Chapter 148: Putting a Team Together

Diwu Lun and Ma Yuan had both served as minor clerks at the grassroots level — one in the Revenue Section and the other as an Inspector. Geng Chun, too, had been a Probationary Officer in the office of the Grand Minister of Agriculture, dealing with the various section clerks of the commanderies.

So the three men's understanding of commandery-level administration was nothing like the naive notions of a prince raised deep within the palace or a scholar who had done nothing but pore over the sages' books — they would never imagine that simply hanging a two-thousand-bushel seal at one's waist was enough to issue orders at will.

"Not all commandery governors are the same."

Based on a two-thousand-bushel governor's actual power and his control over his own commandery, they could roughly be divided into five tiers:

First: his orders do not leave his office.

Second: his orders do not leave the commandery bureau compound.

Third: his orders do not leave the commandery capital.

Fourth: his orders reach every county throughout the commandery.

Fifth: his orders extend beyond the commandery's borders and begin to project influence outward.

Some commandery governors, though they had held the post for many years, remained puppets of the powerful local clans the whole time — put-upon young daughters-in-law. Zhang Zhan of Liewei was one such; he was at the second tier. Li Yan was a little stronger and had reached the third tier, yet he still found himself led by the nose by the powerful clans, to his surprise.

In this world, there were also quite a few two-thousand-bushel officials who reached the fourth tier, men whose word was law in their commanderies — like that Wang Hong who attempted suicide by poison but failed. As wretched as he looked, his ability was still there.

As for those who could reach the fifth tier, Diwu Lun had seen only two.

One was Gongsun Shu, the Governor of Daojiang in Shu, who had hosted them at a banquet when they escorted Yang Xiong's body home for burial.

The other was Tian Kuang, Governor of Jiping (Beihai). This man's professional competence was exceedingly strong, and he was much praised by Wang Mang. Tian Kuang not only controlled real power within his commandery, able to mobilize thirty to forty thousand able-bodied men to resist the rebel armies, but his prestige and his orders had begun to extend beyond Jiping, spreading throughout the entire Qing-Xu region.

"To reach that level — Gongsun Shu and Tian Kuang are both outstanding men of their age."

The difference between the two was that Gongsun Shu quietly amassed power in silence, while Tian Kuang was extremely high-profile, eagerly reporting every last bit of his administrative achievements to the court.

Diwu Lun sighed with emotion. And what about himself? Never mind comparing himself to men like Gongsun and Tian — he was far inferior even to Zhang Zhan and Li Yan. His orders did not leave his office; he was still at the first stage. It was truly miserable.

Had he been assigned somewhere else — Guanzhong, for instance, or the Northern Lands, where he already had a foundation — his start would never have been this difficult. But this appointment to Weicheng Commandery had come suddenly. He was a stranger in an unfamiliar place; if not for the fact that he could speak the local dialect and had brought Geng Chun and Ma Yuan as his two aides, he would have been even more utterly lost.

With the court in Chang'an itself teetering on the brink, how could high officials make the local power-holders sincerely submit based on nothing more than the seal-cords at their waists? More often than not, they had to act according to the powerful clans' whims.

Geng Chun's proposal of a marriage alliance, though made in jest, was nonetheless a real method — many commandery governors did exactly that. But Diwu Lun wanted to seize power standing upright. This world is full of contradictions: between man and man, group and group, class and class. The more one tries to simply dissolve complex contradictions through compromise, the greater the calamities left festering for the future.

Having decided not to take shortcuts, Diwu Lun was destined to fight many bitter battles in the arena of power in Weicheng.

"Before the fourth year of Dihuang, I must advance from the first tier to the fifth, and bring the entire commandery's military, administrative, and financial authority firmly under my control."

Diwu Lun set himself a grand objective — on the premise, of course, that Wang Mang would not have another fit of madness and issue random transfer orders, and would allow him to slowly develop for a full year or half a year.

