Chapter 306: Sudden Turn of the Storm

The phrase "winds rising, clouds surging" seems barely adequate to describe the great upheaval now shaking the Great Ming.

Ever since the Hongxi era of Emperor Renzong, the status of civil officials had been steadily rising, until the early Chongzhen years—the so-called "age when all worthies filled the court"—when it reached the point that nothing could be done without the Donglin.

Beyond that, sharp-eyed merchants calling at their doors under the guise of forming acquaintances increased day by day, covering the civil officials' expenses and all manner of miscellaneous costs, delivering silver to their mansions in sums that could not be spent in several lifetimes.

These merchants either sent enormous gifts, or funded the civil officials in round-the-clock revelry, while some set their sights on newly emerged scholars of weak conviction, gradually forming a vast, tightly bound interest bloc.

This bloc—one half shielding the other within the court, providing gentry with official convenience and benefits, while the other half ran amok in the localities beyond even the reach of ordinary government offices, earning the title of "local emperors"—marked the beginning of the alliance of official-gentry and plutocrat cliques.

Some failed to understand. The Jiajing and Wanli emperors and many others were no fools; while on the throne they could all see the harm of this interest bloc, yet to this day no one dared touch it.

The reason was precisely that successive emperors feared shaking the foundations of the state. At a time like this—bandits in the south, barbarians in the north, leaks on every side—stability at home should have been the top priority. So why was this benighted sovereign doing the exact opposite?

No matter how much dissatisfaction this sudden reform provoked, the scholars discovered they could find no fault they could put to paper to refute it, because everything that could be said aloud was precisely what could not be brought into the open.

Wei Zaode retired, and the newly appointed Chief Grand Secretary Jiang Dejing together with the Grand Secretariat immediately put forward a series of decrees: reforming commercial taxes, establishing a royal bank, a Salt Administration Bureau, and a Tax Administration Bureau.

In this way, the great pot that Wei Zaode had carried on his shoulders for two years was finally set down—though what now rested on Jiang Dejing's back was no longer a "pot" but a "mountain."

Following convention, the Chongzhen Emperor circulated the proposal for discussion among his ministers, and only after "not a single person in the court said this policy could not be done" did he reluctantly affix his seal, formally promulgating the tax reform system of the nineteenth year of Chongzhen.

The capital region was the first place of implementation. Garrison troops of every office were actively mobilized, and the number of criminals arrested and thrown into prison was several times that of previous years. When word reached the outer provinces and Jiangnan, it made the many plutocrats and official-gentry tremble with fear, sitting as if on needles.

The civil officials and gentry, spoiled into a "young master's disease," finally witnessed once again the Zhu emperor's ruthlessness in dealing with corruption and the collusion of officials and gentry, and saw the power of the Great Ming court when it grew strong.

Though every dynasty had increased the intensity of commercial tax collection, since the two strong emperors, the Founder and Yongle, no emperor had possessed such boldness, daring to alter the ancestral laws, taking on the posture of sharpening his blade to sweep the realm clean.

Yet what galled those harboring discontent was that, aside from matters that could not see the light of day, they had absolutely no means to openly check the emperor's reforms.

Ancestral laws? Don't be ridiculous. The Chongzhen Emperor paid no heed to any "ancestral law." Whatever he could use was "ancestral law"; whatever he could not use was just like the words scholars wrote on paper—utterly without effect.

Indeed, this emperor had openly altered and deleted the "ancestral laws"—such an absurd thing had already happened many times in the past two years.

The most commonly used method before was to have one's protégés and old subordinates write essays decrying the darkness of court governance. Even calling the emperor the worst benighted sovereign in history would not have been excessive, for it truly looked like something only a madman would do.

The Chongzhen Emperor had the reforms proposed through the Grand Secretariat and properly passed through court deliberation before implementation. That old method clearly no longer worked, for converting private salt sales to official management was universally acknowledged as benefiting both people and state, and commercial taxes had existed in every dynasty—there was nothing to attack.

