Chapter 549: The Great Tree General

In the same tenth month, the northern frontier of Bingzhou was already swept by north winds, with snowflakes scattering from time to time. Guo Ji, the Inspector of Bingzhou, though advanced in years, still wrapped himself in a thick fur coat and hurried along the road.

Guo Ji was also a man of the Five Tombs in Guanzhong, with very senior credentials. He had been the Xin dynasty Governor of Bingzhou and enjoyed a reputation for virtue. After the Xin dynasty fell, he held Taiyuan alone, feigning cooperation with the remnants of the Xin army, the Northern Han, and other factions, preserving that large commandery. When the Wei army marched east, he chose to surrender. Diwu Lun, mindful of Guo Ji's familiarity with Bingzhou affairs, kept him on as Governor and later promoted him to Inspector. He wholeheartedly assisted Geng Yan and contributed greatly to the war repelling the Hu and Han incursion southward.

Now Guo Ji had traveled from Taiyuan to Shang Commandery, wishing only to see Geng Yan, with whom he had worked for two years, one last time.

A major personnel reshuffle had recently occurred at court. Like a relay race, at the end of the tenth month, Grand General of the Agile Cavalry Ma Yuan entered Liangzhou to take over military affairs. After Wu Han completed his handover, he would head north and take over from Geng Yan in the eleventh month. Geng Yan, in turn, was to travel east to Luoyang for an audience with Diwu Lun. By next spring, the young General Geng would take command of a combined army from Youzhou and Jizhou — an army said to number a full hundred thousand, twice the strength of the Bingzhou forces.

When Guo Ji arrived in Shang Commandery, Geng Yan was making final preparations to leave. He seemed to have no particular objection to being suddenly transferred — or rather, his rigid face betrayed neither pleasure nor displeasure.

Upon seeing Guo Ji, Geng Yan only said: "The incoming general, Wu Ziyan, is rough in his ways. You, Sir Guo, will inevitably have to deal with him often, and I fear it will be trying."

Guo Ji was not greatly worried about this: "Though I am a man of little talent, I have served as Commandant of Yuyang and as Grand Governor of Shanggu, so I am reasonably familiar with men from Youzhou. Wu Han may have a somewhat unsavory reputation, but he serves His Majesty loyally and does his duty for the realm."

Having said this, Guo Ji watched the Bingzhou cavalry hurriedly mobilizing outside the commandery city and asked cautiously: "General Geng, how many men do you intend to take with you?"

Like Wu Han, Geng Yan had spent three full years in Bingzhou and had trained a force of mounted archers capable of field battles against the Xiongnu. But these men were not all imperial troops; some were bold warriors and men of ambition who had come to join him out of admiration for his renown. They were generally taken on as retainers and personal followers, fighting in the same ranks during battle, but their pay and provisions came from the general's own purse.

When a general was transferred elsewhere, these personal troops would follow him, serving as his bodyguard and also being inserted into the new unit he took over, to facilitate command and coordination.

In other words, their loyalty was to the general personally, not to the Emperor.

This had been customary since the Warring States period and could not be abolished by a single administrative order. Still, the imperial military code strove to bring these retainers and personal followers under regulation, treating them as officers and soldiers who received state grain and rewards. The number a general could take with him upon transfer was also restricted: a regional general could take only eight hundred men. Of course, if a general so wished, there were plenty of ways to increase that number — for instance, having his personal troops discharged in batches and then follow their old master as private individuals.

But Geng Yan was prepared to abide by the rules: "I shall take only four hundred."

"His Majesty sent me north to train the Bingzhou cavalry precisely to counterattack the Xiongnu and retake Shuofang, Wuyuan, and the other territories. The Meiji youths and others in the army train day and night, longing for the day of vengeance. If I were to force them to choose between following their general and reclaiming their homeland, would that not be too cruel to them all?"

Geng Yan continued: "Wu Ziyan does have a somewhat unsavory reputation, but he is also a fierce commander. Back in Longyou, had he not joined forces with me, Wei Ao would not have been defeated and driven off so quickly. In choosing him to deal with the Hu and Han, His Majesty has shown discernment in his use of men. So I must leave a batch of capable hands behind, so that Wu Han can swiftly wipe out Lu Fang and restore peace to Bingzhou."

It sounded high-minded and righteous, but Inspector Guo detected a trace of reluctance in Geng Yan's words and expression. Indeed — to train fine soldiers for three grueling years, to see the moment for a counteroffensive on the Hetao gradually ripening, and then to hand them over to a colleague to win glory — who would be willing?

