Chapter 344: The Benefits of Factionalism

He first quickly skimmed through the yellow labels on the memorials. This batch was mostly from local and central officials regarding the situation in Dengzhou, interspersed with a large number of impeachment memorials, a significant portion of which were directed at Zhou Yanru and Sun Yuanhua.

The Chongzhen Emperor had long suspected Zhou Yanru of corruption and bribery. He had secretly ordered the Eastern Depot to investigate, but the report that came back was “the matter has its reasons, but the evidence is unsubstantiated.” This only deepened the naturally suspicious emperor’s unease.

In recent years, state affairs had become increasingly difficult. He always hoped his ministers would serve with sincerity, yet all he saw in the mountains of memorials, besides the grave state of the nation, was the endless mutual backbiting among his officials.

In comparison, Zhou Yanru, despite the constant impeachments, was still able to handle matters to his satisfaction. Furthermore, he had a vague feeling that there was someone orchestrating this wave of impeachments against Zhou Yanru.

“You all say Zhou Yanru is corrupt and harms the state. Would you not harm the state if you replaced him?” he sneered inwardly, yet felt utterly helpless. The court debates and the memorials were mostly empty talk. He knew full well that many of the current measures were like treating the head for a headache and the foot for a foot pain—they didn’t solve the problem and were even like drinking poison to quench thirst. But what else could be done?

Zhou Yanru had already offered to resign several times, and each time he had issued edicts of comfort. But facing the relentless stream of impeachment memorials, he was once again wavering.

Next were several more impeachment memorials, but these were not aimed at Zhou Yanru or Sun Yuanhua. Instead, they were from Liu Zongzhou, impeaching the Minister of Revenue, Min Hongxue.

Min Hongxue was one of Wen Tiren’s men; the emperor was well aware of this. Liu Zongzhou’s impeachment of Min Hongxue was clearly aimed at Wen Tiren.

The emperor sensed a subtle shift in the content of the memorials from various places over the past few days. Impeachments against Wen Tiren and his associates had noticeably increased, most of them from Donglin partisans. In their memorials, they tirelessly reminded the emperor that Wen Tiren had once “cozied up to the villainous clique” (the eunuch faction) and, after entering the cabinet, had even tried to overturn the verdicts against the “villainous clique” and the “imperially decreed treason cases.” Some memorials even listed the various words and deeds of Wen Tiren and his allies.

Besides targeting Wen Tiren’s faction, all officials implicated in the Dengzhou mutiny had recently come under fierce attack. The magistrate of Wuqiao County, Bi Ziyin, had already been dismissed for condoning the “market strike” that had triggered the mutiny, and his elder brother, Bi Ziyan, was also being fiercely attacked.

Furthermore, several officials from the Wang family of Xincheng were also accused of being responsible for “provoking the mutiny.”

“There isn’t a single good man!” Chongzhen threw down the memorial in frustration. He vaguely felt that the Dengzhou mutiny was no longer a simple military uprising but had become an opportunity for court ministers to engage in factional strife.

He rested his head in his hands, silent, unwilling to open another memorial. The surrounding eunuchs and maids stood as silent as cicadas in winter, not daring to utter a word.

As he was stewing in his frustration, the on-duty Grand Eunuch of Ceremonies, Cao Huachun, brought in another stack of documents. He saw that the top one was a secret military report from Shandong. His heart sank again, and he was reluctant to open it. The news from Shandong had been getting worse and worse.

Just half a month ago, the court had discussed dispatching troops from Tongzhou under the command of Yang Yufan, giving him the title of supreme commander to oversee all the garrisons in Shandong. They also dispatched troops from Tianjin under the command of General Wang Hong and troops from Baoding under General Liu Guozhu, setting a deadline for them to go and quell the rebellion.

