Chapter 2 Provocation
The soldiers of the Ming Dynasty had many types according to their types: horse soldiers (which can be further divided into cavalry and mounted infantry), infantry (infantry soldiers and camp guards), chariot soldiers (car camps), sailors ( The main responsibilities are transportation, jumping gangs and killing people), crossbowmen, pacesetters, etc. Among them, the pacesetters are the personal guards of high-ranking officers and the best among all branches of the military. Today, the word still retains this meaning. There are six types of pacesetters, namely: Du Biao, the governor's guard, Fu Biao, the governor's guard, Ti Biao, the admiral's guard, Zhen Biao, and the general officer's guard. Except for the governor, who is more in charge of civil affairs, the other three positions are all related to the military. Therefore, the members of the guard are all elites who are well-fed, well-equipped, and well-trained. Of course, the governor is in charge of a province and has no worries about money and food, so he will not be much worse off. The other two are used to make up the numbers: the river mark of the Northern River Governor, and the water mark of the Southern Water Transport Governor. Although these two groups are also called pacesetters, their specialty is extortion, extortion, and troublemaking... Let's put it this way, except for fighting, they can do everything else! So don’t mention it.
According to another classification method, it can be roughly divided into two parts, combat soldiers and auxiliary soldiers.
War soldiers are those soldiers who have been recruited by the imperial court, have records in the Ministry of War, and whose food and salary are theoretically controlled by the imperial court. Auxiliary soldiers don't count - not only do they not count, they don't even count as people. At best, they are just talking animals, but they are not as strong as animals! Their only job is to farm and grow food under the supervision of the whips and sticks of the general's personal soldiers to supply the army, oh, that's wrong, supply the army leaders. The generals would leave just enough of the food they grew to survive starvation, and take away the rest.
Since Tian Huo cannot be used as cannon fodder and Tian Huo is not included in the official accounts of the two capitals and thirteen provinces, the imperial court will not care about the specific number of auxiliary soldiers. For this reason, every general tried his best to exaggerate the number of soldiers under his command. He would dare to report the number of soldiers to one hundred thousand if he had only three thousand beggars. Then, with a look of grievance on his face, he would reach out to the court to ask for money, food, or even ten thousand soldiers. The soldiers were helping him farm, but he would never say a word. Anyway, after the autumn harvest, he would not give a grain of grain to his soldiers. If he could openly ask the court to help him, what lunatic would pay for it out of his own pocket? Moreover, even if one of them suddenly loses his mind and realizes that he declares it on his own initiative - what will you ask other colleagues to do? As the saying goes, destroying someone's wealth is like killing one's father and mother! Regardless of how everyone usually tries to trick each other out of their own petty ways, in the face of such a big issue of principle, everyone will put aside their differences and work together to kill this guy who broke the rules first!
This system originated from Taizu Zhu Yuanzhang.
After wielding a three-foot sword to unify the mountains and rivers and annihilating the heroes with his feet, Lao Zhu, who was born as a beggar, began to ponder an economic problem: the Mongolian Tatars fled to the desert north, and the barbarians in the southwest did not even have iron armor, they were no different from monkeys and wanted to beat them Just take action at any time. For the rest, there are only some "countries that are not conquered" - well, the cost of going to the expedition is too high, and there is really no money to be made, so just do a verbal favor to show that I am kind... I am a horse-riding person. Why keep so many soldiers? How much money does it cost to just eat and not work?
But the entire army was really disbanded. No matter how rich Lao Zhu was, he didn’t dare to take this really heart-wrenching adventure. Finally, the smart Lao Zhu finally figured out a good way: a half-soldier, half-peasant guard station and farmland system! When nothing happens, you farm the land for me and support yourself. If anything happens, put down your hoe and pick up your sword and gun to cut down my hostile forces! Haha, "I can raise millions of soldiers without costing the people a grain of rice"! There has never been anyone as smart as me since ancient times, please come and praise me!
Will this approach work?
Of course.
Oh, no way either.
It's okay, because the chaos has just begun, and I look around and feel confused: There are really no hostile forces, and there is no problem with half-ploughing and half-garrisoning. Even if there are, it is very easy to let these guys who have just left the battlefield return to their old careers. It can be done with just one sentence. .
I say no because after two or three generations, the guardsmen have completely transformed from professional soldiers back to farmers, and their combat effectiveness has returned to zero. So much so that during the Japanese invasion, dozens of professional bandits were able to hunt down thousands of "mighty and majestic" guard "official troops" for hundreds of miles!
The "ancestral system" could not be changed, and the "peasant-soldier system" did not work, so whenever there was trouble to suppress, a recruitment system was gradually formed. The recruited soldiers are naturally responsible for cutting people, but... marching with a heavy load is very tiring. How can you still swing a knife when you are half exhausted? There must be someone who is responsible for chopping wood, burning water and carrying weapons for them, right? Then, there was the natural combination of combat soldiers and auxiliary soldiers...
In the end, the imperial court added some weight to its already overburdened finances - recruiting troops to win the battle, generals were rewarded with the position of commander, mid-level officers were required to seal thousands of households, and junior officers and meritorious officers were required to Veterans must also be rewarded with some acres of land; commanders must have "guards" and thousands of households must have "houses"; to have "guards" there must be military camps, and to have military camps there must be people to farm the land... Who will farm? Auxiliary soldiers!
