Chapter 105: 103

The serving girls and old women in Zhao Han's household were either homeless or had chosen to stay and work for wages.

Now only four remained, all switched to short-term labor contracts. One was responsible for chopping firewood and cooking, one for washing and sweeping, and the other two for serving tea and water to Zhao Han and Pang Chunlai.

There had been more, but they were sent to the relief home — mostly the older women.

Even Zhu Yuanzhang set up relief homes across the empire; if Zhao Han wanted to achieve Great Unity under Heaven, how could he not get relief homes running?

For now, the relief home held very few widowers, widows, orphans, and the childless, because the elderly often chose to take their own lives. In time, the numbers would gradually grow.

They were not idle mouths to feed, either — they had to do whatever work they were capable of, such as sewing padded cotton shoes and military uniforms for the soldiers. That is, winter clothing. Zhao Han had purchased a batch of cotton cloth and raw cotton, all ordered from traveling merchants.

There was also news of corn and sweet potatoes. A merchant who worked the "central Jiangxi to Huguang" route had promised to bring corn and sweet potato seeds on his next trip.

Noon, at the dining table.

Pang Chunlai tossed over a small booklet, then picked up his bowl to eat. "Maosheng revised this. Some of that rhetoric of yours doesn't work on the villagers."

Zhao Han took it and glanced at it, then broke into a smile. "An oversight on my part, indeed."

After the busy farming season, Zhao Han had chosen not to expand, but instead had the society members spread Datong ideals, so the villagers and soldiers would understand what they were fighting for.

After some practical testing, Chen Maosheng had reworked much of the propaganda material, stripping out the high-flown concepts and turning everything into plain speech and local slang: Datong means letting the common folk eat their fill, Datong means letting the common folk live free from oppression... and so on.

Pang Chunlai offered a suggestion. "Maosheng could be transferred to chief of the Rites Section, dedicated to spreading Datong thought. It wouldn't be a demotion — he truly isn't suited to be deputy town chief. Huang Shunfu is very solid in his work and can be promoted to deputy town chief. What do you think?"

"That works," Zhao Han nodded in agreement.

Suddenly, a maidservant came in to report. "Sir, Registrar Huang requests an audience. He has also brought someone from Shangfang Village."

Xiaocui was no longer a serving maid; she had been reassigned to the Women and Children Section of the town office, where she and Xiaohong spread Datong thought. That meant going door-to-door every day, chatting with the womenfolk, and carrying out propaganda specifically among women and children.

"Show him in," Zhao Han said.

A moment later, Huang Shunde entered the dining room, accompanied by a scholar.

Seeing Zhao Han in the middle of his meal, Huang Shunde hesitated. "Director-General, shall I wait in the reception hall instead?"

"No need," Zhao Han said with a smile. "It's midday — you haven't eaten yet, have you? Sit down quickly and join us. Xiaozhu, bring two more sets of bowls and chopsticks."

Huang Shunde hastened to make introductions. "Director-General, this is a child student from Shangfang Village — Yang Gui, courtesy name Guanjü."

Yang Gui bowed with hands clasped. "This junior pays his respects to Mr. Zhao."

"Very good. Sit down quickly and eat," Zhao Han said, pulling the two men to their seats.

Yang Gui had just sat down when he stood up again, cupping his hands. "I beseech Mr. Zhao to take charge and quell the chaos in Shangfang Village."

"Shangfang Village is in chaos again?" Zhao Han asked, surprised.

Shangfang Village lay due north by west of Wuxing Town. Much of the village was mountainous, and the people were extremely poor.

After the four villages of Wuxing Town had their bumper harvest, some women returned to their natal homes, bringing new rice to help their families. They inevitably bragged a little, saying that every household in Wuxing Town could eat its fill, which made the villagers of Shangfang Village burn with envy.

And so, a spontaneous uprising erupted.

Landlords great and small were either killed or fled, and the peasants of Shangfang Village began dividing up the land.

Zhao Han had been busy with ideological propaganda work and had no time to meddle in neighboring villages' affairs. More importantly, he feared that acting on his own would provoke resentment among the Shangfang villagers, who might see them as coming to seize the land.

Although Yang Gui was a child student, he was a yeoman farmer, and his family had only a few mu of land. This time, he had managed to escape disaster.

