Chapter 528: The Enemy Is at Gong'an County

Li Zicheng was close to despair. He turned and glanced at Liu Zongmin. "Did you understand that?"

Marquis Liu was still utterly bewildered. "How are farming households an industry? They're not houses, not land — they're living, breathing people!"

Still doesn't get it... Li Zicheng turned back and glared fiercely at the big corrupt official Tao.

"Farming households are of course an industry, not much different from land or real estate. It's just that they can't be openly bought and sold..."

Tao Xingjin paused, then went on: "Anyway, it's just this bit of peasant land. In the past, the landlords ate their fill and left a little for the court. Now the gentry and landlords across Jingzhou Prefecture, Chengtian Prefecture, Xiangyang Prefecture, and De'an Prefecture have all been swept away by you.

The Crown Prince and his Northern Prefecture nobles have swallowed up what was left, so the commoner households and farmland are all the court's property now. In the past, the court could only collect a little over two million piculs of white rice in land tax from Huguang. If the gentry and landlords weren't sharing in the spoils, I'm afraid a single prefecture would yield more than two million. And what the farming households pay might even be a bit less than what they used to hand over when they worked for the landlords. So both high and low are pleased..."

What Tao Xingjin was pointing out was an unspoken rule every landlord and scholar-official knew — most peasants toiled like beasts of burden. They were labor attached to the land, not masters of it. Even if they held title deeds, it did them no good whatsoever; they were still meat on the chopping block for the gentry, the powerful, and the officials.

The scholar-officials and the court were the true masters of the peasants and the land. But the two sides' shares were not split evenly. The scholar-officials reckoned they held ninety percent — perhaps ninety-five. The court held only five to ten percent!

Of course, this was not merely the view of the scholar-officials of the southeast, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong. The scholar-officials and nobles inside Beijing thought the same way!

It was just that those northern magnates had lost their property and arrived in Jiangnan empty-handed, which was why they stood united behind Zhu Cilang, wanting to devour the southern scholar-officials' share and then carve out a piece for themselves... Anyone who imagined the Northern Prefecture Army were some kind of revolutionary fighters would be about as wise as the Chongzhen Emperor.

Zhu Cilang was a clever man, so he had always worked hard to satisfy the private interests of the Northern Prefecture bloc while at the same time fighting for the largest share for himself.

His purpose in bringing troops to Huguang this time was simply to seize money — in that respect he was much the same as Li Zicheng. But what set him apart from Li Zicheng was that he still needed the existence of the gentry and magnate bloc of the southeast, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong.

Wiping them all out and letting the northern bloc rule the southeast alone would not do... because the northern bloc was even more conservative, more backward, and more feudal than the gentry and magnates of the southeast, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong.

Men like Wu Xiang, Wu Sanfu, Li Yan, Hao Yaoqi, Feng San, Zhu Chunchen, Zhu Chunjie, Li Guozhen, and Zhang Shize were, to put it bluntly, feudal military aristocrats. If he relied entirely on them, Zhu Cilang would have no way to lead the Great Ming out of the cycle of dynastic rise and fall.

The gentry and magnates of the southeast, Huguang, Fujian, and Guangdong, however, lived in an environment that had already reached the budding stage of capitalism, and they had relatively easy access to Western knowledge and technology. There were in fact talented men among them.

For example, this Ningbo man Tao Xingjin standing before Li Zicheng was a talent!

Li Zicheng looked at Magistrate Tao and nodded approvingly. That bandit Crown Prince Zhu's side truly was full of talent!

"Take him away for now," Li Zicheng ordered. "Later, give him an official post."

Talent must not be allowed to slip away — he had to be hauled off to Sichuan to serve as an official!

The moment Tao Xingjin heard this, he panicked: "Spare me, Great King, spare me! This humble one has an eighty-year-old mother above and a three-year-old child below — I cannot follow... cannot follow the Great King to Sichuan!"

"Wait," Li Zicheng waved a hand, stopping the old-camp soldiers who were about to drag the great Magistrate Tao away. "Magistrate Tao, how did you know We were heading into Sichuan?"

Tao Xingjin was stunned again and again — everyone knew this! Who didn't know that since you can't hold on in Huguang, you were going to Sichuan to seize Zhang Xianzhong's base?

"G-Great King," Magistrate Tao stammered in explanation, "isn't the matter plain to see? Hankou has already been taken by Lord Wu. The poor peasants of Xiangyang and Nanyang Prefectures have been stirred up. How can the Great King still hold a footing in Huguang? Right now the bandit Xian and the government troops in Sichuan are locked in fierce battle — isn't it the perfect moment for the Great King to reap the fisherman's profit?"

