Chapter 289: So the Tartars Were That Wicked! (Part One)

On the thirteenth day of the eleventh month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen in the Great Ming, both sides of Yifeng Gate Avenue in the north of Nanjing were packed with jostling crowds.

By this time, the northwestern part of Nanjing, near the Yangtze River and the Qinhuai River, had long been thick with dwellings, markets everywhere, and a dense population. From morning to night every day it was a scene of bustling prosperity. But today was an exception: inside and outside the western wall of Nanjing's inner city, along both banks of the Qinhuai, those places of pleasure and splendor had become utterly deserted, the streets emptied. People had all gathered along both sides of Yifeng Gate Avenue and North Zushi Nunnery Avenue, on the gate tower of Yifeng Gate and the nearby city walls, and on Lion Mountain to the north of Yifeng Gate Avenue.

The sole purpose for so many people gathering in this northernmost corner of Nanjing's inner city was to see the Tartars!

To see what these wicked, savage Tartars looked like — the ones who wanted to dig up Confucius's grave, cut off the root of the Confucian moral order, and turn all Han people into booi slaves!

The negative propaganda about the Tartars had begun in the ninth month and had now continued for nearly two months.

However, because the means of propaganda were still rather limited — only posting notices and distributing handbills, and with no dedicated "Propaganda Department," the task could only be filled in by the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Eastern Palace guard battalions — the results were not especially good.

The common people of Nanjing did not quite believe it either. In the view of some among them, the Great Ming court controlled by Zhu Cilang was in fact just another insatiably greedy outside regime. After suppressing the Nanjing meritorious nobles and officials who had tried to rally to the throne, it had done nothing but squeeze and hoard! First it re-imposed the salt tax, then it confiscated properties, then it investigated fields (checking the military fields, official fields, and hidden fields usurped by the meritorious nobles), and recently there were even rumors that it would strictly levy customs duties and commercial taxes!

Although in the tenth month Zhu Cilang had issued an edict of "five years' grain exemption," remitting the land tax for five years beginning from the eighteenth year of Chongzhen, and at the same time halting the three surtax levies, which could be counted as slightly reducing the pressure on the southeastern peasants. But this relief meant something only to owner-peasants; it brought no benefit to the gentry landlords and tenant farmers, and even did them harm!

Because while the five-year tax exemption and the halting of the three surtaxes lightened the burden on owner-peasants, they also lowered the value of "fraudulent registration" — if the court no longer collected land tax and surtaxes, then what meaning was left in the gentry's privilege of tax exemption?

And while the land tax and surtaxes were being exempted, offices called "Military Field Bureaus" — agencies specially managing military fields and official fields (including the confiscated hidden fields and private fields) — began appearing throughout South Zhili. Although these offices were for the time being responsible only for managing the lands confiscated from the Nanjing meritorious nobles and officials, everyone knew that they would soon replace the original guard battalions and bring the military fields under the names of more than a hundred guards in the southeast into their jurisdiction. That would seriously infringe upon the interests of the southeastern gentry!

In addition, an office called the Inspectorate-General of Customs appeared under the Ministry of Revenue. The appearance of this office made quite a few gentry smell the odor of "a great resurgence of mining taxes"!

In particular, those southeastern gentry sojourning in Nanjing now all knew that the Crown Prince Regent who held power in the Great Ming had a talent for extracting wealth far surpassing that of the old Wanli Emperor of years past.

Toward such a "wealth-extracting Crown Prince," the Nanjing scholarly world naturally had no good impression. It was only that from the ninth month until now, the Embroidered Uniform Guard had been rigorously investigating the "remnants of the eunuch faction" — the several chief culprits of the Nanjing eunuch-faction upheaval, such as Han Zanzhou, Zhu Guobi, and Zhao Zhilong, had still not been executed, nor formally tried, which meant the investigation was not yet over!

So the atmosphere in Nanjing was somewhat tense, and the scholar-officials were still rather careful in their speech. Therefore Zhu Cilang's reputation had not yet completely rotted away.

But the people did not much believe the court's propaganda blackening the Tartars.

The Tartars were human too — how could they possibly be so savage?

How could they possibly be worse than Ming emperors who knew nothing but squeezing wealth?

Therefore, hearing today that a Tartar embassy was coming to Nanjing, the curious people and gentry of Jinling gathered inside and outside Yifeng Gate, through which the embassy had to pass to enter the city, to see with their own eyes what the Tartars looked like and whether they were truly so fierce.

