Chapter 4: Suffocate for the Dream (Luo Luo Has Dreams Too—Namely, Bookmarks)

"It seems he dreamed of the old ancestor."

Zhu Cilang had not nailed the matter down from the very start. Wang Cheng'en might be honest, but he was by no means a fool. The Chongzhen Emperor would use an honest man, but he would never use a fool as brush-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial and concurrent superintendent of the Eastern Depot. With this sort of man, one had to coax him along slowly, half truth and half falsehood, and best of all let him walk into the trap himself.

"Oh." Wang Cheng'en responded. "What did the old ancestor in Thousand Years' dream look like? Was he like the portrait of the Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor?"

"Not the same," Zhu Cilang shook his head and said vaguely, "much younger, and he looked very fierce."

Wang Cheng'en nodded, noncommittal. "Perhaps it is because Thousand Years is troubled by state affairs, and so his dream came at night?"

He did not for a moment believe that Zhu Yuanzhang would really send a dream to a sixteen-year-old crown prince, because the Great Ming still had a wise and brilliant Son of Heaven on the throne. Even if the old ancestor had some way to turn the tide, he ought to have sent the dream to the Son of Heaven.

"Perhaps so," Zhu Cilang looked seriously at Wang Cheng'en. "But We still saw a road to survival in the dream."

"A road to survival?" Wang Cheng'en was somewhat puzzled. "Whose road to survival?"

"The Great Ming's road to survival, of course!" Zhu Cilang's tone was firm, each word deliberate. "Does Companion Wang not feel that our Great Ming is now hovering between life and death?"

Wang Cheng'en was silent. Who did not already know that the Great Ming stood on the line between life and death? In fact, as early as after the great battle of Zhuxian Town in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, Supreme Commander Hou Xun had already spoken of abandoning the Central Plain and putting the realm and the altars first.

In the spring of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, the Chongzhen Emperor himself had privately discussed moving south with Zhou Yanru, who had been restored as Chief Grand Secretary.

And by the sixth month of the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, just when the Chongzhen Emperor was repeatedly urging Sun Chuanting to march out of Tong Pass and fight a decisive battle with the ascendant Li Zicheng, Empress Zhou had also raised the suggestion of moving the capital. Citing "the bandit emergency," she tested Chongzhen by saying: "We still have a home in the south." At that time Wang Cheng'en was right beside Chongzhen.

After entering the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, more and more officials had come to realize that "frontier and bandits were intertwined, and the Central Plain could no longer be held," so the proposal to move south had already been laid out in open discussion at court.

Yet the Chongzhen Emperor could never bring himself to make the decision and use his sole imperial authority to carry out the move south. And most of the officials were unwilling to bear the blame of abandoning the ancestral tombs, so whenever the move south was debated at court, there was always a chorus of opposition.

Wang Cheng'en thought to himself: The Crown Prince presumably also favors moving south, but fears that he is young and his words carry little weight, so he has borrowed the Grand Progenitor's dream to put forward the proposal, is that it?

"Did the old ancestor mention the matter of moving south in the dream?" Wang Cheng'en probed.

Zhu Cilang did not answer that question. He merely handed Wang Cheng'en the chart he had prepared earlier. "Take a look."

Wang Cheng'en respectfully accepted the chart, and was again taken aback. This method of listing out through investigation the various major internal strengths, weaknesses, and external opportunities and threats closely related to the object of study, in the form of charts and matrices, then carrying out systematic analysis and matching the various factors against one another for analysis, was clearly not something a sixteen-year-old Zhu Cilang could have mastered… and neither Zhu Cilang's tutors nor the attendants around him seemed capable of such a method either.

Zhu Cilang looked at Wang Cheng'en and spoke at length: "Our Great Ming's difficulties, on the surface, look like defeats in battle and the loss of generals, setback after setback. But on closer inspection, they actually come down to finances. If the court had money it could never spend, the roving bandits would long since have been pacified, and the Hu caitiffs would long since have been trapped to death by the forts and border walls."

"Thousand Years is right." Wang Cheng'en answered while frowning at the chart Zhu Cilang had given him.

This chart mainly analyzed the financial condition of the Great Ming.

