Chapter 27: The Clerks

Luoding had no Qing-appointed prefect, but it did have a gang of clerks and petty officials left over from the original Ming prefectural office.

At the start of the year, after Li Dingguo's great army lifted the siege of Xinhui and withdrew to Guangxi, Luoding was reoccupied by the Qing army.

By regulation, the Qing-appointed prefect of Luoding ought to have rushed to Luoding at the first opportunity to take over and pacify the people, establishing a Qing government office in Luoding so as to levy money and grain to supply the garrison and maintain order in the region.

Luoding was a directly administered department of Guangdong. Under the Ming official system, a directly administered department ranked the same as a prefecture, while an ordinary department ranked the same as a county.

The rank of the Luoding prefect was therefore not low: like a prefect, he was of the senior fourth rank. With such a rank, there were naturally plenty of men who wanted the post.

The fact was, however, that although the Qing army had occupied Luoding for a full three months, Guangzhou had still not settled on a candidate for the new prefect, and no one was willing to come and take up this fourth-rank post.

The prefect's seat in the Luoding yamen therefore remained vacant, and all affairs great and small in the yamen were handled by that gang of clerks and petty officials.

That no one would come to fill the post of a dignified senior fourth-rank prefect was, to hear it told, a strange thing.

When the Qing court first appointed the Prince of Pingnan, Shang Kexi, and the Prince of Jingnan, Geng Jimao, to march south into Guangdong, the Qing court, in order to seize Guangdong at the smallest cost and greatest speed, ordered the Ministry of Personnel to bestow upon these two princes a large number of blank official commissions and seals, permitting them to act at their discretion in Guangdong.

This meant that Shang Kexi and Geng Jimao had the authority to appoint Guangdong officials directly, needing only to report to the Ministry of Personnel afterward — a privilege that even Wu Sangui, a prince of equal rank, had never enjoyed.

Nor was it only these two feudatory princes who held the power to appoint officials; the newly appointed Governor-General of Guangdong, Li Shuaitai, held the same power. His governor-general's yamen had brought along no small number of scholars from the north.

Most of these men were juren by examination, with a few xiucai among them. They all stared with eager eyes, waiting to be chosen by His Excellency the Governor-General and sent out to office.

Any one of them who could be appointed to a seventh-rank county magistracy would laugh his back teeth out, let alone a fourth-rank prefectship.

With so many men under the princes and under the governor-general waiting for office, no one was willing to come and take up the senior fourth-rank post of Luoding prefect.

Instead they made excuses and evaded, refusing in every possible way, leaving Luoding without a chief official for three months. Absurd as it sounded, the reason was in fact simple.

They were afraid of Li Dingguo!

Since the late Ming, Ming civil and military officials had all turned pale at the mention of the Qing army.

Whenever the Han armies that had surrendered to the Manchus faced an urgent military situation, they would memorialize the Qing court requesting that "true Manchu soldiers be sent."

Once true Manchu soldiers arrived — even just a few dozen or a hundred of them — Ming armies of thousands or tens of thousands would often retreat in panic, not daring to fight them.

Such timidity on the part of the Ming army naturally swelled the prestige of the true Manchu officers and men. The entire Qing court regarded the Manchu soldiers as heaven's favored sons, believing that wherever the Manchu soldiers went they were invincible and unstoppable.

Then Li Dingguo "toppled two famous princes" at Guilin and Hengyang, shattering at a stroke the myth of Qing invincibility.

The whole Qing court trembled with fear, and Shunzhi himself was moved to consider negotiating peace with the Southern Ming on the condition of ceding Jiangnan.

If even the Emperor felt this way, the mentality of the officials below him can well be imagined. In the ninth and tenth years of Shunzhi, every official in Beijing regarded being posted south as a death sentence.

They dodged and evaded Ministry of Personnel appointments, even going so far as to bribe others to intercede so as to escape southern postings.

There was even a governor, a high official, who feigned illness to avoid taking up his post in Guangxi — and was strangled to death by an enraged Shunzhi.

After Li Dingguo led his army into Guangdong, although he suffered two successive defeats, his main force was not greatly damaged.

The Qing forces in Guangdong still dared not meet Li Dingguo's great army in open battle; they only dared bully the other Southern Ming forces within Guangdong, such as the troops under Lian Chengbi, Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, and the volunteer army led by Grand Secretary Guo Zhiqi — motley forces of that sort.

Against the Southern Ming's motley armies, the Qing forces in Guangdong won every battle. Yet even so, they still dared not strike at Li Dingguo's troops; the mere sound of his name frightened them.