"Nonsense!" Li Zicheng's face hardened. "How would We play the fisherman? We are entering Sichuan to help Old Zhang of the Xi fight Zhu's bandit troops, not to take Old Zhang's territory."

Magistrate Tao said in a low voice, "Great King, you have surely read the *Records of the Three Kingdoms* and the *Romance of the Three Kingdoms*..."

Li Zicheng sighed. This was truly... Why did the books of the Three Kingdoms never teach people anything good? All schemes and treachery, corrupting men's hearts! If We ever sit on the throne, We will certainly ban these books!

"Take him down, take him down... keep him under close guard, don't let him escape!" The moment Li Zicheng thought of how millions upon millions of people knew how Imperial Uncle Liu had done Liu Zhang in, his mood soured completely. He had no heart to waste more words on Tao Xingjin, and with a wave of his hand had him taken away.

Of course, he could not be released — once they reached Sichuan, he was still to be given an official post!

Just as his mood was at its most dejected, an urgent military dispatch arrived from Li Guo, who had been left to hold Jiangling.

Zhu Cilang's twenty thousand troops had already crossed the Yangtze and, bypassing the walls of Jiangling, were circling west toward Tiger Fang Mountain!

"Tiger Fang Mountain?"

Li Zicheng sucked in a great gulp of hot air, and beads of sweat broke out on his broad forehead from sheer fright.

It was not that Old Li was prone to alarm. It was that Zhu Cilang's move this time was extraordinary. If he had come to seize Jiangling, Li Zicheng would not have panicked, for there was nothing of value left in Jiangling — only a bit of political symbolism.

The supplies moved out of Jiangling — grain, gold and silver, cloth, arms, carts and horses — had all been shifted to the great camp at Tiger Fang Mountain for storage.

One could say the Tiger Fang Mountain camp was the true foundation of Li Zicheng's position in Jingzhou Prefecture!

Moreover, the Tiger Fang Mountain area was the key route for Li Zicheng's westward advance into Sichuan. It could not be called the only way, but for Li Zicheng, whose main force was deployed in Jingzhou, taking the mountain route through Tiger Fang Mountain — anciently called Xiaoting — was absolutely the most convenient.

Zhu Cilang's first move was to pounce on Tiger Fang Mountain — this was cutting off Li Zicheng's lifeline for the westward advance!

"Your Majesty," Liu Zongmin was anxious too, "we cannot let the bandit Zhu seize Tiger Fang Mountain. Otherwise our hundred thousand and more brothers will all come to a bad end!"

"Your Majesty, there is still time to turn the army back," Gu Junen added. "We have many mounted units. We can send the cavalry ahead, and they can reach Tiger Fang Mountain in two days at most. The garrison on Tiger Fang Mountain is not small either, and the Marquis of Bo in Jiangling will send reinforcements. They can hold for several days no matter what..."

Old Madam Qin Liangyu had been right. Having become emperor, Li Zicheng was indeed no longer as free and easy as before, because he had too many interests to protect. This place had to be defended, that place had to be guarded, and his limited forces were naturally scattered. The troops he could actually use to strike at the enemy had grown fewer.

For example, the old-camp elite troops now with Li Zicheng numbered only a little over thirty thousand. Yet after absorbing the remnants of Zuo Menggeng's forces, the total number of Li Zicheng's old-camp troops had reached one hundred and ten thousand.

Besides the thirty thousand Li Zicheng kept with him, some twenty-four or twenty-five thousand remained in Xi'an Prefecture and Fengxiang Prefecture. About twenty-five thousand were spread across the six prefectures of Xiangyang, Nanyang, Yunyang, Hanzhong, De'an, and Chengtian. Hanyang Prefecture held ten thousand, and about twenty thousand were deployed at Jiangling.

"No," Li Zicheng pondered for a long while, then shook his head. "We cannot turn the army back to Tiger Fang Mountain!"

Liu Zongmin asked urgently, "Your Majesty, then what do we do?"

Gu Junen asked, "Do we strike at Wuchang Prefecture instead?"

"We are not going to strike Wuchang," Li Zicheng waved his hand. "Wuchang Prefecture has at least fifteen thousand of Zhu's new army, and nearby there are another twenty or thirty thousand naval troops. We cannot take it... We, We will go find Zhu's bandit army and fight them to the death!"

"Fight to the death?" Gu Junen asked. "Where?"

"To Gong'an!" Li Zicheng snorted. "He pounces on Tiger Fang Mountain, We will pounce on Gong'an! We'll strike at Zhu's rear!" He paused. "Send word to Li Guo — tell him to abandon Jiangling and move the entire army to Tiger Fang Mountain!"