Chapter 28: Settling the Refugees

Starting from the third month, streams of refugees flowed continuously from Shaanxi, Henan, and other places into Zhili, gathering near the capital, hoping to survive under the emperor's feet.

Especially after word spread that His Highness the Crown Prince had been ordered by imperial decree to comfort the people by opening porridge kitchens in the capital, where going meant survival, by the fifth month, a crowd of nearly ten thousand starving refugees arrived in the capital.

In the early years of the Great Ming's founding, Zhu Yuanzhang established asylums across the regions to take in disaster victims, sheltering the orphaned, poor, disabled, and destitute, and also set up public graves to bury abandoned corpses and bones.

By the Yongle era, Zhu Di further established soup kitchens in various places to relieve refugees, and in the capital he set up the Candle and Banner Pole temples to house disaster victims. After the mid-Ming period, the Great Ming established porridge kitchens everywhere to relieve disaster victims.

Setting up porridge kitchens was originally meant to embody benevolent governance, but by the late Ming, the imperial treasury was in difficulty—even soldiers went months, sometimes years, without pay—and there was no strength left to relieve the refugees.

Most local officials and wealthy households were cold-blooded as well; too few came out to distribute porridge, leaving refugees starving to death across the land. Many women and children were abducted and sold, and in even more places, even fair-skinned young maidens were given away for free and nobody wanted them—they couldn't afford to feed them.

Ever since refugees kept flooding into the capital, many merchants and rice shops in the city collectively raised rice prices, seizing the chance to reap exorbitant profits. Originally one dan of rice cost five taels of silver; now one dan cost eight taels—it was practically robbery.

In the prosperous mid-Ming period, one tael of silver could buy two dan of rice; even in ordinary years, one dan of rice generally cost only one tael of silver.

By the late Ming, disasters struck everywhere, the roving bandits plundered, and the north was raided by the Jianzhou barbarians every few days—rice prices had already inflated to several times what they once were.

Upon hearing this, Zhu Cilang immediately issued an order: for any rice shop or grain store in the capital whose prices rose more than ten percent compared to the fourth month, he would directly have porridge kitchens moved to their shopfronts—let them choose between money and their lives.

What refugees lacked most was food. The rice in the shops was more valuable than gold in their eyes. The result of distributing porridge at the shop doors could be imagined.

At this moment, Zhu Cilang thought of Zhu Chunchen. After squeezing a sum of silver out of him last time, the old bastard still dared to misbehave—and this time he had donated only fifty taels in the fundraiser, showing far too little respect to His Highness the Crown Prince.

"Since you show me no respect, then I need not show you any either. It's time to take some more silver." Zhu Cilang could hardly hide the smile on his face, then he picked up his brush and wrote a letter, signed once again as 'Brother Haonan'.

The gist of the letter was that this boss of the capital had originally planned to live a carefree life on the Duke's hundred thousand taels of silver, but heaven played tricks on him—the banknotes on his person had been inadvertently lifted by refugees, so he once again 'requested' the Duke to bestow another hundred thousand in silver.

Zhu Cilang didn't know what Zhu Chunchen looked like when he received the letter, but after switching tactics, he had again taken a hundred thousand taels of silver from Zhu Chunchen for nothing. With so many refugees in the capital now, Zhu Chunchen would find it truly difficult to catch the culprit.

Watching the capital's public order deteriorate day by day, the people of the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office and the Shuntian Prefecture came daily to the Duan Prince's mansion seeking an audience. Zhu Cilang had no choice but to decide to first settle all the refugees outside the city.

He thus sent people to find a stretch of desolate, uncultivated land ten li southeast of Beijing, and set up fifty porridge kitchens there.

After the Jisi Incident in the second year of Chongzhen, that place had long been devoid of human habitation. Though some of the land was still in the hands of major landlords, Zhu Cilang quickly dealt with them, having the Shuntian Prefecture buy back the land at low prices.

