Xinhai Revolution
Something about this unit is strange.
That was the conclusion Guo Songling reached, one week to the day after his transfer in.
“Second Lieutenants Jo Do-seon, Woo Deok-sun. What exactly are you... doing right now?”
“Oh, Lieutenant Guo. There you are.”
“What does it look like? We're making books.”
“Books.”
The two of them were stamping something out, again and again, with a crudely carved wooden frame onto volumes bound from sheets of paper and twine.
“The title is... Recruit Guidebook? Mind if I have a look?”
“Be my guest. Look all you want.”
He picked up a copy and turned the pages one by one.
“The alphabet, I see?”
“Well, truth be told we'd rather have used hanzi, but the Major ordered us to strip them out wherever we could.”
“Fair enough. Mind the homophones and it may well be more efficient that way.”
Guo Songling was a thoroughly practical man. He had started out as a hired hand in other people's households as a child just to keep body and soul together, and there was hardly a kind of labor — brute work or farm work alike — he had never done. Had he put on genteel airs, he would have starved to death.
He read straight through to the end, then let out a small sound of admiration and looked up at Jo Do-seon.
“Who devised all of this content?”
“Is something wrong with it?”
“On the contrary. It is simply the leanest material I have ever laid eyes on — not an ounce of fat on it.”
Beyond the fundamentals like drill and formations, it was crammed with substantive material he had never been taught at the academy — hand signals of every description, field first aid — a textbook like a bible entire. It even covered land navigation, military law, and how punishments were carried out under it.
“But can the common soldier truly master all of this? Frankly, I doubt the rank and file need this much knowledge. Would it not serve better as a manual for officers?”
At his question, Jo Do-seon and Woo Deok-sun traded a brief glance, then hoisted their shoulders in a shrug.
“We wondered the same thing ourselves, once.”
“But the Major says that in modern war, you have to raise every last soldier to his ceiling.”
“Still, however fine the individual soldier, no single man can stand against masses of rabble advancing shoulder to shoulder in formation. Can he?”
“Now, now. Take that up with the Major yourself. We, frankly speaking, were indepe— mmph!”
“Independent gunslingers! Haha! Former guns-for-hire who drifted the land on their own, that's what we were! Strategy and tactics? Not our department.”
Jo Do-seon clamped his hand firmly over Woo Deok-sun's mouth.
Guo Songling thought, privately, what thoroughly amusing men they were.
“I suppose I must. Where is the Major just now?”
“Probably over by the parade ground.”
“Understood. Then carry on with your work.”
“Aye, you too.”
Guo Songling rose and stepped outside.
— You hopeless idiot, just go advertise it, ADVERTISE!!
— Agh! Agh! That's what you get, keeping me up three days and nights! I said I'm sorry! Aaargh!!
It sounded as though someone inside was rattling on and on about something in Korean, but he paid it no mind. This Manchuria was a place where Chinese, Manchus, Koreans, and Mongols alike were all stirred together in one jumbled pot.
His own ancestors had come from the Shandong Peninsula, yet he had been born in Fengtian. His grandfather and father were Han Chinese, his grandmother Manchu, and his mother was a woman whose ethnicity no one could say for certain.
They had all gathered here, after all, to defend their shared homeland of Manchuria — what did a paltry matter like bloodline matter?
To Guo Songling, the people living in this Manchuria mattered far more than some emperor or grand minister south of the Shanhaiguan pass whom he had never once laid eyes on.
Ten times, a hundred times more than the men who claimed kinship with him as fellow Han.
He was still turning such thoughts over in his head when, before he knew it, he found himself near the parade ground.
“How many more?!!”
“““Twenty more—!!!”””
“Good! Final count is skipped!”
Tweeeet! Twee-twee-twee-tweeeet!
“Eighteen! ...Nineteen! ...Twent—URK!!”
“Oh dear, oh dear. Went and shouted the last count, did we? Then I suppose a puuunishment is in order? Now — forty more, ready!”
“Uwaaagh!!!”
“Kieeeek!!!”
Guo Songling approached slowly and addressed Lee Tae-oh, who stood atop the drill platform watching the spectacle below like a man at the theater.
“...Major.”
“Something on your mind, Lieutenant Guo?”
“Why are the soldiers... performing those bizarre movements?”
“Part of their Ranger training.”
“...Ranger training?”
Guerrilla tactics meant operations to disrupt the enemy's rear. Should they not, then, be drilling in concealment and deception? What were those grotesque contortions supposed to be?
“What tactical advantage does that grant us, exactly?”
“Ah — an absolutely enormous one, Lieutenant.”
“...Ohh! Is that so!? I knew it!”
“Curious?”
“Very much so, sir!”
So what they taught at school truly was a different animal from the field. Surely this was some profound, far-seeing stratagem — wisdom as good as gold, distilled from years of front-line experience. What words would come out of Lee Tae-oh's mouth?
Guo Songling anticipated it immensely.
