Chapter 7: Huai City
[Hard to imagine.]
[As the orthodox successor to an orthodox dynasty.]
[The Southern Ming regime.]
[Is rarely acknowledged by history.]
[Barely even known among the common folk.]
[Far worse off than the Southern Song, which everyone's always despised.]
[When you get down to it, it's because the Southern Ming was just too garbage. Garbage among garbage. Shit among shit.]
[The Southern Ming's purpose for existing wasn't to resist the Qing, wasn't to restore the realm—it was so the interest groups could keep living the good life.]
[So they used their claim to orthodoxy to establish a regime, led the people to fight the Manchu Qing, and kept their own rulers living in comfort.]
[The Southern Ming regime wasn't even continuous.]
[Because that pile of trash called the Southern Ming.]
[Was still constantly fighting partisan battles.]
[1644.]
[The Southern Ming's first regime.]
[The Hongguang regime was established in Jinling.]
[As the successor regime with the highest orthodoxy and the strongest base.]
[The Southern Ming's Hongguang regime was actually the worst of the lot. Emperor Hongguang was incompetent and muddleheaded, drowning in wine and women.]
[Ma Shiying and Ruan Dacheng held all the power, waging fierce partisan warfare with the Donglin faction, squeezing the common people dry, and purging anyone who disagreed.]
[So in less than a year, the Qing army breached the capital, and it was declared destroyed.]
[1645.]
[The Southern Ming's second regime.]
[The Longwu regime was established in Minzhou.]
[Emperor Longwu was the most ambitious of the Southern Ming emperors.]
[He was single-mindedly set on restoring Huaxia, and even proposed an alliance with the rebel armies.]
[But unfortunately, the Southern Ming's garbage nature wasn't something one emperor could change.]
[Though Emperor Longwu took the throne, he was essentially a puppet.]
[His power was completely hollowed out by the warlords.]
[The warlords only wanted to carve out their own territories and harvest profits.]
[They had no interest in resisting the Qing at all.]
[And at this point there was an even more serious problem.]
[The Southern Ming didn't just have Longwu as a regime at this time.]
[In the Jiangzhe region.]
[There was also the regime of Prince Lu as regent.]
[Both sides were utterly passive about resisting the Qing.]
[But extremely active in the struggle for orthodoxy.]
[The two sides attacked each other, consuming each other, and squeezed the common people in tandem.]
[You could say they'd already rotted into one pile after another.]
[But even so.]
[The Southern Ming could still get worse.]
[1646.]
[The Qing army entered Min.]
[Emperor Longwu was captured and killed.]
[The relevant warlords and officials kept fleeing.]
[In November of the same year, the Shaowu regime was established in Guangzhou.]
[In the same month, the Yongli regime was established in Zhaoqing.]
[The two central courts were only a few hundred li apart.]
[They had the lessons of destruction before them, and the Qing army right in front of them.]
[But they still refused to make any progress, and instead carried on the Southern Ming's fine tradition.]
[Frantically squeezing the people dry, continuing their partisan battles, waging full-scale civil war, attacking each other.]
[Just 41 days later, the Qing army, having caught its breath, resumed its attack, and the Shaowu regime collapsed in an instant.]
[The Yongli regime began its frantic flight, transforming from an orthodox central court into a government in exile.]
[The task of resisting the Qing fell entirely on Li Dingguo and Sun Kewang, who had come over from the peasant rebel armies.]
[At this point, the Southern Ming was thoroughly rotten. The Manchu Qing could have kicked it to death with one casual foot.]
[But it's like I said.]
[The late Ming was all about comparing who was worse.]
[The Southern Ming was garbage.]
[The Manchu Qing was no better.]
[Now, we need to bring up why the Manchu Qing's founding level was so pathetic.]
[After the Manchu Qing took over the Central Plains, they were about to secure the realm, but they were simultaneously arrogant and insecure.]
[To promote their own backward culture and suppress Huaxia's superior culture, they went all in on a policy of high-pressure massacres.]
[The hair-cutting and clothing-change order: keep your head, lose your hair; keep your hair, lose your head.]
[The land-enclosure decree: seizing commoners' land by force, forcing people into slavery.]
[The submission law: allowing bannermen to force Han Chinese into slavery.]
[The fugitive-slave law: hunting down escaped slaves, implicating the innocent.]
[And then there's the Ten Days of Yangzhou, the Three Massacres of Jiading, the Eighty-One Days of Jiangyin.]
[Atrocities and vile deeds beyond counting.]
[Countless common people died miserably.]
[The Central Plains ran with rivers of blood.]
[Beyond the massacres.]
[The Qing dynasty also had anti-intellectual policies.]
[Literary inquisitions.]
[Starting from Shunzhi.]
