Chapter 491: Rebels and Traitors Love Chongzhen

"Your Highness, Your Highness, Li Zicheng is about to make his move — and he has picked a very good moment for it!"

The urgent military report Li Yan had submitted turned out to be that Li Zicheng was finally about to march east in force! This great strategist, who had remained utterly calm and composed even when the Qing troops came south, was this time unusually anxious.

Zhu Cilang sat behind his writing desk, with Wei Zaode and Wu Xiang seated across from him; all three looked at Li Yan with some surprise.

Wu Xiang merely smiled. "Ah, what great matter is this? What is there to fear from Li Zicheng? With the Zuo family army holding the front, they can hold out for a while."

Wei Zaode also smiled. "His Highness the Crown Prince's new army is invincible — why fear mere roving bandits?"

Zhu Cilang, for his part, looked at Li Yan with a faint smile, clearly also failing to realize that Li Zicheng was making progress too!

The Li Zicheng of now was no longer the same Li Zicheng who in history had come south from Xiangjing! This Li Zicheng had learned to "entrench and take root" and to "distribute land by headcount." Not only was his revolutionary force more stable, but his ability to stir up the laboring masses of Huguang had also grown considerably.

Moreover, Li Zicheng had not abandoned his only base and come south as a roving bandit. Instead, while firmly controlling the five prefectures of Xiangjing, Yunyang, Nanyang, Hanzhong, and Xi'an, he had seized an extremely favorable moment to march his army east into Huguang.

Li Yan shook his head. "Right now Zuo Liangyu's fate is unknown, and the whole Zuo army is in a state of panic. Word has even come recently that the Zuo family army is moving toward Jingzhou Prefecture — clearly they mean to avoid battle!"

Zhu Cilang frowned slightly. "So what? Can Li Zicheng be stronger than Hooge?"

Li Yan was taken aback and looked at Zhu Cilang with some astonishment. "How could Li Zicheng not be a match for Hooge? At Shanhai Pass, he held off a combined force of more than a hundred thousand under Wu Sangui and the eastern barbarians with sixty thousand men, fighting bitterly until deep into the night before being defeated and retreating west, with losses barely over half. If that day only Hooge's single force of eighteen thousand had been there, Li Zicheng would have smashed it long ago."

What Li Yan said actually seemed to make sense!

When Li Zicheng's old roving-bandit camp really fought hard, they could still put up a good fight. Their performance in the great battle at Shanhai Pass was not much inferior to that of the Endure-Hardship New Army at the Battle of Blood-Flow Creek.

The reason their combat strength had grown steadily weaker after the great battle at Shanhai Pass was, in truth, that Li Zicheng had long refused to take the backward path of feudalism, leaving his old brothers of low political consciousness disheartened and without the will to conquer the realm.

But now Li Zicheng had corrected his errors and was actively striving to regress. He had enclosed more than ten million mu of land in Xiangjing, Yunyang, and Nanyang and distributed it to the seventy or eighty thousand officers and men under his command, completing the transformation to a feudal system of land-based military service.

And those seventy or eighty thousand Shun officers and men who had received land now had, at least in the short term, a full measure of fighting spirit once more.

Li Yan's brows were tightly knit. "And the autumn harvest in Huguang has only just ended!"

Wu Xiang asked, puzzled, "So what?"

Li Yan said, "After the autumn harvest is precisely when the conflict between gentry and tenants is at its sharpest! The tenants want to resist rent and dodge debts, while the landlords press for rent and call in debts. Moreover, Huguang has not enjoyed the grace of five years' tax exemption, and the local officials working for Zuo Liangyu have been squeezing the people even more ruthlessly. How could the tenants' grievances not boil over? The roving bandits' agents have been spreading word of land distribution by headcount through the prefectures and counties of Hubei since before the autumn harvest."

"Autumn harvest uprising—" The four unspeakable words popped out of Zhu Cilang's mouth before he could stop himself!

What Li Zicheng was playing at now was precisely the idea of "the sharpening of gentry-tenant conflict after the autumn harvest." Though the timing was a little late, the effect was no different — Li Zicheng's army had also feudalized; they themselves were landlords now and also needed to collect rent after the autumn harvest, so they could not march at the same time as the harvest. Thus the earliest possible time to move was early winter!

"Exactly — it is to exploit the conflict after the autumn harvest!" Li Yan, having come from roving-bandit stock himself, naturally understood how great the gentry-tenant conflict in the countryside was after the autumn harvest. "That is precisely Li Zicheng's plan. Never mind that Zuo Liangyu's fate is unknown — even if he were alive and well, he could not withstand the combined onslaught of a Huguang popular uprising and the Roving Bandit's great army!

Your Highness, we can wait no longer. Once Hanyang and Wuchang fall, the grain route from Huguang will be cut!"

