Chapter 208: Shi Kefa, You Have Plenty of Accomplices!

Crash! Huang Degong smashed a teacup to the floor, and, still not vented, kicked over a chair as well. His staff officers all stood to one side with hands lowered and shoulders hunched, not daring to breathe too loudly, let alone knowing how to console this Regional Commander so utterly loyal to the Chongzhen Emperor.

Because Huang Degong was angry at Shi Kefa, Gao Hongtu, Qian Qianyi, and Huang Shu.

These past few days, these few men, along with the other Ministers and Vice Ministers of the Nanjing ministries who had gathered at Yanzhou to welcome the imperial procession, had done nothing but argue and debate endlessly, simply wasting time.

Among them, Qian Qianyi advocated answering Kong Yinzhi's call to defend the Confucian teaching and guard the Kong family forest, and for the time being not to quibble with that unfilial son Zhu Cilang.

Huang Shu, however, sang the opposite tune from Qian Qianyi, advocating first restoring the Chongzhen Emperor's authority, and then defending Confucius under the leadership of a wise sovereign...

So the officials gathered at Yanzhou split into two factions, one supporting Qian Qianyi and one supporting Huang Shu, wrangling day after day. Who knows how many polemical essays they wrote, every damn one of them loaded with classical citations and looking perfectly reasonable, yet neither side could convince the other!

And Shi Kefa, the head of the Nanjing Six Ministries, along with Gao Hongtu, the Nanjing Minister of Revenue who controlled the purse strings, were both big shots with no opinions of their own. Watching their subordinates split into two factions and tear at each other endlessly, they too lost all sense of direction. Day after day they merely accompanied the arguing, as if waiting for these two groups of invincible-tongued civil officials to argue their way to a winner.

But as the days passed, the two groups of debaters only grew more and more spirited, seemingly having tossed aside the question of defending the Confucian teaching versus defending Chongzhen, and now arguing purely for the sake of winning the argument.

And while the civil officials at Yanzhou quarreled day after day, the Crown Prince's side had not been idle!

Measure after measure to reorganize the defenses of Shandong was issued, and each one looked perfectly sound—clearly the work of a heroic and wise sovereign!

First, the reorganization of the seven guards of Denglai had achieved great results! The lands of the seven guards, originally more tangled than a skein of hemp, were cut through by the Crown Prince's sharp knife—all lands within the guard-station territories were uniformly confiscated to the state, then redistributed to 10,000 new military households.

The numbers looked smaller—only 10,000 military households remained across the seven guard stations. But their actual combat strength had increased who knows how many times over!

These 10,000 men all held a hundred mu of land or more, and had also received at least ten taels of "armor-and-weapons silver" from the mobile court—elite troops, at the very least free from worrying about feeding their families, and with enough silver to improve their own equipment.

Second, the fifteen prefectures and counties of Denglai were reorganized. Through a "special examination," two or three hundred sons of the local gentry and scholar-official families were selected, and then allowed to "contract" the militia training and tax collection of each prefecture and county. This move, like the reorganization of the guard stations, also violated the ancestral institutions of the Great Ming. But the results were equally striking—at least all fifteen prefectures and counties of Denglai now "had masters."

Having someone to manage, someone to organize, is always better than having no one responsible!

Moreover, the mobile court also took the families of the Guard Commanders and Assistant Commanders of the Denglai guard stations, as well as the families of the powerful local families of the fifteen Denglai prefectures and counties, and brought them all into Dengzhou or Jiaozhou city to be "protected"—in reality, they became hostages...

The third measure was to transfer the Tang fief to Runing and the Lu fief to Qingzhou, granting the two princely houses authority to command troops when mounted and govern the people when dismounted! At the same time, Li Shiyuan, the former Qingzhou Subprefect, was promoted to Qingzhou Garrison Regional Commander, to govern Qingzhou jointly with the Prince of Lu, Zhu Yihai.

Although Zhu Cilang did not reorganize Qingzhou the way he had Denglai, he had at last found a master for Qingzhou Prefecture, and by some unknown means had induced the Heng fief of Qingzhou to surrender its princely residence, lands, and most of its stored silver, willingly going off to Nanjing to be an idle prince.

With the Heng fief's accumulated wealth of over two hundred years, Zhu Yihai and Li Shiyuan should be able to make something of the situation.

The fourth measure—by some unknown means, he had actually won over Kong Yinzhi, the Duke for Perpetuating the Sage, who had always advocated restoring the Chongzhen Emperor's authority, so that now he went about shouting to defend the Confucian teaching and guard the Kong family forest, as if the whole purpose of the Tartars entering Beijing was to dig up his ancestral graves!

Although Huang Degong did not believe a word of Kong Yinzhi's talk, that great Confucian scholar Qian Qianyi believed it! Word had also come from Jiangnan that several young gentlemen of the Restoration Society believed it too, writing essays every day calling for the defense of the Confucian teaching... What a bunch of bookish fools, all taken in by Zhu Cilang!

And in the past two days, bad news had come from Jinan Prefecture! The Army-Soothing Crown Prince, leading forty thousand troops, had suddenly advanced on Licheng, the chief county of Jinan Prefecture, putting on a posture of forcing Gao Jie to submit by arms.

