On May 19th, the fifth year of Longqing's reign, the crown prince returned to Beijing with Gao Pragmatic, a reading scholar, to take off his vacation.
Facts have proved that when going on a long journey, it is not only necessary to take two hundred cavalry with you, but your own status is also very important. Gao Pangshi came back all the way, thanks to Gao Gong's blessing, even though he brought two hundred people with him, he was received respectfully at the inns along the way, and he didn't dare to neglect him at all.
Of course, although the inns are willing to do their best, Gao Pingshi's team is too big to handle. Most inns cannot accommodate so many people and horses, so they can only find ways to relocate them nearby.
Fortunately, Gao Pragmatic Travel has enough travel expenses. Every time he goes to a post station, he will take the initiative to pay for it, and he is relatively generous. As long as the post station arranges the errands, not only will he not lose money, but he can also make a small amount of money, which can be regarded as a win-win situation. Gained a lot of popularity from passers-by.
Of course, Gao Pragmatic was so generous not only for the sake of popularity, but more importantly, through these means to build friendship with the staff at the post station, and then use his spare time to learn from them about the real situation of the post station now.
A well-known thing in history is that at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, who was working hard to govern, ordered the abolition of the original post station system across the country. Li Zicheng, who was originally working as a postman in Shaanxi, suddenly lost his job. After losing his livelihood, he eventually overthrew the Ming Dynasty. In order to save a few hundred thousand taels of silver, Chongzhen lost the world.
But the process of history has never been that simple, because Chongzhen was actually not the first person to eat crabs. Before him, as far as Gao Pingshi knew, the Ming Dynasty had abolished the post system at least twice. The former Jiajing Emperor and the future Wanli Emperor had done so or would do so.
The problem is that both Jiajing and Wanli produced surplus grain, but only Chongzhen produced Li Zicheng. Why is this? Gao Jingshi also knew that the post station system was very costly and constituted a large part of the imperial court's expenditure. If Gao Gong remained in power in the future, he would definitely take action on the post station system - maybe he was already considering it now. Therefore, Gao pragmatic felt that he needed to get to the bottom of this matter before returning to Beijing.
To understand the Ming Dynasty emperor's attitude towards local post stations, we must first understand the operating model of this system. The fact is, if you just think of it as a simple and plain government-run hotel, you would be totally wrong!
Because in the Ming Dynasty, the real post station was actually a kind of luxurious official guest house. In addition to the postal and military intelligence transmission purposes that we usually know, it also undertakes many other functions.
According to Gao Pangshi's understanding from the staff at the stations along the way, according to the regulations at this time, most of the stations have courtyards with two or even three entrances. On major transportation thoroughfares, the imperial court often had inns to serve officials, and the living conditions were no worse than those of local magistrates - many of the officials passing by were of higher rank and more powerful than the local officials. How can you live in such a bad place?
A Ming Dynasty post station had at least the main gate, drum tower, middle gate, front and rear halls, left and right wing rooms, kitchen, warehouse, stable, postmaster's house and other facilities. Most standard inns have 10 upper rooms for officials to live in, and 20 side rooms or wing rooms for traveling officers to live in. They can accommodate dozens of guests at the same time.
At the same time, these stations also have their own residences and offices. Of course, there must be supporting kitchens and stables, as well as management and service personnel such as grooms, donkey drivers, footmen, taverns, cooks, buckets, housemen, and cooks. There must be large bungalows for them to live in the post station, and there are even spare warehouses and temporary prisons for various officials to use.
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty's inns at this time, like the highway service areas of later generations, were scattered all over the country's transportation routes. Provide free services to "system personnel" across the country! Its service items are far more comprehensive than those of later highway service areas.
The service responsibilities of Ming Dynasty Station can be divided into three major categories:
The first and most basic thing is the accommodation service. As mentioned above, it not only provides the supporting facilities for the users, but also provides all the service personnel.
The second is the supply of carriages and horses. Take the situation of the Shaanxi Station where Li Zicheng was later born as an example: Xi'an Station has 27 standing horses, 10 donkeys, a number of oxen pulling carts, and a number of carts. If these are not enough, you can ask hundreds of post soldiers to wait to offer their shoulders. After all, these low-level officials are more able to endure hardships and stand hard work than mules and horses.
