Chapter 173: The Dispute Over the Line of March

In the sixth month of the third year of Dihuang (AD 22), at the banks of the Han River in Nan Commandery, three thousand li from Wei Commandery in Jizhou, lay the great encampment of the "Grand General Who Receives Words," Yan You.

The sixth month was the rainy season in Jingzhou, and most of the officers and men in Yan You's army were northerners — Dou Rong, for instance, was a man from the Guanzhong region.

"This damn weather."

Dou Rong touched his clothes, which always felt damp and clammy; even-tempered as he was, he couldn't help cursing.

By all reason, a light rain ought to feel refreshing, but there was often rain without wind, and coupled with the high summer heat, the whole world seemed to turn into a giant steamer, leaving one's skin sticky and slick. These days, grain and equipment were molding fast; on the rare clear days, the soldiers would joyfully hang their clothes out to dry, only to find at nightfall that instead of drying, they had grown even damper.

The assault on Greenwood had been going on for over half a year, but after analyzing the previous defeats of the Jingzhou Governor, Commander-in-Chief Yan You concluded that dealing with Greenwood required a focus on encirclement, with no rush to attack and wipe them out.

"In the years since Greenwood rose in arms, the Jiang-Han region has been repeatedly ravaged by them. The several counties around Yundu are practically nine houses out of ten empty. Add to that the large population Greenwood has carried off, and they are now holed up in Yundu County alone. They may look formidable, but in truth the majority are the old and weak — they've simply added tens of thousands of extra mouths to feed."

Yan You's thinking was clear: he must never again let Greenwood choose a battlefield they knew well. "If we impose a blockade and cut off their salt and grain entirely, these bandits, with no production within and not a grain of relief from without, will either be trapped in their corner and forced to disband helplessly, or be compelled to leave the mountain forests they hold and fight us to the death!"

The salt of Nan Commandery and Jiangxia came mainly from the well salt of Ba-Shu to the west and the rock salt of the Wuling barbarians, all transported via the great river and the Han River. Yan You did not trust the local price-control officials; he sent troops directly to take military control of every river checkpoint, strictly regulating the movement of salt, which made the commanderies even more destitute.

The same went for grain. Any act of transporting grain toward the counties around Greenwood would be severely punished. The local common folk didn't have enough to eat themselves and could not possibly aid Greenwood. As for the powerful families... after Greenwood massacred Anlu County and carried off its women the year before, the powerful families of Jiangxia would rather side with the government. After all, the discipline of Yan You's and Dou Rong's troops was indeed slightly better than that of the other imperial armies.

After several months of this, Greenwood was indeed finding it hard to bear.

With their salt supply cut off, many people's bodies grew bloated, they contracted various illnesses, and they felt a constant lack of strength. Salt became an extremely precious commodity — people even killed over a lump of coarse salt.

If salt shortage was a dull knife slicing flesh, then grain shortage was a sharp blade killing outright.

Most of Greenwood's chieftains were men of little foresight; accustomed to plundering over the past few years, they paid no heed to farming and production. The fifty thousand people under their control needed fifty thousand shi of grain a month to eat. As the food they had looted the previous year ran out, they could only dig for tubers and pick berries everywhere in the mountain forests to stave off hunger.

Some chieftains led bands out to plunder, but the surrounding counties had hardly any population left — either carried off by Greenwood or relocated by Yan You — so there was no more grain to seize. Venturing farther to attack cities along the Han River would bring a head-on, crushing blow from the well-prepared Yan You.

Worn down in this way, many Greenwood bandits could endure no longer. Under Yan You's offensive of amnesty and inducement to surrender, men gradually came out to give themselves up. They met no good end either: they were directly clapped in irons and sent to the rear to labor to death. Only a few clever ones were kept, given official posts, dressed in silk, and fed their fill, then sent back to continue the psychological assault on Greenwood.

Seeing the once-rampant Greenwood in such dire straits, Dou Rong and the other deputy commanders, as well as officers like Cen Peng and Ren Guang, all heaped praise on Yan You: "To subdue the enemy's troops without fighting — that is the supreme excellence. The General is truly the foremost commander under heaven."

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Steady as Yan You was, even he was flattered into a bit of a swagger. Everyone believed that Greenwood would certainly collapse before autumn. But soon, Ren Guang, the General's Registrar who had been ordered to receive surrenders at the front, discovered news that was hard to tell whether a blessing or a curse.

