Chapter 1268: The Cannons of Words Open Fire!

In late 1666, as the Great Ming Emperor Zhu Cilang took up residence in Wuhan and the Shun Emperor Li Laiheng announced he would personally lead a campaign, the once-calm land of Huaxia was suddenly shrouded in the clouds of war.

Two Huaxia regimes that had faced off for more than twenty years seemed at last to have reached the moment when a victor had to be decided.

After all, the ancient rule of Huaxia has always been that what has long been divided must unite. If one counts from the Wang Er uprising in the seventh year of Tianqi, the struggle between the Shun, this "peasant uprising regime," and the Great Ming dynasty has already lasted nearly forty years!

The peasant heroes who once rose in revolt have now grown into extra-large feudal bureaucrats and landlords — each of the Eight Deliberative Princes owns land yielding eighty thousand shi of rent a year, roughly one to two hundred thousand mu, an amount twenty or thirty times greater than the rank-fields held by Ming princes today!

One wonders whether the history books of later ages will still praise them as leaders of peasant uprisings?

But in late 1666, the leaders of the Shun court at Kunming had not yet realized they had become what they once hated most. They shamelessly dispatched quite a few agents to distribute a new version of the "Welcome the Roving King" handbills everywhere.

Li Laiheng, the emperor, even proclaimed on the handbills: "Welcome the Roving King, equalize the land, level the rich, share peace and joy!"

When a small number of "Welcome the Roving King" handbills appeared on the streets of Jingzhou Prefecture, Xiangyang Prefecture, and Wuhan Prefecture, they immediately caused widespread shock. These three prefectures, except for the Wuchang area of Wuhan Prefecture, had all been briefly ruled by the Shun dynasty, and Jingzhou and Xiangyang Prefectures had each experienced different versions of land equalization.

Li Zicheng's land equalization in Jingzhou Prefecture distributed land to the peasants, while in Xiangyang Prefecture it was exactly the opposite — the land was given to the Shun old-camp soldiers.

So the people of the two places reacted to the Shun handbills and agents in completely opposite ways. In Xiangyang Prefecture, the Shun agents became rats in the street, and within a very short time large numbers were caught and sent to Wuhan Prefecture to await execution!

In Jingzhou Prefecture, however, the Shun agents were far luckier. The common people still remembered Li Zicheng's benevolence, and many impoverished peasants who, for various reasons, had failed to keep their land after the Shun army left still longed for the Roving King, so the situation became somewhat unsettled!

Still, Jingzhou Prefecture was only somewhat unsettled — major chaos was impossible!

Because Hubei's industry and commerce had developed rapidly over the past twenty years, absorbing large numbers of bankrupt peasants, while the development of the New World and the Nanyang region had provided a stage for the most daring among the bankrupt peasants to rise in the world.

Moreover, thanks to rising agricultural productivity and the inflow of agricultural products from the Central Plain, Liaoyang, the Huai River basin, Jin'ou, Siam, and elsewhere, the eight densely populated, commercially and industrially developed provinces of the Four Rivers, Two Lakes, Min, and Yue enjoyed ample grain supplies, and local governments had gained a certain capacity for relief. Peasants do not rebel because of bankruptcy — they rebel only because they have no food to eat!

If bankruptcy were a reason for rebellion, capitalist society could never have emerged — every business involves a process of survival of the fittest, and those eliminated are always the majority. If they all rebelled, the world would have fallen into chaos long ago.

Of course, another important reason Jingzhou Prefecture did not erupt was that the current Ming army possessed extremely strong suppression capabilities.

With a snap, the Ming Son of Heaven, Zhu Cilang, tossed a stack of "Welcome the Roving King" handbills collected by the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot onto the table. The Ming secret services had now returned to a system in which the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Depot checked each other, with the Embroidered Uniform Guard handling external matters and the Eastern Depot handling internal ones. But the Eastern Depot was, after all, a newly opened office and could not compare with the already excessively bloated Embroidered Uniform Guard, so the "internal" sphere under the Eastern Depot for now only focused on watching Yingtian Prefecture and Wuhan Prefecture, with at most some strength around the Ming's two capitals.

Jingzhou and Xiangyang Prefectures lay on the periphery of Wuhan, so they had both Embroidered Uniform Guard strength (primary) and Eastern Depot strength (secondary).

Through the efforts of these two secret services, hundreds of Shun spies had been captured in recent days, and several thousand handbills seized. It had to be said that under the leadership of Liu Wenxiu and Song Xiance, the Shun secret services were still quite formidable.

