Chapter 459: A Heavy Fist Is Absolutely Necessary

In the eighth year of Tianfu of the Later Jin, 943 CE, in the sixth month Zhang Zhao received the support of the various peoples by the shores of the Near Sea. He did not become lord of the Central Plains, but first became the Yinli Khagan of the steppe peoples west of Fengzhou.

Yet behind this glory and splendor, there was no lack of worry.

First, with the submission of the Karluk Tashili and Chigil tribes, the blockade network Zhang Zhao had originally planned to build against the Karluk tribes could certainly no longer be used — at least not openly.

So Zhang Zhao could only let Li Ruoyu play the villain and have him set up inspection posts on the Baishuijian Road.

All ironware heading west was to be heavily taxed, using price to restrict the outflow of iron.

Before Zhang Zhao had unified the Central Plains, he could not let the Karluks obtain large quantities of ironware; otherwise, when Zhang Zhao turned back to them later, it would be hard to command them.

Second, the enmity between the Guo family of Suyab and the Li family of Talas had accumulated to a somewhat frightening degree.

This had, to a certain extent, stimulated the independent development of both sides.

In the years since Zhang Zhao left Anxi, the two powers of Suyab and Talas had both been expanding at a rapid pace.

After Li Guoshou stormed the White Water Hu City, he gathered up large numbers of Oghuz and Turkic-speaking tribes, and now had over fifty thousand households, a population exceeding three hundred thousand.

Originally Zhang Zhao had judged that this Li Guoshou did not seem like a great lord, and so had felt at ease supporting him.

But now he had actually shown considerable ability. By constantly bleeding the Samanid Persians, Li Guoshou was no longer that small, cowering man who had even sent his widowed daughter-in-law to Zhang Zhao's bed.

Because Zhang Zhao knew that Guo Xuanqing had been up to tricks, he had deliberately waited more than ten extra days in Yanqi, but no envoy from Li Guoshou ever arrived.

It seemed this fellow intended to rely on the distance between heaven and the emperor, and pay no heed to me, the Great Khagan Zhang.

But Zhang Zhao could not deal with Li Guoshou by strengthening the Guo family of Suyab, because the Guo family of Suyab had also already swelled up.

Around Suyab there were some three hundred thousand people, and it sat astride the trade route to the Oghuz. Moreover, the Guo family's base was the Nestorian faith, so they absolutely could not be strengthened further.

So for now, Suyab and Talas could only be left as they were, to be dealt with once he had his hands free.

And in Samanid Persia and the Anyuan Kingdom, the brothers Emir Hamid and the Lord of Anyuan, Sadiq, had already forgotten the fear of being dominated by the Great Khagan Zhang.

Although Emir Hamid of Samanid Persia had sent men to Yanqi to take part in the acclamation, the envoy's rank was very low — merely a minor palace official — and the tribute he brought was not even worth a hundred strings of cash.

The Lord of Anyuan, Sadiq, was probably living too comfortably in Huwen City (Kabul); he had simply not sent an envoy at all. What that meant was already perfectly clear.

Of the three Persians Zhang Zhao had subdued back then, Hamid was one thing — Samanid Persia was a great power, and he and Zhang Zhao had never been superior and subordinate; Zhang Zhao had merely tricked him.

But the Lord of Anyuan, Sadiq, was different. Zhang Zhao had rescued him from a pit of ten thousand corpses and had personally helped him onto the throne of Anyuan. Now that he dared to turn against him, a heavy fist was absolutely necessary.

Only Rashid Salman, who held the title of Governor of Huwen City but was stationed in Luolan City (Bamiyan), was somewhat better. He had obediently sent an envoy and offered up large quantities of treasures.

But his loyalty was probably also very limited. He was merely making an investment, waiting for the day Zhang Zhao came to punish Sadiq so he could seize the chance to become Lord of Anyuan.

As for that maternal uncle of Cao Yanmian, the Lord of Zhenyuan whom Zhang Zhao had granted the name Zhang Bingzhong — he was on an even heavier level.

Last year, for Zhang Zhao's thirtieth birthday, this uncle had not sent anyone, and this time, for the acclamation of the Khagan, he likewise had not come.

According to reports from traveling merchants, he had also divorced his first wife and married the sister of the Guge king, Kyide Nyimagön.

