Chapter 176: Father-in-Law

"General, a man calling himself Zhao Han of Yanshan seeks an audience."

"Hmm?"

Zhao Han looked up with an odd expression, then smiled. "Show him in."

Fei Yu was working just outside; he was one of the three chief secretaries. Moments later, when he saw Fei Yinghuan and Wei Jianxiong being led in, he nearly cried out in shock, but immediately lowered his head and went back to processing documents.

Fei Yinghuan kept his eyes straight ahead. Ushered into the room, he cupped his hands and said, "Zhao Han of Yanshan pays his respects to General Zhao!"

So it was his father-in-law who had come. Slightly surprised, Zhao Han hurriedly rose. "Uncle, please sit."

Wei Jianxiong withdrew outside and pulled the door shut behind him, to prevent anyone from eavesdropping.

"Young Han has done great things indeed," Fei Yinghuan said with a teasing smile — half mockery, half reproach, and tinged with a note of wonder.

Zhao Han had a thick skin. "My honored father-in-law flatters me."

"I have read some of your policies, so I won't ask about those," Fei Yinghuan said, getting straight to the point. "I will only ask you this: when can you take Jiangxi?"

Zhao Han replied, "Next year, I will certainly take Nanchang Prefecture."

"I heard there is a great army from Fujian and Guangdong in the south. I thought you would take Ganzhou first," Fei Yinghuan said, somewhat disappointed. "If you take Nanchang first, I fear the court will send even more outside troops to encircle and suppress you."

Zhao Han explained, "I discussed this with several of my advisers, and our original intent was indeed to take Ganzhou first. But the people in Nanchang have pushed things too far. The private Nanchang customs post they set up collects tariffs even heavier than the eunuchs do, severely harming commerce and livelihoods in the territory I govern. Since they are courting death, I shall oblige them!"

Fei Yinghuan asked further, "How confident are you of taking Nanchang?"

"Absolute confidence," Zhao Han answered.

"So confident?" Fei Yinghuan asked.

Zhao Han said with a smile, "If not for the need to consolidate my territory, I could have seized half of Jiangxi this year."

Fei Yinghuan asked no more questions. He said, "I am heading south to Funing to serve as its Prefect. Is there anything I can help you with?"

"Funing is in Fujian?" Zhao Han was not entirely sure.

Fei Yinghuan said, "On the coast of Fujian."

Zhao Han smiled. "If my father-in-law is willing to help, you could befriend Zheng Zhilong on my behalf."

"Very well, I understand," Fei Yinghuan said, nodding.

"Ah!"

Fei Yinghuan suddenly sighed with emotion. "Back when I brought you and your sister to Jiangxi, how could I ever have foreseen this day?"

Zhao Han said, "Even if I had not come to Jiangxi, your son-in-law would have found some place to rebel."

"Do you enjoy rebellion that much?" Fei Yinghuan asked.

Zhao Han shook his head. "It is not that I enjoy rebellion, but that this Great Ming is beyond saving."

Fei Yinghuan smiled faintly. "Do you know that many court officials harbor thoughts of a southern refuge?"

"I did not know that," Zhao Han said.

Fei Yinghuan explained, "This idea was first raised by scholars among the common people and gradually spread to the court. They hold that the prefectures of Jiangnan are the wealth of the realm, while the northern provinces not only yield no tax grain but also require the court to keep pouring money into war. They might as well abandon the north entirely, move the capital to Nanjing to overhaul the government, root out entrenched abuses, and then march the armies north again."

"A pretty fantasy. Once they settle in a southern refuge, who would still be willing to launch a northern expedition? This is an idea from the southern scholars, I take it?" Zhao Han said with a mocking laugh.

"Indeed," Fei Yinghuan nodded. "Though it circulates widely, it is all discussed in private. No one dares to say it openly. Now, with you rising up here in Jiangxi, I fear those who favor a southern refuge are growing fewer and fewer."

Zhao Han suddenly asked, "Father-in-law, why not rest a while in the inner residence? I can call Rulan and Ruhe to come speak with you."

"No need," Fei Yinghuan said, raising a hand. "Too many eyes and ears. It is better that I do not see them. I will be on my way once we finish talking here. The Prefect of Guangxin, Zhang Yinggao, is a man who can govern and fight. He has already trained five thousand local militia. You would do well to be cautious of him."

"Thank you for the warning, Father-in-law," Zhao Han said with a smile. "No matter how crack the militia, once they leave their home ground, their fighting strength drops by half — because they no longer know what they are fighting for."

"Very well, I have said my piece. I take my leave now," Fei Yinghuan said, rising.

He truly left the moment he finished speaking, without even seeing his son and daughter. He still had to hurry to Fujian to take up his post.

Fei Yinghuan traveled by boat and soon reached Ganzhou. Following the Gong River southeast, he came to Huichang County, which the government troops had already retaken.

Midway, he suddenly saw a great number of boats approaching from the opposite direction. It was the army of Governor Zou Weilian of Fujian. The boats carried supplies, and some ten thousand soldiers (including civilian laborers) marched along the riverbank.

