Chapter 634: Wu Sangui, Your Chance Has Come!

Fengxiang Prefecture, Qishan Grand Camp.

Wu Sangui's trusted generals had been summoned to the central command tent early that morning to take part in a major matter that bore directly on whether everyone's purse would be full.

It was now the end of the twelfth month of the twentieth year of Chongzhen, and New Year's Eve was only days away. At the height of the New Year season, instead of returning to Fengxiang's prefectural seat to reunite with their concubines, they had all gathered in Wu Sangui's central command tent — so of course something big had happened.

And not just one big thing, but two big things capable of changing the course of history.

One of them was that the Qing Imperial Ama had robbed a tomb at Qufu!

Although Dorgon had not excavated the Kong Forest himself, but had merely let his subordinates dig up the graves of a bunch of deceased bureaucratic-landlord types, the news had been distorted by the time it reached Qishan Grand Camp. According to rumor, Dorgon had personally presided over the excavation and archaeological work at the Kong Forest, and the haul had been enormous!

Though no bones of the ancient sage had been found, a great number of the ancient sage's treasured relics had been discovered — the ancient sage's lost writings were priceless!

But Dorgon's tomb-robbing windfall at Qufu had little to do with Wu Sangui. Although he was short of money and owed Jobs a usurious loan, he was not so desperate that he needed to dig graves and rob tombs to pay his debts.

The other big matter, however, was truly tremendous!

Zhang Xianzhong was dead!

Zhang Xianzhong, the Xi Emperor who had twice ascended the throne, was now well and truly dead — and this was a heaven-sent piece of good news!

When Zhang Xianzhong was alive he still could not defeat Wu Sangui, and now that he had gone cold, would he not be at Wu Sangui's mercy?

Just as Wu Sangui was rubbing his hands and preparing to make a big move, the leaderless Xi state sent an envoy to Qishan Grand Camp: a xiucai named Wu Xiaoyi, who was also the magistrate of Yanshi County under both the Ming and the Xi.

It was because of his arrival that Wu Sangui had summoned his trusted generals for a council of war before the year's end.

"That bandit chief Zhang Xianzhong is truly dead. He was gravely wounded by the eastern barbarians' cannon fire, then died of his wounds. He died inside this humble official's fortress, and it was this humble official who found a thin coffin and placed him inside it."

"Once the Xian bandit died, his followers were left leaderless. There was not even a puppet emperor left to succeed him. His four adopted sons shut the doors and deliberated for half the night, and nearly came to blows. In the end, they decided that the puppet Xi state would have no emperor from now on, but would be ruled jointly by four kings. That is, Zhang Kewang, Zhang Dingguo, Zhang Wenxiu, and Zhang Nengqi — the four brothers would decide everything together."

"Zhang Xianzhong's dying command forbade the four of them from surrendering to the eastern barbarians or to the Ming, and ordered them to join Li Zicheng. But the main road into Sichuan is held by Your Highness, so they sent this humble official to beg for a way through."

The central command of Qishan Grand Camp was set up in a side hall of the Temple of the Duke of Zhou. Wu Sangui sat high above; the generals of Guanning Army origin sat on either side; and the Xi envoy Wu Xiaoyi stood below in the hall, explaining the current situation of the Xi state to everyone.

From time to time a general of the Wu army asked a question, and Wu Xiaoyi patiently answered each one.

When Wu Xiaoyi had finished and no one had further questions, Wu Sangui waved a hand and had his personal guards escort Wu Xiaoyi away to rest.

Once Wu Xiaoyi had left, Wu Sangui asked with a smile, "Gentlemen, what do you think — should we let the Xian bandit's sons have a way out?"

"We cannot let them go! How could we let them go? They are all roving bandits and vicious criminals!"

"These bandits are all guilty of monstrous crimes — they once dug up the imperial tombs at Fengyang! We are all, or are about to become, loyal subjects of the Ming. How could we let them go?"

"Right! Such vicious bandits — every man has the right to kill them. We should rid the nation of bandits and relieve His Majesty's cares!"

A crowd of Qing Bordered Green Banner ejen and janggin were now all stirred to righteous fury, ready to fight Zhang Xianzhong's four sons to the death over the desecration of the Ming imperial tombs at Fengyang. Truly, their loyalty was beyond words!

Wu Sangui then turned his gaze to his cousin Zu Kefa. Zu Kefa had finally stopped serving as that marriage envoy whose head hung from his belt. He was now the Imperial Commissioner for the Pacification of Gansu and Shaanxi, and his task was to win over Wu Sangui.

Zu Kefa also shook his head. "Changbo, you cannot let them enter Sichuan. Otherwise the situation in Sichuan will become unmanageable."

