Daming: I, Yang Xian, really govern Yang!

Although the Fubing system has various shortcomings, the most important reason why countless people wanted to restore the Fubing system in the late Tang Dynasty and even the Northern Song Dynasty is that it saves money.

The government is totally acting like a rogue.

The reason why the Fubing system has not been restored since then is also very simple, that is, the economic foundation of the Fubing system cannot be restored.

When many people talk about the Fu army system, they emphasize the advantages of the Fu army of "integrating soldiers with farmers" and "integrating soldiers and farmers", and believe that the main source of its soldiers is "home-cultivators who farm in peacetime and go on expeditions in wartime."

Now let’s do a very simple arithmetic problem: the soldiers serve for 15 days a month, and they have to march on expeditions during wartime. How much time can they spend cultivating the land in a year? ——The answer is of course no! This is why it is said that the foundation of the Fubing system is the highly feudal military landlord class.

Lao Zhu and Liu Bowen summarized the various shortcomings of the government army system, and then formulated the current guard system.

Don’t the soldiers of the government prepare their own weapons?
Well, under the Ming Dynasty's guard system, weapons are distributed uniformly in the guards. These weapons have always been public, so there is no problem of private misappropriation.

As for where the weapons come from.

Zhu Yuanzhang proposed a more advanced method.

The military households in the guard station did not have their own private property, and all the fields were farmland owned by the guard station.

All the output in the fields must be handed over to the guard station, and these military households go to the guard station every month to receive their share of grain, and the remaining surplus grain can be exchanged for silver and weapons!
In addition, can't we find a continuous source of troops?

Lao Zhu directly waved his hand and said, "Don't look for it."

As long as you become a soldier, your family will be a military household for generations. If your son becomes a soldier and your grandson continues to serve as a soldier, your children and grandchildren will have endless opportunities.

In Yang Xian's view, in fact, the guard system is completely unfavorable to soldiers fighting and must be abolished.

This is also an important reason why the combat effectiveness of the Ming Dynasty army will gradually decline.

Now, because Yang Xian is here, relying on firearms that are beyond this era, the war is purely crushing, and naturally the hidden dangers cannot be seen.

A victory in a game with a big advantage and downwind will cover up many problems. Only in a balanced game or even a disadvantageous game will problems be truly exposed.

You must know that the two people who founded the Weisuo system were Zhu Biao's father and Yang Xian's teacher.

Therefore, Zhu Biao's attitude towards abolishing the health system was naturally cautious.

Zhu Biao raised his head and looked at Yang Xian, and took a deep breath: "Yang Qing said that the guard system is not conducive to soldiers fighting. Please elaborate."

Yang Xian said: "Your Majesty established the garrison farmland with the intention of being self-sufficient in military food. May I ask, Your Majesty, what would happen if the garrison officers occupied the garrison fields and the private sergeants farmed them? The officers arbitrarily recruited the garrison sergeants to work for themselves. What about private life?"

Zhu Biao frowned.

He knew that what Yang Xian said was true. He had read the secret files. When Li Shanchang built a private house and carried out extensive construction work, there were not enough workers, so Tang He asked for the three hundred soldiers and horses. These three hundred people are working for free.

As sergeants, they have to train, and now they have to do private work, which makes their already overworked bodies even more tired.

It was okay in the early Ming Dynasty, but as the Ming Dynasty progressed, there were more and more corrupt officials, and more and more people used the guards to do private work.

As a result, the following situation occurred:
In the Ming Dynasty, the commanders from various capitals across the country would usually dispatch garrison troops to the capital to garrison and practice together with the Beijing camp troops in the capital. However, these guardsmen who came to Beijing were often transferred to do private work by the princes and ministers in the capital, making them extremely tired. So much so that the generals in the Shandong Capital Command and Envoys Department at that time had to bribe senior officials in the Fifth Army Governor's Office or the Ministry of War to beg them not to mobilize the capital's garrison to Beijing.

These guard troops usually have to train and learn to form troops, but now they are called to move bricks every day without being paid, because the little benefits they have are taken by various commanders, commander-in-chief and other generals. gone.

