Chapter 521: Someone Got the Wrong Script

"What? You want to shake the foundation of the state! That's a serious crime, isn't it?"

Zhu Cilang was stunned by the sight of Zuo Mengmei begging for punishment. He never imagined this girl would be so protective of her man, taking a capital crime like shaking the foundation of the state onto herself!

What a good woman!

After Zuo Mengmei finished confessing, tears came streaming down, and she wept like a pear blossom in the rain. "This slave already knows her error. Today I only beg the Thousand Years to punish me severely. Even if it is death by slow slicing, this slave will not utter a word of complaint. I only beg that the Prince not be implicated. The Prince is young and ignorant..."

Death by slow slicing, not a word of complaint... Watching her sorrowful, weeping appearance, Zhu Cilang thought to himself: she hasn't even been spanked yet and she's already crying like this. If she were really sliced to death, wouldn't she cry herself to death?

"Severe punishment won't be necessary," Zhu Cilang said, still amiable. "A light punishment will do... What punishment would be best? Hanlin Bi!"

"This subject is here!" Bi Jiucheng responded. He was holding a notebook and recording everything!

Zhu Cilang instructed: "Delete that section where the Princess of Chu confessed her crimes just now. Delete it all!" He glanced at Zuo Mengmei again and smiled. "Now there is no crime of shaking the foundation of the state on you... But punishment must still be punishment!"

The "foundation of the state" was Zhu Cilang himself! A Princess shaking the foundation of the state was a sure death sentence! Zhu Cilang couldn't easily exonerate her... Fortunately, he could still rewrite history!

So he quickly had Bi Jiucheng delete the crimes Zuo Mengmei had confessed. From now on, Zuo Mengmei would be a loyal consort, a virtuous consort!

But he couldn't just let that brat Zhu Cizhao off the hook!

Zhu Cilang was so perceptive that he naturally knew Zuo Mengmei was defusing a landmine for Zhu Cizhao — there were Embroidered Uniform Guard operatives around Zhu Cizhao, and all his nonsense talk was on file at the Southern Provost Office of the Embroidered Uniform Guard!

Zhu Cilang not pursuing it now didn't mean he wouldn't pursue it in the future!

So Zuo Mengmei wanted to defuse this landmine for her husband now. Don't be fooled by her crying like this — in her heart she wasn't afraid at all!

Because the army under Zhu Cizhao's name still had over ten thousand men. By any calculation, he was a major warlord. Moreover, Zhang Yong and Zuo Mengmei had sworn brotherhood and sisterhood, so he was also one of the Chu Prince's inner circle.

If Zhu Cilang killed Zhu Cizhao and Zuo Mengmei, what would happen to the couple's and Zhang Yong's army?

Besides, there were other warlords of various banners here in Jingzhou Prefecture, and their combined forces were no fewer than fifty thousand men!

Without their help, how could Zhu Cilang fight Li Zicheng with his own core force of just over ten thousand? Even if he won, the losses would be devastating!

Although on paper Zhu Cilang's core forces numbered no fewer than two hundred thousand, in reality only twenty-four infantry regiments had truly completed "model" reorganization, formed into six divisions, with a total strength of under one hundred thousand.

These six divisions were Zhu Cilang's true capital!

Moreover, Zhu Cilang's regime was not one supported by the landlord and intellectual classes of the vast southeast and Huguang — to win their support, he would have to beg on his knees! But Zhu Cilang was now robbing them standing up. From the three provinces of South Zhili, Jiangxi, and Zhejiang alone, his revenue was sixteen million shi of white rice and over ten million taels of silver.

How could the gentry of the southeast and Huguang possibly support him? To put it bluntly, these people were the real enemies of the Great Ming and of Zhu Cilang!

For example, they occupied two hundred million mu of land in Huguang, yet couldn't even pay two million shi of white rice in land tax in a year. How could people like that not be enemies of the Great Ming?

Even a fool of an emperor like Chongzhen knew at the end that "every civil official deserves to be killed"! Would someone as shrewd as Zhu Cilang not know it?

As for using nationalism, patriotism, a stirring essay, or a rousing speech to mobilize the scholars of the southeast... that was pure fantasy!

All of Zhu Cilang's efforts to blacken the Great Qing had only bought him the southeast gentry's refusal to voluntarily surrender to the Tartars.

And if the Tartars really came, who knew how they would behave!

So Zhu Cilang's regime was, in truth, a minority regime of exiled northerners!

And he lacked the financial resources to bring all northerners into the system. Northerners outside the system naturally wouldn't support Zhu Cilang either.

Therefore, the northerners he truly controlled and could trust numbered only two to three hundred thousand households in total... This was his real strength. In terms of headcount, it really wasn't much greater than the Great Qing or the Shun.

