Chapter 81: The Plan

Chen Qiyu sighed and said, "I have thought of submitting a memorial to His Majesty, but Shiliang, have you considered this? The Great Ming is beset by internal strife and external threats, crisis upon crisis. His Majesty works tirelessly from dawn to dusk, exhausted in body and mind over state affairs. As his ministers, if we cannot share his burdens and solve his difficulties, but instead run to him for support at every turn, then what use are we?"

Chen Liangmo rose and made a solemn bow to Chen Qiyu, saying, "The Governor's words make me feel deeply ashamed! His Majesty bears the weight of peace under heaven and carries the responsibility of ensuring the livelihood of countless millions. How can he be expected to attend to every matter great and small? We who study the words of the sages and learn the arts of governance do so precisely to guard a corner of the realm for the Son of Heaven, so that the people under our care may not suffer the misery of poverty and sickness without recourse, but instead harbor hopes of warmth and advancement! I have previously submitted memorials impeaching high ministers who occupy their posts without doing their duty, yet what I just said differs not at all from those wooden idols and clay statues! I thank the Governor for his instruction!"

Chen Qiyu thought to himself: Instructing you was merely incidental; what I fear is losing standing before His Majesty and leaving an impression of incompetence and mediocrity. If that happens, how could I ever return to the court and take my place among the ranks?

Chen Qiyu smiled and said, "Shiliang, you exaggerate. I would not call it instruction—merely words spoken from feeling. The urgent task at hand is how to deal with unforeseeable calamities, lest Fengyang become the burial ground for us both!"

Chen Liangmo said frankly, "I know nothing of military affairs. The Governor is a man of great talent, and your reputation spread far and wide when you suppressed the bandits years ago. I admire you greatly. Whatever strategy the Governor proposes, I shall simply follow it!"

Chen Qiyu thought to himself: I had no intention of consulting you anyway. You're just a fault-finding Censor; when it comes to military and political matters, I'm three streets ahead of you. Today I've coaxed and cajoled you simply to make you fall in line. After two years in the Imperial Prison, the once razor-sharp Chen Qiyu had learned to be slick. He had no desire to return to that dark place and suffer the cruel abuse of the jailers.

With this in mind, Chen Qiyu said, "Since we are to use guard station troops to resist the enemy, the Fengyang guard stations cannot be ignored. Under the Central Capital Defense Command are the Fengyang Right Guard, Central Guard, Imperial Tomb Guard, Fengyang Guard Station Left Guard, Left Defense Guard, Changhuai Guard, Huaiyuan Guard Hongtang Chiliarchy, and others—seven guard stations and one chiliarchy in total. According to ancestral regulations, these six guards plus one chiliarchy should field over thirty thousand men. Hah, but in reality, Shiliang, you know as well as I do how thoroughly rotten the interior guard stations have become! My estimate is that if the soldiers number even thirty percent of the original establishment, that would be fortunate!"

Chen Liangmo said, "Though I have always served in the capital, I have still heard of the decay of the guard station system throughout the provinces and the cowardice and incompetence of their officers and men. In my view, if the Governor wishes to have strong troops under his command, you must use an iron fist to subdue them. Troubled times require harsh measures. Only through forceful suppression, weeding out the bad apples in the army, and supplementing this with conciliatory tactics can you raise the fighting spirit and morale of the soldiers, so that they will not scatter at the first sight of the roving bandits pressing on the border."

Chen Qiyu suddenly clapped his hands and said, "Exactly! Shiliang's thinking coincides perfectly with my own! Here is what we shall do: the two of us will separately investigate each guard station in secret. We will select one officer from a station with shallow connections but deep misdeeds, one whom most of the soldiers resent. After thoroughly investigating his misdeeds, we will publicly announce his crimes on an appointed day and behead him! The charges will be embezzlement of military pay, enslaving soldiers, and nearly inciting mutiny! As for the aftermath, I will first submit a memorial to His Majesty explaining the matter, and only after receiving His Majesty's approval will I proceed with the disposition!"

