Chapter 495: You're Blacker Than Li Zicheng!

"Eat his mother, wear his mother, open wide the gates to welcome the Roving King; when the Roving King comes, he'll divide the fields!

Rents are heavy, interest is high, these days poor men can hardly stay alive. Open the gates early and bow to the Roving King — no more rent to pay, no more debts to owe, and he'll see that great and small all rejoice."

On the first day of the eleventh month of the eighteenth year of Chongzhen, the song welcoming the Roving King rang out once more across the hills and fields outside the city of Jingmen Prefecture.

This meant that the great army of the Roving King, Li Zicheng, welcomed by the poor peasants, was now sweeping in grand array into the lands of Jingmen Prefecture, which lay under the rule of Zuo Liangyu, the Ming Governor-General of Huguang Military Affairs and Marquis of Wuchang.

Jingmen Prefecture was a subordinate prefecture under Chengtian Prefecture, and at the same time the northern gateway to the Jianghan Plain. The terrain of Jingmen's prefectural city was extremely strategic: west of the city rose the tail ranges of the Jing Mountains, east of the city stood a low hill called Pagoda Hill, and not far north of the city flowed the Quan River, a tributary of the Han.

Besides its strategic terrain, Jingmen Prefecture also sat at the junction of the rich Jianghan Plain and the Jing-Xiang mountain region. North of Jingmen stretched a vast expanse of mountains and hills, reaching all the way to the vicinity of Xiangyang Prefecture and the Han River. South of Jingmen lay the Jianghan Plain, so fertile it fairly oozed fat.

Before Li Zicheng's defeat at Shanhai Pass, Jingmen Prefecture had been territory of the Shun dynasty, and Li Zicheng had even established a Jingmen command here, dispatching a military governor. But Li Zicheng had never put any real effort into developing this patch of ground. After the battle of Shanhai Pass, in order to concentrate his strength against the Qing army, Li Zicheng abandoned his Jingmen command. Zuo Liangyu's troops then swept into the vacuum and seized the whole of Chengtian Prefecture, Jingmen included. He had also stationed heavy troops in Jingmen's prefectural city to guard against another southward push by the Shun army from Xiangjing Prefecture to the north.

During the more than a year that Zuo Liangyu's forces had occupied Jingmen Prefecture, this already quite sturdy city had been further strengthened. The rammed-earth walls had been raised and thickened considerably, and the moats on all four sides had been widened and deepened considerably, and filled with water. On Pagoda Hill east of the city, three forts had also been built to shield Jingmen's prefectural city.

Now the city of Jingmen was once again shrouded in an atmosphere of war. All the city gates were shut tight during the day; only the south gate opened for a few hours each day, and even then it did not dare open fully, but only half-way, so that firewood carriers could enter the city. At the gate stood a group of militia at all times, ready at any moment to shut the gates, drop the crossbars, and block the entrance.

Why militia? Where had Zuo Liangyu's heavy troops gone? The heavy troops had, of course, already scooped up all the plundered wealth and goods and run off to Jingzhou Prefecture.

The man Zuo Liangyu had earlier posted in Chengtian Prefecture as a meat shield was Jin Shenghuan, a figure of real power within Zuo's army. Zuo's army had always had two factions, the Liao faction and the Shaanxi faction. The former was the direct line of Zuo Liangyu and his son Zuo Menggeng, all old brothers Zuo Liangyu had raised up during his service in the Ji-Liao army. The latter were roving-bandit turncoats recruited during the campaigns against the roving bandits, mostly Shaanxi men. Jin Shenghuan was a big-brother figure in the Shaanxi faction, himself of roving-bandit origin.

Around the time Beijing fell in the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Lu Zhenfei had requisitioned him to help defend the Huai region; on his way back he had conveniently scooped up a portion of the Huai-Yang militia army, which had been converted from grain-transport troops. This made him very strong, and he no longer paid much heed to Zuo Liangyu. That was why Zuo Liangyu had appointed him Garrison Regional Commander of Chengtian Prefecture and thrown him to the very front line to serve as a meat shield for over a year.

Yet Jin Shenghuan had passed that year quite comfortably. He did not fight the Shun army, but busied himself with trade. Especially after Li Zicheng's side began enclosing land and granting fields, business got even better — Li Zicheng's old-camp soldiers had become landlords, and their spending power naturally soared. And the five prefectures of Xiangjing, Nanyang, Yunyang, Hanzhong, and Xi'an had no industry or commerce capable of satisfying the demands of the Shun landlords, so naturally they had to trade with the merchants of Huguang.

Jin Shenghuan was also a man whose eyes lit up at the sight of money, so he opened a mutual market right at Lexian Bridge, where Jingmen Prefecture met Yicheng County of Xiangjing Prefecture. And he sold everything! Not to mention the fine iron produced in Xingguo Prefecture — even the turtle-dove-foot matchlocks shipped all the way from Guangdong could be bought at the Lexian Bridge market, as long as Li Zicheng's people could pay the price.

