rotted my head. For the seizure of Fujian to be a trade that paid, the commoners who had gone over to bandits, righteous armies, and rebel hosts—the very people eating out the province from within—had to be settled again and set to their livelihoods without fear. Fujian's trades had to recover, until merchants carried its goods to prosperous Jiangnan, to Goryeo and Japan, even to the southern seas. And it went without saying that I meant to lick a little of that honey myself along the way.
"I expect a great deal of you. For the sake of Fujian's people, who have suffered a long time, give it everything you have."
"I will take Your Grace's words to heart."
"Good. It begins with Funing. From here, we make all of Fujian secure."
Having charged Zhang Yi with that, I turned to Liu Ji, who had been waiting, and asked, "How did it go with the envoys sent to the counties north of Fuzhou?"
"Thanks to Master Shunliao's efforts, it went well. Gutian, Luoyuan, and even Lianjiang—the righteous armies of all of them have asked to submit."
I studied the map drawn on the board sent from Mingzhou and let my thoughts run. Huang Guan had first persuaded his own disciple, Yuan Tianlu. Then, carrying my letter, he had gone on to win over the counties south of Ningde—that is, the counties north of Fuzhou. Word that I had destroyed every rebel band in Funing, and that righteous armies which refused the mandate had been crushed without pardon and at a stroke, had put the fear into their commanders. When Huang Guan stepped forward and argued both the principle of the thing and the profit in it, they came over at last.
"Master Shunliao's merit is truly great. In effect, has Your Grace not taken half of Fuzhou Circuit?"
"A thing to be grateful for."
I nodded at Liu Ji's words. The six prefectures and counties north of the Min, the greatest river in Fujian and the one that cuts Fuzhou Circuit in two, had passed under my influence. What remained was the circuit seat itself—Min County, where the city of Fuzhou stood—and the six jurisdictions south of the Min. It was a little soon, but the hour had come to prepare the next step.
"What do they say of the situation inside Fuzhou?"
At that, Liu Ji, who had been meeting local men and inquiring into the affairs of the Fujian Branch Secretariat, began his report.
"Your Grace will know that, through last year, His Excellency Bukha Temür, Pingzhang Zhengshi of the Fujian Branch Secretariat, and Banruo Temür, assistant surveillance commissioner of the Jiangnan Branch Censorate, quarreled without cease over which of them was to rule Fuzhou."
I nodded at Liu Ji's words and let out a sigh. Bukha Temür, Pingzhang Zhengshi of the Fujian Branch Secretariat, was a Junior First Rank high official, vested in practice with the authority to govern Fujian. Banruo Temür belonged to the Censorate, but he was at best a Senior Fifth Rank assistant surveillance commissioner. He could impeach officials for corruption or for exceeding their powers. He had neither the right to rule nor command of troops. That the two should stand against each other was, by rights, absurd.
"Properly, a surveillance commission under the Branch Censorate exists to investigate corrupt officials and protect the people. Fujian, however, lies in a remote corner, and the court's watch there has been slack, so the officers of the commission have more often led the way in fleecing the people."
"Mm."
"Assistant Surveillance Commissioner Banruo Temür colluded with local officials of Semu origin and with the great clans, built up his power, and took the righteous armies under his hand until he all but dictated the affairs of Fujian. His Excellency Bukha Temür, newly arrived as Pingzhang Zhengshi, sought to set this right, but..."
"He could do nothing about a man who was a warlord in all but name?"
"Just so."
Unlike the Semu Banruo Temür, Bukha Temür was a Mongol noble of the true blood. His ability was nothing extraordinary, but he had a certain backbone, and it seemed he could not endure so ridiculous a state of things. In an age like this, though, the only thing that mattered was the power actually in one's grip. His Junior First Rank and his noble blood had at least kept him from being killed. Even so, Bukha Temür could not stomach the humiliation of being manhandled by a mere Fifth Rank official, and in the end he crossed the line. Qu hu tun lang—he would bring in a tiger to devour the wolf.
"His Excellency Bukha Temür called in the Huihui army that had rebelled and seized Quanzhou. With that pretext in hand, they marched from Quanzhou, took Xinghua Circuit, and then came north, entered the city of Fuzhou, and killed Banruo Temür."
"Then the man holding Fuzhou now is..."
"In name, His Excellency Bukha Temür has taken the authority into his hands. In fact, I am told, the real power is wielded by a man called Saif al-Din, who commands the army quartered there."
