Chapter 472: The Situation Is Excellent

Wang Mang had always firmly believed that the two centuries of land annexation since the Han dynasty were an evil unheard of since time immemorial — all because Shang Yang had ruined the well-field system. In any case, Qin and Shang Yang would shoulder all the blame.

That being so, Doctor Wang prescribed the remedy for the ailment: he held that nothing short of restoring the well-field system could eliminate it. A pity that when he first became Emperor, his heart was too soft, and the powerful magnates and scholars lobbied him repeatedly: "The well-field, though the law of sage kings, has long been abandoned. Even if Yao and Shun rose again, without a gradual transition of a hundred years, it could not be implemented. The realm has only just been settled; the myriad people are newly submitted — truly, it cannot yet be put into practice."

Wang Mang was "muddle-headed" at that time, and so he compromised.

But now Wang Mang understood: "A reform that is not thorough is worse than no reform at all!"

"Yao and Shun rising again could not implement it? What Tang and Wu could not accomplish, I shall accomplish; the antiquity that Confucius and Mencius could not restore, I shall restore!"

In a word, all the things that Dong Zhongshu and the Han Confucians only dared to imagine in their minds — he, Wang Mang, would put them into practice one by one! Without trying, how would one know if it could be done?

Only thus could he spread the guiding principles of Great Peace, establish the foundation of ultimate transformation, equalize the wealth of the people, and rectify the extravagance or frugality of customs.

Wang Mang believed that under the well-field system, a state of great order would emerge: wealth and poverty balanced, no man with surplus strength, no land with surplus yield, people in their comings and goings befriending one another, and in times of illness supporting one another.

As if, once the land problem was solved, one could leap overnight from great chaos to great order.

At least in Wang Mang's eyes, such a transformation had indeed occurred in Nanyang: "Over the past year, every county in Nanyang under the Red Eyebrows' control has completed land allocation. Now, every tiller has his own field."

The main obstacle before had been the powerful magnates; now that this difficulty had been swept away and suppressed by the Red Eyebrows' mighty armed force, everything went smoothly, with no problems whatsoever — if one disregarded the considerable gap in land distribution between the Red Eyebrows' "countrymen" and the local "wild folk," the latter having to labor for the former for nothing, many middling households receiving even less land than before, and the many lives lost in the fields due to the uneven fertility of the soil. If these minor details did not count as problems, then the situation was indeed quite good.

And the situation around Wancheng, which Wang Mang personally supervised, was also quite good. After tenant farmers and serfs were emancipated, their enthusiasm for labor had indeed risen considerably. Upon hearing that no taxes would be collected in the future, though they were half-believing and half-doubting, people still had to eat, after all. Not only did they work hard on their private fields, they also did not slack off when working the public fields of the well. When Wang Mang headed north, it was just the time of a bumper grain harvest there.

That was why he dared to call it a "great achievement." The situation was not just somewhat good — it was excellent!

But just as Wang Mang was boasting, Liu Gong and Liu Penzi, the brothers responsible for the autumn harvest and grain collection in Nanyang, upon arriving in Xinye County, looked at each other in dismay and uttered two words in unison:

"Not good!"

The so-called well-field meant that within one well-unit, eight households had to cooperate fully to complete the cultivation, and the produce obtained was distributed equally. Among it, all the produce from the hundred mu of public fields went entirely to the Red Eyebrows.

When collecting grain, one simply had to cut and take away the harvest from the public fields; not a bit was taken from the private fields, which also avoided complex problems like calculating taxes and per-mu yields.

But the premise was that the public fields had to have grain — enough grain.

After Liu Gong and Liu Penzi arrived in Xinye County, they saw no bumper harvest, only many fields with sparse, withered millet ears. They also learned from the Red Eyebrow giant stationed there that thirty percent of the "wild folk" in Xinye County, after receiving their land, would rather abandon it unplanted and chose to flee the famine instead!

When they finally caught a man who had sneaked back home after fleeing the famine, Liu Penzi asked him curiously:

"Did you not long for land day and night in the past? Now that you have been given land, why flee?"

