Chapter 76: Emulating Zhengde

It was somewhat strange—none of the five newly appointed censors of the city patrols belonged to the Donglin Faction; they were either from the Qi, Zhe, or Chu cliques, or they were members of the eunuch faction exiled in the early Chongzhen years.

The city patrol censors and the Guard Commanders of the Troops and Horses Offices of each city managed the patrol and arrest of criminals throughout the streets of the capital, matters to which the bigwigs of the Donglin Faction had always attached great importance.

Upon hearing this news, the ministers hurried without pause to Wei Zaode's residence.

Soon, a crowd of ministers gathered at the entrance of Wei Zaode's mansion—it seemed the ministers had all arrived at the same idea, wanting Wei Zaode to appear before them at the Warm Pavilion to demand an explanation from the Emperor.

But Wei Zaode was no fool; he had long anticipated this would happen. Ever since returning to his residence after supervising the execution of Consort Kang, he had kept his doors shut and never stepped out. No matter who came calling, unless it was a eunuch of the Directorate of Ceremonial bearing an imperial edict, he refused to see any guests.

Think about it—of the Chief Grand Secretaries before him who had aligned themselves with the Donglin Faction, how many had come to a good end? Chen Yan could be called the most tragic Chief Grand Secretary in the three hundred years of the Great Ming, having had all ten of his kin groups executed—truly a hair-raising fate.

Wei Zaode's refusal to receive guests in broad daylight had already made his stance clear, and under the deliberate or casual warnings of the surrounding agents, the Donglin ministers could only scatter like birds and beasts, returning home in indignation.

At this time, Chongzhen, besides being busy with matters of settling the capital inside and out, had also broken out in a cold sweat—though this cold sweat was not because of the Donglin ministers gathering once again.

The seventeenth year of Chongzhen truly had not a single moment of peace. The chaos in the capital had just been quelled when the Chongzhen Emperor received reports from both the north and the south via the Capital Gazette.

The news from the north naturally concerned the Qing. After settling the internal struggle over the throne, the child emperor Fulin appointed Dorgon as Grand General, with Empress Dowager Xiaozhuang personally offering her blessings. Dorgon, in turn, made a vow before the mother and son to conquer and establish his seat in Beijing.

Dorgon showed not the slightest sign of haste. Besides the Eight Banner troops in Shengjing, he was summoning as many as could be gathered from the Mongols, Joseon, and the Chinese-martial banners. The intent was clear: strike while the enemy is down, and settle the fate of the realm in a single decisive battle against the Great Ming.

Upon hearing this news, the Chongzhen Emperor felt bitter at heart, but said nothing.

The nobles and imperial relatives whom the Chongzhen Emperor had dispatched from the capital had recently been returning one after another to report on their duties, and by now the usable troops in the capital region had essentially been fully accounted for.

Before the accounting was complete, the Chongzhen Emperor had still harbored some confidence—after all, there were so many guard stations and towns in the capital region. Historically, they had failed to form a cohesive force because they were scattered, but if consolidated, holding a single city like Beijing should not be too difficult.

But the facts proved that the Chongzhen Emperor had overestimated the strength of the guard stations.

The Tengxiang Four Guards belonged to the imperial palace guards, their daily duty being to guard the various gates. But by now, they were mostly padded with ghost soldiers drawing salaries for men who did not exist, and could no longer be called the elite imperial guards they once were.

The military registers listed the Four Guards Camp as having tens of thousands of soldiers on the books, but when Fang Zhenghua carefully verified the actual number of the Tengxiang Four Guards, he found only a little over three thousand remained.

Well, three thousand or so was roughly acceptable, but among them was still a portion of the old, weak, sick, and disabled who merely idled away their days. Fang Zhenghua dismissed all of them cleanly, leaving only about two thousand or so.

According to the Chongzhen Emperor's wishes, the defense of the inner palace would henceforth be handed to the Directorate of the Imperial Horses, while the guarding of the Forbidden City's gates would be given to the Capital Camps. The Four Guards Camp had historically proven willing to fight, so after the downsizing, they were pulled out for separate training.

If the roving bandits ever came, the Four Guards Camp would be sent to the battlefield to be tested.

Li Ruolian, the Regional Military Commissioner of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, was responsible for verifying the number of officers in the Northern and Southern Provincial Offices. The empire-wide registers listed no small number of Embroidered Uniform Guard personnel, but those who could actually be used in the capital's Provincial Office were still a minority.

The Northern Provincial Office had a total of a little over two thousand men, but most of them were involved in monitoring the Eastern Depot, the hundred officials, and the nobles and imperial relatives. Unless it came to the final extremity, the Chongzhen Emperor would not count on them to charge into battle with bayonets.

The Southern Provincial Office was responsible for inspecting the guard stations. Originally it had no small number of men, but ever since the assassination case implicated Luo Yangxing, the previous Regional Military Commissioner of the Embroidered Uniform Guard, a large portion of Luo's factional followers had been dismissed.

Given the situation of the late Ming, the Southern Provincial Office could no longer effectively control the guard stations anyway, so its numbers had remained stagnant at around seven hundred men with no increase—utterly unreliable.

