Chapter 1031: Dare Not Rot (Please Subscribe)

"Clang! Clang! Clang!"

A burst of harsh gong sounds suddenly rang out from inside the village. Li Laiheng was startled, not knowing what was happening. But the seven- or eight-year-old boy he was holding in his arms spoke up: "Uncle, put me down. It's time for my martial training."

"Martial training? Good! Good!" Li Laiheng set the boy down with a laugh. The child and seven or eight other children ran toward the village, though quite a few children still remained playing at the village entrance.

"Why don't you all go train?" Li Laiheng saw both boys and girls among the children playing at the village entrance, and several of the boys looked quite big.

"Replying to the master," one of the older boys said, bowing respectfully to Li Laiheng and answering in Sichuan-accented Mandarin, "we are all farmer children. We don't need to train hard in martial skills."

"Oh." Li Laiheng nodded lightly, then frowned again.

So even under the feudal dynasty established by the Shun's "peasant rebel army," there was still a serious problem of class rigidity!

The Shun dynasty's class rigidity stemmed from two of its foundational institutions: the fubing system and the land-per-capita allotment system!

First, all Shun fubing were granted land in exchange for military service. The land grants were not only payment for military service but also a reward for merit — the soldiers who had followed the Shun and the Xi on campaigns east and west for so many years deserved a livelihood to settle into, didn't they? But after years of struggle, the Shun and the Xi had never managed to conquer the whole realm. Only by joining forces in the end did they gain this small territory of Sichuan and Yunnan.

Though the territory was small, the number of soldiers needing land after the Shun-Xi merger was not small at all! The veteran camps the two forces had brought from Shaanxi and Huguang into Sichuan numbered over two hundred thousand!

After entering Sichuan, these two hundred thousand-plus men were converted into more than two hundred thousand land-granted fubing and forty to fifty thousand land-granted officials — they were essentially the same thing, mainly veterans of the Shun and Xi camps, with some who had joined them in Huguang and Sichuan, all enjoying the treatment of land-granted fubing. Only a portion of them, having some literacy, had passed examinations and been converted to civil posts.

And in order to grant land to their own two hundred thousand-plus veteran soldiers, the Shun court had no choice but to enclose large tracts of land in Sichuan and later in captured Yunnan. To support this land enclosure, the Shun court also had to implement land-per-capita allotment, equally dividing the remaining land. In this process, the scholar-official class of Sichuan and Yunnan was thoroughly eliminated — not physically, but economically!

After completing the two social reforms of land enclosure and allotment (for fubing) and land-per-capita distribution (for commoners), a social structure emerged within the Shun realm with fubing on top and peasants below.

The fubing scattered throughout the countryside replaced the original scholar-officials and became the masters of the grassroots society of Sichuan and Yunnan.

They monopolized not only military service, but also officialdom, and even education!

Li Laiheng ordered his attendants: "Let's go take a look!"

With that, he set off on foot toward the village.

This village was shared by outside fubing and local Bishan peasants. One could tell from the houses that the north side belonged to fubing and the south side to ordinary peasants — the fubing's houses were all tiled, while the peasants' houses were all thatched.

Besides the difference in housing, adult fubing and peasants also dressed differently. The fubing all wore blue hemp narrow-sleeved long robes, with hand swords hanging from their belts, and they walked with a swagger that made them look very impressive.

When Li Laiheng entered the village, the fubing who were at home were all heading toward the village training ground. Besides a waist sword, each man carried an additional weapon — some held shields and javelins, some shouldered long spears, and some carried muskets. There were also children and half-grown youths carrying small wooden weapons, bouncing along and shouting slogans: "Train martial skills, become fubing, march on Jiangnan, seize Jinling, kill the Zhu family!"

The morale of the Shun's little warriors was very high!

If the Zhu Emperor in Laoshan Palace knew about this, he'd probably have to hold a few more military exercises with child soldiers to calm his nerves!

Right now both Ming and Shun were taut as bowstrings — neither dared to rot!

Although feudal dynasties cannot cure the terminal disease of corruption, corruption is not the same as rot. Right now both sides were holding their breath, not daring to openly line their pockets, and even less daring to let their killing skills slip. Not only did they not dare let them slip, they had to train relentlessly to perfect them.

