After the provincial institutions were improved, provincial capitals were gradually established.
Guo Gai and others summed up the lessons of the Eastern Roman Empire in their early years. At the beginning, the various official positions, missions, and titles in the Eastern Roman Empire overlapped with each other, the division of labor among military, judicial, and administrative officials was unclear, and various institutions in the military region were overlapping. Not only does it reduce efficiency, but it also fails to solve the problem of noble rebellion when the problem is actually faced.
Therefore, a simple but efficient system is necessary. And this system needs to rely on a large number of experienced and reliable officials.
The Greeks had made many attempts before. In the entire world west of Congling, their system may be the most developed and perfect, even surpassing the Persians as teachers. But the Greeks still could not solve the problem of internal strife and rebellion among the nobles.
Guo Gai and others believe that this is not the fault of the system - the Greek system has even been over-improved and began to become Song-style. The real reason is that their education level is not as good as that of the Central Plains, and they cannot provide a large number of management talents for the citizen class.
We have always relied on these big families and churches to provide education and talents, so of course we cannot get rid of their influence.
As for how to obtain so many officials, Guo Gai's idea was to select them from the army.
Since its establishment, the Purple Horde Khanate has been very unpopular with the surrounding God-worshiping religious forces. Basically, it has to fight with others no matter what. Therefore, the military atmosphere within the Khanate is very strong, and the grassroots military organizations and administrative organizations are often the same thing.
At the same time, the veterans in the army are also the most educated and managerial people at the grassroots level of the Khanate.
According to the experience of the Han and Tang Dynasties, promoting education in the army is an important task. Many soldiers were from low backgrounds, had no systematic education, and had difficulty even reading and writing. In the military, it is difficult for such people to read complex military orders and write official documents, which will affect their training and execution of tasks.
According to the regulations of the Han Dynasty, people who were illiterate could not pass the examination and become military officials. This is not to deliberately create a threshold, but because a capable army cannot be a hastily gathered mob.
In addition to performing military tasks, a grassroots officer also has a lot of paperwork to do: routine inspection and maintenance of weapons, soldiers' health, training performance, assessment results, and even the station's food reserves, non-staple food purchases, and medicine reserves. ... All kinds of official documents and account books have to be written and signed by them.
War is not about bravery, but the collision of two machines. These trivial and complicated matters may seem to have nothing to do with the tense and passionate fighting, but they and the rules and regulations behind them are the source of combat effectiveness. To this day, in the Western Regions, there are still books used by soldiers of the Tang Dynasty to practice calligraphy, which shows how popular it was at that time.
What people in the Han Dynasty could do with bamboo slips, now with printing technology, they are better equipped to achieve it. After all, for soldiers, of course, the more educated the better. In addition to writing, it is best to know mathematics.
In the Central Plains, there is a classic story:
During the Northern Song Dynasty, someone dug up some crossbow machines from the Han Dynasty, and then tried to restore this ancient high-tech, hoping to improve the combat effectiveness of the army. The famous scholar Shen Kuo also conducted research on these crossbow machines.
Shen Kuo discovered that the aiming component of this crossbow was quite long, and there was a graduated ruler on the side. The purpose of the design is to use the endpoint, target and scale of the arrow to aim when launching, measure the angle of launch, and adjust the height of the arrow. What is used here is the Pythagorean method used by mathematicians.
Previously, people of the Han Dynasty left a chant, but people at that time no longer understood its meaning. Shen Kuo compared the crossbow machine and found that it probably told the user the standard hand gestures for holding, the aiming method and the Pythagorean technique for calculation. It is said that the ancients used this method to hit ten times out of ten at the same place.
Shen Kuo restored a crossbow and went to the shooting range to experiment. Even though he was a novice, he could still hit 78% of the marks. Therefore, he believed that this method was effective.
So, could Shen Kuo's method help the Song Dynasty army?
Of course not.
In the Han Dynasty, soldiers had to learn to use crossbows and undergo regular assessments. Assessment results, like the beheading number, are the most important indicators of rewards and promotions. In addition, they usually carry out complicated maintenance and repair work on the crossbow, check whether the pulling force of the two arms of the crossbow is equal, whether the strength and range are qualified, etc., and keep detailed records. The superiors will also send people to spot check from time to time.
And this kind of weapon, when the Han Dynasty was prosperous, was a gadget that did not occupy the establishment - basically every main infantryman could carry one.
Even if the Heavenly Father threw the crossbows in the arsenal directly to the Northern Song army, how many of them would be able to learn to use them? Can it be maintained? Can it be guaranteed that it will not become scrap in a few months or even be sold to other countries?
The Han crossbow itself is now outdated. But the quality of the army is a factor that cannot be ignored at any time.
As Romans who fought every day, Guo Gai and others certainly had a deep understanding of this.
But here, there is a more important need for education: most of their soldiers are recruited from all over the country, and their dialects are incomprehensible to each other. Moreover, except for the Greeks, basically everyone did not have a mature writing system, so even if they wanted to do paperwork, they would not be able to do it. Under such circumstances, if education is not implemented in the military, it may not even be possible to give orders to soldiers.
The nobles of the Purple Horde Khanate were not very educated, but at least they knew a little bit about it: the Li brothers were engineers who built water conservancy projects, and their basic calculation and measurement skills were very good; the Cao family and his son were from accountants. , good at arithmetic; the first shepherd and the first imam were even more powerful. As the most knowledgeable person in the Khan's court, he had participated in many local sects in West Asia. Not only could he translate various popular texts, but he also had rich teaching experience. He knew How to teach these new recruits who have no basic knowledge...
Anyway, the military doesn't need them as teachers. According to Guo Gai's experience, only a few hundred Chinese characters, combined with some concise and concise simple drawing marks specially used in the military, can meet various needs from daily copywriting to flag signs.
Later, even these symbols were eliminated - the soldiers believed that Chinese characters were simply simple and concise symbols, and there was no need to create another set.
In order to unify the passwords, Imam Zhang also used Greek letters to notate these Chinese characters to make it easier for the recruits to read. Although the accent will be a bit strange, you can understand it, so don't expect too much.
Over the past few decades, the Khanate's army has formed a set of traditions that may be quite unique in Europe. Military veterans and grassroots military officials also provide sufficient personnel for local management.
In particular, the hundreds of households at the grassroots level were both grassroots administrators and military officers in the khanate system. Managing the village in peacetime and leading troops in wartime are daily routines in many places.
In the city, it's actually the same.
Except for large cities like Constantinople, most of the areas controlled by the Purple Horde Khanate had no urban traditions. Many cities that appeared with the development of the Khanate were actually war factories, responsible for producing ordnance and other logistical materials at the request of the Khan to meet the needs of the legions.
In the city, workshops replaced farms, and districts replaced villages. The other institutions, including the arsenals where weapons are kept and the armed squares where soldiers are organized, are exactly the same. In terms of management, the difference is not very big.
With this kind of grassroots support, further organization will be much easier.
(End of chapter)