Wang Xiantong, the newly enfeoffed Earl, was mainly responsible for the troops of the three guards of Tongzhou. A few days earlier, he had returned to Tongzhou to verify the numbers and found that the situation of the Tongzhou guards was much the same as that of the capital—all roughly similar.

The registers listed over thirty thousand soldiers, but in reality, the three guards combined numbered only a little over eighteen thousand.

This figure of over ten thousand was the largest number the Chongzhen Emperor had heard in recent days, but before getting too pleased, these men were responsible for the security of all towns within Tongzhou's territory. If they were all transferred to the capital, it would be equivalent to completely abandoning Tongzhou, a strategically vital location. The Chongzhen Emperor was still uncertain what to do.

However, there was no urgency in transferring Tongzhou's troops to the capital to defend the throne, for it was not as far as Shanhai Pass. If he truly wanted to summon them, a few days would be more than enough.

Wang Yong'en, the Earl of Jingyuan, and Liu Wenbing, the Marquis of Xinle, jointly verified the actual numbers of the Banner Guard, the Jinwu Forward and Rear Guards, the Yulin Left and Right Guards, the Four Guards of the Prefecture Army, and the Tiger Ben Guard—the situation was equally unoptimistic.

These so-called imperial personal guards, twenty-six guards in total, had not accompanied the army on the campaign in the Battle of Tumu Fortress and thus escaped disaster. Later, under the command of Yu Qian, then Minister of War, they were thrown into the defense of the capital—that battle was the most glorious moment they had ever had.

Each personal guard had its own designated defense zone. The authorized establishment of each guard was 5,600 men, and the Twelve Upper Guards were responsible for escorting the Emperor's person and guarding the palace precincts as imperial bodyguards.

The Twelve Upper Guards all had strict organizational structures, and their treatment was above that of all other troops.

On the one hand, the personal guards could be divided by duty into escort-bodyguard personal guards and guard-duty personal guards; on the other hand, by area, they could be divided into palace-forbidden personal guards and imperial-city personal guards.

The escort-bodyguard personal guards were the most exalted imperial guard force, accompanying the Emperor's person and directly answering to his command. They were typically selected from robust, valiant, and fierce warriors, with two main categories of duty:

First, protecting the Emperor, ensuring the absolute safety of the Emperor and his retinue; second, carrying out certain missions by imperial decree.

The guard-duty personal guards had as their main responsibility the defense of the palace city and the imperial city—guarding against theft, fire, and the invasion of bandits, and so forth. The palace-forbidden personal guards were the imperial guard force defending the Forbidden City, including patrols, guarding the palace gates and city gates, miscellaneous duties, and ensuring the absolute tranquility of the palace precincts.

The imperial-city personal guards were responsible for defending the imperial city, managing the gates, patrolling day and night within the imperial city, eliminating all hidden dangers, and ensuring the imperial city's safety with no margin for error.

By rights, these soldiers were all men of sturdy build and exceptional martial skill, selected through rigorous screening and strict training. But since the Tumu Incident, they had gradually declined, and no further battle achievements had ever been reported from them.

Beginning with the Tumu Fortress Incident, aside from the Embroidered Uniform Guard and the Tengxiang Four Guards Camp, which remained under the Emperor's direct command, the remaining guards of the twenty-six personal guards gradually became indistinguishable from ordinary Capital Camp troops. Though their titles remained unchanged, they had gradually come under the direct administration of the Ministry of War.

The various personal guards were constrained by civil officials in administration, personnel, and pay, and declined day by day. In recent years, they had retained little combat effectiveness and were rarely mentioned by anyone.

The last assassination attempt had taught the Chongzhen Emperor the fact that these personal guards were virtually a hollow shell. Keeping personal guards managed by civil officials was of no further use; it would be better to consolidate and reorganize them into a new army, which might yield surprising results.

As for guarding the imperial city and inner palace, the Capital Camps and the Directorate of the Imperial Horses would naturally handle that. Redistributing the twenty-six guards of personal troops to protect the palace precincts was a matter for after the national crisis of the seventeenth year of Chongzhen had been averted.

For the Chongzhen Emperor, the most pressing matters, besides curing the plague, were to seize back command of the personal guards from the hands of the civil officials into his own hands as Emperor.

Command of the personal guards was the first step toward military power, and accounting for the actual number of personal guards and registering them as a new army directly subordinate to the Personal Guards Regional Military Commission was the first step toward reclaiming that command.

That said, there had been emperors who intended to retake military power, but they had basically all come to bad ends. For the civil officials, military power was a point that could not be touched, tied as it was to their own interests.

The Zhengde Emperor was one who refused to believe in such taboos, and everyone knows how that ended—the fellow 'accidentally' fell into the water while playing in his own rear garden, and shortly thereafter died abruptly, his life snuffed out.

Now the Chongzhen Emperor could be said to be grasping at straws in his desperation, making use of every force he could.

Though he knew this was the path the Zhengde Emperor had walked, and the outcome had not been good, the current Chongzhen Emperor did not want to be like the historical Chongzhen Emperor, who accomplished nothing and ended up hanging himself on Coal Hill with nearly his entire family dead.

Before he himself was finished, he would first slaughter the Donglin Faction until heads rolled like tumbleweeds!