Chapter 670: There's Huge Good News!

Finally bought them!

With 380,000 taels in silver notes, he exchanged for Pingxi and Shuofang fief bonds with a face value of 510,000 taels!

To buy these fief bonds, he not only waited a full hour and a half in the private room of the Maritime Trading House, but also went through a familiar assistant manager at the Maritime Bank, giving 1,000 taels in bribes before he successfully cut in line, getting ahead of several other big buyers.

The bond trading at the two banks now operates on a "market-maker system," meaning buyers and sellers do not transact directly with each other; instead, the bond bureaus of the two banks provide quotes to both sides (two-way quotes), accept buy and sell orders at those prices, and trade with buyers and sellers using their own funds and bonds.

But because the amount Yao Daqiao wanted to buy was far too large—nearly ten percent of the total first-issue bonds of the two fiefs—the Maritime Bank could not complete the transaction immediately: the bank's bond inventory was not that large!

So Yao Daqiao could only wait patiently, and it was not until near the close of trading that evening that he got a "no physical delivery" buying opportunity.

What was meant by no physical delivery was that he would not receive the actual bond certificates, only a "three-month negotiable fief bond certificate of deposit" issued by the Maritime Bank—in effect, this was a futures transaction. The Maritime Bank acted as the middleman, finding the original short-selling Huizhou and Quanzhou profiteers, who took on Yao Daqiao's massive buy order.

Of course, those Huizhou and Quanzhou profiteers had no goods on hand either. So they had no choice but to sign a contract with the bank to deliver in three months or settle at the then-current market price, and to pay a deposit.

And the price at which they sold the fief bonds (face value one hundred) was 74 taels (Yao Daqiao's buying price was 74.5 taels, with the half-tael being the spread taken by the Maritime Bank). And if the first-issue fief bonds really could be redeemed in the short term—for example, with the principal fully repaid at the same time the first year's interest was paid—then that would be something extraordinary!

The interest accrual start date for this issue of fief bonds was June 1 of the first year of Hongxing. If the principal were fully redeemed when the first year's interest was paid, then by the end of the year, the bonds' remaining term would be only five months.

So by then, the bonds' value could not possibly be below 95 taels, and the short-selling profiteers would lose their shirts.

As for Yao Daqiao, he did not even need to wait three months before he could profit by selling the "negotiable fief bond certificates of deposit"!

In fact, an opportunity for him to make a big profit appeared very soon!

On the tenth day of the ninth month of the first year of Hongxing of the Great Ming, a huge piece of good news arrived in Wuhan from Sichuan.

Li Zicheng was dead!

"Your Majesty, this subject has just received secret intelligence from Sichuan: the roving-bandit chieftain Li Zicheng died of illness on the first day of the ninth month inside the false imperial palace at Chongqing."

In the Palace of Diligent Governance at East Lake Palace, Zhu Cilang, who was presiding over a court conference of the chief ministers of the two offices, suddenly heard news that startled him greatly.

"Zhu Chunjie, what are you saying? Wasn't Li Zicheng already dead long ago?"

Indeed, the man had been pretending to be alive for nearly three years—how was it that he had only now died?

"Your Majesty," Zhu Chunjie explained, "this time he is formally dead. The roving bandits' false Crown Prince Li Guo has issued a proclamation to the realm, announcing that the rebel Li died of illness, and has honored him posthumously as the false Shun Gaozu."

Zhu Cilang nodded: "Oh, so he died twice. This Li Zicheng ascended the throne twice, and died twice as well—how very hardworking!"

Truly hardworking—dead and gone, yet still forcibly pretending to be alive for more than two and a half years. Among all who have called themselves emperors since ancient times, probably only Li Zicheng was this diligent!

Zhu Cilang reflected inwardly for a moment, then asked: "Since Li Zicheng is formally dead, who has become his false Shun emperor?"

"It is Li Zicheng's Crown Prince, Li Guo," Zhu Chunjie said. "The secret report says the false Shun will change its reign title to Gongzhi starting next year.

In addition, Li Guo has in one breath enfeoffed eight Deliberative Princes. From now on, the false Shun will be governed by eight princes deliberating together, with ruler and ministers sharing governance."

Zhu Cilang thought to himself: How progressive. Peasant uprisings really are something else!

"Who are the eight princes?" Zhu Cilang asked again.

"The secret report says they are the Prince of Qin, Sun Kewang; the Prince of Han, Liu Zongmin; the Prince of Jin, Li Dingguo; the Prince of Sui, Tian Jianxiu; the Prince of Tang, Liu Wenxiu; the Prince of Song, Yuan Zongdi; the Prince of Chu, Ai Nengqi; and the Prince of Wei, Liu Fangliang."

