Ninety-Fourth Section: Honors Are Won in the Army

In the early spring of the second year of Xianheng, while the chill still shook the air and winter had not quite loosened its grip, an unremarkable imperial decree was quietly issued.

It announced that the court attendants Feng Xiaobao, Yang Chengxian, and Cheng Boxi had answered the state’s call and volunteered to recruit men in Luoyang and along the road to Liangzhou. In all, they had gathered five hundred elite horsemen and were now hastening to the front against Tubo to join the war.

Five hundred elite horsemen.

Cavalry were, by their nature, already a rank above infantry; elite horsemen meant men who could be sent straight into battle without further training, and that was even rarer.

So the three young companions were promoted. Their civilian honorary rank was raised to Gentleman of the Forest of Letters, ninth rank. Their former title of Gentleman of Service had been the lower grade of the ninth rank, so this was a rise of half a level.

They were still very young, after all, and rising too quickly was not necessarily a good thing.

Curiously, why should recruiting soldiers earn them a civil promotion?

In truth, it was the unexpected bounty from the Laizhou gold mine that had been their reward. To a degree, the Laizhou mine had eased the court’s expenses, and its output had been steadily increasing. Yuan Gongyu, the Minister of Revenue, was a shrewd old fox with an excellent ear to the ground; he repeatedly submitted memorials stressing the mine’s importance and insisted that Feng Xiaobao and the other two be rewarded. In the end, they were granted yet another civil honorary post, with the court’s excuse being that they had done meritorious work in proclaiming imperial policy among the foreign tribes.

That is, persuading the non-Han peoples to serve and work for the court was considered a fine and worthy deed.

One should not look down on an honorary civil rank. It was flexible indeed, and could be used, in proper form, to step into an actual administrative office. It was an important threshold on the road to officialdom.

Because of their military service, the three also received substantive military appointments as officers: deputy commanders of a lower garrison, seventh rank junior.

Wearing both civil and military titles made them a little conspicuous, but not excessively so.

In the Tang dynasty, there were many civil officials who handled military affairs, and many military men who later entered civil office. The clearest example was the current Left Chancellor, Jiang Ke, who served as Grand Commander of the Liangzhou Circuit and was preparing for war against Tubo. Feng Xiaobao and the others merely held both civil and military credentials at low rank; there was nothing especially remarkable about that.

In truth, even Yang Chengxian and Cheng Boxi were baffled. They were still so young, and to receive real military authority was already a delightful surprise, yet they had also been granted civil honorary titles?

The direct heirs of their clans were not even as well placed as they were. True, those heirs would one day inherit noble rank and stand higher in status, but that was the future. For the moment, Yang Chengxian and Cheng Boxi ranked near the top among the younger generation of their families.

It was only years later that the two of them understood they had been riding on someone else’s good fortune.

...

Turning the clock back to the winter of the previous year, after Feng Xiaobao returned from Chang'an, he secretly discussed with Princess Jinqian how he might rise quickly.

Princess Jinqian had wrapped herself up like a plump rice dumpling and was contentedly sipping fragrant goat’s milk. Smiling, she asked, “You used to be so calm, busy with this and that, as though you had no wish to be an official. Why are you suddenly so eager now?”

After making a gesture like drawing a bow to shoot a great eagle, Feng Xiaobao said, “The last piece of my martial skill has finally been filled in!”

“So now you can shoot eagles?” Princess Jinqian asked.

“No, I shot a bird!” Feng Xiaobao replied. To be exact, he had shot down a duck in flight three days earlier while out hunting.

“Go away!” Princess Jinqian was not objecting to the fact that his bird shooting lacked skill, but to his hand reaching toward her like a thief.

“Can’t I even touch you once?” Feng Xiaobao said unhappily. In the past, he had been able to touch her however he pleased. Now, not at all.

“No means no!” Princess Jinqian said seriously. “From now on, let the bridge be the bridge and the road be the road. If you have a money-making scheme, come to me. I’ll help keep watch over the place. For anything else, go find your little Miss Tang.”

She changed her face faster than turning a page. “You really are heartless!” Feng Xiaobao said with a shrug.

Then he sneered. “The child in your belly is mine. When the time comes, how will you explain to the baby that you threw its father aside?”

Princess Jinqian was pregnant with his child.

After establishing a women’s and children’s clinic, she had been deeply moved and had gone to Feng Xiaobao, pressing him to give her a child.

Yet she declared that he need not trouble himself. She had found a man eager to become a father and would hand the child over to him; it had nothing to do with Feng Xiaobao.

