Chapter 163: Xuanwu

Empress Zhou stood beside the Chongzhen Emperor with Noble Consort Yuan from the palace, a subtle curve unconsciously forming at the corner of her mouth. Indeed, this was what it felt like to be the mother of a nation.

Although Empress Zhou had to receive the courtesies of the consorts and concubines at the Hall of Union during festivals and holidays, the number of people was simply too few, and the feeling was on an entirely different level from this.

Watching tens of thousands of soldiers in gleaming armor pass before her eyes and look toward the gate tower, shouting "Long live the Emperor," Empress Zhou felt somewhat nervous in her heart. After all, although she was the Empress of the Great Ming, she had never truly known what such a grand occasion felt like before.

Although this military review ceremony was rough, with most of the rituals cobbled together from later ages and the grand ceremonies of the Yongle era, tens of thousands of people surging across one square still left one deeply shaken.

Before long, after the various battalions of the Capital Camps, the various battalions of the Imperial Guards, and the soldiers of the Divine Martial Army had passed, the final formation came into view.

This formation was somewhat unusual. It was not the combat personnel at the front; the soldiers wore light armor, carried short swords at their waists, and held arquebuses in their hands, while the soldiers in the rear pulled various types of cannons.

Among them were the tiger-crouch cannons primarily used by the Qi family army, as well as various small bronze and iron cannons. Beyond that, what attracted the most attention were the fourteen heavy red barbarian cannons at the rear—these were the era's most powerful great cannons, which the later Qing dynasty would call "red-clad great cannons."

In fact, the Jianzhou barbarians only began copying them after taking Shenyang, having their artisan households replicate the cannons captured on the battlefield. It was said the Jianzhou barbarians boasted that they already had sixty self-made red barbarian cannons, with power surpassing even these ten in Beijing.

In the Chongzhen Emperor's eyes, that claim was complete nonsense.

First of all, although those artisan households in Liaodong were not bad, they were all leftovers that he had discarded after using them himself and sent over. Their craftsmanship and technology were simply not on the same level as the artisan households of the Central Plains and the south.

"red barbarian cannon" had never been the exclusive name for this type of cannon. In the third year of Chongzhen, the Chongzhen Emperor of history had officially named this cannon the "Divine Might Grand General Cannon."

In fact, at the time the Great Ming uniformly called all muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons imported from the West "red barbarian cannons," because this name was distinctive—even a fool could tell from the name that these cannons were imported from the West, saving the need for excessive explanation.

Officials of the various ministries and courts, based on superstitious ideas about feng shui and the like, would often cover these great cannons with red cloth. The Qing dynasty, seizing on this point, had the surrendered traitors falsely propagate the name as "red-clad," thereby making them their own "red-clad great cannons."

The Qing dynasty avoided the character "yi" (barbarian), fearing it would offend the foreigners, and so changed the name to "red-clad." But the Great Ming had no such taboo, because in the eyes of Westerners, there was an essential difference between the Great Ming and the Qing dynasty.

One could see from the attitudes of Western missionaries and so-called envoys that Europe had always been extremely respectful toward the Great Ming—how would they dare show the Qing dynasty that kind of contempt and belittlement?

Some small Western countries referred to the Great Ming as their suzerain state, because in Europe such a thing was not considered shameful; in meaning it was roughly equivalent to an alliance.

Even powerful countries like England and Portugal treated the Great Ming as an equal, and in their letters they addressed the Son of Heaven of the Great Ming as Emperor.

To those foreign devils, the Ming people's agriculture filled them with envy, jealousy, and hatred. Comparing the two, they themselves seemed like country bumpkins walking into a big city.

The Western intellectual and missionary closest to the present whom both East and West considered relatively authoritative, Matteo Ricci, evaluated the Great Ming like this:

"The Ming dynasty is far wealthier than Europe."

That was still when he had just arrived in the Great Ming. After a trip to Guangdong, this fellow's words changed to this: "Guangdong is an enlarged version of Venice—beautiful, prosperous, and convenient for transport. The entire Great Ming looks like a great garden, tranquil and serene."

If you thought one person's words might be suspect for having been bought off, then looking at what others thought at the time would show that these words were not false.

An ordinary European missionary named Álvaro Semedo discovered that Ming farmers had excellent physical fitness, and these farmers were very positive about life.

A Spanish merchant named Rada who had come along for the excitement agreed with this view and lavishly praised Ming agriculture: "The Ming dynasty possesses advanced farming tools and high-yield crops."

So after this great garden of the Ming was handed over to the Qing dynasty, how did the foreign devils evaluate it?

The British diplomat Barrow, who had once been sent as an envoy to the Qing dynasty, said this: "The Qing dynasty countryside during the era of the High Qing was simply extreme poverty and helpless misery."

What horrified him most was that abandoned infants seemed to be seen everywhere along the roads in the Qing dynasty.

