Chapter 709: The Yansheng Duke Comes to the Capital for the Examinations (Seeking Subscriptions, Seeking Monthly Tickets)

What Qian Qianyi had pointed out was actually the trouble every southern-exiled regime in history had faced — compared with the native population of the south, the number of northern nobles, scholar-officials, and warlords who migrated south was utterly insignificant!

Moreover, the powerful figures who fled south were basically empty-handed, with hardly any means of production — they had the sword-handle but no money-bag. And this batch of southern-exiled magnates was in even worse shape than all previous ones: not only did they lack a money-bag, even the sword-handle had been firmly seized by Zhu Cilang — although the sword-handle was in the hands of northern soldiers and officers, not a single northern military boss could now challenge Zhu Cilang!

Because when Zhu Cilang entered Nanjing he adopted a policy similar to Dorgon's in Beijing, turning the backbone officers and men of the Hard-Working New Army into "Nanjing people," granting them land around Nanjing, and also providing money and land for them to build houses and settle there — at the time it seemed like a great deal of wasted money, scattering more than half of the property confiscated with such difficulty from the Nanjing meritorious nobility.

But that money was very well "burned," for it burned away the military authority held by such senior New Army commanders as Wu Xiang, Wu Sanfu, Li Yan, Hao Yaoqi, Li Ruolian, and Cao Youyi. The military power of the Hard-Working New Army was concentrated entirely in Zhu Cilang's own hands!

After firmly controlling the powerful Hard-Working New Army, Zhu Cilang then, by force or by peaceful means, eliminated or won over one by one the other powerful northern military groups.

By the third year of Hongxing, he had basically achieved "great unity of the northerners" — all united around the Crown Prince Zhu.

And while uniting the northerners' sword-handle, Emperor Zhu was also working hard to use the northerners' sword-handle to rob the southerners' money-bags!

That was how his money came to be!

If there had been no southward migration, if he had not brought a crowd of empty-handed northern "poor nobles" south with him, then even if Zhu Cilang had held Beijing, he would still have worried about money every day.

Now that he had several hundred thousand northern "poor nobles" who had come south, he naturally had no fear of any Donglin Faction or Xilin Faction... this was the Little Ice Age, and the water was cold! Anyone who wanted to jump in and try it could step forward!

And no matter how many were drowned, those who survived would all have to pay up!

Of course, Emperor Zhu's method of raising money was not to send the northern army out to plunder, nor even to send northern officials to extort, but to let the southern scholar-official gentry who had submitted to the Ming court do the scraping themselves!

To raise the efficiency of the scraping, Zhu Cilang even dared to delegate power to southern scholar-officials, allowing locals to serve as local officials — that way they would know where to go and extort! And he also allowed southern officials who performed well to remain long in one post, not worrying in the least about them building separatist power bases.

For example, Luo Dagong, who had risen from magistrate of Shanghai County to Prefect of Songjiang, was a three-term "scraping star," and the people of Shanghai had given him the nickname "Luo the Skinner," with a reputation so bad it could hardly be worse. But no matter — he could still serve as Prefect of Songjiang! As long as he could scrape money well and also pacify the locality, that was enough — pacifying a locality had two keys: first, one had to have some real strength locally; second, one had to understand the locality well enough to know whom to ask for money!

And the reason Zhu Cilang dared to delegate so freely was precisely the support of the northern "poor nobles."

He used the "northern poor nobles" to govern the "southern rich gentry." The "northern poor nobles" not only controlled the army, they also held the dominant position in the court and in the provincial governor's offices, and they held an absolute advantage in the two "power departments," the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Censorate.

In other words, the "southern rich gentry" in the Southern Ming bureaucracy were mainly responsible for local affairs, chiefly holding posts below the provincial level — a "scraping star" like Luo Dagong could easily become a Prefect, but becoming a Governor would be difficult; he would not even be allowed to head any of the six bureaus under the Jiangnan Governor's office.

And the northern "poor nobles" were responsible for driving the "southern rich gentry" to scrape money for the state — if they did not extort properly, they could expect dismissal and imprisonment!

A "scraping star" like Luo Dagong had a northern Governor above him, Embroidered Uniform Guard agents controlled by northerners lying in ambush around him, and a pack of northern Censors investigating his corruption; his room for promotion was limited, his days were certainly not easy, and he lacked any sense of security.

And when one's days were hard and one lacked security, naturally one had to form factions for self-protection.

Thus the Southerners' Party, a huddle of the "southern rich gentry," came into being as the times demanded!