With his objective set, Diwu Lun also listed the things he needed to do. The first step was to gain control of the various sections of the commandery bureau. Everything had to be carried out by people, and his own strength was meager — apart from Geng and Ma, he had no capable men under him. Without them, even the best plan would come to nothing.

So the most urgent task was to…

"Put a team together!"

…

None of Diwu Lun's personnel appointments or dismissals could escape the notice of the commandery Labor Section Chief, Ximen Ping, and Ximen Ping, meticulous in every detail, reported back daily to his aging father, Ximen Yanshou, at their estate beside the Twelve Canals outside the city.

"What has our new little commandery governor done now?" Ximen Yanshou had also once served as a commandery official. After growing old, he had handed the post to his son and indulged himself fishing by the Zhang River. Cast after cast, rod lifted after rod — he always caught something.

Ximen Ping corrected his form of address: "Father, it is Commandery Grand Governor."

"Old habits, can't change them." Ximen Yanshou was nearly seventy and had lived most of his life under the Former Han. He scoffed at all the new rules of the Xin Dynasty, and had not even bothered to change his two-character given name. He recalled fondly how, back in the reigns of Emperors Xuan and Yuan of Han, names like Yanshou, Pengzu, and Qianqiu had been all the rage.

In between fishing, Ximen Yanshou often shared his bureaucratic experience with his son: "In my lifetime, I have dealt with a total of nineteen commandery governors."

"Of them, six were cruel officials of irredeemable ignorance, and twelve were Confucian scholars of irredeemable ignorance."

"And the last one?"

Ximen Yanshou cast his line again. "Only one — an upright official whom I could truly respect."

Cruel officials were the men the powerful clans feared most. They were martial, harsh, brutal, and severe, changing policies frequently and readily beating or killing the commandery's gallants and bravos. This was not, of course, because they hated evil as their own enemy, but because they wanted to quickly produce administrative results and earn a reputation for "governing the intractable" — even if it meant stirring up unjust prosecutions and executing people in droves. As if simply wiping out all the powerful clans could truly make this rotten world a better place.

Yet such cruel officials had grown fewer and fewer with the coming of the Yuandi and Chengdi eras. The one or two who occasionally appeared, arriving at their posts alone, could no longer fight the powerful clans the way their predecessors had.

What proliferated instead was the opposite of the cruel official: the Confucian scholar. Most of them rose to power through the Five Classics, and before that had never even served as a county magistrate or a section clerk. They understood nothing of local governance. In ordinary times, they stood about with folded arms, discoursing grandly on the Way of the Sages, and arrived full of lofty ambition to implement Confucius's ideal administration of Zhongdu at the local level. But once in the commandery, they were utterly lost. Faced with the tangled complexities of the situation and the mountains of case files, they had no idea where to begin. Slowly, their ideals eroded, and they became officials who merely occupied their posts and let things run themselves.

The Ximen clan liked two-thousand-bushel officials like that. By controlling the local clerks and section chiefs, they could quickly tame them. Every man had his weakness: to the money-loving, they sent goods and coin; to the fame-loving, flattery and praise; to the lustful, a marriage alliance; and to the power-hungry, they buried them under an avalanche of complicated paperwork.

The previous Grand Governor, Li Yan, had been just such a Confucian scholar. The Ximen clan had cooperated with him happily — until, unexpectedly, Li Yan conceived the notion of restoring the Han. The Ximen clan had originally intended to sit back and watch the outcome; after all, the world had fallen so far that whether the imperial army or the roving bandits came, either would destroy everything the powerful clans possessed. When the critical moment came, the people of Wei Commandery would have to defend the land of Wei themselves.

But after observing the situation for a time, they realized that Li Yan was obsessed with bureaucratic minutiae and incapable of achieving great things. The Ximen clan promptly abandoned him and took the initiative to report him.

And now, Ximen Yanshou welcomed the twentieth two-thousand-bushel official of his life — and the youngest one yet.

