Chapter 471: Zhu Cilang's Dilemma (Calling for Monthly Tickets)

Zuo Mengmei sighed softly: "The Great King sits at ease in his royal residence, passing his days in idle pleasure, yet he does not know that beyond the walls of Jingzhou, the storm is already gathering!"

"What do you mean?" Zhu Cizhao asked hurriedly. "Could it be that my elder brother the Crown Prince has committed some unfilial and rebellious act?"

"It is not the Crown Prince," Zuo Mengmei shook her head. "It is Li Zicheng!"

"Ah, it is His Majesty the Emperor," Zhu Cizhao realized his slip of the tongue and hastily corrected himself. "It is the rebel bandit who is attacking?"

"Not yet, but it will be soon!" Zuo Mengmei said. "The rebel bandit's proclamations have already been posted outside Jingzhou, saying things like 'Eat his mother, divide his mother, when the Roving King comes the fields will be shared,' and the whole city of Jingzhou is in a panic. This morning, my adoptive father's strategist Huang Shu also arrived in Jingzhou, and at this very moment he is discussing with Father, Companion Wang, and Prefect Du how to deal with the Roving King's great army!"

"This, this..." Zhu Cizhao was thrown into a panic at once. "Sister, we had better prepare to flee for our lives! This Li Zicheng is truly ferocious, and We cannot fall into his hands again!"

Zuo Mengmei looked at her little husband, rather at a loss for words.

Li Zicheng is ferocious, but is that elder brother of yours, Zhu Cilang, any less ferocious? Falling into Li Zicheng's hands may not necessarily cost you your life, but if you rebel and your elder brother captures you, do you still expect to live?

Since ancient times, the imperial family has been the most heartless of all!

At that same moment, Zhu Cizhao, Prince of Chu's good elder brother, the foremost filial son under heaven, Zhu Cilang, had already returned to the Jiangbei Grand Camp.

He had not returned to the Jiangbei Grand Camp directly from Fengyang Prefecture, but had taken a great roundabout route. First he followed the Huai River to Huai'an Prefecture, then traveled south along the Grand Canal, and after reaching Yangzhou he turned west, passing through Yizhen before finally arriving at the Jiangbei Grand Camp in Jiangpu County.

Along the way, at every town of any size he passed, Zhu Cilang held a grand victory parade. Eight thousand to ten thousand fully armed soldiers of the new Overcome-Difficulty Army, fully armed, with pickled Tartar heads hanging from their weapons, marched through the towns with murderous intent, striking awe into the hearts of all who saw them!

With so many Tartars slain, who would dare not submit?

If you refuse to submit, then come! Let us see whether you are fiercer, or the Tartars are fiercer!

Besides intimidating petty villains, Zhu Cilang also recruited a great many people along the way — all of them northern refugees who had drifted into the lands between the Yangtze and Huai rivers!

Huang Shu was not wrong about one thing: Zhu Cilang's regime was a regime of exiled northern Han notables, all of whom had come to the southeast with clenched fists to skim off wealth. So the people Zhu Cilang truly trusted were still northerners. In his previous life he had been a Hunan man, always striving in the Magic City, and would not have been particularly fond of northerners. But in this life, he knew very well what his base was.

Zhu Cilang's foundation was, first, the Northern Army; second, the Southern Merchants!

The Northern Army did not refer to northern warlords like Huang Degong, Gao Jie, and Zuo Liangyu. Rather, it referred to the northern soldiers whose livelihoods Zhu Cilang controlled — just as in history with the Eastern Jin and Southern Song, Zhu Cilang's south-crossing regime now relied on exiled northern stalwarts to serve as soldiers.

And the Southern Merchants were mainly maritime merchants. Unlike the Eastern Jin and Southern Song, Zhu Cilang's Southern Ming now happened to be in the midst of the Age of Discovery. Wealth and firearms from overseas were extremely important to Zhu Cilang's army.

Therefore the Southern Merchants were also a major component of Zhu Cilang's regime; without them, the Crown Prince's regime would not be stable.

And now, in a time of military need, the Northern Army naturally held the dominant position, so Zhu Cilang had to pay particular attention to northerners and do his utmost to help the northern refugees who had drifted south.

Granting land by headcount to millions, even tens of millions, of northern refugees was of course unrealistic — the southeast was already densely populated! It was nearly bursting at the seams; where was the land to grant? Although he could seize the lands of southern landlords, he could not evict tenants on a massive scale!

Would that not provoke a peasant uprising?

Nevertheless, Zhu Cilang still had to do everything possible to provide relief and military opportunities for the northerners!

