Chapter 1354: Chongzhen

After the Tianqi Emperor fell gravely ill, Wei Zhongxian attended him personally every day and spent little time at the Directorate of Ceremonial duty room. Now it was the Seal-Holding Eunuch Wang Tigan who managed things.

The Directorate of Ceremonial was the nerve center of all governance under Heaven — the collection and distribution of administrative orders and intelligence all flowed through here. Only by holding this place could one control the court and, by extension, the realm. Wei Zhongxian understood the stakes perfectly. Every day he had to carve out some time for this office, and nothing critical could move without his nod.

Intelligence concerning Xuzhou was of the highest priority. Much of it could only be opened by Wei Zhongxian himself — especially reports about the crossing to Dengzhou and the seaborne landing.

Wei Zhongxian knew all too well the impact of the Zhao Army's seaborne landing. It was not just the local gentry and commoners — even the court officials and the capital's pure-stream scholars would react with fervor. After all, these years of one crushing defeat after another, with no hope of turning the tide, had left everyone choking on pent-up fury, each man nursing a faint, unspoken despair.

The wax seal was intact, the secret marks undisturbed. Wei Zhongxian swept his gaze across the duty room. The eunuchs' faces were solemn, their bearing imposing; the clerks kept their eyes down and their steps brisk. Yet Wei Zhongxian knew in his heart that many of them privately admired the Zhao Army's move to cross the sea and strike north.

This often made Wei Zhongxian curse inwardly. They've all read too many books and rotted their brains, he thought — always fretting over the distinction between Hua and Yi, over some grand fundamental righteousness. We are incomplete men of the inner court, servants at His Majesty's side. Our lives, our wealth, our very survival are bound inextricably to the Emperor. How can we think the same way as the civil officials outside? But cursing was cursing; Wei Zhongxian knew it was impossible. Ever since the Inner Study began inviting Hanlin academicians to teach, the thinking of eunuchs and civil officials had drawn steadily closer.

He opened the sealed dispatch. In truth, its contents were already known to many — by now, probably no one in Northern Zhili was unaware. But the matter was so momentous that confirmation was imperative.

When he saw it confirmed beyond doubt, Wei Zhongxian's face turned ashen. He sat frozen for a long moment, then let out a long breath.

The eunuchs and clerks in the duty room appeared busy, but in fact every one of them was watching Wei Zhongxian's every move. A wax-sealed missive delivered into Director Wei's own hands had to concern a matter of heaven-shaking importance — naturally they paid the closest attention.

When they saw Wei Zhongxian react like that, even the grand eunuchs — men stationed at the very center of power, who had cultivated the bearing of chief ministers — showed alarm on their faces. Had the sky fallen?

The Seal-Holding Eunuch Wang Tigan, whose rank was higher than the others, hurried over and asked in a low voice, "Director, what has happened?"

The Directorate of Ceremonial had its own hierarchy of rank and precedence. By custom, the Seal-Holding Eunuch stood highest, but when Wei Zhongxian was present, that changed. Thus the Seal-Holder addressed the lower-ranked Supervising Director as "Director" — a thing rarely seen since the Ming began.

Wei Zhongxian shook the paper in his hand. He meant to speak, but in the end he simply handed the letter weakly to Wang Tigan. Wang Tigan took it, and his face changed the moment he read it. But he immediately swept a stern glare across the room, making everyone retract their gazes. Only then did he say urgently, in a hushed voice, "Director, this must not reach His Majesty. His Majesty is already barely holding on. If he sees this news, I fear... I fear..."

He spoke with the utmost earnestness, but Wei Zhongxian's expression was wooden. In a rasping voice he said, "If we don't tell him, won't others?"

"Director — our very ancestors — if anything befalls His Majesty, Prince Xin has no fondness for us. And there are those outside who would gladly devour you, Director. The moment this news reaches him, if His Majesty cannot bear it, we are all finished!"

Wang Tigan was frantic now. A eunuch's life, death, glory, and disgrace all hung upon the emperor he served. While that emperor reigned, wealth and rank were assured; if that emperor fell, at best one was dismissed and cast aside, at worst condemned and executed — a wretched end. And during Tianqi's reign, Wei Zhongxian's eunuch faction and their political enemies had fought without quarter. Countless men in the inner court and outer court had been trampled into the dust, living deaths. If the tables turned now, the reckoning they would face was all too easy to imagine.

Wei Zhongxian shook his head. He merely glanced at Wang Tigan and said, his voice hoarse, "Then do you have a solution?"

Wang Tigan was stunned. There was simply no way to suppress this news. Prince Xin, Zhu Youjian, was already the confirmed heir apparent. He met with the Tianqi Emperor daily, and even Wang Cheng'en and Cao Huachun had already been given positions in the inner court. How could the news be contained? Not to mention all those in the inner and outer courts who had gathered around Zhu Youjian, officials and eunuchs alike, hoping to ride the dragon — who knew how many among them would pass the news along.

Is it truly over, just like that? At this thought, Wang Tigan felt his hands and feet turn ice-cold. He looked at the despairing, defeated, utterly aged Wei Zhongxian before him and wondered whether he should switch sides now. But he dismissed the thought almost at once. The roots were too tangled, the entanglements too deep — extracting himself was no longer possible.

Just then, hurried footsteps sounded outside the Directorate of Ceremonial duty room. As those footsteps rang out, the quiet, orderly Forbidden City began to grow clamorous and chaotic. Every eunuch and clerk in the duty room raised his head. Their faces showed a mixture of indifference and grief, but a closer look revealed some in despair, some in terror, and some alight with excitement and joy.