Yang Xian continued: "The consequence of this is that there will be a large number of deserters. Now that the Ming Dynasty is newly built and the country is strong, this is not obvious. But even so, if I remember correctly, according to statistics, until the eleventh day of the third year of Hongwu In this month, there were more than 47,900 sergeants who fled."

"In order to make up for the vacancies of these deserters, there are methods such as "root compensation" and "goubu" (rootbu means capturing the deserters, and hookup means replacing them with men from their households). However, this approach disturbs the people and It also disturbs officials. There are also officers who take advantage of this to embezzle and persecute the people, making the countryside miserable, and desertions are increasing unabated."

The problem is still small now and can be corrected. If we don't pay attention to it, it will not be corrected in the future.

"Mingbao Zong Shilu" records this passage: After the ministers and other secret officials sent their own censors to clean up, in the past three years, the guards of all the countries in the world issued a list of 1.2 million soldiers who escaped. . Today, no two or three people from the Qing Dynasty came to the army, and soon they escaped again.

In the third year of the Zhengtong reign of Mingbao Zong, Yu Qian, who was the minister of the Ministry of War at that time, was patrolling Henan and Shanxi. Because Henan Province suffered from famine, Yu Qian went to the imperial court and requested to suspend the "Censor of the Qing Army" (that is, the imperial envoy who counted the soldiers across the country). ) activities across the country, let them go back to their places.

It was mentioned that these Qing military censors went to the country to inspect various guard posts and discovered an extremely serious problem. In the past three years, there were actually 120 million fewer soldiers on duty in guard posts across the country than the imperial court should have. More. The soldiers were said to have escaped or died.

Even if the deserters who have been identified are re-registered one by one, only two or three out of ten will arrive at their posts. Even these two or three will be rude and will escape again soon.

However, you must know that in the early years of Zhengtong, the imperial court did not use troops on a large scale. Zhengtong Dynasty made a large-scale use of foreign troops. In the sixth year of Zhengtong, Xibo Jiang Gui was appointed as a general. Wang Ji, the Minister of War, was in charge of military affairs. He sent 150,000 troops to conquer Luchuan, that is, using troops. Southwest Dai region.

Obviously, among the 120 million soldiers, not the majority were killed or injured and died, and most of them were deserters.

These 120 million deserters accounted for nearly one-third of the total military strength of the Ming Dynasty at that time.

However, the Ming Dynasty court did not pay attention to this issue at that time. Rather than not paying attention to it, it is better to say that it was helpless, because at that time, this problem was already difficult to change.

Therefore, later during the Mingbao Sect Tumu Incident, the Ming Dynasty claimed to have an army of 500,000, but in fact there were only more than 200,000. The rest probably fled. There was this soldier on the roster, but in fact there was no such person in the army.

By the Jiajing period, the number of escaped sergeants in some guard posts reached about 70% of the registered sergeants, and only half of the troops stationed in many border areas were left.

During the Jiajing period, border troubles were serious and troops were urgently needed. The court had no choice but to add a recruitment system in addition to the garrison system. Recruiting soldiers is different from the garrison army. They are not hereditary and can come and go relatively freely. However, because the recruitment system destroyed the concept of "separation of soldiers and commanders" of the early guard system, the cabinet had to delegate military power to generals, and the Ming Dynasty was unable to fully control military power. Historically, the Qi Jiajun was one of the representatives. Centralized power gradually transformed into the power possessed by individual officers.

After listening to Yang Xian's analysis, Zhu Biao finally understood the dangers involved. If he left it alone, it would really shake the country's foundation.

Zhu Biao looked at Yang Xian with a worried look on his face and said, "In Yang Qing's opinion, how should the guard system be improved?"

Now that Yang Xian has made this move, he naturally has a solution in mind.

"It's very simple. There is only one core thing, and that is to comprehensively improve the treatment of military personnel!"

Why there are deserters is naturally because these soldiers are not living well and feel wronged. The idea of ​​military reform is actually consistent with Yang Xian's previous education reform in the general direction.

