Chapter 392: Everything for the Sake of Staying Alive!

The entire area around Qufu was still one — no, many — enormous construction sites.

The bastion-fort conversion of Qufu had long since been completed, transforming it from a traditional Chinese walled city into a large bastion fort with nine projecting triangular gun platforms and sloped outer walls!

On the outward-facing sides of the gun platforms and walls, layer upon layer of sandbags had been piled up as protection against cannon fire!

On the nine gun platforms, gun emplacements had been built up from sandbags, and in each emplacement four 1,000-jin Great General cannons had been installed — these were large cannon produced by the Ming dynasty itself, cast from pig iron, three to four chi long, weighing anywhere from several hundred to over a thousand jin, with the barrel reinforced by iron bands. A thousand-jin Great General cannon could fire a lead ball of six to seven jin, with a range of roughly one li.

The thirty-six 1,000-jin Great General cannons placed on Qufu's nine gun platforms had not been built under the supervision of Shi Kefa or Kong Yinzhi; rather, Kong Yinzhi had spent a huge sum to purchase them through Shen Tingyang.

Besides these thirty-six 1,000-jin cannons, the Duke of Yansheng had also obtained through various channels as many as 300 assault cannons — a type of light vehicle-mounted cannon, not very powerful, but light and flexible.

In addition, Kong Yinzhi had spared no expense in buying large quantities of high-quality gunpowder from Shen Tingyang — this time the Duke of Yansheng had truly gone all out, silver flowing out like water, buying every kind of firearm and weapon as though they cost nothing. As long as the goods were good, he did not mind the price at all!

There was no help for it — he had to stay alive!

Kong Yinzhi knew he had mortally offended the Great Qing. First he had slandered them by claiming they were coming to Qufu to rob tombs, and then he had raised troops for a northern expedition — although he had never left Qufu, his banners had reached the Northern Metropolitan Region, so he could not wash himself clean even by jumping into the Yellow River.

And he also knew about the death of Hong Chengchou, and knew what the Great Qing had done in Beijing and the Northern Metropolitan Region, so he held out few illusions.

Moreover, Zhu Cilang was ruthless enough — he simply would not allow him to take the Kong clan south to escape disaster. Were they not all filial sons and worthy grandsons of Confucius? How could they abandon the Kong Forest and flee south to escape death? That would be most unfilial!

Besides, the Kong clan had long had a Southern Branch, which had fled there at the end of the Northern Song and settled in Quzhou, Zhejiang. So the Northern Branch of the Kong clan could very well go generously to their deaths.

There truly was no way out! The Tartars had been offended beyond repair, so he dared not go over to them. And the road south to survival had been blocked by the Southern Branch. What way out was left for Kong Yinzhi and the sons of the Kong clan's Northern Branch?

They could only stake everything on staying alive!

The silver that Kong Yinzhi had once loved above all else no longer mattered now. As long as he could survive, even bankrupting the family was worth it! With his single-character surname and the family's 2,600 daqing of sacrificial fields (one daqing equaled 300 mu, for a total of 780,000 mu), the glory and prosperity of his descendants was assured — these sacrificial fields were not land of dubious origin; they had all been granted to the Kong family by successive Sons of Heaven of the Ming dynasty, and the largest portion, 2,000 daqing, had been given by Zhu Yuanzhang himself!

That was why, since Zhu Cilang had taken power, he had not touched the Kong family's sacrificial fields — although he held great power, he could not do whatever he pleased! That sort of thing — exterminating the Kong clan and confiscating the sacrificial fields — how could he, a Donglin Crown Prince, do such a thing? That could only be done by the Tartars' Tomb-Opening Beile, Hooge, and their Grave-Touching Prince, Dodo. You see, were the Tartar armies not even now bearing down on Qufu?

To preserve his life, his family estate, and his ancestral graves, Kong Yinzhi could only lead the entire Kong household in staking everything.

And it was not only these unworthy descendants of the Sage Confucius who needed to save their lives. The poor and lower-middle peasants who had followed the Kong family for over two hundred years here in Qufu also needed to live! And there were countless refugees who had fled from the northwestern part of Yanzhou Prefecture and from the Eastern Depot Prefecture to shelter from the "Qing wind" beneath the great tree of the Kong family — they too needed to live. With so many people, the little city of Qufu could not possibly hold them all!

Therefore, as soon as the "bastion-fort conversion" of Qufu was complete, nine "support forts" were immediately put under construction.

These nine support forts had been designed by Han Lin before he was transferred to Nanjing to serve as Director of the Practical Learning Academy, based on the requirements of Shi Kefa and Kong Yinzhi. The nine support forts were built surrounding the main city of Qufu, each one directly facing one of the projecting gun platforms, at a distance of roughly 200 paces from the gun platform, within the covering fire range of the Great General cannons.