The Spaniard Rada, after staying in the Great Ming for a while, became a thorough "Ming fan." This is how he described the Ming army of the sixteenth century:

"The elite of the Ming army could sweep across all Western nations. Their naval warships were quite reliable, and the Ming army also emphasized the construction of firearm and artillery units."

In Chongzhen's view, this had some suspicion of helping the Great Ming boast, but the combat power of the Ming army and navy was not blown up by these foreign devils—it was hard-earned by the Old Ancestors through fighting.

The combat power of the Ming navy was top-notch in the world at that time. Crushing the Japanese navy was like child's play. Even up to this day, local naval warships had fought against Spanish and British warships without falling behind in the slightest.

But in the same place, once it became the Qing dynasty, this is how the British mission viewed the Qing army:

"The morale and bearing of the army are utterly terrible. They look slack and loose, like extras playing bit parts. The Qing army's cannon and firearm units are also hopelessly backward—compared to the Ming, they seem to have made no progress at all. If the army is bad, the navy is even worse. Their warships are simply unfit for navigation and cannot withstand great winds and waves at all."

Thus, that year, the British mission reached a startling conclusion: "Our British Empire needs only three warships to cripple or even destroy the Qing dynasty's coastline."

The missionary Álvaro Semedo, who had lived in Hangzhou for over ten years, confessed his feelings for Hangzhou like this: "The water of West Lake is extremely clear—I can even see the fine sand at the bottom of the lake. The city of Hangzhou is also quite clean, because the Ming people there are industrious, and there is a mature sanitation management system and garbage recycling system."

By the time of the Qing dynasty, those affectionate and passionate words could no longer be seen, replaced only by such cold evaluations:

"In Qing cities one can hardly see public entertainment facilities. The roads are few and narrow. The big cities are crowded with people, the entire main roads packed with crowds and stalls. The gap between rich and poor is extremely large—either tall and beautiful houses or shabby thatched huts."

Synthesizing all aspects, Chongzhen felt that in the eyes of foreigners, the Great Ming's status and strength were equivalent to the later United States. In contrast, the Qing dynasty appeared to foreigners like a colossus with feet of clay—one gentle push would be enough to knock it to the ground.

According to the secret records the Chongzhen Emperor had flipped through at leisure in the palace, the first batch of red barbarian cannons to enter the Great Ming began with naval guns salvaged from a British warship that had sunk in Chinese waters. The exact time could no longer be verified, but one thing was certain: it was at the very latest before the Tianqi era.

Comparing with European artillery standards of the time, it was discovered that the prototypes of these ten Divine Might General Cannons were the six-pound, twelve-pound, and eighteen-pound muzzle-loading smoothbore cannons carried aboard the British Royal Fleet's warships.

In fact, the Great Ming had always maintained contact with the Bocarro Cannon Foundry in Macau. Of the cannons now in the capital, four-tenths were copies of various captured cannons, and six-tenths came from this Macau cannon foundry.

As the name suggested, this cannon foundry was personally managed by the Portuguese Bocarro, and it was hailed as the best cannon foundry in the Far East.

In the Chongzhen Emperor's view, once he freed up his hands, this kind of heaven-defying good stuff would naturally be used to make cannons to fight the Jianzhou barbarians. When that time came, I would let them know the gap between the Jianzhou barbarians' cannons and the Great Ming's cannons!

It was not until the sixteenth year of Chongzhen that the Great Ming's finances completely collapsed. Even the palace had to economize on food and clothing for military pay, and only then were they forced to cut ties with Macau.

But even so, the court still maintained resident officials at the Bocarro Cannon Foundry, because the Great Ming had never abandoned the idea of introducing advanced technology to strengthen itself.

Speaking of which, the palace's campaign to economize on food and clothing could only be smoothly accomplished through Empress Zhou's personal example. After all, Empress Zhou was the mistress of the harem—if she did this, then those consorts and concubines had nothing to say.

Of the fourteen Divine Might General Cannons pulled atop the walls of the Forbidden City, four had been purchased from the Bocarro Cannon Foundry as early as the Tianqi years, and the remaining ten were purchased again by Xu Guangqi in the tenth year of Chongzhen.

The people present had varied expressions. The civil officials all looked terrified, ultimately muttering things like "tyrannical ruler," while the military officers, soldiers, and commoners were in exactly the opposite state, all feeling proud and delighted.

The Chongzhen Emperor turned to look—the group of foreigners beside Johann Adam Schall von Bell was even more excited than he was. Some had even begun kowtowing toward the Forbidden City, shouting: "Long live the Great Ming Emperor."

The Chongzhen Emperor looked at the high officials of the Great Ming, the corner of his mouth slightly curling upward:

"You look down on the eunuch faction, don't you? Then I will heavily employ the eunuch faction. You look down on crude military men, don't you? Then I will heavily employ military men. Who dares to object? Drag them out and deal with them!"