Chapter 2200: Renzong Chronicles 9: The South Wind Overwhelms the North Wind

People are always like this—only when they lose something do they know what cherishing means. When the old Chancellor Fan handed in his seal of office, declined all farewells, and left the capital for the south in desolate haste, the number of people in the court who sighed deeply over it was beyond counting, including many courtiers, subordinates, remonstrance officials, and pure-stream critics who had exerted themselves and expended effort in the matter of "toppling Fan."

Of course, what best reflected the tide of public sentiment was the reaction of the lower- and middle-class scholars and commoners of Luoyang, where street talk and alley gossip were filled with reluctance to see him go. Some scholars and commoners even said directly: "First they drove away Governor Bao, then they dismissed Chancellor Fan—the scholars and commoners of the capital will hardly know peace now."

In the ninth year of Zhengtong, Bao Zheng, who had served a full six years in the position of Governor of Luoyang, was finally squeezed out of the capital, and Fan Zhongyan had been unable to stop it. However, thanks to the immense prestige and outstanding achievements Bao Zheng had accumulated in his tenure at the Luoyang prefecture, his departure counted as a promotion—he was appointed Fiscal Commissioner of the Southeast, taking charge of the Southeast's financial power. This was a weighty regional responsibility.

And when news of Fan Zhongyan's death arrived, the capital was set aboil. From officialdom to the common folk, memorial and remembrance activities continued without cease. Having laid down the office of chancellor, Fan Zhongyan had already been restored to his reputation as the empire-renowned model of loyal minister, and after his death, he was virtually elevated to the status of a contemporary "sage."

Emperor Liu Weizhen was naturally stirred as well. He issued an edict of mourning and suspended court for seven days—though aside from the regular great and minor court assemblies, he did not attend court on ordinary days anyway. At the same time, he had Ouyang Xiu, with his brush like a great beam, compose a spirit-path stele inscription for Fan Zhongyan.

In the end, after court deliberation, Liu Weizhen by imperial decree posthumously conferred upon Fan Zhongyan the title of Marquis of Pingjiang, and later generations therefore called him "Fan Pingjiang." Of course, the most frequently used appellation was still "Duke Fan Wenzhen," from his posthumous name Wenzhen.

It was also in the dozen or so years after Fan Zhongyan's death that the civil officials and scholars of the Great Han Empire produced a vast body of poetry, ci, and rhapsodies related to Fan Zhongyan—some praising his personal character and merits, and even more recalling and commemorating that period.

After all, viewed from the subsequent development of the Great Han Empire, the five or six years of Fan Zhongyan's administration were regarded as the "final afterglow" of Emperor Shizong's Jianlong golden age.

From the historical records, case files, and written works left from the Zhengtong era, one can gain a relatively comprehensive understanding of the political, military, and economic achievements and accomplishments of the Great Han Empire during Fan Zhongyan's administration—especially certain economic figures, which best reflect the state the Great Han Empire was in during that period.

In the eighth year of Zhengtong (1049), at Fan Zhongyan's initiative, a large-scale, comprehensive statistical survey was conducted of the empire. And from the empire's official data—though not entirely accurate, yet the most persuasive—one can learn:

At that time, the registered population of the Great Han Empire had already exceeded 120 million people. This obviously did not include the household servants, retainers, and tenant farmers kept by nobles, officials, landlords, and merchants, nor the millions of people in the various vassal states, nor the large number of unregistered households that evaded taxes or were lost to poor management and statistical oversight.

In the seventh year of Zhengtong, the empire's fiscal revenue—combining land tax, commercial tax, customs duties, transaction tax, the state monopolies on salt, iron, tea, and sugar, official property, office lands, mining tax, and income from gold and silver smelting—reached 170 million strings of cash in fiscal intake.

Of course, this figure showed a clear gap compared to the height of Jianlong's prosperity. Going back fifteen or sixteen years, the empire's annual fiscal intake had at one point approached 200 million strings. But at that time, the Great Han Empire was at the peak of Emperor Shizong's reign—government was clear and upright, institutions were sound, execution was strong, oversight was powerful, rivers were clear and seas calm, and the four barbarians were at peace.

The empire's cultivated land area also surpassed ten million qing. From south to north, east to west, across all climate conditions—paddy fields, dry fields, terraced fields—the empire's lands were being reclaimed in every form.

It could be said that during Fan Zhongyan's administration, the Great Han Empire still possessed a formidable material foundation. Only, the empire's household was vast and its undertakings spread wide, and its various expenditures were correspondingly enormous.

The traditional, foundational expenditures of maintaining troops, officials, clerks, and nobles need not be elaborated upon, nor the ever-increasing redundant expenses and waste that had plagued the court since the late Shizong period.

The key issue was that from the sixth to the twelfth year of Zhengtong, the Great Han Empire was hardly tranquil—natural disasters and man-made calamities came one after another. Especially in the Hebei region, several consecutive years of severe drought caused lands to lie waste, grain output to fall, and famine to ensue. Social contradictions rapidly intensified, and unrest and epidemics followed in their wake.

