Chapter 202: Defend Our Sacred Teachings, Protect Confucius and Mencius!

Though the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage was honored beyond compare, he was still a duke, one rank below a princely king. Moreover, this time a king and a duke had come together, and no matter how great Kong Yinzhi's airs, he would not dare receive his guests inside his own ducal mansion.

Besides, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage and the Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, were on very good terms. The Prince of Heng was a princely king, so he could only move about near the city of Yidu. The Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, however, was relatively free and could roam about visiting the three princely kings of Shandong. And the princely kings were glad to befriend this "sage" — after all, there were too few people who could stand shoulder to shoulder with a princely king, and they could not get too close to the local officials. So the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, likewise a "titled lord," was their ideal friend.

Now that his old friend had come to Qufu, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, Kong Yinzhi, naturally had to do the honors as host!

And he also wanted to take the chance to find out about conditions at the traveling court — how much real strength did the Thousand Years actually have? Were the officials at the traveling court all cowed by the Thousand Years' tyranny, angry but afraid to speak? And what exactly was His Majesty's health? Was there any chance he had been murdered?

So Kong Yinzhi at once left Yanzhou and hurried back to Qufu, then set out from Qufu city with his household retainers and entertainers in a great procession, and arrived at Mount Fang, on the border between Qufu and Sishui.

Mount Fang was where the tombs of Confucius' parents and elder brother lay, and was called the Liang Ducal Grove. In addition, Confucius' disciple Yan Hui was also buried at Mount Fang, in what was called the Fang Grove. Therefore, since the Ming dynasty, Mount Fang had been an important stronghold of the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage's mansion outside Qufu city. Not only had sacrificial halls been built there, but also a splendid garden villa. And of the land around Mount Fang, apart from a small portion belonging to the Yan clan's main heir, all the rest belonged to the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage's mansion. Even within Sishui County, right next to Mount Fang, most of the land was also in Kong hands, and the Kong family had built gardens there too.

The Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, was not one to stand on ceremony either. The moment he entered Yanzhou Prefecture, he lodged in a Kong family garden. The next day — that is, the very afternoon Kong Yinzhi reached Mount Fang — the Prince of Heng and the Duke of Chengguo's party arrived in grand procession at the Kong family's Mount Fang garden beside the Liang Ducal Grove.

And Kong Yinzhi's misfortune began the moment he saw his old friend the Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander!

The Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, seemed today like a different man. Gone was his usual ease and elegance, and gone too was that air of a king ruling over a region. After being helped down from horseback, he said to Kong Yinzhi with a mournful face, "Maojia, this is bad. Someone has impeached you!"

"Impeached?" Kong Yinzhi, having served three masters, was rather uneasy in his conscience, and at the Prince of Heng's words he tensed up. "Who — who has impeached me?"

The Prince of Heng's face was pale, and he sighed as he said to Kong Yinzhi, "It was the Prince of De, the Prince of Lu, the Shandong Regional Commander Liu Zeqing, and the Relief Expedition Regional Commander Gao Jie — the four of them jointly submitted a memorial impeaching you!"

"What? What?" Kong Yinzhi broke out in a cold sweat at once. Two princely kings of Shandong plus two Regional Commanders with troops in their hands, jointly impeaching him!?

This was no joke! Two princely kings were frightening enough, and now two Regional Commanders besides... Of the four Regional Commanders under Shi Kefa, two had actually submitted a memorial to the traveling court impeaching him, Kong Yinzhi!

What on earth was going on? Why were they against him?

"Th-this, this, this... what has this old man done to offend them?" Kong Yinzhi stammered for a long while before finally getting out this one sentence.

"You!" The Prince of Heng, that fat man, stamped his foot, took his old friend by the hand, and said, "Your surrender to the roving bandits and the Tartars has been exposed! Gao Jie, Liu Zeqing, and the Prince of De discovered, in the Prince of De's mansion in Jinan city, which the roving bandits had occupied, the letters of submission you sent to the roving bandits and to the Tartars! The letters of submission were sent to the traveling court at Qingzhou. When His Majesty saw them, he flew into a rage and ordered the Duke of Chengguo and this prince to come to Qufu and arrest you."

"Arrest..." Kong Yinzhi's face had lost all color, but he still refused to accept the fact of his arrest, and said trembling, "Your — Your Highness, you say His Majesty wants to — to arrest me? But I heard from people that His Majesty has been — been confined by the Crown Prince and stripped of his power!"

"What did you say?" The Prince of Heng stared at Kong Yinzhi in astonishment, pointed a shaking finger at him, and said, "How — how can you say such a thing? You — you — this is sowing discord between His Majesty and the Crown Prince! This prince cannot knowingly fail to report this. When this prince returns to Qingzhou, he will impeach you as well! You — you — your crimes are monstrous, utterly unpardonable!"