He had his son procure Diwu Lun's curriculum vitae. Though it was not particularly detailed, it contained no small number of items: a reputation for filial piety and righteousness in his youth, fighting fiercely against the Xiongnu, being the Emperor's new favorite, and so on.

What the Labor Section Chief Ximen Ping admired most was this: "By all reason, a young man barely past twenty is prone to rashness, yet Diwu Lun knows how to yield. The moment he arrived in the commandery, he paid homage at the shrine of the Venerable Ximen Bao — to understand the way of deference and yielding at his age is truly no small thing."

In his view, this new commandery governor ought to be someone they could get along with. The arrangement — a two-thousand-bushel official as puppet, with the Ximen clan and the commandery's powerful families controlling military, administrative, and financial affairs — should be sustainable.

But Ximen Yanshou felt it was too early to draw conclusions. "Men can dissemble. We must observe how he governs once he is firmly in the saddle, especially his appointments and dismissals of officials and section clerks — only then can we know the man's true substance."

One thing troubled Ximen Yanshou greatly: Diwu Lun had, in one sweep, dismissed, arrested, and executed most of the section clerks implicated in Li Yan's rebellion, with many heads now hanging from the city walls. At least a third of the posts in the commandery bureau's various sections now stood vacant. Although the actual work of the sections was still being maintained by the assistant clerks — sons of the powerful clans — Ximen Yanshou could see what Diwu Lun was planning.

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"The power to appoint and dismiss officials — that is the only trump card he holds!"

Indeed, acting on the principle of "if you can't touch the King of Hell, start by slaughtering his little demons," Diwu Lun had swept away all of Li Yan's die-hard supporters in one stroke. But he had spared the Literary Clerk. The Literary Clerk was a local scholar whom Li Yan had recruited; he had no powerful clan background, and during the military inspection, he had surrendered only when Ma Yuan entered the commandery bureau.

Diwu Lun could have had his head fall to the ground at any moment, yet he spared the Literary Clerk's life. This man could now only cling to Diwu Lun, serving as his key to understanding the commandery's various sections.

Ximen Yanshou told his son to keep a close watch on the personnel appointments. They would certainly not rashly interfere — that would be foolish. The Ximen clan only wanted to use this to understand Diwu Lun's style of operating.

If Diwu Lun, in frantic haste, handed the vacant section posts to the clan retainers and Boar-Rush Braves he had brought with him, then the Ximen clan could breathe a great sigh of relief.

Such a move would offend the commandery's powerful clans who coveted those posts. And those clan retainers and Boar-Rush Braves, with their low level of literacy, might do well enough as personal guards, but if rashly thrust into unfamiliar administrative work, they would only stumble and flounder.

Nor would it work to bring in large numbers of old associates from outside, for they would not understand the local language, would be easily sidelined, and would be regarded with hostility by the locals.

In the past, some cruel-official two-thousand-bushel governors had tried similar things, only to provoke a boycott by all the powerful families of the commandery. Not one of their subordinates could properly handle the case files; their "orders did not leave the office," they could not even outmaneuver the petty clerks, the taxes and levies could not be collected, the annual audit reports were a complete mess, and they were swiftly dismissed by the court.

Diwu Lun, however, appointed only Zang Nu as Security Section Chief, in charge of conscript transportation. He could not yet meddle with the commandery troops, but there were several hundred convicts and criminals in the commandery. He would let Zang Nu take this post and get this group under control first. Once weapons were issued from the armory, they would form an armed force — and one made up of propertyless men who would be easy to win over.

Geng Chun, meanwhile, was appointed by Diwu Lun as "Chief of the Five Bureaus." This was a unique post, second only to the Labor Section Chief in status among the various sections. It had no fixed duties, but if any other section lacked personnel, he could act in its stead or handle its affairs.

This meant that, should the need arise, Geng Chun could step in at any time to handle the business of the other vacant sections.

