Chapter 305: Eight Banners, Beware of Falling into Decadence

In the Hall of Martial Valor, a group of first- and second-generation Eight Banners men whose fighting spirit had not yet been worn away by wealth and rank were gathered behind closed doors, discussing how to deal with Zhu Cilang!

"My Prince, this slave feels the Zhu family's Crown Prince is brimming with confidence!" The speaker was Holoi, the Gūsa Ejen of the Plain Yellow Banner. "This southern expedition must be deliberated at length."

Holoi's meaning was in fact the consensus of Dorgon's faction — they had lost more than eight hundred brave warriors in the Battle of Dagu, many of them White Armor and Red Armor troops. Had the two White Banners not been so deep in reserves, their vitality would have been badly damaged.

So Dorgon's men were rather cautious when it came to fighting Zhu Cilang.

"Then what of the marriage proposal?"

Holoi said, "This slave thinks it is feasible. The Zhu family's Crown Prince is a capable man and will surely become Emperor in the future. There is no more suitable candidate than him."

The Shunzhi Emperor could not possibly marry his own cousin, so if Princess Donggo wished to marry into the imperial family, Zhu Cilang was the only choice.

Moreover, Dorgon now held sole power and ran rampant with arrogance, even holding the Son of Heaven hostage while bedding the Empress Dowager. Apart from his trusted men of the two White Banners, the nobles of the other six banners were all dissatisfied with Dorgon.

While Dorgon lived, no one dared oppose him, but his health was poor — what if he did not live long? Better that Princess Donggo fall into Zhu Cilang's hands than into the hands of Dorgon's political enemies! So Holoi was sincerely seeking a way out for Dorgon's daughter.

Dorgon's brow furrowed slightly; he neither agreed nor disagreed.

"And what of the Marriage Embassy and the Trade House?" Dorgon asked again. "What exactly are these two establishments for?"

The Marriage Embassy was in fact a diplomatic mission, merely operating under the name of "marriage negotiations," so that diplomatic contact could be maintained even while the two sides were at war — as long as neither Ming nor Qing had the strength to topple the other in one blow, a channel for negotiation was very necessary.

The Trade House, of course, was for trade. It was the method of Ming-Qing commerce Zhu Cilang had decided upon after studying the trading posts the Dutch and the Zheng family had established in Nagasaki, Japan — in Zhu Cilang's view, trying to blockade and strangle the present Great Qing through trade was impossible.

The Great Qing's territory was already vast enough, encompassing the future Three Eastern Provinces, Inner and Outer Mongolia, the Outer Northeast, Hebei Province, Shanxi Province, Beijing, Tianjin, and also Joseon and Korea. How could one blockade so much land?

Furthermore, the economic foundation of the Great Qing was a classic feudal serfdom, and the root that sustained the Qing's serf economy was how much population and land the state could control! With the Qing's present capacity for control, it could perfectly well sustain itself through land enclosure and forced enserfment!

Even if north-south trade fell to zero, as long as they enclosed more land and forced more peasants into serfdom, there would be no question of being unable to survive.

For example, if they enclosed all of Shanxi's thirty-some million mu and the nearly fifty million mu of Northern Zhili, then forced two to three million households into slavery — collecting three dou of flour per mu and one bolt of cotton-hemp cloth per household — they could take in more than twenty million shi and two to three million bolts a year. With such income, how could they fear that several hundred thousand Eight Banners lords could not survive?

If that were still not enough, they could simply develop the Northeast two hundred years early, and gain at least tens of millions more mu and a million households of serfs!

And these Han Chinese forced into serfdom — if they only had to pay a "rent" of three dou of flour per mu and a "levy" of one bolt of cloth per household (the "levy" in the Sui-Tang rent-levy-corvée system was collected in cloth), their burden would absolutely be lighter than the toil they had originally shouldered for their landlords.

As for the Little Ice Age and such — if some Han commoners starved to death, would the Eight Banners nobles care? And with the present fighting strength of the Eight Banners troops, any uprising by northern peasants certainly could not defeat them.