Chen Liangmo naturally knew what "the aftermath" meant—it meant the man's family property. If His Majesty approved it being confiscated into the Fengyang Governor's office treasury, a portion could be distributed to the soldiers as back pay, demonstrating the court's grace and buying their loyalty. There was another benefit to this approach: soldiers of other guard stations who had been in similar circumstances would develop severe resentment and antagonism toward their own superiors.

It is not scarcity that breeds discontent but inequality. Originally everyone was the same—court pay perpetually in arrears, superiors driving soldiers like slaves, all so poor they couldn't afford food to fill their bellies or wives to fill their homes. Then suddenly, over there they're seizing the rich and redistributing the land, silver is landing in their hands, and wives are about to come knocking. Why should we continue to be exploited and eat chaff and swallow wild vegetables?

At such a moment, if anyone so much as stirred things up, it might provoke no small disturbance. Then the Governor's office could legitimately proceed to reorganize the guard stations. If handled with skill, the military authority over the entire Fengyang guard station system would fall completely into the Governor's hands.

Chen Liangmo laughed and said, "An excellent scheme, sir! If all goes smoothly, you will not only have troops to resist the enemy, but will also greatly intimidate those local tyrants and corrupt gentry, laying a solid foundation for your future governance of Fengyang. I am full of admiration! However..."

Chen Qiyu smiled and said, "Shiliang fears provoking a mutiny and getting burned by your own fire?"

"Exactly that! I fear that with the slightest misstep, the situation may slip beyond control! The consequences would be unthinkable!"

Chen Qiyu said with great confidence, "I have enjoyed His Majesty's trust and once commanded tens of thousands of troops across five provinces. Those were not comparable to guard station soldiers—those were battle-hardened frontier troops! Even with such strong soldiers, there were often shortages of grain and pay, yet they dared not contemplate mutiny for fear of the court's might. How much less would these guard station soldiers, who are little better than farmers, dare such a thing!"

"Governor, you must still proceed with caution! After all, the affairs of this world are unpredictable. Should the worst come to pass, Fengyang—or even the entire Southern Metropolitan Region—would be unable to bear the consequences!"

"Set your mind at ease, Shiliang. I have always acted with prudence. The first priority in this matter is to obtain His Majesty's consent. Secondly, I have already sent a dispatch to the Ministry of War in Nanjing, citing insufficient troop strength and the need to station soldiers at the Imperial Tomb to guard against a recurrence of the calamity of the eighth year of Chongzhen, requesting that Nanjing send reinforcements. I am not crying wolf—if the Imperial Tomb is ravaged by the roving bandits again, the blood of Yang Yipeng and Wu Zhenying has not yet dried on their severed heads. Who knows who might follow in their footsteps!"

Chen Liangmo laughed heartily and said, "Excellent! The day Nanjing's reinforcements arrive will be the day someone loses his head! The Governor is truly a man of great talent!"

Chen Qiyu, however, had secretly resolved that if he wished to achieve notable accomplishments in Fengyang, he must bite into a hard bone this time. Only then would he thoroughly intimidate those gentry and wealthy merchants.

In a fairly large mansion in Fengyang, the tomb-guarding eunuch Yang Ze, the Defense Office Director Zhu Guoxiang, the Fengyang Left Defense Guard Commander Chen Hongzu, and the Imperial Tomb Guard Commander Chen Qizhong were drinking freely in the flower hall.

After the roving bandits broke into Fengyang in the early days of the eighth year of Chongzhen and burned the Imperial Tomb, both Governor Yang Yipeng and Regional Inspector Wu Zhenying had been executed by imperial decree. Yang Ze should have been on the execution list as well, but he had gathered a heavy sum of silver and sent it to his godfather, the seal-holding eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial, Wang Dehua. Wang Dehua then persuaded Wang Zhixin, Gao Qiqian, and others to plead for Yang Ze before the Chongzhen Emperor, falsely claiming that when the roving bandits took Fengyang, Yang Ze had been on official business in Nanjing and bore little connection to the affair. The Chongzhen Emperor was extremely dissatisfied and distrustful of his outer court ministers, but placed great faith in his household servants. Thus he readily believed the lies of these men, and Yang Ze ended up with only a charge of negligence in oversight, being permitted to remain in his post.

