Chapter 345: The Difficult Second Year of Qianyou

The second year of Qianyou in the Great Han could be described as smooth at first, difficult later. The opening spring was calm and uneventful. The four borders were stable, the weather was favorable, the spring plowing that Liu Chengyou placed great importance on proceeded in an orderly manner, and the court moved further into a state of stability. The harem saw successive pregnancies, the Son of Heaven took new consorts, and the imperial house expanded its branches. Grain taxes reached the capital smoothly, feudal lords submitted memorials of fealty, and the *Criminal Code* was recompiled and published...

It truly was a good start, but after summer arrived, bad news came one after another. In the fourth month, a great earthquake struck Hebei, affecting over a dozen prefectures; in the fifth month, a locust plague loomed, blanketing the lands north and south of the Yellow River.

Compared to the earthquake, Liu Chengyou and the court placed greater importance on the locust plague. After all, at the critical moment of the summer harvest, if they were careless, the labor of the Great Han's "suffering people" would come to naught—and beyond that, famine would break out again, and unrest would follow. When it came to matters of grain, the sovereign and ministers of the Great Han could not help but worry.

Since the founding of the Great Han, it had long suffered from grain shortages. Although Liu Chengyou issued strict orders urging all circuits, prefectures, and counties throughout the realm to prepare against the locust plague, given the current execution capacity of the Great Han's officials and generals, problems were simply unavoidable.

Moreover, the severity of this locust plague and the breadth of its reach far exceeded Liu Chengyou's and the Great Han sovereign-ministers' estimates. After entering the sixth month, prefectures in Hebei and the Central Plains reported locusts one after another. The prefectures of Hua, Pu, Chan, Cao, Yan, Yun, Zi, Qing, Qi, Su, Huai, Xiang, Wei, Bo, Chen, and others—the cream of the Central Plains and Hebei—saw locusts virtually everywhere, and officials and commoners alike suffered bitterly.

What caught Liu Chengyou even more off guard was that over a dozen counties under the jurisdiction of Kaifeng Prefecture were not spared either, and the situation there was extremely severe. Locusts blotted out the sky, their sound heard everywhere, and some insects even flew over the imperial palace in Bian.

Under this great calamity, Liu Chengyou and the various lords of the Han court reacted quickly enough—they drafted edicts and issued them throughout the realm, ordering officials and commoners everywhere to capture locusts. They even halted river works and dispatched the imperial army of the Eastern Capital to engage in locust-catching efforts.

Under these circumstances, it was no longer a matter of worrying about reduced summer harvest yields, but of stopping losses in time—if they could reduce the loss of even one grain of wheat, that was good.

They also established "Locust-Catching Envoys" dispatched to various regions to supervise locust-catching and disaster relief efforts. At the same time, censors and court gentlemen were sent out from the Eastern Capital to inspect the locust-catching situation in various places. Any who were not proactive in their efforts, or who managed locust control poorly, were all to be reported upward and dealt with by the Secretariat.

Some local officials and generals, facing the locust calamity, merely sought to comply with heaven's will by offering sacrifices to the spirits of the mountains, forests, rivers, and marshes in their areas—and that was that. They even strictly forbade the people under their jurisdiction from exterminating locusts, causing those who tilled the land within their borders to suffer devastating losses. For such officials and generals, unsurprisingly, the punishment was not merely dismissal from office—they were all transported in prison carts to the Eastern Capital, imprisoned, sentenced, and dealt with severely.

Even though the *Criminal Code of the Great Han* had already become much more lenient, with many cruel punishments and harsh laws abolished, the severity of Han law was still displayed to the fullest in this matter. The silver lining was that Liu Chengyou discovered that the Great Han's central government had recovered some of its most basic administrative control over the localities. Of course, on the matter of exterminating locusts and saving grain, the center and the localities shared a common understanding and demand—after all, no one wanted to go hungry.

In fact, with last year's experience of locust extermination in Hebei, the court and even the localities were not too flustered in the early stages this time. It was just that this outbreak was too large and too severe, catching the sovereign and ministers of the Great Han somewhat off guard.

Unsurprisingly, the summer harvest was reduced, and the spring seedlings also suffered considerable damage, which meant that, predictably, the autumn harvest would hardly be bountiful.

Fortunately, Liu Chengyou and his ministers, in the face of this large-scale locust plague, maintained firm attitudes and resolute actions, recovering quite a few losses. Liu Chengyou even personally went down to the countryside to inspect, encouraging officials and commoners, reassuring the people, and gaining a wave of prestige.

In just half a month, the locust plague was greatly curbed in the capital region and the Central Plains prefectures that were more heavily influenced by the court's authority. Military Governors, Defense Commissioners, Militia Commissioners, and Prefects from various regions successively reported their locust-catching achievements.

For example, Liu Chengyou's father-in-law, Gao Xingzhou of Yedu, Fu Yanqing of Yanzhou, and Zhe Congruan of Yunzhou—these three families together captured nearly one hundred thousand hu of locusts. Adding in the locust-catching data from the other prefectures, a rough calculation showed over five hundred thousand hu in total.

Upon hearing this, Liu Chengyou even said in a self-deprecating manner that heaven had bestowed upon him five hundred thousand hu of grain, and that he should personally go to a Daoist temple to offer sacrifices and give thanks. He said that if he was going to do it, he would do it—this was probably one of Liu Chengyou's few acts of "superstition." Of course, this could also be counted as finding joy in misery, after all, locusts were hardly delicious, and with so many insects, the degree of destruction they wrought on the crops could well be imagined.