The old farmer of Xinye, hearing that Liu Gong and Liu Penzi were kinsmen of the House of Han, muttered: "If it were land distributed by the Han court, naturally we would take it. But the Red Eyebrows..."

He shook his head and said: "The Deng, Lai, and Yin clans of Xinye are all great lineages. They have fled, but who knows when they might fight their way back? The Red Eyebrows have now divided up the fields and properties of these families and given them to us. Won't we face retaliation later?"

The farmers of Xinye were quite worried about this. The various clans had ruled the area for decades, even over a hundred years, and they were not utterly cruel or vicious; they treated their tenant farmers quite well. The family heads were kind-hearted. Anyone who accepted their fields would be pointed at and cursed behind their backs by their neighbors in secret.

"Fleeing famine only means going hungry for a while, but if we suffer retaliation, we won't be able to hold our heads up in the village for generations."

Liu Gong listened in silence. Liu Penzi, however, having been abducted into the Red Eyebrows as a child and influenced by what he had seen and heard, simply said: "In that case, shouldn't you all be even more willing to help the Red Eyebrows, to ensure the Deng, Lai, and Yin clans do not return?"

"Can they be stopped?" The man of Xinye had no faith at all in the Red Eyebrows. "Deng Fengxian and Lai Junshu are both born to be generals. Deng Feng is right now in Jingzhou to the south. Lai Junshu, I hear, has gone to join the King of Wu — the King of Wu of Kunyang! The one who defeated three hundred thousand with three hundred men!"

Liu Xiu, the sole remaining scion of the House of Han, was also an object of reverence for his fellow Nanyang natives, and the Battle of Kunyang was being endlessly mythologized.

"And the head of the Yin clan, I hear, has gone north to join the State of Wei. He's no pushover either, and could come slaughtering his way back at any time with a hundred thousand troops..."

Everyone said that the Red Eyebrows would take a place, strip it clean, and then leave. Even when there were no enemies, they were prone to act as roving bandits. If they met a strong foe, they would simply turn and flee. And what of the local people? Anyone foolish enough to assist the Red Eyebrows now would, every last one of them, be purged by the powerful magnates later!

"The various clans of Nanyang, however bad, are still our fellow villagers and kin. Bones may break, but the sinews still connect; we are to be neighbors for generations. The Red Eyebrows, however good, are outsiders!"

Coupled with the fact that the Red Eyebrows were a mixed bag, the good and the bad together, and had done no small number of evil deeds, regional antagonism thus overwhelmed class antagonism.

In places where the power of the magnates had been greatest, this situation — people too afraid to farm and preferring to abandon their fields — was all the more frequent. It was the same in Chongling and Huyang. Some even went further, crossing the Tongbai Mountains directly to join "Wu Han," who controlled the three passes of Ming'e. The Red Eyebrows had finally, with great difficulty, tried to become "sedentary bandits," but their reputation was too foul, and the population under their rule was hemorrhaging severely.

Liu Gong and Liu Penzi only had to take a casual walk to understand. The area around Wancheng was indeed "excellent," but a hundred li beyond the city walls, below the township level, there was nothing but anarchy. Spies from the State of Wei and Wu Han ran rampant, rumors filled the sky, and there were hardly any households that could settle their minds and farm the well-fields.

As the autumn harvest arrived, something even worse occurred. Because no grain could be collected from many public fields, in order to meet the quotas demanded by Wancheng, the Red Eyebrow Attendants in the counties and townships began forcibly seizing grain from the private fields...

Conflicts broke out constantly in the fields: "Wasn't it agreed that we would only farm the public fields, and that the private fields would pay no grain?"

"Did you farm the public fields properly? A hundred mu and you only harvested a few dozen shi? Even scattering seeds at random would yield more than this!"

"Attendant, you also come from a bitter background. Do you not know the hardships of farming? Other households may have been lazy, it's true, but I truly did plant! It just didn't grow well. The weather was dry, the ditches and canals fell into disrepair and had no water — you can't blame me."