And Qian Qianyi and Zheng Zhilong, because of their standing at court and their influence in the localities, became the leaders of the Southerners' Party — the aims of these two southern party leaders were quite different. Zheng Zhilong and Qian Qianyi banded together to contend for the position of Crown Prince on behalf of his grandson "Zhu the Tycoon." Qian Qianyi, for his part, had his eye on Wei Zaode's seat as Chief Grand Secretary and wanted to sit in it once before he closed his eyes; that was why he had joined hands with Zheng Zhilong.

In the view of this Earl of Wenquan, who feared cold water above all else, as long as he lived long enough, he still had a very good chance of becoming prime minister. For the northerners' party, after all, had a base of only a few hundred thousand households — far too few compared with the native population of the eight southern provinces.

Moreover, when they had first come south they were empty-handed and had no choice but to serve as Emperor Zhu's dogs, but as time passed, every one of these fellows had scooped up basins full and pots overflowing, and their true colors were bound to show.

When that happened, Emperor Zhu would realize that to govern the southeast well over the long term, he would still have to rely on the southeast's scholars... just like the Southern Song in history! Did not those famous generals of the restoration later die off one by one or retire into idleness, leaving only Wu Lin in power until his death? Yet did not the power of the central government still fall to the southeastern scholars?

Now Emperor Zhu had probably also realized where the fatal weakness of the northern bloc lay, and that was why he wanted to train successors for the northern bloc by establishing the Noblemen's New Learning, was it not?

"Running schools and nurturing talent is indeed a method," Qian Qianyi said, stroking his grizzled beard and narrowing his eyes. "Was not Emperor Guangwu himself a product of the Imperial Academy? The elementary schools, middle schools, and capital schools all give priority to nobles, but the Imperial Academy should at least let the scholars of the realm compete for admission by their own ability, should it not? The petty clerks in the localities are mostly incompetent — either they have read too little or they know nothing of practical affairs. If there were an Imperial Academy that could nurture talent for the state, surely Emperor Guangwu would be much relieved?"

"Grand Secretary," asked Mao Xiang, the Vice Director of the Capital Academy, "the Imperial Academy has been closed for a long time, and it is indeed time to reopen it... who would be best to propose this matter?"

"Let the Deliberative Assembly propose it," said Qian Qianyi. "It is only natural for local deliberative officials to want local men of talent and wisdom to enter the Imperial Academy for advanced study... Since the Imperial Academy is to train ninth-rank petty officials for the state, it should recruit a good many more people — twenty or thirty thousand would not be too many, would it? That would be an unofficial Censorate!"

"Unofficial Censorate" was a boastful phrase used by the three categories of students in the Song dynasty, meaning that although they held no office, once they prostrated themselves before the palace gates and submitted a memorial, they could topple even a grand councilor...

At present, the bitter plight of the "southern rich gentry" was that Zhu Cilang had placed them in a position where they could only take blows and could not strike back!

If there could be an "unofficial Censorate," then the Southerners' Party would have a way to counterattack!

"Your Majesty, your subjects earnestly beseech the court to reopen the Imperial Academy, to nurture capable officials and clerks for the court, and to open a broad road and a heavenly ladder for the scholars..."

The Forbidden City, the Hall of Fengtian.

A routine session of the Deliberative Assembly suddenly produced a small surprise when Zhu Zhiyu, a deliberative official recommended by Prefect Luo Dagong of Songjiang, suddenly raised in a loud voice a proposal to reopen the Imperial Academy.

And this was not merely Zhu Zhiyu's own proposal, but one jointly submitted by dozens of deliberative officials from the four Jiangs and the two Hus!

"Reopen the Imperial Academy..."

Zhu Cilang took the memorial of remonstrance that Zhu Zhiyu handed up and said with a smile to this great southeastern Confucian scholar, whose beard was very long, who was nearing fifty, and whose spirit was still vigorous, "Recruited Scholar, We were just about to consult you... this matter touches the very foundation of Confucianism. If it is not made clear, the Imperial Academy will be hard to run properly!"

"What? The foundation of Confucianism?" Zhu Zhiyu was taken aback. Zhu Cilang was talking about something else entirely, but this "something else" was rather large — it directly concerned the foundation of Confucianism. What could it be?

Zhu Cilang nodded, deliberately lowering his voice, yet still letting the people in the hall faintly hear: "Recruited Scholar, do you know of the matter of the Kong family cemetery being robbed and excavated? Right now, treasures from the Kong family cemetery have appeared on the market in Lüshunkou!"

End of full text.