So over that year Jin Shenghuan had made a fortune — he had become "Jin the Millionaire"!

And having grown rich, Jin Shenghuan naturally became all the more attached to life and fearful of death. As soon as the new version of "Welcoming the Roving King" began to be sung through the countryside of Chengtian Prefecture, he began laying out his escape route.

Once the Roving King began mustering his "old-camp landlords," Jin Shenghuan, the Garrison Regional Commander of Chengtian Prefecture, led his troops in retreat toward Jingzhou Prefecture, leaving the defense of Chengtian to the local militia scraped together by the local landlords and rich men.

Thus the men now holding Jingmen's prefectural city were the local landlord militia of Jingmen. And the landlords and gentry of Jingmen's surrounding countryside had all fled with their families into this strong city.

The last time the Roving King's great army had come, most of Jingmen's gentry and landlords had not taken refuge inside the city. Back then they had mostly hidden in earthen forts in the countryside — most gentry and landlords had some clan power to rely on. When the peasant armies had come before, all one had to do was round up some able-bodied men of one's own clan, find a remote and defensible spot, build an earthen fort, and hide out; more often than not one could ride it out.

But this time it was different. This time they were not offering "three years without grain levies," but rather equal division of land by headcount plus repudiation of debts. "Rents high, interest heavy" had always been the two great hatreds of the poor and lower-middle peasants. Now Li Zicheng not only wanted to divide the fields, he also wanted to cancel the debts of the poor and lower-middle peasants.

This truly won the hearts of the people!

So no landlord dared remain in the countryside any longer; all of them fled to Jingmen's prefectural city. Only after entering Jingmen did they learn that Regional Commander Jin Shenghuan's men had long since run off, and that the city was barely being held by a band of landlord militia headed by Jing Muqing, a local magnate and notable of Jingmen Prefecture.

This Jing Muqing had read a good many military treatises and had served as an aide in Sun Chuanting's army, so he had some method to him.

Now inside Jingmen's prefectural city, whether by day or night, militia patrolled the streets. Every evening, besides the militia going up onto the walls, every household in the city had to send able-bodied men up onto the walls, and the watchmen's clappers sounded all night long.

The martial-law proclamations of the Jingmen militia yamen were posted everywhere, and on either side of the spirit wall in front of what had been the prefectural yamen and was now the militia yamen hung a number of blood-dripping human heads, said to be spies caught sneaking into the city and executed — whether they were really spies, only heaven knew! Still, the people of the city were cowed, order was maintained, and every household was willing to send its able-bodied men up onto the walls.

But what could be kept barely stable was only the inside of Jingmen's prefectural city. Outside the city, it was already a scene of jubilant welcome for the Roving King.

Li Laiheng, advancing by land, had once again found a bit of the feeling of being the "Shun Taizong." The three thousand "old-camp warriors" and an equal number of auxiliary troops under his command were serving as Li Guo's vanguard, and were now marching in grand array southward along the official road from the Lexian Bridge market toward Jingmen's prefectural city. Along the way they met not a single resisting Ming soldier, but instead encountered many poor commoners welcoming the Roving King, supporting the old and leading the young, singing songs, every face beaming with joy.

Clearly, the latest version of "Welcoming the Roving King" had achieved excellent results — compared with not paying the imperial grain levy, dividing the fields and canceling debts was the great good thing that truly won men's hearts!

Several scouts galloped up to Li Laiheng. At their head was a stout fellow wearing blue cloth-faced iron armor — after the land enclosure and equal-field reform, most of the Shun army's "old-camp warriors" had added some armor and weapons, and their equipment was much better than before. This scout, named Chen Zhong, had outfitted himself with a suit of cloth-faced armor.

"Chen Laosan," Li Laiheng recognized Chen Zhong and asked with a grin, "Well? Have the Ming troops at Jingmen Prefecture run off?"

"Reporting to the General of the System," Chen Zhong cupped his fist from horseback, "the gates of Jingmen Prefecture are shut tight, and on the walls there are banners of every color and soldiers patrolling and standing guard."

Li Laiheng laughed. "That 'peck of grain' has nerve, daring to resist the great Shun heavenly troops!"

"The General of the System misunderstands. It isn't 'peck of grain's' men," Chen Zhong said with a smile. "This subordinate captured a patrolman who had come out of the city and questioned him, and learned that the one holding Jingmen Prefecture is Juren Jing of the Zhanghe estuary. Because he raised a thousand-odd militiamen, 'peck of grain' made him a militia officer. Now that 'peck of grain' has run off, Juren Jing has entered Jingmen's prefectural city."

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