Chapter 130 Why did Your Majesty rebel?
Jingren Palace in the imperial palace.

"Your Majesty, I have already contacted Yan Mingtai of the South City. On New Year's Eve, the North and South will simultaneously raise troops to attack and kill Li Ni and the Liao soldiers in one fell swoop, and restore order to the capital."

Imperial Noble Consort Fan, dressed in plain clothes, whispered to Emperor Tianqi who was lying on the bed that she was in mourning for Concubine Dowager Xuanyi.

This place is one of the six eastern palaces of the inner court. It was built in the 18th year of Yongle and was renamed Chang'an Palace during the Jiajing period.

According to the rules of the Ming Dynasty's inner court, this place was the residence of the imperial concubine and noble concubine who ranked second or third among the inner court concubines.

Among the concubines of Emperor Tianqi, Imperial Noble Consort Fan, who gave birth to the third son, once lived here. Later, she was imprisoned in Dongliusuo because she offended Keshi and Wei Zhongxian.

After the Liao army attacked the city, Wei and Ke were executed. Emperor Tianqi finally remembered the benefits of Mrs. Fan and ordered her to move back to Jingren Palace. After the Liao army occupied the imperial city, Emperor Tianqi, his concubines, and palace maids were all driven to the six eastern palaces, so Emperor Tianqi and Mrs. Fan squeezed into one palace.

"Yan Mingtai is a man with good intentions, but unfortunately he is always late. Even the eunuchs and strong maids in the palace have been captured. With the remaining maids, I'm afraid he can't even seize the palace."

Zhu Youxiao became increasingly thinner and he coughed all day long. Although the Liao soldiers allowed imperial doctors to enter the palace every few days to treat him, he could not get better.

It’s hard to say whether he will lose his kingdom first or die first.

"Li Ni is so cruel that he has never been heard of before. He didn't even leave a few eunuchs for Your Majesty. The palace maids are so weak that they can hardly help Your Majesty turn over..."

Fan was also a little sad. Queen Zhang had died for her country, and she was the most respected person in the harem. She was originally an ordinary concubine, and she could not take on the responsibility of linking up the palace maids to revolt against Li Ni.

But apart from her, there wouldn't be many people in the entire harem who could take charge.

The previous emperor's concubine, Concubine Li Kang, was a complete shrew. She had been involved with Wei Zhongxian and Keshi. Now that the Liao army was in charge, she shamelessly ran to Li Ni to try to be related to him and asked him to give her the title of empress dowager.

Li Ni was more sensible than Concubine Kang. He drove her back to the inner court and imprisoned her directly.

"What's the situation outside the city? Master Sun is from Baoding. If we calculate the date, he should have led all the reinforcements a long time ago. If we can let him lead the troops to attack the outer city, we will have a better chance of success."

Zhu Youxiao was thinking about the best situation, and he knew it was wishful thinking. But without this wishful thinking, he might not even survive this year.

Fan replied angrily, "The reinforcements from Yongping and Shanhaiguan are even less reliable. It is said that Sun Chengzong is guarding Tongzhou City with a small number of elite soldiers, and the rest of the army has withdrawn to the Tianjin area. The Shandong Banjun and Beiwojun heading north were also stopped in Tianjin. The military supervisors Ji Yong and Hu Liangfu, and the governor Yuan Chonghuan who led the Shanhaiguan reinforcements are all treacherous ministers, even more treacherous than Wei Zhongxian. After the Li traitor is eliminated, these people will be cut into pieces."

She didn't understand the logic. Logically, there were still tens of thousands of troops loyal to the court in Tongzhou, and with the troops under Yan Mingtai, they should be able to drive Li Ni away. However, tens of thousands of troops inside and outside the city were just staying in the camp.

"Alas~" Zhu Youxiao roughly understood the reason, "They are not treacherous ministers, they just can't hold on. Among the elite troops of the Nine Frontiers, only Liaozhen, Jizhen, and Yansui are left, and the rest are struggling to hold on. As soon as Li Ni gave silver to the reinforcements, the soldiers who were owed money gathered together."

He could understand the situation, but he couldn't solve it.

