Chapter 590: Prince Who Pacifies the West, You Need to Be a Bit More Feudal

"How does one go about feudalism?"

Wu Sangui was taken aback, thinking to himself: This king is an Iron-Capped Prince of the Great Qing's Bordered Green Banner! Would I not know how to do feudalism? Do I still need to read a book for it?

Jiabusi noticed Wu Sangui's slight disdain, so he said with a smile, "My Prince, you had best read it. This book was sent to Your Highness by a truly extraordinary personage, who bade this humble one bring it to you."

An extraordinary personage — Wu Sangui understood: it was the Hongxing Emperor!

Since it was sent by the Hongxing Emperor, he had better read it at once! Even if it proved useless, he still had to study it carefully — this was a matter of attitude!

So Wu Sangui, right in front of Jiabusi and Liu Sheng, opened this book, On Feudalism, and began reading it closely.

This On Feudalism was in fact an abridged edition of the Laws and Regulations Governing Inner and Outer Vassals, which the Hongxing Emperor's court had just promulgated in the spring of the twentieth year of Chongzhen. The original Laws and Regulations Governing Inner and Outer Vassals covered a very broad range of matters, governing not only the inner vassals but also the relations between the Great Ming and the outer vassals.

The so-called outer vassals were those tributary states that nominally declared themselves subjects of the Great Ming and offered tribute in exchange for lavish rewards, while in practice performing none of the feudal obligations at all.

Zhu Cilang was not so easy to deal with! You people hand over a few trifles and expect to cart silver out of Zhu Cilang's treasury? Where in the world is there such a good deal?

A tributary state must have the obligations of a tributary state; it cannot merely take benefits without fulfilling duties. The Hongxing Emperor had no taste for such empty bustle — he liked solid, tangible benefits.

Furthermore, the Hongxing Emperor would never practice "meager tribute, lavish reward" — the vassal is below, the emperor above. To put it in terms of an analogy, the vassal is the tenant farmer, and the emperor is the landlord. The tenant pays rent to the landlord, and the landlord, at New Year's and festivals, gives the tenant's household a little reward to maintain good feeling. But how could the reward the landlord gives out possibly exceed the rent the tenant pays in? If one did things that way, how could the landlord remain a landlord?

Therefore, in the Laws and Regulations Governing Inner and Outer Vassals, Zhu Cilang strictly prohibited "meager tribute, lavish reward," and at the same time prohibited three kinds of conduct: "failure to pay tribute," "disrespect," and "failure to submit."

"Failure to pay tribute" meant not paying tribute on time — tribute had to be paid every year; one could not pay only when one remembered and forget it otherwise. If, due to some special circumstances, it was truly impossible to pay tribute on time, one had to make up the tribute afterward and offer apologies.

"Disrespect" referred to straddling several boats — declaring oneself a subject to several powers at once, or shutting one's gates and calling oneself emperor. The former was not absolutely forbidden, but one had to obtain the gracious permission of the Great Ming Emperor. The latter was not permitted, though the Great Ming would not necessarily send a punitive expedition; rather, it would dissolve the lord-vassal relationship and kick the offender out of the ranks of Great Ming tributaries.

From now on, they could no longer be the Great Ming's dogs!

"Failure to submit" meant that a tributary state did not open itself to Great Ming merchants, did not grant them preferential treatment, and could not refuse the Great Ming's demand to establish stations on the tributary state's soil. Because a tributary state was not an independent country and did not possess full sovereignty, Great Ming merchants were not "foreigners" to a tributary state, but "people of the superior state." They could not be turned away at the gates, could not be subjected to cruel punishments, and their property could not be seized at will.

In addition, the Great Ming, as the suzerain state, had the right to establish "stations" in tributary states, stationing officials or troops there.

As for what kind of station to establish, and whether to station officials or troops, that could be discussed gradually — but a tributary state had no right to refuse the Great Ming's demand to establish stations.

In short, from the twentieth year of Chongzhen onward, being an outer vassal of the Great Ming was no longer a particularly comfortable thing.

Of course, the small neighboring states could choose not to be outer vassals and remain happy independent countries, or become vassals of other states. The Hongxing Emperor was not particularly eager to take on little brothers who were too distant, or had no profit to offer, or were hard to control — Zhu Cilang did not want those at all!

The little brothers he was now focusing on developing were the four lords of Annam, Champa, Water Chenla, and Siam.

Among them, the four lords of Annam and Water Chenla were the top priorities!

Zhu Cilang's current Annam policy was to abolish the Later Le and enfeoff the four lords. The best plan was to depose the Later Le dynasty, which existed in name only, and at the same time elevate the four lords — the Nguyen lord, the Trinh lord, the Mac lord, and the Vu lord — to kings of Great Ming tributary states. That is, to divide Annam into four and turn it into four small kingdoms.

