Han Shizu

Chapter 2192 Renzong Chapter 9 The South Wind Overwhelms the North Wind

People are always like this, they don't know how to cherish until they lose something. When Mr. Fan handed in his seal and resigned from his post, declined farewell, and left the capital in a sad and anxious manner, countless people in the court sighed deeply, including many court officials and censors who had devoted their hearts and efforts to the "overthrow of Fan".

Of course, the reaction of the lower-middle-class people in Luoyang was the best indicator of the people's support. The talk on the streets was full of reluctance. Some people even said directly: "First, dismiss Bao Fuyin, then dismiss Fan Xianggong. It's rare for the people in the capital to have peace."

In the ninth year of Zhengtong, Bao Zheng, who had served as the prefect of Luoyang for six years, was finally driven out of the capital, and Fan Zhongyan was unable to stop him. However, due to the great reputation and outstanding achievements Bao Zheng had accumulated during his tenure in Luoyang, he was promoted and appointed as the Southeast Transport Envoy, leading the financial power in the southeast, which was an important task.

When the news of Fan Zhongyan's death came, the capital was in an uproar. From the government to the people, there were constant activities of mourning and remembering him. After resigning from the post of prime minister, Fan Zhongyan had returned to the world-renowned role model of a loyal minister. After his death, he was almost regarded as a contemporary "sage".

Emperor Liu Weizhen was naturally alarmed and issued an edict to commemorate Fan Zhongyan, suspending court for seven days, although he did not attend court on weekdays except for the normal meetings of all sizes. At the same time, he asked Ouyang Xiu to write an epitaph for Fan Zhongyan with his eloquent pen.

Finally, after discussion in the court, Liu Weizhen ordered that Fan Zhongyan be posthumously named Marquis of Pingjiang, and later generations therefore called him "Fan Pingjiang". Of course, the most popular name is "Duke Fan Wenzhen" because of his posthumous name Wenzhen.

It was also in the decade after Fan Zhongyan's death that the literati and scholars of the Han Empire created a large number of poems and songs related to Fan Zhongyan, which included both praises of Fan Zhongyan's personal character and achievements and remembrances of that period.

After all, judging from the subsequent development of the Han Empire, the five or six years when Fan Zhongyan was in power were regarded as the "last afterglow" of Emperor Shizong's Jianlong era of prosperity.

From the historical records, case files, and writings left over from the Zhengtong period, we can have a relatively comprehensive understanding of the political, military, and economic achievements and contributions of the Han Empire during Fan Zhongyan's administration. Some economic data, in particular, best reflect the state of the Han Empire at that time.

In the eighth year of Zhengtong (1049), Fan Zhongyan promoted a large-scale and comprehensive statistical survey of the empire. From the official data of the empire, which is inaccurate but the most convincing, we can know that:
At that time, the registered population of the Han Empire had exceeded 1.2 million. This obviously did not include the servants, retainers, tenants maintained by the nobles, bureaucrats, landlords, and merchants, as well as the millions of people who moved to the various vassal states, and a large number of unregistered residents who evaded taxes or due to poor management and statistics.

The imperial fiscal and taxation in the seventh year of Zhengtong, including local taxes, commercial taxes, customs duties, transaction taxes, salt, iron, tea and sugar monopolies, government property, official land, mining taxes, gold and silver smelting imports, etc., totaled 1.7 million guan in fiscal revenue.

Of course, this data is significantly lower than that of the heyday of Jianlong. Fifteen or sixteen years ago, the annual revenue of the empire was close to 2 million guan. However, the Han Empire at that time was at the peak of Emperor Shizong's rule, with clear politics, sound systems, high execution, strong supervision, and peace and tranquility.

The total cultivated land area in the country has exceeded 10 million hectares. From south to north and from east to west, various climatic environments, paddy fields, dry land, terraced fields, and imperial fields have been reclaimed in various forms.

It can be said that during Fan Zhongyan's reign, the Han Empire still had a strong material foundation. However, the empire was large and powerful, and the expenditures were also huge.

There is no need to mention the traditional and basic expenses such as maintaining the army, officials, clerks and nobles. There is no need to talk about the increasing redundancy and waste of the court since the late reign of King Sejong.

The key point is that from the sixth to the twelfth year of Zhengtong, the Han Empire was not peaceful. Natural disasters and man-made disasters continued, especially in Hebei Province. The severe drought that lasted for several years caused the land to become barren, food production to decrease, and famine to occur. Social contradictions quickly intensified, and unrest and epidemics followed.
As the empire was moving forward, various contradictions were also accumulating rapidly. The most concentrated outbreak was the "Wang Ze Uprising", which was extremely wide-ranging, affecting more than 30 counties in five states. When the rebel army was at its peak, its scale once approached 100,000.

