Chapter 1740: False Accounts, Bad Debts, and a Pyrrhic Victory

Inside the inner city of Beijing, the Duke of Chengguo's residence in the Fuxue Hutong of Jiaozhong Ward was bustling with visitors today. Before its broad front gate, a long line of lavishly decorated carriages and horses had already formed. On the rows of hitching posts outside the gate, fine-looking saddle horses with glossy coats were all tethered. The household retainers and personal attendants of Beijing's various noble houses, dressed in military garb with sabers at their waists, were all waiting in the hutong outside the ducal residence, every one of them looking worried and sighing without cease — their masters had run into big trouble now. The good days were over, and if things went badly, even their lives might be forfeit!

And what was worse, they as household retainers would suffer along with them — who knew, they might even be sent to the battlefield to die!

Just thinking about it made them want to cry!

While the retainers and attendants outside were on the verge of tears, the crowd of Ming military nobles and imperial kinsmen gathered in the second hall of the Duke of Chengguo's residence were already weeping bitterly. Even as they wept, they cursed and muttered, all speaking ill of those eunuch-faction treacherous ministers — Huang Liji, Wang Zaijin, Wen Tiren!

What was to become of the Great Ming! Nothing but eunuch-faction traitors and wicked ministers. If this went on, the state would no longer be a state.

"That Wen is a scoundrel — he wants to sell us out to curry favor with the throne!"

"That Wang is a scoundrel too. What's this about 'falsely claiming a hundred thousand'? Our Capital Camps have a hundred and twenty thousand on the books, plus another twenty thousand garrison-family troops — do we need to make false claims to field a hundred thousand?"

"Aren't those all just on paper? The slave bandits aren't coming to audit the books — what use are paper troops?"

"Right, we can't go!"

"Can we not go? That death-deserving Wen Tiren has already submitted a memorial demanding an audit of our books. What are we supposed to do? How in the world do we cook the books?"

How to cook the books? So these people weren't the military nobles of the Great Ming after all, but a bunch of bookkeepers — and bookkeepers who specialized in false accounts at that.

But now they had run into Wen Tiren, this "master auditor," and the false accounts could no longer be made!

Never mind those twenty thousand garrison-family troops — take just the hundred and twenty thousand camp troops. If they existed... fine, then go out of the city and kill people! The slave bandits had already reached Shunyi; if the Capital Camps still didn't march out, what were they waiting for?

And over at Changping there were another seventy thousand paper troops!

A hundred and twenty thousand plus seventy thousand made a hundred and ninety thousand. The Jizhou troops and the Liaoxi troops added another fifty thousand, for a total of two hundred and forty thousand. The slave bandits over at Shunyi numbered at most fifty or sixty thousand. If an army of two hundred thousand charged over, how could they possibly lose?

So if these "false-account nobles" claimed that the hundred and twenty thousand Capital Camp troops were all present, then there was no excuse not to march out of the city.

If they claimed there weren't... then they wouldn't have to march out — they could go straight to the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Imperial Prison and stay there!

Of the hundred and twenty thousand Capital Camp troops, at least eighty or ninety thousand were phantom vacancies, and these vacancies had been pocketed not for a year or two, but for who knew how many years. If this were verified, every single person present today would have his house confiscated!

Zhu Chunchen, the Duke of Chengguo, who had just succeeded the Duke of Ying, Zhang Weixian, as Commander, was so worried his hair was nearly turning white, yet still utterly helpless, just sighing there — he was now the Commander, and the biggest black pot in all Beijing was pressing down on him.

If he admitted that the Capital Camps had eighty or ninety thousand vacancies, then he was dead for certain — the little emperor wouldn't even need to kill him; the noble houses of Beijing would join forces to take his life.

One could say that the moment he entered the Imperial Prison, he would not be far from death.

If he insisted there were no vacancies... then he would have to let the slave bandits come and count heads!

Listening to the people below him arguing endlessly, Zhu Chunchen's head was splitting. He no longer wanted to stay in this room. Agitated and confused, heedless of propriety, he stood up in a daze and walked out on his own. Only when the cold wind in the courtyard hit him did Zhu Chunchen sober up a little. He turned to go back, but suddenly realized that Liu Kongzhao, the Count of Chengyi, had appeared before him.

Liu Kongzhao was a descendant of Liu Ji — that Liu Bowen who could divine and calculate. He was now the sixth Count of Chengyi — the Chengyi title had been interrupted for over a hundred years after Liu Bowen's grandson Liu Zhan, and was only restored in the Jiajing era, so it had passed down only six generations. Perhaps because the hundred-plus years of interrupted title had been good for tempering people, this Count of Chengyi, Liu Kongzhao, counted as someone with some resourcefulness among a crowd of useless nobles.

Zhu Chunchen looked at this twenty-something count with the appearance of a pale-faced scholar and asked, "Count of Chengyi, what are you—"

"Duke," Liu Kongzhao said, "we must march out!"