After settling these two appointments, Diwu Lun stopped. The seven or eight commandery section chief posts — ranks of four-hundred or three-hundred bushels — were left vacant just like that, with the air of goods being held back to await a higher price.

The next area Diwu Lun set his hand to surprised Ximen Yanshou even more.

"He is openly recruiting subordinate clerks from the entire commandery?"

"Indeed. Lord Diwu posted notices on the city gates, the official temple walls, and every post station, declaring that scholars of this commandery, regardless of background — whether sons of powerful houses or scholars from humble families — may emulate the ancient example of Mao Sui recommending himself. They may come to the commandery office to apply, and all who pass the interview shall be appointed as subordinate officials."

After hearing his son's report, Ximen Yanshou was first taken aback, then laughed: "A brilliant move!"

The so-called subordinate clerks were a type of post that had newly appeared in local administration after Emperor Wu's reign. To counter the Nine Ministers, the Han emperors specially established the "Inner Court," relying on a group of secretaries and various clerks of low rank but heavy authority to contend with the Outer Court.

And local two-thousand-bushel officials, suffering under the constraints of powerful families, likewise devised "subordinate aides" — specifically to take in guests and scholars, granting them the official posts of petty clerks, the equivalent of a commandery's inner court.

So, small as a sparrow yet complete in all organs, there were Subordinate Libationer, Subordinate Document Assistant, Subordinate Filial Son, Subordinate Inspector, Subordinate Adviser, and so on — sixteen types in all.

Because all subordinate posts were private personal clerks with no official salary, equivalent only to the commandery governor's retainers, one could freely appoint by favor without incurring the resentment of the powerful houses.

But do not underestimate this group of subordinate clerks — when necessary, they could all step in together, directly supplant and hollow out the various section heads to take over commandery affairs!

Ximen Yanshou could only sigh in admiration. This Diwu Lun truly lived up to his experience in the local grassroots. On one side, the various sections were up for bid, the banquet of invitations already laid out, waiting for interested powerful houses to come to the door. On the other side, with Ma Yuan as Subordinate Aide, subordinate petty clerks were recruited solely on talent, drawing in a wave of low-ranking scholars in the commandery eager to rise. This was Diwu Lun's method of building a faction from nothing.

But on Diwu Lun's side, there were other plans as well.

"The section heads and subordinate clerks cannot all be sons of local powerful houses. Locals and outsiders must check and balance each other."

Diwu Lun then wrote several letters and dispatched his guests to the Guanzhong and Nanyang regions. He wanted to recruit some talents he had taken a liking to during his time as an official and envoy to come help. Of course, whether they were willing to come was another matter — after all, at a time like this, a clever person probably would not board the Great Xin's ship so easily.

For example, Cen Peng, the Commandant of Jiyang. Diwu Lun had earlier considered recruiting him as "Military Section Head," but now that post had been taken by another powerful house. Moreover, Cen Peng had since been promoted to "Magistrate of Jiyang" for his merit in protecting the imperial prince.

A full six-hundred-bushel County Magistrate — to recruit him to bow his head and serve as a section head would likely be seen as an insult. So Diwu Lun only first wrote a letter of greeting to sound him out, asking about the situation in Nanyang, and did not mention recruitment.

Another was Ren Guang, the Bailiff of Western District in Wancheng. Diwu Lun admired this man's worldly wisdom and tact. If he were promoted to a commandery section head, it would be a high promotion — only, Diwu Lun did not know if Ren Guang was willing to leave his home and come to Hebei. He could only try.

"I wish to recruit Ren Boqing as Chief Clerk."

There was one more person. Diwu Lun searched around the room and realized he had left the nine-spike jade someone had given him back at his old home. Truly careless.

"Liu Wenshu of Caiyang." Diwu Lun thought for a moment.

"I wish to recruit you, sir, as Chief Records Aide. I hope you can come to Hebei for a meeting, to hunt together by the banks of the Zhang River!"

(Silver Alliance bonus chapter 3/11)

PS: Something came up, so it's a bit late.