Section Seven

The current situation was exceedingly peculiar. Ever since Lin Feng had launched a sweeping campaign of retribution in the capital, bannermen across the empire had sworn eternal enmity toward him. The hatred harbored by the three princes was especially intense—they not only bore the burden of national disgrace but also the agony of having their families exterminated, rendering their animosity all the more irreconcilable. Yet, ironically, up to this moment, Lin Feng had not seen a single soldier dispatched against him.

By the time the Qing dynasty’s lineage reached the Kangxi era, the composition of its military had changed dramatically. At its founding, the Eight Banner cavalry—the invincible force that swept in from Liaodong—had been the dynasty’s mainstay. But once the empire was unified, this force succumbed to corruption and degeneration at a shocking pace. Though not yet wholly incapable of fighting, they were but a shadow of their former martial glory. At present, the few units worthy of being called elite were only those cavalry contingents drawn from beyond Shanhaiguan, along with the auxiliary forces contributed by various Mongol tribes. Even so, their numbers constituted but a tiny fraction of the self-proclaimed “million-strong” Qing army.

Thus, during this era, the Han Green Standard Army formed the backbone of the Qing military. To be fair, the Aisin Gioro emperors, from Hong Taiji onward, had devoted themselves to the study of “collaborator management,” becoming especially skilled at exploiting traitors among the Han. Each era featured its own exceptional exponents of this art—men such as Fan Wencheng, Hong Chengchou, and now the three puppet princes at the height of their influence.

It was Hong Taiji who first pioneered the use of puppet armies. One must concede that this minority monarch was possessed of extraordinary talent. It was he who first organized captured Han peasants and surrendered Ming soldiers into the Han Banner, making them vassals within the Eight Banners and mainstays of the fighting force. When Dorgon took up his mantle, this “united front” policy was inherited and expanded. The puppet army, which had started with only a few tens of thousands, snowballed over the years into a force of several hundred thousand. After enduring years of indoctrination, these collaborators gradually became the very pillars supporting the Qing regime.

Indeed, once one had fallen into the quagmire of opposing Qing unification and resisting the tide of history, talk of ethnic reconciliation became farcical. As matters stood, Lin Feng and his followers had no room left for compromise with the Qing. Their struggle could end only in the total destruction of one side by the other.

During this period, Han military intelligence made great strides. Chen Menglei had gradually adapted to his role as chief of the secret police, a transformation largely enabled by the aid of the Heaven and Earth Society. The Aoki Hall, active in Zhili, boasted genuine talent. Under their guidance, Chen Menglei selected a number of promising recruits from his propaganda corps for espionage training. Many of these men were itinerant performers—“actors”—whose social status was little better than that of beggars. Now, given the chance to become state officials, they embraced their new roles with zeal. Thanks to this spirit, the Han army’s intelligence network quickly stretched out across the provinces.

With this influx of intelligence, Lin Feng and his staff gained a clear understanding of the current situation. First, it was evident that the armies of the three southern princes could not possibly return north in the short term—a basic military reality. On the battlefield, Wu Sangui and the other rebel princes were locked in a strategic stalemate with Qing forces, a moment of tense calm that was more dangerous than any full-scale battle. The political upheaval in Beijing had neutralized the Qing’s former battlefield advantage, and the morale of their troops had plummeted. The Green Standard Army was gripped by fear and suspicion, and tensions with the proud Bannermen had sharply escalated. In such conditions, the Qing could not afford to shift their main forces north. Should they dare, Wu Sangui would surely seize the opportunity to strike for the throne, and with their spirits so low, the Qing army might well collapse before even crossing the Yellow River.

Moreover, the empire’s wealth and resources were concentrated in the south. Unless absolutely necessary, the Qing would never abandon the southern provinces, which sustained their war effort.