These nine support forts were not bastion forts, but circular fortresses built from sandbags, earth, and logs. Outside each fort was a ring of trenches, and inside were the shacks where the refugees lived. Within each circular fort there were always over ten thousand people.

Construction on the outer walls of the circular forts was still ongoing — those were walls that would save lives! Of course they had to be reinforced again and again; when would there ever be a time of complete finish?

When news that the Qing troops had occupied Ziyang, the seat of Yanzhou Prefecture, reached Qufu, it was just at dusk. The strong laborers who had been piling sandbags all day were wolfing down sorghum flatbread wrapped around scallions, clustered in group after group. Some men dressed as scholars were taking the opportunity to make a mobilization speech: "Fellow villagers, there is still one more shift after this — pile up a thousand mud bags, and then drive 300 sharpened wooden stakes into the trenches..."

These scholars were all staff officers of the Qufu militia army — not any formal official post, but privately appointed by Shi Kefa, Governor-General of the Seven Provinces, and assigned to the refugees or to the local Qufu scholars who were still fit for use.

Most of these scholars held examination degrees, and some were even juren, "sirs"! Now they too had been tricked onto a dead-end road by that cunning and treacherous Ming Crown Prince, Zhu Cilang!

How had Zhu Cilang tricked them onto a dead-end road?

Of course it was him! Last time, had not Sun Zhixie and Jin Zhijun brought back several large crates of the "Proclamation Against the Barbarian Invaders"? Tens of thousands of scholars had signed their names to it, including juren and xiucai from Shandong, and it had been Kong Yinzhi, Gao Hongtu, and Zuo Maodi who had taken the lead in advocating it!

At that time, anyone who did not sign would have been suspected of being a traitor to the Han! If suspected of being a traitor, could one still remain a juren or xiucai? Without the juren or xiucai degree, could one still hold on to the family's land?

So when their turn came, few dared not to sign, and Sun Zhixie and Jin Zhijun had "copied down" their names and native places and taken them back to Beijing.

What was worse, Dorgon had now appointed Sun Zhixie as Governor of Shandong — which meant he was coming with a blacklist to arrest people! Who would dare stay at home? When the time came, they would come arresting according to the list, catching one after another with perfect accuracy, and every last one of them would have his whole family executed!

To stay alive, everyone had no choice but to abandon their homes and flee. But no sooner had they fled to Qufu than they were stopped by the militia of Shi Kefa and Kong Yinzhi, who said that scholars must swear to defend Confucius to the death! If they did not stay to defend Confucius, all their examination degrees would be stripped away, and they would never again be allowed to sit the civil service examinations!

On what grounds? None of them were surnamed Kong! But Shi Kefa and Kong Yinzhi simply would not listen to reason. They forcibly detained people, and moreover organized the commoners they had forcibly kept into nine great militia corps according to native place, armed them all, and then stuffed them into the nine support forts outside the main city of Qufu.

"Outside there are nine forts ringing us in defense, within there is the strong city of Qufu, and there are tens of thousands of militia and my own 5,000 headquarters troops standing guard day and night. Even if the Tartar caitiffs came with a million men, they would find it hard to break this city. The Duke of Yansheng may set his mind entirely at ease and dwell here as usual."

The one in the Duke of Yansheng's mansion inside Qufu, giving Kong Yinzhi his absolute guarantee, was Shi Kefa. He had rushed over immediately upon learning that the Qing army had occupied Ziyang, the chief county of Yanzhou.

He and Kong Yinzhi had been dealing with each other for nearly a year, and he knew all too well how terrified of death this Duke of Yansheng was — if the man had shown a bit more backbone that day, and told Zhu Cilang "kill me or spare me, do as you please," how could the great Crown Prince Zhu have forced the Qufu Kong family to this point? At most, Zhu Cilang would have quietly done away with Kong Yinzhi; against the entire Kong clan of Qufu, he would have had no way to act!

But Kong Yinzhi, as it happened, was cowardly and terrified of death to the extreme. Threatened with death by Zhu Cilang, he had step by step driven the entire Kong family onto a dead-end road.

Now that the Tartar army had come knocking, how could Kong Yinzhi not be afraid? If he were simply frightened to death, that would be one thing — he could be given a grand funeral under the name of "having died from overwork in the service of the nation," and his death would count as weighty as Mount Tai.

But what if he were so frightened by the Tartars that he fled before battle? How would that be handled? What would happen to morale? What would the scholars of the realm think of the sacred enterprise of defending the Kong Forest and upholding the Confucian orthodoxy?

So when Shi Kefa came over, he had brought many of his personal guards, and had also brought the finest crane's-crest poison that Zhu Cilang had given him... If in the end he could not talk Kong Yinzhi around, then he would simply have to invite him to sample the crane's-crest poison.

(End of Chapter)