Some of the bandits who had slipped out of Greenwood to surrender were frail, unsteady on their feet, and reeked. Though it was sweltering weather, they shivered violently with cold; a day later, they would cry out with burning heat and strip themselves stark naked, then suffer vomiting and diarrhea. By the next day...

They simply dropped dead!

At this sight, Ren Guang and all the officers and men turned pale with horror and retreated a hundred paces.

"Cold malaria — it's the cold malaria disease!"

Cold malaria disease was malaria.

In the Jing-Chu region, legend had it that in ancient times, the great Emperor Zhuanxu had three sons who, after death, all became pestilence-spreading demons. One of them dwelt in the Yangtze and Han River region, spreading malaria. The south is hot and damp; as summer nears, rheumatic heat prevails, and miasmic plagues are frequent. Malaria was only one of them, but an exceedingly vicious one.

Once it became epidemic, it would spread over an extremely wide area and persist for years on end, so much so that the locals often erected "Malaria God Shrines" to worship it.

No one knew how the malaria on Greenwood Mountain had started. Perhaps the hot, humid climate had become a breeding ground; perhaps the great chieftains, in their greed, had seized too many people and crowded them together, causing it to spread; or perhaps, deprived of salt and grain, their bodies had simply grown too weak.

At any rate, by the time the Greenwood Army chieftains realized what was happening, many men on every hill had already collapsed. Their symptoms varied: some had tertian malaria that struck every two days, some had malaria that struck at intervals of many days; some had cold malaria with chills first and fever after, some had warm malaria with fever first and chills after, and some had heat malaria with fever but no chills. In any case, with no doctors, no medicine, and not even food to eat, most of the infected met one end: death.

In Yundu County and on Greenwood Mountain, in barely over a month, the place had become a realm of ghosts. Over ten thousand people contracted the disease, and even several chieftains who had enjoyed good food and drink were succumbing. If men of their stature could not escape the torment of malaria, it was no wonder that the common Greenwood soldiers regarded the disease as a tiger-like cruelty that devoured men.

For a time, corpses could be seen everywhere in Yundu and Greenwood; mosquitoes and flies filled the sky, further accelerating the spread of the epidemic.

Some knelt weeping and praying before the Malaria God Shrine; some dragged their sick bodies, hoping to flee Greenwood Mountain. But the government troops outside had also caught the disease and long since withdrawn to the Jiang-Han region. Compared to the plague god, what did the Greenwood Army count for?

And within Greenwood Mountain, the surviving chieftains were quarreling fiercely over the Greenwood Army's future.

"If this goes on, we'll just be sitting here waiting to die!"

The hot-tempered Nanyang man Ma Wu was a forceful advocate for withdrawal: "Who among us hasn't lived through a few plagues? We should all know: once you catch it, there's practically no cure. You either tough it out, or you lie down on the ground and wait for death!"

"Never mind the lack of grain and salt — Greenwood has already become one huge plague ward. I feel the whole area is miasmic; you'll catch it just by breathing. We have to escape."

Abandoning the infected and letting those who still had a chance to live leave quickly — a consensus was soon reached on this point. Only one of the two great chieftains, Wang Kuang — who shared a name with the Xin Dynasty's Grand Preceptor — weakly asked, "The able-bodied can go, but what about the old and weak who haven't caught the disease?"

The chieftains looked at each other. No one cared about that, but they all swore solemnly, "Once the epidemic is over, once we've seized grain and salt, we will come back to rescue them."

Escaping was no problem, but where to escape to — that sparked an enormous disagreement.

"We should go south."

The great chieftain Wang Kuang had his own idea and proposed: "Last year, a flanking force followed the Han River and captured Jingling County. We should retrace that route and take temporary refuge in the Cloud Dream Marsh. Once the great plague has passed, we can bring the old and weak over from nearby."

Although Wang Kuang was the head leader who had first raised the banner of righteousness in Greenwood, he was, after all, only a fisherman, with limited vision. His eyes were fixed only on Nan Commandery and Jiangxia — his old home. Even with a great plague raging, he could not bear to abandon it.

Moreover, the armed forces of the powerful families in Nan Commandery and Jiangxia were relatively weak; the region was still one where government power was thin. By holing up in the Cloud Dream Marsh and drawing in small bands of bandits, they could quickly restore their strength and go back to a life of plunder.

But as men from other commanderies, Wang Chang and Ma Wu had their own ideas.

"We should go north!"

