Chapter 504: Li Zicheng Turns a Loss into a Gain

Amid the rumbling of cannon fire, the Anlu talent Peng Ziqin, Scholar Peng the juren, like everyone else, tossed aside his grand ambition to "march north against Xiangyang and recover the Xianling Mausoleum" and simply clutched his head and fled for his life. His hat was gone, one of the two cleavers he had been carrying had been dropped, and he was even missing one shoe — yet he himself was utterly oblivious.

Because the cannons mounted on Tortoise Mountain were aimed at the Hanyang Gate tower, rubble was flying everywhere below the gate. So the band of scholars "determined to march north" dared not enter the city through Hanyang Gate, and instead fled along the Yangtze embankment, hoping to enter the city through Wusheng Gate on the north side of Wuchang.

But when they reached Wusheng Gate, they found the gate already under martial law! Large squads of Model Army officers and men in full armor with sharp weapons had set up sentry posts at the open gate, and had blocked the gate passage with chevaux-de-frise.

Wusheng Gate lay north of Wuchang city, not too far from Tortoise Mountain. Although it had not been shelled, no one knew when the roving bandits might turn their cannons on it!

So everyone wanted to get into the city as fast as possible!

But the New Army officers and men blocking the gate would not let them through, on the grounds of preventing spies from infiltrating the city!

Now that the roving bandits were shelling the city, strictly speaking the battle for Wuchang had already begun. Tightly controlling entry and exit at such a time was only natural...

Peng Ziqin was among the sturdier of the crowd of juren and xiucai, so he had run fast and reached Wusheng Gate in the first batch. Seeing the tense, battle-ready scene, he stepped forward to explain.

"I am Peng Ziqin, a juren of Anlu. My family is all inside Wuchang city. Hurry and let me through..."

The New Army soldiers guarding the gate would not listen to him. They leveled their matchlock muskets with fixed bayonets and said fiercely, "Halt! See the white line at your feet? One step forward and we'll skewer you on the spot!"

Skewer him?

Peng Ziqin was furious. "I am a juren!"

The man opposite snapped back, "How do you prove you're a juren? And you're carrying a weapon! You don't look like a good man — you must be a spy!"

A weapon? Peng Ziqin started, then realized his right hand was still clutching a rust-spotted cleaver!

He hastily threw the cleaver away and explained, "Don't misunderstand — I brought the cleaver to fight the roving bandits to the death... I really am a juren!"

Hahaha...

The New Army men all burst out laughing.

One young officer with a Tianjin accent said, "Some juren! With a head like that, a juren?"

He had a point! Carrying a cleaver and thinking he could hack Li Zicheng to death — could a brain like that really pass the provincial exam? This had to be a spy!

Peng Ziqin grew frantic and stamped his foot. "I really am a juren... I am Peng Ziqin, a juren of Anlu!"

The New Army man asked again, "How do you prove it?"

How to prove it? There seemed to be no way to prove it!

Peng Ziqin was in tears! He had not brought any luggage out of the city, so he had no way to prove who he was, and he did not have a single coin on him... If he could not get into the city, he would not need Li Zicheng's roving bandits to kill him — he would starve to death on his own.

His weeping seemed contagious. Soon outside Wusheng Gate, the crying had spread into a chorus. Juren and xiucai alike, at that moment, all seemed to understand one truth.

In this age where swords and blades ruled, those of them who studied the sages' books amounted to nothing at all!

The Great Qing wanted to topple Confucius's altar!

Li Zicheng wanted to seize the scholars' land!

The Great Ming on this side was a little more polite, but it did not take them too seriously either... The last special examination was proof of that! And now the Crown Prince's New Army was blocking them outside the city and refusing to let them in — more proof!

"Your Highness, these are the seeds of scholarship in Huguang!"

"Your Highness, will you truly give them no way to live?"

"Your Highness, this old subject begs you to let them into the city!"

At that moment, Zhu Cilang had already climbed onto the Wuchang city wall near Wusheng Gate. Like Li Zicheng, he had raised no banner, and had brought only a hundred or so guards, along with Yuan Jixian, Qiu Yu, and Fang Gongyue.