Perfect transformation: generals become big landowners, mid-level officers become middle-level landowners, and petty officers and veterans also become yeoman farmers. Well, you don’t have to pay taxes or pay royal rations.
So, at this point, it finally evolved into an invincible and ultimate cheating cycle: not only did the original guard's products go into the pockets of the military leaders, but the court also continued to give them money and food to raise soldiers - these soldiers couldn't fight and were in trouble. You can only recruit soldiers who can fight again. If you lose, you will have to continue recruiting. After finally winning, these guys immediately transformed into a guardhouse where they will raise serfs to do private work for the military leader. If there is any trouble again, we will have to recruit again...
Lu Yong's military farmland covers more than 2,000 acres. In theory, the output was enough to feed his battalion, and in practice it was enough. Of course, like all the other military leaders who are older or younger than him, he will not spend even a grain of land except to support his own servants and soldiers. After being promoted to a general, he could expand his troops, and if he did, he would get money and food, so he selected some guys from the auxiliary soldiers who could still be considered individuals after careful identification - in theory, all the soldiers who had food to eat were beggars. What kind of virtue can be expected of auxiliary soldiers whose status is inferior to that of animals? In the Ming Dynasty, the livestock were recorded, but the auxiliary soldiers had no records at all! They also arranged for Lu Sixiang, Deng Changjiang and others to lead a search team to catch refugees everywhere to make up the numbers, and finally pieced together the establishment of two battalions.
If there is an establishment, there will be food and wages. However, extreme joy brought sorrow, and Lu Yong's bad luck also began.
Military households are hereditary. As long as you join the military and become a soldier, your children and grandchildren will continue to do so forever. Lu Yong, who came from a military family, certainly understood that part of the food and salary for the newly expanded two battalions should be filial to the superiors. This was a rule that he had been ingrained in since childhood. He also knew very well in his heart, and even always respected the "floating" after being handled by civilian officials. This was even more important. It's natural.
But this time the float was a bit outrageous: it was as high as 60%!
The commander-in-chief and deputy commanders also felt that the civil servants had gone too far, and they tried to get through it symbolically. After two passes, only 10% of them were left behind. Even so, less than 30% was handed out! You know, if this 30% is really converted, it will still be almost halved!
The Ministry of Household Affairs allocates it to the Ministry of War, and the salary and silver distributed by the Ministry of War should be official silver with a fineness of more than 90%, and the rice grain should be rice and flour with fragrant white flowers. Lu Yong, the middle and lower-level officers who participated in the tour, received only More than 60% of the fine people's silver and grains mixed with soil! You can figure out the mystery behind this with your toes...
If it were just these, Lu Yong would admit it. Everyone knows exactly how this "big victory" came about, whether it's a secret or not. The money and food for the two new battalions will be added. At worst, everyone will contribute to it. As long as those guys don't starve to death, most of them will be fine. Anyway, in the future Will it become a fixed quota, or will it only make money without losing money... But this time, the civil servants deducted the food and salary of the original battalion together - that is to say, after a great victory, not only did they not make any money, but they also lost their original capital. Also lost!
The emperor was happy to receive the imperial reward, and gave him a hundred taels of private money, and also gave him a jar of royal wine, saying it was "to strengthen the general and the tiger's power." No one dared to make any decisions about these rewards that came directly from the top of the empire, so Lu Yong drank so much that he complained a few times in front of the escort officer, a seventh-grade state magistrate. This stirred up a hornet's nest!
The imperial reward was sent by a father-in-law.
Eunuch is actually an honorific title. In the Ming Dynasty, not every father-in-law could be called eunuch! The father-in-laws were the domestic slaves of the Holy Emperor - at that time, the Holy Emperor regarded the world as his home, and family laws were naturally greater than national laws. In other words, even though the civil servants can make the generals cry without tears, they can't offend the father-in-law even if they are beaten to death. Even if they make a hole in the sky, the civil servants can only endure it and cry and complain to the Holy Emperor. If the Holy Emperor does not speak, no one can control these guys!
Generally speaking, unless they have obtained special privileges, such as Shangfang swords or gold and silver command arrows, the generals' reports to the emperor must be forwarded to the emperor through the General Affairs Department - if you say something that the civil servants don't like to hear, haha, right? Come on, your report will be rejected at this level: God has so many things to do, how can he have time to listen to you talking about rice and beans?
But the civil servants couldn't control what the father-in-law said. Although most of the father-in-laws who were sent to Jiubian in the bitter cold to give an imperial reward to a young newly promoted general were servants and sweepers in the palace who were not very popular... they were also people close to the Holy Emperor. The words reached the ears of the Holy Emperor!
After all, the civil servants not only vomited the fat in their mouths to their father-in-law intact, but this shrill-voiced "angel" (that's the word, the emperor's messenger) took the opportunity to let go of it a little. Blood——In fact, this angel himself was dissatisfied with Lu Yong: Our family doesn’t care if you are really poor or pretend to be poor. We went all the way to send you a favor, so we sealed one hundred and fifty taels to our family. , to send the beggars? ! When we get home, we have to share it with the big and small leaders. After all the hard work, our family has gone all the way to give you some money!
They put on humble smiles and bid farewell to the angel. The civil servants saw the murderous intention in each other's eyes: These idiots who don't know how to die are so brave, they dare to openly cry out in front of the angel! A small general dared to do this. In the future, those deputy generals and commanders in chief would still have to go to the capital to complain? If you break the rules, you must pay the price!
A blood feud.
Even if this problem is settled!
