Even Such Feeble Troops Could Still Be Utilized

With the conclusion of the summer harvest, the local militia and bowmen of Changzhou—effectively controlled by the local gentry—received orders to gather outside the city walls of Changzhou for a ten-day grand exercise.

Under the name of Zhang Xun alone, the number of mobilized bowmen exceeded two thousand. Combined with the militias from other townships across the entire commandery, the total eventually reached no less than seven thousand men.

It was quite a grand spectacle.

The gentry contributed three hundred bolts of colored silk—note that this was colored silk, far more expensive than a thousand bolts of white silk—erected rows of banners, demarcated sectors, established front and rear formations, and arranged themselves into camps. They also raised white cloth markers, clearly writing down the respective townships, platoons, and unit affiliations, strictly defining the headcounts.

To assist Ma Yong in organizing the exercise, Zhao Huai from Liyang had dispatched an additional thousand regular government soldiers. These thousand regulars were also "feeble troops," barely capable of holding their ground rather than serving as stalwart and valiant elite forces.

The only fortunate news was that Zhang Xi had returned from Hangzhou. The funds Zhang Xun had entrusted to him not only successfully fulfilled the mission of purchasing two hundred Divine Arm Bows, but also brought back an eight-ox crossbow and twenty thousand bolts of arrows.

Additionally, upon learning that this concerned the hometown of Zhang Cheng, the Palace Draftsman, the warehouse-managing official routinely allocated three thousand conical hats and three thousand heart-protecting bronze mirrors to Changzhou. There were no full suits of armor to spare; having a heart-protecting mirror to make do with was the best they could get.

To be frank, given the state of your "feeble troops," even if you were issued three thousand sets of lamellar armor, strapping them on would render these soldiers incapable of fighting. They would exhaust themselves to death before walking a few paces, making the distribution utterly pointless.

In truth, this was the universal condition of the Song dynasty's military at the time. The temporarily conscripted levies were all starving refugees and vagrants; how many of them possessed abundant physical strength? Very few, truly very few.

Even during the Jianyan era, there were hardly any soldiers in the Sichuan and Qin Feng regions capable of wearing lamellar armor, wielding heavy battleaxes, and serving as the backbone of an army.

Zhang Xi, however, had the physical stamina to strap on a full set of bowman's lamellar armor, and thus he extorted a set of lamellar armor for himself from the warehouse-managing official. As for why he did not extort one for Zhang Xun? Did Zhang Xun even need to extort one?

In the left storehouse of Zhang Xun's estate sat five sets of armor, all comprising the helmets, military equipment, and banners of generations of ancestors. Take Zhang Xun's late father, Zhang Xuexi, for instance; having served as the Signer of the Privy Council back in the day, he naturally owned a fine set of lamellar armor. Father and son were of similar build, so when the time came for battle, Zhang Xun could simply put on his father's armor directly.

After all, as for iron armor, one set could be passed down through three generations; the owner might die, but the armor remained.

There was once a story that when the Liao cavalry marched south to attack Changzhou of the Song dynasty, many soldiers wore armor that they had stripped from the bodies of Shi Chonggui's defeated troops when their grandfathers fought against Shi Chonggui. Upon returning home, they only needed to add a few new scales to use them as brand-new gear.

Of course, some people likely stripped theirs from the men under the command of the Donkey-Cart God of War at Gaoliang River, but that was another matter entirely and need not be discussed further.

The gentry of this commandery all held official status; without that presentable official skin, one could not even become a member of the gentry in the Great Song. Put in the context of the Great Ming, if you were not even a provincial graduate, what kind of rural squire could you possibly claim to be?

There was only so much arable land under heaven, and those who wished to partake in the feast had to sit in orderly rows. Without some political standing, it was utterly impossible to protect one's land and wealth.

Today, the gentry were dressed in formal robes and belts, and they had even invited Zhao Ruijian, the prefect of the commandery, to attend the exercise together. Just watching these ten thousand men drilling simultaneously was already a magnificent spectacle.

The militia and bowmen from the various townships were actually commanded by the scions of the gentry families. For instance, the more than two thousand bowmen sent by Zhang Xun were almost entirely officered by men surnamed Zhang, all of them collateral branches propagated from the Zhang family over the past four hundred years. As the head of the main lineage, Zhang Xun usually showed them much care, and the righteous granary in his estate was established for the benefit of the entire clan.