The three old men naturally pitied these scholars who had lost their homes and livelihoods, and spoke up to plead with Zhu Cilang.

Below the wall, outside Wusheng Gate, several hundred or even a thousand juren and xiucai, reduced to utter destitution, were clutching their heads and weeping. Zhu Cilang merely watched their behavior in silence... After some unknown length of time, he turned to look at the three old men, who were sweating with anxiety, and smiled. "Rest assured, We will let them into the city. But the road to survival, they must walk themselves!"

Yuan Jixian did not quite understand Zhu Cilang's words, and pressed, "Your Highness, you mean..."

Zhu Cilang looked up at the sky and sighed. "The times have changed! The world has changed! They too must change... When in dire straits, one thinks of change; change brings passage; passage brings success! I hope this lesson will make them truly understand that saying. If they understand, if they change, perhaps they can survive — and some among them may rise to great heights!"

The passage "when in dire straits, one thinks of change" comes from the Book of Changes. Anyone who had studied to the level of xiucai or juren certainly knew it.

But knowing is easy, doing is hard!

And even if one knows it and chooses to change, those who can successfully transform, adapt to the new age, and rise to great heights are, in the end, still a minority... And the new age is not easy for anyone!

Who would think the Age of Exploration and the early stage of capitalism are easy? If life were easy, who would go to sea, who would engage in capitalism?

Zhu Cilang already knew that he had brought China into the Age of Exploration and the early stage of capitalism — because entering the Age of Exploration and embracing capitalism was the only forward direction for a Chinese civilization seeking to escape cyclical collapse.

What else could be done?

The Great Ming could now unquestionably survive in the southeastern half of the realm. Neither Dorgon nor Li Zicheng had the power to destroy the Ming.

But for the hundred and several tens of millions of Chinese crammed into the southeastern half, life in the future could not possibly be easy or comfortable. Because while Zhu Cilang had halted the total collapse of the Ming Empire, he had also given more than a hundred million Han people the chance to survive.

This meant that the acute contradiction between people and land had not been alleviated — and as Zhu Cilang's "Southern Ming regime" consolidated, the people-land contradiction in the southeast would only grow sharper. For China, still an agrarian society, once stability returned, population would resume its steady growth.

A population of two hundred million or even three hundred million was bound to appear within Zhu Cilang's lifetime.

At the same time, the Little Ice Age had not ended! And the war with the Great Qing in the north might well continue for many years.

So what Zhu Cilang could give his hundred million and more Ming subjects was merely a chance to struggle forward through hardship. To live, and to move forward — but very possibly to suffer even more than the people who lived in the early Qing dynasty.

Because in history, the early Qing did not have so many people!

Of course, many hands make great strength! Once China burst into the wild world of the Age of Exploration, it would become an unstoppable colossus.

The wild, undeveloped world must have a share for a hundred and several tens of millions, even two or three hundred million, hard-pressed Chinese people! And a very large share at that!

"Your Highness," Yuan Jixian, who of course could not understand how much suffering Zhu Cilang would bring to the Ming's millions of common people, said, "what exactly do you intend to do?"

Zhu Cilang smiled. "We merely want everyone to have a way to live... After all, a wretched life is better than a good death!"

"This..." Yuan Jixian was somewhat speechless.

But what Qiu Yu and Fang Gongyue were thinking of was how those scholars outside the city could manage to cling to their wretched lives.

Zhu Cilang paused, then spoke again. "Let them stay outside the city for one night... We will send people to register their names, native places, examination degrees, and family property. If the records check out, they may enter the city and reunite with their families.

Furthermore, starting the day after tomorrow, the field headquarters will begin settling and relieving the scholar-officials from north of the river who have fled to Wuchang... We must give them some way to live, after all! But We will give them only one way to live. What they make of it in the future will depend on their own fortune."

Hearing Zhu Cilang's words, Qiu Yu and Fang Gongyue both understood. His Highness the Crown Prince was about to take aim at the scholar-official class — whatever benefits the Ming emperors of old had granted the scholar-officials were likely all about to be taken back by His Highness the Crown Prince.