Chapter 549: Where Does the Road Lie?

In mid-June of the nineteenth year of Chongzhen of the Great Ming, Li Zicheng was still playing dead, while Li Guo had already seized Wu County and begun attacking the strategic Kuimen pass at Qutang. Gao Yigong and Luo Hu had broken into Kuizhou from another direction, occupied Taiping County, and pushed on to the banks of the Tongchuan River. Meanwhile, the old Long Live King of the Xi, Zhang Xianzhong, after thoroughly plundering Chengdu, had turned north, intending to take the Yangping Pass–Dasan Pass route to realize his dream of Guanzhong and Longxi.

And the great city of Wuhan Prefecture, situated at the confluence of the Yangtze and Han Rivers and along the middle reaches of the Yangtze, commanding the hub of nine provinces, was now a place where a hundred undertakings awaited revival and its vitality was gradually returning.

The decree establishing Jiangdu Wuhan Prefecture had been jointly issued and proclaimed to the realm several days earlier, on the tenth day of the sixth month, by the Grand Secretariat and the Grand Marshal's Office, both far away in Nanjing.

The reason Zhu Cilang's decree was jointly issued by the Grand Secretariat and the Grand Marshal's Office was that the governance of the Great Ming had now reverted to the early Hongwu-era model of a chancellor assisting the sovereign, and had grown even more mature. The name "Secretariat" was not restored; instead, the title "Grand Secretariat" was used.

Because the first Chief Grand Secretary, Wei Zaode, concurrently served as Minister of Personnel, for administrative convenience the Grand Secretariat and the Ministry of Personnel were merged into one, and henceforth the Chief Grand Secretary would always concurrently hold the post of Minister of Personnel. Apart from the Personnel portfolio, the Grand Secretariat also had under it three offices: the Left Office of Transmission, the Office of Currency, and the Office of Regulations.

Among these, the Left Office of Transmission was responsible for the delivery of edicts, memorials, and official correspondence; all edicts, memorials, and correspondence within the Great Ming's civil administration system were to be transmitted by the Left Office of Transmission.

In addition, the Grand Marshal's Office had a Right Office of Transmission, responsible for the delivery of orders, military reports, and documents within the military system.

Since the Ministry of War, one of the Six Ministries, was now under the dual jurisdiction of the Grand Marshal's Office and the Grand Secretariat, all edicts, memorials, and correspondence related to the Ministry of War were also transmitted by the Right Office of Transmission.

The Office of Currency was a government body akin to a banking regulatory commission and central bank, responsible for overseeing the banking industry and the minting of coinage. Coinage was divided into two types: government-minted and government-supervised merchant-minted. The former was produced by the minting plants operated by the Office of Currency itself. The latter was authorized for the Maritime Merchants' Bank and the Salt Merchants' Bank, but limited to silver dollars only; private minting of copper cash was forbidden.

The Office of Regulations was an institution for planning the national economy, altering old laws, and drafting new ones, similar to the Song dynasty's Regulations Office of the Three Fiscal Commissions. However, the Office of Regulations itself had no power to promulgate laws; all civil-administration laws had to be issued in the form of a decree countersigned by the Grand Secretariat. Laws involving military affairs, depending on whether they touched civil matters, were issued either as a decree countersigned by the Grand Marshal's Office, or as a decree with the dual countersignature of the Grand Secretariat and the Grand Marshal's Office.

For example, the decree establishing Jiangdu Wuhan Prefecture while simultaneously abolishing Fengyang Prefecture's status as the Central Capital involved both military and civil affairs, and so it was jointly countersigned and issued by the two offices.

From mid-June of the nineteenth year of Chongzhen, the Great Ming's two capitals, north and south (or the three capitals, south, central, and north), formally became two capitals, east and west.

Although in the eyes of many patriots determined to restore the realm, the Crown Prince's act of changing the north and south capitals into east and west capitals smacked of a desire to settle comfortably in the southeast, the Huguang officials and gentry summoned to Wuhan Prefecture by the Crown Prince felt with unmistakable clarity a pressure of approaching imperial might.

From now on, the Ming court would no longer be two or three thousand li away, but pressing directly down upon the heads of the Huguang gentry and officials.

Their carefree days, I fear, were gone for good.

And after this decree was formally issued, the Crown Prince boarded an official boat heading east. Since Wuhan was now the River Capital, he would return here before long.

In mid-June, Wuchang Prefecture, now deep in high summer, saw several days of torrential rain, which not only washed the summer heat away completely but also brought the people of this new Ming capital a rare summer coolness.

Inside the Wenchang Gate archway in the southwest of Wuchang city, several carriages and a squad of soldiers were sheltering from the downpour. The soldiers guarding the carriages all craned their necks, anxiously waiting for the sudden storm to pass so they could finish this last stretch of the journey and safely escort the two great lords, who had just seen off the Army-Supervising Crown Prince, to their residences within the city of Wuhan Prefecture, the western capital of the Great Ming.

But this rain fell thick as woven silk — when would it ever stop?

At that moment, inside one of the especially spacious carriages, the two great lords, having changed into loose, thin Daoist robes, were deep in animated conversation, not the least bit impatient.

"This Army-Supervising Crown Prince of ours is probably scheming to govern the interior through the exterior, and to control the gentry through the bandits. That commotion in Nanjing gave him a convenient pretext."

