Chapter 505: Zuo Liangyu Is Dead

The thunder of cannon fire rumbled on without cease through the night.

The Ming and Shun armies' artillery duel across the river dragged on listlessly for an entire day — not any fierce bombardment, just slow, dawdling cannon fire.

Peng Ziqin and several hundred to a thousand other juren and xiucai listened to the rumbling cannon and passed a night of fear, cold, and hunger — Zhu Cilang really was wicked enough: he neither let the scholars outside Wusheng Gate enter the city, nor allowed anyone to send them food, and just starved them like that until dawn the next day.

Of course, after daybreak, still no one sent them food. But some New Army officers came out from Wusheng Gate and began registering the household registration, examination degrees, and property of the cold, hungry scholars outside the city.

"What's your name?" A dark-skinned officer with a northern accent, holding a small notebook and writing brush, came up to Peng Ziqin.

"My name is Peng Ziqin."

The officer recorded as he asked, "Where are you from?"

"From Chengguan Town, Anlu County, De'an Prefecture."

"Do you hold any examination degree?"

"The juren degree!" Peng Ziqin's weary tone was full of pride.

"So you're a xiaolian!" The officer smiled. "How much land does your family have? Only counts if you can produce the deeds — if you don't have deeds, don't bother mentioning it."

What was this about? Peng Ziqin was stunned — they were asking about that too?

"Do you have any or not?" Seeing Peng Ziqin not answer, the officer pressed again.

"Yes, yes, yes..." Peng Ziqin said. "My family has three or four thousand mu of land in De'an Prefecture. The deeds were all brought to Wuchang, but they're not on me."

"Good, good." The officer nodded. "Who else is in the city? Where do they live?"

Peng Ziqin answered, "There's also my old mother, my wife, two concubines, and two sons and two daughters. They all live at..."

He had a whole big family! All waiting to be fed, and he had come to Wuchang empty-handed! Just thinking about it made him frantic!

The officer recorded everything one by one, then showed the notebook to Peng Ziqin. After confirming there were no errors, he took out an ink-pad box and had Peng Ziqin press his thumbprint. Only then did he point to a passageway at the city gate lined with chevaux-de-frise: "Show the red print on your hand to the soldiers at the gate and you can go in. Once inside, there'll be food."

Food... it sounded like dealing with beggars!

Peng Ziqin felt a pang in his heart, and tears came down. Wasn't he just a beggar now? The three or four thousand mu in Anlu had long been confiscated by Li Zicheng... If he hadn't been at the end of his rope, he wouldn't have joined the disturbance!

And now the disturbance had failed — how was he supposed to live from here on?

After entering Wusheng Gate, Peng Ziqin discovered that the inside of the gate had also been cordoned off with chevaux-de-frise, and an open space had been fenced off at the foot of the city wall. In the open space stood several large cauldrons, simmering fragrant rice porridge!

New Army officers and soldiers stood guard all around, and one officer was shouting at the top of his lungs: "Drink the porridge first, drink the porridge first! Fill your bellies, and then there's something to discuss with you!"

Peng Ziqin couldn't care about anything else and dazedly followed the others to queue for porridge. After a bowl of fairly thick hot porridge went down, he finally recovered a bit of spirit. Then he squatted at the foot of the city wall and brooded over his own worries.

No one knew how much time passed. It was only when Peng Ziqin's stomach began rumbling again that he heard someone shout: "The Imperial Commissioner, Governor of Hubei, the Earl of Kenan and Yicheng, has arrived!"

So it was the newly appointed Governor of Hubei, Qiu Yu, coming to play the good man.

Zhu Cilang's true nature was still very kind — he couldn't bear to starve the several hundred to a thousand scholar-officials outside Wusheng Gate to death!

So seeing that they had been disciplined enough, he sent a "good man" to rescue them. But "Good Man Qiu Yu" at this moment wore a face full of worry, and his mood was not good at all.

It turned out that Zhu Cilang was willing to show leniency and give the Huguang scholar-officials exiled in Wuchang a way to survive. But this way was very narrow — it would only let them struggle to stay alive, and it would also strip away their privileges and their land ownership north of the river.

Oh, one couldn't exactly call it stripping — that sounded unreasonable. Zhu Cilang was very reasonable; his reasoning was to trade a "way to survive" for "privileges and land north of the river"!

If the exiled scholar-officials wanted to live in Wuchang, they had to give up their land north of the river. At the same time, the tax privileges enjoyed by Huguang scholar-officials would all be terminated.