The outbreak of Wang Ze's uprising was essentially due to the corruption and degeneration of the imperial aristocracy and bureaucracy and the continuous expansion of the scholar-official landlord class, which led to the intensified exploitation of the people. When successive natural disasters occurred, the rentier class took the opportunity to stir up trouble, while the local government handled the situation slowly and improperly. Under the instigation of the "Maitreya doctrine", a large-scale rebellion broke out in Hebei, which had been the core ruling area of ​​the Han Empire since its founding.

In order to quell the rebellion in Hebei, the imperial court also spent a huge price, mobilizing hundreds of thousands of troops, spending tens of millions of strings of cash, and causing hundreds of thousands of casualties among officials and civilians. In fact, Fan Zhongyan's balance and coordination of the court was disrupted, causing him to give up more in-depth reforms and improvements.

In the end, Fan Zhongyan was dismissed from his post as prime minister, which was directly related to the rebellion in Hebei.
While the drought in Hebei was finally alleviated and the rebellion was gradually suppressed, drought also occurred in the prosperous southeastern region of the empire, in the Jianghuai area, which supplied large amounts of taxes and grain to the capital every year. The severity of the drought was no less than that in Hebei.

With the Hebei Rebellion as a warning, the imperial court dared not be careless and devoted a large part of its energy to disaster relief in Jianghuai. Although there were also many dirty things in the process, the two places did not have a big chaos because of the conscious precautions and control of the ruling class in Jianghuai.

Compared with the drought in Hebei, the drought in Jianghuai actually had a greater impact on the empire. From the subsequent development, it profoundly changed the political situation of the empire. The south wind overwhelmed the north wind, and it was this drought in Jianghuai that was the turning point.

The southeastern region has always occupied an important pillar position in the empire's financial and taxation map. This is beyond doubt and there is sufficient data to support it.

The economic base determines the superstructure. However, a hundred years after the founding of the country, the imperial nobles, bureaucrats, and gentry, who represented the interests of the southeast region, did not obtain the corresponding political status. The top ruling resources of the empire were still firmly occupied by the traditional northern military nobles and the northern scholar group.

This is obviously an extremely serious contradiction, which is even more acute when the economic development in the southeast is on the rise and the northern group dare not look at it and cannot suppress it.

The most direct impact of the drought in Jianghuai at that time was that Kaifeng and Luoyang, two capitals with a population of one million, began to be short of food. In the capital, food prices were high and people were resentful. The court also took targeted measures, such as opening official warehouses, transferring food from the two lakes, the interior of the country, and Sichuan, and even issuing special policies to encourage merchants to buy food from overseas countries.
However, these measures, while increasing the court's expenditure, inevitably caused a burden on the people in the Guannei, the two lakes, and the Sichuan and Shu regions. The central government still had integrity, but it could not prevent a series of people from taking advantage of it.
A single move can affect the entire body, and social and class contradictions in other places have also deepened, especially in the Guannei Road. The influence of Guannei can radiate to the entire Northwest. Therefore, the Northwest, with its complex folk customs, began to breed unrest again after decades of peace.

Of course, many deep-seated contradictions and influences always need enough time to ferment and corresponding opportunities before they erupt. However, eleven years after the orthodox era, the center of the empire had to make a careful political and economic calculation due to the severe drought in the Yangtze and Huaihe River regions.

The capital was short of food because of the severe drought in Jianghuai, which reduced the amount of grain sent to the capital from the southeast. The court's solution was to rely heavily on the southern provinces, including grain purchased from the Southeast Asian kingdoms, which was mainly imported through the Jianghai Pass and then transported to the capital.

Therefore, in the later period of Fan Zhongyan's administration, the imperial court could no longer take the southern ruling group seriously and had to face up to more voices and demands from the southern nobles, bureaucrats, and gentry.

In summary, during Fan Zhongyan's administration, the South officially began to surpass the North in the ruling class of the Han Empire. This was a major change brought about by the combination of economy and politics.

Not to mention the influence of the northern nobles who kept moving south and integrated with the locals over the long years, Fan Zhongyan was a southern official, and the fact that he could become the Shangshu Ling already showed the trend.
As for the impact of this change on the rule of the Han Empire, especially its unity and stability, what are the pros and cons, it remains to be seen.

(End of this chapter)