Stirrings of War (5)
"Gongsun Zan has stationed an army at Guangzong County (Jieqiao)?"
"He's citing the death of his younger brother, Gongsun Yue, as his justification."
I couldn't keep the surprise off my face at the intel Jia Xu had brought me out of nowhere.
"How did Gongsun Yue die?"
"They say he lost his life aiding Yuan Shu in an assault on the pro–Yuan Shao forces in Ye Province."
Birds of a feather, apparently — Gongsun Zan and Yuan Shu had already linked arms.
In the Romance, Gongsun Yue dies on the road home after serving as an envoy to Yuan Shao demanding he honor their agreement; in the official histories, he throws in with Yuan Shu and is cut down by an arrow while attacking the pro–Yuan Shao camp.
Truth be told, no record ever spells out what the "agreement" between Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan actually was. Splitting Jizhou down the middle was purely Luo Guanzhong's invention for the Romance.
Put simply, Gongsun Zan had strong-armed his way into planting an army at Guangzong County (Jieqiao) — which amounted, for all practical purposes, to picking a quarrel with Yuan Shao and demanding a fight.
"And how did Yuan Shao respond to this?"
"Yuan Shao has likewise marched on Guangzong County at the head of her army."
Hearing that, I lobbed another question at Jia Xu.
"Not even a gesture to placate him?"
"None. She gathered every soldier in Jizhou and marched out at once, I'm told."
Well, that was unexpected.
The Yuan Shao who, under normal circumstances, would have tried to soothe Gongsun Zan by handing the Administrator's post of Bohai to Gongsun Fan had instead raised her troops and marched, itching for a straight fight with not an inch of retreat in her. Apparently she'd judged the bout worth having.
"So the collision comes on the Ban River?"
"Most likely."
Jia Xu gave a small nod.
So it had finally begun — the Battle of Jieqiao, the set-piece where Gongsun Zan and Yuan Shao would settle accounts.
And there was exactly one move for me to make in it. Let the two of them grapple back and forth until they were thoroughly sick of the bloodshed, and then dispatch an imperial envoy to broker a reconciliation.
Both forces, having leapt at each other only to find themselves unable to withdraw for want of a pretext, would seize the excuse the instant a decent one appeared — parting ways with an almost grateful "well, if you insist."
So — would Yuan Shao prevail as in the original history? Or had history flipped on its head entirely, handing Gongsun Zan the win?
Yuan Shao's power is famously colossal by the time of the Battle of Guandu, but back in the early days of the warlords carving up the realm — when the two had only just come to blows — Gongsun Zan was by far the stronger. Even after dropping a decision at the Battle of Jieqiao, his faction as a whole still held the edge.
What if Yuan Shao lost? The question flickered through my mind, but I couldn't work up much worry over it.
Even back when Gongsun Fan — who owed his Bohai post to Yuan Shao — led Bohai's soldiers over to Gongsun Zan's banner, Yuan Shao had still won; and now she had fused the armies of Jizhou into one and was advancing at their head. True, Gongsun Zan had fattened himself early by swallowing Liu Yu's territories, but Yuan Shao was hardly the sort to be shoved around for it.
Not when the man destined to make his name at the Battle of Jieqiao sat under Yuan Shao's command. What was there to worry about?
Qu Yi.
That general would smash Gongsun Zan's pride and joy, the White Horse Volunteers, to splinters — all I had to do was sit back and savor the show.
Those White Horse Volunteer boys positively love to die once Hebei's crossbowmen start planting arrows in them.
There were any number of reasons Gongsun Zan — still swaggering with strength long after Jieqiao — ultimately went down to Yuan Shao for good.
First: he killed Liu Yu, a ruler who had governed with genuine benevolence, and rode his own people with crippling exactions, forfeiting the hearts of all under heaven. A state stands on its people; strip away their hearts, and the fall writes itself. Apparently the man had learned nothing even from watching the Han court nearly go under to the Yellow Turbans.
Second: he was no diplomat either, and he stockpiled enemies on every border. The northern tribes he had ground down without number and the partisans of the Liu Yu he had killed never stopped hammering his flanks — and facing him stood Yuan Shao, a past master of the political arts, who deployed every ounce of that talent to strangle Gongsun Zan slowly.
Third: as the squeeze ground on, Gongsun Zan began losing the faith of his own officers. We only threw in with that brute because he won battles — and now he can't lay a hand on Yuan Shao and keeps getting shoved back? Shouldn't we defect while the door's still open? His men began to edge about, quietly testing the wind.
This is exactly what dooms men who spout rubbish like strength is everything or the strong are justice. A power that herds people through coercion and raw force comes apart the instant that force begins to ebb. Splendid returns in the short term; inevitable collapse on the long view. After all, what man alive can stay strong forever?
