Chapter 336: The Hearts of a Million Men

"Chen Menggong, you've finally returned from attending the King of Wei's banquet?"

Chen Zun, now past sixty with graying hair, was thoroughly drunk. When he arrived back at his old residence in Maoling — which Diwu Lun had returned to him — he found an old friend already waiting there. The old fellow hadn't waited inside the house but sat on the steps outside the gate, massaging his weary legs.

Chen Zun rubbed his eyes, then was instantly overcome with joy. He threw his arms around the man, old tears streaming down his face.

"I never imagined, after all this chaos, I'd see you again, Zhang Bosong!"

Zhang Song was the grandson of Zhang Chang, known as "the Capital's Eyebrow Painter," and could be considered the foremost propaganda chief in Wang Mang's regime. He wrote countless sycophantic essays for Wang Mang and was enfeoffed as a marquis for it. When Diwu Lun entered the capital, he at least didn't execute him as a traitor to the realm, and when his house was searched, they discovered he was actually an incorruptible official, so the matter was dropped.

Months ago, when Diwu Lun evacuated Chang'an, Zhang Song, holding no grudge, resolutely followed him out and settled in Chiyang north of the Wei River. He had predicted the capital would be exceptionally cold this winter. Those Chang'an neighbors who once mocked him were surely shivering with regret now — though of course, no doubt quite a few still pinned their hopes on the Wei clan coming to their rescue…

His old friend Chen Zun had also suffered a life full of misfortune. A renowned Confucian knight-errant of the Guanzhong region, Chen Zun had quelled rebellions for Wang Mang, been enfeoffed as a Marquis, and served three times as a regional official with a two-thousand-dan salary. In the end, because he once spent the night drunk at a widow's door, he was deemed to have violated public morals and was stripped of his office and stipend.

Months ago, he was recruited by the Xin Dynasty's Grand Minister of Works, Wang Yi, and accompanied the army on campaign. Wang Yi wanted to leverage his reputation in Guanzhong and Guandong, emulating how Zhou Yafu recruited Ju Meng. But Wang Yi suffered a crushing defeat at Kunyang, and Chen Zun could only flee under the escort of his retainers, dashing east and west until he barely made it to Hedong by autumn's end, seeking refuge with Dou Rong, whom he had met once before.

Dou Rong was now practically at the very bottom of the State of Wei's official pecking order and dared not take in a former Xin official. So he politely escorted him back to Guanzhong. Unexpectedly, upon arriving in Maoling, Chen Zun became Diwu Lun's honored guest and was even granted the empty title of "Palace Attendant of the Glorious Prosperity."

Chen Zun and Zhang Song were old friends. Zhang Song was broadly learned and astute, adhering to frugality and integrity; Chen Zun was unrestrained and uninhibited, a lover of drink. Yet they got along remarkably well. Now, these two old men who had lost everything were reunited and overcome with emotion.

Zhang Song's visit, of course, was not merely to see a friend. "Menggong, tell me quickly — how was the King of Wei's banquet?"

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Chen Zun knew that Zhang Song had no taste for pleasure and was really asking what the King of Wei had said to him. So he replied, "The King of Wei is courteous. Even with the Wei clan's army at his flank, he still made time to see me. He spoke of his late teacher Yang Ziyun's 'Rhapsody on Wine' — I was also quite fond of that piece in my day."

"And what else?"

"He heard that in my youth I escorted the Chanyu on his return north, so he asked a few things about the Xiongnu."

Zhang Song pressed further. "And what else?"

Chen Zun displayed the seal and cord at his waist. "He appointed me Palace Attendant of the Glorious Prosperity to tour northern Wei on the King's behalf, pacify the local powerful families, and warn everyone: those executed and those whose homes were burned were all in league with Liu Bosheng and the Wei clan. The other clans should stay peacefully where they are and not listen to rumors."

"Now that's more like it." Zhang Song clapped his hands. "With your reputation, Chen Menggong, you should be used as a figurehead precisely to soothe people's hearts."

Chen Zun, however, gave a bitter smile. "Don't celebrate too soon. If the Wei clan wins and Diwu loses, we'll either have to flee with him to Hexi or Hedong, or stay behind and await the Wei clan's judgment. You and I are both former Xin and Wang Mang marquises, and now we're running errands for the King of Wei. Once the Wei clan takes control of Guanzhong, you'll be safe enough, but I will certainly die."

