Chapter 78: Eunuch Cao, Come with Us to Greet the Imperial Arrival (Seeking Recommendations)

"Th-this, this, this..."

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

How could there be such a scheme? Loyal and righteous men surrendering by imperial decree... loyalty and surrender both accomplished at once, openly and honorably becoming twice-serving ministers — and moreover, twice-serving ministers who could be listed by name in the Biographies of Loyal Ministers!

The Shun Son of Heaven, Li Zicheng, immediately felt his brain was not enough! Now, Li Zicheng was himself a rather cunning man; in his career as a rebel he had done plenty of treacherous and crafty things, and had even faked surrender. He had always felt that in cunning he was far superior to the Chongzhen Emperor, yet now he had encountered a Ming Army-Supervising Crown Prince who was plainly more treacherous than himself...

"His mother's," Li Zicheng said with a bitter laugh after being stunned for a good while, "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, father and son, had swapped places, how would I have this day!"

Indeed, if Zhu Cilang and Chongzhen had swapped places, Li Zicheng would either have been sweet-talked into becoming a loyal subject of the Great Ming or sweet-talked into dying a martyr for the Great Ming — how could he have gone on being 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 and righteous men atop Zhengyang Gate were willing to surrender, Beijing was 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: a villain of great treachery and great righteousness!

"Great treachery and great righteousness..." Li Zicheng pondered, then nodded. "Well put! For Zhu Cilang to prop up the Zhu rebel's collapsing cause in just a few days, to make a fool of me, and to turn men like Luo Yangxing and Gao Yushun into loyal and righteous ministers — he truly has the methods of great treachery and great righteousness!

It seems the Ming house has not yet exhausted its mandate! He is my formidable foe!"

Gu Junen stepped forward and advised: "Your Majesty, now that Beijing is taken, the Shun has the legitimacy of the true ruler of all under Heaven. The most urgent task is to capture the rebel emperor and his son. They must not be allowed to flee to Nanjing, or there will surely be a bloody war between north and south!"

"I think the same!" Li Zicheng's face had darkened. He greatly admired Zhu Cilang, but Zhu Cilang was still his mortal enemy!

"Your Majesty, the hurdle of the eastern barbarians must also be crossed!" Song Xiance reminded him. "Above all we must guard against Zhu Cilang joining hands with the eastern barbarians. First we should ascertain whether Zhu Cilang and the eastern barbarians have actually formed a marriage alliance. If such a marriage exists, then we must guard against Wu Sangui joining hands with the eastern barbarians. If the marriage is a fiction, 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 run me in circles! A pity the mandate lies not with him but with me! Otherwise, had he been born ten years earlier, how would I possess the empire? Men! Send orders to Yellow Tiger and One-Eyed Tiger: they must at all costs seal off the rebel Crown Prince's routes north and east...

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

"Your Majesty," Wang Dehua now ventured 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 that army has long been beaten into fear of the eastern barbarians. If he surrenders to Your Majesty, he will inevitably be made to lead the van 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 house have truly joined hands or formed a marriage. I cannot simply take the one-sided word of those twice-serving ministers in Beijing who know neither loyalty nor 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. If they sincerely submit to my Shun and truthfully report whether the rebel Crown Prince and the daughter of the eastern barbarians' Prince Regent have formed a marriage, I will enfeoff them as Loyal-Righteous Earl, Loyal-Obedient Earl, and Loyal-Virtuous Earl. If they dare deceive me, I will not spare them!"

Wang Dehua hastily kowtowed: "Your Majesty is truly peerless in benevolence and righteousness, his virtue matching 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 it could not be clarified, he feared he would not even be able to sit easy as emperor!

...

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

Within Zhili territory, 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 military dress, each holding a single-tube telescope, gazing intently northward.

The watchtower was crude in the extreme — it did not even have a roof to block wind or rain, just four great timbers propping up a platform. Still, standing atop it, one could take in every detail of the area around Wangqingtuo.

Wangqingtuo was neither very close to the canal nor very far — roughly twenty or thirty li. It had not originally been a large town, but it had prospered because a certain Cao Huachun had emerged from 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 main reason Wangqingtuo had risen was 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 had come to value safety over favorable transport routes.

The Cao family of Wangqingtuo had produced a eunuch who had served as Superintendent of the Capital Camps and a Regional Commander — a local power in every sense! Naturally they had not neglected the management of their home base, and so after many years of the Cao clan's efforts, Wangqingtuo had become a fortress as secure as if walled in metal and moated with boiling water!

In the previous incursions by the Tartar caitiffs, Wangqingtuo had never once been breached!

On that account alone, it was enough to attract landlords and wealthy merchants from a hundred li around to move there. Thus although Wangqingtuo was a town, it was more prosperous than several of the nearby county seats.

Yet this prosperous 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 founding 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. Apart from arming every able-bodied man of the Cao clan and all the Cao family retainers, every household, rich or poor, had to contribute men and labor, and the wealthy households had to contribute money as well.

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

Inside the walls of Wangqingtuo, the disorderly mass of two or three thousand men had been more or less formed into ranks, dozens of rows stretching out. Though these men were a rabble, with the Cao family's long-kept household retainers as the backbone doing the drilling, after some time they had finally taken on a passable appearance. The men in the first row were all the old Cao family's household retainers, each armed with a turtledove-foot matchlock! And these were not the shoddy goods used to fool the court — they were all Guangdong-made pieces that Eunuch Cao had gotten Zheng Zhilong to present as tribute, matchlocks and powder alike, all of the finest quality!

In these years when the Tartars had come raiding, Wangqingtuo had kept safe precisely by relying on these genuinely effective matchlocks!

Of course, it was not that the Tartars truly could not take Wangqingtuo, but that they were unwilling to spend dozens or even a hundred lives on a mere town. They were few in number, after all, and their plan was to grab and run; 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 the master of all under Heaven... would he still permit a stronghold loyal to the Ming to exist right under his nose?

So within this little walled town of Wangqingtuo, the people's hearts now inclined toward surrender... most of them were eagerly watching Eunuch Cao, hoping he would take the lead so that everyone could surrender together to the Shun heavenly troops!

Cao Huachun's adopted son Cao Wenbao first lowered his telescope, turned his head to look at his eunuch father, and said in a slightly trembling voice: "Father, it's a troop of iron-armored cavalry!"

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

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