Chapter 508: The Imperial Countenance Beamed with Delight

After the great battle on the third day of the eighth month of the fourteenth year of Chongzhen, the Songshan front settled into an eerie calm. Both the Ming and Qing sides were brewing the next phase of warfare.

Within three days, the memorials of Hong Chengchou, Wang Chengen, Zhang Ruoqi, and others were dispatched to the capital by eight-hundred-li express. Of course, that was only in name; in reality, they still traveled at the Ming field-report limit of three hundred li per day and night.

With no large roving bandit bands in the north, the relay posts in each region were relatively well maintained. Moreover, these victory reports were sent by the Regional Commander and the Army Supervisor at the Songshan front, with the highest precedence, so the several memorials never halted along the way. Moving at a tight pace, they reached the capital on the sixth day of the eighth month.

The day the victory reports arrived, the entire capital was stirred. The news of the Ming army’s great victory at Huangtuling — over two thousand heads taken in a single battle, and the enemy chieftain Ajige slain in combat — spread clamorously throughout the capital and across the metropolitan region.

The capital seethed, and the men who proclaimed the victory received treatment beyond the norm. At the morning court session specially convened by the Chongzhen Emperor on the seventh day of the eighth month, each man was led before the imperial presence by officials of the Court of State Ceremonial to read the victory tidings one by one.

At that time, the hundred officials all wore auspicious court attire. After awaiting the proclamation of victory, the Court of State Ceremonial officials delivered an address, and all officials performed the ritual of five prostrations and three kowtows. Thereafter, the Hanlin Academy drafted the texts, the Court of Imperial Sacrifices prepared the offerings, and officials were promptly dispatched to announce the news at the suburban altars and the ancestral temple, conducting grand sacrificial rites of announcement and celebration.

Throughout the capital, firecrackers thundered for days on end. The gentry and commoners celebrated heartily for many days. The name of Wang Dou and the might of the Jingbian Army once again soared to the clouds.

When the news reached the Eastern Circuit, hearing that the Loyal and Brave Count had once more led the army to a great victory, the soldiers and civilians of the Eastern Circuit boiled over with excitement and bustle.

The Chongzhen Emperor had constantly brooded over the Jinzhou campaign, his heart perpetually anxious. When word of the great victory at the front arrived, the imperial countenance immediately beamed with delight, and His Majesty’s heart was comforted, as if he had swallowed a pill of reassurance, settling down all at once.

For days on end, his face was wreathed in smiles, his mood light and joyful. After the morning court on the seventh day, he specially summoned the Grand Secretaries Zhang Sizhi, Li Rixuan, Chen Xinjia, Li Daiwen, and others to the Wenhua Hall to decree the rewards and honors for the officers and generals at the front.

At this time, the Senior Grand Secretary Fan Fucui had finally been approved by the Chongzhen Emperor to retire and return to his native village. The Minister of Rites, Zhang Sizhi, was appointed Senior Grand Secretary.

Zhang Sizhi had once served as the Emperor’s tutor and was therefore always respected and trusted by the Chongzhen Emperor. Moreover, because his countenance was flawed — he had once suffered ulcerations on his face — he was constantly attacked by the censors.

After the Chongzhen Emperor ascended the throne, however, he grew increasingly disgusted with the censors. The more the censors impeached a man, the more the Emperor employed him. Thus Zhang Sizhi’s official career had been smooth all along. From Chancellor of the Imperial Academy, to Right Vice Minister of Rites, all the way to Minister of Rites, he was later appointed Grand Secretary of the Wuying Hall and granted the title of Grand Guardian of the Heir Apparent. Now he had reached the pinnacle: appointed Senior Grand Secretary of the Grand Secretariat.

Yet how illustrious was the position of Senior Grand Secretary? If Zhang Sizhi had been content to remain Minister of Rites, that would have been fine. The Senior Grand Secretary seat had long been the object of Chen Xinjia’s covetous gaze — how could he tolerate Zhang Sizhi occupying it?

