Chapter 140: Sangui, Whose Ship Are You Boarding? (Previous Chapter Content and)

"Your Highness," said Li Banghua, Left Chief Censor of the Censorate, rising at once to address the throne, "according to the institutions of the court, the officials of the remonstrance circuits bear the duty of impeaching and denouncing, of redressing wrongful convictions, and of speaking on hearsay; maintaining order and discipline in court assemblies is likewise the proper duty of remonstrance officials. What Your Highness has just said — is it meant to tell the remonstrance officials not to do their work?"

Zhu Cilang smiled. "Court assemblies are held precisely so that men may speak and deliberate on governance. In speaking, errors are unavoidable; in deliberating, mistakes are unavoidable. If men are to be punished for that, then more than half the officials in this hall today are guilty — and guilty of great crimes! Left Chief Censor, do you intend to impeach them?"

Guilty?

We are all guilty?

The officials who had remained for the small court assembly all felt their hearts leap into their throats — most of them were corrupt ministers! Not only corrupt, but greedy; if properly investigated, every one of them was guilty!

"Why does Your Highness say such a thing?" Even old Li Banghua felt his scalp prickle. He knew well enough that the Crown Prince was not easy to deal with. But as Left Chief Censor, upholding the court's discipline was his duty, and he had no choice but to speak.

"Do you all still remember Chen Xinjia, the Minister of War who was executed in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen for advocating peace?" Zhu Cilang said unhurriedly. "What was Chen Xinjia's crime? Privately negotiating terms and disgracing the nation — sentenced under the statute for losing a walled city: beheading!

Had Xinjia's peace talks succeeded that day, the court would long since have concentrated its forces and wiped out the roving bandits. How could the capital have fallen? How could Our two younger brothers and Imperial Father's Noble Consort Yuan have fallen into rebel hands? The ministers who impeached Chen Xinjia in the fifteenth year, and those who earlier opposed peace talks and opposed moving the capital — did they not harm the nation? Should they not be punished? Li Banghua, speak!"

Speak what? No one can out-talk you... Li Banghua had already done his duty; now of course he fell silent and played dumb.

Zhu Cilang sighed. "Chen Xinjia was wronged! Though he was not a competent Minister of War, punishing him for privately negotiating terms and disgracing the nation was a monstrous injustice! And he did not negotiate on his own authority — he acted under the Emperor's secret edict. Did those officials who impeached him not know the Emperor's intent? Did they not know the state was no longer able to fight a war on two fronts, east and west? Knowing full well the will of their sovereign and father, knowing full well that peace talks were the sound policy to save the nation, they nonetheless rose in a body to obstruct him — were they not men of sinister purpose? Should they not be prosecuted to the full extent of the law?"

Zhu Cilang's tone grew darker and darker, and not a few of the officials below were already trembling.

This Crown Prince was a ruthless man who had imprisoned his father and killed his brother, and he was also the lord of the Ming restoration — offending him would bring no good end!

"Minister Li," Zhu Cilang said, looking at Li Banghua with a smile, "the rule We have established — that no speaker shall be punished — was intended precisely to absolve those ministers who harmed the nation... If you do not agree, do you intend to impeach them?"

Gaze after resentful gaze shot toward the talkative Li Banghua, and the old man suddenly felt as though needles were pricking his back.

"This old minister... this old minister has been muddled..." Li Banghua did not dare! He could only bow his head to the great Crown Prince.

Zhu Cilang smiled. "It is not that you are muddled; it is that our ancestors overestimated the abilities of you remonstrance officials.

Whenever a great minister is wicked, petty men form cliques, palace servants meddle in governance, men are base and corrupt, official discipline is ruined, scholarship is unsound, or memorials are reckless — your Censorate is to impeach them all! Whether officials are worthy or not, who should rise and who should fall, is also your charge. In the joint trial of major cases and serious prisoners, your Censorate must take part. And you must also oversee the capital's military camps, supervise the provincial and metropolitan examinations and the military examinations, inspect the Court of Imperial Entertainments, inspect the granaries, inspect the inner treasury, the imperial city, and the five wards, take turns at the Dengwen Drum, purge the army, superintend the schools, inspect the salt administration, the tea-and-horse trade, inspect the grain transport, inspect the customs... and many, many more matters that We cannot even remember. We only know that in all affairs under heaven, there seems to be nothing you censors cannot manage! But can you manage it? Old Master Li, speak — can your Censorate manage so many things?"

So the Crown Prince means to move against the Censorate! The officials present all understood now.

"The Censorate cannot manage so many things..." Li Banghua could not very well lie through his teeth — if the Censorate could manage so many things, how had the court been driven all the way to Dagukou?

"Then manage a little less!" said Zhu Cilang. "From today onward, the Censorate need manage only one thing... and that is official violations of discipline and the law!

The nation has only just shown the first shoots of restoration, yet if the old abuses are not rooted out one by one, this small hope of restoration will very soon be buried. And to root out the court's abuses, one must begin with rectifying discipline. If discipline does not prevail and officials are corrupt, the court has no hope. To restore discipline and purge corruption — that is the heavy charge We entrust to the Censorate. As for the great policies of state, the Censorate need not concern itself."