Fei Yinghuan was not stopped and searched. He reached Huichang County without incident.

Asking around at the dock, he learned that the rebels at Ruijin had been wiped out, with only a few hundred remnants fleeing deep into the mountains.

Worried now for his son-in-law, Fei Yinghuan immediately turned his boat around and returned to the prefectural seat of Ganzhou to pay a call on Zou Weilian.

In the military camp outside the city.

Zou Weilian was in the midst of a killing spree. Sixteen mid-ranking officers were lined up in a row, awaiting beheading.

The Fujian troops he had brought, upon entering Jiangxi, had constantly gone off to burn, kill, and rape. One subordinate commander had even massacred a village and passed off the victims' heads as rebel kills for merit, enraging Zou Weilian so much that he beheaded the man on the spot.

Zou Weilian was a native of Jiangxi!

Had he been leading troops to Zhejiang to suppress bandits, he might have turned a blind eye. But leading troops back to Jiangxi to suppress bandits — how could he permit his men to run amok? He would be reviled and shamed before his fellow countrymen!

Among the three supreme commanders — the Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi, the Governor of Jiangxi, and the Governor of Fujian — Zou Weilian was the most zealous in his desire to exterminate the rebels.

Because his hometown of Xinchang (Yifeng County) lay just north of Fenyi and Xinyu counties. In a year or so at most, the Luling rebel Zhao would occupy his hometown. How could Zou Weilian not be anxious?

The Governor-General of Guangdong and Guangxi had troubles flare up in his own backyard and had withdrawn his troops back to Guangdong to quell the unrest.

Zou Weilian remained alone in southern Ganzhou, and instead intensified his suppression campaign, retaking the county seat of Ruijin in just one month.

Leaving five hundred men each to garrison Ruijin and Huichang, he led the main force onward to Ganzhou.

"Execute!"

A blade flashed, and a head fell to the ground.

The common soldiers were awed; the officers burned with resentment.

To keep the outside troops from plundering his homeland, Zou Weilian had no choice but to pay their wages in full. He also had to bypass the military commanders to do so, or the officers would surely skim off the top.

For this reason, the ordinary soldiers and junior officers all fervently supported Zou Weilian.

But the mid- and high-ranking officers hated Zou Weilian to the marrow. He would not let them bleed the soldiers dry, nor let them go looting — so what the hell had they come all the way from Fujian to Jiangxi for? Wouldn't it be better to just stay home and enjoy themselves?

"Governor, an old friend has come to call," an aide said, handing over a visiting card.

Zou Weilian took the card and looked at it. His face lit up with joy. "It is Dazhao who has come! Quickly, show him in!"

Fei Yinghuan strode over, clasped his hands, and said, "Brother Dehui, it has been a long time."

"Brother Dazhao," Zou Weilian bowed in return, smiling, "please, come inside the tent and sit for a drink."

These two men were from the same hometown, had become juren in the same year, and had even traveled to the capital together for the metropolitan examination, where both failed.

Zou Weilian was only four years older than Fei Yinghuan. He had lost his father in childhood and was forced to drop out of school. Before the age of ten, he went into the mountains with his mother to cut firewood; mother and son survived entirely as woodcutters.

He also had no money to buy books, so he borrowed them from neighborhood children to read. He read at home, read on the road while cutting firewood — he read everywhere, at every moment. Afraid of dirtying the books, he would wrap them in cloth while he worked.

Zou Weilian had only a beginning tutor, never a classics master; he taught himself the Four Books and the Five Classics entirely on his own, and passed the xiucai examination at nineteen.

Only after entering the county school did he finally formally study under a classics master and properly learn the Confucian classics. Then, he passed the juren examination at twenty-one, and the jinshi examination at twenty-five.

"What brings Brother Dazhao here?" Zou Weilian asked.

Fei Yinghuan replied, "This foolish brother has been reassigned as Prefect of Funing. I heard that a rebel named Zhao was causing chaos in Jiangxi, so I went in person to Ji'an Prefecture to investigate."

"Oh, and did you find anything of note?" Zou Weilian grew serious. He too had scholars from Ji'an coming to join him, but they were all fleeing from Taihe County and Wan'an County. The gentry of Jishui, Luling, and Anfu counties preferred to flee toward Nanchang and Jiujiang.

Fei Yinghuan said, "This rebel has done three things that greatly alienate the people's hearts."

Zou Weilian asked, "May I ask what three things?"

Fei Yinghuan smiled. "The first is dividing the land — seizing the great clans' fields and distributing them to the common folk. How brutal! The second is freeing the slaves — releasing all household slaves, military households, and music-register households. The third is slighting the scholars — whether juren or xiucai, anyone who serves as an official under the rebel Zhao must start from the lowest clerks and minor posts."

Zou Weilian froze for a moment, then said in shock, "How is this alienating the people's hearts? These are acts to incite and beguile the people's hearts!"

The "people's hearts" Fei Yinghuan spoke of were the hearts of the gentry.

The "people's hearts" Zou Weilian spoke of were the hearts of the common folk.