Jiangnan now had too large a population, and cash crops were widely planted, crowding out grain fields. As a result, it could not feed itself and had to buy grain from Huguang upriver. Once Wuchang was occupied by Li Zicheng and the Yangtze waterway was choked off, grain prices downstream would immediately soar, and great cities like Nanjing, Suzhou, and Yangzhou would fall into disorder!

"This Li Zicheng deserves to die ten thousand deaths!" Zhu Cilang cursed. "If not for Our war with the Tartars, Li Zicheng would have been beaten to death long ago. How would he have the present situation of holding five prefectures? And with five prefectures he is still not satisfied. This time We will surely exterminate this wretch and pacify Huguang in one stroke!"

"Crown Prince, are we to send out troops?" Wu Xiang frowned slightly. "The autumn grain has not all been collected, and the southeast is not entirely stable either!"

The conflicts triggered by the autumn harvest existed not only in Huguang but also in the southeast.

And the "autumn harvest conflict" in the southeast differed from that in Huguang. In Huguang the conflict was relatively simple — just gentry versus tenants. In the southeast it was more complicated: there was of course the gentry-tenant conflict, but in addition there were official-gentry conflict, north-south conflict, and master-servant conflict.

The official-gentry conflict arose because Zhu Cilang's court had strictly investigated military colonies and official fields! To the southeastern gentry who had encroached on military colonies and official fields, Zhu Cilang's actions amounted to confiscating their property!

The north-south conflict also arose because of Zhu Cilang, mainly because the northern faction that followed him had acquired large amounts of southeastern land — in the eyes of the southeastern scholar-official landlords, these crude northern military landlords were Zhu Cilang's own roving bandits!

And the master-servant conflict was also somewhat connected to Zhu Cilang. In order to levy commercial taxes and investigate official fields, he had forcefully suppressed the power of the southeastern gentry. By strengthening the prefectural and county governments, he had stripped part of the gentry's authority to govern the countryside, and had also greatly damaged the prestige of those local gentry who had not participated in the "strengthening of prefectural and county government" campaign.

And the power of the southeastern gentry rested on prestige to rule over the common people.

After the authority and prestige of the gentry had been severely battered, the servant class, which suffered the heaviest oppression, had already begun to stir restlessly.

Over these past months, the Crown Prince had received reports of "servant uprisings" from quite a number of local prefectures and counties.

"We cannot wait any longer," Zhu Cilang shook his head. "Wuchang must not fall, and Huguang even less may fall into Li Zicheng's hands! If he truly gains a firm foothold in Huguang, it will be hard for us to retake it.

And after land is distributed by headcount, the Huguang grain sold to Jiangnan will greatly diminish!"

Distributing land by headcount would deal a severe blow to commercial activity in the countryside, because most landlords also engaged in trade; rural merchants and landlords were in fact one and the same. Once Li Zicheng distributed land by headcount in Huguang, the merchants and landlords of Huguang would certainly suffer a crushing blow. The commercial network that had originally spread throughout Huguang would also vanish!

Moreover, how much demand would the small farming households that received land have for the silk, porcelain, tea, and other handicraft goods of the southeast?

Without such demand, why would they sell the grain that kept people alive?

"Crown Prince," Wei Zaode shook his head, "the situation in the southeast is unstable right now. It would be best for you to send a great general on this campaign!"

"Who can make this journey?" Zhu Cilang asked with a frown.

"What about the Duke of Cheng?" Wu Xiang recommended Zhu Chunchen. "He has fought rather well in Fengyang."

"Better to recall Li Ruolian from Shandong." Li Yan recommended Li Ruolian.

Could either of those two actually do it?

The greatest weakness of Zhu Cilang's core group was that it had very few great generals capable of holding a front on their own. Wu Xiang and Li Yan perhaps had that ability, but Zhu Cilang needed Li Yan to devise strategy for him, while at the same time he had to guard against the expansion of the Wu family's power.

After all, there was now already a Great Qing General Who Pacifies the West, Prince, and commander of the Bordered Green Banner **** Wu Sangui.

"Then We shall lead the campaign Ourself!" Zhu Cilang thought for a moment. "Nanjing will be entrusted to the Chief Grand Secretary and Our esteemed father-in-law."

Wu Xiang asked, "How many troops will be sent?"

"The army will first send one division, reinforced with two three-pounder cannon companies and two Hongyi cannon companies." Zhu Cilang said, "In addition, the main force of the Yangtze River Navy is to be deployed!"

One army division was fourteen or fifteen thousand men; if the Yangtze River Navy sent its main force, that would also be about fourteen or fifteen thousand — altogether thirty thousand men.

Wei Zaode asked, "Then will His Majesty be going?"

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