Finally, there is the provision of travel expenses, which is probably the most incomprehensible service item to modern people. Officials not only don't have to spend money to live in the inn, but they can also get money from the inn. At this time, many official servants came to stay at the inn, and when they left, they asked for money in various names. After all, the post station cannot cover all areas, but the messengers can't stop eating, drinking, sleeping and sleeping for a moment. If they don't give it, it's very common for the postman or even the postmaster to be beaten.
If it were just being blackmailed constantly, the Yizhan system might not be the target of several takedowns. But what's even more terrible is that these numerous inns are not only not operated in a market-oriented manner, nor are they supported by state funding. Each station is mainly supported by local government's direct allocation to the people, and the additional tribute from local people!
In other words, the daily operation and maintenance of the post station are carried out between grassroots officials and grassroots people. There is no supervision from upper and lower levels of government, and there are no agreed-upon market regulations. Therefore, it is the officials of the post station who have the final say on whether to charge more or less from the people.
As far as the horses that each station must be equipped with are concerned. The horses in the post station eat grain instead of grass. As early as the time of Zhu Yuanzhang, each horse in the post station required 80 shi of local grain supply every year. However, by the middle and late Ming Dynasty, a horse in Huazhou, Shaanxi Province actually required 422 shi of grain every year! At that time, a hectare of cultivated land in Shaanxi could only produce 7 shi of grain. Therefore, raising one stage horse requires the hard-earned income of more than ten farmers throughout the year.
In view of the really poor breeding technology of the Ming Dynasty, it was impossible to breed horses into the size of African elephants, so it was even more impossible for their food intake to increase more than five times in more than a hundred years and less than two hundred years. These extra grains were actually eaten by the "system personnel" and the staff of the post station.
After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the rate of collapse of officialdom accelerated greatly. Anyone who has some connection with the system can write a letter of introduction to stay at the inn and use carriages and horses. The advantage is not only that it is free, but you can even ask for travel expenses from the inn. Therefore, in order to support the increasingly expensive post stations, officials within the system had no choice but to allocate more and more expenses to the private sector. As for apportioning more or less, it all depends on the official's personal conscience. Among them, there are Yicheng who are filial to their superiors and can accumulate thousands of wealth in addition to catering to errands.
Anyone with a discerning eye can see that if the inns are not abolished, the farmers who will eventually be forced to survive by the inns will rebel sooner or later.
At that time, many court officials actually saw this problem. When Emperor Jiajing was in power, the imperial court planned to reduce the size of post stations across the country by 30% to 50%, and half of the money and food saved would be used for military expenses.
The idea was actually pretty good, but there were still problems with the execution. The local government has indeed reduced the funding for the post station, but the burden on the post station has not been reduced. Officials coming and going still ate and drank in the inn, and used cars and horses. As a result, staff at stations across the country began to go on strike or simply abandoned their posts and ran away. Since the post station itself also undertakes the function of messaging, the consequences are more serious.
For example, when Japanese pirates attacked Xinghua City in Fujian Province, it took more than a month for urgent news to be delivered to the capital. As a last resort, the abolition and reform failed five years later, and everything returned to its original track.
By the Wanli period, Zhang Juzheng had taken over all the power and began to take advantage of Yi Zheng. But he did not impose reduction ratios from the perspective of cost savings, but started by limiting officials' privileges. He presided over the promulgation of strict regulations, punished dozens of officials who violated the regulations, and many officials were demoted or dismissed. They also include descendants of Confucius and relatives of the emperor.
In addition, Zhang Juzheng did not set a rigid target for cutting funds, but instead seized on the key point of "official privileges." The reform of post offices has also been directly included in the assessment of provincial leaders in various places. This idea is quite correct, and it has successfully reduced the cost of post office administration nationwide by more than 30%. It is said that it has saved nearly one million taels of silver and reduced the huge financial burden for the people.
However, as mentioned before, Zhang Juzheng's method may have benefited the country and the people, but if he uses administrative means to suppress officials all over the world, there will be no way for the people and the government to escape.
The reason why Gao pragmatic went deep into the station to understand the situation was because he wanted to carefully find a breakthrough - he has always agreed that "politics is the art of compromise", so although it doesn't mean that force will never work, it will definitely not work just by force. If you close a door, at least you can still You have to leave a window for people. This principle is similar to the "siege three and one missing" in the art of war - block them all. It is better to leave a small gap as an outlet to prevent the trapped beasts from fighting and the fish to die and the net to break.