"Mr. Zhao," Yang Gui lamented, "after the peasants of Shangfang Village killed the landlords, they started fighting among themselves when dividing the land."

"What happened?" Zhao Han asked.

Yang Gui explained, "Shangfang Village never had much good land to begin with — more than half is mountain terrain. When it came time to divide the land, they simply could not agree on who got the good fields and who got the poor ones. Those who got poor fields were all nursing grievances. The tenant farmers who led the uprising had selfish motives and gave all the good land to their own relatives and friends. The ringleader himself seized a great deal of land, practically taking all the top-grade fields for himself."

"So that's how it is," Zhao Han said, understanding at once.

They had overthrown the old landlords, only for the ringleaders to turn into new landlords themselves. It would have been strange if things hadn't descended into chaos!

Yang Gui continued, "This morning, the villagers who refused to accept this went to demand an explanation, but they were beaten up. Once word spread, the whole village erupted in violence again, with over twenty dead or wounded. Now all the ringleaders are dead. There is no one in charge, and no one trusts anyone else."

Huang Shunde added from the side, "The villagers of Shangfang Village have jointly recommended Brother Guanjü — Yang Gui — as village chief, and they ask the Director-General to come in person to oversee the land division."

Zhao Han laughed. "The peasants of Shangfang Village don't even trust their own people, yet they trust me that much?"

Yang Gui cupped his hands. "Mr. Zhao loves the people as his own children and handles matters with fairness. Which of the surrounding villages does not know this?"

"Very well, I shall make a trip there," Zhao Han said.

After lunch, Zhao Han set out with a group of men. He discovered that Shangfang Village was truly impoverished.

The entire village had fewer than five hundred people to begin with. After two successive outbreaks of violence, only a little over four hundred and twenty remained. If the land were divided equally, the per capita arable land would be over nine mu, far exceeding that of Wuxing Town — but more than half of it was barren mountain land.

Why was Master Huang so powerful, with so many men at his command?

Precisely because Wuxing Town lay in a river-bend region, where the land was flat and fertile and never lacked water. Its agricultural conditions utterly crushed those of the surrounding villages.

When they reached the village entrance, Yang Gui said to a villager, "Mr. Zhao has arrived."

"Mr. Zhao has arrived!" the villager cried out in joyful surprise, then ran into the village.

Before long, the villagers of Shangfang Village came, dragging their wives and children — even those wounded in the fighting came. They knelt down in a great rustling wave, gazing at Zhao Han with eyes full of hope. These peasants trusted no one else; now they trusted only Zhao Han, a stranger from another place.

The following half-month was spent overseeing the land division in Shangfang Village.

This time, the land was not divided by household, but equally by headcount, with those receiving poor land given proportionally more. At the same time, cadres from the Rites Section and the Women and Children Section were dispatched to Shangfang Village to spread Datong thought.

Yang Gui was appointed village chief of Shangfang Village, which was placed under the jurisdiction of Wuxing Town.

Once Shangfang Village divided its land equally by headcount, the other four villages inevitably felt a sense of grievance.

So Zhao Han once again oversaw land division, readjusting the ten thousand mu of donated land according to population. In one stroke, another six thousand mu were distributed, leaving only four thousand mu as public property for the entire town.

Before the second land division was even finished, Ganshang Village, to the northeast, also exploded.

It truly spread like a contagion. The tenant farmers of Ganshang Village launched an uprising. Moreover, having learned from the precedent of Shangfang Village, they immediately sent men to request that Zhao Han come in person to Ganshang Village to oversee the land division.

The situation in Ganshang Village was little better than that of Shangfang Village — endless barren mountain land, compounded by landlord exploitation, had made the common people's lives unbearably bitter.

In the blink of an eye, without Zhao Han lifting a finger in battle, he now held a territory of six villages, with a total population under his jurisdiction of 4,936 (not counting children under twelve).

The Governor of Jiangxi, Xie Xuelong, had finally finished restoring the Pavilion of Prince Teng.

He invited the local gentry to a gathering. Amidst the feasting and drinking, he raised a sum of silver, and then abruptly decided to march south to suppress the bandits.

The man had seemed utterly harmless, but suddenly bared his fangs.