Zhang Song retorted, "Who says Diwu Lun will lose?"

Chen Zun lowered his voice. "Quite a few powerful families think so. What the King of Wei burned were the debt contracts of those thirty-three already-destroyed clans, but what he slapped was the face of every powerful family in Guanzhong."

"Does the King of Wei still care about their faces? Not to belittle them, but those people are utterly useless in deciding victory or defeat."

Zhang Song sneered. "When the King of Wei purges dissidents, it's not random killing — there's a method to it. Those thirty-three powerful houses were either leftover elders of the Former Han, loyal to the House of Han and insatiably greedy — since they were impossible to win over anyway, better to exterminate them and eliminate future trouble. Or they controlled so many retainers that they posed a threat to the King of Wei, so he simply used the banquet to wipe them all out at once."

"There are also many great clans south of the Wei, but since they had already thrown in their lot with Liu Bosheng and were hostile to Wei, troops were sent directly to root them out. Now only a few families remain, stubbornly resisting in their strongholds. The rest have been destroyed or have fled, and they've called the Wei clan's army eastward."

"As for the remaining people, some — like the Ma, Geng, and the Marquis of Qiongcheng's families in Maoling — are high officials and dignitaries in the State of Wei's court. They have no reason to rebel."

"The others are so weak in manpower that they can't even beat county soldiers. As long as the King of Wei sends people like you to make promises on his behalf, and since the burning of contracts hasn't touched their own heads, they'll cling to wishful thinking."

Zhang Song assessed, "Therefore, although Diwu Lun's actions seem ruthless, the hidden danger lies not during wartime, but only after the war. If he doesn't rely on powerful families to govern the localities, whom should he use? He can't have his soldiers manage affairs, can he?"

Although people of the time said Zhang Song's erudition and refinement surpassed his grandfather Zhang Chang's, his grasp of governance fell short. Still, he had some insight. So he believed that the scholars of Guanzhong shouldn't rush to righteous indignation — once this battle was over, it would be their turn to take the stage.

Chen Zun nodded. "Bosong, you see things so clearly. This Palace Attendant of the Glorious Prosperity should be you."

Zhang Song hastily waved his hands. "I wrote too many fawning essays for Wang Mang, praising his mandate omens. My reputation is utterly ruined. The people of Chang'an all mock me: 'If you want a marquisate, go past Zhang Songbo; better to craft a clever memorial than to fight with all your might.' The King of Wei didn't kill me — that's his magnanimity. But he'd rather let people like Wang Long write his essays than use a single word of mine again… Still…"

He actually sighed with emotion. "The King of Wei and Wang Mang — they really are alike after all."

Chen Zun found this amusing. He hadn't seen it. "In what way are they alike?"

Zhang Song said, "Equal-field distribution, equalized loans — Wang Jujun also understood where the evils of the late Han's malaise lay. But Wang Mang was all theory and no practice. His royal-field system, restoring the well-field system, delusionally expected the local prominent clans to divide up the land themselves — isn't that laughable?"

"Diwu Lun, on the other hand, acts decisively, practical rather than theoretical. Look — didn't the land seized from those thirty-three clans get equally distributed to his officers and soldiers? I suspect that when it comes to loans and credit, he'll have his own measures sooner or later too."

For the moment, however, it was far too difficult. Wang Mang had already completely wrecked the currency system. The common people had regressed to the barter stage of the Shang, Zhou, and Spring and Autumn periods — grain and cloth were the only hard currency.

Zhang Song said, "But the greatest difference between the two men is this: Diwu Lun has an army of soldiers loyal to him. And after this affair, that loyalty is only bound to deepen further!"

…

The onlooker sees most clearly. Zhang Song, who had lost everything and had no land or related interests at stake, saw it plainly, and his assessment was exactly right.

The several thousand soldiers stationed at the front line in Liquan Township, a few dozen li west of Maoling, learned that the King of Wei had acted with lightning speed. Emulating Lord Wu'an's distribution of land, he had carved up the fields of the thirty-three powerful families north of the Wei and given every regular soldier currently in Guanzhong forty or fifty mu.

The hastily produced land deeds were distributed to them by Zhang Yu, who had been dispatched there by order. Instantly, the army's morale soared.