Under these circumstances, Qian Qianyi and Huang Shu, those two argumentative bookworms, were still quarreling endlessly, and Shi Kefa and Gao Hongtu remained just as helpless.

Huang Degong already had a very bad premonition! Gao Jie, a Regional Commander of roving-bandit origin, had no sense of loyalty or righteousness, and was very likely to defect under the Crown Prince's threats and inducements!

Gao Jie had thirty thousand men in hand, and the Crown Prince now had about fifty thousand troops. If the two of them joined forces, that would be an army of eighty thousand. And Shi Kefa's throne-rallying army, after losing Gao Jie, would number at most seventy or eighty thousand... and of those, the only ones fit to fight were the six or seven thousand household retainers in the hands of Huang Degong, Liu Zeqing, and Liu Liangzuo.

Huang Degong was growing somewhat disheartened. Why were the civil officials of the Great Ming so fond of quarreling?

Come to think of it, the Crown Prince's side had plenty of civil officials too, didn't it? Why weren't they quarreling? All the Crown Prince's edicts had Grand Secretariat endorsements attached to them—how had the mobile court's Grand Secretariat become so agreeable? When His Majesty held full power, those people had not been like this!

Just as Huang Degong was feeling his ambitions thwarted, one of his personal guards strode in and announced: "Reporting to the Commander, Governor-General Ma has come to call."

"Governor-General Ma is here? Now?" Huang Degong glanced out the window—pitch black. What was Ma Shiying coming for at this hour? Could there be something he could not speak of openly?

He had guessed right. Ma Shiying did have something he could not speak of openly to discuss with Huang Degong. He had come incognito with only a small retinue, and after Huang Degong welcomed him into the inner hall, he asked Huang Degong to dismiss all attendants.

"There is a secret edict!" Ma Shiying said solemnly once the idle onlookers had all withdrawn. "Huang Degong, receive the decree!"

Huang Degong was taken aback and did not immediately kneel to receive it. Instead he asked in return: "Is it an imperial edict or a princely decree?"

"It is His Majesty's direct edict!" With that, Ma Shiying carefully produced a square of silk, densely covered with writing.

"Your subject Huang Degong receives the decree!" Huang Degong hastily knelt.

Ma Shiying did not read it aloud, but handed the square of silk to Huang Degong to read himself. For the secret edict was not addressed to Huang Degong, but to Ma Shiying. The writing on the silk was in the Chongzhen Emperor's own hand, and its content commanded Ma Shiying to contact loyal and righteous men and await the chance to rally to the throne.

Huang Degong read the secret edict through carefully, character by character, then returned it to Ma Shiying with both hands before rising to his feet.

"Governor-General, tell me—what should Huang do?" Huang Degong asked Ma Shiying.

Ma Shiying sighed: "Yanzhou is no longer tenable! I have just received word that Gao Jie of Jinan Prefecture has gone over to the Crown Prince!"

Huang Degong ground his teeth: "What? How could that man Gao be so disloyal and unrighteous?"

Ma Shiying frowned. "Once Gao Jie joins forces with the Crown Prince, there will be eighty thousand troops in Jinan Prefecture. Liu Zeqing in the Eastern Depot Prefecture will surely not dare resist and will soon submit as well. And Liu Liangzuo's troops have never had any discipline; the throne-rallying volunteers that Minister Shi brought are untrained, and they have few decent weapons—they cannot withstand a single blow. Here in Yanzhou, only your troops, Commander Huang, can still fight, and they are loyal to His Majesty—the Crown Prince fears you most!"

Huang Degong nodded repeatedly. "My elite troops are all from the Valiant Guard Camp—most loyal to His Majesty!"

Ma Shiying sighed: "But the enemy is many and we are few, and the Crown Prince is indeed full of stratagems and skilled at governing troops and waging war... This new army that overcomes hardship is no trifling matter! If we truly fight a head-on battle at Yanzhou, I fear His Majesty's last remaining strength will not be preserved. If the Valiant Guard Camp is gone, what will the Crown Prince have left to fear? He will surely usurp the throne brazenly, and may even harm His Majesty!"

"He wouldn't dare!" Huang Degong roared.

"Once loyal subjects like you and me are gone, why wouldn't he dare!" Ma Shiying's face was full of anguish. "You have seen what Minister Shi and Minister Gao have been doing these days—they are utterly incapable of accomplishing anything. Governor Lu left in despair the day before yesterday and has taken his men back to Huai'an. We cannot remain in Yanzhou either, or we will surely be dragged to our deaths by Minister Shi and Minister Gao!"

"Not remain in Yanzhou? Where then?"

Ma Shiying said: "To Fengyang Prefecture! I am the Governor-General of Fengyang and can command the Fengyang region. Fengyang has a strong walled city to rely on and the Huai River as a natural barrier, and the surrounding area produces abundant grain, enough to be self-sufficient. Once we reach Fengyang, I will submit a memorial recommending you as Fengyang Garrison Regional Commander. We will first establish ourselves in Fengyang, then seek to contact loyal and righteous men and plan our next move!"

Huang Degong nodded heavily. "Good. The Governor-General holds His Majesty's secret edict, so Degong will naturally obey your every command!"