The situation in Sichuan was now comparatively stable — in a state of stable civil war! The civil war was still going on, but the lives of the common people had become comparatively stable. The Shun group led by Li Guo was very different from the Xi group led by Zhang Xianzhong. The latter was basically still a bandit gang, and its leader was a deranged mass murderer.

The Shun group, by contrast, had been striving since the sixteenth year of Chongzhen to establish a new feudal dynasty to replace the Ming. Although the Shun group had taken many detours in this process, taking enough detours can eventually reveal a direction — for a peasant rebel army like the Shun to seize the realm and sit on the dragon throne without a single detour, always perfectly correct, was simply unrealistic.

In fact, before the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, Li Zicheng had been nothing more than a true roving bandit, and probably had never even entertained the thought of seizing the realm. In the thirteenth year of Chongzhen, taking advantage of the fact that part of the Ming main force was pursuing Zhang Xianzhong into Sichuan and another part had been transferred to Liaodong to resist the Qing, he raised the banner of "equalizing land and remitting taxes" and composed the ballad "Welcome the Roving King" — which counted as having a political program and the determination to overthrow the Ming.

From that point on, Li Zicheng's group truly began to get on the right track. But the victories that followed came too quickly, leaving Li Zicheng no time — and causing him to neglect — the building of political power and social reform. That was why the subsequent collapse came like a mountain crumbling.

But because of Zhu Cilang's rise, which made the Southern Ming the Qing's principal enemy, Li Zicheng's group was given a second and a third chance to learn from its mistakes.

So although Li Zicheng was dead, the feudal revolutionary cause he had pioneered was walking ever more steadily.

The Shun army that entered Sichuan had completely shed its roving-bandit ways (they were no longer roving bandits). Not only was their military discipline strict and the common people left utterly untouched, but they also placed great emphasis on building base areas. In every prefecture and county they occupied, they expended great effort surveying the population and the land, and then carried out planned land grants by encirclement and land grants by headcount.

Land grants by encirclement were grants to the officers and men of the Shun army who had entered Sichuan. Depending on rank, merit title, or noble title, they were granted between 50 and 1,000 mu of office-merit land. Office land could not be inherited — when the office was removed, the land reverted — while merit land could be passed down to descendants.

Moreover, the Shun army had learned the lesson of the fall of Xiangyang and Nanyang, and no longer concentrated the evil policy of land encirclement (land encirclement is certainly an evil policy, but without land encirclement there is no feudal army, and without a feudal army there is no feudal dynasty) in one place. Instead, it was dispersed across every prefecture and department under Shun rule. In principle, the amount of land the Shun army encircled in any one prefecture or department would not exceed thirty percent of that prefecture or department's total arable acreage.

The remaining seventy percent was used for land grants by headcount, distributed to the common people of that prefecture or department.

But not all common people could receive land, because the Shun dynasty also needed commerce and handicrafts. Therefore, after entering Sichuan, the Shun dynasty also began using household registration to distinguish scholars, farmers, artisans, and merchants.

Of course, the Shun household registration was not as detailed as that of the early Ming. It simply divided the common people of Sichuan into three broad categories: farming households, artisan households, and merchant households.

Farming households made up the overwhelming majority. All of them received land by headcount and bore the corresponding rent, corvée, and tax obligations. In addition, without the approval of the local government office, no farming household could leave the borders of its county — they said that since they themselves had risen from roving bandits, they naturally had to guard against new roving bandits!

Artisan and merchant households, by contrast, were relatively free and could move freely within the borders of a prefecture or department — artisan and merchant registration was not under the county but was directly controlled by the prefecture or department. They did not need to pay taxes, but they had to bear "harmonious purchase" and "long corvée." So-called "harmonious purchase" meant selling their products at prices set by the Shun court! And "long corvée" meant serving corvée labor in long shifts.

Among them, artisan households had to labor without pay for government-run workshops.

Merchant households had to work for government-run monopoly markets — all commercial circulation that crossed prefectural (or directly administered department) borders was controlled by government-run monopoly markets. "Controlled" did not mean the government directly entered into buying and selling. Rather, the wholesale rights for a certain commodity in a certain prefecture or department were contracted out to several merchant households, who were responsible for managing the business.

In short, the Shun regime adopted a strategy of slow, steady, careful management in Sichuan, so its progress was very slow. For that reason, the Ming side could also hold the situation steady for the time being.

Wu Sangui had also kept his eyes fixed on Sichuan, that land of heavenly abundance, and of course knew the situation there. He was also preparing, once the situation in Shaanxi had stabilized, to send troops into Sichuan to deal with Li Zicheng's remnants on Zhu Cilang's behalf. So he was unwilling to let that undisciplined band of Xi roving bandits charge back into Sichuan.

He immediately nodded heavily. "Please tell His Majesty on my behalf that Sangui will never let the remnants of the Xian bandit return to Sichuan. Dasan Pass — that is where they will die!"

(End of Chapter)