On the xinwei day, the twenty-first of the first month in the spring of the third year of Emperor Sima Yu of Jin's Xian'an reign, Grand Marshal Huan Wen led Huan Chong, Governor of Jiangzhou and concurrently General of the Southern Household, Huan Xi, Inspector of Si Province and concurrently General Who Pacifies the North, and the generals of the Western Headquarters and Northern Headquarters in assembling at Taiji Hall in Taicheng to request an imperial decree authorizing a northern expedition-
Huan Wen submitted a memorial: "Your subject has been away from the imperial palace for more than twenty years, devoting himself entirely to military affairs, laboring diligently and pondering bitterly. Yet I consider that the lands of the Yangtze and Han rivers face difficulties unlike those of former days. Yi Province and Liang have only recently been pacified, and Ningzhou has only just submitted. Our troops are stationed far afield in Hanchuan, and our garrison duties extend ever farther. Moreover, powerful tribal peoples are entrenched in the upper reaches, while the rivers and lakes stretch into the distance. To command the regional lords requires a man of weighty reputation and substance, or there will be no way to hold those distant lands in check. Your subject knows the dangers and hardships of leaving this behind, yet dares to turn his back on it without regret. My wish to bare my arms and throw myself into the enterprise in the Central Plains arises truly from my shame that imperial rule and the imperial abode are confined to a narrow corner of the southeast, and my anguish that our sacred homeland has fallen beneath the alien tribes. If we may rely upon the spirits of the ancestral temples, we shall sweep them away like clouds scattered and mats rolled up, clearing