I am Emperor Shizu of Song

Chapter 86: First, trick Fang La's right-hand men out and kill them
"Hurry up and go! If you keep dawdling, I'll shatter you to pieces! I'll show you the effects in no time!"

The next morning, in Suzhou Prison, a group of thieves who had been captured in the government army's various operations to search for pirates in Taihu Lake since last year were driven off by the police.

Shi Sheng, the biggest pirate in Suzhou and a member of the "Sea Sand Gang," died last April. However, his accomplices were gradually apprehended. The government wasn't so kind as to keep them alive, but they didn't sentence them to exile in remote military prefectures. Most of them were kept in custody as hard labor, forced to do heavy physical labor every day, such as repairing rivers and digging embankments, in exchange for a small amount of bran and coarse grains.

After nearly a year of hard labor, these former pirates were suddenly summoned for transfer, and they couldn't help but feel a little uneasy. Many people wanted to know what was going on, but the officers escorting them would not say anything.

These people were quickly taken to the dock in Yanziwu Town and then boarded several Taihu sand boats, which quickly set sail and headed south.

These people were all old pirates and were naturally very familiar with the routes on Taihu Lake. Therefore, just by looking at the scenery on the shore and the direction of the boat, they could immediately judge that the boat was heading towards Wujiang County, south of Gusu County.

"Why would the government send us to Wujiang?" All the old thieves couldn't help but feel suspicious and asked each other in a low voice, but they couldn't find the answer.

After a long while, these people huddled in the cabin like pickled fish, and only then did they hear the armed guards outside the cabin whispering:

"Captain, why are you going to the trouble of transporting these pirates? There's chaos and turmoil here. I heard Fang La is about to attack us."

"What do you know! It's because Fang La is about to attack that we have to gather all these thieves and move them to another place for strict supervision to prevent them from finding opportunities to become accomplices to the thieves! You don't know yet, but in Huzhou, the gang of the great thief Lu Xing'er has already caused trouble and almost surrendered the city to Fang La! Even though the new Huzhou officials were alert, they still lost two counties!

Zhao Tongpan's life and property depended on Gusu County, where he had made his fortune. He didn't want to keep any prisoners in the city, fearing trouble. Killing them all was out of the question, so he moved them to Wujiang for centralized custody. Wujiang was a small county, unlikely to be targeted by Fang La's main attack, and he looked down on it.

After these thieves were transported to Wujiang, they were made to carry soil and build the city wall every day. They were not given enough food to prevent them from causing trouble. Those who disobeyed could be killed directly! Zhao Tongpan had already delegated his power.

"President Zhao is a man who hates evil. He's afraid that if he takes heavy-handed action in the city, he'll be held back by Lord Zhao. After arriving in Wujiang, there's no one higher than him to control him. He can strike any disobedient criminal with his strength! Also, if Fang La's army really arrives in the city and lays siege to Wujiang County, these people must be killed immediately! Some of their accomplices have already defected to Fang La, and they'll definitely be his accomplices!"

This conversation happened to be heard by the old pirates who were packed like sardines in the cabin, and they were immediately frightened and angry.

"So Officer Zhao transferred us to Wujiang to find a place without the constraints of his superiors, so he could abuse the harsh punishment!"

"The government has already made us do hard labor for a year, and they still don't trust us. If the Holy Archbishop's troops really reach the city, we'll be dead! These corrupt officials are worried that we'll be collaborating with the Holy Archbishop, and they want to execute us first!"

When the news spread among the old pirates on several ships, they immediately went into an uproar. They didn't care that they had no weapons, while the officers and soldiers guarding the escort had weapons. After a brief discussion, they decided to fight to the death, seize the ship to Huzhou, and then take the canal to surrender to Fang La!
"You bastard officer, we're going to fight you!" A group of unarmed pirates desperately rushed to the cabin door, quickly broke it open, and rushed to the stern where the steering wheel and oars were rowing.

The officers and soldiers on the ship pretended to resist, assassinated some of the pirates, fought and retreated, pretended to be defeated, and swam away - these officers and soldiers were not wearing armor, and were dressed very lightly, so they could jump into the water at any time without worrying about drowning.

Because there were many escorting ships, only a few of them were captured by the old pirates who had risen up, so they did not dare to pursue them. They immediately took over the rudder and oars, turned around slightly and headed southwest like flying, and broke away from the government fleet.

The government fleet pretended to give chase, but after chasing for a while without catching up, they became too lazy to pursue them anymore. After all, it was just some unarmed pirates from the Haisha Gang who escaped.

……

Two days later, outside Hangzhou city.

Fang La, who had surrounded the gates of Hangzhou for two or three days, was riding on a tall horse with a grim face, and climbed up Wushan with his brothers and sisters to check the defense loopholes of Hangzhou City.

His troops had not yet completed the full encirclement of all the city walls, and subsequent reinforcements were still arriving from various places.

As the largest city in the Liangzhe region, Hangzhou's city walls were already quite large, and since it was long and narrow from north to south, the entire city's perimeter was even longer. A full encirclement would require a significant number of troops.