Moreover, Zhang Sizhi was a man of mediocre talent, with no outstanding political achievements. Even the Grand Secretaries Li Rixuan and Li Daiwen were dissatisfied with him. They joined forces to squeeze him out, and Zhang Sizhi, having only just taken the Senior Grand Secretary seat, already showed signs of instability.

Furthermore, an incident had occurred not long before: Zhang Sizhi’s hometown of Feixian had been plundered by bandits. Because he had just assumed the great office of Senior Grand Secretary, to demonstrate impartiality, Zhang Sizhi handled the matter strictly by the book. He instructed the supervising secretary Zhang Jinyan to impeach Feixian County Magistrate Li Peiyuan, Jail Warden Wang Pu, Instructor Sun Zhenzuo, and the training commander, Yizhou Battalion Commander Hu Jing, among others, and had them thrown into prison.

This stirred up a hornet’s nest. In this era of the Great Ming, the principle was to side with one’s kin, not with reason. If a relative committed a crime, it was perfectly reasonable for family members to conceal it. Whether the hometown people were right or wrong, you were supposed to take their side — that was the proper principle. If you sided with reason and not with kin, you were gravely wrong.

A man of Feixian, raised on Feixian’s water, treating his own local officials and fellow townsmen like this — he deserved to be hacked to pieces. So it went without saying that local sentiment boiled over. One Feixian licentiate surnamed Sun even cursed Zhang Sizhi in language of extreme vulgarity, calling him, in the Feixian dialect, “born of an unmarried girl.”

And Zhang Sizhi’s conduct won him no goodwill whatsoever in Great Ming officialdom — on the contrary, he was collectively ostracized. In this era, fellow townsmen and men of the same examination year were of paramount importance — just look at the story of Fan Jin passing the provincial exam.

You become a Grand Secretary, yet not only do your hometown clansmen find no support in you, but you stab them in the back — then what use is your office? The Feixian clansmen, thoroughly ostracized, even went so far as to place righteousness above family. Zhang Sizhi’s younger brother, Zhang Siwei, sued Zhang Sizhi for lack of fraternal duty, alleging that on a certain day Zhang Sizhi had gotten him drunk and swindled his own younger brother out of his property. He further claimed that Zhang Sizhi had acted under imperial decree that day — not only lacking fraternal duty, but also deceiving the sovereign and harming the state.

After this matter spread, the censors clamored. Some even dug up old accounts from the Wanli reign, impeaching Zhang Sizhi for failing to properly instruct his son. Because Zhang Sizhi had long served as an official in the capital and neglected family discipline, his son had idled away his time and was arrested and executed by a county magistrate surnamed Yao during the Wanli period. Could a man with such a historical stain occupy the seat of Senior Grand Secretary?

After this man’s impeachment, the memorials from the censors impeaching Zhang Sizhi piled up as high as a man. Zhang Sizhi’s life and deeds were placed under a magnifying glass for scrutiny. His old affairs from the Wanli years to the Chongzhen years were dug up one by one, leaving Zhang Sizhi scorched and battered, with no energy to handle state affairs, which drew the Chongzhen Emperor’s displeasure.

Yet Zhang Sizhi was a man rather infatuated with officialdom. Historically, after the Manchu Qing entered the pass, they offered him nothing more than the minor post of Jining Circuit Military Defense Intendant, and he rushed off to take office. The position of Senior Grand Secretary of the Great Ming — how illustrious it was! How many men had thrown themselves at it, one after another, all for this seat. How could Zhang Sizhi give it up?

Like a reef amid wind and rain, no matter how the censors impeached him, he simply would not resign to take the blame, but held firm.

At this moment, he was leading the assembled Grand Secretaries in kowtowing to the Chongzhen Emperor.

Just as he had done with the memorials from Yang Sichang and others that day, the Chongzhen Emperor could never tire of reading the memorials sent from the Songshan front, especially Wang Chengen’s memorial — among the three memorials of Hong Chengchou, Zhang Ruoqi, and Wang Chengen, Wang Chengen’s memorial was the one the Chongzhen Emperor trusted most.