Zou Weilian asked, "Does the rebel Zhao slaughter landlords and gentry indiscriminately?"

"He does not kill indiscriminately," Fei Yinghuan said. "Whenever he reaches a village or town, he invariably executes those locally guilty of the most heinous crimes, to vent the people's anger. The rest of the landlords are all forcibly subjected to land division, but their money, grain, houses, and dwellings are left untouched."

"Does he exploit the merchants?" Zou Weilian asked again.

Fei Yinghuan said, "The merchants all welcome the rebel Zhao's policies. It is the Governor of Jiangxi and the Provincial Administration Commissioner, rather, who have drawn endless complaints from merchants north and south by privately setting up customs barriers and imposing heavy taxes."

Zou Weilian sighed, "This rebel is truly extraordinary."

Fei Yinghuan pulled out a copy of The Great Unity Collection. "Any boat passing through Linjiang Prefecture or Ji'an Prefecture is forced to buy a copy of this rebel book. Brother Dehui, please have a look."

Zou Weilian opened it and read carefully. At first he was furious, then his heart pounded with alarm.

Many of the arguments written in these rebel essays were identical to Zou Weilian's own thoughts.

Apart from the seditious rhetoric, Zou Weilian liked this book immensely — he even felt a sense of regret at not having encountered it sooner.

Fei Yinghuan suddenly asked, "How many soldiers does Brother Dehui have, and are you confident you can defeat that Luling rebel Zhao?"

"What confidence is there?" Zou Weilian sighed. "I hear that this rebel Zhao has defeated two successive governors; he must be even stronger now. Though I have over ten thousand troops under my command, those fit for battle number no more than three or four thousand. What I rely on are merely a thousand-odd matchlock musketeers and those dozen or so Folangji cannons."

Fei Yinghuan asked again, "Why does Brother Dehui not advance swiftly and catch the rebel Zhao off guard?"

Zou Weilian shook his head repeatedly. "Suppressing bandits in southern Ganzhou, I won a string of great victories, and now my men are all arrogant troops. I have also restrained them, forbidding them from plundering within Jiangxi, and the officers under my command are growing daily more disobedient. This time, moving my garrison to Ganzhou serves three purposes: first, to raise funds and grain; second, to rest and refit the troops; third, to tighten military discipline! If discipline is not strict, I absolutely dare not march north to suppress the rebels."

"You are a man who understands warfare," Fei Yinghuan said with admiration.

In the days that followed, Fei Yinghuan was in no hurry to leave. He stayed in Ganzhou helping Zou Weilian with his affairs, while incidentally probing the true state of his army.

Wei Jianxiong quietly traveled north and delivered a letter to Zhao Han.

Even the names of the officers in Zou Weilian's army were written out clearly in the letter, to say nothing of how many firearms and cannons he had.

(Regarding Yuan Chonghuan, the debate has been quite heated. I can only say that, aside from getting the month of Wang Tingshi's dismissal wrong by two months, everything else in the last chapter is recorded in the historical sources. Yuan Chonghuan certainly did plenty of foolish things, but in his attitude toward Mao Wenlong, he was first helpful, then helpless, and finally furious. There is too much to say, so I will write it in the author's note next.)

At the time, Mao Wenlong reported a troop strength of 200,000, but Chongzhen issued military pay based only on the actual strength of just over 20,000.

Both sides were utterly absurd.

Yuan Chonghuan could only try to smooth things over, hoping to give Mao Wenlong the same treatment as the Guanning Iron Cavalry — all 20,000-plus troops receiving double pay.

At this point, Yuan Chonghuan's relationship with Mao Wenlong should still have been fairly good. Mao Wenlong agreed to accept double pay and promised not to make further trouble over pay or engage in plunder, but Chongzhen firmly refused.

The Minister of the Ministry of Revenue, Bi Ziyan, even sent an official reply to Yuan Chonghuan, expressing his own helplessness and that he could only obey the Emperor's command and could not grant Mao Wenlong double pay.

The civil officials, including Yuan Chonghuan, were enraged by Mao Wenlong in the early second year of Chongzhen, when Mao Wenlong led his troops to pillage Dengzhou for the second time. Bi Ziyan, who had previously wanted to help, now took the initiative to demand that Mao Wenlong's military pay be cut off.

From beginning to end, Yuan Chonghuan was always trying to smooth things over.

Especially in the eighth month of the first year of Chongzhen, when Mao Wenlong sent troops to Dengzhou and the Tartars sent troops to Liaodong — essentially coordinating attacks on Ming territory — Yuan Chonghuan, while fighting the Tartars, was simultaneously requesting double pay for Mao Wenlong. Many civil officials could not have done the same.

I am not trying to whitewash Yuan Chonghuan; he indeed made many outrageous moves, but killing Mao Wenlong was truly a choice born of helplessness. Because Mao Wenlong had been pushed by the court to a point where he had no way out — he had to either rebel himself or defect to the Tartars.

Cutting off Mao Wenlong's pay was not Yuan Chonghuan's order either; it was simply that the Ministry of Revenue never allocated the silver.

(End of Chapter)