Chapter 187: Five Lords and Seventh Rank
"I obey the Duke." Zhu Yunwen said: "Uncle Xu, who has received the true biography of the Duke, has never been in the military. I also feel sorry for Uncle Xu. Let's do this. Let Uncle Xu follow the Duke and be the Duke." His assistant can be regarded as a father-son soldier. As for the other candidates, although the Duke recommends them, after discussing with the ministers, he will definitely give the Duke an answer."
This is exactly what Zhu Yunwen meant.
Xu Da's mental and physical problems can only support major events, but he cannot take care of many specific details. Of course someone else will do it. In this way, Xu Da serves as a brand that unifies military forces.
Send generals from various factions to work under Xu Da.
The greatest possibility is to integrate the entire army and give Xu Da some benefits. The biggest benefit is the training of Xu Huizu.
I hope that after this time, Xu Huizu can take over Xu Da's mantle and become the leader of a line in the army. The reappearance of Wei Guogong's line in the court will also be of great benefit to Zhu Yunwen's control of the court.
However, this is contrary to Xu Da's arrangements for the Xu family.
Xu Da hopes that the Xu family can calm down. Get out of court disputes. It's not that Xu Da doesn't want his family to prosper, but that Xu Da's achievements in founding the country are too great, and he is already suspected of shaking the master with his achievements. Xu Da has been self-effacing for so many years. Not without reason. The most intense battles in a court are during the second and third generations of emperors. At that time, the power of the founding heroes was purged or declined.
This is inevitable, conquering the world is a group of people, and sitting in the world is another group of people.
After the distribution of interests in the world is completed, the Xu family is no longer a threat to the imperial court, and only the achievements of founding the country are left, then the glory and wealth of the Xu family can be guaranteed.
Even if it is impossible to have all the power for a while, the heirloom of wealth and wealth is a sure thing.
However, this is a suitable solution for the Xu family. But for a specific person in the Xu family, this is not good news. This means that Xu Da wants to suppress his sons, grandsons and even other descendants. He should just stay in peace and enjoy his own glory and wealth. Don't think about other things in politics. As a result, especially his son and grandson.
Xu Huizu has been serving as a sinecure, which is what Xu Da means.
But now Xu Da can no longer stop the Xu family from joining this fight.
After giving such great benefits to the Xu family, Zhu Yunwen seized the power to appoint generals from other factions. There will definitely be many people from other factions under Xu Da's command in the future. It was impossible for Xu Da to truly control the army.
Xu Da could only say: "Your Majesty is wise."
Zhu Yunwen felt proud.
Although the situation on the battlefield was somewhat passive, Zhu Yunwen was also completing the integration of the army step by step. He believed that as long as he had full control of the Nanjing court, he would have enough power to defeat Beijing.
There is no doubt about this.
"Just let him be arrogant for a while." Zhu Yunwen thought to himself.
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It will take some time for news from Nanjing and the East China Sea to reach Beijing.
During this period, Beijing had already digested the impact of the Battle of Hejian.
He Xi presided over an enlarged cabinet meeting to discuss the list of knights.
The hero of the Battle of Hejian, led by Ye Chen, was granted the title Duke of Chang, Duke of Chang. There are about a dozen people below Ye Chen who have been granted the title of marquis or uncle. Many of them are from Liaodong. These people will become the very important Liaodong Group among the future nobles.
This is something.
The most important thing about the rewards this time is not the rewards for these people.
After all, it's just a reward based on merit.
Zhu Xiongying is not a fool. Perhaps for his own influence, he will make some small moves, such as placing certain people in certain key positions, but it will not affect too much. At least it is unlikely to affect justice.
Since it does not affect justice, there is not much suspense here.
There are two things that really have a huge impact. The first is the title reform presided over by He Xi and passed by the imperial court.
There are five nobles and seven ranks.
The fifth rank means the fifth rank.
, Duke Bozinan.
In fact, there were viscounts and barons before the Ming Dynasty, but they were later changed by Zhu Yuanzhang.
However, there is one thing that needs to be explained. Having a title does not mean that it is hereditary. Is there still a need to give an iron certificate to the alchemy book? If you don't have this, you will be a Liujue, and you will die in this lifetime.