"March out?" Zhu Chunchen shook his head. "Those are slave bandits!"

"We still must march out," Liu Kongzhao said. "The slave bandits have entered the passes to seek wealth. We have no silver for them to plunder — why would the slave bandits fight us to the death? If the slave bandits were willing to fight hard, how could Zunhua and Yutian have held? How could the Jiliao army have retaken Yiyuan Pass?"

That seemed to make some sense! Zhu Chunchen's eyes lit up as he looked at Liu Kongzhao, waiting for him to continue.

Liu Kongzhao went on: "Right now the eunuch-faction villains all want to frame us loyal subjects, and they want to make an issue of the Capital Camps' vacancies. If you dare not lead troops out of the city, then when His Majesty returns in triumph, we can all just wait to enter the Embroidered Uniform Guard's Imperial Prison!"

"His Majesty returns in triumph..." Zhu Chunchen's face finally showed an expression of terror.

Compared to Hong Taiji, who sought wealth, that deadly Zhu Youjian was far more terrifying!

Liu Kongzhao said: "What did His Majesty do in Datong? He audited the fields and reorganized the army! He smashed the original Datong garrison to pieces, then newly appointed Vice Regional Commanders, Assistant Regional Commanders, and Mobile Corps Commanders... He sorted out more than forty thousand actual troops, and also identified over two million mu of military farmlands!

And what is His Majesty doing in Xuanfu now? Is he really going to cut off the slave bandits' retreat? If he really meant to cut off their retreat, why would he transfer more than half of Xuanfu's troops to the Duke of Ying?"

Zhu Chunchen sighed: "He wants to turn Xuanfu into a second Datong..."

Liu Kongzhao said: "Xuanfu's pay quotas and military farmlands are also considerable. Sorting out thirty thousand actual troops plus a thousand tent-guard cavalry is no problem. That way His Majesty can control in his own hands, like an arm directing his fingers, more than eighty thousand horse and foot soldiers! With that much capital, will he let Changzhen, Jizhen, and Baozhen go next? Once the three frontiers and five garrisons are all in his grasp, it will be Beijing's turn!"

Zhu Youjian would of course not let Beijing go — but he would not start by overturning the table inside Beijing, nor would he rely on Wei Zhongxian to overturn the table.

His method was to use household retainers to control the border garrisons, and the border garrisons to encircle the capital. Once he had the three frontiers and five garrisons around Beijing all in his grasp, the nobles inside Beijing would naturally have no strength left to resist.

And the nobles inside Beijing not only fed on the hundred thousand vacancies of the Capital Camps, but also controlled the thirty-some thousand Embroidered Uniform Guard of the capital, and had also encroached on the military fields of more than seventy guard stations in the Northern Metropolitan Region. Only by seizing all these interests could Zhu Youjian's throne truly be considered secure — the real purpose of the Yongle Emperor's moving the capital to Beijing was neither to have the Son of Heaven guard the national gate, nor to make it convenient for him to campaign on the steppe, but to firmly control the empire's strongest troops.

And the foundation of the Yongle Emperor Zhu Di's strong troops was the land and population around Beijing!

If Zhu Youjian wanted to become the wise sovereign and sage ruler who restored the Great Ming, he had to take back the land and population around Beijing, and on that foundation rebuild the army of the Son of Heaven.

"Then what do we do?" Zhu Chunchen looked full of gloom. "He is the Son of Heaven, and he has troops in hand..." Liu Kongzhao said: "Even the Son of Heaven must be reasonable; only by being reasonable can he win over the multitude. We must balance the books, and we must also fight out a pyrrhic victory!"

"Balance the books? A pyrrhic victory?"

"Exactly!" Liu Kongzhao said. "With so many vacancies, there has to be some explanation! And what better explanation than dying on the battlefield? But we can't report a great defeat upward either... We must win, drive the slave bandits out of the Northern Metropolitan Region — that would be defending Beijing and the Ming realm. Then we would all be meritorious subjects! If he wants to pacify Liaodong and sweep the desert, he cannot treat meritorious subjects too harshly... he will have to give us a way out."

"I understand the reasoning you speak of, but how do we fight out this pyrrhic victory?" Zhu Chunchen was thoroughly depressed. Given the standard of the Capital Camps, producing the "pyrrhic" part was no problem — the "victory" part was the hard part!

"Don't we still have the Jiliao elite troops?" Liu Kongzhao said. "As long as the two forces combine, we'll have a host of a hundred thousand. Why fear we can't beat the slave bandits?"

Zhu Chunchen shook his head repeatedly. "Yuan Yuansu is no fool. He's sitting comfortably in Pinggu — why would he come to join forces with us?"

"Because the slave bandits are going to dig up the imperial tombs at Tianshou Mountain!" Liu Kongzhao laughed. "Didn't the Son of Heaven use exactly that pretext to send the Duke of Ying and the Xuanfu troops to Changzhen?"

(End of Chapter)