In Zhu Cilang's view, the Censorate was just the sort of organ one might call a discipline commission or anti-corruption bureau. Fighting corruption and enforcing law and discipline were its proper business. The great policies of state were not for it to meddle in... and when the leaders of the nation discussed great policies, no one should be punished — still less beheaded — whether they spoke rightly or wrongly.

If speaking wrongly meant losing your head, who could bear it? Unable to bear it, men would have to spout politically correct nonsense every day just to stay alive — stay alive so they could go on taking bribes, and when the roving bandits came, when the Tartars came, go over to the enemy and become twice-serving, thrice-serving turncoats... Was that what the Great Ming kept so many officials for?

Therefore, if Zhu Cilang wanted to reform the government and make the court actually capable of doing things, he had first to turn the Censorate into a "discipline commission" — an organ devoted solely to purging official corruption and violations of discipline. Only with specialization could a thing truly be done well.

His earlier tightening of the Embroidered Uniform Guard's powers, leaving the Guard only as an intelligence service, was likewise for the sake of specialization. The Embroidered Uniform Guard was the equivalent of a state security department; state security should do state security's work, while anti-corruption should be handed to the Censorate. And the great affairs of state, along with all manner of miscellaneous matters, had no need of the Censorate's meddling.

The Ming court had so many offices; let each do its own duty and mind its own patch. When everyone muddles in together, they swarm forward when there is benefit, and when there is responsibility to bear, no one steps forward.

To put it bluntly, the fewer people managing affairs, the fewer people there are to take bribes!

Moreover, once the Censorate became a truly useful anti-corruption department, Zhu Cilang would have in his hands a butcher's blade sharp enough for the officialdom!

So long as the butcher's blade was truly held in his own hand, that was enough. As for whether the blade was called the Censorate, the Embroidered Uniform Guard, or the Eastern Depot — there was no difference.

The Great Qing, Shengjing.

At dawn on the second day of the fourth month, Dorgon received scout reports that Beijing had been taken by Li Zicheng. The report he received said that Beijing had been breached by Li Zicheng on the twenty-second day of the third month, that the Chongzhen Emperor had been captured, and that the Crown Prince had fled before the city fell to Wu Sangui's army at Yongping.

Upon receiving this report, the Prince Regent of the Great Qing formed an initial judgment — the Ming dynasty was finished!

Henceforth the world would be contested between Li Zicheng's Shun and the Great Qing! And just what this newly risen opponent, the Shun, was made of made Dorgon somewhat uneasy.

The Ming army was an old adversary, long since cowed by the Eight Banners. Even their strongest force, the Guanning Army, now only held fast behind castle walls, with basically no stomach left for a great decisive battle in the open field — not to speak of whether they could win, they no longer even had the nerve to fight one!

Such an army could not be counted an opponent of the Great Qing's Eight Banners at all. But this enemy, the Shun — whether or not they could fight, their nerve was surely stronger than the Ming army's; at the very least they dared to fight.

Dorgon, who was only thirty-two this year, was thoroughly versed in the use of troops, and he knew well that on the battlefield there is no absolute certainty. If one met an enemy willing to fight to the death, one had to be cautious.

So Dorgon did not immediately issue orders to march on Beijing. Instead he ordered the Ministry of War to spare no reward in gathering all manner of intelligence on Li Zicheng after his entry into Beijing, while on the other hand ordering the Eight Banners troops to begin assembling and preparing for war.

At this time the Great Qing was in the full flush of its sudden rise, brimming with vigor and vitality, and every office could get things done. The work of spying on Ming military affairs was given the highest priority; in and around Beijing there had always lurked large numbers of Manchu agents, and the moment any important news arose it was delivered into Qing territory at the first opportunity.

And the Ming court was a sieve that leaked wind — everything was aired in the Capital Gazette, which greatly facilitated the agents' activities.

Yet these ordinarily very effective Manchu agents began making mistakes after Beijing fell to Li Zicheng.

First, on the question of the whereabouts of the Chongzhen Emperor and the Crown Prince Zhu Cilang, they produced contradictory reports.

On the second day of the fourth month, the report Dorgon received said Chongzhen had been captured and the Crown Prince had fled to Yongping.

By the third day of the fourth month, the news had changed to say that Chongzhen and the Crown Prince had broken out, fleeing separately toward Tianjin and Yongping.

By the sixth day of the fourth month, the news had shifted again: the Chongzhen Emperor and the Crown Prince had both gone to Tianjin, where they were already surrounded by Li Zicheng's pursuing troops and would soon be finished.

But today, the eleventh day of the fourth month, the news had changed yet again! The Chongzhen Emperor and the Crown Prince had not been finished after all; they were holding Tianjin, had received support from a great army led personally by Wu Sangui, and had defeated Li Zicheng's pursuers... which meant Wu Sangui's great army had gone to Tianjin.

It seemed the Great Ming would not die just yet.

But only yesterday — the tenth day of the fourth month — Wu Sangui's envoy Zu Zepu had explicitly told Hong Chengchou and Zu Dashou that Wu Sangui had not gone to Tianjin, and that the main force of the Guanning Army was still at Shanhai Pass, unmoved...