Chapter 82: Into the Wolf's Den Again! (Seeking Favorites, Seeking Recommendations)

Over Zhangjiabao, a town on the east bank of the Lu River in the Tianjin Garrison, the Roving King's army banner — red field, black characters — was already fluttering in the wind by daybreak on the twenty-third day of the third month.

This had once been a flourishing large town, ringed by tall rammed-earth walls, within which seven or eight streets and lanes crisscrossed one another. The houses along the streets had all opened shops, laid out with storefronts in front and residences behind. The size of these shops showed how prosperous the town had once been. But that prosperity was long gone now, and most of the shops had been shuttered for years. The merchants who had once done business here had either gone far away or moved across to Wangqingtuo on the west bank of the Lu River.

Yet the oldest great family of Zhangjiabao, the clan of Centurion Zhang, who had settled here with the northward-marching Ming army as early as the Hongwu era, still lived on in this nearly abandoned town.

In fact, Zhangjiabao had originally been a centurion station, and the post of centurion had been passed down hereditarily through the Zhang family generation after generation. By now it had been handed down for fifteen generations!

The military household system had long since existed in name only, but there were still many centurion and chiliarch families who had become local strongmen on their hereditary lands. The Centurion Zhang clan was just such a family of local strongmen! In earlier years, when the realm was at peace, they had flourished for many years because they occupied the advantageous ground along the canal. The family had also produced quite a few juren and xiucai, and could be counted among the notable scholar-official households of the Tianjin Garrison.

By the way, in the Ming dynasty, military households and scholar-officials were not two completely opposed classes. Nor was there any notion of scholar-officials bullying military households, or of military households being lower than commoner households. Although military households faced somewhat more restrictions than commoner households when sitting the civil examinations, military-registered jinshi accounted on average for as much as thirty percent of all jinshi in the Ming! The military household population of the Ming was nowhere near thirty percent of the total population — how could there possibly be that many military households?

So the middle and upper ranks of the military households and the scholar-officials were in fact the same group of people, and there was no such thing as a military-registered jinshi being a grade below a commoner-registered jinshi.

Besides this thirty percent of military-registered jinshi, the middle and upper military households also long monopolized the Ming's military offices. One could say they had both the civil and military spheres in their grasp, attending to both hereditary office and the examinations. They were the greatest beneficiaries of Ming rule... it would be no exaggeration to call them the backbone supporting the Ming realm.

Of course, it was the middle and upper military households who had it good; the bottom ranks were surely suffering... but in any age, the poor at the bottom of society are usually suffering. And the loss of fighting strength among the middle and upper military households, for a variety of reasons, was the most fundamental cause of the Ming realm's collapse.

If those hundred-odd thousand military households still had the fighting strength of their Hongwu-era forebears, where would there be any roving bandits, any eastern barbarians? They would have long since been chopped into mincemeat!

The centurion here at Zhangjiabao, Zhang Zongbao, naturally no longer had his ancestors' skill at killing people either. Though he held a hereditary centurion post, he was in fact a man of letters. Before inheriting the hereditary post passed down from his ancestors, he had sat the examinations and passed the xiucai degree, wrote excellent poetry, and enjoyed a modest reputation in the scholarly circles of the Tianjin Garrison.

In addition, two of his paternal cousins had both passed the juren examination. One of them was serving as an official elsewhere, while the other, named Zhang Zongyi, lived permanently in the Tianjin Garrison city. He was the leader of the Tianjin Garrison's scholarly circles!

Still, the Zhang family were hereditary centurions after all, and even after abandoning the martial for the literary, they were not bookish weaklings who could not truss a chicken. The two brothers Zhang Zongbao and Zhang Zongyi, both in their late forties and nearing fifty, could still gallop at full speed on horseback.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth day of the third month, the two brothers set out from the Tianjin Garrison city, leading the Tianjin Circuit Intendant Yuan Yuzong and Yang Weihan of the Tianjin Governor's Brigade, along with several dozen of Yang Weihan's household retainers, galloping toward Zhangjiabao, which was already occupied by the Shun army.

But they were not going to retake Zhangjiabao; they were going there to pay their respects to the great general of the Shun's heavenly troops, Hao Yaoqi!

A tremendous merit was beckoning to the lot of them!

Zhang Zongbao had welcomed the Shun's heavenly troops into Zhangjiabao the previous evening, and had immediately received from Hao Yaoqi an opportunity to earn merit! He was to take a letter in Li Guo's own hand to the Tianjin Garrison city and see the Circuit Intendant Yuan Yuzong.

It turned out that Yuan Yuzong, whose family was originally from Puzhou in Shaanxi, had long since secretly submitted to the Shun and promised to act as an inside agent, because his own mother, née Lei, had been captured by Li Zicheng. He had originally been an agent of no great importance, a thoroughly inconspicuous figure while the Shun swept across the realm. But a great merit that no one had expected had suddenly landed on the heads of Yuan Yuzong and his associates.

