Chapter 500: Not a River Plunge — a Northern Expedition!

The idea of eating Zhu Cilang into poverty was nothing more than a joke Liu Zongmin had dreamed up in his own head — Li Zicheng would never actually think that way.

The reason he did not kill these gentry and unscrupulous merchants was mainly that he was rather "kind-hearted" and unwilling to kill too many people. Had it been Zhang Xianzhong, he probably would not have been so polite!

And while being "kind-hearted," Li Zicheng had also agonized for a long time over whether to "tear down and start over," and in the end made his final decision — he would tear down the entire society of the Great Ming and start anew, establishing a simple and efficient "Shun system." He would not adopt the approach of "the Shun inheriting the Ming system," patching things up here and there and then making do as his Shun Emperor.

And to tear down and start over, he had to thoroughly sweep away the vested-interest groups of the "Ming system"!

These vested-interest groups included not only the Ming imperial clan, meritorious nobles, and a portion of the civil officials, but also the gentry landlords spread across the entire realm, as well as the industrialists and merchants flourishing along the southeastern coast — especially the maritime merchants stimulated by the twin blessings of Ming commercial development and the Age of Discovery! These ambitious, energetic, and armed merchants were simply not something a newly emerging feudal ruling group could tolerate.

As for co-opting the gentry, integrating industry and commerce, and forcibly developing capitalism and the like — that was in reality just maximally taking over the Ming dynasty's inheritance, and doing so would make it impossible to thoroughly tear down and start over.

And for Li Zicheng as he was now, it was fundamentally impossible to accomplish.

Because the Great Ming had already been saved by Zhu Cilang. The Ming was not even dead, so what the hell was Li Zicheng supposed to inherit? If anyone was to inherit, it would be Zhu Cilang and Zhu Cilang's descendants — Li Zicheng and Dorgon had no chance.

So their line of action had to undergo a major adjustment!

Moreover, "inheritance" also meant "sharing the benefits." Historically there was the saying "the Qing inherited the Ming system," and the Qing did indeed hand out a bit of benefit to share with the scholar-officials left over from the Ming.

But the Qing still could not tolerate the Ming's maritime merchant group. Because they were more energetic than the scholar-officials, more threatening, harder to control, and would also strike at the feudal hierarchy the Great Qing dynasty had established — in fact, all merchants strike at the feudal hierarchy, because they can use money to buy a certain amount of power and nobility, and an armed maritime merchant group was of course even more terrifying!

So historically the Great Qing had to resolutely root out the Ming's maritime merchant group, even if it meant fighting a forty-year war, even if it meant wounding itself with the policy of coastal evacuation and the sea ban.

For Li Zicheng as he was now, on the one hand he could not become the Ming's heir, and on the other he had no more benefits to distribute to the scholar-officials and unscrupulous merchants.

Rather than curry favor with the gentry and unscrupulous merchants, it was better to sweep them all away, seize the limited benefits, and hand them over to his own "new nobility" and the poor peasants below — that would also be more advantageous to his rule!

Of course, this kind of restart would definitely have a negative impact on social productive forces. After the restart, society would become rigidly hierarchical, the chasms between classes would deepen, and private industrial and commercial activity would be severely suppressed.

But for a society that had just emerged from great chaos, with its population greatly reduced, land relatively abundant, and the people's food and clothing relatively easy to satisfy, this kind of restart was necessary and beneficial. In this period, the most effective way to develop productive forces was actually to "produce population." Only with more people could there be production!

And producing population required neither developed industry and commerce nor enormous cities — equal land distribution by headcount was the best method.

Historically, many feudal dynasties adopted the state policy of emphasizing agriculture and suppressing commerce at their founding, and the reason lay precisely in this.

But for a society with a huge population, sharp social contradictions, and developed industry and commerce, unless one had twentieth-century means of social management and industrialization, tearing down and starting over was Thanos mode!

For the late Ming, with its population of over a hundred million, the precondition for tearing down and starting over was the elimination of a hundred million people!

And after paying the cost of a hundred million lives, what would start over would still only be a rigidly hierarchical feudal state that emphasized agriculture and suppressed commerce — because the military aristocrats who gained power in the process of starting over would not easily give up the power and interests they had won with such difficulty.

