52. Another Interpretation of "Benevolence Does Not Command Troops"

Prefect Zhao received the letter from Zhang Xun and learned that Wang Xiaojie actually wanted the vagrants residing within the city wards and quarters. Putting down the letter, he immediately shouted for his attendants and ordered them to execute the task right away.

If you wanted vagrants, you should have said so earlier, he thought. There was no need for Zhang Xun to write a letter; I could have simply rounded them up for you. Why bother with such a superfluous gesture?

The empowered constables and yamen runners set upon the streets like wolves and tigers, locking people up. In truth, the ruffians and scoundrels who collected protection fees and acted as thugs in the local area all had some degree of connection to the yamen. The petty clerks in the yamen naturally took bribes from them on usual days, and sometimes even relied on these characters to do their dirty work.

However, one principle must always be remembered: the yamen is the yamen, and ruffians are ruffians. No matter how close a petty clerk was to a ruffian, their relationship remained strictly that of a master to a spittoon or a nightstool.

When the superiors needed to solve a case, they would inevitably pick out the most thorny, unruly ruffians whose crimes had grown too flagrant to cover up, and use them as scapegoats to fulfill quotas.

As for the rest, certain personal connections and favors naturally existed. While some indulgence could be granted, with so many yamen clerks mobilized, shouldn't they put on a show and drag a few out?

Therefore, by that very night, over a hundred people were crammed into the livestock pens at the city's outer market gates. These individuals were neither beggars nor hardened ruffians, but rather "vicious youths."

To put it bluntly, they were lads of fourteen or fifteen, or slightly older, who had gone astray for various reasons, hanging around the streets as petty punks, up to no good and prone to pilfering.

Such individuals—who counted as able-bodied laborers yet had no ties to the yamen—were naturally the very first to be cleared out by the yamen runners. After all, the hardened ruffians still had a day's grace to turn things around, and serving as spittoons and nightstools still held a certain value.

The street-clearing campaign in Changzhou City unfolded throughout the night.

Simultaneously, Zhao Rujian dispatched official documents to Wuxi, Jiangyin, and Yixing, ordering the roundup of all vagrants. If one was going to do a job, one might as well do it thoroughly. If he could help Wang Xiaojie fully recruit his troop quotas, wouldn't Zhao Rujian also be credited with assisting in a meritorious cause? When year-end evaluations came around, he would have an extra stroke of praise added to his record.

In less than three days, the livestock pens at the outer market gates were packed to capacity with captured men designated for military service. There were none of advanced age, for vagrants were hardly likely to live to old age.

Having hired labor to hastily construct a makeshift camp outside the city with straw, Wang Xiaojie—much like Ma Yong—did not assume his post alone; he had brought over thirty men with him. Backed by these thirty-odd men, Zhang Xun spent a thousand strings of cash out of his own pocket to help him recruit another hundred elite fighters. Through proper discipline and management, handling one or two thousand men would be as easy as child's play.

This lay at the core of organized violence's aesthetic: those who possessed organization could use a hundred men to defeat a thousand.

For the hundred brave soldiers recruited by Zhang Xun, Wang Xiaojie naturally accepted them with tears welling in his eyes. Which general does not wish to command fine troops? Had any other choice existed, would Wang Xiaojie have willingly recruited vagrants? It was simply because the imperial court refused to provide adequate funds and grain while simultaneously demanding as many soldiers as possible.

With no other options left, he had no choice but to draft able-bodied laborers to make up the numbers. As the street-clearing operations in Changzhou continued, they ultimately managed to gather over three thousand men for Wang Xiaojie, including those hauled in from Jiangyin, Wuxi, and Yixing. Piecing them all together, they could form an army of thirty-five hundred men, organized into eight battalions.

In stark contrast to Ma Yong's method of troop training, Wang Xiaojie had no intention of leveling everyone down to frontline fodder. He divided the three-thousand-odd men into three tiers. The first tier consisted of prime-aged regular soldiers with genuine physical strength; this tier was issued standard weapons and armor, fed two solid meals a day, and trained starting from basic formations and marching. Their military discipline was even stricter than that of Ma Yong's forces.

