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

Chapter 194 Work hard and live well!

During the war, the capital of the Ming Empire suffered from economic depression. After martial law was lifted, the city experienced a period of retaliatory prosperity.

The sorrow was slowly soothed, even as countless white banners fluttered in every corner of the imperial capital, and scattered paper-cut coins piled up on the ground like fallen leaves.

Buddhist monks chanting sutras and Taoist priests selling rituals also emerged from their filthy temples. For a period of time, there were even instances in the capital where the number of funeral processions was so large that it caused congestion at the city gates.

Only a small number of soldiers were able to be buried in their hometowns after death. Most of them could only be collected by their comrades and buried in a public cemetery. Then, the couriers would deliver the fallen soldiers' identification cards, death notices, and pensions to their families and inform them of the burial location.

Family members could come to the outskirts of Beijing to pay their respects, but it was not allowed to dig up the remains of the soldiers and take them back to their hometowns. This was because when the soldiers were buried, the court was unable to collect enough coffins. They were buried together, stacked on top of each other, closely connected, with only a reed mat separating them.

Traditionally, only imperial tombs had tomb keepers. However, Zhu Youjian decided to add an extra expense to the Ming Dynasty's imperial family: the imperial treasury would fund the recruitment of a group of wounded and disabled veterans to serve as tomb keepers for the martyrs' cemetery. They would be formally established as the Martyrs' Cemetery Guards, receiving one shi of rice and five hundred copper coins per month.

The first batch of recruits numbered 343. They couldn't even muster 300 legs, and most of them were soldiers with particularly severe injuries. They once felt that life was bleak, and their despair could not be dispelled. They even wished that they would die on the battlefield instead of ending up in this half-dead state.

Although the emperor did not specify a limit on the number of soldiers guarding the martyrs' cemetery, they imagined it as a welfare institution to provide food for brothers in dire need. The emperor was so poor that he had to write IOUs to his soldiers, so where would he get extra money?

They didn't understand the difference between the imperial treasury's money and the court's money. They believed in the universal value that "all land under heaven belongs to the king, and all people on the shores of the land belong to the king's subjects." They thought that if the court was broke, the emperor was broke; if they were doing well, it was because the emperor was wise; if they were in arrears with military pay or couldn't get enough to eat, it was because the emperor was incompetent.

Therefore, soldiers with minor injuries, such as those who had only lost an arm, were too embarrassed to apply for the position and instead gave up their opportunities. When the Ming army was starving, their moral standards were very low, but when they were well-fed and watered, reason would return, and their sense of honor and shame would automatically take shape.

This is not the result of deliberate propaganda and brainwashing by the emperor or his superiors. In fact, the soldiers are not stupid. They only believe what they think and will not easily believe the nonsense of their superiors. They are just powerless to resist, not completely ignorant or naive. In fact, everyone, whether a small person or a big person, has their own philosophy of life.

The soil in the cemetery looks a little different from the surrounding area because people are now standing on fresh soil that has been turned up from the ground. Three days ago, this place was a huge pit with a radius of a hundred paces. It took a total of two thousand auxiliary soldiers and half a month to dig this pit.

Afterwards, the remains of ten thousand soldiers were buried here. After the soil was backfilled, this place became a high platform protruding from the ground, while the remains were buried several feet underground, avoiding the fate of being exposed to the wilderness and eaten by wild dogs and crows.

On the high earthen platform stands a blank square stele weighing several thousand kilograms. Scattered around the stele are many normal tombstones, each recording the name, place of origin, cause of death, time, and place of the buried soldier.

The large square stele was meant for inscriptions, but Zhu Youjian lacked the literary skill to write them. He had his officials present inscriptions, but after reading several, he felt something was amiss. So he simply left the stele empty. The square stele stood silently, tall and solemn, and it did look quite impressive.

Like the soldiers buried under the monument, who gave their most precious lives for the empire, yet never made their voices heard until their deaths. Even if their names are recorded, how many people can recall their voices and smiles, and how many people have truly listened to their voices and paid attention to their joys and sorrows?

To show his importance, or what could be described as a shameful political show, Zhu Youjian attended the first sacrificial ceremony at the mausoleum. The ceremony abandoned all formalities and used forms that ordinary soldiers could understand and participate in. Under the watchful eyes of tens of thousands of people, their emperor poured three cups of wine and lit an incense stick in front of the square stele.