[Through Kangxi, Yongzheng, and Qianlong, the literary inquisitions grew ever more intense.]
[A single line of poetry, a single essay, could bring a death sentence.]
[Intellectuals lived in constant fear, their minds imprisoned.]
The scene unfolded.
The Qing army entered the pass, iron hooves marching south.
Commoners were forced to shave their heads, their clothing and caps changed.
Jiangnan's cities were breached, flames shooting into the sky.
Corpses lay everywhere, the sound of weeping shook the heavens.
The bullet comments exploded.
[The Ten Days of Yangzhou were too tragic.]
[The Three Massacres of Jiading, never to be forgotten.]
[The Qing took over by massacre, ruling the advanced with the backward!]
[Literary inquisitions, imprisoning minds, dragging Huaxia behind the rest of the world!]
[Learning Han culture on one hand, guarding against Han people on the other—a dynasty like that, how could its founding level not be pathetic?]
Southern Ming.
Shi Kefa was in Yangzhou city.
He already knew the city would fall at any moment.
But the Celestial Screen's evaluation left his heart in a tangle of emotions.
"The Southern Ming is incompetent, and so am I, letting the Jian slaves butcher Huaxia's people like this!"
A personal guard knelt on the ground.
"Commander, the Qing army has surrounded the city. We can't hold out."
Shi Kefa drew his sword.
"If we can't hold out, we still hold."
"Yangzhou is Jiangnan's gateway."
"If Yangzhou falls, Jiangnan's people will be slaughtered."
"Even if this commander dies, I'll take a few more Tartars with me."
"The city lives, I live. The city dies, I die."
The guard's face streamed with tears.
"Commander."
At the same time.
In Jiangyin city.
Yan Yingyuan stood on the city wall.
The Qing army had surrounded the city for eighty-one days.
The city's commoners—the men were nearly all dead or wounded.
An old man spoke in a trembling voice.
"Magistrate Yan, how much longer can we hold?"
Yan Yingyuan smiled.
"Until the very last moment."
"Every Tartar we kill is one more."
"People of later generations will remember."
"The people of Jiangyin would rather die than shave their heads."
"Our Han people's thousand-year clothing and caps—we can't just let it be cut off."
The old man nodded.
"Good."
"Rather die than shave."
The city's commoners shouted in unison.
"Rather die than shave."
The sound shook the clouds.
Great Qin.
Ying Zheng's gaze was ice-cold.
"Shaving heads and changing clothes, imprisoning minds!"
"This is meant to sever Huaxia's clothing and caps, to cut off Huaxia's culture!"
"How vile these barbarians are!"
Great Han.
Liu Che was burning with rage.
"Good, good, good! Treating my Han sons like this!"
"I'll see every last barbarian tribe wiped out, root and branch!"
Great Ming.
Zhu Yuanzhang was trembling all over.
"Back then I drove out the Tartars and restored China."
"Now the Tartars are trying to cut off Huaxia's inheritance."
"Damn those wild boar skins!"
Yongle.
Zhu Di was furious.
"Assemble the Three Great Camps!"
"March with me!"
Great Qing.
Kangxi raged.
"Nonsense!"
"My Great Qing took the realm through benevolence and righteousness—how could we massacre cities?"
"The Great Qing's policies are all correct—how could they be backward!"
And the next moment.
The Celestial Screen's images.
Left Kangxi utterly silent.
[The Qing dynasty's founding rule was both insecure and arrogant.]
[Insecure, because they knew they were ruling the advanced with the backward.]
[Arrogant, because they believed they held the Mandate of Heaven, and tolerated not a single word of criticism.]
[Speaking of which.]
[Let's make a comparison.]
[Also a foreign people ruling the Central Plains.]
[The Yuan dynasty's founding level was actually higher than the Qing's.]
[When Kublai Khan destroyed the Southern Song, he implemented a policy of magnanimity and leniency, pacifying officials and commoners.]
[When Bayan entered Lin'an, he pacified the officials and commoners, not harming a single hair.]
[When conquering Dali, Kublai Khan ordered that the city not be massacred, and preserved the Dali royal house.]
[Though the Yuan dynasty was rough, at its founding it did not slaughter commoners on the scale the Qing did.]
[The policies it implemented were also quite in line with Huaxia orthodoxy.]
[And the Qing?]
[They faced commoners already under the late Ming's harsh rule.]
[The commoners already couldn't survive.]
[And then the Qing came, and were even harsher than the Ming.]
[People who might have settled down after years of natural disasters and turmoil couldn't survive.]
[The Qing's founding rule directly provoked fierce popular uprisings among Huaxia's people.]
[Many surrendered Ming soldiers rebelled on the spot.]
[So the Manchu Qing, despite basically controlling the Central Plains.]
