Chapter 219: The Common People All Yearn for Our Great Han

"I've seen Boyu's birth date — and I lived through the last years of the Han."

Ma Yuan had seen Diwu Lun's birth date when the two families exchanged betrothal gifts. Diwu Lun was only twenty-three this year, yet he was already the youngest Provincial Governor and a top-ranking minister, renowned across the realm. Who could have imagined that just four or five years ago, he was nothing more than a lowly Palace Gentleman living day to day?

Diwu Lun nodded. "I was born in the first year of Yuanshi under Emperor Ping — the first year of the Common Era."

Strictly speaking, that was already the era when Wang Mang held power. Diwu Lun said, "When the Han fell, I was only nine. Everything I know of the former dynasty is hearsay."

Ma Yuan said, "I am more than ten years your senior, so I lived through a stretch of it."

What Ma Yuan experienced in his youth was the darkest period of the Han. Under Emperor Cheng, the Wang consort clan's five marquises wallowed in arrogance and debauchery. By the time of Emperor Ai, it was even worse — the Ding and Fu consort clans outdid the Wangs in every excess.

"As for the common people, there were seven ways to lose everything and not one to gain; seven ways to die and not one to live."

The seven losses were: unending floods and droughts; ever-heavier taxes and levies; extortion by corrupt officials; oppression by powerful magnates; corvée labor that ignored the farming season; rebellions of the border tribes; and bandit plunder.

The seven deaths were: cruel officials slaughtering the people; jailors torturing prisoners to death; courts handing down wanton sentences that left good men no way to live; robbers killing for profit; blood feuds of mutual vengeance; famine years starving the people to death; and unchecked plagues.

"Under these seven losses and seven deaths, commoners rose up no less than in earlier years. In Emperor Ai's time, tens of thousands of people east of the Pass, using worship of the Queen Mother of the West as a pretext, stirred riots that spread through twenty-six commanderies and kingdoms. It took over three months to put them down."

"Revolts by the iron-office slaves broke out one after another."

"I saw it with my own eyes: in the second year of Yuanshou under Emperor Ai, commoners near the capital district, enraged that the House of Han had raised taxes, set fire to the mausoleum town of Emperor Wu at Maoling. The blaze was so bright it lit up Weiyang Palace!"

The people's hearts had turned from the Han. The Confucian scholars thought the Han's system of royal hegemony was not thorough enough. The common folk felt life was getting worse by the day. The Liu clan had produced three generations of emperors without heirs — perhaps the line was done for?

Even Emperor Ai himself felt the Great Han could not hold on. He tried to "renew the Mandate," styling himself something like "Chen Sheng Liu the Great Peace Emperor," which ended as a farce that fizzled out — in effect, an admission that the House of Han was already in decline. He probably didn't want the job anymore either, for he half-jokingly, half-seriously considered abdicating the realm to Dong Xian.

Ma Yuan, having lived through both eras, saw it clearly: "At that time, did the people's hearts yearn for Han? Their hearts yearned for change!"

It was precisely this tide of yearning for change that brought Wang Mang forth at the appointed time. By the peaceful method of "abdication," he seized the throne, established the Xin Dynasty, and carried out reforms, meeting the hopes of every social stratum for easing and resolving the contradictions. So, when Han gave way to Xin, apart from scattered resistance by the Han imperial clan and a handful of officials, what was the attitude of the vast majority under Heaven?

Ma Yuan said, "Either they craned their necks and sighed, full of expectation." Take his own Ma clan's elder brothers, for example — they actively campaigned for Wang Mang and won positions among the new nobility. The Imperial Academy, expanded by Wang Mang, was even more jubilant, feeling that the "impure" Han governance was finally over and they could now properly implement the teachings of the sages.

"As for the common people, because the Wang clan dominated the court and seized the throne under borrowed names, the danger arose from above and the harm did not reach down to them. Therefore, between Liu and Wang, they had no preference and no aversion."

What does "no preference and no aversion" mean? It means they had no bias — they simply did not care!