Lee Tae-oh stood with his hands clasped behind his back, the very picture of gravity. Slowly, he opened his mouth.
“The lads stop giving me lip.”
“······.”
“Enormous advantage, that. People act up when they're merely tired — but work them until they feel half-dead, and they stop.”
“······.”
He pointed at the men rolling this way and that across the parade ground.
“See those boys down there?”
“Yes, sir.”
“As of this morning, not one of them could keep step with the man beside him.”
“Is that so.”
Men who, mere hours ago, could not execute a single drill movement properly. Lee Tae-oh sent a soldier running and summoned the platoon leader who had been putting his men through their paces.
“Major, you called?”
“Looks like you've ground them down nicely. Time to take them around the parade ground, I'd say.”
“Yes sir!”
The platoon leader returned the salute, turned, and gathered his soldiers.
“Fall out of step and we start over from the beginning! Anyone here who'd like to roll around in the dirt some more!?”
““Sir! No sir!””
“Platoon — forward, march!”
In barely six hours, men who had known not the first thing about drill were moving in step, in perfect formation.
Lee Tae-oh turned to Guo and spread his palms wide.
“Ta-da.”
“...I am deeply, deeply impressed.”
Guo Songling swept a hand back through his hair.
His head ached. It felt as though every piece of common sense he had ever carried was being torn down around him.
“What? A bit of a shock?”
“N-no, sir.”
“Stammering, so I'd say it was. Don't they teach you at the officer academy... no, wait — the Army Primary School — how to keep soldiers in line?”
“They taught that if an officer leads by example, showing the men diligence and learning in his own conduct, the soldiers will be moved to follow.”
“Sound doctrine. I think so too.”
“Then why on earth—”
“Because that only works on men who lived ordinary lives before they became soldiers.”
He kept his eyes fixed on the soldiers marching in rank and file far off as he went on.
“New recruits start arriving next week. Men who came after seeing the notice that wages would actually be paid. A fellow who'd been farming, a fellow who'd hawked fruit with his gab at a greengrocer's, a fellow who'd scraped by selling papers and doing odd jobs. Honest men who lived honest lives, every last one.”
Lee Tae-oh turned his head and looked at him.
“I want you to be their platoon leader.”
“...I am honored, sir, but there is one thing I would like to ask.”
“Go ahead. What is it?”
“Why does the Major entrust such guileless men to me, rather than take them under his own wing? Surely men like that would be far easier for you to command.”
“Well, now.”
He looked back out at the men still rolling across the distant parade ground.
“The truth is.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The truth is, I don't enjoy this either. I've no particular itch to grind people down, and I detest hassle above all things. Watching men scrawl every exotic curse imaginable next to my three-syllable name on the latrine walls isn't precisely a delight either.
But there are men, Lieutenant, who can only be set right by the rod — applied without a moment's rest. Like those ex-bandits of ours over there.”
“······.”
“And yet, for better or for worse, I owe those men a great deal. When we killed Jeon Ok-bon — if even one of them had thrown down his rifle and run, I might be dead myself.
So I intend to make every last one of them into proper human beings. Men with a home and a family to go back to, with honest work they can hold their heads high about wherever they go.”
So you start in clean water — the muddy water, I will purify myself.
he added.
“...Understood, sir.”
“Off you go?”
Guo Songling lifted a purloined copy of the Recruit Guidebook and said:
“If I am to be training recruits from next week, it seems I had best familiarize myself with this manual first.”
At that, Lee Tae-oh let out a small laugh.
“Good. Best of luck to you.”
Just as the two were about to part—
“Major! Major!!!”
“?”
Ma Jeom-san, sprinting toward them from far off, spat out the words:
“An uprising has broken out south of Shanhaiguan!!”
“...What? Already?”
“Sir? What do you mean, already?”
“No — my mistake. I'll convene a commanders' meeting. Every officer, brigade commander included — have them assemble.”
“Yes sir!!”
Early 1910.
Having collated the intelligence pouring in from every quarter, I called a commanders' meeting and laid a large map across the table.
“An uprising, you say?”
“Yes, sir. It has been suppressed.”
At first I thought the Xinhai Revolution had erupted a full year early — thank God it hadn't. For a moment there I wondered whether history had careened off its rails without my knowing.
I tapped the map with my long command pointer.
Jingzhou — Hunan Province. And its heart, the city of Changsha.
That was the place, all right — the very city where Liu Bei won Huang Zhong and Wei Yan in Romance of the Three Kingdoms.
“An uprising has broken out in Changsha, Jingzhou. Estimated strength: twenty thousand at minimum.”
“Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand. Twenty thousand.”
Zhang Zuolin, seated at the head of the table, chin propped on one hand, leg jiggling, muttered to himself.
“And why did they rise up?”
“The harvest failed and rice prices soared, and on top of that, certain landlords, speculators, and foreign investment firms hoarded rice.”
“Motherless bastards, the lot of them. Nothing to toy with, so they toy with people's food?!”
