Late Ming Dynasty: So what if Emperor Chongzhen was inactive?!

Chapter 123 An imperfect reform, an imperfect surrender, only my daughter is perfect!!!

In July, the summer taxes were collected, including regular taxes, miscellaneous taxes, and taxes levied on Liaodong troops, totaling 18 million taels of silver and 12 million shi of grain.

Six million taels were retained locally, and twelve million taels were transferred to the capital. The grain transport quota was five million shi (a unit of dry measure), and in addition to the grain transport from the north, the quota for transporting grain to the capital was four million shi.

In August, tax silver and tax grain were gradually transported to Beijing. Taicang received eight million taels of silver, but due to various reasons such as bandits, shipwrecks, and evaporation, more than three million taels were lost en route. Of these, more than one million taels from Guangdong, Guangxi, Yunnan, and Guizhou were still en route, and it was unknown how much would arrive.

In any case, Zhu Youjian was fed up with the snail-paced land transport and was eager to build an invincible fleet for the Ming Dynasty. After all, even Guangxi had a coastline! Five million taels of tax grain were stored in the granaries, mainly from Beizhili and some neighboring prefectures in Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan. Only a few hundred thousand shi of grain were transported from the south, and most of them were still floating on the canal.

Zhang Weixian, who was dispatched, was intercepted and killed by the White Lotus Sect in Shandong in Beizhili. Half of his infantry battalion, eighteen out of eight hundred men, were killed, while three hundred enemy soldiers were killed. Unable to find the mastermind behind it, Zhu Youjian dismissed the magistrates of the neighboring Dongming County and Changyuan County and replaced them with newly appointed Jinshi (successful candidates in the highest imperial examinations).

Ma Xianglin encountered a rebellion by the Tusi (local chieftain) of Guizhou, and the two sides fought for half a month. Five thousand White-Spear Soldiers killed three thousand enemy soldiers and captured over twenty thousand rebel soldiers and civilians, while the White-Spear Soldiers suffered a thousand casualties. Guizhou's tax revenue was insufficient to cover the relief efforts! Ma Xianglin was impeached, as was the Governor-General of Guizhou, Yang Shuzhong. Court officials recommended that Qin Liangyu and Zhu Xieyuan be transferred back to the southwest.

Yuan Chonghuan went on a killing spree in Fujian, receiving over five hundred impeachment memorials from both the central and local governments. He no longer talked about pacifying Liaodong in five years; now he boasted that if given free rein, he could make Fujian province's revenue support the entire nation's army within ten years! He seized the fishing boats of local Fujian gentry, blockaded the coastal waters, and extorted huge tolls from passing ships.

Originally, there were over fifty legally registered merchant ships in Yuegang, collecting more than 30,000 taels of silver in taxes annually, which pleased the imperial court immensely. In reality, there were over three thousand merchant ships of various sizes in the Fujian area alone. Each ship was charged an average of five taels of silver in tolls, resulting in hundreds of thousands of taels of silver being extracted from tolls alone each year.

The trade volume of these ships exceeded fifty million taels of silver, making the profits from maritime trade terrifying. If the imperial court could truly absorb all the profits from maritime trade, it could indeed support the entire nation's army!
Yuan Chonghuan's family was also in business, but they were in the timber business, trading back and forth along the border of Guangdong and Guangxi, and had amassed a modest fortune. However, he felt that compared to these great merchants, his family was simply a bunch of bumpkins.

The people sent by Zhu Youjian were originally there to inspect the disaster situation in various places, but now everyone calls them "tax inspectors". Among them, Yuan Chonghuan did the best job, raising the tax revenue of Fujian Province to two million taels.

However, this all comes at a price: Fujian is "eight parts mountains, one part water, and one part farmland." During the summer tax collection period, a large number of mountain bandits inexplicably appeared in the mountain valleys, intercepting and killing tax officials and robbing tax silver, and they could not be eradicated.

The newly established Fujian Navy had acquired two hundred large warships, thirty of which were now scrapped and blocked in the harbor by various heroes led by Zheng Zhilong. However, Zheng Zhilong was also very frustrated: he could not defeat the Ming army on land, and the Ming navy was hiding in the harbor, protected by its infantry, so he could not take them down.

Yuan Chonghuan was like a cowardly turtle, unmoved by any provocation or attempts to lure him in. His niche was being partially encroached upon by Yuan Chonghuan; he couldn't seize people or goods, and his ship owners were filled with resentment, on the verge of collapse. If things continued this way, his fleet would disintegrate.

Although he could survive even if he stayed in the East and sailed the Japanese-South Seas routes, maritime conquest was far more brutal than land conquest. He had defeated many enemies and offended too many people to get to where he was now; if he lost power, he would likely meet a terrible end. He had used every trick in the book—black, white, underhanded.

He tried, as before, to bribe Ming officials to leak information, ideally by exerting influence in the court to remove the troublesome official. Unfortunately, the wealthy gentry of Fujian were now sending him money, hoping he would get rid of Yuan Chonghuan. His methods were ineffective, and the two sides remained locked in a prolonged stalemate.

Left with no other choice, Zheng Zhilong had to bring up the old matter again. Last year, the imperial court begged him to be granted amnesty, but he refused because he felt the conditions did not meet his expectations. This time, it was his turn to take the initiative to request the imperial court to grant him amnesty.