Having recounted the past, Ma Yuan looked back at the present situation and found even he thought it absurd: "Yet now, twenty years after the Wang clan's reforms, it has turned into 'the people's hearts yearn for Han.'"

This point had to be acknowledged. Even in Wei territory, if you grabbed an old farmer and asked him whether the Xin Dynasty or the Han Dynasty was better — if he were willing to speak the truth, he would absolutely choose the latter! Other regions went without saying.

"But is it truly the Han that the people under Heaven yearn for?" Diwu Lun disagreed.

"Then what does Boyu think it is?" Ma Yuan smiled, not giving away the answer.

Diwu Lun dipped his finger in wine and wrote two characters on the table. Ma Yuan leaned over to look and immediately burst out laughing.

One character was "peace"; the other was "stability."

"What the people's hearts yearn for is not the Han — it is peace and stability!"

Those somewhat advanced in years all remembered the days of the former dynasty. The hardships and displacements of chaotic times naturally stirred the common folk's warm recollections of a past that, though not one of prosperous plenty, was still tranquil, uneventful, and safe for young and old alike.

This illusory, beautified vision of the past naturally pushed all the bitterness, suffering, and the seven losses and seven deaths they had once endured to the back of their minds, while invisibly magnifying the pain of the present — and then they would sigh to their children and grandchildren: "Life today is nothing like it was under the Han!"

In the minds of common folk who had little grasp of history, the Han Dynasty was the very embodiment of peace and stability. If not yearning for Han, what were they supposed to yearn for? The Qin, already demonized? Or the Zhou, vague and elusive, existing only in the wistful imaginations of Confucian scholars?

One could say that yearning for Han was practically the only choice left to the common people of a realm sinking into ruin — a colossal bubble blown to enormous size. Until this bubble was burst by cruel reality, the current of "the people's hearts yearn for Han" possessed a massive "social mass base."

Diwu Lun had pinpointed the crux of the matter, but that did not change anything.

Ma Yuan shook his head. "How many people can see as clearly as you and I?"

"Geng Boshan may see it clearly, yet he still believes we should raise the Han banner going forward. Why?"

In Diwu Lun's view, beyond the lower commoners, the officials and powerful magnates of the Great Xin also faced the question of where to go after abandoning Xin.

Some, like Bao Yong, clung to the immutable principle that sovereign and subject remain unchanged through ten thousand generations, believing Wang Mang's usurpation of Han had been wrong from the start and single-mindedly sought restoration. Confucian scholars who had spent two hundred years disparaging the Han's hegemonic system as inferior to Zhou governance were now changing their tune and beginning to recount the glories of the Wen and Jing reigns over and over.

The clearer-headed ones, like Geng Chun, did not genuinely yearn for the House of Han either. Rather, they wanted to guide the situation to their advantage, fully exploiting this considerable resource of public sentiment to attract and win over the common people and the scholar-gentry.

Heaven pities the people; what the people desire, Heaven will surely grant. The people's hearts could turn the phantoms of the past into a mighty force — and even make them real. At the very least, Diwu Lun knew it had become real; otherwise, how could there have been an Eastern Han?

So now, with the Xin Dynasty's survival uncertain, those ready to jump ship were already preparing to raise the banner of the House of Han.

"That is why Feng Yan and Boshan all invoke the Liu clan, with one voice and no dissent."

Ma Yuan said, "This so-called lingering grace and residual glory is both false and true. Amidst the interplay of truth and illusion, it is like a surging tide — the foam is thick, but the waves are strong too. How can ordinary men resist it?"

"Since things have come to this, and the situation is what it is, what does Boyu plan to do going forward?" Ma Yuan looked at Diwu Lun with keen interest. For himself, whether or not to raise the Han banner was also a matter of no preference and no aversion — he only wanted to see how Diwu Lun would choose.

If Diwu Lun shrank back and followed the crowd, that would be a prudent choice, but Ma Yuan would feel a small measure of disappointment in this son-in-law. After all, what he hoped to see was a brilliant lord, one of broad vision and great magnanimity!

"Since the day I was born, I have never been a subject of the House of Han."

