Chapter 523: Why Has the Shun Become Un-Shun Again?

Someone Grabbed the Wrong Script. "Eat his mother's, wear his mother's, open the gates and welcome the Tang King; when the Tang King comes, he'll divide the land!

Rents are heavy, interest is high, wives and daughters can hardly be kept safe. Lately the bandits have grown too fierce; the poor men of Nanyang can barely stay alive. Better to open the gates and bow to the Tang King..."

In the summer of the third year of the Shun's Yongchang era, in the eastern part of Nanyang Prefecture, which had been under Shun rule for more than two years, by the banks of the Bi River, the common people seemed to have gotten the lyrics wrong!

The proper "Welcoming the Roving King" had somehow turned into "Welcoming the Tang King"! And they were not only singing it — they were actually acting on it. On the south bank of the Bi River, along the official road from Queshan County in Runing Prefecture to Biyang County in Nanyang Prefecture, countless ragged commoners appeared at that moment, carrying baskets of food and jugs of drink, singing ballads, welcoming the Tang King...

This scene was hard to believe even for the Tang King, Zhu Yujian, who had boldly led several thousand palace guards into Nanyang — and the poor and lower-middle peasants standing on both sides of the road singing also felt a sense of unreality!

They were actually opposing the righteous Roving King and welcoming back the Great Ming's Tang princely establishment, which had oppressed them for more than two hundred years... This was truly unimaginable!

But the problem was, although the Roving King was righteous, the nobles and lords under him were utterly outrageous. They seized land by riding horses around it, taking every bit of land in Nanyang Prefecture clean, regardless of whether it had belonged to landlords, rich peasants, or poor and lower-middle peasants — now everyone had uniformly become tenants of the nobles.

And these nobles of roving-bandit origin were even greedier and more brutal than the old gentry landlords! Not only were the rents sky-high, but not the slightest delay in payment was tolerated. Whoever failed to pay on time would have their wives and daughters seized as collateral... In the past, the mountain bandits around Nanyang generally did not kidnap women for ransom, but these Shun nobles were truly worse than mountain bandits! A decent girl would be taken and slept with, and even if she was released, she could hardly be married off!

Even if everyone gritted their teeth and paid the rent, those Shun nobles still were not satisfied — they also demanded that everyone work for free, building fortified strongholds!

The Shun nobles were different from the old landlords: they would not live in proper houses, but insisted on living in fortified strongholds! They lived in clusters of ten or twenty households, dwelling inside strongholds built of rammed earth. And they did not study books either — men and women, old and young, all practiced martial arts and loved to fight. Every household had armor and weapons, and they often gathered to drill formation combat. They looked especially ferocious...

So the poor and lower-middle peasants around Nanyang now did not even dare resist rent, resist interest, or raid the rich households! What was worse, there was nowhere left even to turn bandit.

Because every mountain stronghold within Nanyang Prefecture had either gone over to the Roving King or been wiped out by the Shun lords dispatched to Nanyang — what fighting strength did they have? Li Zicheng was the number one bandit chief under heaven! How could the local bandits of Nanyang possibly defeat him?

And what baffled the poor and lower-middle peasants of Nanyang even more was that while the Shun lords viciously oppressed them on one side, on the other side they were dividing land and canceling debts in the prefectures of Chengtian, De'an, Jingzhou, and Hanyang to the south!

Moreover, word had come from Kaifeng, Ruzhou, Henan, and other places occupied by the Tartars that land was likewise being distributed by headcount!

What was the meaning of this? Did they think the people of Nanyang were easy to bully?

But there was no use puzzling over it — Li Zicheng had no choice either. If he did not feed these ferocious men under his command until they were full, the ranks would scatter!

Furthermore, military service for these Shun "Old Camp warriors" came at a cost: they had to provide their own weapons, armor, horses, attendants, and part of their army rations. In addition, they were required to build fortified strongholds on their "fiefs," live in clusters, acquire defensive equipment, and train their families, so as to ensure that Nanyang Prefecture still had defensive strength after large numbers of Old Camp warriors marched off to war.

With service costs that high, if they were not shifted onto the shoulders of the peasants below, who else could bear them?

So by the end of the second year and the beginning of the third year of the Shun's Yongchang era, the poor commoners of Nanyang had finally come to recognize one fact — at least for them, the righteous Roving King Li Zicheng was not even as good as the Great Ming!

And it was precisely at this time that the ballad "When the Tang King comes, he'll divide the land" began spreading through the villages of Nanyang Prefecture!

The Great Ming's Tang King had clearly grabbed the wrong script and was coming to stand up for the poor and lower-middle peasants of Nanyang Prefecture...