What he intended by this was self-evident: the two were banding together to counter Li Shengtian's penetration onto the plateau, and by the way also blocking the road from the plateau down into the land of India.

The heavens are high and the emperor is far away!

Zhang Zhao had expected these places to slip out of his control, but that they would slip so quickly, so resolutely, and with so little regard for his face — that he had never imagined.

A heavy fist! A heavy fist is absolutely necessary! Once the Central Plains are unified, I will go take their lives!

At the end of the eighth month, Zhang Zhao led the great army back from Anxi to Liangzhou.

In this campaign he had destroyed the Gaochang Uyghurs, gained a population of three hundred thirty thousand, and also won the support of the steppe peoples west of the Hetao. The various tribes sent over four hundred hostages in total, all of whom Zhang Zhao enrolled into the Army of Adopted Sons.

The significance of this matter was extremely great: it meant Zhang Zhao was completely free of worries behind him, and it also resolved the problem between the Golden Kingdom of Khotan and the Liang Kingdom.

Zhang Zhao's nominal territory now extended west to Lake Yibohai (Lake Balkhash). In extreme circumstances, Zhang Zhao could even summon tens of thousands of steppe cavalry to aid in battle.

At this moment, the Liang Kingdom already possessed the attributes of a steppe khanate. From Lingzhou in the Houtao in the east to Lake Yibohai in the west, it stretched for several thousand li, with a population exceeding six million. It was already one of the few great powers under heaven.

But no sooner had Zhang Zhao arrived in Liangzhou than news that utterly shocked him arrived.

It was not that Shi Chonggui's Jin army had run into trouble; on the contrary, just as in history, Yelu Deguang had come away with a bloody nose.

The news that shocked him was that this year the Later Jin had suffered a terrifying plague of locusts, drought, and floods.

This year, in what should have been the spring and summer season when all things grow, in Hebei's Hengzhou, Dingzhou, Shenzhou, Jizhou, Beizhou, and Xingzhou, and in Henan's Huazhou, Chanzhou, and Mengzhou, the land was scorched for a thousand li, with almost no rain for three consecutive months.

And at the turn of winter to spring last year, when it should have snowed, the prefectures of Hebei and Henan had no snow, but instead suffered continuous heavy rain for more than a month.

The Western Capital Henan Prefecture (Luoyang), as well as Mengzhou, Huaizhou, and Ruzhou, broke out in massive floods, and nearly a third of the farmland in several prefectures and counties was submerged.

In Henan Prefecture alone, the dead from this flood numbered in the thousands. According to statistics from the officials of the Later Jin's Western Capital Henan Prefecture, the refugees whose homes were destroyed and who became fugitive households numbered five thousand three hundred eighty-seven households.

And this was only the number counted by the government. Given the rampant corruption of Later Jin officials, the actual number of homeless households was at least five times their count.

And the floods and droughts in Henan and Hebei had not ended when a terrifying locust plague broke out in the four jurisdictions of the Military Governor of Bao Yi Army in Shanzhou, the Military Governor of Hu Guo Army in Hezhong, the Military Governor of Zhen Guo Army in Huazhou, and the Military Governor of Kuang Guo Army in Tongzhou.

The locusts blotted out the sky and earth, gnawing the crops almost bare. The locusts moving north even reached south of Yinzhou in the Liang Kingdom.

This locust plague alone caused more than twenty thousand people to starve to death in just the two military prefectures of Huazhou (Hua County, Shaanxi) and Shanzhou (Sanmenxia, Henan), and more than seventeen thousand households were forced to flee.

It could be said that almost the entire core ruling region of the Later Jin had been struck by this terrifying natural disaster, and Zhang Zhao was witnessing for the first time the power of the Little Ice Age.

He had originally thought the Little Ice Age was nothing more than a bit of cold, but only now did he understand.

The Little Ice Age was not merely cold; it also brought disasters caused by all kinds of extreme weather.

Under the impact of this terrifying natural disaster, Zhang Zhao, having returned to Liangzhou, only had time to go and see Cao Yanxi and the others. He had not even held his son and daughter before Zhang Xichong, Fan Zhi, and the others grabbed him by the sleeve and dragged him away.

With a face full of pain, Zhang Xichong handed a memorial to Zhang Zhao and said to him in a heavy tone.