Even if some who feared death not dared to drag some matter into the open and shout about it, the impact on the Chongzhen Emperor was actually minimal.

Whoever dared to do such a thing—no matter how high their office, no matter who stood behind them—the Chongzhen Emperor would seize one and destroy one. Whether by his own decree or through his lackey runners in the Embroidered Uniform Guard and Eastern Depot handling it silently, in the end not a single one was left alive.

The Fushe Society struck down earlier, the Donglin Academy shut down in public, and last year's vine-drag purge that implicated several hundred officials across the court—these were all vivid examples that sent chills down one's spine.

Since then, the officials still alive at court counted themselves fortunate every day that they had "scraped by" another day under this benighted sovereign. As for any improper ambitions—they no longer even had the thought to think them.

Moreover, since the jiashen year, the Chongzhen Emperor had cast aside all pretense of face, caring nothing for how many cursed him, and paying no mind to the reputation he would leave to posterity.

As the saying goes, "The shameless man is invincible under heaven." And now the shameless one was the reigning emperor himself—which made the civil officials, gentry, and merchants feel they had no opening to attack, miserable in the extreme.

In truth, the Chongzhen Emperor's decision to implement reform was one made after deep deliberation.

Among the people, over more than a year of vigorous promotion by the Royal Newspaper and the Three Depots and One Guard, at least the impression of this emperor in several northern provinces had begun to change for the better.

Moreover, in the jiashen year he had also "exempted taxes for three years" and abolished the long-standing "three levies" of the eastern front—deeds that common folk in the streets passed from mouth to mouth, calling them feats of greatness.

At court, after Liu Zhengzong's death, the last great Donglin figure had been thoroughly toppled, and the former Chief Grand Secretary Wei Zaode, once a Donglin partisan, had already retired. The so-called Grand Secretariat had in fact become entirely the Chongzhen Emperor's private seal-stamping office.

After two consecutive years of purging the Donglin Faction, the Donglin members remaining at court now numbered only two or three stragglers, utterly unable to form any force, let alone influence the Chongzhen Emperor's decisions.

On the military front, the several great victories at military pay and provisions and elsewhere were each achievements worthy of a thousand ages, fit to be recorded in the annals of history. Added to the establishment of the Shrine of Loyal Martyrs, military academies, and the edicts of self-blame, the Chongzhen Emperor's two personal campaigns had both ended in great triumph, and his personal prestige had reached great heights.

The Northwest Grand Camp and the Imperial Guard had now been fully established. Though their fighting strength was still insufficient, local commanders such as Gao Jie, Bai Guangen, Tang Tong, Huang Degong, Yang Yufan, Huang Fei, and Zhang Mingzhen had all submitted and pledged loyalty to the court, and the soldiers of the Nine Borders had also given their hearts.

Because the Chongzhen Emperor intended to appoint a group of young, vigorous meritorious nobles and imperial relatives such as Zhang Shize, Dong Qi, Wang Xiantong, and Wang Yong'en to substantive posts, the power of the meritorious nobility was also regrowing at a gradual pace.

These military officers, meritorious nobles, and the "eunuch faction" as the scholars called them, along with the common people in the localities who had changed their view of him—all were in truth loyal royalists.

It was they who gave the Chongzhen Emperor the resolve to launch this political reform that history would call the "Bingxu Reformation."

For the Chongzhen Emperor, he did not possess the awesome golden fingers those figures in history had—able to summon wind and rain, able to draw from a warehouse—nor did he have one of those incredibly overpowered systems that could summon Zhao Yun, Lü Bu, or Cheng Yaojin with loyalty of ninety-nine and combat power of one hundred eighty, able to cut through a thousand foes alone like mowing grass.

That left only one choice: use every means an emperor could use, make those who wanted him dead die before him, ensure his own survival first—only then could he have the strength to keep China from being toppled by the Tartar barbarians.