At first, no one believed it. How could that be possible? It was obviously just a rumor. Even if the Tang King returned, he ought to return the land to the original landlords! How could he possibly divide it among the poor peasants?

But by early April, the facts were laid out before everyone!

The Ming troops advancing from Queshan County into Biyang County were openly flying banners reading "The Tang King has arrived; the land will be divided," and they were also posting notices in every township and village, announcing land distribution by headcount and the cancellation of debts and interest... Of course, it was not unconditional — every household was required to provide able-bodied men to accompany the army. If a household was unwilling to send men, it could still receive land, but had to pay a redemption fee of one to two dan of white flour per mu of land — to be paid in full within five years of receiving the land, of course.

This time everyone could finally believe it: there was no free rice in this world. Since the Tang King had use for them, distributing land as payment was only right.

So when the Tang King led the palace guard center into Biyang County, what he saw was a somewhat unreal scene of ten thousand people welcoming him!

"Regional Commander Feng," Zhu Yujian still could not believe that the people of Nanyang missed him so much, so he asked Feng San, who was riding alongside him, "Have We not made a mistake? Are they welcoming us?"

Feng San laughed. He had been brought up by Li Yan and Hongniangzi, those two bandit chiefs so skilled at stirring up the masses, so of course he knew how to mobilize the people.

"Your Highness has made no mistake," Feng San said with a smile. "They are welcoming you! Because you are going to give them land... They have been pressed down by Li Zicheng's Old Camp troops until they had no hope left, and when they saw the neighboring prefectures all distributing land by headcount, how could their hearts not itch?"

"Li Zicheng has this time lifted a rock and dropped it on his own foot..." Zhu Yujian sighed, his thick brows tightly knitted. "But what we are doing — is it not the very same thing Li Zicheng is doing?"

Indeed, if the people of Nanyang got their land divided, would the people of Runing and Fengyang not grow envious?

"Your Highness, do not think so much," Feng San said, waving his hand. "Biyang County town is almost here. We will enter the city tonight, and Your Highness's command banner will be raised high across Nanyang Prefecture... Li Zicheng's rear courtyard will be on fire!"

The Tang King Zhu Yujian was not the only one who had grabbed the wrong script. Zhu Cilang's military adviser Li Yan and the Jing-Xiang black talent Jing Muqing were likewise holding a script that should have belonged to Li Zicheng, leading troops along the Dahong Mountains and storming into Zaoyang County, which belonged to Xiangjing Prefecture.

Zaoyang County belonged to the core of the Shun dynasty, right next to Xiangjing city. The poor and lower-middle peasants there had naturally suffered extremely heavy oppression as well — there was no helping it. The estates of Li Zicheng's most trusted Imperial Guard troops were heavily concentrated in Zaoyang County; their equipment was better and their military-service burden heavier, so they oppressed all the more fiercely.

At the same time, Suizhou in De'an Prefecture and Zhongxiang County in Chengtian Prefecture, both adjacent to Zaoyang County, had undergone "land reform" over the past few months, and it truly delighted everyone high and low!

Yet the poor peasants of Xiangjing Prefecture, who had "followed" the Roving King the longest, were suffering so bitterly — thinking about it, how could they not feel resentful!

So when more than ten thousand fully armed soldiers of the Hard-Working New Army, flying the banner "The Crown Prince has arrived; the land will be divided," suddenly marched into Zaoyang County's territory and swiftly routed the small Shun force left to garrison Zaoyang, the entire county immediately boiled over.

The common people did not even care whether the promise of "The Crown Prince has arrived; the land will be divided" could be fulfilled. Just being able to join in the commotion was good enough — even if they got not a hair out of it, they could at least vent their spleen!

And while the Ming army, flying the "divide the land" banner, was invading Xiangjing and Nanyang prefectures in force, Yuan Zongdi and Bai Wang, whom Li Zicheng had left to guard the home base, both completely lost their composure.

They were not worried about the Tang King's guards who had entered Nanyang, but they could not take lightly the New Army's Left Division, led by Li Yan, which had broken into Xiangjing Prefecture along the Dahong Mountains.

This division had fought its way over from the eastern part of Huangzhou Prefecture, already routing multiple detached Shun forces, and in every case achieving complete victory in an extremely short time while inflicting enormous casualties on the Shun troops it engaged.

Yuan Zongdi, who had little capital in hand, did not dare risk a decisive battle with Li Yan. He could only pull back, gathering the families of the troops scattered across Zaoyang, Guanghua, Yicheng, and other counties in Nanyang and Xiangjing prefectures into Xiangjing city, while sending envoys to Jiangling to report the emergency to Li Zicheng... A great disaster was at hand — the Zhu family's Crown Prince was coming to kill the rich and aid the poor!