In the end, Gongsun Zan walled himself up in his fortress at Yijing and adopted the Yijing Tower Meta — a move that amounted to half a declaration of surrender. He laid in grain on a mind-boggling scale, enough to run farming colonies and garrison the walls indefinitely, and those cursed watchtowers of his stood so thick on the ground that no soul on earth dared dream of crossing the ramparts.
It was Gongsun Zan who pinned down Yuan Shao and handed Cao Cao her opening to grow. While Yuan Shao stood outside his walls hollering come out here and fight me already, please!, Cao Cao went gaily about her business — smashing Lü Bu flat, crushing Yuan Shu, and widening her borders at a merry clip.
Gongsun Zan endured some four years at Yijing before the fortress finally fell — and even then, it likely fell because his mind had given out before his walls did. He would grant audiences to a parade of bizarre strangers while shutting out his own closest aides, and whenever something truly unavoidable arose, he had his concubines relay the orders in his stead. He had, in the most literal sense of the phrase, become a shut-in.
At the sight of it, what soldiers and generals remained either went over to Yuan Shao or bolted from Yijing. In the end, he simply couldn't accept that he — the man who had known nothing but victory — had lost to Yuan Shao, and his mind snapped. He was such a thoroughgoing scoundrel that I couldn't scrape up much pity for him.
"So — is there anything I should be keeping an eye on?"
Jia Xu held her silence a moment before speaking.
"It would be best to fix your gaze on Hebei — but without letting the movements of the other powers slip past you."
"Meaning I'm to bide my time for now?"
"That is so."
In other words: whether Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan mauled each other to their hearts' content or not, we were to sit tight here and behave ourselves.
"And Zhang Lu in Hanzhong, or Liu Yan in Yi Province — no need to mind them?"
"If they were so good as to move first, that would be a gift to us, if anything."
When I raised the question that had been preying on my mind for a long while, Jia Xu answered with perfect equanimity.
"Should they invade, we need only throw back their armies, then counterattack and take their lands."
"Hmm..."
I nodded.
"That said, Zhang Lu and Liu Yan understand this as well as we do, so they will never make the first move."
"Then what am I supposed to do?"
"Yi Province may be rich land and a natural fortress, but Yi Province alone cannot contend for all under heaven."
Well, that much went without saying.
Even Zhuge Liang, grinding her own body down to the bone in devoted service, met her appointed end at Wuzhang Plains. If even she couldn't pull it off, what could Zhang Lu and Liu Yan — lesser men by every measure — possibly hope to do?
For that matter, Liu Yan was well advanced in years, with few days left to him.
And of all the heirs in the world, his successor was to be Liu Zhang?
Zhang Lu and Liu Zhang were precisely the sort who would not budge a hair's width no matter what pandemonium broke out beyond their borders.
"Even if you build our strength a little further before moving on Yi Province, it will not be too late," Jia Xu said, meeting my eyes.
"Understood."
Throwing ourselves at Yi Province on a whim and paying for it in soldiers would be a disaster. I felt no need to court the risk of a weakened faction just to seize the place.
As Cao Cao had done in the original history, we could claim the lion's share of the realm first and reach for Yi Province at our leisure.
Besides, give it time, and Yi Province would sprout traitors to Liu Zhang in wildly excessive numbers.
Zhang Song, the plain-faced woman Cao Cao herself certified as a mannerless lout — a character the Romance introduced only to drop midway through; Meng Da, the grandmaster of the backstab who'd make any Shu devotee grind his teeth to powder; and, to crown it all, Fa Zheng, the genius strategist whom Liu Bei honored with the only posthumous title she ever personally conferred.
Short of some genuine mishap, wouldn't they deliver Yi Province to me on a silver platter, all on their own?
Of course, their moment lay quite a way down the road — which meant, in the end, that this too was a problem time itself would solve.
If I had to keep watching Hebei, where Yuan Shao and Gongsun Zan were locked together, and leave alone the Yi Province direction, where Zhang Lu and Liu Yan sat entrenched, then the only direction left for us to expand into was the Central Plains...
"So for the Central Plains as well, we wait for the warlords to bleed each other weak?"
"That is so."
"..."
At Jia Xu's serene affirmation, I shut my mouth.
This needed time to ripen, and that needed time too, did it?
The world — the heavens themselves — were insisting that I play the couch-bound hermit for the foreseeable future.
Drumming my fingers against my knee, I sank into thought for a moment — and then, suddenly, a thought struck me.
Wait. Isn't this actually a good thing?
All I had to do was lounge about in comfort in Luoyang, eat delicious food, and watch them beat each other bloody.
There's a saying, isn't there? If you can't avoid it, enjoy it.
It wasn't as if I could step forward this very instant, knock every one of them flat, and unify the realm — so there was nothing for it.
In that case, better to pour my strength into domestic administration while the luxury lasted.
And the first step of domestic administration was talent recruitment.
Better to bring gifted people to my side than to pointlessly hand them to my enemies and hand them room to grow.
I sorted through the names surfacing in my head and began turning over exactly how I might lure each and every one of them to me.