There was considerable thought behind it: the princely titles of the first six Deliberative Princes all came from the unified Han dynasties that followed the First Emperor's unification of the realm, arranged in chronological order.

The Prince of Chu, Ai Nengqi, had a title derived from the Righteous Emperor of Chu, while the Prince of Wei, Liu Fangliang, had a title derived from the Wei state that usurped the Han.

Zhu Cilang turned his gaze to Ma Shiying, the Governor-General of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan, who had come to court to report on his duties, and asked: "Governor-General Ma, what is your view?"

Ma Shiying looked utterly dejected. He was now a defeated commander. Everywhere else in the Great Ming the situation was excellent—only he had failed, first losing Chongqing, then Chengdu. Now nearly all of Sichuan Province was lost, leaving only the mountainous prefectures of southwestern Sichuan and Zunyi Prefecture in southern Sichuan.

Fortunately, Zhu Cilang had earlier reformed the remonstrance-official system, abolishing the censors' right to deliberate on policy and dismissing the Supervising Secretaries of the Six Offices. Otherwise Ma Shiying would surely have been denounced to death by a crowd of censors and remonstrance officials.

Still, there were plenty of meddlesome civil officials in the Great Ming. These days, impeachment memorials against Ma Shiying flew like snowflakes onto Zhu Cilang's desk, with who knew how many finely wrought essays written that could make one hate Ma Shiying to death after reading them.

If the Retired Emperor Chongzhen were still in power, Ma Shiying would certainly have been executed by slow slicing.

But Zhu Cilang paid no attention whatsoever, not even glancing at these impeachment memorials.

The question of the Sichuan defeat was for the Marshal's Office to review on its own—Li Yan had been appointed imperial commissioner and had personally gone to Sichuan and Guizhou to investigate. There was no need for a crowd of civil officials who knew nothing of the Sichuan front to squawk about it.

Li Yan had not yet returned, but Zhu Cilang already knew why Sichuan had been fought to this state—it was simply not a failure of combat!

The Shun army's policy of distributing land by headcount was for real; who knew how many poor Sichuan peasants had received land for free!

And after Zhang Xianzhong's death, the combat power of the remnant Xi army had been unleashed. These men had beaten Wu Sangui to the ground at Heshangyuan; if they had not been in a hurry to enter Sichuan, Wu Sangui would not now have to worry about the fief bond problem.

With the Xi army's explosive combat power plus the Shun army's having won the hearts of the Sichuan people, how could Ma Shiying possibly have won, relying on a bunch of landlord militias and tusi forces?

So Zhu Cilang merely stripped Ma Shiying of his noble title as a token gesture, and did not even remove him from the post of Governor-General of Yunnan, Guizhou, and Sichuan.

He still hoped Ma Shiying could reorganize the various warlords and landlord militias that had fled Sichuan, and integrate them into something like a Guizhou Garrison, to plug the bottomless pits of the Sichuan border, Guizhou, and Zunyi.

"Your Majesty," Ma Shiying sighed, "Li Zicheng has long been dead, and the reason Li Guo did not announce it for so long was not to deceive us. Such a matter could at most be concealed for two or three months—how could it possibly be concealed for more than two years? Li Guo did not announce Li Zicheng's death because his internal situation was unstable; after announcing it, he would have found it very difficult to take the throne as false emperor.

And now that he has publicly announced Li Zicheng's death, it shows he has straightened out his internal affairs and can become the false emperor."

Ma Shiying's analysis was probably correct!

Zhu Cilang frowned slightly. Gains always come with losses! He had been busy "begging for food" and with the northern expedition, leaving the mess in Sichuan to one side, thinking that once the Sichuan local tyrants and evil gentry realized their mistake and came back begging him, he would then launch a large-scale campaign.

He had not expected Zhang Xianzhong's four sons to return to their old ways and go join the Shun in "eight fathers ruling together." With the Shun and the Xi united, their forces would at least double, with an estimated 200,000-plus capable of fighting! And they had also won the support of the broad laboring masses of Sichuan through land distribution by headcount.

This meant the Shun court could rapidly replenish battle losses by promoting laboring people into the military establishment. Eliminating them would not be easy!

But the banner of recovering Sichuan still had to be raised!

Without holding high the banner of retaking Sichuan, the story of abolishing the fiefs could not be told, and without abolishing the fiefs, to whom would the new issue of fief bonds be sold?

Emperor Zhu had already received reports from Huang Jiang and Su Sheng—market buying was enthusiastic!

If new bonds with the same term and interest rate as the first-issue fief bonds were now issued at a discount, they estimated that six-percent annual interest bonds could be sold for 80 taels, raising at least four to five million.

(End of Chapter)