Before these two thousand-odd men alone, Zhang Xun could command a hundred responses to a single call. Before assembling at the commandery capital, Zhang Xun had already coordinated internally with the various Zhang scions: on the field, everyone would follow Ma Yong's instructions; there would be no need for them to engage in duels or deploy square and circular arrays. It was merely a show of force to familiarize everyone with the coordination of ten thousand men.

And indeed, that was the case. Ma Yong was well aware of the actual condition of the bowmen from the various townships. As long as they could be led by the official and gentry scions of their respective districts to display banners and stand firmly in pre-assigned positions, it was more than enough.

The actual performance was carried out by the two thousand feeble troops who had been drilling under Ma Yong for over two months, along with the thousand feeble troops dispatched by Zhao Huai. These soldiers performed maneuvers of marching forward in dense ranks, advancing en masse, retreating en masse, heeding commands, recognizing gongs and drums, and understanding their generals and commanders.

The primary focus remained on holding their ground.

The performance of successive firing and advancing—employing the technique of stationary-rank volley firing—was executed solely by the more than three hundred valiant elites whom Ma Yong had recruited back and forth with high pay.

The valiant elites were indeed different: clad in grey-hemp white armor, with heart-protecting mirrors strapped to their chests, wearing iron helmets, and having leather bracers tied to their arms, they advanced in successive waves. Crossbow bolts flew like winged insects, and arrows sped like rain, winning cheers and applause from the gentry and commoners across the commandery.

It was likely the same sentiment as when the officials, gentry, and commoners of the Great Song watched the Imperial Guards compete for victory banners at Jinming Pond inside Bianjing—the main attraction was simply the lively atmosphere.

The township militia and bowmen acting as the backdrop behind them stood in dense, overlapping ranks, waving banners and shouting battle cries. Only then did Zhang Xun understand why the authorities often seized massive numbers of commoners for military service: usually useful for labor, when a battle occurred, they could shout loudly from the rear. To the uninformed, it was genuinely terrifying.

The soldiers in the front could fight, those in the middle could hold the line, and those in the rear could shout. If the enemy's opening three axes of attack failed to rout the front line, and the entire army swept forward, the accompanying commoners were also quite adept at rounding up prisoners.

In a victorious battle, even the peasants of the island nation would engage in *nojigari* (peasant hunts for defeated warriors). Naturally, the peasants of the Central Plains would not be far behind; have you not seen how the Tang bandits amidst floods, droughts, and locust plagues were disarmed by the peasants?

The "performance" of the first day was meant for the prefect and the gentry. Only when they watched with delight would they raise provisions and funds. The actual ten-day grand exercise that followed was the real drill, and Zhang Xun watched it with much greater care.

For these militia bowmen, who were in reality nothing more ordinary farmers, Ma Yong likewise did not impose overly strict demands. Those who truly knew how to use bows and arrows were placed in the front; those who could only shoulder spears, staves, and long shields were placed in the rear.

They were instructed to always remember to move with the main force, to keep their eyes on the banners wherever they went, and to stay close to the main body. If they truly encountered the enemy, the front rank would loose their arrows—indiscriminately, without expecting any coordinated volley or barrage, which were skills belonging only to drilled regular troops. For the militia bowmen, being able to loose three arrows upon encountering the enemy was already a victory, after which they would fall back behind the long-shield bearers.

They would shoot if they could; if they couldn't, they would let it go.

Waving banners and shouting battle cries served to boost the army's morale. If the regular troops in the very front rank were defeated, these men would undoubtedly be defeated as well, swept away in the tide, possessing merely numbers and nothing more.

If ten days of drilling could familiarize them with moving alongside the large army and instill the belief that only by sticking together could they survive, then the exercise would not have been in vain. Another objective was to help them recognize banners and drums so they knew which was the general's banner and which was the command banner, allowing them to follow the banners onto the battlefield.

"They can already be considered usable troops." Such was Ma Yong's assessment.

"These are already usable?" Such was Zhang Xun's bewilderment.