In the north, every province was desperately expanding its forces. Because of the centralizing nature of the imperial system, the court had always forbidden provincial governors to maintain armies strong enough to threaten the center. As a result, supplies and weaponry were woefully inadequate, and after years of supporting the war against the Three Feudatories, the north had been thoroughly drained of military strength. Now, only flood-control troops and a handful of Green Standard garrisons remained—hardly a force capable of offensive action. Until new armies could be trained, they posed little threat.

The only Qing troops capable of launching a sudden strike were stationed beyond Shanhaiguan, in the region of Fengtian, Heilongjiang, and Ningguta. The greatest threat came from the three thousand cavalry under the General of Heilongjiang, but even they were hampered by long distances and severe logistical shortages. Even if these border forces began war preparations immediately, it would be half a year before they could act. As for the garrison of just over a thousand at Shanhaiguan, Lin Feng gave them little thought.

Naturally, Lin Feng would not let this rare opportunity slip by. During this period, the Han army conducted a second large-scale recruitment drive in the capital region. This time, the scope was broader: not only urban poor from Beijing, but also farmers from the surrounding counties were conscripted. By now, word of the Han army’s generous benefits had spread throughout the region, and Chen Menglei’s propaganda was highly effective. Lin Feng thus had little difficulty expanding his forces to over forty thousand, and their quality was impressive—apart from widespread illiteracy, there was little to complain of.

Yet Lin Feng realized he could not achieve everything he wished. First, ideological work was a challenge—he lacked the ability to create a sophisticated doctrine, and in the seventeenth century, uncritically imitating foreign ideas would have marked him as a madman. Thus, he could not mobilize the masses. Nor was redistribution feasible: setting aside internal opposition, driving the landlords into the arms of the Qing was out of the question. After much deliberation, Lin Feng chose to set a moderate standard for land reform; after all, the Qing were not as formidable as the Japanese invaders or the Nationalist reactionaries.

Under Lin Feng’s orders, all estates in the capital region previously owned by the imperial family and Bannerman nobility were confiscated unconditionally. After surveying and calculating yields, the land was divided into small plots. The old soldiers and officers who had followed Lin Feng from the start finally saw their land deeds become tangible property—Lin Feng had kept his promise and made them landowners.

New recruits to the Han army also shared in the rewards. Their families received generous government subsidies. At Lin Feng’s insistence, the military government under Li Guangdi proved remarkably humane. In addition to food and silver, goods previously restricted by the Qing—oil, salt, soy, vinegar—now graced soldiers’ kitchens. Special services for the military, including regulated brothels, were established. All shops, apothecaries, and physicians in Han-controlled areas were ordered to offer soldiers and their families half-price goods and services—under penalty of death for any merchant who dared defy the edict.

These sweeping pro-military measures instantly elevated the status of soldiers to unprecedented heights. Morale soared, and combat effectiveness improved rapidly. After a period of intense training, the ten thousand new recruits from Beijing had become a passable fighting force. In recent actions against nearby counties, they acquitted themselves well: their marching formations and artillery drills were beginning to resemble a true army. Many quick-witted men, who mastered the use of muskets and cannon, were promoted to officer rank and shared in the division of Manchu lands alongside the veterans.

Eager to present a new image, Lin Feng personally designed a modern military uniform. Since the Han army had broken definitively with the Qing, clinging to the old flowing garb was politically untenable. On this point, Lin Feng was adamant. When the city’s most renowned tailor produced a suit reminiscent of the Zhongshan jacket, most officers were reluctant to accept it. But the leader’s authority was not to be questioned. Normally affable, Lin Feng now became a tyrant—storming out of meetings, browbeating his subordinates, and employing every tactic of division and coercion. Under such pressure, Yang Haisheng and Old Liu were the first to compromise, donning the odd-looking uniforms. Soon the entire army followed suit.

The firearms captured from Beijing’s arsenal had originally been intended by the Kangxi Emperor for the Imperial Yellow Banner’s artillery regiment. In truth, the emperor’s vision was not particularly advanced—most of the weapons were matchlocks, several generations behind their European contemporaries.