[Instead faced the greatest anti-Qing tide in all of Huaxia.]
[Gan Province.]
[Jin Shenghuan and Wang Deren rebelled against the Qing.]
[Recovered the entire territory of Jiangxi.]
[Guang Province.]
[The Qing general Li Chengdong defected.]
[Liangguang returned to Southern Ming territory.]
[Jin Province.]
[Jiang Xiang raised troops against the Qing.]
[The north spun out of control.]
[The remnants of the original peasant armies began to unite.]
[Sun Kewang and Li Dingguo formally allied with the Ming to resist the Qing.]
[And as the strongest force in the realm at the time.]
[The Qing, who claimed unmatched horsemanship and archery, was utterly helpless against this.]
[Retreating step by step on every front.]
[Losing control over most of its territory.]
The bullet comments surged.
[Yuan dynasty: I've actually become a positive example.]
[Kublai Khan really did know how to handle people better than the Qing.]
[Back then the Yuan's call to arms against the Southern Song wasn't just talk.]
[Garbage Manchu Qing—backward themselves, so they want to drag Huaxia down with them, to make their own rule easier!]
[To put it bluntly, the Qing almost collapsed on its own. It was pure fucking luck that they ran into an even worse opponent.]
Great Ming.
Zhu Yuanzhang was shaking with rage.
"My Huaxia realm."
"And it was taken by trash like this."
Great Tang.
Li Shimin spoke in a low voice.
"Winning the realm by comparing who's worse—the people's hearts won't submit."
"Even if they gain power for a time, chaos will surely follow."
"This Manchu Qing will likely bring no small disaster to Huaxia."
Great Qing.
Watching this scene.
Kangxi flew into a fury.
"Insolence! Nonsense! Nonsense!"
"Guards! Arrest everyone discussing the Celestial Screen!"
The various space-times trembled.
And the Celestial Screen continued its orderly progression.
[The Manchu Qing's anti-intellectual maneuvers.]
[Let the Southern Ming's Yongli regime catch its breath completely.]
[Afterward, through wooing and other means, it united various forces.]
[Regained control over Yungui, Liangguang, Huguang, and Sichuan—vast territories.]
[Began a long period of confrontation with the Manchu Qing.]
[At this point.]
[The Qing was already unstable.]
[They killed the Qing's Prince Dingnan, Kong Youde, at Guilin.]
[They cut down the Qing's Prince Jingjin, Nikan, in battle at Hengyang.]
[The Manchu Qing faced a full-blown crisis.]
[Its Eight Banner forces were severely depleted, rebellions broke out in many places, and they couldn't suppress them.]
[The central court's decisions wavered back and forth, and confidence began to collapse.]
[The Manchu Qing at one point planned to abandon the southwest and make peace with the Southern Ming.]
[They even directly planned to abandon the Central Plains and retreat beyond the pass.]
[The Manchu Qing at this point—to put it plainly—still couldn't shake the mindset of a regional regime.]
[No concept of orthodoxy or awareness. They always felt they'd just take a bite out of Huaxia and leave, then find a chance to come back.]
[Frankly speaking, if the Manchu Qing had dared to retreat beyond the pass, even if Huaxia's lands had fallen into warlord division, the Manchu Qing would never have had another chance to come back.]
[But, it's like I said.]
[Thank the useless Southern Ming for handing over the realm.]
[In this contest of comparing who's worse.]
[The Qing relied on its opponent frantically giving away points.]
[And ultimately won lying down.]
[And even so.]
[The Manchu Qing almost lost.]
[You can only say it was fate and fortune.]
[What a pity about Li Dingguo.]
[Reading the broken stele, I call to the heroic ghost—in life and death, both follow Prince Li of Jin.]
[If not for the Southern Ming's incompetence, Sun Kewang's infighting.]
[If not for heaven's timing and earth's advantage all being on the Manchu Qing's side.]
[And human harmony all being on the Southern Ming's side.]
[Li Dingguo might well have truly driven the Qing out beyond the pass.]
Bullet comments.
[Southern Ming, garbage among garbage, fuck, completely rotten!]
[So fucking disappointing! If you'd just been a little more competent, the Manchu Qing would've been kicked out!]
[No need for the Southern Ming to be competent—just let it die sooner, let Li Dingguo establish himself, and maybe he could've actually driven the Qing out.]
[Li Dingguo: Fuck, with a bunch of worms like these, how am I supposed to restore Huaxia?]
[Wuuu! Prince Li of Jin! Declare yourself!]
Southern Ming period.
Li Dingguo looked at the sky and sighed.
"Is the restoration of Huaxia truly hopeless?"
His subordinates spoke in unison.
"General! Declare yourself!"
"With a bunch of worms like these, how can we restore the Han people's realm!"
Li Dingguo fell silent.