Entering the ninth month, the weather gradually turned cool. In the misty drizzle, a few yellow leaves occasionally drifted down from the lush green canopy of Mount Yuelu.
Han Qian stood beneath the pavilion. The wind swept in the misty rain, and the breeze against his face already carried a hint of cold.
“No one can know Junior Supervisor Shen’s state at death. Even the two young eunuchs who served him in life were beaten to death before the palace gates the next day for stealing private property…” An Xi clan youth sent back by Feng Liao reported the information they had gathered during their time in Jinling.
Han Qian nodded. This Xi clan youth wearing a rain cape descended the mountain and disappeared into the misty rain.
Han Qian sighed softly, involuntarily falling into deep thought…
Though Shen He was destined to die, in order to make him appear to recover while in Tanzhou, Han Qian had ordered the use of strong tonics in his medicine, actually depleting in advance that last bit of his life force.
Shen He hadn’t been able to endure past the eighth month. It could be said that Han Qian had assisted the Anning Palace from behind the scenes.
Over the past two months, Prince Tan’s mansion and the Hunan Administrative Commission had been fully reorganizing the forces of Hunan’s eight provinces after reducing the feudal lords.
Recovering the five provinces of Yue, Lang, Tan, Shao, and Heng, they detained a total of forty thousand prisoner soldiers. Adding the troops that had pledged allegiance following the surrendered generals Zhang Han, Gao Long, Miao Yong, and others, there were also nearly six thousand men.
Among these forty-six thousand men, there were about twenty-six thousand local militia recruited through conscription. After discussion among the Administrative Commission’s officials, they ultimately decided to let eleven thousand militiamen return home, ensuring that agricultural work in the various provinces would be affected as little as possible by the warfare. The other fifteen thousand militiamen who were selected by lottery to remain were incorporated into the newly established provincial garrisons of Langzhou, Yuezhou, Tanzhou, Shaozhou, and Hengzhou, preserved as necessary armed forces for maintaining local order and basic defense.
The appointments of Provincial Military Commissioners, Military Commissioners, and even basic-level military officers were mainly drawn from military officers and veteran soldiers transferred from the Dragon Sparrow Army.
The veteran soldiers of the Dragon Sparrow Army were more willing to return home after the war to reunite with their families, even resisting being selected for transfer to the provincial garrisons in various places to serve as basic-level military officers.
Even if their families were also moved over for resettlement, many of the veteran soldiers had more courage than literacy—barely recognizing a few characters—and without sufficient time for training, their ability to adapt to unfamiliar environments was very poor. It was difficult to expect them to coordinate the complex relationships with local clans and militiamen well. Contradictions between them and the local population and militiamen were also endless.
This also resulted in the provincial garrisons having quite limited combat effectiveness.
However, to currently ensure the Administrative Commission’s absolute control over the localities and prevent localities from harboring rebellious intentions, this was also a method that had to be implemented.
At this time, Jinyun Tower monitoring and investigating the localities under the pretext of searching for traitors also became an indispensable supplementary means of controlling the various provinces and counties.
Apart from those in Jinling and those secretly infiltrating Shu and the Liang state to gather intelligence, by the end of the eighth month, Jinyun Tower’s surveillance organization for Hunan’s eight provinces had also recruited personnel from among the captured militiamen and expanded to four hundred men.
Besides the militiamen, there were over twenty thousand prisoner soldiers who were troops directly under the Ma family’s military prefectures. These people, together with their families totaling over one hundred thirty thousand, were naturally all enrolled this time as military household soldiers under the Dragon Sparrow Army’s military prefectures.
The garrison military prefectures originally established by Tanzhou at Taojiang, Ziyang, Ningxiang, and other places, owning a total of over nine hundred thousand acres of grain fields, were naturally still cultivated by the original military households.
Because the campaign to reduce the feudal lords along the shores of Lake Dongting hadn’t lasted long, major cities like Tanzhou, Yueyang, and Hanshou had almost all been recovered without experiencing much warfare. The harm to agriculture and urban handicraft industries had been kept to a minimum, without causing devastating destruction.
Over these two months, Jinling had also dispatched large numbers of civilian officials to fill the vacancies created by executing and purging traitors. The situation in the counties along Lake Dongting quickly stabilized. After entering the ninth month, merchants and travelers began to frequently appear on the rivers, lakes, streams, post roads, and highways, bringing renewed prosperity.
Though the direct search of the Tanzhou Governor-General’s Office when the city fell yielded extremely limited results, subsequent deep reckoning with the civil and military officers of the rebel army resulted in confiscating over eight hundred thousand acres of grain fields and mulberry fields, over six thousand rooms, over three hundred pawn shops and warehouses, three shipyards, six iron mines, six coal mines, twelve weaving bureaus, and over sixty large and medium water mills.