Such bizarre behavior could only have been done by a Tang princess in that age. But Feng Xiaobao greatly admired Princess Jinqian’s method of self-preservation. Since he had become the empress’s private beautician, Princess Jinqian no longer met him alone. She always had attendants by her side, impeccably proper.

No wonder that after Emperor Gaozong died and Wu Zetian took the throne, Princess Jinqian, though a member of the Tang imperial house, could remain untouched, preserve both life and fortune, and enjoy wealth and splendor without ever truly being dragged into the storm. She was far from simple.

Take the matter of the child. Though she claimed there would be no more connection between her and Feng Xiaobao, old threads could not truly be severed. How could she ever completely let go? In the future, when cooperation was needed, they would still cooperate. A mother could rise through her child.

...

The conclusion Feng Xiaobao and Princess Jinqian reached was that if he wanted high office, he would have to win fame in the army.

Civil officials advanced by rules and precedent, by seniority and rank, stiff and unyielding.

If he dreamed of changing the world, making paper, forging steel, or pouring cement, he had better stop imagining so much. It was not his turn yet.

The fastest promotions in the civil bureaucracy always went to members of the imperial clan, the core of the great aristocratic houses, and the orthodox scholars of the civil examinations. Feng Xiaobao belonged to none of them. He would do better to save his energy.

What, he was the empress’s private beautician?

Fine. If he said that out loud, the empress would surely call him an impostor, and the emperor was not yet dead; his blade was still sharp. Ask his neck whether it had been washed clean.

So forget civil office. Military merit, however, was not hard to obtain. At present, the Left Chancellor, Jiang Ke, was the Grand Commander of the Liangzhou Circuit, recruiting on a grand scale, summoning brave men, and preparing for war against Tubo.

There was also the long, grinding conflict with Goguryeo. Both were excellent places to win merit and establish a name.

Killing Tubo men and Goguryeo men gave Feng Xiaobao no psychological burden at all.

So enlisting was a good way forward, but it had to be planned carefully.

Under the Tang military-farm system, each garrison command governed four to six regiments; each regiment had two hundred men, sometimes three hundred. A regiment was commanded by a colonel. Each regiment contained two battalions of one hundred men, each battalion under two squad leaders. Each squad had five sections of ten men, led by a section chief.

Take ten or so men and become a section chief?

That would make him cannon fodder. Ten men thrown into the Tubo or Goguryeo battlefields would not even make a ripple.

Yes, his martial skill was high, but the notion that one man could carry the world on his shoulders existed only in dreams.

The army valued coordination above all. A single logistical matter was enough to make even a great hero bow his head. Surely a great hero could not carry grain on his own back.

So if he was going to make a move, he had to make a big one. He would gather two regiments. One large, one small: the larger with three hundred men, the smaller with two hundred. Exactly five hundred in all.

Bring five hundred men into service, and any commander would look at him differently.

Why were sons of great clans so easily promoted? Because family background was such a huge advantage. They had the capital to begin with. Bring several hundred followers to establish a foothold, and earning merit became much easier. All the accomplishments of the men beneath them would be counted under the commander’s name. How could superiors not advance quickly?

Making one hundred thousand from another one hundred thousand was easy. Making one hundred thousand starting from nothing was hard.

No, not just five hundred men. What kind of men?

Five hundred infantry?

Princess Jinqian would be responsible for arranging the official strength of those five hundred. They had to appear under a legitimate establishment. Without such an authorized roster, if Feng Xiaobao suddenly rallied five hundred armed men, would that not look like rebellion?

Of course, Feng Xiaobao’s plans could not be hidden from another intimate person at his side. The moment Tang Tian heard that he intended to fight Tubo, she immediately declared, on behalf of the Tang family, that they would sponsor eight hundred horses to form five hundred cavalry.

Tang Tian was by no means acting on a whim. She was certain the Tang family would support it.

National enmity... The Tang defeat at Dafeichuan had left any Tang subject of standing gnashing his teeth in hatred. The Tang family, once a foreign household and later granted the Tang surname, had to make its position known.

Family enmity... or rather, the enmity that might one day become family enmity. Tubo occupied Dafeichuan, and its cavalry could sweep south at any time; from there, Liangzhou was only a single day’s ride away.

If Tubo truly pressed into Liangzhou, the Tang family would be forced into a fight to the death, and the losses would be even greater.

At that moment Feng Xiaobao looked at Tang Tian in doubt. “You have eight hundred horses?”

“Of course!” Tang Tian lifted her chest. “My dowry alone is three thousand fine horses and ten thousand sheep!”

A rich beauty through and through.