Zhu Cilang's side had established juvenile military academies to train the second and third generations, and also set up the Nine Borders Youth Army to train elite soldiers, while at the same time replenishing the noble and meritorious bloc with fresh blood.

The Shun side did not have as many resources as the Ming, but neither was it willing to wait for death in a sloppy manner, so it could only concentrate its strength on strengthening the fubing bloc. Not only did veteran fubing have to train diligently in martial skills, but the second generation of fubing also had to follow a path of both civil and martial cultivation from childhood — with martial training as the priority. Combat strength must be cultivated from childhood!

In addition, the Shun dynasty had also opened the Yunnan Military Academy and the Chongqing Official Academy (for training officials), selecting elites from the nation's "child fubing" to enroll.

Li Laiheng, as the Shun Crown Prince, was now dressed much like an ordinary Shun soldier: a blue hemp long robe, washed so much it had faded somewhat, a white felt hat on his head, a treasured sword hanging from his belt. The only difference was a red cape, which was especially eye-catching.

In the Shun dynasty, the red cape had originally been the mark of the Roving King, and could only be worn with Li Guo's special permission. In the entire Shun realm, those entitled to wear the red cape — besides Crown Prince Li Laiheng and the Eight Deliberative Princes — numbered no more than twenty, all of them meritorious officials and great generals of the Shun.

So when the "blue-robed warriors" in the village saw Li Laiheng's red cape, they all knelt and saluted him. Some even recognized Li Laiheng and, kneeling on the ground, shouted "Crown Prince, Thousand Years!"

Li Laiheng waved his hand grandly and said with a smile: "Reward them! Each fubing household gets one tael of silver first! If they train well, add another tael!"

"We thank Your Highness the Crown Prince!"

"We thank the Thousand Years!"

Amid a chorus of thanks, Li Laiheng, surrounded by a group of personal guards and his own son Li Jicheng, strode into the village training ground, preparing to watch the village's "fubing warriors" demonstrate the martial skills they practiced daily!

"Oh, so you watched a fubing village drill in Bishan? How was it? Any good?"

"Not bad. The javelin throwing was excellent, the musket shooting was quite accurate, and the long-spear line formations were set up in fine style. And those boys trained well too — not easy!"

"Heh heh, it's all capital for their advancement. How could they not train hard?"

"It's just that..."

"Just what?"

"Ama... the fubing are breeding far too many!"

In Chongqing, inside Chaotian Palace, the Shun Son of Heaven Li Guo and Crown Prince Li Laiheng were strolling through the small imperial garden while discussing Li Laiheng's observation of the drill at a certain fubing village in Bishan.

"Too many?" Li Guo, already past fifty, turned to look at Li Laiheng and said with a bitter smile, "What can be done? When you're fed and full, isn't that what you do? Your daughter-in-law is already pregnant — in a few more months, you'll be a grandfather!"

Li Laiheng's son Li Jicheng had married Sun Kewang's daughter. A fourteen-year-old boy and a fifteen-year-old girl — in later ages they would be middle-school students — were now about to become parents!

Of course, this was the seventeenth century! Everyone married early. Not only did Li Guo's grandson marry early, but the children of ordinary fubing below, and those of ordinary peasant families, also married early and became parents.

By comparison, the nobles of Zhu Cilang's Laoshan-Pukou area generally "married late." Because they had all urbanized and also had to undergo long periods of education, marriage was delayed.

The reason for this arrangement was mainly that the Zhu Emperor did not want these powerful figures scattered across the localities, becoming dominant local clans. Moreover, concentrating them in Laoshan-Pukou was also conducive to education and cultivation. All under the Zhu Emperor's watchful eye, with the Emperor keeping an eye on them, they dared not fail to make something of themselves!

So the privileged class of the Great Ming was now reproducing far more slowly than the Shun's fubing class, and their base numbers were not as large either. On the Ming side, only officials with noble titles or the title of "Meritorious Veteran of Overcoming Hardship" counted as the privileged class (soldiers with the Overcoming Hardship title were not privileged), so their numbers were limited. Yet the territory they occupied and the opportunities they possessed were far broader than those of the Shun fubing class.

Therefore, the weaker Shun actually had a stronger need for war...

(End of Chapter)