Chapter 545: The Shun Is Getting More and More Progressive

An army was making its way through the mountains of the Three Gorges along the Yangtze.

It was a vast host, tens of thousands strong! Looking down from the slopes on either bank of the Yangtze, one could see neither end of this blue-clad army. The vanguard had already entered Sichuan, while the rear guard still remained within Huguang.

Li Guo, the Army-Pacifying Crown Prince of the Shun dynasty, rode among this host on a tall piebald warhorse that had followed him for many years. Like most of the other soldiers, he wore a plain blue battle robe over his armor and a white felt hat on his head. His attire was exactly the same as Li Zicheng's, and behind him flew a great banner bearing the character "Roving." Anyone who did not know better would have thought Li Zicheng himself was leading the troops!

Li Zicheng was, of course, still pretending to be alive, and had made a great show of returning to Xiangjing under Liu Zongmin's escort — not, of course, riding into Xiangjing in a coffin. Instead, they had found a soldier who closely resembled Li Zicheng, dressed him in the Roving King's regalia, and had him lead troops down Tiger Fang Mountain in full public view, then pass through Yiling Prefecture, White Tiger Pass, Golden Bamboo Flat, and Pavilion Hill, and finally cross Mount Jing into Xiangjing Prefecture.

Although the grand strategy of throwing everything into Sichuan had been settled, Xiangjing Prefecture could not be lightly abandoned.

Xiangjing Prefecture was not only Li Zicheng's earliest base, but also the capital of the Shun dynasty, and the hub connecting the territories of Shaanxi, Henan, and Huguang under Shun control.

As long as Xiangjing Prefecture held, the situation in Shaanxi and Henan could be maintained for the time being — at least in Dorgon's eyes, the Huguang war between the Shun and the Ming was still ongoing, and his Great Qing had no need to stab the Shun hard at this moment.

And as long as the Shun dynasty continued to bare its fangs in Huguang and Guanzhong, the people of Sichuan would not regard the pretend-alive Li Zicheng as a down-and-out wretch who could not make it in the lower Yangtze.

From what Li Guo had learned, the reason Zhang Xianzhong, who had entered Sichuan ahead of the Shun army, was now in such dire straits was precisely that the Sichuanese all regarded him as a down-and-out roving bandit who would not last.

Therefore, the pretend-alive Li Zicheng could not enter Sichuan with the bearing of a loser in the contest for the Central Plains. He had to enter Sichuan while the situation in Huguang was still tolerable and Guanzhong had not been lost.

The people of Sichuan most firmly believed that whoever held Guanzhong and occupied Ba-Shu would possess the realm. Had not Liu Bang won the empire that very way? Later, Zhuge Liang's Longzhong Plan had advised Liu Bei to hold Jingzhou and Ba-Shu simultaneously, then seize Guanzhong when the opportunity arose and settle the Central Plains.

Now Li Zicheng held Guanzhong in one hand and Jingzhou in the other — no matter how you looked at it, he was a "Shun Gaozu"!

So Li Guo did not dare wait for the situation to deteriorate further. Before the Xiangjing campaign had fully erupted, while Li Zicheng could still pretend to be alive a while longer, he took command of thirty thousand elite troops in the name of the Shun Army-Pacifying Crown Prince and marched into Sichuan to rescue Zhang Xianzhong from fire and water.

At the same time Li Guo was advancing west with his army, Gao Yigong and Luo Hu, stationed in Guanzhong, quietly led twenty-five thousand elite troops away from Xi'an Prefecture and Fengxiang Prefecture, where they had fought for nearly two years. They passed through Dasan Pass into Hanzhong, then took the route through Xixiang and Chunshui, circled around the Daba Mountains, and burst into Taiping County in Kuizhou, finally proceeding through Dongxiang and Dazhou into Chongqing Prefecture.

This was a surprise force! The Ming troops in Chongqing were now beset on two fronts — Zhang Xianzhong to the west and Li Guo to the east — and merely holding on was hard enough. If Gao Yigong and Luo Hu also struck from the north, they would be utterly unable to cope no matter what.

One must understand that Gao Yigong and Luo Hu's twenty-five thousand men had resisted the Qing in the east and held off Wu Sangui in the west in Guanzhong, fighting for nearly two years without collapsing. If they were not elite before, they had been forged into elite! If they truly could cross the Daba Mountains by surprise, that heap of landlord militias in Sichuan was bound to collapse!

Then Chongqing Prefecture would be Shun territory!

Moreover, the Sichuanese had always believed in conquering the south from the north (Guanzhong) and that whoever held Guanzhong would possess the realm. So facing a Shun army coming from the north, their morale would surely break, and then Kuizhou would no longer be defended.