Diwu Lun raised his head and smiled. "And in the future, I intend to stand straight and walk my own path!"

Never a Han subject — going it alone to the very end!

If one had to argue the point, Diwu Lun had far deeper feelings about the character "Han" than the ancients did. It had become the name of an entire people, a sentiment engraved deep in his bones. When playing a certain game, he too would roar: "Uphold the House of Han!"

But that did not mean you had to become a slave, in spirit and in body, to the ancient, decaying dynasty called "Han," bowing and declaring yourself its subject the moment you saw it. How did you know whether the man under that banner was Liu Xiu — or Lu Fang?

In this great tide of "the people's hearts yearn for Han," Diwu Lun intended to go against the current, without any shortcut of borrowed momentum. This was destined to be the hardest road of all! To blaze a new path beyond Xin and Han, one could only hack through thorns and brambles, endure every hardship!

Diwu Lun had laid out his intentions; now it was up to Ma Yuan's attitude. The Wei leadership circle had to unify its thinking, starting with Ma Yuan.

Ma Yuan was rather surprised by Diwu Lun's choice — and full of approval. He only said, "I seldom praise Boyu, but today I shall praise him, just this once."

"Since Boyu took charge of Wei Commandery, he has selected elite troops and deployed garrison forces. With the three armies in order and armor and weapons fully prepared, he has defended against the powerful Red Eyebrows abroad and shaken the lands between the Yellow River and the Ji River, so that roving bandits dare not violate his borders. He has also assessed the richness of the land, observed the benefits of its waters and springs, devised methods of military-agricultural settlement and land distribution, recruited refugees, and trained them in warfare and archery, gaining nearly ten thousand armored soldiers. With their protection, the people of Wei have found peace in their livelihoods."

"If one speaks of yearning for Han, Wei is probably the place that yearns for it least — because with Diwu close at hand, peace and stability are already here. Why seek water from distant lands?"

Exactly — this was Diwu Lun's "mass base," and the foundation for his hegemony.

Diwu Lun rose from his seat. "Wenyuan, it is precisely this peace and stability that I wish to extend to broader lands — to Ji Province, to Yan Province, to all under Heaven!"

Not just restoring peace and stability — in the future, there must also be new change.

"But I cannot do it alone. I need the aid of men fit to be chief ministers — I need men like Xiao He and Cao Shen, like Fan Kuai, Guan Ying, and Zhou Bo! Is Wenyuan willing to help me?"

Ma Yuan had watched Diwu Lun grow with his own eyes: from disdain at Xiliu Pavilion before Wan Xiu was released, to approval when they "carried out Heaven's justice" together in New Qinzhong, to astonishment when Diwu Lun declared his ambitions before the Helan Mountains, and finally to the shared commitment of their two families' marriage alliance.

Diwu Lun had his own flaws and shortcomings, but he also had rare and valuable qualities. Ma Yuan's only concern was whether his caliber — sufficient to be a regional lord — was enough to be the master of all under Heaven…

Was he truly qualified?

They could only take it one step at a time. At least, Ma Yuan had yet to see anyone who had done better than Diwu Lun.

Ma Yuan said pensively, "At present, people's hearts seem to yearn for the Han, yet the realm is in upheaval. The Greenwood's Gengshi Emperor has only made a beginning; hereafter, those who steal that name will be beyond counting. Do such men have the talent to govern? Whether they will squander the Han-yearning momentum just as Wang Mang squandered the momentum of longing for change — that remains unknown."

"Therefore, I believe that once the Xin falls, the realm will descend into the Warring States pattern, with victor and vanquished yet undecided."

Ma Yuan had already changed how he addressed Diwu Lun. He bowed to him with clasped hands: "If you, my enlightened lord, wish to achieve something great — difficult though it is, it is also full of promise!"

Seeing that Ma was now won over, Diwu Lun let out a long breath. It was a relief that this fellow Ma Yuan could still reach a common understanding with him; at least he had one man he could open his heart to.

As for the rest, he could not tell them this plan truthfully for now — it might well frighten off a few.