And a sparse population with abundant land and withered cities would also severely suppress the development of industry and commerce.

In all of vast China, if the total population were only forty or fifty million, the urban population at most three or four million, and then you deducted the bureaucrats, nobles, soldiers, official and private slaves and so on, how many people would be left? Develop what damn capitalism? Engage in what damn colonization? With no people at home, how could you colonize outward?

On the eleventh day of the eleventh month of the eighteenth year of Chongzhen of the Great Ming, the Ming Army-Pacifying Crown Prince Zhu Cilang, who had led his troops into the Wuchang prefectural city packed with refugees, already knew that the road to the accursed capitalism lying before him was extremely difficult to walk — and at the same time it was the only road to survival. What else could be done?

And on the Yangtze River at this moment, Ye Jiaxin, who had failed to find death, was together with his wife and two children aboard a wooden boat packed with people, sailing toward the far shore of suffering.

Everyone on the boat was weeping, because they had all lost everything!

This severely overloaded wooden boat, rocking and swaying, reached the Hanyang Gate dock of Wuchang prefectural city.

At the Hanyang Gate dock, security was already extremely tight. New Army soldiers holding pikes and firelocks were deployed in all directions. The moment they saw a boat approaching, matchlock soldiers immediately aimed their bayonet-fitted muskets at them.

At the same time, runners from the Wuchang prefectural yamen and the Jiangxia county yamen came forward and shouted at the top of their lungs: "Hear this, you refugees! His Highness the Army-Pacifying Crown Prince has arrived in Wuchang — you shall all live!"

Truly, they would live?

Ye Jiaxin could not help but sigh. How had he fallen to such a state?

His wife tugged at him just then and said in a low voice, "Husband, the boat has reached shore. We—"

"Let us just stay alive!" Ye Jiaxin looked at his woman and his two half-grown children and forced out a bit of a smile. "I hear His Highness the Crown Prince is a wise lord. Perhaps he will soon retake Jingshan. Once Jingshan is retaken, we will have good days again."

"Mm, husband, the days ahead will surely get better."

Ye Jiaxin nodded, and as he helped his wife and children disembark and step onto the dock, he suddenly heard someone calling him.

"Old Ye! Is that Old Ye from Jingshan County?"

The voice sounded familiar. Ye Jiaxin quickly looked in its direction and saw a fat man dressed in a scholar-official's Daoist robe waving at him. Wasn't this fat man none other than the big rice merchant Boss Yao Daqiao?

"Old Ye, you finally made it out! And the little lady is here too! Oh, and the two children as well — good, good. Money and goods are things outside the body; losing them is nothing. As long as the whole family is together and intact, that's all that matters!"

Fat Yao really did talk as if it cost him nothing!

His family were great merchants, with properties all along the Yangtze. The Hankou business was only part of it; they had holdings in Jingzhou, Wuchang, Jiujiang, Anqing, Taiping, and Nanjing.

Seeing Ye Jiaxin downcast, the fat man laughed even more cheerfully: "Don't fret, don't fret. Your old brother has capital and connections, and you have skill — who doesn't know your farming ability? Stick with your old brother from now on, and I guarantee you can build the family fortune back up."

Ye Jiaxin sighed: "Easier said than done."

"Easy, easy." Boss Yao tugged Ye Jiaxin toward Hanyang Gate. "If the Crown Prince hadn't come, there'd be no chance. Now that he's here, there are chances aplenty!"

"What chances?" Ye Jiaxin frowned. "Don't they all say he—"

He stopped halfway through his words, because saying it in full would have been gross disrespect — Zhu Cilang did not have a good reputation in Huguang.

"Let me tell you," Boss Yao said with a smile. "In the southeast he cleared out quite a lot of official fields and military colonies. Here in our Huguang, there are even more military colonies and official fields! A casual reckoning gives tens of millions of mu — that's the opportunity!"

"Opportunity? What opportunity?" Ye Jiaxin the farmer still did not understand, and just stared blankly at Boss Yao.

"Leasing land!" Boss Yao laughed. "At most seven dou of white rice in rent per mu of paddy field. What do you think? Can this deal be done?"

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