Section Six

With that, the first literary inquisition of the Han court came to an end. Once Wu Weiye was released from his cell, the literary circles of northern China let out a collective sigh of relief. This is not to say that Wu Weiye himself possessed extraordinary influence; in truth, though Wu Meicun had once been a prominent member of the Restoration Society and had worn the halo of a loyalist who kept faith with the fallen dynasty, that aura of lofty integrity was stripped away the moment he broke ranks and entered the service of the Qing court as an Academy compiler. To many great scholars, men of the stature of Gu Yanwu, he had become something rather contemptible. Yet after his arrest, the scholars rallied behind him chiefly because he was indeed the most brilliant man of letters of the age, unmatched in the realm of poetry and song. Thus many farsighted scholars were compelled to view the matter from the standpoint of cultural preservation: for a writer of such nationwide influence to die on a charge so close to one of mere conjecture was, whatever else might be said, a most regrettable thing.

The second reason was that the literati hoped to use the Wu Weiye affair to test the Han army’s tolerance in matters of culture. In truth, the political purpose behind the case was exceedingly simple, and anyone with a head on his shoulders could see that the Han bureaucrats meant to kill the chicken and frighten the monkeys. Ever since King Lin Feng had personally led his armies in a bloody purge of Liaodong earlier that year, the rise of the Great Han in the north had become irresistible. Setting aside all other factors, from a military standpoint the elite forces under Lin Feng’s command were, across the entire Yellow River basin, all but invincible. Neither the Qing remnants, nor Yang Qilong’s peasant rebels, nor the Mongol cavalry of the Khorchin and Dzungar could hope to bring down the Han dynasty in short order. So for the scholars, the question of how to enter the ruling class of this northern empire became the most urgent concern of all.

Taken in broad outline, this line of thought was probably very much like the view held by Huang Zongxi and his circle. According to the painstaking research of specialists such as Wang Shirong, this idea may well have already existed as far back as the era of Zhang Juzheng in the old Ming dynasty. At the outset, it was simply a comparison of the personal abilities of emperors and ministers. To be fair, the comparison did possess a certain scientific basis: an emperor inherits the throne by blood and is therefore highly uncertain in quality, whereas a statesman is a profession demanding real expertise. Set side by side, the difference is indeed plain. This point can be verified by comparing Zhang Juzheng with the Wanli Emperor. History has shown that a well-functioning grand secretariat was certainly far stronger than a monarch whose wisdom or folly could never be known in advance. Thus many Confucian scholars pursued the matter further: if emperors were all like the Shenzong Emperor, or the Wanli Emperor, indifferent to all affairs, tucked away in the palace and worshiped from afar, while the country was entrusted to a group of high-minded, formidable ministers and then watched over by the broad scholarly world, would not the state be a far finer thing?

Under the influence of this current of thought, the Donglin faction sprang up at once. First came a group of eminent scholars as its leaders, then great numbers of ordinary literati joined in. It flourished across the country, pointing fingers and talking politics at the affairs of the Ming court, proudly styling itself the “clean stream.” But the emperor quickly realized the threat that this form of landlord-class liberalism posed to imperial authority, and immediately fostered the eunuch clique to oppose and suppress it. Clearly, this war of ideas brought immense disaster upon the empire as a whole. When the Great Ming finally collapsed in thunderous ruin, neither side emerged victorious.

At present, the military pressure on the Han army was also severe. Aside from the Guard Corps directly under Lin Feng’s command, almost all field formations were short of men, with the exception of the two garrisons commanded by Ma Ying and Wang Dahai. Nor did the Han army yet possess any second-line formations to rotate in. If a leave system were implemented, that weakness in manpower would only be made worse. One could easily imagine the catastrophe that would follow if the enemy on the border chose the soldiers’ vacation to launch an offensive.

The first annual leave enjoyed by the Han state’s troops was extraordinarily pleasant. In fact, when Lin Feng unveiled this comprehensive plan, even officers at every level, including Zhou Peigong, stared in astonishment. For seventeenth-century China, such benefits were so considerate and so humane as to seem almost unprecedented and without parallel, no less impressive than the old practice of funding scholars’ journeys for the examinations in the capital.

