Chapter 251: Corruption

"Your Excellency Hong, I have been in this post for over three years now. Watching from the sidelines, I have occasionally gained some insights. In my view, the reason Liaoxi has come to its present state is nothing more than the pursuit of profit, and the methods employed by the officers and men of the Ning-Jin garrisons are simply to nourish bandits for their own enrichment. If the court wishes to settle this matter once and for all, it must destroy the root of the problem. Once the Jianzhou barbarians are annihilated, both Liaoxi and Liaodong will naturally be pacified. That is all there is to it!"

Li Zhiyuan clasped his hands in salute, then sat upright and spoke with ease and confidence.

Hong Chengchou nodded gently in approval, while Shen Shiyu beside him wore an expression of neither agreement nor disagreement. Li Zhiyuan's conclusion, though quite to the point, was not particularly striking—it could only be counted as the common consensus of knowledgeable people both in and out of court.

"Since the Hongwu and Yongle reigns, when the court ordered military farmland to be established in Liaodong to guard the frontier, down to the Wanli and Tianqi reigns when our forces withdrew to defend Liaoxi, the entire territory beyond the passes has gradually ceased to be under the court's governance. In reality, it has become the domain of the Zu, Wu, Ma, Li, Ma and several other families! I have thoroughly reviewed documents spanning over a hundred years. Of the more than one hundred thousand qing of farmland in Liaoxi today, the greater part has fallen into the hands of the garrison commanders of various regions—only barren and impoverished fields remain in the possession of ordinary soldiers and civilians. The court derives no benefit whatsoever from this, and instead must allocate enormous sums of money and grain every year to support the vast numbers of adopted sons and household retainers these men keep. From the Commissioners-in-Chief and Regional Commanders at the top of Liaoxi down to the Chiliarchs and Centurions at the bottom, all conscript their garrison troops to farm for them, and the money and grain thus obtained are all diverted into sideline enterprises such as commerce, mining, fishing, and timber-cutting, rapidly multiplying their wealth. To be frank with Your Excellency Hong, the reason large numbers of hereditary military household Han civilians are fleeing Liaoxi is that they can no longer endure this exploitation—for although the fields of Liaoxi are fertile, there is no place for them to make their stand and call home! If this continues, the Great Ming will surely be dragged down by Liaoxi, and I dare not imagine the consequences!"

Li Zhiyuan then proceeded to give a general analysis and summary of the origins and current state of the Liaoxi military clans.

Had Zhu Youjian been present, he would certainly have applauded Li Zhiyuan's remarks. As someone on the inside at the time, Li Zhiyuan's vision was quite far-sighted. These words in effect stood at a height above the entire situation in examining the problem, and his conclusions were ones that later generations would largely endorse.

Many later views held that long before the Donglin Faction drove the Ming dynasty's finances to bankruptcy, those Commissioners-in-Chief, Vice Commissioners-in-Chief, Assistant Commissioners-in-Chief, Regional Commanders, Vice Regional Commanders, Guard Commanders of the various commands, as well as those Chiliarchs and Centurions and military officers of every rank in Liaoxi had already carved up and divided among themselves every scrap of land the Zhu family had allocated to the army. In other words, the army's primary source of military pay and provisions had been cut off. The mass flight of hereditary military households, put plainly, was because they had lost their land and become serfs. At this point, the pay and provisions needed to support the army became an unbudgeted expenditure for the Zhu family's court—and moreover, this official army did not obey the court, nor was its combat strength as formidable as legend claimed. The Zhu family was essentially raising a pack of ingrates.

Hong Chengchou's expression turned grave, and Shen Shiyu's face likewise showed a look of deep contemplation.

Li Zhiyuan's words struck both men with great force. Although they knew the situation in Liaoxi was complex, they had never imagined it had decayed to such a degree.

Although the Emperor and his senior ministers all knew the Liaoxi situation was beyond the court's control, and knew that part of the enormous military appropriations sent down each year would end up in the pockets of the military commanders, they had never imagined that the vast majority of soldiers received no pay or provisions at all. The court was essentially paying to raise private armies for others—wasn't that just being a fool, a goddamn sucker?

From the officers down to the household slaves in the Liaoxi military clans, these people had little sense of nation and little sense of ethnicity. For the sake of their own small groups' interests, they would do anything: when the Ming dynasty's finances collapsed, they continued carving up land, padding their rolls, and bleeding the soldiers dry; when the Jianzhou barbarians suffered famine, they played at nourishing bandits for self-enrichment, secretly letting them through, even supplying the enemy with weapons; when the capital was in peril, they held their troops motionless and let the Jianzhou barbarians gnaw and tear at the body of the Great Ming.

Were these people evil? In truth, their natures were not necessarily all that wicked. Setting others aside, Wu Sangui alone was an extremely complex figure—he had turned traitor and strangled the last emperor of the Zhu family with a bowstring, yet he had never committed the inhuman evil of massacring a city's population. In the great battle at Jingzhou during the Rebellion of the Three Feudatories, Wu Sangui, even amid fierce fighting and heavy casualties, still refused to breach the ten-thousand-man dike.