The powerful magnates who had previously organized the digging of canals and the distribution of water had all been driven away by the Red Eyebrows. The newly arrived township officials did not understand local conditions. It would be a miracle if there were a bumper harvest.

But though the people's cries were so bitter, the officials' cries were so furious. They had completely forgotten that they themselves had once joined the Red Eyebrows because of excessively heavy taxes: "I don't care! If the public fields don't yield a hundred shi of grain, we'll levy it from the private fields!"

"May I ask, who set this rule?"

"Elder Fan set it, Libationer Tian set it! If you refuse to hand it over, then go to the front lines and carry loads!" The Red Eyebrow Attendant was also spouting nonsense off the top of his head, but old Wang Mang had indeed set a standard that "a hundred mu of public fields should yield at least a hundred shi even in the worst harvest," and then demanded that every locality implement it.

By the same logic, if many people in the northern township had abandoned their land and the grain collected was too little, they would simply seize extra grain from several other townships to make up the shortfall.

And when the Red Eyebrow Attendants collected grain, they naturally raised their hand high and let off the private fields where the Red Eyebrows' own dependents, the "countrymen," lived. Thus, the burden of the shortfall fell entirely upon the "wild folk" who had not abandoned their planting and fled the famine. In the end, each household often ended up paying over sixty percent of their grain in levies — the Attendants had worked so hard, and since the Red Eyebrows had no salaries, they had to have a little something for their trouble, right?

Cart after cart of grain was hauled away from the impoverished villages, leaving only the unlucky farmers sitting dejectedly in their fields, cursing the Red Eyebrows once more.

"These Red Eyebrows — how are they any different from when the Han, Xin, and Greenwood governments were still here?"

"Had we known it would be like this, we might as well have all gone together to join the heads of the Deng, Lai, and Yin families!"

A year ago, when the land was distributed, they had been grateful to the Red Eyebrows, shouting "Long live Emperor Liu the Republic" and "May Elder Fan live nine thousand nine hundred years!"

Violent tax resistance grew ever more frequent. Coupled with the machinations of the remnant forces of the powerful magnates, every county in Nanyang was in turmoil. A pity, then, that Wang Mang had once again left the grassroots behind and could neither hear nor see any of this. When he left Wancheng and went to Chen County to present the "annual accounts" to Elder Fan, all he received were the full quotas of grain from each locality, along with reports that the situation was "excellent"!

Even when Liu Penzi returned to Wancheng and could not help but want to chase after the carriage to tell old Tian the true situation on the ground, he was held back by his elder brother.

Liu Penzi was filled with righteous indignation: "Elder Brother, the Attendants below are deceiving people — deceiving old Tian, deceiving the Elder!"

"For centuries, dynasty after dynasty, deceiving those below and hoodwinking those above — hasn't it always been done this way?"

Liu Gong knew a bit more. No matter the era, those upright and incorruptible officials who dared to speak the truth were always regarded by their colleagues as misfits, silenced by the muddy current, and sometimes even died mysteriously. He shook his head: "Back then, everyone thought, 'Everyone else does it, so I will too. The sky won't fall.'"

"But now, the sky has already fallen."

The sky of the Liu clan, the sky of Great Han, had fallen into the mud, crushed into dust under the wheels of the Red Eyebrows' war chariots. Pitiful that they, born of noble blood, had a younger brother reduced to a shepherd boy, and now had to run errands for the Red Eyebrows.

By what right? The Red Eyebrows, and old Tian too, all said that the world had come to this because their Liu-surnamed magnates had bred too many, lived too well, and eaten the Nine Provinces into poverty. But now, the Liu-surnamed kinsmen in every province had been abducted by the passing Red Eyebrows, forced to eat chaff and drink gruel, even starved to death — but had the world gotten any better?

The people of Nanyang and Runan, those who had been oppressed in the past, were still suffering.

He no longer felt that the Liu clan bore any responsibility for this chaotic world.

Liu Gong raised his head and looked at the evening clouds, dyed red by the setting sun.