In the end, a woman driven past all endurance by hunger had thrown herself into the river and drowned — and that was the spark that lit the fuse.
“More than a hundred establishments, rice merchants and foreign firms combined, have burned to the ground, and the governor's residence was seized.”
“I see. And how was it put down?”
“...Well. About that.”
I fiddled with the sheaf of telegrams Hans had wired from Kiautschou.
GREAT BRITAIN
Butterfield & Swire.
Jardine, Matheson & Co.
Logistics warehouses burned. Damage considerable.
Two Royal Navy gunboats, HMS Thistle and HMS Snipe, dispatched posthaste.
JAPAN. Damage considerable. Gunboat Uji sortied.
UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. Asiatic Fleet.
USS Samar and United States Marines committed.
GERMAN EMPIRE.
Three civilians dead.
East Asia Cruiser Squadron.
SMS Vaterland and naval infantry committed.
“The navies and naval infantry of four powers — America, Britain, Japan, and Germany — sealed off the streets under naval gunfire, and when the Jingzhou Local Brigade proved sluggish about its suppression orders, two companies of New Army central troops were rushed in and finished the job with a volley followed by a bayonet charge.”
This.
What in God's name is this.
Is this Tiananmen?
The garrison wouldn't obey suppression orders, so they hauled in troops from some other province — men who had never laid eyes on the locals — and shot every last one of them dead? How is this one damned bit different from Tiananmen?
These bastards pull the exact same stunts now as they will in the future.
And I understood.
This was the sediment piling up, layer by layer, that would detonate into the Xinhai Revolution next year. Like concrete crumbling away in pebbles before the dam finally gives.
Every joint and seam of the Qing dynasty was splintering apart with a dull popping sound.
This was inevitable.
“...Nothing from the center?”
“An order for each army to refrain from rash action, and to establish order so the populace is not swept up in wild rumors.”
“Whoever issued that order, I can tell his mother wasn't around to raise him right.”
“And they are replacing the Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces.”
“What? At a time like this?”
Zhang Zuolin lit a cigarette in one swift motion.
“Whew. Who is it?”
“The former Shengjing General, Zhao Erxun.”
“Goddamn it. They're sending that old fossil back now?!”
“With the situation this grave, they'll likely recall Xu Shichang and hand him the Ministry of War.”
What Beijing trusted right now were the six New Army central divisions they had poured heart and soul into raising. The New Army Local Brigades had failed to carry out their orders — but the instant the command came down, the central army turned downtown Changsha into a slaughterhouse.
Installing the bureaucratic, obedient Xu Shichang as Minister of War — their de facto defense minister — would be a very tidy move on their part.
“And... it appears Beijing intends to establish a public-security regime.”
“Goddammit. Now what?”
“They are posting Inspection Commissioners to each region. A man named She Ruqing is coming to Fengtian.”
“Inspection Commissioner?”
“Should the center declare martial law, the viceroy becomes that region's martial law commander and the Inspection Commissioner his deputy — and they will seize control of all military authority.”
“······.”
The end of the cigarette clenched between Zhang Zuolin's teeth burned down fast.
One second.
Two.
Three.
“Colonel.”
“...Huh? Hot, hot — damn it!!”
He shook the ash from his hand, spat, and clamped a fresh cigarette between his lips.
“Whew. Well — hate it all I like, short of open rebellion there's nothing we can do from here, is there? So all that's left is to wait for our chance.”
The commanders nodded one and all.
“The road ahead looks rocky, so every one of you devote yourselves to drilling your troops. When trouble comes, the only thing we'll be able to trust is our own fists. Depending on how this goes, we may yet find ourselves staring down rifle barrels at those central army bastards.”
Every commander's head stopped mid-nod.
“What?”
“...Ahem.”
“You jumpy little bastards, the lot of you. Did I just say charge into Beijing? I said prepare for contingencies, that's all!! Trembling in your boots like... dogs caught out in the rain!?”
“Colonel.”
“What now, Tae-oh? You scared too?”
“No, sir.”
“Then what?”
I said it plainly, and with all the conviction in me:
“Don't worry, sir. The brigade's direct-command units can beat anyone they're pitted against.”
“What?”
Zhang Zuolin blinked.
“Heh. Heh heh.”
Then he stretched his grin wide enough to show every tooth in his head.
“HAHAHAHA—!! That's the spirit, goddammit! A man's got to have that much guts!”
He sucked down his cigarette with genuine relish, then ground it out in the ashtray.
“None of us knows what the future holds. So sweat your asses off, every last one of you. Dismissed.”
““Yes sir!””
April 1910.
Xu Shichang, Viceroy of the Three Eastern Provinces and Shengjing General, returned to Beijing.
The vacant post was filled by his predecessor, Zhao Erxun, who came back to take it up once more.
And on that very same day—
In Guangzhou, a thousand men of the New Army Local Brigade rose in mass mutiny.