So trying to force the present Great Qing to collapse by blockading trade and suppressing commerce was basically a pipe dream. On the contrary, flourishing commercial activity would corrupt and degrade the Eight Banners bannermen, gradually sapping their fighting strength.

Since a trade blockade would not weaken the fighting strength of the Eight Banners bannermen but would instead preserve it, Zhu Cilang naturally would not do such a thing.

That was why he would use the opportunity of the "marriage negotiations" to open a trading post on Haisha Island, which hung at the mouth of the Wei River at Tianjin, striving to place the initiative in Ming-Qing trade under the control of Shen Tingyang, the Minister of the Northern Seas. Then he would import great quantities of fine food, drink, and amusements, so that the Eight Banners bannermen settled in Beijing could sooner enjoy the carefree life of carrying birdcages and strolling with their larks.

Fan Wencheng, a booi of the Bordered White Banner just back from the Datong front, had been frowning in thought for a long while without grasping Zhu Cilang's intent, so he said to Dorgon, "My Prince, we might as well agree for now. Haisha Island is not an easy place to control anyway — in winter when the river freezes it is manageable, but once the ice melts it becomes an island. Better to let the Southern Court set up two establishments there, but forbid them from stationing troops. We can station some men at Dagu to keep watch over Haisha Island."

"And the matter of the marriage proposal?" Dorgon's brow was tightly knit.

Fan Wencheng said, "The Princess is still young anyway; we can negotiate slowly. Having a channel for discussion between the two sides — this slave thinks it is not a bad thing." His own brow gradually knotted as well. "My Prince, 'marriage talks' and 'peace talks' differ by a single word, and can easily become one and the same thing."

Dorgon nodded. "True. We cannot spare the strength to deal with the Southern Court for the time being anyway. Slow peace talks do no harm, and they can lull the Zhu family's Crown Prince into complacency!"

While Dorgon, Holoi, Fan Wencheng, and the others were discussing the southern expedition, the three of them had no idea that in Nanjing at that very moment, anti-Qing sentiment had already surged to its peak!

The matter of Zhu Cilang sending a marriage envoy to Beijing was known to only a very few people in Nanjing. But the news made public — whether written in the Capital Gazette or posted in "public proclamations" — all indicated without exception that the brutal eastern barbarians would soon sweep south in force!

If the people and scholar-officials of the southeast did not wish to become slaves of the Tartars, did not wish their property seized by the Tartars, did not wish their wives and daughters violated by the Tartars, then they had no choice but to give money and effort and resist the Qing to the end.

The tide of all-out resistance to the Qing spread outward in every direction from the city of Nanjing.

And one current of it traveled upstream along the river with Zhu Cilang's envoy Hou Fangyu, all the way to Wuchang, the city under Zuo Liangyu's rule.

In December, Wuchang gave one an exceptionally oppressive feeling. The whole city was always shrouded in gloom — not from the weather, but from people's hearts.

Because six years earlier, in December, a mutiny had broken out in Xuzhou, in Kaifeng Prefecture, Henan Province — and Xuzhou happened to be the main camp of Zuo Liangyu's great army, which was then campaigning against the roving bandits in the Central Plains! The families of many officers and men of Zuo's army, including Zuo Liangyu himself, had perished in that mutiny.

So every December was the death anniversary of those martyred families of Zuo's army!

And Zuo Liangyu, the Grand Commander Zuo, whose name would stink to high heaven in later history, had at this time the "public image" of a man whose entire family was martyred for the realm!

So for Zhu Cilang, he was a harder figure to deal with than Gao Jie, Huang Degong, Liu Zeqing, and Liu Liangzuo put together. Zuo Liangyu's entire family had essentially died for the Great Ming, leaving only himself, one son, and one adopted daughter — one could say he had destroyed his whole family for the Great Ming!

And he was old, looking as though he had not many days left. Such a pitiable "old loyal subject" — what could Zhu Cilang do to him? The atrocities of the Zuo family army in history had not yet occurred, so what crime could His Highness the Crown Prince publicly punish anyone for?

(End of Chapter)