And Zhu Cilang's policy toward Champa and Water Chenla was to exploit the contradictions between the Nguyen lord of Annam and these two countries, gradually encroaching and annexing them, turning the Nine Dragons River plain in eastern Water Chenla and some territories in southern Champa into land of the Great Ming!

As for Siam, first strengthen the tributary relationship, and then slowly find ways to progress together!

Of course, the affairs of the outer vassals had nothing to do with Wu Sangui — those were the responsibility of Zheng Zhilong, Zheng Sen, Zheng Jiangong, and the rest.

So Zhu Cilang had Ji Kun remove the outer-vassal portions from the Laws and Regulations Governing Inner and Outer Vassals, then revise and abridge the inner-vassal portions, compiling this On Feudalism, and had Jiabusi deliver it to Wu Sangui.

And in this On Feudalism, which teaches people how to do feudalism, the renowned feudalist political theorist Ji Kun focused on explaining the "household-enfeoffment system" of integrating military and civilian populations. That is to say, the object of enfeoffment was not territory, but households of people.

For example, how many military households and civilian households were there in the territory of Wu Sangui, that Great Qing green-hat — no, Iron-Capped Prince? First take a count, and then, based on the situation, organize some of them according to the method of integrating military and civilian populations into Centurions, Chiliarchs, and Myriarchs, while simultaneously enfeoffing Centurion chiefs, Chiliarch chiefs, and Myriarch chiefs.

Although the territory Wu Sangui now occupied was relatively poor, a careful count would still yield three to four hundred thousand military and civilian households.

Under the current pattern of great warlords coaxing lesser warlords, and lesser warlords seizing a patch of land and squeezing it for all it was worth, three to four hundred thousand households crammed together without any organization could at best produce fifty or sixty thousand men actually capable of fighting — and even they would be hampering and guarding against one another, unable to put even one-tenth of their strength to good use.

It was precisely because he could not bring his strength to bear that Wu Sangui had so far been bottled up in western Gansu and Shaanxi, unable even to defeat Zhang Xianzhong in the Guanzhong region.

If Wu Sangui could use the methods in On Feudalism to reorganize the forces under his command, forming the Great Qing's Bordered Green Banner into twenty or thirty Myriarchs, each Myriarch capable of supporting several thousand elite troops, that would be enough to form a formidable military force.

Historically, when the Mongols rose to power, they had only ninety-five Chiliarchs in total — that is, fewer than one hundred thousand households. And the true Eight Banners of the Great Qing were about the same; no matter how one calculated, they would not exceed one hundred thousand households.

If Wu Sangui could organize thirty — no, even if he could organize twenty Myriarchs, at least in numbers he would be able to crush the opponents around him.

Jiabusi said to Wu Sangui with a smile, "My Prince, this commoner also has some business in Xi'an Prefecture, so I know that the one currently entrenched in Xi'an is the Xian Bandit. The Xian Bandit has rampaged across the Central Plains and Sichuan for years and plundered an enormous amount of wealth — in silver alone, no less than ten million taels. All of it he has brought with him to Xi'an! If Your Highness can persuade the generals of Gansu and Shaanxi to reorganize their forces, and everyone goes together to attack Xi'an, a fortune is there for the taking!"

"Is that true?" Wu Sangui was once again delighted at the news.

"How could it be false?" Jiabusi laughed. "That bandit Zhang Xianzhong acts with no rules at all — he plunders wherever he goes, and the silver he seizes has nowhere to be spent, so he carries it all with him. As long as Your Highness can reorganize the armies of Gansu and Shaanxi, you can take it all for yourself."

Reorganizing the internal forces required a common goal! Attacking Beijing looked too dangerous; going to Xi'an to make a fortune was more suitable. As for whether to go to Xi'an or take the southern Gobi route to Beijing after the reorganization was complete — that could be decided when the time came!

Wu Sangui closed the book and said to Jiabusi, "Shopkeeper Jia, if I say there are mountains of gold and silver in Xi'an, people may not necessarily believe me. But your trading houses are spread throughout the northwest, and more than half the army commanders in the Gansu-Shaanxi forces have business dealings with you — quite a few of them even owe you debts. If you go and tell them this, they will certainly believe it!"

He paused, then laughed. "Besides, this king is rather short of funds at the moment! To reorganize the various armies, I will need to spend money. How about you lend me two or three hundred thousand taels first, and once Xi'an is taken, I will repay you double."

Wu Sangui's title of Prince Who Pacifies the West had truly been a losing proposition — not only had he sunk all his savings into it, he was now in debt to loan sharks. If the attack on Xi'an also failed, he would truly be buried under a mountain of debt!

(End of Chapter)