Additionally, the confiscated bondservants and traitors with their families demoted to slave status totaled over ninety thousand people.
Confiscated grain totaled two hundred sixty thousand shi along with other goods worth over five million strings of cash.
The confiscated money and grain undoubtedly all went to the public treasury as the Hunan Administrative Commission’s and various provinces’ public funds and the Dragon Sparrow Army’s military maintenance funds.
The twenty to thirty iron mines, shipyards, weaving bureaus, coal mines, and their attached ten-thousand-plus official bondservants were also all incorporated under the Administrative Commission’s jurisdiction and managed by the Salt and Iron Bureau with Zhang Qian serving as supervisor. Each year’s operational income was also entirely used to compensate for shortfalls in the Administrative Commission’s public funds and military maintenance funds.
Another forty-thousand-plus official bondservants totaling over seven thousand households, along with over three hundred thousand acres of grain fields and mulberry fields, were used to further expand the military households and military prefecture garrison fields of the Dragon Sparrow Army.
At this point, the garrison military prefectures under Prince Tan’s mansion Guard Command had expanded to ten locations, with a total enrollment of sixty thousand military households and nearly one hundred thousand able-bodied men, owning over two million acres of grain fields.
This also meant that having reached this stage in the campaign to reduce the feudal lords, the scale of military households and garrison fields directly under Prince Tan’s mansion had more than doubled.
Not considering extreme situations when warfare erupted, to maintain the Left and Right Dragon Sparrow Armies’ daily standing combat strength of around thirty thousand men roughly reached the level of conscripting one out of every three men. This was equivalent to each able-bodied man in the military households bearing an average of nearly four months of military service per year, while the purchase and repair of armor and weapons all needed to be the military households’ own responsibility.
Additionally, every ten military households had to provide one mule or horse and also pay a certain field tax per household.
For ordinary military households, this burden remained quite heavy.
However, for Prince Tan’s mansion and the Hunan Administrative Commission, maintaining an elite combat force of thirty thousand men and around thirty thousand men in local provincial garrisons—as long as large-scale warfare didn’t erupt—was sufficient in expenditure. This time, to win hearts, they even implemented a three-year field tax exemption for the newly enrolled military households.
Apart from two hundred thousand acres of grain fields and mulberry land plus over two thousand households of official bondservants directly designated as private property of Third Prince’s Prince Tan mansion, nearly three hundred thousand acres of grain fields and mulberry land plus nearly four thousand official bondservants were all used to reward meritorious officers.
With the Third Prince’s support, Han Qian and his father Han Daoxun were still designated as having first merit in reducing the feudal lords, ranking before Marquis Xinchang Li Pu, Zheng Hui, Marquis Zhenyuan Yang Jian, Shen Yang, and others.
Besides the mansion in Tanzhou City, Han Qian and his father Han Daoxun also received rewards of over six thousand acres of grain fields, two hundred households of official bondservants, and other grants, permitted to maintain three hundred household troops and retainers.
This time, eight thousand soldiers were also selected by lottery from the newly added garrison military prefectures’ thirty-thousand-plus military households and transferred to Shaozhou to be incorporated into the Left Dragon Sparrow Army, accepting Li Zhigao’s command and training.
At this time, Li Zhigao on the southern front, besides directly commanding the newly organized Left Dragon Sparrow Army, also exercised authority over the provincial garrisons of Shaozhou and Hengzhou, temporarily fully responsible for suppressing and resisting the remnant rebel soldiers who had fled into Yongzhou territory.
Though the troops Li Zhigao currently commanded and controlled reached twenty-three thousand men, over three-quarters of them were surrendered and captured soldiers. It was difficult to say how much combat effectiveness they had, and in the short term it would be very difficult to launch a large-scale offensive from Wuzhi Ridge into Yongzhou against the rebel army.
However, besides the over fifteen thousand elite troops of the Right Dragon Sparrow Army resting in Tanzhou City, plus over three thousand naval officers and soldiers of the tower ship fleet, the three thousand elite troops of the Chenzhou tribal camp commanded by Xi Zhen, and five thousand troops of the Tanzhou provincial garrison, after the ancient post road crossing Xuefeng Mountain was opened, the distance from Qianyang County to Shaozhou’s Wugang County was shortened to one hundred thirty li. If necessary, the Xuzhou provincial garrison could also be transferred at any time to Wuzhi Ridge southeast of Shaozhou to assist in operations.
