Chapter 390: The Great Qing Arrived Too Late — the Chives Had All Run Off

Sun Zhixie had never imagined that one day he would be forced to become Governor of Shandong!

Governor of Shandong! In the past, he would have dreamed of it, but now all he wanted was to resign and leave the capital, to find some place where no one knew him and live in seclusion — he knew exactly what sort of role he was, worse than Jiang Gan!

Because Jiang Gan had merely fallen for Zhou Yu's trick — that was a matter of ability, not of allegiance. But he, Sun Zhixie, in order to get out of the Southern Ming alive, had betrayed the Great Qing in Yangzhou, and had even played the great villain in Nanjing together with Zu Kefa and Jin Zhijun, smearing the Great Qing as black as coal.

If Dorgon ever found out what he had done in Nanjing, it would not be a question of dismissal and striking his name from the rolls — his entire family would be executed!

But going into seclusion was not easy either. His hometown was under Ming control, and most of his property and land were probably already gone. And he had not brought much property with him to Beijing; after becoming an official of the Great Qing, he had not had much time to line his pockets. So he had little spare money on hand, and with a whole household depending on him, even putting food on the table was difficult — what seclusion was there to speak of? Go find some deserted place to starve to death?

So after he was dismissed from office, he had been struggling along in Beijing, and just when he was at a complete dead end, Dorgon actually made him Governor of Shandong, and even sent him to win over the powerful local gentry of Shandong!

He was a nationally notorious eunuch-faction traitor, and he had even publicly declared he wanted to dig up Confucius's grave — sending him to win over the powerful gentry of Shandong, what was he supposed to say? Let's all surrender to the Great Qing together, then go as a group to Qufu and rob tombs?

Could that possibly work?

But he did not dare say no to Dorgon! Dorgon was already dissatisfied with him; if he failed to read the situation now, he could forget about seclusion — he would be dragged straight to Caishikou and butchered!

So he had steeled himself and taken up the post of Governor of Shandong, entirely in the frame of mind of taking each day as it came, serving as governor with his head hanging from his belt.

But when he crossed into Shandong territory from Wuqiao Town in Dezhou, following Helohoi's great army, his mood suddenly lifted enormously.

Because his fellow Shandong natives had already solved his biggest problem for him — how to win people over!

After leaving the borders of Northern Zhili and entering Shandong, everything he saw along the way was devastation!

It was mid-spring in the fifth month, a time that ought to have been full of flourishing life.

Yet all along the road, he saw only fields lying waste, and human traces could only be described as rare. As for the towns along the Grand Canal, most had been put to the torch, leaving only broken walls and rubble.

Excellent! His Shandong compatriots were all very clever — without waiting for the Great Qing's heavenly troops to come killing, they had run off on their own! Sun Zhixie was overjoyed at heart — if the people of Shandong had all fled, then of course there was no need to win them over, and his assignment could not possibly be botched. If the assignment was not botched, he could hold the governorship for a while, scrape together a little something, and never be poor again.

But his good mood could not show on his face — Helohoi, the Plain Yellow Banner commander of the Manchu Banners, was riding stirrup to stirrup with him!

"Our Great Qing's heavenly troops invaded Shandong twice, in the first and fourth years of Chongde, and both times won complete victories, killing over a million, carrying off several hundred thousand captives, slaughtering so thoroughly that the very children of Shandong dared not cry at the sound of our Great Qing's mighty name. So this time, when they heard the Great Qing's heavenly troops were coming again, they ran off first on their own."

Hearing Sun Zhixie speak of the two previous Qing incursions into Shandong, Helohoi also frowned deeply. Those two incursions had indeed been complete victories, with spoils exceeding all the earlier incursions. Everyone in the Eight Banners, high and low, had profited handsomely. But who would have thought the nikan of Shandong would actually learn their lesson, and without waiting for the heavenly troops to come again, flee clean away first!

Looking at the desolate scene before him, he could not help sighing: "But this time the Prince Regent has already given the word — he wants us to kill a little less, and loot a little less."

"Isn't that so!" Sun Zhixie nodded. "The common people here in Shandong have been deluded by the Zhu traitors for too long, and do not know how benevolent and righteous our Great Qing is. It seems we can only wait until after we take the Eastern Depot Prefecture, and then think of ways to entice the fleeing commoners back to their homes."

At present, the Great Qing's invasion of Shandong was divided into a western and a northern route. The western route was the main force, commanded by Dodo, consisting of the main strength of the Bordered White Banner, part of the Plain Red Banner, the regular Eight Banners troops plus booi bondservants, and in addition the Green Standard troops of Liu Liangzuo and Xu Dingguo — over thirty thousand men in all — attacking from the direction of Daming Prefecture, taking Guan County, Guantao, and Linqing Subprefecture.