"We didn't lie to you, did we?"

Centurions and squad leaders like Qin He wore expressions that said "just as I expected" as they spoke to the poor soldiers, who were grinning from ear to ear. This was also the promise Diwu Lun had made to everyone when he raised his army at Hongmen.

At the same time, inwardly they were screaming, "We got the short end! These new recruits get land in Guanzhong, but our fields are far away in Wu'an in Wei Commandery — who knows if we'll ever go back. We can only hope that what the Colonel said — that the King of Wei has promised the eight hundred officers and squad leaders can swap their land later — will be put into effect soon."

Men like Qin He were mostly veterans of the Boar-Rush Braves, utterly loyal to the King of Wei. This time, higher-ups like the Palace Gentleman Zhang Yu and others had come down to hold meetings with them, giving them personal instructions. Seeing that the boasts they'd made back then had now been fulfilled, the officers were to spare no effort in helping the soldiers "recall past bitterness and savor present sweetness."

And so, in the cold twelfth month, in the township of Liquan — where all civilians had been evacuated and the fields stripped bare, leaving only soldiers — similar conversations always sprang up around the campfires.

The men Zhang Yu brought were all eloquent and literate. They addressed the crowd: "Gentlemen, in the past, when you were slaves or tenant farmers, you never had enough to eat or warm clothes to wear. But since following the King of Wei, you've never lacked for grain or clothing, have you?"

The soldiers nodded. The squad leader continued, "The promised gold was distributed the first time we entered the capital."

The men chuckled. Some of them had been carrying that gold cake in their bosoms for nearly half a year, and it was covered in teeth marks…

"And now, you even have land of your own!"

Brand-new wooden contracts were clutched in their hands — the arduous task that Jing Dan and Ren Guang had spent two months completing.

Wang Long was right: matching the halves of a tally and separating the contract deed — these are the means of establishing trust. For those who possess a house or a state, sufficient arms and sufficient food earn the people's trust. And among these, trust is the most important.

But in Diwu Lun's heart, true trustworthiness was not the high-interest loan contracts that rich men and moneylenders cajoled and tricked tenant farmers and the poor into signing — it was this very equal-field contract!

Zhang Yu and the others asked in return, "Tell us — does the King of Wei keep his word or not?"

"He does!" came the unanimous shout from every encampment. The campfire warmed the gold cakes in their bosoms, heartwarming. The wooden contracts were damp with sweat, and they were terrified of smudging the carved characters. Unlike the insatiably greedy powerful magnates and nobles, they were easily satisfied. If this didn't count, what did?

Seizing the moment, Zhang Yu raised his arm and cried, "There's an old saying: 'Ji Bu's promise is worth a hundred jin of gold.' So today, how much is the King of Wei's promise worth?"

"He gave us gold — just the gold alone, distributed twice, over a hundred thousand coins in total. That's over a hundred thousand jin — enough weight to crush oxen and horses to death."

"And land — each man got forty or fifty mu. Not much, right? But add up the three armies, and that's tens of thousands of qing! For one man to walk around tens of thousands of qing of land, how many days and nights would it take? He'd walk his legs off!"

As he spoke, Zhang Yu, who had a script in his belly, suddenly felt a pang in his nose as he thought of his and Zhu Di's own backgrounds. Overcome, he began to weep.

"To fulfill this promise, the King lives frugally. His chariot has no ornamentation; he drives mares. He builds no palaces. When he was in Yueyang, he squeezed in together with the archives office. Now that the Queen and the Crown Prince have arrived, they're just temporarily using a small detached palace from the Han era."

Though it stemmed from personal taste and values, Diwu Lun's style could rival Wang Mang's in its austerity. But the greatest difference between the two men was this: Diwu Lun was not the least bit stingy with those beneath him. Fiefs, stipends, gold cakes, land — all kinds of tangible benefits were distributed when they were due. If he were to be defeated and perish tomorrow, could he take all this hoarded stuff to the grave with him?

Besides, since the powerful families harbor disloyalty, he now urgently needs to force growth artificially — to forge a class that firmly supports him!

Stirred by Zhang Yu, Qin He and the others were also moved. They came to the campfire and said, "Though we are army officers, we are just like the soldiers who rose up at Hongmen — all poor men. For so many years, from childhood to now, we've endured countless lashes from our masters, never treated as human."