Jinling remained relatively calm and peaceful for now. The Third Prince stationed in Tanzhou was mainly stabilizing the situation in Hunan. Military and political affairs had the assistance of Shen Yang and Marquis Xinchang Li Pu. Shen Yang had Wang Lin, Zhang Qian, and others as strategists, while Li Pu had Wen Ruilin, Chai Jian, Li Chong, and others as strategists. Han Qian, as Advisory Military Counselor, was actually not the busiest.
After the affairs of Jinyun Tower were smoothly organized, the Third Prince ordered Han Qian to proceed to Shaozhou to assist Li Zhigao in organizing military preparations on the southern front.
No matter what changes occurred in Jinling, Tanzhou as the main base could not be lost. The remnant armies of the two units under Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia who had retreated to Yongzhou remained a constant worry for Prince Tan’s mansion and couldn’t be taken lightly.
After receiving definite news of Shen He’s death from illness, Han Qian received orders to depart from Tanzhou and head to Wuzhi Ridge in the southern part of Shaozhou to meet with Li Zhigao, assisting in organizing defenses on the southern front and striving to launch an offensive against the Yongzhou rebel army after winter set in, also providing an account to Jinling.
Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia had led their remnant forces, dragging families totaling over one hundred thousand people, fleeing into Yongzhou.
Emperor Tianyou’s ruthless suppression of the Tanzhou traitors left these two rebel armies with no choice but to become cornered beasts resisting stubbornly. Though these two rebel armies quickly and smoothly took control of the two major cities of Yingyang and Lingling after fleeing into Yongzhou, and their troop strength was stronger than Li Zhigao’s forces, due to the material shortages caused by so many people needing food, drink, and supplies, as well as sharp contradictions with local Yongzhou forces, they were unable to turn around and attack the Chu army stationed in Shaozhou and Hengzhou.
Both sides could only continue their stalemate for now.
South of Yongzhou was Quanzhou under the jurisdiction of King of Nanhai Liu Yin. According to current intelligence, a considerable portion of officials within the Nanhai Jinghai Army feared the Chu army’s strength and strongly advocated not acting rashly.
Though King of Nanhai Liu Yin’s forces had assembled over ten thousand troops at Guizhou south of Quanzhou, currently there were no signs of contact with the two rebel armies of Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia, much less directly sending troops or supplies to reinforce Zhao Sheng and Luo Jia.
Li Zhigao employed troops with the manner of a great general. After Han Qian met with Li Zhigao and observed the defenses around Wuzhi Ridge and Shizi Ridge (located at the border between Yongzhou and Hengzhou), he found nothing that required his concern. He then first headed to Wugang County in Shaozhou.
Besides the fact that the eastern exit of the Xuefeng Mountain post road was located within Wugang County’s territory, Han Qian needed to pass through Wugang County to return to Qianyang. Moreover, among the six thousand acres of grain fields he was awarded this time, excluding three thousand acres near Dragon Tooth City, another three thousand acres of grain fields were located at the exit of the Xuefeng Mountain post road within Wugang County’s territory.
This estate had originally been the private property of Shaozhou Governor Luo Jia. After being confiscated and made public, Han Qian had requested the Third Prince to select his reward lands there.
The farming households on the estate had naturally all been coerced by Luo Jia to flee into Yongzhou. Han Qian’s visit this time was also to relocate and settle the two hundred households of official bondservants granted under his and his father’s names.
On the twelfth day of the ninth month, when Han Qian’s group rode into Wugang County territory and could finally see Wugang County town at the foot of Xuefeng Mountain, they simultaneously saw a contingent of troops, about a dozen people, emerge from Wugang town and slowly ride toward them.
Guo Que’er, responsible for scouting ahead, galloped back with two men and reported: “The Wugang County Magistrate, County Lieutenant, and others have come out of the city to welcome my lord!”
Wugang County Magistrate Song Ze was an official directly appointed from Jinling in mid-July and had no friendship with Han Qian, but Song Ze dared not show the slightest negligence toward Han Qian, the favorite at the Third Prince’s side. The new Wugang County Lieutenant was Han Daoming’s eldest son by a concubine, Han Qian’s cousin Han Chengmeng.
Among the eight provinces under the Hunan Administrative Commission’s jurisdiction, apart from the officials of Chenzhou and Xuzhou remaining basically unchanged, and apart from Yongzhou still under rebel army control, in the other five provinces’ forty counties, over these two months, a total of three hundred ranked officials had been appointed. Han Chengmeng, as an attendant at the Third Prince’s side, had also been appointed this time as the Wugang County Lieutenant of the eighth rank.
In Wugang County, Han Chengmeng as County Lieutenant, besides assisting County Magistrate Song Ze in catching bandits and maintaining county defenses and order, was also responsible for training and commanding a county militia force of five hundred men…