The northern route was a secondary force, commanded by Helohoi, now appointed Plain Yellow Banner commander, with parts of the Plain Yellow, Bordered Yellow, Plain Red, and Bordered Red Banners, plus the Green Standard under Wu Weihua, a total strength of fifteen thousand. It attacked from the direction of Hejian Prefecture, taking Dezhou, Gucheng, and Wucheng, then proceeding to Linqing Subprefecture to join forces with Dodo.

After the rendezvous, Dodo would command the entire main force southward along the Grand Canal, and finally hurl it at Qufu.

And Sun Zhixie, once Linqing Subprefecture had been taken by the Qing army, would establish the Great Qing's Shandong Governor's Office there and begin winning over the gentry and worthies of Shandong on behalf of the Great Qing — he still had the Great Qing's official buttons to hand out, and ought to be able to draw in a few heads.

"Governor, don't you think there are far too many people here? We don't have that much land."

At the same moment, Li Dakai, Vice Regional Commander of the Jinan Garrison, was pointing at the endless line of refugees outside the walls of Jinan and quietly complaining to Gao Hongtu, Governor of Shandong and Regional Commander of the Jinan Garrison on the Ming side.

These refugees had all fled from the subprefectures and counties under Jinan Prefecture and the Eastern Depot Prefecture! Nor had this wave of refugees just begun — it had been going on for quite a long time.

Ever since the Great Qing had seized houses, enclosed land, and forced Han Chinese into bondservice in Beijing and Northern Zhili, the refugee tide had gradually risen. First came the Han commoners who had fled Beijing and Northern Zhili — whatever they had been before, they were now all utterly ruined, and after entering Shandong they were little better than beggars.

Under their example, the common people of northern Jinan Prefecture (north of the Daqing River), the Eastern Depot Prefecture, and the northwestern part of Yanzhou Prefecture (west and north of Yanzhou Prefectural City and Qufu) also began fleeing their homes in great numbers — these places had been slaughtered twice by the invading Qing armies, and the commoners now living there were survivors of catastrophe, with no good impression of the Great Qing whatsoever. Seeing what Northern Zhili had become, why would they not hurry to pack up and run?

And the Shandong Governor's Office did not stop them; on the contrary, it issued orders to the yamens of the border prefectures and counties to organize the evacuation of the common people!

So the scale of the refugee tide grew larger and larger, until by the turn of spring and summer in the eighteenth year of Chongzhen, the prefectures and counties of Shandong bordering the Great Qing had been almost entirely emptied.

Meanwhile, the Dengzhou-Laizhou Governor's Office, the Shandong Governor's Office, and the Shandong Militia Office had all been busy during this period recruiting people.

Among them, the Dengzhou-Laizhou Governor's Office was recruiting on behalf of Zhu Cilang, its main targets being the refugees who had fled Beijing and Northern Zhili — they were all "deeply wronged and bitterly resentful," and all northerners, making them the best possible source of soldiers for the Hard-Working New Army!

Moreover, these people would tell the "original northern followers" in the Hard-Working New Army about the miserable fate of the commoners of Beijing and Northern Zhili — those men had all lost their homes and families, so would they not howl for vengeance?

Therefore, most of the commoners who had fled Beijing and Zhili were arranged by the Dengzhou-Laizhou Governor's Office to go south, and were settled in Nanjing and in the port city of Shanghai, then under construction.

As for the commoners who had fled the border prefectures and counties of Shandong, they were "divided up" between the Shandong Governor's Office and the Shandong Militia Office.

These two offices, to judge by their names, seemed to be provincial-level offices of Shandong, but in reality the territory each could administer was only prefecture-level. The Shandong Governor's Office currently controlled only Jinan Prefecture and half of Yanzhou Prefecture. And the Shandong Militia Commissioner's Office did not manage the militia of the whole province either; it only administered parts of Dengzhou Prefecture, Laizhou Prefecture, and Qingzhou Prefecture — not only the militia, but also the civil administration of those prefectures and counties. In effect, it too was a military governorate holding both military and civil power in one hand!

But these two military governorates did not have one hundred percent control over the prefectures and counties under them either, because within those territories there still existed many middling and petty local strongmen who did not necessarily buy what Gao Hongtu and Zuo Maodi were selling. So the Shandong Governor's Office and the Shandong Militia Commissioner's Office had also begun seizing population and seizing land.

And the method these two offices used to seize population and land was to open military-agricultural colonies! The commoners who had fled the border prefectures and counties of Shandong were the source of population — a few hundred thousand at least, if not more.

The more troublesome issue was land. Although Shandong had been brutally ravaged by the Qing army nine years earlier, with its population reduced by two or three million, the depopulated prefectures and counties were all those near Northern Zhili and Henan. The relatively lightly afflicted areas of Dengzhou, Laizhou, Qingzhou, and the Taiyi mountain region had not lost much population, so there was not much unowned wasteland there.

(End of Chapter)