But Zhu Cilang's response to these handbills was merely a cold laugh.

"These roving bandits have turned into entrenched bandits. They have already swallowed up all the land in Sichuan and Yunnan, and now they still want to use land equalization to stir up trouble and incite the Ming's people to rebellion. Do they really think everyone else is a fool?"

Wu Meicun, a Hanlin scholar and compiler of the national history, was also holding a handbill, turning it over and over as if reading it without really looking. After a while, he let out a snort of laughter: "If anyone really believes this, we could seize them and send them to the northwest for military exile. His Highness the Prince of Dai sends up memorials every few days asking for people — the Ministry of Justice's prison is already empty."

Nowadays, captured Ming criminals — as long as their crimes fell short of the unpardonable — were basically hot commodities! The twelve principalities of the Nanyang, the Kingdom of Luzon, and the Principality of Dai in the northwest were all scrambling for them!

So the Ministry of Justice's prison was always empty, with far more jailers than prisoners.

Zhu Cilang snorted: "Still, we can't let Li Laiheng get too pleased with himself. We need to stir up some trouble for him too!"

"This subject has already written a ballad called 'Welcome the Ming King.'"

"Is that so?" Zhu Cilang asked. "How does it go?"

"It goes like this," Wu Meicun said, and he actually began to sing: "Eat his mother, wear his mother, open the gates and welcome the Ming King. When the Ming King comes, no grain tax; when the Ming King comes, no corvée; when the Ming King comes, no cloth tribute; when the Ming King comes, the examinations open; when the Ming King comes, the land is divided. Morning seeking a sheng, evening seeking a ge — lately the people of Sichuan can hardly stay alive. Open the gates early and bow to the Ming King, and he will see that all rejoice!"

"Why is there land division in this?" Zhu Cilang frowned. "Master Wu" — Wu Meicun had served as Zhu Cilang's lecturer in earlier years — "you cannot make things up! And why does this 'Welcome the Ming King' of yours sound a bit like 'Welcome the Roving King'?"

Wu Meicun laughed: "Your Majesty, this subject simply adapted it from 'Welcome the Roving King,' so of course it resembles it."

Zhu Cilang was somewhat speechless. You are one of the Three Masters of Jiangzuo, such a great talent, and you plagiarize Li Zicheng?

"As for the land division," Wu Meicun said with a smile, "it has little to do with Your Majesty."

"How does it have nothing to do with me?" Zhu Cilang asked. "Isn't the Ming King me?"

"Your Majesty, this Ming King could also be the Ming King of Manichaeism," Wu Meicun said with a smile. "This 'Welcome the Ming King' is not necessarily 'Welcome the Great Ming'!"

"So that is how it is." Zhu Cilang still felt something was off, and glanced at Zhu Chunjie.

Zhu Chunjie said: "Your Majesty, this Ming King can be Your Majesty, or it can be the Ming King of Manichaeism. The reason for using this title is to make it easier for the White Lotus followers in Sichuan to spread it. The bandit state is tightly controlled — even the Embroidered Uniform Guard cannot get 'Welcome the Ming King' inside. We can only rely on these heretics."

"Can those heretics really stir up trouble?" Zhu Cilang asked again.

Zhu Chunjie shook his head: "This subject does not know. Popular uprisings sometimes depend on the heavens. If a disaster strikes Sichuan, perhaps chaos will erupt. If the weather stays favorable, then the bandits will have been lucky."

Zhu Cilang snorted: "We do not believe these people can stay lucky forever!"

Staying lucky forever was, of course, impossible, because a disaster within Sichuan had long been brewing.

This disaster was not a natural one, but a man-made calamity! And not just one man-made calamity, but several piled on top of one another.

The greatest of these man-made calamities was too many people! Although the Shun dynasty had gradually become what Li Zicheng, Li Guo, and the others had once hated most, compared with the Great Ming of the Tianqi and Chongzhen years, the Shun dynasty was still considerably stronger. The Shun could maintain internal stability and could also limit the exploitation of peasants by the fubing households — at least during Li Guo's reign, such limits existed.

In addition, Li Guo had, through strict suppression of commerce, enabled peasants and fubing to maintain a low-level "contentment," allowing most people to find happiness in poverty and take pleasure in the Dao. Although economically they were extremely deprived, spiritually they were still relatively happy, and their deprivation had not reached the point of curbing population growth.

So over the past twenty years, Sichuan's population had been growing at a relatively high rate.

(End of Chapter)