Wang Chang, a man of Yingchuan, proposed: "Cross Greenwood Mountain, and you're in Nanyang — Sui County, Caiyang, all rich and prosperous lands. Once we get there, we can open up a whole new world!"

Wang Chang, courtesy name Yanqing, had originally been a small landholder. He had fled to Greenwood after killing a man to avenge his younger brother. Unwilling to spend his life as a bandit, he made this argument.

The conservative chieftains objected. They were unfamiliar with Nanyang, and the powerful families there were strong; those sturdy fortified manors were as defensible as county seats and could not be easily taken.

But Ma Wu, who had once made a trip to Nanyang and raided Diwu Lun's delegation, said: "The great knight-errant of Chongling, Liu Bosheng, once saw through my identity as a Greenwood chieftain yet still hosted a banquet for me. He also often sends his clansmen to Greenwood with gifts of salt and cloth. We can surely march north and contact him to rise up together!"

This was a dispute over the line of march. The two sides argued without yielding, to the point of drawing swords. In the end, it was the other great chieftain who had first raised troops, Wang Feng, who stepped forward as peacemaker.

"Since both directions have their advantages and reasons, why not split the force in two — one part going south, the other north?"

That was indeed a solution. Splitting into two directions would also leave that damned Grand General Who Receives Words, Yan You, not knowing which group to pursue.

And so, with joy and cheer, everyone parted ways: Wang Feng led a force out of the Xin, heading for Sui County, the gateway to Nanyang.

Meanwhile, Wang Kuang led his men out of Yundu, making straight for Jingling.

The only one not particularly happy was Wang Chang. When the forces were divided, he, who was set on going north to do great things, was ordered by the great chieftains to join the southbound contingent.

"Chieftain Yanqing captured Jingling last year and is familiar with the area. We can't do without you on the southern march."

Wang Chang commanded few men, and more than half had died in the epidemic. How could his voice compare to the great chieftains'? He could only grudgingly agree.

In the latter part of the sixth month, the able-bodied soldiers of the Greenwood Army left their main base and began to break out in two directions, seeking a path to survival.

The Greenwood Army force of over ten thousand heading north set out from the Xin, and thus were called the the Xin troops.

The force of over ten thousand heading south aimed to follow the river downstream, and thus were called the Xiajiang troops.

As the two armies parted ways, Grand Chieftain Wang Kuang, who led the Xiajiang troops, looked back at the place where he had risen in revolt and fought for years, unable to tear himself away. The malaria-stricken sick who lay stiff and could barely move were abandoned; the old, the weak, the women and children who could walk no further could only gaze after them from afar, not knowing what to do from here on.

Wang Kuang merely swore to himself: "We will definitely return!"

Over on the the Xin troops' side, Ma Wu, who could finally lead his men back to fight in his home region of Nanyang, was utterly elated. Toward the Greenwood Mountain at his back, he did not so much as turn his head, his heart brimming with joy.

"At last — no need to ever come back!"

……

It was likewise the end of the sixth month. In Wei Cheng Commandery in Ji Province, which had been spared the plague god's ravages, Diwu Lun, Ma Yuan, Geng Chun, and the others were tensely planning the assault on the Li clan of Wu'an.

Two thousand refugee soldiers were under Ma Yuan's command, while Geng Yan led the five hundred troops he had personally trained for over two months — they were the main force for attacking Wushi County.

Diwu Lun, for his part, transferred five hundred men from Liyang to command personally.

Together with a thousand able-bodied men of Wei, conscripted on short notice to serve as support troops transporting provisions, they accompanied Lord Diwu as he took up station in Liangqi County, fifty li north of Yecheng.

First, to secure the forward army's provisions; second, to press close to Zhao territory, guarding against the Li clan's allies — the various remnants of the former dynasty, the Zhaos and Lius — recklessly rising in revolt despite the imperial army's presence east of the pass.

And third… as the Grand Commander, keeping some distance from the forward army spared Diwu Lun from his own itching hands meddling in specific command and playing at micromanagement.

And just before the three forces set out, Ma Yuan and Diwu Lun both learned two great pieces of happy news from the commandery office.

What Ma Yuan heard was: his daughter was pregnant!

What Diwu Lun learned was: his wife was with child!

……

PS: In the third year, a great plague struck; nearly half the dead perished, and (the Greenwood men) thereupon scattered and withdrew. — Book of the Later Han, Biography of Liu Xuan

(Chapter 2 at 18:00.)