The savage Tartars had not yet appeared, but soldiers of the Hard-Working New Army, who looked nearly as fierce as the Tartars, were already standing guard every three paces and sentry every five paces, armored and armed, stretching from the docks outside Yifeng Gate all the way to the avenue beyond the Drum Tower — beside the Nanjing Drum Tower there was a residence prepared for the Hard-Working Earl of Dongguan, Su Guansheng, but since Earl Su was still in Denglai and had not returned, it was for the time being still under the management of the Grand Marshal's Office, and so it had been used to house the Tartar embassy.

The New Army soldiers standing guard were all "meritorious men" who had just been allotted land and wives. Only in mid-tenth month had they returned to camp one after another, every man brimming with drive, now training at a "697" intensity, and eating well too — they looked full of spirit, a completely different species from the previously tottering Capital Camps troops.

Just as the gentry and commoners of Nanjing were beginning to feel somewhat afraid of the increasingly spirited Hard-Working New Army soldiers, the Tartars also disembarked from the official boats that had come from Yangzhou.

There were not only envoys, but also Tartar soldiers escorting the envoys, every one of them with a shaved head, wearing the money-rat-tail queue, clad in cloth-faced armor, carrying long spears, with sabers at their waists, drawn up in a column of fours, swaggering forward.

They looked... not much fiercer than the men of the Hard-Working New Army after all!

Following the Tartar soldiers were three Tartar officials riding on horseback, all dressed in Tartar clothing and also wearing queues, and three Embroidered Uniform Guard officers in flying-fish robes riding beside them — whether as escorts or as guards, no one could tell.

The crowd of onlookers now began to talk among themselves.

"These Tartars don't look any fiercer than His Thousand Years' New Army!"

"Of course they're not as fierce. These aren't real Tartars — they're some kind of Han Army of the Tartars... Didn't the public notices say? The Tartars have many Han troops under them, all Han people who went over to them."

"I remember now — something about first becoming a booi slave, following your master into battle, and after winning merit you can be promoted to the Han Army and enrolled in a Han banner."

"Why must one first become a booi slave?"

"They say that except for soldiers who defected and civil officials who surrendered before the Tartar emperor moved his capital to Beijing, all other Han people under Tartar rule must become booi slaves..."

"What is a booi slave?"

"A slave! Your very life belongs to someone else — you can be killed or sold, and your wife is a slave too. If the master wants to sleep with her, he sleeps with her, and you cannot resist!"

"Isn't that just like the Mongol Yuan times?"

"Far worse than the Mongol Yuan! In the Mongol Yuan days it was third-class Han, fourth-class Southerners. Now the Tartars who have taken Beijing want to turn all Han people into booi slaves!"

"Really? I don't believe it. There are so many of us Han people — all turned into their slaves?"

While the people were buzzing with discussion, the Tartar embassy had already arrived outside the barbican of Yifeng Gate. The Great Ming Minister of Rites, Qian Qianyi, was waiting there with several civil and military officials. Seeing the Tartar embassy arrive, he was about to step forward to exchange greetings — the Great Ming was, after all, a land of propriety, and envoys ought to be entertained as they should be.

But at that very moment, whether because the New Army soldiers maintaining order had been negligent or for some other reason, an elderly man dressed as a Confucian scholar suddenly strode out of the crowd and, under the gaze of all, walked quickly to the front of Yifeng Gate and planted himself between Qian Qianyi's party and the Tartar embassy.

What was this? Qian Qianyi hurriedly turned his head to look at the Hard-Working New Army Mobile Corps Commander responsible for order at Yifeng Gate. But this Mobile Corps Commander Yu seemed to see nothing at all, merely standing rigidly at attention.

"Is that Sun Longfu ahead? I am Ruan Dacheng of Tongcheng. Since we parted in the capital, seventeen years have passed in the blink of an eye!"

Ruan Dacheng! That eunuch-faction Ruan Dacheng! When had he come to Nanjing? Could it be to renew old ties with Sun Zhixie, a fellow eunuch-faction backbone? No, that didn't make sense — the two of them had never been that close! And how could Ruan Dacheng and Sun Zhixie have been parted for seventeen years? By the first year of Chongzhen, Ruan Dacheng had long since resigned from office and was at home writing operas. What on earth was going on?

Qian Qianyi narrowed his eyes to look, but saw only a figure from behind. He thought to step forward and stop the two eunuch-faction remnants from reminiscing, but was pulled back by the Marquis of Wuqing, Li Guorui, who was beside him and had come with him to receive the Tartar embassy.

"Minister Qian," Li Guorui said with a smile, "watch the show!"

Watch the show? What show? Qian Qianyi was baffled again and again.

(End of Chapter)