Naturally, Wang Xiaojie ate and drilled right alongside them, at least creating the outward impression of treating them as limbs and brothers, sharing both sweet and bitter with them.

The second tier comprised youths and laborers whose physical vigor was less robust; these were all assigned to dig trenches and build ramparts—any heavy manual labor was directed their way. They were even ordered to assist the government yamen in loading and transporting goods, until finally, when no other tasks remained, they were dispatched to repair the city walls.

The core of Changzhou City was originally built during the Yang Wu era. During the Southern Tang dynasty, Changzhou served as the frontline in the wars against Wu and Yue, prompting Crown Prince Wenjian, Li Hongji, to issue orders to expand and reinforce the city. Consequently, Changzhou was divided into an Inner Dou City and an Outer Dou City.

Originally, there had also been a Jinluo City, but due to commercial development and a steadily growing population, the smaller military stronghold of Jinluo City—which hindered the development of the urban wards—was demolished, leaving only the inner and outer city fortifications.

Both the inner and outer walls were made of rammed earth, with brick or ashlar stone masonry used only around the city gates; the ordinary walls were entirely constructed of rammed earth. During the Jianyan and Shaoxing eras of the Southern Song dynasty, maintenance and repairs had been carried out in response to the massive southward invasions of the Jin army.

Nearly a hundred years had passed since then, and the rammed-earth walls of the outer city had long since collapsed in multiple places.

Yet collapse they did; the earth simply remained piled there anyway. Standing just over twenty feet high, the outer city walls were less a defense than a barrier separating the inside from the outside, serving mainly to prevent fires and theft.

The inner city wall stood over thirty feet high, but it was much the same—nobody expected these walls to shoulder any monumental responsibility; good enough would have to suffice.

Since idle hands make mischief, Wang Xiaojie put over a thousand recruited soldiers to work repairing the city walls. Zhao Rujian was more than willing to foot the bill for this, and could even raise a portion of the funds through donations from local merchants. After all, repaired city walls kept out fires and thieves; furthermore, as long as they paid for the raw materials, the labor costs were entirely saved.

Most importantly, this counted as a political achievement, leaving Zhao Rujian quite full of enthusiasm.

The third tier consisted of the surplus soldiers—those lacking physical strength and advanced in age. For this group, Wang Xiaojie provided neither military pay nor two solid meals a day; they received one thick and one thin gruel daily merely to keep them breathing, while they performed miscellaneous chores within the army.

Such duties included lighting fires and cooking, fetching water and gathering firewood, or running errands. On one hand, this served to instill basic military discipline in them; on the other, they functioned as logistical handymen.

At the very least, such logistical laborers were far more useful than casually abducted peasants. They at least understood a modicum of military camp rules, and when battle came, they could be sent forward carrying flags to shout slogans from the rear.

If they won, they won; if they lost, these men could be left behind to serve as human cushions, and their deaths would not cause a single pang of heartache.

So benevolence does not command armies had yet another layer of interpretation. Zhang Xun, lacking any profound understanding of military training, brought thirty sheep to court Wang Xiaojie.

Because Wang Xiaojie had successfully recruited over three thousand troops in Changzhou, and was awaiting the arrival of military pay dispatched from the Yixing Bamboo and Timber Bureau, the imperial court had ordered him to temporarily halt his troops and garrison in Changzhou.

That suited everyone just fine; staying stationed in Changzhou indefinitely would be best of all.

Thus, Zhang Xun intended to come over and cultivate their relationship. While expecting Zhang Xun to shoulder the army's regular pay was out of the question, routinely sending a few sheep and pigs posed no problem at all.

Just as Wang Xiaojie finished drilling the selected regular troops, he spotted Zhang Xun's retainers driving thirty sheep into the camp and immediately announced that sheep would be slaughtered today for the first and second battalions.

He certainly knew how to capitalize on a favor using someone else's resources.

Handing the sheep over to the third-tier surplus soldiers in the camp, Zhang Xun asked Wang Xiaojie how long the imperial court had ordered him to remain in Changzhou for reorganization.