In terms of personal virtue, Wu Sangui placed great weight on trust and righteousness. When Wu Sangui was young, he had a subordinate surnamed Wang. Because of their close relationship, Wu Sangui promised that if he had a daughter, he would marry her to his colleague's son Wang Yongning, who was still an infant in swaddling clothes. Later, Wu Sangui rose to power, while Wang Yongning's family fortunes declined, his father passed away, and at thirty he still had not married. By chance, he found the marriage contract Wu Sangui had written all those years ago among his father's belongings. Summoning his courage, he begged his way all the way to Yunnan, not daring to ask that Wu Sangui actually marry his daughter to him—only hoping Wu Sangui might give him some small relief. What Wang Yongning never dreamed of was that upon seeing the marriage contract, Wu Sangui immediately married one of his daughters to him, gave a substantial dowry, and moreover purchased the famous garden known as the Humble Administrator's Garden in Wang Yongning's hometown of Suzhou as a residence for his daughter and son-in-law. Wang Yongning thereby escaped poverty and became wealthy, transforming overnight into a local power in Suzhou.

"'Use Liaodong men to defend Liaodong soil, use Liaodong soil to nourish Liaodong men'—in truth, what it nourishes is only the Liaoxi military clans. How did the millions of Liaodong soldiers and civilians ever benefit? Dozens of fortresses were built along the route from Shanhai Pass to Jinzhou, consuming incalculable money and grain, and in between they demanded silver under the pretext of maintenance and repair—over the years, tens of millions of taels of silver ended up in whose pockets? The officers of the Ning-Jin army turned their soldiers into farmers, justifying it with the fine-sounding words: 'He who cannot be a farmer surely cannot be a soldier; if soldiers do not farm, they have no place to stand, and lacking fixed property, how can they have fixed hearts?' As we see it now, that was merely a glib tongue used to seize the people's labor!"

Li Zhiyuan sighed deeply, his words aimed directly at Sun Chengzong and Yuan Chonghuan, who had proposed and implemented the theories above.

"How many soldiers does Ningyuan currently have? What is the reputation of the two commanders He and Li? Is there any resentment among their men? If the court were to distribute military pay and provisions directly into the soldiers' hands, and then rebuild a new army in Liaoxi—what do you think, Ning Si?"

Hong Chengchou did not take up Li Zhiyuan's thread, but instead shifted the topic.

Yuan Chonghuan was long dead by now, while Sun Chengzong had been reactivated by the current Emperor, and it seemed the Emperor held him in high regard—there was no need for him to pass judgment. The strategies Sun had implemented when he governed Liaodong border affairs were also a helpless choice given the army's weak combat strength. As for the new military fiefdom that had arisen as a result, that was surely not something Sun Chengzong had wished to see either.

"To report to Your Excellency Hong: Ningyuan nominally has fifteen thousand soldiers, but in reality most are no different from farmers. All the farmland Your Excellency saw along the way was reclaimed by soldiers, yet what they harvest barely suffices to keep their families alive from day to day—the greater portion goes to their superiors. As for the pay and provisions issued by the court, most soldiers have never laid eyes on them! Assistant Regional Commander He Qianchu, from the moment he joined the army, was a personal guardsman of Grand Tutor Zu. That he became an Assistant Regional Commander was entirely due to Zu's personal promotion. The man is arrogant, crude, and has courage without strategy. Li Lu's ancestors were originally household retainers of Li Rusong; he is said to possess some genuine skill in battle. He is considerably better than He Qianchu—at least he has some sense of hierarchy and respect. Both commanders keep household retainers: He Qianchu has five hundred, and Li Lu, though only a Mobile Corps Commander, has eight hundred elite household retainers. As for resentment—the retainers of He and Li are all armored warriors, kept precisely to suppress all manner of discontent. Even if there were resentment, what could be done about it? If the court wishes to form a new army with pay and provisions distributed per capita, that would be snatching food from a tiger's mouth. Unless there is overwhelming force to back it, I do not hold out much hope!"

The pay and provisions the court allocated for fifteen thousand men were instead used to support only some one thousand and several hundred household retainers, with the remaining silver all going into the commanders' pockets.

Although padding the rolls was a widespread phenomenon throughout the Great Ming, commanders inside the passes did not dare treat their soldiers so harshly, nor did they go so far as to cruelly exploit their men's pay and provisions. The court allocated one tael of silver per man per month; commanders inside the passes would still give their soldiers at least half of it. Not like Liaoxi, where the entire amount was simply swept into their own bosoms, with only a small portion taken out to support their retainers.

Even if, as Hong Chengchou suggested, the court were to distribute pay and provisions directly into the soldiers' hands, whether the hereditary military households—who had long been frightened out of their wits by officers at every level—would dare to accept it was itself a question. Even if they dared, the moment the court's people left, the commanders would dare to go door to door collecting the pay back. As for those who dared resist, the consequences went without saying. For the sake of their group's interests, these people would do anything—what strength did ordinary military households have to resist? Moreover, such an overt move by the court to divide soldiers from their officers, without the suppression of a heavy official army presence, might well trigger unpredictable events.