organize the peasants, in order to achieve a forcible settlement of the matter in dispute.  Occasionally, however, the movement grows far beyond its leaders’ original objective and becomes a popular revolutionary movement, directed against the whole ruling class.  That is what happened on this occasion.  Vast swarms of peasants marched to the capital, killing all officials and people of position on their way.  The troops sent against them by Wang Mang either went over to the Red Eyebrows or copied them, plundering wherever they could and killing officials.  Owing to the appalling mass murders and the fighting, the forces placed by Wang Mang along the frontier against the Hsiung-nu received no reinforcements and, instead of attacking the Hsiung-nu, themselves went over to plundering, so that ultimately the army simply disintegrated.  Fortunately for China, the shan-yue of the time did not take advantage of his opportunity, perhaps because his position within the Hsiung-nu empire was too insecure.

Scarcely had the popular rising begun when descendants of the deposed Han dynasty appeared and tried to secure the support of the upper class.  They came forward as fighters against the usurper Wang Mang and as defenders of the old social order against the revolutionary masses.  But the armies which these Han princes were able to collect were no better than those of the other sides.  They, too, consisted of poor and hungry peasants, whose aim was to get money or goods by robbery; they too, plundered and murdered more than they fought.

However, one prince by the name of Liu Hsiu gradually gained the upper hand.  The basis of his power was the district of Nanyang in Honan, one of the wealthiest agricultural centres of China at that time and also the centre of iron and steel production.  The big landowners, the gentry of Nanyang, joined him, and the prince’s party conquered the capital.  Wang Mang, placing entire faith in his sanctity, did not flee; he sat in his robes in the throne-room and recited the ancient writings, convinced that he would overcome his adversaries by the power of his words.  But a soldier cut off his head (A.D. 22).  The skull was kept for two hundred years in the imperial treasury.  The fighting, nevertheless, went on.  Various branches of the prince’s party fought one another, and all of them fought the Red Eyebrows.  In those years millions of men came to their end.  Finally, in A.D. 24, Liu Hsiu prevailed, becoming the first emperor of the second Han dynasty, also called the Later Han dynasty; his name as emperor was Kuang-wu Ti (A.D. 25-57).

7 Reaction and Restoration:  the Later Han dynasty