Chapter 307: Is This True Madness?

Zuo Liangyu had very likely gone mad — and even if not completely mad, his mind was certainly no longer sound!

It was not only Hou Fangyu, sitting across from him, who had this feeling. The three hidden behind the screen at Zuo Liangyu's back — Zuo Menggeng, Huang Shu, and Qiu Lei, Zuo Liangyu's sworn brother, currently the Regional Commander garrisoning Jingzhou Prefecture and also the biological father of Zuo Mengmei — all felt that the Grand Commander had lost his wits somewhat!

Because of Huang Shu's instigation, Zhu Cilang's "forcing out" of Liu Liangzuo and Xu Dingguo, his stripping of Liu Zeqing's authority, and other such reasons, Zuo Menggeng and Qiu Lei, along with most of the generals under Zuo Liangyu, harbored resistance toward the Nanjing court.

And after learning that Li Zicheng was going to send Prince Yong, Zhu Cizhao, to Wuchang, Huang Shu, who had fled to Wuchang for refuge, proposed the strategy of "upholding Prince Yong, opposing the Crown Prince, and protecting His Majesty" — in history, Huang Shu had once incited Zuo's forces to purge the court, but now he lacked the nerve for that.

Because Zhu Cilang's strength far exceeded that of the Hongguang Emperor, no one in Zuo's camp wanted to clash head-on with him.

Though Zuo's army claimed eight hundred thousand or a million men, that was all bluff. The actual number was only around a hundred thousand, roughly the same as Zhu Cilang's forces.

In truth, troop numbers were tied to the silver, population, and land one held. Although Zuo Liangyu had been in Wuchang for over a year, he had not put effort into seizing land or population, so Zuo's forces had never taken root in Huguang.

Without sufficient land and population under his control, Zuo Liangyu's army was built on the model of "troops gathered by pay."

In the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Hou Xun had given Zuo Liangyu, then leading his troops in a great battle against Li Zicheng, five hundred thousand taels from the privy purse. Later Zuo Liangyu had gone to Wuchang and let his troops plunder on a grand scale — at the time, Hankou was famed as one of the Four Great Gatherings of the realm, ranked alongside the capital, Suzhou, and Foshan — so he had quite a bit of money on hand. Moreover, he had no family to spend it on, and having grown increasingly paranoid, he kept not even a woman in his rear quarters, so naturally there was nothing to spend it on. Thus it all went to recruiting and maintaining troops. In terms of numbers, therefore, Zuo's forces could crush those of Gao Jie and Huang Degong.

But Zuo's elite troops had been nearly annihilated in the great battle of Zhuxian Town. The new units built after fleeing south had neither adequate equipment, nor good training, nor high morale — they were, in short, a "three-nothing" army.

Unlike Zhu Cilang's Overcoming-Hardship New Army, most of whom had now been allotted land and taken wives, which naturally gave others a grip on their very lifelines, forcing them to train overtime without daring to complain about "996" or "997," and making them reluctant to flee once on the battlefield. Their training and morale were still assured, and their weapons and equipment were considerably better than Zuo Liangyu's — Zhu Cilang had more money than Zuo Liangyu, and he also had Zheng Zhilong, that international arms dealer, to supply cannons and matchlocks, and could even hire foreign military advisors from Macao!

So although Zuo's numbers were about the same as the Overcoming-Hardship New Army's, if it truly came to blows, there was no certainty of victory. Besides, Zhu Cilang also had the two commands of Gao Jie and Huang Degong, whose strength was likewise not below Zuo Liangyu's!

Under these circumstances, carving out a separatist domain and sitting back to watch the struggle between the Southern Ming and the northern Qing was the wishful calculation of Zuo's high command.

As for marching east to purge the court and such — no one dared even think of it!

And Prince Yong, Zhu Cizhao, whom Li Zicheng was about to return, would serve as the banner and legitimacy for Zuo's separatism — or, one might say, as a bargaining chip.

But upholding Prince Yong for separatism and upholding Prince Yong to make him emperor were not the same thing.

And whether it was separatism or purging the court, there was no need to show one's hand to Zhu Cilang so early!

"My lord, why did you tell Hou Fangyu everything we've been secretly planning?"

"My lord, the Crown Prince is cunning and treacherous. If he becomes wary, how are we to accomplish anything?"

"Indeed — better to send Mengmei to Nanjing to confuse the Crown Prince."

As soon as Hou Fangyu left, Zuo Menggeng, Huang Shu, and Qiu Lei emerged from behind the screen and clamored around Zuo Liangyu. Annoyed by the lot of them, Zuo Liangyu slammed the table with a crack, his face darkening.

The old man frowned deeply. "What are you all saying? What are you talking about?"

Ah, it's over — the old man's mind has gone muddled. What do we do now?

