What if Chongzhen, who hanged himself at Coal Hill, had been replaced by a postdoctoral scholar with fifteen years of experience studying Ming history?
Zhao Yi, the youngest postdoc at the Ming History Institute of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, woke up to find himself Zhu Youjian, the Chongzhen Emperor, newly enthroned in the seventh year of the Tianqi reign.
At that moment, Wei Zhongxian's resignation was awaiting the emperor's approval, memorials from the Donglin faction were piled high at the Secretariat, the Tartars beyond the frontier were sharpening their blades, and refugees in Shaanxi were on the verge of revolt. The silver in the treasury wasn't even enough to pay the soldiers guarding the nine frontier garrisons for a month.
He knew how everyone would end up, and he had the answers to every problem.
But his greatest challenge wasn't how to kill Wei Zhongxian. It was what to do after killing him.
And so, in the middle of this disaster, an unprecedented "national operation" quietly got underway.
He said, "The eunuch faction is a pack of vicious dogs, but for now they can still guard the house."
He said, "Don't call it a donation. Call it a loan. We'll issue war bonds, backed by customs revenue, at an annual interest rate of five percent."
He said, "The upright officials of the Donglin faction should be put to work, not worshipped."
Using the most Ming-like methods, he fought the most modern battle for a comeback.
When the Tartar cavalry was routed by volleys of gunfire, when Jiangnan's salt merchants lined up to buy "Bonds for the Pacification of Liaodong," and when crops from the Americas took root in Shaanxi's loess hills, the court officials finally realized, far too late, that this young emperor was no longer a ruler they could fathom.
All he wanted was to lift this shattered sun and moon back into the heavens.
