No One Knows Better How to Save the Great Ming

From the very first month of his reign, the Chongzhen Emperor watches three million taels of silver vanish from the treasury—and he finally understands which disastrous precedents his predecessor set by abolishing the mining tax and recalling the garrison eunuchs. By the third year of Tianqi, his imperial brother had burned through over ten million a year, making the Donglin faction far too expensive a tool to keep. In the first year of his own era, Chongzhen declares a brutal creed: the Ming may crumble, but the Jurchen "wild boar skins" must be wiped out first. By the third year of his desperate campaign to save the dynasty, he has dismissed three of the four Grand Secretaries, removed five of the six ministry heads, and purged one-third of the entire court bureaucracy. When the crisis deepens in the sixth year, he decides that for the greater good, the northern gentry must bear their share of hardship—and so they are sent overseas to colonize Nanyang. By the twelfth year, his imperial fleets have discovered a new southern continent, and it is time for the Jiangnan elite to shoulder their own burden. This is a chronicle of ruthless calculus, impossible choices, and the staggering cost of holding a dying empire together by force of will alone.