He could also secretly order Sun Chengzong to set up large-scale purges in northern Zhili, Shandong and other places to extort enough silver to pay the reinforcements, but doing so might cause the local gentry to rebel on their own.

The gentry did not dare to surrender to Li Ni, because Li Ni was even more ruthless in exploiting the land.

This way the world will fall into chaos even faster.

After coughing for a while, he ordered Fan to prepare the nine-beam crown and clothes.

"It will definitely be useful in the future. If this fails, my beloved concubine will say that it was all my idea and save my loyal ministers."

Zhu Youxiao is now seeking death, and it would be great if the Liao soldiers could take action.

With red eyes, Fan agreed and then sobbed softly. She did not dare to cry out loud for fear of attracting questioning from the Liao soldiers who were on duty in the six eastern palaces.

There were only a few hundred palace maids left for the Zhu Ming royal family, and they were all young. The older ones were taken away by the Liao soldiers. It was said that Li Ni was planning to marry those palace maids to the Liao soldiers who had no families, which made the remaining palace maids panic.

There might not be enough palace maids, and even they might be divided up by the soldiers.

Fan's collusion was of little use. At noon on the 30th, as agreed, only more than a hundred palace maids followed the imperial concubine to gather near Jingren Palace.

This is easy to understand. The most loyal concubines, eunuchs, and palace maids in the palace all died in battle on the day the Liao army broke through the imperial city. The rest of them did not have much courage, so it was already quite good that they could gather hundreds of people.

The scale of this palace coup was so small that even the Liao soldiers who were monitoring the six eastern palaces did not take it seriously. It was not until the palace maids armed with dung shovels, fire tongs and wooden poles, led by the Imperial Noble Consort, launched an attack on the fully armed Liao soldiers that the captain in charge of this place sent someone to notify Marshal Li.

The Liao soldiers could deal with the palace maids who were causing trouble, but they could not take action against the royal family members, and the leader was the Imperial Concubine Fan, so the Liao soldiers fought and retreated, hoping that Marshal Li would arrive soon.

……

South City.

The situation of the Liao soldiers and the Jizhen soldiers confronting each other across the city wall was dissipating. Marshal Li, who had collected enough money, finally recruited enough people, so he sent a small group of elite troops to gradually fight southward. The reason why both sides did not take action before was very simple. In winter, the weather was dry and the main weapons of the remaining people, except for the soldiers who used bows and arrows, swords and spears, were basically firearms.

Once a war breaks out, the entire South City will be engulfed in flames. In winter, even the moat outside the city and the gates of various government offices are frozen solid, and there is no sufficient water source to put out the fire. By then, not only will the warring parties die without a burial place, but even the poor people in the small gates and courtyards of the South City will suffer.

Neither the Liao soldiers nor the Jizhen soldiers were so brutal as to sacrifice the people of Nancheng to win the battle. Both sides controlled the scale of the battles to a small extent during the confrontation to avoid large-scale fires.

If they went out of the city to fight, the Jizhen soldiers would be no match for the elite Liao soldiers led by Marshal Li, and would only lose manpower in vain. Therefore, Yan Mingtai only ordered his generals to take good care of the soldiers in each camp, and to prevent them from escaping, as a success.

The soldiers in Jizhen didn't want to fight, but Marshal Li didn't want to sit around.

Including the civilian laborers he had brought with him, the surrendered soldiers from the Beijing camp, the elite troops from Liaodong, and the escaped soldiers from other military garrisons, he now had more than 50,000 men under his command. Almost all of the elite Liao soldiers he had brought with him were promoted to sergeants, but there was still a shortage of many low-level officers.

After having sufficient manpower, the new Liao soldiers began a new round of land grabbing. There were quite a large number of farms owned by nobles outside the capital, so Marshal Li sent the surrendered soldiers from the Beijing camp with stricter military discipline to redistribute the farmland, livestock, farm tools, etc. under the jurisdiction of the elite troops in Liaodong.

The civilian laborers and soldiers from other military garrisons who were forced to do this job are not capable of doing it. If they start, Marshal Li's reputation will probably drop several levels.