When the Shuntian Prefecture learned that the Crown Prince intended to use that land to settle the refugees in the capital, and that all the money for purchasing the land would come from the Eastern Palace's own funds, they were very cooperative—all procedures were completed within a single day, and the entire vast tract of land was directly registered into the Crown Prince's imperial estate.

Zhu Cilang was somewhat speechless. With power and influence, things really did get done smoothly—no wonder every dynasty saw imperial relatives seizing tens of thousands of mu of land.

The next day, at the original porridge distribution points in the outer city, the men of the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office began announcing during distribution that porridge would no longer be given in the city but had moved outside the city walls—the refugees were to go to the porridge kitchens outside for their next meal, led by yamen runners.

A distance of ten li took only about an hour on foot. The refugees had traveled from hundreds or even thousands of li away to reach Beijing—walking ten li was naturally nothing to them.

Zhu Cilang then mobilized half of the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office personnel to go to the new distribution point outside the city to maintain order, while the remaining half cleared the streets within the city. At night a curfew was imposed—no one was allowed on the city streets, and any refugees encountered were driven out of the city.

After three days of rectification, Beijing finally regained its former cleanliness—indeed, it was even cleaner than before.

Worried that the porridge kitchens outside the city lacked sufficient manpower and that inadequate security might cause trouble, Zhu Cilang dispatched five thousand troops of the Yongwei Camp there to set up camp. Between training, they joined the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office in maintaining order.

On a vast expanse of land ten li southeast of Beijing, a full fifty large porridge kitchens were set up, each larger than those previously in the city, capable of accommodating four thousand people eating porridge at once.

"Everyone, line up properly, don't push—one at a time, everyone gets a share!"

In front of each porridge kitchen stood thousands of refugees lined up in order. Before them were dozens of large cauldrons emitting the fragrant smell of porridge, along with yamen runners ladling it out.

Gazing at the steaming rice porridge in the cauldrons, the refugees in the front rows clutched their own bowls and stepped forward one by one to receive their portions—many couldn't help but swallow hard several times.

Many refugees, especially those who had only recently arrived, wept tears of gratitude after receiving their porridge, thanking everyone profusely.

Around the porridge kitchens, squads of yamen runners from the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office patrolled. Under their clubs and staves, the hundred thousand or so refugees remained orderly before the kitchens.

On this day, Zhu Cilang came here in person, protected by several hundred Eastern Palace guards in plain clothes.

On the flat ground around the porridge kitchens were scattered clusters of haphazardly built shacks—the refugees' dwellings. Amid the countless shacks, garbage and excrement lay everywhere, the stench rising to the heavens.

Inside the shacks, many people wore tattered, filthy clothing, their faces sallow, their limbs withered and thin, their eyes vacant and wandering.

Outside the shacks, orphans who had lost their parents wandered about with dull stares. Some, too hungry, sat on the ground, watching others drink porridge nearby with longing eyes—they didn't even have a broken bowl to hold porridge in.

There were too many refugees here—the shacks numbered over ten thousand—and all kinds of incidents occurred every day. Some of the strong bullied the weak, robbing their belongings, and some even raped widows and solitary women in public.

Looking at the scenes before him, everything was utterly shocking.

Zhu Cilang immediately ordered the soldiers of the Yongwei Camp to bind those thugs and ruffians who preyed on the weak, gather them together, and behead them on the spot before the assembled refugees as a warning to others.

Subsequently, Zhu Cilang ordered the Five Wards Troops and Horses Office to build latrines and forbid everyone from relieving themselves anywhere at random, to prevent plague. He also sent civil clerks from the Shuntian Prefecture to register the population and gather the young orphans who had lost their parents into one porridge kitchen.

At the same time, he ordered the Yongwei Camp to suspend training, increase patrol frequency in small groups, strengthen patrols, and—when encountering lawbreakers—kill them on the spot without needing to request permission.