Generally speaking, it is not too difficult for most people who are knighted to inherit their title hereditary.
Dukes and Earls, these changes have not changed much.
These titles are still superior, ranking above the civil and military officials.
Only under the chief assistant and cabinet bachelor.
The treatment of a viscount is equivalent to the first rank. Baron is equivalent to second grade.
Below the baron, there are: light chariot captain, cavalry captain, valiant cavalry captain, flying cavalry captain, cloud cavalry captain, martial cavalry captain, and public servant.
These official positions were not created by He Xi. But He Xi came here from the Ming Dynasty Honorary Officer. Originally, the highest honorary officer was Zhu Guo and Hu Guo. He Xi merged with the viscount and the baron.
In fact, honorary titles were still useful in previous dynasties.
Although it is only an honorary official position. But there is a salary. With each honorary title comes an additional salary. For some officials, the more titles they receive, the higher their salary will be. However, after Zhu Yuanzhang studied it, he felt that it was not cost-effective for these officials to do the same thing and get an extra salary with an additional title. So there was a rule that no matter how many titles an official had, they would only receive one salary, which was the salary for the one with the highest rank among all official positions.
In this way, the title of Honored Officer has completely become an honorary title.
There is almost no use left.
Some are just names.
He Xi simply took it and used it to form a title system of five nobles and seven grades, from lowly to Duke.
The reason for this is that there are actually nine levels of hereditary official positions in the Ming Guard.
Hereditary commander, hereditary commander Tongzhi, hereditary commander Qianshi, hereditary guard and governor, hereditary thousand households, hereditary deputy thousand households, hereditary hundred households, hereditary trial hundred households, hereditary governor.
The hereditary commander and the hereditary commander are the future viscounts and barons.
The following seven levels correspond to official positions one by one, such as captain of light vehicles and so on.
According to Zhu Yuanzhang's regulations, generally speaking, to become a commander, one will be lowered by one level to hereditary commander Tongzhi, or by another level to the basic level, hereditary thousand households. But not too low.
The entire hereditary system inherits the title system from the top and the soldiers from the bottom.
Because when Zhu Yuanzhang designed the guard system, he wanted the soldiers below to serve as soldiers for generations to come. The title system corresponds to upper-level generals, the hereditary system corresponds to middle-level generals, and the military household system corresponds to ordinary soldiers.
Self-contained.
Generally speaking, salaries were reduced and land was given, or salaries were allowed to be obtained from land, so as to avoid excessive expenditures by the court.
This also corresponds to the period at the beginning of the founding of the People's Republic of China when everything was in ruins and the government's expenditures were insufficient. However, wars continued in various places and military expenditures increased explosively.
In fact, this is also a problem when Zhu Yuanzhang established the system. On the surface, Zhu Yuanzhang's system did not spend much, but a large amount of expenditure became invisible expenditure. As long as there is power, every position has its own share of money, but it does not come from the court.
This is the evaluation given by some historians in later generations. The characteristic of China's feudal society since the Qin Dynasty is power feudalism. The superiors allocate certain powers to the people below, and the people below will naturally use these powers to benefit.
In this case, corruption is tacitly tolerated.
The essence of He Xi's reform is to equalize responsibilities and powers and include all hidden expenditures in government affairs disclosure expenditures. The biggest problem with this is that the court's expenses will skyrocket.
The Ming Dynasty, and even many ancient dynasties used this method, not because they did not know the benefits of including all expenses as formal expenses. After all, when the top is provided with enough money, the bottom can do things easily. This has been the case since ancient times.
But why, the imperial court doesn’t have that much money at all? The imperial court's financial expenditure is simply not enough to maintain the existence of a unified imperial court, so this kind of compromise method is used to handle various affairs.
Many people can't understand. Let me just talk about one thing, that is the transshipment of grain. Some places are thousands of miles away.
The freight for grain transshipment already exceeds the price of the grain itself.
Rather than doing this, it is better to give some people some privileges and let them solve these problems on their own.
There is no other way.
Without the income dividends brought about by the Industrial Revolution and He Xi's financial reform, He Xi's reform would have been a poison that killed Ming Dynasty.
