Chapter 68: Trapping Li Zicheng (Seeking Favorites, Seeking Recommendations)

"Take it, take it... until we meet again!"

"Thousand Years, this old subject..."

Another official, now dressed in commoners' clothes, stood weeping and about to kneel before Zhu Cilang. Beside the stone bridge outside Chaoyang Gate, Zhu Cilang, Wu Sanmei, Wang Qi, Bi Jiucheng, and several dozen other guards stood in a row before open wooden chests filled with silver, handing out money to the officials, soldiers, commoners, sons of noble houses, and assorted others fleeing across the Chaoyang Gate stone bridge.

Everyone got a share!

The silver being handed out, needless to say, had all been hauled out of Zhou Kui's house!

More than three hundred thousand taels of silver, to be given out until it was gone!

This kind of money-burning audacity rivaled the subsidy wars of certain internet giants in later ages.

And Zhu Cilang's purpose in burning money this way was much the same as those later internet giants: they spent money to buy market share, while Zhu Cilang spent money to buy people's hearts.

Having left Beijing, what Zhu Cilang would lack most over the coming month and more was the people's hearts! And as long as he could hold out until Li Zicheng was defeated at Yipian Shi, those hearts would slowly return to the Great Ming.

The reasoning was simple: before Li Zicheng was driven out of Beijing, the Great Ming had merely "lost the state," not "lost the realm." These were two different concepts! Losing the state meant nothing more than a change of dynasty.

To the scholar-officials and common people of the realm, the Li Shun replacing the Zhu Ming was simply a matter of emperors taking turns, nothing fundamentally different.

One could even say that once he entered Beijing, Li Zicheng became the legitimate sovereign of Huaxia, while Chongzhen, Zhu Cilang, father and son, were merely remnants of the previous dynasty.

If Li Zicheng could have gotten past the Manchu hurdle — he needn't have destroyed the Qing state, just fought them to a draw at Yipian Shi and finally signed some sort of peace treaty, even paying a bit of annual tribute — the Shun's hold on the realm would have been secure!

Chongzhen and Zhu Cilang, father and son, would likely have had no choice but to flee overseas and struggle to survive.

Any thought of using the southern half of Jiangnan to stage a comeback would have been sheer delusion!

But once Li Zicheng was defeated by the Manchus and lost Beijing, the foremost capital of the realm, the death trap facing Chongzhen and Zhu Cilang immediately sprang open.

Because from then on it was no longer the loss of a state, but the loss of the realm!

And the Great Ming would then stand for the realm of the Han people!

The Great Qing, at least from the late Ming all the way to New China, meant rule by an alien race. The struggle to overthrow the Qing and restore the Ming ran through the entire Qing dynasty.

If Li Zicheng had won at Yipian Shi, would there have been any "overthrow the Shun and restore the Ming"? Absolutely impossible!

So the Battle of Yipian Shi was a disaster for Li Zicheng's Shun, but for Zhu Cilang's Great Ming it was a rare opportunity for restructuring.

Historically, Li Zicheng's easy abandonment of Beijing after his defeat at Yipian Shi cost him his position as the common leader of resistance against the Qing.

In other words, the blame for losing the realm fell on Li Zicheng!

The realm was not lost to the Great Qing by the Great Ming, but by Li Zicheng. The Great Ming had already lost its state — how could it still be made to take the blame for the Shun?

This responsibility was very clear at the time. Everyone in the realm knew he had a million-man army! How much could a million-man army lose at Yipian Shi? At most a few tens of thousands.

After Yipian Shi, even in the capital region, Li Zicheng still had at least thirty or forty thousand men in his veteran camp and at least a hundred thousand or more newly attached troops. He still had the strength to hold Beijing! And Beijing's walls were quite sturdy; holding out was entirely possible.

At least in the eyes of the realm, Li Zicheng fully had the strength, and the duty, to hold Beijing!

And abandoning Beijing while his forces were still adequate was, in effect, carrying out a policy of non-resistance... How could a "non-resisting" Shun emperor rally hearts to resist the Qing?

Of course, from Li Zicheng's own perspective, abandoning Beijing to preserve his strength was not without justification. His footing in Beijing was shallow, and he had already lost the hearts of the city's people by torturing and extorting military funds. With no popular support within and a powerful enemy without, how could he dare hold the city?

Better to withdraw with the gold and silver plundered from Beijing and return to Shaanxi to regroup... But once he left, the tide had turned for good!

In short, Beijing was a trap of the century for Li Zicheng! Before stepping into it, Li Zicheng was the new sovereign of the realm, revered by countless millions, just waiting for him to destroy the Zhu Ming, found the Shun, and build a new age of peace.