Zheng Zhilong's bottom line was to maintain the independence of his fleet. He didn't care about the rank of his officers; he just wanted to receive a military salary. He hoped that after being incorporated into the imperial court, he could continue his maritime trade, cooperate with the court to suppress dissidents, stop plundering Ming fleets, and instead collect protection money; and relocate Ming refugees to populate the eastern regions.

Yuan Chonghuan was eager to try his luck and planned to simply lure Zheng Zhilong ashore and kill him. What kind of scoundrel dared to try and steal his protection money?!
However, Xiong Wencan stopped him. Xiong Wencan felt that Yuan Chonghuan had become too arrogant and overbearing lately. The emperor was indeed protecting him, but only if he fulfilled the emperor's orders! The emperor had sent them to offer amnesty to Zheng Zhilong.

During the Jiajing era, the notorious pirate Wang Zhi was tricked and killed by Wang Bengu, the Zhejiang Provincial Inspector. After Wang Zhi's death, his followers lost their discipline, and the pirate raids intensified. This demonstrates that killing one or two pirate leaders is ultimately futile and only undermines the court's credibility. Zhu Youjian, confined to the capital, could only obtain information about the outside world through memorials from various regions, which were highly distorted. However, he still sensed the profound division between the North and South of the Ming Dynasty between these reports. This division manifested in many ways: a split between the Northern and Southern courts, and also among the scholar-officials themselves.

Northern literati ridiculed Southern scholars as "weak and superficial, engaging in empty talk that harms the country," while Southerners despised Northerners as "crude, barbaric, and uneducated." This regional prejudice permeated all levels of society.

The military disparity between the North and South has not yet fully materialized, but the economic gap has reached an absurd level. Zheng Zhilong, that scoundrel, has only a few hundred ships and a ragtag army of over 30,000, yet he generates profits exceeding ten million taels of silver annually.

Zhu Youjian went to great lengths and risked everything to collect less than ten million taels of tax revenue. The entire country's income was less than that of a mere pirate. It was truly absurd. Zhu Youjian admitted that he was terribly envious!
Zhu Youjian hesitated on the issue of appeasing Zheng Zhilong. Zheng Zhilong's group was now extremely dangerous, and Yuan Chonghuan encouraged him to concentrate his forces to wipe out the Japanese pirates in the southeast. However, Chen Jisheng, the Fujian general, secretly reported that Yuan Chonghuan was making a mess of things.

He was now walking on thin ice; many of his men had died in battle, and he risked repeating the mistakes of Yu Zigao, once again annihilating the Fujian navy. He strongly advised the emperor to stop while he was ahead.

Actually, Zhu Youjian's hesitation wasn't about suppressing or appeasing the Zheng family, but rather whether or not to incorporate the Zheng clan, this monster, into the Ming Dynasty's garrison system. Historically, doing so would have resulted in Zheng Zhilong becoming a local tyrant in Fujian.

Zheng Zhilong achieved fame at a young age and had an incredibly smooth life, but became a useless person in middle age. He was essentially stateless, with no sense of belonging to the Ming Dynasty or his own people. He felt no guilt in accepting the Ming Dynasty's amnesty, and later felt no shame in kneeling before the Manchus and betraying the Southern Ming emperor.

In the end, Zhu Youjian decided not to let the wolf into the house and ordered Zheng Zhilong to be granted amnesty, appointing him as the coastal defense guerrilla commander and the commander-in-chief of the Eastern Barbarians.

He was to remain in Dongfan to continue managing his old base; his fleet was forbidden from plundering Ming official ships and merchant ships, at least not openly; his merchant fleet was allowed to dock and trade, but he had to pay taxes; he was ordered to cooperate with the Fujian navy to annihilate all the Japanese pirates except himself.

It was called appeasement, but it was actually a ceasefire agreement. Under the premise that neither Zheng Zhilong nor the Ming Dynasty could do anything to each other, the war was stopped first, and other pirate groups and foreign tribes were dealt with.

But this is only temporary: if the Ming navy develops, he will be a loyal minister of the Ming for life; if the Ming is defeated by refugees and Jurchens, Zheng Zhilong will certainly not be content to be just an island lord.

After the appeasement arrangements were finalized, maritime trade in Fujian returned to normal, and the unrest in Fujian gradually subsided. Various parties demanded that Yuan Chonghuan return the leased large ships, some even willing to forgo the 100 taels of rent, but Yuan Chonghuan continued to delay, citing that "it hasn't been a full year." Naturally, this led to impeachment proceedings.

After three months of turmoil throughout the Ming Dynasty, things finally calmed down. The outcome was naturally not entirely satisfactory, and the reforms were inevitably incomplete, but at least Zhu Youjian obtained the taxes he wanted, and the Ming Dynasty did not collapse; it survived for another six months. Zhu Youjian was somewhat pleased.

On the night of the 14th of the eighth month of the first year of Chongzhen's reign, the moon was big and round. With a cry from inside the Forbidden City, Zhu Youjian's eldest daughter was born. Mother and daughter were safe and sound, and Zhu Youjian shed tears.

Sun Shiwan felt a little disappointed. Apart from her, everyone in the inner court and the outer court breathed a sigh of relief. If she had given birth to a boy, that would have been a real problem!

However, Zhu Youjian did like his daughter very much. He subconsciously felt that the Ming Dynasty would not have another emperor, so the gender of the emperor was not very meaningful to him.

He desperately wanted only daughters, so that those ministers wouldn't have to rack their brains to place bets in advance, or even have him fall into the water to welcome the young emperor.

(End of this chapter)