On the twenty-fifth of the first month, Yang Yufan led his personal guards and troops from the Duo, Yi, and Qing garrisons to Zhuqiao Town. In the evening, the Tianjin troops led by Wang Hong also arrived. On the twenty-eighth, they marched east together and reached Xincheng. On the twenty-ninth of the first month, the rebel army came out from Dengzhou to meet them. The Tianjin troops were the first to break and flee, and Wang Hong escaped. Yang Yufan was surrounded by the rebels and only managed to break out of the encirclement in the middle of the night and flee to Laizhou. His soldiers scattered, and Yang Yufan escaped to the walls of Laizhou with only three hundred personal guards. He was almost refused entry into the city but finally managed to get in.

Could it be that Laizhou had fallen now? A series of terrible possibilities flooded his mind. Although he was no military expert, he had learned of Laizhou’s importance from the snowstorm of memorials about the Dengzhou affair. Sun Yuanhua had submitted a memorial stating his intention to defend Laizhou to the death to prevent the rebels from spreading and causing “the whole of Shandong to fall into chaos, with disaster reaching the capital province.”

The disastrous defeat of the Tianjin troops led by Yang Yufan a few days ago seemed to foreshadow that the Dengzhou rebellion would not end easily—it might even turn into another “band of rebels.”

“Sun Yuanhua deserves to die!” Chongzhen cursed silently, forcing himself to pick up the secret memorial and open it.

He then noticed the memorial was from Sun Yuanhua, and his mood calmed slightly. Sun Yuanhua was already shouldering the crime of losing Dengzhou. If Laizhou also fell, he would surely not “break out” again; he would have died defending the city.

So Laizhou still stood!

He hastily read the first two lines of the “reason for the report,” couldn’t believe his eyes, and read them again. A smile flickered at the corners of his mouth. After reading the entire text, the color returned to his face. He let out a sigh of relief, leaned back in his chair, and closed his eyes. After a moment, as if still doubting the news, he quickly opened the reports from the Censor-Inspector Wang Daochun, the new Governor of Shandong Xu Congzhi, and General Yang Yufan.

After reading them all, a smile appeared on his face. As if to vent his excitement, he stood up and paced back and forth in the hall a few times.

All these reports carried the same news: Sun Yuanhua had defeated the rebel force of Mao Chenglu in Huang County, beheading several thousand and killing the rebel general Mao Chenglu. Subsequently, he had heavily defeated the rebel forces attacking Laizhou, beheading several hundred more. The government troops had suffered few casualties.

“I didn’t think Sun Yuanhua had such competence!” He recalled a memorial from a few days ago which argued that Sun Yuanhua, having managed Dengzhou for a long time, was familiar with the situation in Shandong and Dongjiang and had prestige among the Liaodong soldiers. It suggested letting him atone for his crimes through meritorious service.

He had originally been prepared to dismiss Sun Yuanhua and have him arrested. But the current situation made him hesitate—especially now with the first victory on the Shandong battlefield. Although he was furious with Sun Yuanhua for losing Dengzhou, he considered that Sun had managed to halt the rebels’ seemingly unstoppable momentum with only a few thousand defeated soldiers in Laizhou. This was likely due to the lingering authority from his long tenure as governor in the Dengzhou-Laizhou area. A few days ago, a secret memorial on the Shandong situation had strongly argued against “changing commanders mid-battle.”

If he were to remove him now, a new governor of Dengzhou and Laizhou might not win the support and trust of the soldiers and gentry—it could even provoke another mutiny. The emperor knew the army all too well. These brutes had become increasingly unruly since the late Tianqi era. They demanded pay first, and the slightest dissatisfaction would lead to mass mutiny. Yet now, with fires breaking out in all eight directions and smoke rising on all four sides, troops were needed everywhere to maintain order…

Thinking of this, he decided not to replace Sun Yuanhua but to let him continue to “atone for his crime with merit” in Laizhou. At the end of last year, he had already “demoted him by three ranks but kept him in his post.” This time, he decided not to grant him any merit for the victory. As for Yang Yufan, since he had just suffered a defeat and received a demotion, his merit this time would cancel out the punishment. As for Xu Congzhi, the Laizhou Prefect Zhu Wannian, and the Yexian Magistrate, they would all be rewarded with promotions. The local gentry and citizens who had contributed, listed at the end of the memorial, would also be rewarded as usual. The emperor didn’t read the details, issuing an edict for the Ministry of Rites to handle the matter at its discretion.