Under such circumstances, which of those Han scholars who had sold themselves to the Manchus would dare come to Luoding to take office? It must be remembered that Luoding lay right next to Gaozhou, where Li Dingguo's troops were garrisoned!

Nor was it only the bad neighbor next door. Luoding was a classic case of barren mountains and foul waters.

Not only did the Yunwu Mountains cut straight through the department, its jurisdiction also bordered the mountain ranges of Guangxi, and the counties of Dong'an and Xining under its administration had been emptied of inhabitants.

Who would come to a godforsaken place like this unless they had eaten too much and had nothing better to do, or were running a fever in the brain?

Moreover, the Qing forces in Guangdong had just occupied the Chaozhou-Shantou region, where Hao Shangjiu had entrenched himself. That was a land of rice and water, rich in produce.

Was a prosperous place like that not a hundred times better than a hellhole like Luoding? Only a fool would not sharpen his head to worm his way in there, and instead come to Luoding to die!

With no local official in charge, during the period when Kong Guoliang's Jiangxi Green Standard troops garrisoned Luoding, their supplies were essentially all handled by those clerks and petty officials in the prefectural yamen.

And every one of these clerks and petty officials, without exception, was a native of Luoding with his family in the department. More than half had inherited their posts from their fathers — local bosses who had served in the yamen since Ming times.

The change of dynasty was no great matter to these local bosses. So long as Luoding had a government office for a single day, they need not worry about losing their jobs.

Officials and clerks, officials and clerks — having officials without clerks would never do. With so many affairs to manage, how could the officials alone handle them all? Everything still had to be done by them!

When the Ming army came, they were clerks of the Ming; when the Qing army came, a shave of the head and they were clerks of the Great Qing. Neither side was neglected!

And so it was in fact. Over the past few years, although Luoding had changed hands back and forth between Ming and Qing, and the officials had been replaced several times over, the one constant was these clerks and petty officials in the yamen — unshakable as thunder!

When the fire broke out in the dead of night and they heard the sounds of the Ming army entering the city, the clerks and petty officials were not at all alarmed. Those at home told their families to bolt the gates and keep buckets of water ready in the courtyard, just in case.

Those in the yamen dutifully locked themselves in their offices. Whatever the commotion outside, they would not come out even if beaten to death.

If anyone came in, they would kowtow at once! This was the way of self-preservation!

After daybreak, once it was confirmed that Kong Guoliang's Green Standard troops had been annihilated and that Luoding from this day forward once again bore the surname Ming, the clerks and petty officials — those at home and those in the yamen — gathered before the main hall of the prefectural yamen, knelt in neat rows on the ground, and respectfully requested instructions from the newly appointed Ming prefect of Luoding.

Some of the more eager ones had even cut off their queues, though the others knew full well that those queues were surely still tucked inside their robes, to be stuck back on with glutinous rice paste whenever the Qing army came again.

Boss Hu was a rough fellow with no idea how to handle such matters, so he hastily sent men to fetch Song Xianggong and Zhou Shixiang.

Zhou Shixiang bore no great ill will toward these clerks and petty officials, nor any particular fondness. Song Xianggong, however, was delighted to see them, and set about putting them to work at once.

Some went to take inventory of the department's money and grain, some to count the population of the city, some to tally damaged goods and materials, some to help coordinate and maintain order, some to busy themselves posting proclamations to pacify the people...

In short, every affair in the city, great or small, so long as it touched upon the government, these petty clerks busied themselves with it.

With these experienced hands at his disposal, Song Xianggong was like a fish in water. He did not have to worry about a thing; the Luoding prefectural yamen was up and running, more efficiently than the team of village heads and prominent households he had organized.

The clerk who wrote the pacification proclamation was an old xiucai, his queue streaked with white, his beard streaked with white too, but his calligraphy was beautiful.

He wrote at length with great flourish, and Song Xianggong and Zhou Shixiang nodded repeatedly as they read, offering several words of praise.

Having won the recognition and praise of his "superiors," the old xiucai was invigorated. With a flourish he wrote "the eighth year of Yongli" at the bottom of the proclamation, then bent low and requested that His Excellency the Prefect affix his seal.

Song Xianggong had no seal to affix. Fortunately, Hu Quan had an Assistant Regional Commander's seal, which was fetched at once and stamped upon it. Seeing that it was a military officer's seal, the old xiucai was quite taken aback, but did not dare ask. He withdrew awkwardly.