Yet Geng Yan swallowed his reluctance. Diwu Lun had also written to soothe this promising young general, telling him that the unification and the repulsion of the invaders were two campaigns to be fought simultaneously, the former being the foundation of the latter. In the east, a great deed awaited Geng Yan — the conquest of a kingdom and the seizure of a province!

"If I wish to destroy Qi, how can I do without a 'Yue Yi' to lead the army?"

This pleased Geng Yan somewhat. Looking across the realm, since Ma Yuan and Wu Han were both in the west, then the commander in the east — wasn't it...

He consoled himself further: Wu Han, coming to Bingzhou, could at most deal with Lu Fang. As for the real powerful foe behind him, the Xiongnu, they would likely have to wait until after unification to be dealt with. By then, he himself would have finished the civil war and could return to deal with the foreign enemy!

At this, Guo Ji was reassured and could only praise both Geng Yan and his father for understanding the greater picture. What he did not know, however, was that beyond public duty, Geng Yan also harbored a small private motive...

After seeing the old man Guo off, Geng Yan murmured to himself: "On this journey east, I am to take command of the Youzhou and Jizhou troops, the core of which are the Yuyang shock cavalry."

"Now, by leaving Wu Han a few more elite troops here in Bingzhou and making sure no one gives him trouble, Wu Han ought to feel grateful. Once I reach Youzhou and Jizhou, it will be Wu Han's old subordinates — Gai Yan and the others — who will have to show me some face, obey orders obediently, and not make things difficult for me!"

Diwu Lun's original intent in carrying out this personnel reshuffle, aside from putting the most suitable men in the most suitable positions, was also to rotate the generals' defense areas, to prevent troops from becoming the private property of their commanders and growing too entrenched in one place, which would breed problems.

Had he known that Geng Yan and Wu Han, two men of limited political awareness, understood this as "swapping old subordinates to trade favors," he would probably have been furious enough to curse.

Fortunately, among the various powers of the realm, Diwu Lun and Gongsun Shu were not the only ones vexed by factions and cliques. Liu Xiu, the Emperor of Han, who had only recently declared himself emperor, suffered from them just as much...

And so it was that in the tenth month of the first year of Jianwu (AD 26), Liu Xiu, having returned from Huaibei to Huainan, received a memorial from the west and immediately began pouring out his troubles to his closest confidant, the Grand Chancellor Deng Yu.

"Feng Yi is excellent in every way — he has both literary talent and military skill. His only flaw is that he is far too self-effacing."

It turned out that the previous year, Liu Xiu had personally led the main force against the Red Eyebrows at Pengcheng, while Feng Yi and Deng Yu had taken a detached force to seize Yuzhang, Jiangxia, and other commanderies in the west, and had sought an opportunity to advance into several commanderies in southern Jingzhou. They had driven back the troops of the King of Chuli who were besieging Changsha and "rescued" Liu Xuan, sending him back.

But before that campaign had ended, after Deng Yu escorted Liu Xuan back, Feng Yi had continued to lead the various generals in contesting Changsha and Jiangxia commanderies with the Chu army. Now they had finally driven the Chu army back north of the river, but the Han army's losses had not been light. Feng Yi had therefore submitted a memorial reporting the relevant circumstances, without daring to boast. It was likely precisely Feng Yi's humble and low-key manner that had given the other generals the idea of claiming a share of the credit.

Among those with Feng Yi were Wang Chang, a former Greenwood prince, General Ma Wu, whom Liu Xiu had sent as reinforcement, and several old associates from Nanyang. They were not the least bit modest: every one of them who had the right to submit memorials vied desperately to boast of their own achievements.

After hearing this, Deng Yu merely laughed and said: "If it were not so, how could Feng Yi be Your Majesty's 'Great Tree General'?"

This referred to an amusing incident during the Huainan campaign. Feng Yi was a man who neither contended nor snatched. After battles, the other generals liked to sit together and debate their merits, while Feng Yi would often sit alone far off under an old tree, only coming over after the others had finished squabbling. Liu Xiu, both fondly and sympathetically, had therefore called him the "Great Tree General."

Deng Yu analyzed the reasons for Liu Xiu: the several generals sent to Feng Yi this time included men like Wang Chang, a former Greenwood grand general and prince with very senior credentials, and Ma Wu, who, though of bandit origin, was the elder brother of that "Empress Ma" in Liu Xiu's palace and was thus inevitably arrogant.

Moreover, the Eastern Han also had serious factional problems. If one had to categorize, the earliest followers of Liu Xiu were the so-called "Thirteen Riders of Kunyang," and Feng Yi was one of them.