Once Li Zicheng cut his losses and got out, he became the sinner who had lost the realm, a rebel and a non-resisting false emperor!

But on the early morning of the twenty-first day of the third month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, when the Shun Emperor Li Zicheng ascended the Yongding Gate tower amid the cheers of tens of thousands of his veteran camp soldiers, he had absolutely no idea that the Beijing he was about to take over was a super landmine that would cost him his entire stake — still less that Beijing's masters, Chongzhen and Zhu Cilang, had already shed their golden cicada shells and fled under the cover of a fake Chongzhen.

At that moment, he was still worried that he might not be able to take Beijing's inner city!

The cannons mounted on Zhengyang Gate, Xuanwu Gate, and Chongwen Gate had roared all night, and the defending soldiers had kept up a constant chorus of "Long live the Emperor!" — their morale seemed quite high!

But after daybreak, the cannons fell silent and the cheers stopped; things seemed a bit wilted. Could it be that a night of commotion had worn them out?

A man of about forty or more, somewhat resembling Li Zicheng in appearance — same high cheekbones, broad forehead, and heavy beard — now strode quickly to Li Zicheng's side and said in a low voice: "Your Majesty, the lads I sent to patrol east of the city report signs that the Zhu traitors have broken out and fled!"

The speaker was Li Guo, Li Zicheng's eldest nephew, nicknamed One-Tiger, holding the rank of General of the Rear Camp. The cavalry patrolling around Beijing had all been sent out by his rear camp.

"The Zhu traitors broke out?" Li Zicheng turned his head and saw Du Zhizhi still holding up a telescope, peering in the direction of the Zhengyang Gate arrow tower.

"Old Du, is the Zhu traitor emperor still there?"

"He is, he should be..." Du Zhizhi said. "Can't see too clearly, but the build matches, the clothes are right, and beside him there's an old eunuch, Gao Yushun... He's the seal-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, the great eunuch the Zhu traitor emperor trusts most. Oh, and I also saw Luo Yangxing — he's the Commander of the Embroidered Uniform Guard."

Li Guo said: "Your Majesty, the Zhu traitor emperor may not have left, but quite a few people certainly slipped out of Beijing last night!"

"Oh? What happened?"

"The roving cavalry I posted outside Chaoyang Gate and Dongzhi Gate ran into large bands of Zhu traitor cavalry. One patrol even reported encountering a large force of armored cavalry!"

"What?" Li Zicheng was taken aback. "A large force of armored cavalry? How many? Coming from which direction?"

"Over a thousand riders!" Li Guo's expression was grave. "Hard to say where they came from... but they headed toward Tongzhou!"

"Old Du," Li Zicheng asked, "are there armored cavalry inside Beijing?"

"No." Du Zhizhi shook his head. "These days the only armored cavalry the Great Ming has left belongs to the Guanning Army..."

He had never considered the Han General Guards to be soldiers at all...

"Guanning armored cavalry?" Li Zicheng's single eye narrowed. "Wu Sangui has come? And the Manchu Tartars... any word from Yellow Tiger?"

"None." General of Authority Tian Jianxiu immediately reported. "This morning we received the military report from the Central Authority personal army. Their scouts were deployed as far as Sanhe and Pinggu, and no Guanning Army was spotted. There is also word that the Guanning Army only passed Shanhai Pass on the sixteenth, and its vanguard reached Yutian on the nineteenth. As for the Manchu Tartars mobilizing, nothing has been heard."

"Strategist, what do you make of it?" Li Zicheng asked Song Xiance, who could divine the future.

Song Xiance was pinching his fingers, putting on an act. Hearing Li Zicheng's question, he immediately answered: "Your Majesty, perhaps the Zhu Crown Prince has left the city... The day before yesterday, wasn't it said that the Zhu Crown Prince was to marry the daughter of the Manchu Tartar Prince Regent Dorgon? He couldn't very well complete the marriage while inside Beijing."

"That makes sense!" Li Zicheng, who knew nothing of the inner workings of the Manchu court, assumed Dorgon's daughter was a grown young woman. In fact, she was only six years old and could not possibly marry Zhu Cilang.

"Your Majesty, we cannot let the Zhu Crown Prince escape! I beg permission to lead troops in pursuit!" The surrendered general Tang Tong was also on the tower, eagerly volunteering for battle. It wasn't that he had any grudge against Zhu Cilang; he mainly figured he wouldn't get a share of the spoils inside Beijing, so he might as well try his luck outside the city.

"Good!" Li Zicheng nodded and said with a smile, "One-Tiger, you go too... Take three thousand of the old brothers, and be sure to capture the Zhu Crown Prince alive!"

"This subject obeys the decree!"

"This subject will not fail the mission!"

(End of Chapter)