As for the Red Eyebrows' fate? Liu Gong saw the Red Eyebrow masses in chaos and knew they were doomed. Fearing disaster for himself and his brothers, he took after those shrewd old farmers of Xinye who abandoned their land — making early plans was already too late, and now he should offer the Red Eyebrows sharp critiques of their ills? On what grounds?

"Aside from Old Tian, the Red Eyebrows themselves don't care. You and I just need to clap along with them and cheer loudly — isn't that enough!"

……

As the Red Eyebrows' "Second Emperor," Xu Xuan had always liked playing the antagonist to "Old Tian," because he always felt this man was a treacherous minister at Fan Chong's side, bent on destroying the Red Eyebrows.

But unlike his reasoned opposition during the abolition of slavery, once Wang Mang's comprehensive plan was rolled out, Xu Xuan in principle supported the well-field system.

Xu Xuan had been a prison clerk, and his lifelong idol was the Han dynasty's second-greatest founding minister, Cao Shen, who had also served as a prison aide. He believed that in their early days, the Red Eyebrows could seize wealth from officials and powerful magnates, but once they held territory, they had to sustain themselves by establishing a regime — that was why he was so keen on the "emperors, kings, generals, and ministers" that Fan Chong despised. Even if they were now practicing some "Five Lords' Republic," they still had to set up a tax system and organize production to secure a stable source of grain and funds.

But he also understood that, given the Red Eyebrows' peculiar circumstances — which made it very hard to attract educated scholars or former officials of the old dynasty — the complex tax system of Han times simply could not be implemented. The well-field system was indeed more convenient; even the most illiterate person knew to harvest the grain from that central plot.

As for the real situation in Nanyang and Runan, Xu Xuan had large numbers of former subordinates spread through the grassroots, so he understood it far better than Wang Mang — yet he turned a blind eye: without doing it this way, there was no way to collect grain. What the Red Eyebrows needed to solve now was survival, not delivering justice to every farming household.

"Old Tian truly is a statesman of the realm."

After Wang Mang finished that "annual report," Xu Xuan rarely offered him a few words of praise. He admitted that he himself possessed only petty stratagems and lacked the great wisdom to govern a state; for the time being, the Red Eyebrows still could not do without Old Tian.

But Xu Xuan still refused to give up. He felt that Wang Mang must be a major figure of the Xin Dynasty, perhaps even a high official among the Three Dukes and Nine Ministers. Wasn't Grand Preceptor Wang Kuang stationed in Chen County? Perhaps he could be brought to identify him...

After the praise, Xu Xuan's tone shifted: "Although the well-field system in Nanyang and Runan has largely succeeded, the grain collected is only enough to feed the ten ten-thousand-man camps in those two commanderies."

"Now in Yingchuan, Huaiyang, Liang, and Pei — four commanderies, each with ten ten-thousand-man camps — the grain taken from the Liang-Han granaries and wealthy households is nearly exhausted."

With no more local tyrants to strike, the Red Eyebrow Army in Yu Province could only turn to demanding grain from middling households and even the poor. But affected by the war, spring planting in Liang and Chen was delayed, the autumn harvest was pitifully meager, and the common people had no surplus grain at home. Unlike in Nanyang and Runan, the Red Eyebrows' forcible extraction of life-saving grain in Liang and Chen, where their foothold was still unsteady, would trigger violent clashes between the outside army and the locals.

Fan Chong also knew that forcibly seizing food was inadvisable. The Red Eyebrow fighters still had a little rations, but they would certainly not last through the winter. Following Wang Mang's proposal to distribute land in each commandery was also a distant water that could not quench immediate thirst.

"In that case, we can only use the old method."

Fan Chong laughed: "Strike toward places that have grain — go and 'borrow grain' from the various emperors and the marquises, generals, and ministers under them!"

They would still have to rely on mobile warfare and feeding themselves elsewhere, but as to which direction to strike, disagreements arose once more.

As soon as Wang Mang heard that the Red Eyebrows were going to move troops again, he — who had been longing for this day — straightened his old back in excitement and was the first to propose:

"Lord Fan, we should strike Luoyang!"

"Northward campaign!"