The Duke of Chengguo, Zhu Chunchen, standing to one side, had spent so long in Zhu Cilang's company that his acting had greatly improved. At that moment he shook his head and sighed, "Alas, one more charge — slandering the Crown Prince, shaking the foundations of the state... You are finished!"

"C-could it be that His Majesty has not lost power?" Kong Yinzhi was so frightened he was nearly incoherent. "Then how is it that the Crown Prince is commanding the army?"

"Ah," Zhu Chunchen waved a hand, "that was only because His Majesty could not bring himself to lose face, so he pretended to faint at the Gate of Imperial Supremacy and let the Crown Prince take charge of the breakout..." At that point he realized he had misspoken and hastily corrected himself, "Not pretended to faint — really fainted, truly fainted!"

As he spoke, he seized Kong Yinzhi's hand in a grip and said sternly, "You, Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, are in a sorry state. Not only did you surrender to the roving bandits and the Tartars, you also slandered the Crown Prince and shook the foundations of the state. Come quickly with this lord to Qingzhou and beg His Majesty's forgiveness! Perhaps you may escape death by a thousand cuts and settle matters with a cup of poisoned wine!"

This Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, Kong Yinzhi, had grown up steeped in honey; when had anyone ever frightened him like this? He was stunned at once. He forgot to flee, did not dare let his household retainers resist, and even his legs went weak, so that his whole body was about to sink to the ground. It was the Duke of Chengguo, Zhu Chunchen, who was strong enough — he hoisted the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage up with one heave, stuffed him into a carriage that had long been prepared, and then personally escorted him to Yidu in Qingzhou.

The Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, did not leave, but took up residence in the Kong family garden at Mount Fang. A company of Embroidered Uniform Guard who had come with him, under the command of Chiliarch Ren Yizhou, detained all the Kong family members inside and outside the garden and sealed off the news of Kong Yinzhi's arrest.

On the ground in Ming-dynasty Shandong, the three princely houses and the one duke carried great weight. The Prince of De's house was in Jinan, the Prince of Heng's house in Qingzhou, the Prince of Lu's house in Yanzhou, and the influence of the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage's mansion extended throughout Shandong.

When the sky fell at the end of the Ming, of these three princely houses and one duke, only the Prince of Lu, Zhu Yihai, proved worthy of being a descendant of Zhu Yuanzhang, resisting to the bitter end in those troubled times. The other two princely houses and the duke all became capitulationists. In particular, the surrender of the Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, who still had real strength, and of the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, Kong Yinzhi, had an enormous impact on the later Southern Ming cause against the Qing.

If they had been able to hold out in Shandong, even for as little as a year, the Southern Ming might have been able to finish its power struggle and produce a power center that could truly call the shots — considering the Chongzhen Emperor's choices in history, the Southern Ming's fierce internal strife was inevitable. In this respect there was no comparison with the Southern Song; Zhao Gou was, after all, Zhao Ji's own son! And Sima Rui of the Eastern Jin, though from a collateral line, was a prince with a real fief, with territory, household officials, and an army. Moreover, it was only in the ninth year after Sima Rui moved his headquarters to Jiangdong that the Western Jin finally fell!

So in Zhu Cilang's view, the longer Shandong held out, the more secure his rule in the south would be.

And to make the front in Shandong — that is, the three prefectures of Jinan, the Eastern Depot, and Yanzhou, through which the Grand Canal ran or which could shield the canal's safety — into a barrier blocking the Qing army's southward advance, Zhu Cilang had to draw all three princely houses and the duke of Shandong into the anti-Qing camp.

Moreover, to break up the anti-Crown Prince faction that Shi Kefa had pieced together, Zhu Cilang also had to win the support of the three princely houses and the duke.

Now, just as the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, Kong Yinzhi, was being brought to Qingzhou city in a daze, Zhu Cilang was inside the Prince of Heng's mansion in Qingzhou city, receiving the Prince of Lu, Zhu Yihai, and the Prince of De, Zhu Youli.

Two princes, two temperaments. The Prince of Lu, Zhu Yihai, though also a runaway prince who had abandoned his fief — by the time the envoys Zhu Cilang sent found him, he had already fled as far as Haizhou and was preparing to take ship for Jiangnan —

once brought to Qingzhou, showed not the least timidity, and even had a bit of that reckless defiance of a dead pig that no longer fears boiling water.

Zhu Youli, by contrast, was far worse — a shivering, trembling figure, of the same stamp as the Prince of Heng, Zhu Mobile Corps Commander, and at a glance a coward.

In the Silver Peace Hall of the princely mansion, besides these two princes, there were also the Prince of Jin, Zhu Shenxuan, and the Prince of Qin, Zhu Cunji. These two princes were the ones Zhu Cilang had rescued from outside Fucheng Gate during the battle for Beijing. Though they were useless men who had lost their fiefs, Zhu Cilang had not punished them — for though Zhu Cilang was fierce and violent, he was also very good at making use of useless men, and he acted with reason and would not kill people on a whim.

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