"The people may be made to follow, but not to understand" — by "the people," Diwu Lun understood "powerful clansmen and officials." People are not persuaded by a mouth endlessly chattering in their ears, but by what their own eyes see, by circumstances that leave them no choice, by the helplessness of being forcibly bound onto the chariot. One man who bares his heart is enough.

"But if you wish to contend like a tiger for the realm, my lord, you still lack one thing."

Ma Yuan began laying plans for Diwu Lun and pointed out what he most lacked: "Legitimate standing!"

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This is something modern people often cannot grasp — does such an intangible thing as legitimate standing truly matter so much?

"Of course it matters!"

Ma Yuan said, "The present situation resembles when the heroes of the Six Kingdoms rose together to destroy Qin. Wang Mang is now no different from the Second Emperor of Qin. How much longer does my lord intend to play the 'loyal minister of the Great Xin'?"

"Zhang Han served Qin loyally and surrendered only after defeat, yet the world has not a single word of praise for him."

"In this age, it is not only the lord who chooses his minister; the minister also chooses his lord. The name of a Xin loyalist is no longer useful. Have you not seen, my lord? Within Wei, you could still recruit sons of humble and powerful houses, but once beyond Wei, unless they are old acquaintances, what worthy talent is willing to readily come serve you? The ancients said, 'Love the house, love even the crow on its roof.' Turn it around, and there is also 'Hate the house, hate even the crow.' The Xin and Wang Mang are the house; you, my lord, are the crow!"

The implication was clear: Diwu Lun had to wash himself clean quickly. If he delayed, and on top of that failed to raise the Han banner, he might well be mistaken for a leftover loyalist of Wang Mang. When that happened, never mind winning hearts — it would be fortunate if his own followers did not slip away. Worse, he could become the target of the whole realm's arrows!

Opposing Wang Mang and restoring the House of Han — of these two future political orthodoxies, he had to pick one. A loyal minister of the Great Xin? When the realm is ruined and men's brains smear the ground, who the hell cares whether you are loyal or not!

Diwu Lun smiled. "On this matter, I already have a plan."

He then laid out his rough scheme to Ma Yuan — how to extricate himself from the sinking ship of the Xin Dynasty, and how, in a future where all under heaven raise the Han banner, to keep himself safe and whole.

This idea made even Ma Wenyuan widen his eyes. For the second time that night, he re-examined Diwu Lun and recalculated the measure of his ambition.

"This is not like your usual style."

Diwu Lun smiled. "In ordinary times, caution is needed. But if one wishes to accomplish great things, one needs a measure of courage and decisiveness."

The summons of his trusted confidant was now concluded. What concerned Diwu Lun were deeper matters. To enter the Pass or not? From beginning to end, that was never even a question!

Diwu Lun kept one saying firmly in mind: "The gentleman conceals his tools within himself, awaiting the right moment to act — what disadvantage could there be?"

The tools he concealed were two. First, the eight hundred officers and men he had petitioned to bring with him into the Pass — they were the sparks. Second, Diwu Lun's reputation and his clansmen and old connections in Liewei Commandery within the Pass — these were the "firewood and charcoal" long since stockpiled. Not to mention that Wang Mang had also agreed to let him recruit refugees in the Pass into the ranks, adding yet more kindling for Diwu Lun.

"Awaiting" — that meant stubbornly dragging things out.

"The moment" — that meant opportunity.

As for whether to act or not, it would depend on whether, in the end, there was profit to be had.

Diwu Lun's waiting was not wasted. As the days passed, although his intelligence network lagged behind the court's post riders, men like Diwu Xian still transmitted all kinds of news back one after another. Combined with what Wang Long had recounted, he had basically gotten a clear picture of the situation in the Pass.

And "the moment" soon arrived right on schedule.

Diwu Lun could drag things out, but someone else could not. In late third month, the Xin Dynasty's final god of war — the Grand Minister of Works, Wang Yi — marched out of the Pass with a hastily scraped-together army of over three hundred thousand!

This meant one thing.

"The Pass is now empty!"

……

PS: Chapter 2 at 18:00.