So he couldn't recklessly throw himself into a war of attrition against the Tartars and Li Zicheng. If he spent his two hundred thousand, he might defeat the Tartars and Li Zicheng — but what would the consequences be?

Actually, he wouldn't even need to lose them all. Losing half would destroy their fighting spirit. This wasn't a revolutionary army!

He wouldn't even need to lose half. As long as Dorgon and Li Zicheng could use a "stalling" strategy and drag the war out indefinitely, they could make Zhu Cilang choke — a northern expedition that dragged on without victory would not only sap troop morale, but his home base might also change hands!

Here in Huguang, it might not be easy for Li Zicheng to stall, since Huguang was a water-network terrain. Zhu Cilang's army could be supplied and maneuvered by water routes. But once they reached the north... Zhu Cilang had little cavalry, nor enough draft horses to pull cannons and supply wagons. Was he really going to rely on one hundred thousand infantry capable of forming Maurice-style squares, carrying thirty days of rations on their backs, to fight the Eight Banners?

Did he really think Dorgon and Dodo wouldn't learn from Hooge's lesson? If they couldn't win a pitched battle, wouldn't they lure the enemy deep and cut off their supplies?

Zhu Cilang bringing his northern army with clenched fists to the southeast and Huguang to plunder was truly like killing someone's parents and cutting off their livelihood! How many filial sons were there in the southeast and Huguang? If his army collapsed, would they let him off? Wouldn't they eat him and his northern army's families alive?

So Zhu Cilang now had to expand his base while preserving his strength — it sounded reactionary, but to rob standing up and to live to spend the money, he had to preserve his strength!

And to preserve his strength, he had to drive various miscellaneous armies. And to drive miscellaneous armies, Zhu Cilang had to show magnanimity — if he couldn't even tolerate his own brother, how could he tolerate miscellaneous forces?

Zhu Cilang put on a magnanimous smile and said to Zuo Mengmei: "Princess of Chu, your fault must be borne by the Prince of Chu, so the light punishment must fall on him... He can no longer be a Prince. He'll be demoted to Commandery Prince!

And he can't remain a prince in Jingzhou Prefecture... How about making him the Prince Who Pacifies the West instead!"

"Prince Who Pacifies the West?" Zuo Mengmei was stunned. Why the same title as Wu Sangui?

She probed cautiously: "The Thousand Years doesn't intend to send the Prince to attack Shaanxi, does he?"

"No," Zhu Cilang waved his hand. "How could he take Shaanxi?" He smiled. "We recently received a joint memorial from Governor Wu Zhaoyuan of Yunnan and former Grand Secretary of the East Hall Wang Xigun, stating that Mu Tianbo has rebelled, that Sha Dingzhou has put down the rebellion, and that Sha should be appointed to garrison Yunnan in his place!"

"What?" Zuo Mengmei was stunned again and again. "Mu Tianbo is the Duke of Qian, isn't he? Who is Sha Dingzhou?"

Zhu Cilang smiled. "Sha Dingzhou is the native chieftain of the two prefectures of Wangnong and Ami."

Zuo Mengmei was still completely bewildered.

Zhu Cilang said with a beaming smile: "Yunnan is extremely important. We cannot let a mere native chieftain like Sha Dingzhou garrison it. Since the Duke of Qian's family can no longer hold on, let a princely house go and guard it! Once the fighting in Jingzhou Prefecture is over, Cizhao will be re-titled Prince Who Pacifies the West and go to Yunnan to take command."

He then looked at Zhang Yong. "Zhang Feixiong, how would you like to be Regional Commander of Yunnan?"

Zhu Cilang was truly cunning. Did he not know that Mu Tianbo had been overthrown in a coup? Had he not read the History of Ming, or at least The Deer and the Cauldron? But he simply didn't expose it, and conveniently tossed Yunnan to Zhang Yong, Zhu Cizhao, and Zuo Mengmei. In any case, Sha Dingzhou certainly couldn't beat Zhang Yong!

And Zhu Cilang couldn't throw too many troops at Yunnan either, so he simply let these miscellaneous forces go and pacify it — Zhu Cilang was actually quite generous with miscellaneous forces. The reason he hadn't sent anyone to pacify Zuo Liangyu before was that he couldn't give Huguang away as a reward. Huguang had two hundred million mu, while Yunnan on paper had less than 1.8 million mu. So the former had to be firmly held, while the latter could be left to the military governors to work on... If measured purely by the amount of land and the oil that could be squeezed out of it, Zhu Cizhao, re-titled from Jingzhou to Yunnan, had indeed taken a huge loss.

But for the court, Yunnan was beyond its reach. Once Zhu Cizhao, Zuo Mengmei, and Zhang Yong went there, they could live in peace and comfort!