"How many troops are they said to have?"
"Several thousand elite armored soldiers out of Persia, and, with the righteous armies drawn in from Quanzhou, Xinghua, and Fuzhou, more than ten thousand in all."
At Liu Ji's words I stroked my chin and sank into thought. Here in Fujian I was already crossing back and forth over the line between lawful authority and overreach, and not by my original design. Had things gone to plan, I would have received a proper mandate from the court, set my cause in order, and only then marched. The storm had forced me to move a little early. But when the highest official charged with governing Fujian grew so enraged at being slighted by a Fifth Rank subordinate that he called in rebels to murder the man—in a farce of that order—surely a modest overstep could be forgiven?
"Your Grace, there will certainly be talk of it later. Rebels do hold the city of Fuzhou, yet to all appearances His Excellency Bukha Temür, the Pingzhang Zhengshi, is the one governing it..."
I gave Liu Ji a bitter smile. The Yuan court might seize on it and spin some plot. The southern scholars in my service might be disappointed in me, and the reputation I had so carefully laid up might be damaged.
"Moreover, the city of Fuzhou is no easy place."
"Mm. The walls will certainly be a problem."
I looked again through the materials I had long since gathered on Fuzhou, and scratched at my cheek. After the previous dynasty fell and the walls of Jiangnan were pulled down, Fuzhou's walls had been thrown down with the rest. But the age was disordered on every side, and the walls had been restored and reinforced in brick and stone until they were no easy thing to attempt.
According to the Heukwol reports, the walls of Fuzhou stood more than six meters high, and their thickness reached some five and a half. Gate towers, protruding bastions, barbicans, and crenellations had all been raised, and beyond the walls a moat and waterways ran, so that even the approach was no small matter.
"Until now, whenever Your Grace has taken a city, you have always secured help from within and sent in swift soldiers to open the gates. These Huihui, however, do not readily trust others. They guard the gates with great severity, and they have the backing of His Excellency Bukha Temür, the Pingzhang Zhengshi..."
"You mean it will be difficult for anyone to answer us from inside."
Liu Ji nodded. I had, in truth, always avoided siege warfare with the utmost care. In the open field, elite troops and the fire of matchlocks could wring a victory at the least possible cost, even against overwhelming numbers. A siege was another matter. Armor or no armor, climb a ladder against a wall and take a stone flung from above, and that was the end of you.
"Even if it takes some time, would it not be better to blockade Fuzhou? Seize the surrounding counties, obtain a formal order from the court, and win them over. In the end the gates—"
Liu Ji was setting out a seasoned alternative when someone came in from outside.
"My lord! This humble servant, Ban Baeksu! I have come at my lord's summons!"
"Oh! So you've come! Good to see you—very good to see you!"
I welcomed Ban Baeksu warmly as he offered a formal bow. If Zhang Yi had been called in for his gifts as a civil administrator, Ban Baeksu was the scholar of Taizhou I had taken as a retainer earliest of all, save only Jo Gwangwang. I had, in effect, rescued his entire house when he stood at the edge of death. Once Fujian was pacified, I meant for him to oversee the civil government of the whole province in my stead, just as Yu Inbon oversaw the interior of Zhedong. That was why I had summoned him.
"My lord—and on the way, I brought this from Mingzhou."
"This is..."
I took the imperial edict and the official seal Ban Baeksu held out.
"An edict has come down appointing my lord Pingzhang Zhengshi of the Fujian Branch Secretariat. The present Pingzhang Zhengshi, His Excellency Bukha Temür, is to return to Hangzhou and take charge of the Jiangnan administration."
"Marshal Lim seems to have had a hard time of it."
"I heard he went to the Jiangzhe Branch Secretariat and forced the matter to a settlement."
I pictured my uncle, Lim Pyeong, pecking away at Dashti Temür, chancellor of the Jiangzhe Branch Secretariat, and a short laugh escaped me. The pretext for moving on Fuzhou was now in hand. That left only one thing.
"Has it arrived? There was something I charged Marshal Lim to see to..."
At my question, Ban Baeksu nodded.
"Yes. His Excellency Marshal Lim loaded it aboard ship with his own hands and sent it on the way. They are probably having a fine struggle unloading it about now."
"Good. Very good."
The puzzle was complete.
I would let the soldiers rest before the next campaign. In the meantime, I had a rehearsal to conduct.
1) Reference for the attached map. OpenStreetMap, CC BY Public Domain Mark.