Chapter 28: Show of Force

Early the next morning, the small vendors around gradually opened their stalls one after another, children went out to play in the streets, while women gathered in groups of three or five to buy rice and vegetables at the market before heading home to cook.

In truth, relatively speaking, even if a place like the capital couldn't be called prosperous, it could at least not be called poor either. Among the towns of the north, aside from a few places like Jining and Xi'an, the capital was truly the most wealthy and abundant.

Yet even in this capital, one could frequently see on the main streets groups of beggars in tattered clothes, covered in mud, begging along the roadside. These people spoke with all sorts of accents — some from Shandong, others from Henan, Huguang — mostly refugees who had fled disaster from various regions.

At night they were driven by patrolling soldiers to nearby ruined temples and alleyways to sleep, and by day they had to endure hunger and come out to beg for food.

In recent years, war had raged unbroken across the five provinces of the Central Plains, and refugees were everywhere. For Li Zicheng and Zhang Xianzhong, these refugees were prime cannon fodder and labor — at minimal cost, they could raise an "army" at the fastest possible speed.

Since the first year of Chongzhen, great droughts and small calamities had come one after another — one could say they had almost never ceased.

Things like droughts and locust plagues unseen in decades, along with the Little Ice Age in the north — even in peaceful times, encountering just one of these calamities would be hard to bear, yet now they had all come at once.

The results, besides a sharp decline in population and the court robbing Peter to pay Paul, throwing silver everywhere to put out fires until the treasury went bankrupt, were that even in towns that had once been somewhat prosperous, residents and merchants were gradually migrating southward.

Anyone with half a brain could figure out that there was hardly a peaceful place left in the Central Plains and the Northern Metropolitan Region — aside from the capital, only Jiangnan remained.

As for Liu Zeqing, the Regional Commander of Shandong, over a month had passed since the Chongzhen Emperor issued the order for him to come to the emperor's aid, and to this day not even a shadow of him had appeared.

Then there was Zuo Liangyu, the Bandit-Pacifying General of Huguang, who commanded a claimed several hundred thousand imperial troops — yet now he was being chased all over the place by Zhang Xianzhong's hundred-plus thousand men.

When he received the order to come to the emperor's aid at Wuchang, Zuo Liangyu agreed to everything with fine words, sweet-talking the eunuch who delivered the edict into circles. But in reality he was even worse than Liu Zeqing — at least that Shandong Regional Commander Liu Zeqing had made a token gathering of his troops, while Zuo Liangyu hadn't moved so much as an inch.

Those rebel armies holding high the banner of "carrying out Heaven's will" were everywhere. The only policy of Li Zicheng's Dashun Army was to carve up the landlords, wealthy households, and court officials — wherever they went, they divided and distributed.

For these great households, if they didn't quickly transfer their family property south, were they just supposed to wait to be charged in and have everything looted, killed, and burned?

The imperial troops that remained in the north and Central Plains either hoarded their soldiers and carved out their own domains like Liu Zeqing and Zuo Liangyu, or they bent the knee and surrendered, collapsing and scattering at the first sight of the roving bandits.

Basically by this point, aside from Zhou Yuji's lone force in the Ningwu Army of Shanxi, all other troops would heed orders but not obey summons — openly waiting for the Zhu family dynasty to completely collapse.

At a time like this, the landlord class should have been clustering behind the court's backside begging for protection, but the imperial troops simply weren't up to the task. As everyone knew, the last elite force had been utterly annihilated together with Sun Chuanting, the Governor-General of the Five Provinces, at Tong Pass.

The Chongzhen Emperor was like a clay Buddha crossing a river — unable to save even himself. Just a few days ago he had been stabbed and nearly ascended to heaven. Word had it he was now vigorously purging the imperial palace. Think about it — if the emperor couldn't even control the capital, how could he possibly have the mind to manage other places? So better to look out for oneself.

Judging from the Chongzhen Emperor's recent edicts, aside from a cornered dog leaping the wall, the only other possibility was that he had gone mad.

The Chongzhen Emperor had reinstated the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard, indulging them in mass arrests and torture of Donglin scholars in the capital. In the eyes of the empire's literati, where was there even a shred of the image of a sage Son of Heaven? Better he go meet his Zhu ancestors in the afterlife sooner rather than later.

This morning, the Wang family pawnshop, which should have opened for business, was eerily silent. Some of the bolder ones stepped forward for a closer look and found that the Eastern Depot's seal was pasted on the door.

The people around immediately began discussing, and rumors gradually spread through the capital.

"Did you hear? The Eastern Depot raided the Wang family pawnshop last night — everyone was arrested and thrown in prison. Word is there was an assassin wanted by the court inside."

"How could the Wang family be involved in something like that? Could the Eastern Depot have arrested the wrong people?"

"Who cares about that — at least they won't come after common folk like us."

"True enough. Look, look — another squad of agents is coming!"

Customers at a roadside teahouse chatted as they drank, and happened to see a squad of depot guards rushing over urgently, stopping before an imposing residence and pounding on the gate with a "thump, thump, thump."

Normally when the depot guards operated in the capital, they went wherever they pleased making arrests, and passersby would avoid them at all costs. But this time was somewhat different — after the door opened, a crowd of government students wearing netted headpieces and white robes rushed out.

The depot guards initially didn't want to resort to blades directly — after all, these dozens of people were all students of a single academy. The squad leader leading the group conferred briefly with the Embroidered Uniform Guard Centurion and decided to give a warning first, courtesy before force. After all, the residence was surrounded; no one could escape.

But unexpectedly, these government students refused the toast only to drink the penalty. The more polite they were, the louder the students shouted.

The depot guards and a crowd of Donglin government students became entangled, and soon spectators filled the area. Someone slipped away toward the distance, heading off to who knows where.

The Eastern Depot squad leader grabbed the leading student by his clothes and said fiercely:

"You people really don't intend to get out of the way, do you? You dare obstruct a joint operation of the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard? Do you really think we gentlemen don't dare draw our blades?"

The student who had been grabbed suddenly waved his arms wildly and shouted at the top of his lungs: "The depot guards are bullying people!"

"Yes! Did everyone hear that? These agents want to draw their blades on us scholars! In broad daylight — is there no law anymore!"

"We scholars have labored over the books of the sages — was it not so that one day we might uphold the state? The current Son of Heaven trusts eunuch slaves — how is this the way of Confucius and Mencius!?"

"What you say is absolutely right! Today we should remonstrate with our very lives! To protect our academy from the harm of these claws and fangs, even if our blood splashes three feet, we would not begrudge it!"

The government students all wore expressions of righteousness incarnate, their every word implying "go ahead, try drawing your blade." And the louder they shouted, the more energized they became — looking just like citizens of Western countries in later ages marching in protest.

This was the first time the depot guards had encountered such stubborn resistance. Before long, the area was packed with onlookers come to watch the show, and it was no longer easy to draw blades in front of so many people.

"Whoa, these government students of Zhilu Academy sure have nerve — flat-out refusing to show the Eastern Depot and the Embroidered Uniform Guard any face?" A passerby who heard this said with cold sarcasm: "Hmph, I wonder if they'll still be this tough when they're thrown into the Eastern Depot's dungeons."

"What do you know? Zhilu Academy even has members in the Ministry of Rites in Nanjing (Qian Qianyi). And the current Second Grand Secretary of the Grand Secretariat, Lord Wei, often comes here to debate and compose poetry. No matter how capable these Eastern Depot agents are, surely they wouldn't dare arrest people right in front of these lords!"

"Exactly, exactly! If they truly angered the lords of the Donglin, a few memorials sent up would be enough to make these depot guards suffer the consequences!"