So while he displayed military force between the Yangtze and Huai rivers, he recruited northern able-bodied men all along the way, gaining tens of thousands more households, all of whom he brought back to the Jiangbei Grand Camp — and this Jiangbei Grand Camp would soon become a military town for settling northern refugees!

"Thousand Years, adding these tens of thousands of households, the Northern Army officers and soldiers who have been allotted residential land within Yingtian Prefecture now number about one hundred twenty thousand households, with a population of no less than three hundred thousand, and it will soon exceed four hundred thousand!"

"At present, many northern refugees are still streaming in continuously. Huai'an, Yangzhou, Fengyang, Runing, and other prefectures have all reported numbers of no fewer than three or four million!"

"Thousand Years, in the past several years, many northerners have already come south, and now there are several million more..."

"Thousand Years, at present every prefecture in the southeast has large numbers of northern refugees, many of whom lack food and clothing and have no place to beg... We must think of some way to help them, must we not?"

The ones speaking with Zhu Cilang about the northern refugee problem were Minister of War Wu Xiang and Guard Commander Li Yan of the Military Orders Guard.

The northerners who had followed Zhu Cilang to the Jiangbei Grand Camp were handed over to the two of them for settlement — land grants were impossible, but residential plots still had to be allotted, and a bit of silver for settling in had to be distributed. Each household had to be given twenty or thirty taels.

For roughly forty to fifty thousand households, over a million taels of silver would be thrown out!

In addition, they had to be given some grain rations; they could not be allowed to starve to death! Two shi of rice and flour per household — that was another hundred thousand shi gone.

Of course, this money and grain was not given for nothing. Forty to fifty thousand households meant forty to fifty thousand able-bodied men, all of them new recruits for the Overcome-Difficulty New Army!

Adding the more than seventy thousand households previously settled within Nanjing, Zhu Cilang now controlled one hundred twenty thousand households, five to six hundred thousand people — and this number was still growing.

And throughout the entire southeast, refugees who had fled from the north numbered, by conservative estimate, four to five million!

In addition, many refugees remained in the unoccupied regions of Shandong and between the Yangtze and Han rivers — all together, even ten million would not cover it!

And if one added the refugees who had fled south in previous years, the numbers were even more staggering. And how were so many refugees to make a living? How were so many mouths to be fed? Moreover, the southeast itself had the "slave revolts"... just thinking about it made one's head ache!

Zhu Cilang pressed his temples. "Is there any news from Zuo Liangyu? Is he dead yet?"

Li Yan replied: "Not dead, but close enough."

"Thousand Years, is it time to use troops against Huguang?" Wu Xiang said. "Only by taking Huguang into our hands will our grain supply be sufficient!"

Zhu Cilang narrowed his eyes and calculated: "How much grain has the Military Farms Office stockpiled? If the Military Farms Office does not have enough grain, this campaign cannot be fought! Using troops against Huguang is not only a matter of dealing with Zuo Liangyu, but also with Li Zicheng! The troops sent must number in the hundreds of thousands, the campaign must last at least six months, and with the consumption of laborers, boatmen, and livestock, plus grain reserves for relief — without a million shi of grain, We dare not commit these troops."

Because of the excessive number of exiled northerners and the impact of the fighting in Huaibei and Shandong, the southeast was already somewhat short of grain.

And now it was the lean season, so grain prices in Nanjing, Yangzhou, Suzhou, and other places were very high, with a shi of white rice already selling for around three taels of silver!

Moreover, because industry and commerce were highly developed in the southeast of the Great Ming, large amounts of land were used to grow cash crops, so grain had always been supplied by Huguang upriver.

Once war broke out in autumn and winter, the eastward shipment of Huguang grain could be interrupted, and then grain prices in the southeast would rise even higher.

So the "million shi" Zhu Cilang had cited was actually an understatement; to be truly prepared, ten million shi would be closer to the mark.

"A million shi? Where would we get that?" Wu Xiang shook his head. "The autumn harvest has not yet arrived! The rents cannot be fully collected until the eleventh or twelfth month, but then there should be sixteen million shi!"

"Sixteen million shi!" Zhu Cilang smacked his lips. "Once it is all in hand, the expenses for pacifying Huguang will be covered, Shandong will no longer be a worry, and we can also relieve the refugees and stabilize grain prices..."

"Then we will have to wait until next spring to launch a large-scale campaign, but that is for the best." Li Yan thought for a moment. "There are still more than four months... We should be able to expand several more model regiments. These past few months, we have already ordered large quantities of muskets, cannon, and gunpowder from the ironworks in Foshan and Anping, and they should arrive when the southeast winds rise next spring."

He smiled: "Huguang has thousands of li of fertile fields and two hundred million mu of arable land. Once we take it, we will never again have to worry about grain shortages!"

(End of Chapter)