Zhu Youjian didn't utter any empty words about eternal incense offerings, because he fundamentally didn't believe in people becoming ghosts after death, nor could the Ming Empire exist forever. However, one thing was certain: this mausoleum didn't belong to the emperor, but to all the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty. If they couldn't return to their hometowns after death, they could find a small resting place here. Before all the surviving soldiers died in battle or of old age, they could come to this mausoleum, remember their familiar comrades, speak tearful words to the cold tombstones, and drink strong liquor that burned their hearts.

Zhu Youjian did not value posthumous honors, not because he disregarded life, but on the contrary. If he could, he hoped to save everyone. If he could not save everyone, then he would save more people, even if it meant sacrificing some people to achieve this goal.

Death is death; there is nothing left after death. Only the life of the living has meaning. Rather than mourning the dead, we should protect the living.

This wasn't the first time the soldiers of the Beijing garrison had seen the emperor. Whether it was during a campaign or during wartime, they would see the emperor appear, or even bump into him and exchange a few words with him, if they weren't so nervous that they stammered and couldn't speak.

This often puzzled the soldiers, and this doubt accumulated and spread throughout the army. One point of conversation among the soldiers was that they had never seen the emperor ask them to pledge allegiance. Isn't that how it is in plays? The emperor bestows titles and rewards on his soldiers, and the soldiers fight to the death to repay the emperor's kindness.

They knew the emperor was doing this to win over the army, but they didn't think there was anything wrong with it. They learned martial arts and literature, sold their skills to the emperor, and the soldiers were paid by the emperor and risked their lives for him. It was fair.

The emperor didn't lecture them on grand principles of loyalty to the emperor and patriotism, nor did he speak in classical Chinese like a civil official, using strange and incomprehensible language.

The emperor was just as vulgar as these lowly soldiers. He would curse when he talked about the Jurchens, and even talking about the tofu beauty on West Street would elicit lewd laughter from him. At that moment, they were truly afraid that the emperor would actually take that beauty from West Street into the palace, but unfortunately, he didn't.

The emperor didn't play any tricks by traveling incognito. Every inspection he made clearly revealed his identity. The words he spoke most often to his soldiers were not to encourage them to fight bravely, but rather the same old phrase: "Do a good job and live well!"

Gradually, this phrase became a common greeting and joke among the soldiers of the Beijing Garrison, becoming a unique cultural phenomenon among them. At first, visiting troops were puzzled by the behavior of the Beijing Garrison soldiers, but after they understood the ins and outs, they also gladly joined this peculiar cultural phenomenon.

When the emperor is no longer a lofty figure, and when ordinary soldiers can joke about the emperor's whims, the generals and civil officials who understand this are worried, unsure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. Even Zhu Youjian himself is unsure whether this is a good thing or a bad thing.

He personally deconstructed the emperor's divine status, from deconstructing the concept of Heaven to revealing to the lower-ranking soldiers that the emperor was merely a mortal. Some praised him for having the style of Emperor Gaozu of Han, while others lamented that he had disgraced civilization.

However, when Zhu Yuanzhang offered sacrifices at the top of Zijin Mountain, he declared that he was originally a commoner from Huaiyou. Perhaps the legal system of the Ming Dynasty was not based on so-called noble bloodlines from the beginning. The legal system of the Ming Dynasty originated from the reshaping of the Han Dynasty's empire!

Therefore, the political correctness of the Ming Dynasty was never about the supremacy of imperial power or the Confucian Three Cardinal Guides and Five Constant Virtues, but rather about standing tall and fighting against foreign enemies no matter who was sitting on the dragon throne.

Zhu Youjian had different requirements for different soldiers. For his own imperial guards, he demanded absolute loyalty because he was afraid of death—this was his personal motive. But for most of the army, he did not expect these people to be loyal to him. As long as they did not betray the Ming Dynasty, that was enough. Loyalty to the emperor and love for the country was a very fragile belief.

The belief in protecting the country was incredibly strong. Zhu Youjian did not want the soldiers to fight for the emperor, nor did he want them to fight merely for pay. He hoped they would fight for their hometown and their fellow villagers, because such soldiers possessed an exceptionally strong will.

(End of this chapter)