Matchlocks had a long history in China. In the days of the Japanese pirate incursions, they had been issued in large numbers to Ming troops. Qi Jiguang’s “Treatise on Military Training” mentions them, rating them as “chicken ribs”—full of potential but of limited battlefield value, sometimes less effective than bows and arrows. Over the years, artisans had improved their range and rate of fire, but the weapons still left much to be desired. The consensus among experienced officers was that their chief advantage was ease of training: unlike archers, who required years to master their craft, musketeers could be trained quickly.

Lin Feng had once considered solving this problem by purchasing flintlocks from Western countries. But during discussions with Rick, his hopes were dashed. In this era, the arms trade was far more difficult than he had imagined. Flintlocks were still cutting-edge weapons, tightly controlled by European states. Few European merchants in East and Southeast Asia could supply them, and those who could were politically connected; such weapons were not available to just anyone. Smuggling was out of the question. For a handful of guns to arm a bodyguard, perhaps something could be arranged, but to equip thousands was impossible.

Resigned, Lin Feng was forced to increase the burden on his musket units. In addition to regular drill and marksmanship, every musketeer was issued a long saber and trained in bayonet and close-quarters combat. Until they could be properly rearmed, these troops could not fully claim the title of “musketeers.” It was a frustrating predicament—armed with modern concepts but hobbled by obsolete hardware. Fortunately, their adversaries, the Bannermen and Green Standard troops, paid little attention to firearms, giving Lin Feng’s musket corps at least some edge—though cavalry would remain a challenge, against infantry they had the advantage.

As the days passed, the Han army threw itself into intensive training. Meanwhile, the northern provinces under Qing control were far from idle. With the central government’s grip weakened and the southern princes meddling at will, the administrative system north of the Yellow River fell into chaos. The official oversight apparatus was paralyzed, and corruption and dereliction of duty among local officials grew rampant. Still, the provinces maintained a united front in military matters, frantically expanding their forces to protect themselves. The burden of raising funds for troops and supplies was passed down through layer upon layer of bureaucratic command, until it became a crushing, astronomical weight on the common people.

History since Dorgon and the Shunzhi era showed that the Qing, after establishing their dynasty, had no meaningful development policies. In fact, until Kangxi’s personal rule, the regime followed a destructive policy of economic plunder. The most notorious examples were the Banner Land Enclosure Movement and the forced enslavement of peasants. Under the regent Ao Bai, these policies reached monstrous extremes, devastating the central plains. Though Kangxi later tried to reverse the damage, his efforts were too brief to make a significant impact. The main beneficiaries were always the Bannerman aristocracy, the backbone of the regime. No matter how brilliant Kangxi was, he could not destroy his own kin for the sake of reform. Before he could revive the economy, rebellion erupted among the Three Feudatories, forcing all social programs to halt. The people of the north had to shoulder the costs of suppressing the uprising. After years of war, the northern economy was on the brink of collapse. Masses of peasants were ruined and became refugees; in provinces such as Henan, Shanxi, and Anhui, entire villages were abandoned as people fled for their lives. Yet at this very moment, provincial governments were frenziedly levying new war taxes, compounding the people’s misery.

There was no suspense to what followed. Under the covert planning of Yang Qilong’s Four Brothers Society, massive peasant uprisings first erupted in Shangqiu and Xinxiang, Henan. Thanks to meticulous organization and secrecy, these revolts far exceeded officials’ expectations in both scale and scope. In Shangqiu, over four hundred thousand starving people assembled overnight. Within a day, with help from insiders in the city, they stormed and captured the prefectural seat. Simultaneously, more than three hundred thousand insurgents gathered in Xinxiang and seized several county towns.

It was as if a fuse had been lit. As news of the great uprising spread throughout the land, hungry peasants in Shanxi, Zhili, Anhui, Shaanxi, and other provinces responded in kind, launching large-scale rebellions. The forces of insurrection rallied under slogans such as “Drive out the Tartar invaders! Restore our land!” and struck fiercely at Qing government offices.

In an instant, the very mountains and rivers seemed to change color.