peasantry round the capital for the support of its greatly increasing
staff of officials, and to satisfy the gentry of the region. This
produced several revolts in the south.

As an old soldier who had long been a subject of the Toba, Wen Ti had no
great understanding of theory: he was a practical man. He was
anti-intellectual and emotionally attached to Buddhism; he opposed
Confucianism for emotional reasons and believed that it could give him
no serviceable officials of the sort he wanted. He demanded from his
officials the same obedience and sense of duty as from his soldiers; and
he was above all thrifty, almost miserly, because he realized that the
finances of his state could only be brought into order by the greatest
exertions. The budget had to be drawn up for the vast territory of the
empire without any possibility of saying in advance whether the revenues
would come in and whether the transport of dues to the capital would
function.

This cautious calculation was entirely justified, but it aroused great
opposition. Both east and south were used to a much better style of
living; yet the gentry of both regions were now required to cut down
their consumption. On top of this they were excluded from the conduct of
political affairs. In the past, under the Northern Ch'i empire in the
north-east and under the Ch'en empire in the south, there had been
thousands of positions at court in which the whole of the gentry could
find accommodation of some kind. Now the central government was far in
the west, and other people were its administrators. In the past the
gentry had had a profitable and easily accessible market for their
produce in the neighbouring capital; now the capital was far away,
entailing long-distance transport at heavy risk with little profit.