Under Lin Feng’s plan, during this long vacation the Han government took advantage of the winter season, when livestock lost weight and fetched low prices, to purchase a total of five hundred and fifty thousand cattle and sheep from Eastern Mongolia, Khorchin, and even Dzungar-held areas. These were then slaughtered and delivered in bulk to the various military camps. Each soldier would receive twelve jin of beef and mutton, two jin of liquor, two jin of salt, and one jin of sauce, along with a month’s pay in advance. To help the men travel through ice and snow, the General Staff planned to deploy nearly six thousand carts and wagons of every sort, drawn by mules and horses, as transport. Along the main roads, large numbers of civilian homes were requisitioned to serve as military way stations where the soldiers could rest, while cavalry detachments were dispatched along the route to provide security. In addition, because of the weather, each man going home was issued two pairs of cloth shoes to keep his feet warm on the journey.

Beyond these equal benefits, the Han government also issued an order to support the troops. For every family with a Han soldier, local offices in all regions were required to send officials to make home visits and express concern. Households with minor children were awarded five taels of sugar per person; households with elderly members received two jin of meat each. Village headmen and local constables were ordered to provide two hundred jin of firewood to each household, and militia strongmen were to contribute labor for house repairs once. Everything had to be done to ensure that every Han soldier had no worries behind him. At the same time, military police and the capital’s censorate guards swept out in full force, sealing off brothels and gambling houses throughout Han territory, strictly forbidding any returning officers or men from whoring, gambling, or squandering their military pay, and forcing them to spend their money on comforting their soldiers’ families instead.

This enormous campaign to reward and sustain the troops shook the entire north. Once the news spread, the local princes and warlords everywhere were all filled with concern, while the Qing soldiers and officers opposed to the Han army were utterly envious. Most excited of all were the garrison troops in Anhui who had only just submitted to King Han. These fortunate men had truly caught a fast ship in harbor: before Lin Feng had even had time to reorganize them, he launched this plan. Since he wished to show equal treatment and buy hearts, there could be no discrimination, and so this mixed and uneven force also enjoyed the benefits. The only regret was that the Third Infantry Army under Liu Laosi, already stationed in Anhui, missed the chance. Because of military duties and the distance of its posting, the more than ten thousand officers and men of the Third Army were unable to enjoy this leave.

Apart from Liu Laosi’s Third Army, more than twenty thousand newly recruited soldiers were also denied the right to travel home and visit their families. Yet when the decision was made, it provoked no backlash. In truth, these men had been away from home for barely more than a month; it would indeed have been rather bewildering to grant them leave at once. So when the order was announced, everyone, including the recruits themselves, felt it was only natural. Seeing veteran troops enjoying preferential treatment as an example, they not only felt no resentment, but their morale rose even higher. Inspired by this warm and humane military system, the cohesion of the new army was greatly strengthened.

Compared with the previous rounds of expansion, this newly summoned force was superior both in numbers and in the quality of its men. Since Lin Feng’s return from the south, the Han government had recruited more than twenty-five thousand new soldiers, divided into infantry and cavalry, drawn mainly from the Ningjin, Nurgan, and Suiyuan-Chahar regions, and composed chiefly of Han Chinese. They were being trained respectively at the Fengtai depot and at the depots of Luanzhou and Shanhaiguan. In Lin Feng’s original plan, after four months of training these men would be distributed among the garrison forces of the various regions, while the troops under the great generals would undergo a small-scale reshuffling. A body of elite veterans and junior officers with combat experience would be transferred to Beijing. In addition to restoring the Second Guard Cavalry Army, Lin Feng would also expand the Third Guard Infantry Army, forming a mobile strategic reserve force of more than forty thousand men.

One could only be thankful for the long winter in northern China. In such bitter weather, the Mongol and Dzungar horsemen, though the main force of the region, would hardly launch a fierce and reckless offensive against Shanxi while being tied down by the Khorchin alliance. This gave Lin Feng several precious months in which to put the army in order and prepare for the great war of 1686.