Zuo Menggeng, Huang Shu, and Qiu Lei looked at Zuo Liangyu, their hearts turning cold. This was a critical moment. If the old man lost his wits, what would become of their faction? To say something treasonous — even if they wanted to defect, there was nowhere to go!

The Tartars were still in Northern Zhili and Shanxi! If they defected now, they could only go to Li Zicheng or Zhang Xianzhong. Even if the three of them were willing, the men under them would not be! Defect to those two demon kings, and wouldn't they be seized and put to the ankle-press to squeeze out their silver?

"My lord, do you truly not remember what you said to Hou Fangyu?" Zuo Menggeng asked, his voice trembling.

Zuo Liangyu glared at him. "How could I not remember? I just saw him — how could this old man possibly not remember?"

Good — not completely muddled.

Huang Shu shook his head. "My lord, you should not have laid our entire plan bare!"

Zuo Liangyu laughed coldly. "Then what? Send Mengmei to Nanjing to attend upon the Crown Prince?"

"Going would do no harm," Zuo Menggeng said.

"No harm?" Zuo Liangyu glared at his adopted son. "This is no selection of palace ladies! This is the Marquis of Wuchang's house sending a daughter into the palace as a consort. Would you, the heir, like to escort her there yourself?"

Ah.

Zuo Menggeng was stunned.

Zuo Liangyu looked at his son. "If you go, you won't come back! If you don't go, he has ways to deal with us too! He has silver to spare. When Mengmei returns to Wuchang to visit her family, he'll give this general thirty thousand and reward that one with fifty thousand... Do you still expect to be master of all the armies here in Wuchang after this old man is gone?"

The old man was not muddled.

"But my lord still should not have told Hou Fangyu about upholding Prince Yong," Li Guoying said, still unable to make sense of it.

Zuo Liangyu snorted coldly. "If we don't lay it out plainly, then after next year's spring palace examination he will usurp the throne. When that time comes, will we acknowledge it or not? If we acknowledge it, he becomes sovereign and father of the Great Ming, and any further opposition to him would be rebellion!

If we don't acknowledge it, then it's war! Whether we could win aside, Xiangyang Prefecture is still in Li Zicheng's hands!"

Huang Shu was already giving a thumbs-up. "My lord is brilliant! We protect and support Prince Yong, oppose the Crown Prince's usurpation, and thereby seize the great moral mandate! And so long as the Crown Prince does not usurp the throne, we do not raise troops — we hold Huguang as separatists and wear him down!"

"But what if he sends troops to attack Wuchang?" Qiu Lei asked.

"Impossible," Zuo Liangyu said with a smile. "The Tartars have already reached the north bank of the Yellow River and will soon march south!"

Hou Fangyu knew nothing of the conversation between Zuo Liangyu and Zuo Menggeng, Huang Shu, and Qiu Lei. Nor did he have the mind to think about it. After leaving Zuo Liangyu's marquis residence, he did not even dare return to his inn, but went straight to the dock, hired a boat, and headed for Nanjing — he feared that Zuo Liangyu's subordinates, learning the old man had let things slip, would send men to silence him!

Fortunately, he fled quickly enough and was not caught by any assassins. He even made it safely, before New Year's Eve, to Nanjing — a city that had itself grown somewhat crazed.

"Good sir, if you have money, give money; if you have strength, give strength! We must defend the Confucian orthodoxy! Resist the Tartars!"

No sooner had Hou Fangyu stepped ashore at Nanjing's Shangxinhe dock than a young scholar with a Jiangxi accent came up to him, handed him a handbill, and shouted a slogan.

What was going on? Hou Fangyu looked up and saw that on this busy dock there were several young men dressed as scholars shouting slogans and handing out handbills.

Whenever anyone disembarked, so long as they looked like a man of learning, someone would go up and hand them a leaflet. What was wrong with these scholars? Had they given up their studies? The special examination was about to open — how did they have the leisure for this?

He lowered his head and looked at the handbill. Its contents were, as before, slanders against the Tartars, saying that in Northern Zhili the Tartars had turned everything upside down: enclosing land, seizing houses, forcing people into bondservice, slaughtering cities wholesale, burning books and burying scholars alive, and even threatening to dig up the graves of Confucius and Mencius and extinguish the Confucian orthodox lineage, and so on. And at the end of the handbill there was a signature, reading: "The Donglin Assembly, weeping blood and crying out."

What was this about?

What did "Donglin Assembly" mean? Could it be that all those handing out the leaflets were Donglin gentlemen?

Hou Fangyu quickly caught hold of a young scholar and asked, "Is this young brother also a Donglin successor come to the capital for the examinations? And what is this handbill about?"

The young man smiled bitterly. "You misunderstand, sir. I am no Donglin successor. I am merely a clansman stranded in Jinling, earning a bit of hard money by distributing leaflets for the Donglin Full Assembly."

(End of Chapter)