From now on, Huguang would begin implementing unified tax and grain payment for officials and gentry alike!

If the gentry trapped in Wuchang were unwilling to give up their land north of the river... then they also had the freedom to starve to death!

"What? The court wants to trade a few mu of poor fields in Wuchang Prefecture for our land deeds north of the river?"

"And unified tax and grain payment for officials and gentry?"

"And they won't even recognize our juren degrees! On what grounds? Our juren degrees were earned through examination..."

"This won't do! We are scholars, we are juren, we are xiucai!"

"How can the court do this?"

"Waaah..."

Although the scholar-officials inside Wusheng Gate had empty bellies and had just suffered a fright, they still could not help letting out roars of fury.

Because the "way to survive" Zhu Cilang offered was simply too outrageous. Only after giving up their land north of the river and losing all their privileges could they obtain the qualification for "land distributed by headcount" — and there wasn't much land to be had, just a few mu per person. Taking it back and farming it themselves would be enough to eat, but these scholar-officials were not people who could farm.

If they rented out these few mu, getting a few dan of white rice would already be difficult.

Moreover, after the "five-year tax exemption" on these few mu of poor fields expired, they would still have to pay taxes like ordinary farmland!

And the commercial tax concessions enjoyed by scholar-officials would be canceled immediately! They would no longer be able to profit by sheltering merchants from taxes.

With just one person holding onto two mu of land, how were they supposed to live in the days ahead?

After their roars subsided, this group of Huguang scholar-officials — who had in fact already become propertyless — felt that apart from shouting a few times, they had no options left at all, and nothing remained but to wail loudly.

The sound of weeping rose and carried up to Phoenix Mountain. By this time Zhu Cilang had already set up his central command on Phoenix Mountain and raised the "Great Ancestor Exalted Emperor Reborn Banner" — he had traveled a thousand li to Wuchang Prefecture not merely to torment a bunch of Huguang scholar-officials. Defeating Li Zicheng, settling the Zuo family army, winning back He Tengjiao, and turning all of Huguang into the granary of the Great Ming — those were the main objectives of his journey, so military matters could not be neglected either.

And to defeat Li Zicheng, the first step was of course to retake the two strongholds of Hanyang Prefecture city and Hankou Town, which blocked the Yangtze and the Han River.

And the simplest way to retake Hanyang Prefecture city and Hankou Town naturally required a powerful siege artillery force!

Today Zhu Cilang had climbed Phoenix Mountain precisely to observe the bombardment effects of the twenty-four-pounder and thirty-six-pounder cannons — several months earlier he had placed an order with the Bocarro Cannon Foundry in Haojing and Macao for more twenty-four-pounder and thirty-six-pounder cannons.

In addition, before leaving Nanjing, Crown Prince Zhu had also signed foreign-cannon contracts for large-caliber mortars with the Bocarro Cannon Foundry, the Lopez Cannon Foundry, the Nanjing Cannon Foundry, the Anping Cannon Foundry, and the Shanghai Jiangnan Cannon Foundry, so more large-caliber artillery would soon be transported from the southeast to Wuchang Prefecture!

It was now a lull in the bombardment, and without the roar of the great cannons, the people on Phoenix Mountain could hear the sound of weeping coming from inside Wusheng Gate at the foot of the mountain.

"Your Highness, it sounds like the xiaolian and xiucai inside Wusheng Gate are weeping! Has the court treated them too harshly?" Yuan Jixian was the Governor-General in charge of military affairs, so he had accompanied the ascent of Phoenix Mountain. Hearing the weeping, he sidled up to Zhu Cilang and muttered.

"Let them weep!" Zhu Cilang sighed. "We know they are bitter at heart. Let them weep as they please; no punishment will fall on them... This is also because they were born into bad times! The realm is now divided in three, and We here still treat scholars fairly well. At least We give them a few mu of land per person, and later We will open a special Huguang imperial examination to select a batch of officials — opportunities still exist.

As for those concessions, they were no good thing for the scholars themselves, for the court, or for the common people of the realm! Hasn't this country of ours fallen to its present state precisely because too many concessions were given to scholars, to the imperial clan, and to meritorious nobles? If We keep giving more, it won't be the fall of the Great Ming but the collapse of China itself. Moreover... the southeast now has a population of over a hundred million, and feeding them is a huge problem! So all the more reason not to let scholars go on eating the flesh of farmers and drinking the blood of farmers."