So far, Fang La can only block all the land gates to the city, but if the defenders use hanging baskets or ropes to escape from the city at night, Fang La’s army will still not be able to completely block it. It will take at least three or four days to do so.

As for the Water Gate, Fang La was unable to besiege it at present. The entire section of the city wall on the west side of Hangzhou City bordered the West Lake.

Before Fang La's army arrived, all the boats on West Lake had been confiscated by the government and hidden inside the city through the Yongjin Gate and Qingbo Gate water gates. When Fang La's army arrived, they had not seized a single boat.

Ships arriving from elsewhere, such as the upper reaches of the Qiantang River, were unable to enter West Lake. During the Song Dynasty, West Lake was a stagnant pool of water, disconnected from the external water system, and ships could not enter. The connection between West Lake and the Qiantang River did not occur until after the founding of the People's Republic of China in the 20th century.

Fang La could only attack the city from the east, south and north, mainly from the east and south.

The east side is the flattest, while the south is rugged and difficult to advance into, but there are commanding heights such as Phoenix Mountain and Wu Mountain that overlook the entire city. The north side has the Grand Canal, which also serves as a moat and is wider than ordinary moats, making it difficult to advance into.

Historically, forty years later, before the Jin ruler Wanyan Liang launched his southern expedition against the Southern Song, he wrote a doggerel: "A thousand miles of travel, all the books are mixed together, how can there be a separate border in the south of the Yangtze River? Leading a million troops to the West Lake, we will immediately conquer the first peak of Wushan Mountain." Wanyan Liang failed to conquer the first peak of Wushan Mountain, but Fang La was relieved, as his hometown was nearby.

At this moment, Fang La stood on Wu Mountain, looking down at the defense of Hangzhou City for a long time, and felt quite frustrated.

"Everything went so smoothly until now. I didn't expect it would be so difficult to capture a fortified city."

Fang La couldn't help but sigh as he recalled the setback of his exploratory attack two days ago and the casualties suffered by many soldiers under the attack of arrows and stones from the defenders.

"Brother, we still lack craftsmen to build heavy siege weapons. Why don't we stop insisting on storming Hangzhou? We are good at field battles, not storming." A woman next to Fang La couldn't help but persuade him. It was his sister Fang Baihua.

"No! If we don't take Hangzhou, our money and food will be hard to sustain! We seemed to be making rapid progress before, but what we conquered were all remote and poor mountainous areas. Even if the local people responded to our call, at most it would only look like we had a large number of people, but in reality, our money and food were always in short supply!

If we don't forcibly capture one or two wealthy provincial capitals, those hundreds of thousands of mouths alone will eat us to death! Now that we have finally conquered Fuchun and fought our way out of the mountains, we are about to enter the fertile plains, the land of fish and rice. How can we give up?

Even if many die, we must force our way through at all costs! It doesn't matter if a few more people die, we already have insufficient rations and too many mouths to feed! Now the government army has fewer people but more money and food, while we have more people but less money and food! "Fang La was very self-aware of his most critical contradiction at the moment. Since ancient times, as long as the peasant army developed too quickly and the number of people increased, the main contradiction would change from insufficient people to insufficient money and food.

Including the historical Song Jiang, why did he have to seek amnesty? Many people who read Water Margin don’t understand why. In fact, it is because they don’t understand the saying “Experts judge wars by logistics”.

When the Song Dynasty court used the resources of only a few counties or even one or two states to encircle and suppress Song Jiang, Song Jiang only needed 1,800 men to defend himself. And when Song Jiang had fewer men, he could only feed himself with the output of the Liangshan Marsh area.

But once he became a major threat to the imperial court, the Song Dynasty mobilized the resources of a dozen or more states to suppress him. Song Jiang had to expand his army to 18,000 or more. With so many people, the local products of the waterfront could no longer sustain them, and simple looting was no longer enough.

Therefore, in the novel "Water Margin", it is often written in the later period that Song Jiang found that "now the mountain stronghold is short of money and food, so it is a good time to attack Zhujiazhuang/Zengtou City/Dongping Prefecture/Dongchang Prefecture and 'borrow food by the way'." And after borrowing food from all the surrounding areas, if Song Jiang still does not issue an amnesty, the excess population gathered under his command will eat him to death.

Liangshan didn't fall under the Zhao'an (Chao'an) rule, but rather in a modified form of the Malthusian trap. Liangshan's resource allocation was orders of magnitude lower than that of the Song court, forcing it to transform or flee.

Fang La had already seen his own weaknesses and had said so much, so naturally his relatives and staff had no way to refute him.

It is imperative to capture Hangzhou quickly and by force, regardless of the cost and how many people die.

Even so, Fang Baihua couldn't help but persuade him, "Brother, even if Hangzhou City must be captured, our army must be careful with its methods. Our army has always had a good reputation. Wherever we go, we only kill corrupt officials with notorious crimes and wealthy families who are truly infuriating to the people, and leave the rest alone.