The previous bribe to his godfather and the various powerful eunuchs in the palace had cost a full fifty thousand taels of silver, consuming more than half of the wealth Yang Ze had accumulated over the years. This pained him immensely, but to preserve his life, Yang Ze could only grit his teeth and part with the flesh.

In the year or more since settling that matter, Yang Ze had grown even more rapacious in his pursuit of wealth and even more reckless in his methods, all to recover his losses. He had submitted several memorials to the palace claiming that the roving bandits had burned sixty-seven rooms of the Dragon Rising Temple bearing the calligraphy of the Founding Emperor, twenty-four rooms of the Defense Office compound, and several hundred rooms of the high-wall garrison and tomb-guard barracks. These structures, he claimed, would require three hundred thousand taels of silver and the conscription of two thousand laborers, taking two years to complete the repairs.

Before Zhu Zhenqing had transmigrated into his body, the Chongzhen Emperor had been an emperor obsessed with face. Upon receiving Yang Ze's repeated memorials requesting funds to rebuild the Imperial Tomb structures, he ignored the reality that there was still a major shortfall in the military funds needed to suppress the roving bandits, and instead allocated one hundred thousand taels of silver from the privy purse to Yang Ze's hands, instructing him to repair the damaged Imperial Tomb structures as quickly as possible and restore the tomb to its former appearance, with Yang Ze to find ways to raise any shortfall himself.

This muddle-headed decision by Chongzhen was like water to a fish for Yang Ze. He promptly summoned the gentry in the name of the palace to solicit donations. The retired Minister of War Zhang Heming, already eighty years old, generously donated five thousand taels, and his younger brother Zhang Heteng, the retired Vice Surveillance Commissioner of Yunnan at nearly eighty, donated two thousand taels. Led by these two venerable retired ministers, everyone else—willing or coerced—successively contributed silver and grain. In the end, they raised thirty thousand taels of silver and over five thousand dan of grain. Though far short of Yang Ze's psychological target, it was already no small fortune.

Subsequently, Yang Ze forced the Fengyang Prefect Li Qimei to conscript laborers to repair the damaged structures, and had Chen Hongzu and Chen Qizhong summon their soldiers to participate in the labor. To prevent the laborers and soldiers from slacking off or loafing, Yang Ze sent his own godson, the young eunuch Hou Dingguo, to serve as overseer, monitoring all the commoners and soldiers involved in this work.

If Yang Ze had applied the silver allocated by the Emperor and the donations raised to this repair project, it would have been barely sufficient despite some shortfall. But how could Yang Ze pass up such an opportunity to enrich himself? All conscripted laborers had to bring their own rations and received not a single coin in wages. The soldiers, who were already having their pay and provisions docked by their superiors, now had to turn out and do hard labor. Their meals consisted of sorghum rice that was hard to swallow, with a small lump of coarse salt meant to last seven days. They expended enormous physical energy all day long without adequate nutrition, and at the slightest sign of slackening, they would be berated and whipped by Hou Dingguo and his underlings. As time went on, both soldiers and laborers saw their discontent gradually accumulate.

Repairing walls and building houses inevitably required bricks, stones, and timber. Though some bricks and stones from the damaged structures could still be reused, the timber shortfall was enormous. Purchasing at market prices would cost a great deal of silver, but Yang Ze had already made up his mind to pocket the repair funds for himself, so how could he bear to spend money on purchases? After consulting with Chen Hongzu, Chen Qizhong, Hou Dingguo, and others, Yang Ze sent people to directly demand timber from merchants dealing in various woods, under the guise of conscription.

Chen Hongzu and Chen Qizhong had spent many years in the military. Though neither was particularly capable, after spending heavily to cultivate and bribe Yang Ze, he had used his connections in the palace to put in a word with the Ministry of War, and the two had been promoted directly from Chiliarch to Guard Commander. Believing they had latched onto a thick thigh, the two became utterly devoted to Yang Ze, treating his every word as an imperial edict.