Although victory in the Chongqing–Kuizhou campaign was assured, gazing at the layer upon layer of mountains ahead and watching the endless marching column disappear into the towering peaks, Li Guo still felt somewhat restless. "Second Military Advisor, how far is it to Wushan?"

Half a horse-length behind Li Guo, Second Military Advisor Gu Junen immediately replied, "Reporting to Thousand Years, at least another two hundred li."

"Two hundred li still?" Li Guo raised his head and looked at the scenery of mountain after mountain ahead. "How far is Chongqing?"

Gu Junen said, "Chongqing lies seven or eight hundred li west of Wushan, about a thousand li from our present position. If the journey goes smoothly, we can cover it in twenty days."

Li Guo drew a breath. "Twenty more days — nothing's going to go wrong, is it?"

"Thousand Years, rest assured," Gu Junen said with a smile. "Zhang Xianzhong began his counteroffensive against Chongqing Prefecture at the start of the year. Although the fighting has not gone well, he will not give up. Chongqing Prefecture is the richest prefecture in all Sichuan, with annual tax grain double that of Chengdu Prefecture. Zhang Xianzhong is not willing to let it go."

Zhang Xianzhong's methods were strange. He was clearly the leader of a peasant uprising, but after entering Chengdu he had picked up the wrong script. He neither distributed land to his brothers below nor lightened the burdens of the peasant folk, but instead set about holding civil service examinations!

Then he was dissatisfied with the scholars he had selected and, in a muddle, executed a batch of them!

At the same time, his rule over Sichuan was utterly unsystematic, still the roving-bandit style of eating wherever he went. After nearly two years as emperor in Chengdu, he had ravaged the surrounding area to ruin, and now naturally wanted to take Chongqing to feed on next.

Li Guo asked again, "What is the total annual tax grain for all Sichuan now? And the total amount of farmland?"

Gu Junen said, "The total tax grain for all Sichuan set by the Ming emperor is 1,080,000 shi, and the total farmland is about 13,500,000 mu."

"Only that much?" Li Guo was taken aback. "Sichuan has always been called the Land of Abundance. How can its farmland be on par with a single Jingzhou Prefecture?"

Gu Junen laughed. "That is because the Ming was slipshod and let the local gentry conceal their landholdings. Otherwise, with Sichuan's size and the wealth of the Land of Abundance, how could it possibly be only 13,000,000 mu? It is more than triple that!"

In later ages, Sichuan Province alone, even after Chongqing Municipality was carved out, still had 100,000,000 mu! How could Sichuan Province at the end of the Ming possibly have only 13,000,000 mu? The hidden fields had been concealed to a truly unconscionable degree.

Moreover, the figure of 1,080,000 shi of grain levied from the whole province of Sichuan was an absurd joke. Even if the amount actually paid by farming households were multiplied tenfold, it would only be about 10,000,000 shi. Spread over at least forty or fifty million mu, that came to just two dou of rice per mu.

For the soil of the Land of Abundance, that was no burden at all. Sichuan's climate was also relatively mild and little affected by the Little Ice Age. That was why, in the great chaos of the late Ming, no one in Sichuan itself rose in revolt, and everyone from top to bottom was extremely hostile to Zhang Xianzhong, that peasant uprising leader.

Of course, this Land of Abundance belonged to the Sichuan gentry and landlords, and had little to do with the Sichuan peasants, who merely did not starve to death.

Li Guo said in a low voice, "It is the gentry who most deserve death. In the state the realm has come to, they are the chief culprits! After we enter Sichuan this time, we must still carry out land equalization by headcount."

"Thousand Years is sagely wise!"

Li Guo suddenly furrowed his brow again. "But what about all the old brothers? We cannot let what happened in Xiangjing Prefecture happen a second time."

The disgrace at Xiangjing Prefecture had been too great — poor and lower-middle peasants welcoming the Crown Prince! And that was in the Shun dynasty's own nest! If it happened a second time, where would Li Guo flee? To Tibet?

Gu Junen said with a smile, "Thousand Years, at that time our territory was cramped. If we did not let the old brothers feed on the common people of Xiangjing, we could not have survived. If we win Sichuan, there will naturally be no need for that."

"No enclosing land and granting fields?" Li Guo asked.

"That would not do." Gu Junen said, "Ba-Shu has many prefectures and subprefectures. Let each prefecture and subprefecture set aside twenty-five percent of its farmland to distribute to the officers and men, and divide the remaining seventy-five percent equally among the common people. That way, everyone above and below will be content!" He paused. "After the soldiers have been given their fields, there will still be at least 30,000,000 mu left. Collect one dou of rice, one bolt of cloth, and ten days of corvée labor per mu, and in one year that yields 3,000,000 shi of rice and 3,000,000 bolts of cloth, and there will be no shortage of men for great public works."

"Good!" Li Guo nodded. "This method is good. Only when those above and below are all content can our Shun win the realm!"

(End of Chapter)