The speaker was none other than He Tengjiao, the top official of Hunan Province, a man who ruled over a vast territory. In his view, even if Zhu Cilang lacked the strength to enter Sichuan in force, he ought at least to seize the mountainous territory of Yiling Prefecture, Gui Prefecture, Yidu County, Changyang County, Badong County, and Xingshan County in the western part of Jingzhou Prefecture — two prefectures and four counties in all!

How could he allow tens of thousands of roving bandits, dividing up land and fields, canceling debts and interest, to squat there? What was the meaning of this?

"Hunan is not like Hubei. Hubei has long been stable, having entered the Chinese fold as early as the Qin and Han, while many parts of Hunan remained wild Jing and Man territory even into this dynasty. I fear it will not be easy to govern!"

The one replying was Du Yinxi, who had now been promoted to Provincial Administration Commissioner of Hubei.

"The Crown Prince will surely have a way. He is a wise and brilliant lord, and knows to adapt measures to local conditions. He will not impose a one-size-fits-all policy in Huguang."

He Tengjiao remarked with feeling.

"Ah, no matter how one adapts to local conditions, it always means contending with the people for profit. How much total land tax did Huguang have in the past? A mere two million-odd shi. How much will it be in the future? Even raising it to ten million shi would be generous! And then there is the question of the land in Hubei that Li Zicheng equalized — what is to be done with it? By rights it should be returned to its original owners, but..."

Du Yinxi was clearly no supporter of the Crown Prince — he was a capable man, to be sure, but he was also a Donglin successor, a Jiangnan gentry member, and a scion of the Jinling noble houses!

His teacher Ma Shiqi was a disciple of Ye Maocai, one of the Eight Gentlemen of the Donglin, and belonged to the same faction as Zhou Yanru. When Beijing fell to Li Zicheng, he happened to be in the capital awaiting appointment (he had returned to the capital after his mourning leave just when Zhou Yanru fell from favor, and so had received no post). Later he fled together with Zhu Cilang, and was now sent to Guangdong as a prefect. He could be considered useful, but could not be called a member of the Crown Prince's faction.

Du Yinxi's ancestors, meanwhile, were meritorious officials who had followed Zhu Yuanzhang in conquering the realm, with a hereditary prospect of the rank of Guard Commander. However, in his grandfather's generation the family had declined due to a dispute over family property (what was actually being contested was military land), and so they had moved from Jinling to Yixing. But they remained gentry, and as Du Yinxi studied and entered officialdom, the family fortunes gradually flourished. Now they were also major landlords in Wuxi (Du Yinxi later transferred his registration to Wuxi), and his family still had many relatives and friends, all gentry of the southern Jiangsu region. Without a doubt, they were all victims of Zhu Cilang's new policies!

Which side Du Yinxi's loyalties lay on was a real question.

As for He Tengjiao, whom later generations would call a "pig teammate," although he too was close to the Donglin, he was after all a native of Guizhou and not of distinguished lineage, so there was no conflict of interest between him and Zhu Cilang.

Zhu Cilang's reach was not that long. If the new policies he was now promoting could be fully implemented in the southeast and Huguang, that would already count as a great success. As for Yunnan and Guizhou, they were truly beyond his reach — he could not manage them well, nor could he afford to manage them!

During the years when Zhang Juzheng assisted in governance in the Wanli reign, the total land tax of Guizhou Province was a mere 50,807 shi. Yunnan was somewhat better, at 142,690 shi. These two figures not only showed how poor the two provinces of Yunnan and Guizhou were, but also demonstrated the Ming court's actual capacity for control there. And the two provinces' combined land tax of under 200,000 shi, even if fully collected, was insufficient to sustain the cost of the Ming court's appointed-official administration.

In other words, the Ming's rule in Yunnan and Guizhou was operating at a "loss," and a considerable one at that. Given the actual conditions of the two provinces, it was impossible to turn that loss around in the short term. If this were a time of peace and prosperity, the Crown Prince might have poured money into Yunnan and Guizhou, strengthened governance, and forcibly accelerated their social progress.

But as things stood, how could Zhu Cilang have the spare energy to fuss over Yunnan and Guizhou? He would be quite satisfied just to maintain Ming rule there in stable fashion.

Thus He Tengjiao and Ma Shiying, these two great officials and great landlords of Yunnan and Guizhou, had no conflict of interest with the Crown Prince. Not only was there no conflict, there was in fact considerable room for cooperation — after all, the more stable the Ming court, the more secure their own rule over the localities of Yunnan and Guizhou.

Seeing Du Yinxi fall silent, He Tengjiao spoke again: "Land that has been equalized away — how can it simply be taken back? If we really did that, how would the tens of thousands of new troops in Huguang possibly suffice? And if we need to raise more troops, who will pay for their provisions and pay? The scholar-officials of Hubei have all been devoured clean by Li Zicheng; they cannot produce any money. Are we to make the scholar-officials of the southeast pay for it?"

Du Yinxi shook his head: "You speak truly. Money on the one hand, grain on the other — hard to come by and easy to exhaust, bottomless pits everywhere. Thinking on it, I do pity this Army-Supervising Crown Prince!"

(End of Chapter)