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“…A force to fight a… a ‘nationwide peasant rebellion’…?”
The words were part of the mass of bewildered murmurings that could be
heard around the public noticeboard in the town of Fuchun, which was located in
Wu Prefecture, Yang Province in the southeast of China. Few could scarcely
believe it, but the words were true: the Han Empire was now enveloped by chaos
caused by the rise of a popular sect called the ‘Way of Peace’ and the
beginnings of militant action by the million-or-more followers of that sect,
action that was gradually being dubbed the ‘Yellow Turban Rebellion’.
“What should I do?” another voice asked: the question was echoed across
the small crowd. The noticeboard carried a call to arms that had been issued by
the court in the Han Imperial capital Luoyang: its significance was impossible
to overstate.
As always, the world as a whole was enduring change. The vast Roman Empire to the west of China was entering the fourth year of rule by Emperor Commodus, an era that is seen by many scholars as the beginning of the end; in the Parthian Empire to the north of China, Vologases IV was into his fourth decade of rule over a nation that was very stable by contrast. The Chinese Han Empire had enjoyed some trade with Parthia and was looking to trade with Rome, but that was now a faded dream. Two decades of corrupt government had weakened the incumbent emperor Ling, and after a failed military campaign against the warrior-tribal Xianbei Empire on its northern border, famines and economic mismanagement had finally pushed many of the desperate people to their limits and inadvertently forced them to seek salvation in the ‘Way of Peace’.
“What can anyone here do?” was another question that was being asked, although it was thought rather than spoken in most cases.
The southeast region
of the Han Empire was far from the wealthiest, but it had its share of strong
and tenacious people: they had to be. Rain battered the land nigh-on
unendingly, and vast, hostile marshlands lined the banks of the winding Yangtze
River that bisected the country and gave part of the region another name:
‘Jiangdong’, or ‘East of the River’. Other, smaller rivers caused further
natural division, and the constant threat of the pirates that all but ruled
those waterways was a permanent pressure on the exhausted and under-resourced
administration. But the situation was made all the worse by the social divides
between north and south.
“Let the northerners sort it out, it’s their problem,” was another
common sentiment. The capital and the influential nobles were mostly - if not
all - based to the north of the winding Yangtze River, while the south suffered
industrial underdevelopment and general neglect. It could still be said that
there was an administrative framework in what was known to the capital as
southern Yang Province, but opportunities for advancement would almost certainly
mean a move to the north.
A low-ranking official left his place of work and walked to the noticeboard for the second time that day: he had made a decision that would affect not only the rest of his life, but the entire country for the next nine decades.