The Great Ming's financial condition, on the whole, was still fairly healthy!

There were just two small problems: depleted cash reserves and an imbalance between revenue and expenditure… To the finance dogs of later ages, these were of course small problems!

Because the Great Ming basically had no debt, and moreover possessed enormous cash flow, and exclusively occupied a vast market—the tax markets of Jiangnan, Jianghuai, Fujian, and the two Guangs!

This was the largest tax market in the entire world in the seventeenth century! And its growth was excellent. Through the massive export of silk, porcelain, and other goods, silver from the New World was flowing ceaselessly into the tax markets of Jiangnan, Jianghuai, Fujian, and the two Guangs. These places could therefore bear higher taxes… Of course, the premise was to let Zhu Cilang go to Jiangnan to collect the money!

As long as he could get to Jiangnan and take power, he would have ways to collect money from the wealthiest sea merchants and the great landlords of the Three Wu region… or swindle it out of them! That was exactly the line of work he had been in in his later life!

Zhu Cilang stood up, clasped his hands behind his back, and paced about the great hall as he spoke with eloquence: "In the sixteenth year of Chongzhen, all taxes and surcharges together totaled more than ten million taels of silver in value. Because the Central Plain, Shaanxi, Huguang, and other places had fallen into war, and the Northern Metropolitan Region had been plundered by the Hu caitiffs in the fifteenth year of Chongzhen, all of them were heavily in arrears. Of the more than ten million actually collected last year, the greater part came from the rich southeastern lands of the Southern Metropolitan Region, Jiangxi, Zhejiang, Fujian, and Guangdong.

And yet the rich southeastern lands, bearing so much in taxes and surcharges, remain as stable as ever, with no disaster of refugees. This shows that the southeast has money, enough to bear all manner of taxes and surcharges!

The southeast is stable: no roving bandits, no Hu caitiffs, no princely fiefs, no great disasters. Even the sea bandits have been pacified by Zheng Zhilong. It is entirely a scene of peace and prosperity. So while the court collects huge taxes in the southeast, it needs to spend almost nothing there. The income is nearly all pure profit!"

Zhu Cilang paused, then asked: "Companion Wang, do you know where the court's money is mainly spent?"

"Ai," Wang Cheng'en sighed. "Naturally it is spent on the war in Liaodong and on suppressing bandits in the Central Plain. In addition, the stipends of the princely fiefs also cost a great deal."

Zhu Cilang nodded. "Correct! The court collects huge taxes in the southeast, and spends huge sums in the Central Plain, the northwest, and Liaodong… What the southeast yields is not enough to meet the expenditures of the Central Plain, the northwest, and Liaodong, and the finances are thus beyond repair. When the finances are beyond repair, the troops and generals lack pay and weapons, the refugees of the Central Plain and northwest cannot be relieved, and can only rise in revolt, and the passes and walls of Liaodong have no money for reinforcement. The war naturally rots away until nothing can be done!"

Wang Cheng'en was silent.

Zhu Cilang then asked: "Companion Wang, how much money do you think the court would need to simultaneously defeat the Roving Rebel, who has already grown great, and the Hu caitiffs?"

"That…" Wang Cheng'en still could not answer.

Zhu Cilang smiled bitterly. "When government troops fight the roving bandits, they actually win more than they lose. Were it not for natural and man-made disasters, and the court having no money for relief, the roving bandits would long since have been pacified. But when government troops fight the Hu caitiffs, victories are rare, and there have been many great defeats and catastrophic defeats! So much so that the elite officers and men who could have been used to suppress the bandits were all thrown away on the battlefields against the Hu caitiffs.

From this it is not hard to conclude that the fighting strength of the government's elite troops is superior to the roving bandits, but far inferior to the Hu caitiffs. If government troops are to be used against the Hu caitiffs, several times the enemy's number of elite troops is required.

According to the reports of the Governor-General of Ji-Liao, the so-called Manchu Eight Banners crack troops of the Hu caitiffs now number over eighty thousand, and the troops of the three surrendered kings number more than ten thousand. Their elite fighting men are around one hundred thousand! In addition, there are tens of thousands of Mongol tribesmen attached to the Hu caitiffs who can be used. In total they can field over a hundred thousand fighting men!