Because of the locusts, this year's summer harvest progress was greatly slowed, and the collection of summer taxes was also delayed until autumn. It was not until the autumn equinox that a rough report on the disaster situations and tax collections in various regions was finally compiled.

The results, of course, gave no cause for joy—the subjects of the Great Han would be going hungry again.

Famine victims rose up in various places. Liu Chengyou very much wanted to order the granaries opened to distribute grain, but in the end, he remained silent... He only issued a tactful and ambiguous edict, instructing local governments at all levels to do their best to relieve and settle the disaster victims, so as not to let them scatter and flee to other prefectures.

Then, popular unrest broke out in many places. Toward this, the court's attitude was far more resolute—any who caused disturbances were to be suppressed with full force. It was cold-blooded, but to maintain order and avoid even greater chaos, it had to be done.

Of course, for the vicinity of Kaifeng, Liu Chengyou still squeezed out some grain from between his teeth for relief purposes. He also issued a clear edict, proclaimed throughout the realm, calling on the subjects of the Great Han to weather the difficult times together. In the palace, Liu Chengyou also donned hemp clothing and had the few remaining ornaments of splendor within the Han palace all put away. As for officials and generals within the capital who engaged in extravagance and waste, they were all reprimanded and investigated.

At the same time, anticipating the rise in grain prices, he had all those who hoarded goods to profiteer and made fortunes off the nation's calamity—every single one of them—arrested and dealt with according to law.

What could barely be counted as a blessing was that after the peace agreement with the Southern Tang, the Huai River was opened, merchants of both states traded freely with each other, old and new markets were thrown wide open, and grain from Jianghuai was transported north without obstruction. Southern Tang merchants traveled north with grain to sell in the Central Plains, which to a certain extent alleviated the grain shortage there. At the same time, however, it also caused an outflow of the Great Han's currency and goods.

Although Liu Chengyou was troubled by this, compared to the hunger in their bellies, external possessions counted for little—it was just that the scholars, commoners, and common people of the Great Han had become poorer.

At the national level, Liu Chengyou also proactively purchased grain from the Southern Tang, showing considerable sincerity by trading northern horses, cattle, donkeys, and sheep in exchange—even giving up a thousand war horses. It should be noted that even though the Great Han was in the north, it suffered from a shortage of horse sources, and war horses were an extremely important and scarce strategic resource for the Great Han.

Sure enough, on the Southern Tang side, Li Jing was very generous, and his court ministers were very pleased... It was Han Xizai who made one last effort, proposing that the Tang sovereign dispatch troops on a northern expedition—only to be rejected without hesitation. After all, the two states had been on good terms for less than a few months, and peace had not come easily; how could they lightly take up arms?

If the Han army were pushed to the brink, a hundred thousand hungry wolves descending south to forage would make regret too late to matter. Add to that the sowing of discord that Liu Chengyou had casually arranged earlier, which had caused Li Jing to harbor some thoughts about Han Xizai, plus the politically correct opposition of his rival faction—Han Xizai, who held no real power, simply had no opportunity to realize his ambitions.

It was said that after his advice was rejected, Han Xizai got dead drunk at his residence and bluntly declared that the Great Tang would never again have the chance to advance into the Central Plains or restore its old capital...

On the Great Han's side, although the locust plague was fierce, through utmost effort it was barely brought under control. It was just that dealing with the aftereffects was somewhat of a headache.

Yet almost simultaneously with the locust plague came drought. Also in the sixth month, at the end of the sixth month, its reach was likewise considerable—the prefectures of Bin, Ning, Ze, Lu, Jing, Yan, Fu, Fang, Jin, Jiang, and others encompassed nearly all of Guanzhong, and the Hedong region was also slightly affected...

Against the backdrop of continuous disasters, it was inevitable that people's hearts would be unsettled. Rumors spread in the capital claiming that the Son of Heaven lacked virtue and that Liu Chengyou's governance was poor. Toward those who spread such baseless talk and stirred up trouble, Liu Chengyou showed no excessive agitation—he merely sent secret agents of the Wude Office out in all directions, and the Kaifeng Prefecture arrested a large batch of people, sentencing them swiftly. At the same time, several court officials, for failing to keep their mouths shut, were arrested, imprisoned, and exiled—then died on the road to exile.

Under the heavy punishments, and with Liu Chengyou continuously sending people to publicize his merits and virtuous measures to turn public opinion around, the capital was at last pacified.

Earthquake, locust plague, drought—under the assault of nearly nationwide natural disasters, the Great Han dynasty, this newly born regime, was like an aged traveler enduring the harshest of trials, trudging forward with difficult steps, moving on alone.

Fortunately, in these two years, Liu Chengyou's many measures had consolidated his regime, preventing it from collapsing, and even allowing it to barely press forward against the difficulties. One could well imagine that in the original course of history—with natural disasters, military calamities, and corrupt and base officials and ministers—how miserable the Great Han dynasty must have been, and what a living hell the people of the Central Plains were plunged into.

Liu Chengyou sighed with deep emotion—that the original holder of this body had lost the state and perished was hardly unjust.

Of course, though the road ahead was difficult, for Liu Chengyou, whose will had already been tempered to be as firm as iron and stone, it could not shake him in the slightest.