Even so, he was still uneasy. He had gradually lost trust in his external officials, feeling they were not as reliable as his inner court eunuchs. Therefore, he decided to select two reliable and “militarily knowledgeable” eunuchs to go to Laizhou to supervise Sun Yuanhua and Xu Congzhi respectively. He was considering suitable candidates from among the eunuchs of the Imperial Stables Directorate. In his view, the most suitable was Gao Qiqian. But Gao Qiqian was a rare talent among the inner court eunuchs who “knew military affairs.” He felt he should save him for a more critical occasion: once the plan for the Dengzhou campaign was settled, a eunuch would also need to be sent to supervise it.

As he was pondering, he suddenly saw the Grand Eunuch of Ceremonies, Cao Huachun, about to withdraw. An idea struck him. Cao Huachun had served him when he was the Prince of Xin and had been purged by Wei Zhongxian during the Tianqi era, sent to Nanjing. He was a “dragon-following” eunuch who had suffered with him, and thus he trusted him greatly. He immediately asked:

“While you are outside, have you ever heard about the matters between Zhou Yanru and Wen Tiren?”

Cao Huachun bowed and replied, “Your servant serves Your Majesty in the palace daily. I only hear rumors of outside affairs. Besides, this is a major matter of the court. How would your servant dare to speak?”

“Just speak frankly to Us.”

Days ago, Cao Huachun had been entrusted by Eunuch Yang, received several benefits, and also received silver and a letter from the retired Donglin partisan Qian Qianyi, asking him to speak for Zhou Yanru. His relationship with Qian Qianyi was special—Cao Huachun was a protégé of Wang An, and Qian Qianyi had once written an epitaph for Wang An. Thus, he was already prepared to defend Zhou Yanru and Sun Yuanhua. But he usually had no opportunity to discuss the matter face-to-face. Now that the emperor had asked, he seized the chance and knelt to make his plea.

He had long considered the content of his plea. He would primarily approach it from the angle of factional strife, which the emperor most abhorred, hinting that the attacks on Sun Yuanhua and Zhou Yanru were part of the factional struggle between Wen Tiren and Zhou Yanru.

This speech indeed had an effect on Chongzhen. Since his accession, his greatest taboo had been factional strife and the formation of cliques at court. That was why, although the Donglin had been exonerated under his rule, apart from a brief period at the beginning of his reign when “all the righteous were in court,” the Donglin partisans had never been able to occupy key positions in the central government. His long-term appointment of Wen Tiren, who was often cursed as a “remnant of the eunuch clique,” as Grand Secretary was intended to counterbalance the Donglin. He had already suspected factional strife was at play, and now Cao Huachun’s insinuations immediately put him on high alert.

He dismissed Cao Huachun. He had already decided not to replace Sun Yuanhua, and this conversation only strengthened his resolve. But he was still unwilling to let Sun Yuanhua off so easily: Dengzhou was, after all, a major military stronghold that cost 800,000 taels a year. For Sun Yuanhua to lose troops and territory, even a death sentence would not be excessive. After much consideration, he decided to dismiss the other Dengzhou officials who had escaped: the Supervising Censor-Commissioner Wang Zheng and the Dengzhou-Laizhou Circuit Intendant Song Guanglan were to be stripped of their posts and exiled to Datong Garrison. Zhang Tao was to be dismissed from his post but retained for service in the army at Laizhou. All other personnel were to be dismissed and stripped of their scholarly ranks.