Chapter 76: Great Treachery, Great Righteousness — Zhu Cilang (Seeking Recommendations)

"Th-this, this…"

On the night of the twenty-second day of the third month, when Li Zicheng saw on Yongding Gate the three "Loyalty Certificates" that Wang Dehua had brought back, he was so astonished he could not speak.

How could such a scheme exist? Loyal subjects surrendering by imperial decree… loyalty and surrender both accomplished at once, openly and honorably becoming turncoats — and what was more, becoming three turncoats whose names would be listed in the Biographies of Loyal Ministers!

The Shun Son of Heaven, Li Zicheng, instantly felt his wits were not enough! Li Zicheng was, it must be said, a rather crafty man; in his career as a rebel he had done plenty of treacherous and underhanded things, and had even faked surrender himself. He had always felt that in cunning he was far superior to the Chongzhen Emperor, and now he had actually run into a Ming Crown Prince and Army-Pacifying Commander who was plainly more treacherous than himself…

"His mother's—" After being astonished for a good while, Li Zicheng finally gave a bitter laugh. "To think I've been played by a sixteen-year-old whelp! Lucky for me he's Zhu Youjian's son — if the two of them swapped places, how would I have this day!"

Indeed, if Zhu Cilang and Chongzhen had swapped places, Li Zicheng would either have been bamboozled into becoming a loyal minister of the Ming, or bamboozled into dying a martyr for the Ming — how could he ever have been a rebel?

"Your Majesty," Li Zicheng's chief strategist Song Xiance now stepped forward to speak, "this villain Zhu Cilang is no ordinary man — he is a villain of great treachery and great righteousness!"

Since the loyal subjects on Zhengyang Gate were willing to surrender, Beijing was now Li Zicheng's — the Great Ming was all but overthrown, and Li Zicheng naturally became the legitimate ruler of all under Heaven. From this moment on, Zhu Cilang was the rebel.

So Song Xiance at once fixed Zhu Cilang's character: he was a villain of great treachery and great righteousness!

"Great treachery and great righteousness…" Li Zicheng thought it over and nodded. "Well put! For Zhu Cilang to prop up the Zhu rebel's collapsing cause in just a few short days, to make a fool of me, and to turn men like Luo Yangxing and Gao Yushun into loyal subjects — that truly takes the methods of great treachery and great righteousness!

It seems the Ming house's mandate is not yet exhausted! He is my formidable enemy!"

Gu Junen stepped forward and advised, "Your Majesty, now that Beijing is taken, the Shun holds the legitimate title to all under Heaven. The urgent task is to capture the rebel Zhu emperor and his son. They must on no account be allowed to flee to Nanjing, or there will surely be a bloody war between north and south!"

"I think so too!" Li Zicheng's face had darkened. He did admire Zhu Cilang, but Zhu Cilang was still his mortal enemy!

"Your Majesty, the eastern barbarians are a hurdle that must also be crossed!" Song Xiance warned. "Above all, beware of Zhu Cilang joining hands with the eastern barbarians. First we must ascertain whether Zhu Cilang and the eastern barbarians have actually formed a marriage alliance. If such an alliance truly exists, then we must guard against Wu Sangui joining hands with the eastern barbarians. If the marriage alliance is pure fabrication, then we should seize the strategic pass of Shanhai Pass as quickly as possible, to block the eastern barbarians from advancing west."

"It must indeed be investigated thoroughly!" Li Zicheng laughed. "A hero among men! He has only held power for a few days, and already he has me running in circles! A pity the mandate lies with me and not with him! Had he been born ten years earlier, how would the empire be mine? Attendants! Send orders to Yellow Tiger and One-Eyed Tiger: no matter what, they must seal off the rebel Crown Prince's routes north and east…

Also, is there anyone who can make a trip to Yongping? I intend to win over Wu Sangui with the rank of marquis!"

"Your Majesty," Wang Dehua now offered in a low voice, "Wu Sangui's younger sister is Zhu Cilang's consort. I fear he will not surrender… Moreover, Wu Sangui is the head of the Guanning Army, and the Guanning Army has long been cowed by the eastern barbarians. If he surrenders to Your Majesty, he will inevitably be made to lead the vanguard and fight the eastern barbarians to the death."

Li Zicheng laughed heartily. "I know he will not surrender. But I still want someone sent to take a look, so as to find out whether the eastern barbarians and the Zhu family have truly joined hands in marriage. I cannot rely solely on the one-sided words of those turncoats in Beijing who cannot tell loyalty from treachery.