The saying "soldiers pass by like a comb and bandits pass by like a rake" is not just an exaggeration. The soldiers who were able to escape were actually not much different from the bandits.

Distributing land to tenants and bringing back the lackeys from the farm were secondary. The main purpose was to break the original order and make the tenants recognize Marshal Li's banner.

The battle in the south city was more difficult, so he and his godsons personally went into battle, clearing out small groups of Jizhen soldiers led by guerrillas and lieutenant generals along the main streets.

It just so happened that the South City had residential houses first, and then streets and city walls, so the streets and alleys were crooked and there was no sense of order like the north side. Therefore, the New Liao soldiers could not quickly occupy the South City. The two sides fought several minor battles in the main streets and alleys for several days.

After Marshal Li killed some generals personally, most of the Jizhen soldiers retreated to the vicinity of the three city walls.

When Li Hao received the message from the imperial city, he had no choice but to lead his elite personal troops north.

"You tell me, this emperor is alive and well, why would he rebel?"

Marshal Li was deeply confused. Was it because he had not killed enough people, or was it because his reputation for evil had not spread to the imperial city?
The Liao soldiers around did not dare to say anything. They also knew that they were committing a crime punishable by beheading, so they were bent on encouraging their superiors to give their commander more clothes, but Marshal Li did not seem to have such an intention.

At least I haven't had that thought recently.

The way back to the imperial city was unobstructed. When Marshal Li and his men arrived, the new Liao soldiers had gathered three to five thousand people, while the rebels consisted of only hundreds of palace maids and a concubine in plain clothes.

The two sides confronted each other in front of Huangji Hall (formerly Fengtian Hall), one of the three major halls that was about to be completed.

The three main halls burned down in the twenty-fifth year of the Wanli reign. It has been exactly twenty-nine years since then, and it will be thirty years tomorrow.

The construction of the three main halls and three gates began during the Wanli period. The Huiji and Guiji gates were built first. In the 47th year of Wanli, the Huangji Gate was rebuilt. In the first year of Taichang, another one million taels of silver were allocated from the treasury to rebuild the Huangji Hall. In the fifth year of Tianqi, it was rebuilt again. So far, 11 million taels of silver have been invested in the repair.

In order to avoid the same flood as last time, the area of ​​the three main halls was reduced by more than half. Compared with the 15 million taels of silver spent on rebuilding the three main halls during the Jiajing period, the amount of money spent on this reconstruction was not small.

Of course, the sickly Emperor Tianqi also showed up. He was wearing a black and red nine-beam crown and was supported by palace maids. He still had some dignity.

"Your Majesty, do you know how much silver Wei Yan embezzled during the reconstruction of these three halls?"

Marshal Li, who was leading the way, approached the platform and shouted.

"What's the point of saying all this? Li Ni, we are enemies!"

The voice of Emperor Tianqi was as soft as the flapping of mosquito wings, and his words were relayed by palace maids.

"Eunuch Hu Liangfu alone confiscated more than 300,000 taels of silver. According to his trusted eunuchs, the tax revenue collected could reach 1.1 million taels of silver. It is unknown how much Wei Yan collected."

Emperor Tianqi stopped talking and just waved his hand gently, signaling his loyal Imperial Noble Consort Fan to lead the palace maids to kill the traitors.

"Why did your Majesty rebel?"

Marshal Li was not polite either. He grabbed Fan, who was the first to rush over, and smashed her against the white marble guardrail, breaking a stone pillar. The palace maids were so scared that they dared not to rush forward anymore and just stayed where they were, trembling.

"Don't make things difficult for these palace maids. Take them to the Five Military Commandery and make them wives for the brothers. Your Majesty has been deceived by the traitors. You must send some loyal officials to serve Your Majesty in the future. Li Yongxi, call your godson over and have him bring people to serve Your Majesty personally."

Shang Kexi, who was called, sent someone to summon his godson who was much older than him. He felt that his godfather was very angry this time and even did not keep the palace maids for Emperor Tianqi, which meant it was time to submit a petition to persuade him to ascend the throne.

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(End of this chapter)