He ordered the Nanchang Guard to dispatch three hundred troops, the Ruizhou Chiliarch Station fifty, the Fuzhou Chiliarch Station fifty, the Linjiang Chiliarch Station fifty… Sailing south all the way, he gathered over eight hundred men from guard stations and chiliarch stations, then recruited another five hundred local braves.

They were all beggar soldiers, grabbed from the fields at the last minute by the officers of the various guard stations to make up the numbers — in fighting strength they were worse than the field soldiers of Ruijin.

But Xie Xuelong had these thirteen-hundred-odd soldiers fitted out in brand-new government army uniforms, and he rounded up civilian laborers to make a great many banners. At first glance, they really could intimidate the peasants.

Although they could travel by boat the whole way, Xie Xuelong still conscripted fifteen hundred civilian laborers to haul provisions.

A disorderly mob of less than three thousand, they proclaimed to the outside world an army of thirty thousand.

When the army reached Ganzhou Prefecture, Xie Xuelong halted at once and sent men into Ruijin County to spread propaganda.

The Ruijin peasant army was thrown into a panic. The three field-soldier leaders immediately held a council, but their opinions split.

Shen Shichang, a child-student by background, believed they could use this chance to seek amnesty; He Zhiyuan, a tenant farmer by background, believed they should avoid the enemy's edge for now and hide deep in the mountains until the government troops withdrew on their own; Zhang Sheng, a private salt dealer who had done time in jail, did not take government troops seriously at all and believed they could set an ambush and rout them.

The three could not agree, and the quarrel turned very ugly.

In truth, for the first two years they had cooperated with perfect rapport. But as time passed and external pressure temporarily vanished, their conflicts grew by the day.

Governor Xie Xuelong had timed his move exquisitely.

After cowing the peasant army by spreading word of his thirty-thousand-strong force, the scoundrel sent men to make private contact with Shen Shichang, promising to recommend Shen Shichang for the post of Constable of Ruijin County.

Without even waiting for Shen Shichang to agree, the "thirty-thousand-strong army" struck Ruijin County. Many merchant boats were also forcibly commandeered, crammed thick with banners.

The peasant army sent scouts to probe in secret but could not figure out how many government troops there really were.

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Xie Xuelong then imitated the stratagem of Dong Zhuo: by day he sent a thousand men marching into the county seat with banners flying; by night they slipped out again, and the next day they once more marched in with great fanfare.

This went on for days on end, terrifying the peasant army, who truly believed he had thirty thousand troops.

Shen Shichang went into the county seat in person to beg His Excellency the Governor for amnesty.

The next day, Xie Xuelong dispatched troops to attack Zhang Sheng. Before the two sides had even formally engaged, Shen Shichang suddenly struck Zhang Sheng's lair in a surprise attack.

When Zhang Sheng learned his nest had been taken, his army's morale collapsed in an instant, and he was routed utterly.

He Zhiyuan, seeing the situation was hopeless, fled deep into the mountains with his trusted followers.

Xie Xuelong appointed Shen Shichang Constable of Ruijin County, then led his troops into the mountains in pursuit, making Shen Shichang his vanguard to clear the way.

Shen Shichang wandered the mountains for days on end, was ambushed by He Zhiyuan and driven back, and fled with only a few dozen men left around him.

Xie Xuelong immediately withdrew his troops, and on the charge of desertion in the face of the enemy, had the newly amnestied Shen Shichang beheaded.

Within a single month, of the three field-soldier leaders of Ruijin County, one had died in battle, one had been executed, and one was hiding in the mountains, too afraid to come out.

Xie Xuelong, who had spent a year restoring the Pavilion of Prince Teng, now had a fearsome name that awed the entire southern Jiangxi region — even eunuchs had to show him a measure of respect.

The landlords of Ruijin were suffering in silence; they would rather the Governor had never come.

That "thirty-thousand-strong army" had fought with such ferocity that even Xie Xuelong could not restrain them. They plundered half of Ruijin down to bare earth, and even carted off most of the landlords' surplus grain.

Just as Xie Xuelong was leading his army back to Nanchang, word suddenly arrived from Luling County.

Half of Luling County had erupted in successive uprisings, all following the example of Wuxing Town — killing landlords and dividing up the land!

(End of chapter)