If our officers and men can fight two against one, then three hundred thousand elite troops are needed! If three against one is required, then four hundred fifty thousand elite troops are needed!

Add to that the roving bandits, who have already grown great and are now marching over a hundred thousand men this way! To crush them, I fear over a hundred thousand elite troops would also be needed.

The two together mean the court needs six hundred thousand elite troops to pacify Liao and destroy the bandits! How much money would it take to maintain six hundred thousand elite troops? Can the court produce it? Even if it neither pacifies nor destroys, but merely holds the line, two or three hundred thousand elite troops are still needed. If they are paid according to the treatment of the Guanning Army, how much would two or three hundred thousand elite troops cost? Could the court possibly bear it?"

Wang Cheng'en shook his head.

Zhu Cilang stopped walking and looked at Wang Cheng'en: "Since we cannot produce it, then we can only temporarily abandon the loss-making Central Plain and Liaodong, and withdraw to defend the southeast, where great money can still be made. As long as the southeast is in hand, an income of twenty million a year can still be managed. With those twenty million, our Great Ming's restoration is still within hope!"

This was in fact the simplest asset restructuring: abandon the markets and businesses that do not make money, and concentrate the main energy on the businesses and markets that do.

"But…" Wang Cheng'en frowned deeply. "But if Beijing is abandoned, can the southeast be held?"

"It can!" Zhu Cilang was very certain. "The campaigns in the Central Plain and Liaodong depend on cavalry that come and go like the wind. But the southeast is crisscrossed with waterways, and has the Yangtze, the Huang-Huai (at this time the Yellow River had seized the Huai's course to the sea, so in the lower reaches the Huang and Huai were one), and the Grand Canal as its trunk lines, and the sea as its support. Therefore war and defense in the southeast favor a navy. And neither the Hu caitiffs nor the roving bandits have a navy, while our Great Ming has the three fleets of Fujian, Guangdong, and Tianjin to rely on, and under the grain transport governor-general there is also a fleet of ships that can be converted into a navy. As long as they are employed properly, we can rely on the Yangtze, the Huang-Huai, and the sea to preserve the peace and security of our Great Ming's southeast."

The navy was the Great Ming's core competitiveness! What were Dorgon and Li Zicheng, those two landlubbers, going to use to fight it?

Zhu Cilang continued his analysis: "Moreover, once the roving bandits enter Beijing, the Roving Rebel will have to face the caitiff scum directly! With the Roving Rebel contending against the caitiff scum in the north, can our Great Ming not recuperate in the southeast? This is exactly the situation of old, when the Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor, rose in the southeast and won the realm!

Right now the Central Plain and Liaodong have no money. After so many years of fighting, what money there was has been fought away into nothing. If it is not in the court's hands, will it be money once it reaches the Roving Rebel's hands? The Roving Rebel goes about shouting about equalizing land and remitting taxes, about no levies for three years. Once he enters Beijing and faces the Hu caitiffs surging toward him, he will learn his misery. By then, the Roving Rebel will hardly be able to fend off the Hu caitiffs in time—what spare strength will he have to campaign south?

And once the court goes to the southeast, it will not need to clash with the Hu caitiffs, nor need to richly support the princely fiefs and imperial clansmen everywhere. Even the roving rebels will lack the strength to move south."

The Central Plain market was not easy to work! Competition was fierce! And the cash flow it could generate was small, while every kind of expenditure was enormous. It was very hard to sustain.

Zhu Cilang's tone was impassioned, his gaze deep and far-reaching, fixed on some unknown point in the air as he slowly spread his arms. "So as long as the court moves south, the Hu caitiffs will become the Mongol Yuan of old, the roving bandits will become the Red Turbans of old, and our Great Ming will, just as in the time of the Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor, rise again in restoration in the southeast!

Companion Wang, this is Our dream! And it is the road to survival that the Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor, pointed out for our Great Ming! Do you think the road pointed out by the Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor, is right or wrong?"

Wang Cheng'en already had the feeling that he could not breathe—this was suffocating for a dream!

The old eunuch wept for joy: "The Exalted Emperor, Grand Progenitor, really did send a dream! The Great Ming is saved! His Majesty is saved…"

(End of Chapter)