"This is the official bulletin of the Later Jin court. From last winter to now, in the twenty-seven prefectures of Henan, Hebei, and Hedong, the number of famine victims who starved to death alone has reached more than four hundred seventy thousand.

And this is what the Later Jin bulletin admits; the actual figure is far greater.

According to the combined statistics of the Brocade Guard emissaries and the Qionglin Academy from various traveling merchants, even in Guanzhong, the least affected area, thirty-five thousand people died from cold, hunger, and flash floods. For the entire Central Plains, it would be no fewer than seven hundred thousand."

The bulletin was the equivalent of the later gazette. As for the accuracy of this thing, everyone from ancient times to the present knows what it is. Zhang Xichong said no fewer than seven hundred thousand, but even that was probably somewhat conservative.

Phrases like "corpses of the starved strewn across the fields," "people eating one another," and "land scorched for a thousand li" — Zhang Zhao had seen them many times in various history books.

But only now that he truly lived in this era did he feel how heavy those few words really were.

In only nine months, less than a year, nearly a million people had starved to death.

His Zhang Zhao's Liang state, if one set aside Anxi, Suyab, Ningyuan and the rest and counted only Hexi and Longyou, had no more than a little over two million people.

This one event alone had starved to death close to half the population of Hexi and Longyou.

In the silence, Zhang Zhao raised his head with difficulty and asked in a low voice, "What of the Jin court? What of Shi Chonggui? Did they make no arrangements for relief?"

A bitter smile flickered across Fan Zhi's face. "It would have been better if they had not tried to relieve the famine. Perhaps fewer people would have died.

The Jin court ordered every prefecture to open its granaries and distribute grain, but the officials in each prefecture all claimed their granaries were empty. So Sang Weihan issued an order forbidding the common people from keeping grain.

Any household with grain was required to lend it to the government, which would use it to relieve the starving, and repay it after next year's harvest.

The court also dispatched sixty-seven men to the various prefectures and counties to supervise, and instructed the localities that, since the Khitan might come south again in winter, the autumn tax absolutely could not be waived."

"Sang Weihan — this is driving people to their deaths! If I ever enter the Central Plains, I will surely kill this man!"

A chill spread through Zhang Zhao's heart. The Later Jin court was not relieving a disaster at all — calling it extortion would be too mild. It was outright robbery.

One had to understand that Sang Weihan's strategy of borrowing grain from wealthy households to relieve the starving looked sound, but in practice it was almost impossible to carry out.

Even in the era of the Republic, it would have required the utmost caution.

Because the moral bottom line of officials at every level — indeed, the moral bottom line of human beings themselves — cannot be manipulated in such matters until the collective has reached a considerable height.

It was foreseeable that the Later Jin officials would certainly not be able to touch those power-holders who controlled military and political authority. The ones who would suffer would only be the prosperous farmers and small landlords without much backing.

Moreover, when these officials went to "borrow" grain, they would certainly not borrow only the surplus. I fear that leaving the farmer from whom they "borrowed" three to five days' worth of grain would already count as an act of charity.

And of this "borrowed" grain, apart from the portion handed up to the court, where the rest would end up — that needed no explanation.

This was driving households that could still fend for themselves to their deaths, while the starving were simply abandoned to their fate — all to keep the court running!

Zhang Zhao's guess was correct. As soon as the Later Jin court's order went out, officials at every level immediately erupted into a great carnival.

Officials whose consciences remained and who were unwilling to harm the common people, yet were hounded by the supervisors with no way out — more than fifty of them hung up their seals and left. Once they were gone, the world grew even darker.

Plague Marquis Du Chongwei once again displayed his heavyweight prowess. Hengzhou under his governance suffered the worst from the disaster, and had originally been permitted by the Later Jin court not to participate in this "grain borrowing."

But Du Chongwei volunteered to take part. In Hengzhou (Zhengding, Hebei) alone he seized a million shi, reported only three hundred thousand, and pocketed the rest — then ordered another million shi borrowed from the people's grain.

In this way, Du Chongwei alone plundered two million shi of grain, leaving the whole of Hengzhou without food in the fields, until even great landlord households were on the verge of going hungry.

Then, when famine gripped all of Hengzhou, Du Chongwei sold at super-inflated prices, and in one stroke plundered the people's rare treasures and gold and silver to the tune of more than four hundred thousand strings of cash. The entire Hengzhou was ravaged by him into something like a realm of ghosts.

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