Deng Yu and his peers had joined when Liu Xiu was being squeezed out by the Gengshi Emperor, at the lowest point of his career — they were the ones who brought fuel in the snow. They formed the "King of Wu's Original Followers," mostly men from Yingchuan.

Lai Xi, Wang Chang, Ma Wu, and that batch, though they had long-standing ties with Liu Xiu and his brother, had ultimately defected only after the collapse of the Greenwood, joining the cause midway. They often brought their own personal followers and thus constituted a second group.

Of course, there was also a batch of local powers in Jiangdong and Huainan, such as the four great clans of Kuaiji and Wu — the Gu, Lu, Zhu, and Zhuang families — all descendants of former Han two-thousand-bushel officials. Admittedly, located in a remote region, they were nothing compared to the great clans of the Central Plains, and before Liu Xiu's imperial house and the prominent surnames of Nanyang, they even felt a sense of inferiority. They were reasonably submissive to the Han Emperor, and their influence was confined to Jiangdong, but as the main source of tax and land revenue, Liu Xiu could only treat them with a smiling face.

After Liu Xiu declared himself emperor, the generals in the army and the Three Excellencies and Nine Ministers at court were drawn mainly from these three factions, who refused to yield to one another — it was all too common.

For this reason, Deng Yu offered his own suggestion: "Since Your Majesty wishes to entrust Feng Yi with the defense of the western frontier, his status must be further elevated before he can command the others. Merely adding 'Governor of Jingzhou' to his title of General Who Conquers the West is probably not enough."

Liu Xiu gladly adopted this advice and issued an imperial edict, naming names as a warning: "By decree to the various generals: The achievements of the Conqueror of the West are as weighty as hills, yet he still considers himself insufficient. How does this differ from Meng Zhifan, who fled but brought up the rear? Now I send the Grand Palace Grandee to bestow medicine and coffins upon the dead and wounded officers and soldiers of the Conqueror of the West. I have personally issued condolences for the dead and inquiries for the sick, to honor humility and deference. Additionally, I appoint Feng Yi as 'Grand General Who Conquers the West'! With overall authority over the military and civil affairs of Jingzhou!"

Liu Xiu had, in fact, arrived at the same idea as Diwu Lun. Neither of them had restored the Han system of Grand General; instead, they had concocted this new variety of "Grand General of X," which both elevated Feng Yi's authority and could later be granted to others with similar titles, preventing any one man from becoming too dominant.

Unlike Diwu Lun, who outwardly discarded Han institutions, Liu Xiu, who styled himself the legitimate successor of the Liu Han line, naturally restored the full Han system of official dress and institutions, taking the late Former Han system as his blueprint. But forced by circumstances, his Three Excellencies still had to be stationed separately in three regions, managing both military and civil affairs together.

For instance, Deng Yu, as Grand Chancellor, was stationed in Huainan.

Lai Xi, as Grand Marshal, was stationed in Huaibei, bearing the first line of defense against Wei.

Hou Ba, the Governor of Linhuai, who had received Liu Xiu at his lowest point and offered his first base territory, was skilled in administration and was appointed by Liu Xiu as Grand Minister of Works, responsible for the great rear area of Jiangdong.

Now, with Grand General Who Conquers the West Feng Yi placed in Jingzhou on the western border, Liu Xiu had capable ministers on all four frontiers and could feel somewhat at ease.

Liu Xiu could finally end his life of constant scrambling, where he had to manage everything himself, and set out for the capital where he had not yet properly stayed since its establishment, to meet an "uninvited guest" who had arrived there.

Before departing, Liu Xiu asked Deng Yu: "Zhonghua, what do you think that Shu visitor, Fang Wang, has come to the southeast for?"

Deng Yu replied: "Fang Wang is a strategist. He once served as Wei Ao's envoy to Nanyang, to arrange an alliance with the Gengshi Emperor to strike Diwu Lun — which is what led to King Yongwu's entry into Guanzhong..."

The so-called King Yongwu was Liu Xiu's beloved elder brother, Liu Bosheng. When he died in battle at the Wei River, the Gengshi Emperor, with ill intent, deliberately gave him the posthumous title of King Zhuangmiao of Pingyi — a malicious title with ambiguous meaning, meant to disgust the Liu brothers and their friends.

Now that Liu Xiu had become Emperor, he posthumously honored his beloved brother as King Yongwu. In doing so, he not only rectified his name but also hinted to Liu Bosheng's old followers that he would sooner or later fight his way back to Yongzhou, where his brother was buried, and settle the old grudges!

Deng Yu guessed it at once: "Fang Wang has come east now for no other reason than to invite Your Majesty to form an alliance with Gongsun Shu of Chengjia — two weak states against one strong one, uniting Liu against Diwu!"