Even as the empire advanced, various contradictions were rapidly accumulating, and the most concentrated eruption was the "Wang Ze Uprising"—extremely wide in scope, afflicting five prefectures and more than thirty counties, with enormous numbers of participants. At the height of the rebel army's strength, its scale once approached one hundred thousand.

The eruption of the Wang Ze Uprising was, in essence, rooted in the corruption and degeneration of the empire's nobles and officials, and the ever-expanding scholar-official landlord class, which led to intensified oppression and exploitation of the common people. When successive natural disasters descended, the rentier class seized the opportunity to stir up trouble, while local governments responded slowly and ineptly. Then, under the seduction of "Maitreya teachings," a massive rebellion erupted in Hebei—a region that had been the core ruling territory of the Han Empire since its founding.

To pacify the Hebei rebellion, the court also paid an enormous price—mobilizing over a hundred thousand troops, expending more than ten million strings of cash in total, with hundreds of thousands of officials and commoners dead or wounded. Moreover, it factually shattered Fan Zhongyan's balance and coordination of the court situation, causing him to abandon deeper reforms and improvements.

In the end, Fan Zhongyan's dismissal from the chancellorship was directly connected to the Hebei rebellion.

And just as the Hebei drought finally eased and the rebellion was gradually suppressed, in the empire's prosperous and wealthy southeastern region—in Jianghuai, which annually shipped vast amounts of fiscal revenue and grain to the capital region—a drought also broke out, no less severe than Hebei's.

With the warning of the Hebei rebellion before them, the court dared not show any further negligence or carelessness, and diverted a large portion of its attention to disaster relief and famine aid in Jianghuai. Though this process was likewise riddled with filthy dealings, thanks to the deliberate precautions and control of the various ruling classes in Jianghuai, no major disorder broke out in either region.

And compared to Hebei, the drought in Jianghuai actually had a greater impact on the empire. Viewed from subsequent developments, it profoundly changed the empire's political landscape. "The south wind overwhelming the north wind" also took this great Jianghuai drought as its turning point.

The southeastern region had always occupied an important pillar position in the empire's fiscal and tax map—this was beyond doubt and amply supported by data.

The economic base determines the superstructure. Yet, a hundred years after the founding of the state, the empire's nobles, officials, and great clans who represented the interests of the southeastern region had not obtained corresponding political status. The empire's highest ruling resources remained firmly occupied by the traditional northern military-merit nobility and the northern scholar bloc.

This was clearly an extremely profound contradiction, and it became all the sharper as the southeastern economy increasingly rose to prominence, to the point where even the northern bloc dared not look askance at it and could no longer suppress it.

The most direct impact of the Jianghuai drought at the time was that the two capitals of Kaifeng and Luoyang, with their million-plus populations, began to run short of grain. Within the capital cities, grain prices soared and popular resentment boiled over. The court adopted targeted measures—opening official granaries, transferring grain from the Two Lakes, Guannei, and Chuanshu, and even issuing special policies encouraging merchants to purchase grain from overseas vassal states.

But these measures, while increasing court expenditures, also unavoidably added to the burden on the people of Guannei, the Two Lakes, and Chuanshu. The central court still had integrity, but it simply could not prevent a whole chain of people from dipping their hands in along the way.

Pull one hair and the whole body moves—social and class contradictions in other regions deepened accordingly, especially in the Guannei Circuit. And Guannei's influence could radiate across the entire Northwest. Thus the great Northwest, with its complex popular sentiments, after decades of peace, began to breed unrest once more.

Of course, many deep-seated contradictions and effects always need sufficient time to ferment and appropriate catalysts before they erupt. But after the eleventh year of Zhengtong, the empire's central government was compelled by the Jianghuai drought to reckon carefully with a political and economic account.

The capital region's grain shortage was caused by the Jianghuai drought reducing the grain shipped east to the capital from the Southeast. Yet the court's solution relied heavily on the southern circuits and prefectures—even the grain purchased from the South Seas vassal states was mainly brought in through the river and sea customs, then transshipped to the capital.

Therefore, in the later period of Fan Zhongyan's administration, the imperial court and central government had no choice but to treat the southern ruling bloc seriously, and to face squarely the greater number of voices and demands coming from the southern nobles, officials, and great clans.

In summary, during Fan Zhongyan's administration, at the upper levels of Great Han imperial rule, the South formally began to surpass the North—a major change brought about by the combination of economics and politics.

Not to mention the influence of those northern nobles who continuously moved south and, over the long years, merged with the local populations—Fan Zhongyan himself was a southern minister, and the very fact that he could become Director of State Affairs already demonstrated the trend.

And as for what this change meant for the Great Han Empire's rule—especially its unity and stability, whether for good or ill—that, I fear, still requires observation.