The Ming Crown Prince Zhu Cilang, and perhaps the Chongzhen Emperor as well, had very likely already fled Beijing and were heading for Tianjin!

If Yuan Yuzong could help the Shun's heavenly troops seize the Chongzhen father and son, that would be a merit beyond measure — enough, perhaps, to be enfeoffed as a marquis!

The two brothers Zhang Zongbao and Zhang Zongyi, though not qualified to receive noble titles, could still be all but certain of entering the Shun's service and obtaining a post of no small size.

This truly was the ancestors' blessing...

...

At the same moment, outside the walls of Wangqingtuo, hoofbeats sounded steadily. The Cao family retainers on watch atop the walls instinctively widened their eyes. They too had not closed their eyes for a day and a night, and now had been sent out again to guard the walls. They ought to have been utterly exhausted, yet they felt not the slightest drowsiness. For the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming and the Army-Pacifying Crown Prince were at this very moment within the town of Wangqingtuo.

For the Cao family of Wangqingtuo, sheltering the fallen Son of Heaven and Crown Prince was nothing less than a colossal gamble!

If they won the bet, the Cao family would become first-rank ennobled worthies once they reached Jiangnan!

If they lost the bet... it would mean the extermination of their entire clan!

Moreover, because of Zhu Cilang's methods, the Cao family of Wangqingtuo had no possibility of not gambling!

Several hundred of the Wu family of Guanning's "barbarian cavalry" had entered the town the previous evening. And Cao Huachun had no choice but to lead more than two thousand Cao family troops to follow Zhu Cilang and go greet the imperial procession. By the hour of the ox on the twenty-fourth, the great fleeing column led by Zhu Cilang had finally arrived. The Cao family of Wangqingtuo had thus thoroughly boarded Zhu Cilang's pirate ship, and could only follow along... whether it led to great wealth and honor, or to the extermination of the whole family, they could only leave it to Heaven.

Now that the Cao family had boarded the pirate ship, how could they have any peace of mind? If they could still sleep, wouldn't their hearts be far too big?

So while Zhu Cilang and the others were sound asleep, the Cao family members were either silently packing their things, preparing to leave with them, or up on the walls keeping watch, waiting on tenterhooks for the Shun's heavenly troops to arrive.

Just as the Cao family men on the wall were so startled by the approaching riders that their hearts leapt into their throats, a dozen or so horsemen had already galloped up outside the town. They were not Shun troops in white caps and blue coats, but Ming soldiers wearing mandarin-duck battle jackets.

The lead rider came up beneath the wall and shouted loudly: "I am a household retainer of Commander Cao of Tianjin, sent here by order of the Commander. I ask to speak with the steward of Eunuch Cao's household!"

Cao Wenlu, a nephew of Cao Huachun who was on watch atop the wall at that moment, upon hearing that Commander Cao of Tianjin had sent men, immediately called back to them from the walltop. After ascertaining their purpose, Cao Wenlu flew down from the wall and dashed straight for Cao Huachun's great residence.

Cao Huachun's residence was now occupied by the Chongzhen Emperor, Empress Zhou, Empress Zhang, Consort Li, and several of Chongzhen's concubines. It counted as the place where His Majesty had halted his progress! Cao Huachun had also gone back on duty, once more donning the python robe of a high-ranking eunuch, bustling about making arrangements.

Because Chongzhen and the others had all traveled by carriage, they had been able to doze in the compartments when tired. They were therefore not as weary as those who had come on horseback or on foot, and after settling in, Chongzhen had not the slightest drowsiness. Instead, he had summoned several trusted kin and nobles to his side — including the old imperial relative Zhou Kui, Noble Consort Tian's father Tian Hongyu, Imperial Son-in-law Commandant Gong Yonggu, the Marquis of Xinle Liu Wenbing, and a Embroidered Uniform Guard Assistant Regional Commander Wang Shide — not to plot anything in secret, but to keep him company while he drank in gloomy silence.

Just as the drinking had reached the height of dejection, hurried footsteps suddenly sounded from outside, and it was more than one person coming!

The Chongzhen Emperor and those drinking with him were all startled, thinking it was the Crown Prince's men! Just as their hearts were pounding in fright, Cao Huachun's voice came through.

"Your Majesty, Your Majesty, wonderful news! The Governor of Tianjin Feng Yuanyang and the Tianjin Regional Commander Cao Youyi have brought troops to greet the imperial procession!"

A flash of surprised delight crossed the Chongzhen Emperor's face, and he blurted out: "Good! Feng Yuanyang and Cao Youyi are loyal subjects indeed!"

(End of Chapter)