Wang Tigan's body went rigid. The expression on his face was worse than weeping. He opened his mouth to speak but no words came. At last, his voice trembling, he said, "Director Wei... this is the end..."

He did not even notice that his voice had suddenly turned utterly hoarse. Wei Zhongxian braced his hands on the armrests of his chair to stand. His arms moved several times but could not manage it — yet no one came to help him. When he finally rose, there was not a trace of life left in his expression or his voice. Hunched over, he said, "To the Palace of Heavenly Purity."

At that moment, the messenger eunuch finally burst into the duty room. His face was twisted with grief — whether real or feigned, none could tell — and in a tearing wail he cried, "His Majesty! His Majesty has passed away!"

In the seventh month of Tianqi's fourth year, a eunuch delivered a memorial before the Tianqi Emperor. Its contents: the Zhao Army was massing troops and preparing to cross the sea on a northern campaign. When the Tianqi Emperor, Zhu Youxiao, learned this, he immediately spewed blood and lost all consciousness. By the time the imperial physicians arrived, he had already breathed his last.

The Tianqi Emperor's health had actually shown some improvement. According to the Imperial Medical Academy, his illness was of the body but also of the heart. The realm was in peril, and the Son of Heaven carried too many burdens, too heavy to bear — the collapse had brought on this condition. Therefore, he absolutely must not be troubled. In fact, both the inner palace and the outer court had arranged matters accordingly. Yet somehow, inexplicably, this memorial had been delivered before the Tianqi Emperor. Prince Xin, Zhu Youjian, had tried to intercept it, but it was too late.

There were many rumors about this incident, but pursuing them was meaningless. By every measure — legitimacy and all else — Prince Xin, Zhu Youjian, was the successor. Now a new sovereign ruled the land, and everything had to revolve around him. The inner and outer courts had long been prepared for this. Prince Xin, Zhu Youjian, ascended the imperial throne, with the reign title Chongzhen...

Compared to the Tianqi Emperor, Zhu Youxiao, who had pushed Wei Zhongxian to the fore while hiding behind him, the Chongzhen Emperor, Zhu Youjian, was far more callow. Yet as the Ming Emperor, he could not possibly take comfort in the Zhao Army's northern crusade across the sea or the shifting tide of popular sentiment. It was said that upon taking the throne, he wanted to muster troops for a southern punitive expedition. The Chongzhen Emperor even did the arithmetic at a court assembly: the capital garrison had 120,000 men, Xuanfu 80,000, Ji Garrison 80,000, and Shanxi 110,000. If these 400,000 troops were deployed in full force, they would outnumber the Xuzhou bandits ten to one — victory would be certain.

Yet when he put forward this proposal, even the Donglin ministers he had restored to power kowtowed and pleaded against it. Grand Secretary Sun Chengzong and the other Grand Secretaries of the Cabinet prepared to resign in protest. But the Chongzhen Emperor felt he was not wrong — the officials beneath him opposed him only out of cowardice and venal self-interest. Still, the matter of launching a campaign died quietly. The reason was simple: when word of this proposal spread, the entire capital garrison began to ignore orders. Desertions multiplied, and some even plotted mutiny. Memorials laced with veiled threats arrived from the other border garrisons as well.

These reactions poured cold water over the Chongzhen Emperor. However hot his blood boiled, the threat of mutiny was all too real. The rules — using civil officials to control military officers, honoring the civil and debasing the martial — had begun to change. Battle after battle had proven that no matter how exalted a civil official's rank, it counted for nothing; in the end, it was the military officers and soldiers who had to fight with blades. To make men risk their lives, the court dared not casually punish military officers. This had steadily swelled the power of the military factions. On many matters, the court could only hold its nose, pretend not to see, or simply accept — each side preserving a veneer of mutual respect.

Since nothing could be done about the rebels for the time being, it was time to purge the wicked. The reckoning against Wei Zhongxian's faction began. Yet this reckoning could hardly be called harsh. It was not that anyone held back in the political struggle, but rather that Wei Zhongxian's actions had not been so egregious. Had Zhao Jin not raised his army in Xuzhou, the conduct of Wei Zhongxian and the eunuch faction might well have gone to an extreme. But because of the Zhao Army's step-by-step advances from Xuzhou, Wei Zhongxian had been forced to respond step by step — and in doing so, he had left little for anyone to fault.

At the time, they had cried that the eunuch Wei was a calamity to the state, that his actions were absurd, that he harbored treasonous intent. Yet in hindsight, all those measures had been quite reasonable, taken entirely with the greater good in mind. More interestingly, the Donglin pure-stream faction had held power several times during this period and had even launched attacks against the Zhao Army — only to suffer catastrophic defeats. The gravest of these matters was the bombardment of the capital, which forced the court to sue for peace and cede territory. This had happened while the Donglin were in power. The pure-stream leaders Yang Lian and Zuo Guangdou could not deny it; they could only say the rebels were too powerful and they had no choice — it was a necessity for the sake of the realm and the altars of state.

Reckoned this way, Wei Zhongxian's crimes could not be called so great. At most, one could say he had corrupted the state administration and sat idle while the Xuzhou rebels grew strong. The rest were charges of frame-ups, corruption, and attempts to implicate him in the Three Great Cases — accusations that any clear-eyed observer knew were baseless, trotted out only to fabricate a case.

Many had originally gnashed their teeth, wanting to see Wei Zhongxian carved alive, with the rest of his faction condemned to eternal damnation for their grave crimes. But when the accounting was done, there was simply no way to pass a harsh sentence. Even though the Chongzhen Emperor loathed Wei Zhongxian just as much — and some said Wei Zhongxian had once plotted to harm him — he too had no grounds to strike hard.