Wang Dehua, go back and tell Luo Yangxing, Gao Yushun, and Guang Shiheng that I have all my life most revered loyal and righteous men. So long as they sincerely submit to my Shun dynasty and truthfully report whether the rebel Crown Prince and the eastern barbarian Prince Regent's daughter have a marriage alliance, I will ennoble them as Loyalty Marquis, Obedience Marquis, and Good Faith Marquis. If they dare deceive me, I will not spare them!"

Wang Dehua hastily kowtowed and said, "Your Majesty is truly peerless in benevolence and righteousness; your virtue matches Heaven and Earth."

The false statement Zhu Cilang had made atop the Yongding Gate tower was fast becoming a sore point in Li Zicheng's heart. If he could not get to the bottom of it, he feared he would not even be able to sit easy as emperor!

……

The twenty-second day of the third month, near dusk.

Within the borders of Zhili, on the west bank of the Grand Canal, atop the wall of a large town called Wangqingtuo, in a makeshift watchtower, Cao Huachun and his adopted son Cao Wenbao stood in full armor, each holding a single-tube telescope, gazing intently northward.

The watchtower was crude in the extreme — it did not even have a roof to keep off wind and rain, just four great timbers propping up a platform. Still, standing on it, one could take in everything around Wangqingtuo at a glance.

Wangqingtuo was neither very close to the canal nor very far — about twenty or thirty li. It had not originally been a large town, but it had prospered because a certain Cao Huachun had come out of it during the Chongzhen years. By the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, Wangqingtuo was the largest town between Tongzhou and the Tianjin garrison city.

And the reason Wangqingtuo had risen was chiefly the long years of management by Cao Huachun's family. Over the past dozen or so years, the northern Zhili region had gradually descended into chaos and warfare, so merchants traveling north and south came to value safety even more than favorable transport routes.

The Cao family of Wangqingtuo had produced a eunuch Superintendent of the Capital Camps and a Regional Commander — a local power in every sense! Naturally they would not neglect the management of their home base, and so after many years of the Cao family's efforts, Wangqingtuo had become an impregnable fortress!

In the previous battles when the Tartar scum had broken through the passes, Wangqingtuo had never once been taken!

That alone was enough to draw landlords and wealthy merchants from a hundred li around to move here. Thus although Wangqingtuo was only a town, it was more prosperous than several of the nearby county seats.

Yet this flourishing place in a chaotic age seemed, by the third month of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen, to have reached its end… not necessarily its end, but certainly a crossroads of rise and fall, success and ruin.

As the patriarch of Wangqingtuo, the great eunuch Cao Huachun had returned on the evening of the eighteenth day of the third month, bringing only a dozen or so household retainers and no luggage to speak of, arriving travel-worn and dusty. The moment he entered the town, he immediately declared martial law. Aside from arming all the able-bodied men of the Cao clan and the Cao family retainers, every household, rich or poor, had to contribute men and labor, and the wealthy households had to contribute extra money as well.

So when the dust raised by a large body of troops on the march appeared in the northwestern sky, Eunuch Cao gave a single order and mustered two or three thousand able-bodied men.

Inside the walls of Wangqingtuo, the two or three thousand men milled about in confusion, barely forming ranks, drawn up in several dozen rows. Though these men were a rabble, with the Cao family's long-kept household retainers as the backbone directing them, after some time they finally took on a passable appearance. The men in the first row were all the old Cao family's household guards, each armed with a turtledove-foot matchlock! And not the shoddy showpieces used to fool the court — these were all fine Guangdong-made pieces that Eunuch Cao had gotten Zheng Zhilong to present as tribute, matchlocks and powder alike, all top quality!

In the years when the Tartars had broken through the passes, Wangqingtuo had relied on these truly effective matchlocks to keep safe!

That said, it was not that the Tartars truly could not take Wangqingtuo, but rather that they were unwilling to spend scores or even a hundred lives on a mere town. They were few in number, after all, and their plan was to grab and go; when they saw a hard walnut to crack, they naturally chose to give up.

But Li Zicheng was different. Once he entered Beijing, he would be master of all under Heaven… would he still permit a stronghold loyal to the Ming to exist right under his nose?

So within the little walled town of Wangqingtuo, the people's hearts now inclined toward surrender… most of them were gazing hopefully at Eunuch Cao, waiting for him to take the lead so they could all surrender together to the Shun heavenly troops!

Cao Huachun's adopted son Cao Wenbao was the first to lower his telescope. He turned to look at his eunuch father, his voice trembling slightly: "Father, it's a troop of ironclad cavalry!"

Eunuch Cao knitted his white brows. "Are they the Shun's, or the Ming's?"

"I don't know," Cao Wenbao shook his head. "Too far away — I can't make out the banners…"

(End of Chapter)