This good policy must be publicized and made known to the people of Hangzhou, so that we can encourage internal support, or at least make the defenders less determined to hold on.

In addition, if there are other opportunities to break into the city through internal cooperation, we must not miss them, even if it means dividing our forces to capture it. Otherwise, if tens of thousands of people are stationed outside Hangzhou, their military rations will be exhausted in just a few days.

Fang La nodded. "I'll naturally forget about these two points. Don't worry. The cities we've conquered before were all small ones, so I've always enforced strict military discipline and never allow massacres or looting. Even if we massacre those small mountain towns, we won't get much money or food. Since our reputation is so good, of course we have to make full use of it."

If during the siege, there are people like Lü Shinang who respond to the call, we must do our utmost to support them and not let them down."

Fang La knew very well what he was doing and what he wanted.

Historically, when he first started his rebellion, he enforced strict military discipline. Even if he wanted to kill officials and wealthy people to share the money after breaking into a city, he would still find a clear crime against them. However, after the fall of Hangzhou, Fang La suddenly became a completely different person, slaughtering and burning the city for six days without discrimination, and killing officials and wealthy people regardless of whether they were guilty or not. His ruling style was completely different.

Later generations revisited the situation and found it easy to understand. The previous indiscriminate slaughter hadn't yielded much, as the troops were only in impoverished mountainous areas. It was better to create a false reputation and undermine the resistance of the subsequent prefectures and counties. Hangzhou, however, was the wealthiest region in Liangzhe. Taking it would have been a victory. Burning and massacring the city would have yielded enormous rewards, so there was no need to stage a repeat performance.

From this we can also see that Fang La really had no ambition, or he might have been forced to stop acting due to lack of money and food.

Just like when Qin Shihuang unified Yan and Zhao, he had to perform a show. In order to prevent Zhao Wangqian's brother from proclaiming himself King of Dai and continuing to resist, Qin Shihuang treated Zhao Wangqian very well.

But when Qin Shi Huang finally conquered Qi, even though King Jian of Qi surrendered without resistance, Qin Shi Huang still broke the oath he made when he accepted the surrender and starved King Jian of Qi to death in a pine forest.

Because Qin Shihuang knew that the battle against Qi was the last one and there would be no repeated games, so there was no need to act credible anymore.

The store downstairs won't cheat you because it knows it'll have to deal with you again. Even Uncle Dong knows that product quality must be strictly controlled. "How can I have the nerve to give them this kind of stuff? This is the last time we'll do business, right?"

But shops at tourist attractions just rip off tourists at will, because tourists only come once and there is no repeated game, so maximizing the profit from the single rip-off is the most important thing.

In the eyes of Fang La, who was increasingly pressured by the two major problems of population expansion and shortage of money and food, Hangzhou City might be his last and most profitable deal.

The reputation they had earned by pretending to be a benevolent and righteous army and the losses they had suffered from resisting robbery must be recovered with interest in Hangzhou.

At this moment, when Fang La was deploying a "full-scale offensive at all costs, regardless of casualties," several scouts suddenly rode up the mountain and came to him, informing him of an urgent military situation:
"Report to the Holy Lord! In Wuxing, Huzhou, and Wujiang, Suzhou, chivalrous men from Taihu have come to surrender with their troops! They claim they were originally disciples of our Holy Church, former subordinates of Captain Lu Xing'er of Wuxing and Captain Shi Sheng of Suzhou!"

Fang La was delighted when he heard this. "Oh? How many troops have they brought? Well, more troops are useless right now. What we lack in attacking Hangzhou is siege equipment, not soldiers."

The scout immediately reported that the total number of people coming to surrender from the two groups was only a few hundred.

After hearing this, Fang La's joy subsided.

However, the scout's next words cheered him up again.

"They also said that there are still brothers in Wuxing and Wujiang who haven't escaped yet. The government has ordered the city gates to be closed. As long as the Holy Lord remains in Hangzhou, the counties of Suzhou and Huzhou will defend the city to the death. But those brothers who remain in Wuxing and Wujiang are willing to serve as internal support. If the Holy Lord attacks the city, they have a way to contact the internal support and force the city gates to open!"

Fang La was already troubled by the difficulty of attacking Hangzhou. When he heard that there were opportunities to capture Suzhou and Huzhou cities, he was of course willing to give it a try immediately.

Since he launched his army, the vast majority of cities he had conquered were ultimately conquered by those within the city who gave up resistance, released the floodgates, or by internal forces who opened the gates. He was accustomed to this path dependence, and there was no doubt about it.

These pirates who escaped were all real, not impersonators sent by Zhao Zicheng. At most, Zhao Zicheng created some opportunities for them to escape.

It would be impossible for Fang La to see any flaws because they had no flaws to begin with.

"Very good! As soon as possible, split the troops into two groups and attack Huzhou and Suzhou respectively! The main force will remain outside Hangzhou and follow me to attack the city!"

(End of this chapter)