"On the estates, we were donkeys and oxen, worked to exhaustion and death."

"In the Boar-Rush Braves, we were horses, driven forward to die."

"Beasts of burden, every one of us!"

His voice was tinged with anger, then suddenly choked with tears: "Only the King of Wei ever treated me as a man!"

On the outer edge of the campfire sat some tenant farmers from the Five Tombs, conscripted to haul grain and fodder as laborers. Listening from a distance, watching the soldiers weep, they were astonished, and also filled with yearning — the firelight flickered and danced in their eyes.

Seeing the mood was ripe, Zhang Yu took a swig of wine and rose: "The realm is in chaos now — there are several emperors, dozens of kings. Some may have noble blood, some may have great power. But only the King of Wei can speak for us poor folk, give us food and drink, gold and land. But if the Wei clan of Longyou or the Gengshi of Lühan fight their way in…"

"They'll seize it all back!"

He suddenly jabbed a finger at the tenant laborers beyond the firelight: "Even the debt bonds you just had burned and wiped clean — they'll all be restored! Interest compounding on interest, rent crushing you to death, then crushing your sons and grandsons and great-grandsons!"

"Gentlemen, can we let them have their way?"

These words jolted everyone like a thunderclap, and their hearts filled with fury: "No!"

Their answering roar shook the night sky, carrying far, far across the plains north of the Wei River!

Some bolder tenant laborers edged closer and asked Qin He, Zhang Yu, and the others, "Officers, if the King of Wei's soldiers are treated so well, can we also become soldiers? And if we do, can we also get land?"

"Of course you can!"

Zhang Yu pointed toward the southern bank of the Wei in the distance: "We've struck down over a dozen powerful families south of the Wei. The land is a bit less, but still enough to divide among tens of thousands."

"Beyond the Passes, the realm is vast — we've only taken one of the nine provinces. The other eight are still waiting for us to conquer for the King of Wei. You don't even need great merit — as long as you're willing to endure hardship, are you afraid you won't get land in the end?"

After this speech, though it was the bitter cold of the twelfth month, a fire seemed to blaze in the soldiers' hearts!

That fire was called hope — a luxury they had never known in the deep darkness since the end of the Han. Wang Mang claimed to reform the system, but he only tinkered in the court without ever putting it into practice; it never directly touched their lives.

The tenant laborers, whose debt bonds had just been canceled when the King of Wei overrode the united objections of the "gentlemen," now hoped to truly enlist and own their own land. They numbered in the tens of thousands, even a hundred thousand. Even those tenants whose debts had not been directly canceled were overjoyed to see the arrogant powerful families brought low.

And the soldiers who had already become small farmers again since the Hongmen uprising — their numbers fluctuating, now totaling over forty thousand — saw the King of Wei's promises fulfilled. Their hearts rejoiced, and their trust in him deepened. Some thought only of driving off the invading Wei clan troops so they could live in peace; others, watching the officers with heads held high, aspired to climb even higher.

Officers like Qin He, already minor landowners, wanted more and better land, and dreamed of building a fortified manor to play with someday — that was the greatest luxury they could imagine in this life.

As for men like Zhang Yu, who had already risen into the upper ranks of the State of Wei, they had their own dreams.

"I want to be enfeoffed as a marquis too!"

This was no longer the heart of Diwu Lun alone.

It was the heart of thousands upon tens of thousands!

…

A hundred li to the northwest, in Haozhi County, the "White Tiger Grand General" Wei Cui had seized the area with cavalry from six commanderies. He hesitated between launching a surprise attack on the Five Tombs and pinning down the Wei army, when the scouts he had sent to reconnoiter Liquan Village returned, their faces deathly pale.

"How are the Wei army's preparations?"

"Grain and fodder are ample, defenses are tight, and morale…"

"What of their morale?" Wei Cui pressed. Hadn't the powerful families who fled from south of the Wei said that Diwu Lun's perverse policies had thrown men's hearts into chaos, that everyone was sharpening their blades, ready to welcome the royal army?

The scout raised his head and said, with great caution, "Cries of loyalty to the King of Wei shake the countryside in all directions. Their spirit could swallow mountains and rivers!"

…

PS: Update tomorrow at the usual time.