Zhu Biao suddenly became enlightened and said, "Please Yang Qing elaborate."

Yang Xian said: "The first is the property rights details. The military land allocated to each military household will be owned by the court, and the right to use it will be completely handed over to them. In addition to not being able to buy or sell, they can cultivate their own land and arrange their own Relatives came to farm, and the court took 10% of the income from the farming, and the remaining 90% belonged to the military households themselves."

According to existing regulations, the garrison troops in the garrison are no longer able to farm due to old age, relocation, accidents, etc., and must return the military land to the court. Moreover, because the garrison belonged to the official family, the amount of grain collected was very high. It was stipulated that in addition to keeping twelve shi of regular grain for food, each garrison also had to pay 12 shi of surplus grain to the officers of the guard and post to which it belonged as salary.

It can be seen that military settlements have obvious characteristics of economic coercion and heavy exploitation.

It can be said that according to the original regulations, except for their own rations, all other output of these sergeants must be taken away by the court.

But now Yang Xian left 90% for military households.

The 20% handed over is equal to the total cost of renting land and taxes.

In this way, in terms of income alone, military households are much higher than farmers outside.

The best way to improve a profession's social status is to improve its economic status.

Because the two are closely related.

In the past, the military households in the Ming Dynasty were just a group of free long-term workers who had no land and gave themselves to hundreds or thousands of households.

"Yang Qing's method is good, but as a result, the court will have to invest a lot of extra money in the army." Zhu Biao said.

Yang Xian smiled and said: "Things that can be solved with money are not problems. And His Highness does not really think that relying on the guard system and these military fields, he can really support the Ming Dynasty's army. "

Lao Zhu was most proud of the fact that "I can raise millions of soldiers without costing the people a grain of rice". After all, it was just an ideal.

Even in later generations, the average proportion of military expenditure in GDP of countries around the world is more than 2%. (In my country, it was 23% in 1.32)

Regardless of how small 2% is, you must know that GDP is not a country’s fiscal revenue, but the total wealth created by the country’s citizens in a year, including goods and services.

Yang Xian then said: "Nowadays, health centers across the country do have a lot of land, but what will happen in a few decades?"

"A military household gave birth to five or six sons. When they grow up, do you still expect them to be able to feed one person? Do you want to continue to divide military land?"

"As long as the population of military households grows fast enough, the population limit required to support the explosion of the guard system can be reached."

"If we don't continue to divide military fields, will those hundreds or thousands of households have no choice but to drink the blood of the military households below?"

"So it is unrealistic to expect to spend no money to support the army. As for if the army is short of food, it can be easily solved. The court can just pay for it and buy the excess food from those military households."

After listening to Yang Xian's words, Zhu Biao's frown deepened, and he asked: "But even so, the total number of military fields has not changed. Therefore, as Yang Qing said, when the number of military households increases to a certain level, , the problem that will overwhelm the population limit required by this health system system has not yet been solved.”

Yang Xian smiled and nodded, and said: "There are many ways to solve this problem. First of all, I would like to ask Your Highness, I mean, is there a possibility that there are some military households whose next generation does not want to be soldiers? Woolen cloth."

"Of course." Zhu Biao replied.

Unless they really can't afford to eat, who would want to do this kind of work with their heads in their belts?

Everyone knows this. It is for this reason that Zhu Yuanzhang and Liu Bowen came up with the current household registration system to solve the problem of military sources.

Yang Xian's words completely confused Zhu Biao.

Yang Xian said: "Your Highness, to solve this problem, we must first determine one thing, that is, how many soldiers the Ming Dynasty needs. As long as you determine this, then find a way to maintain the number of soldiers within this tolerance range."

In Yang Xian's view, as the Ming Dynasty's technology gradually advanced, soldiers were more valuable than more soldiers.

Zhu Biao began to understand what Yang Xian wanted to say, that is to say, the descendants of military households did not need to force him to become a soldier.

Keeping the number of Ming soldiers within a certain range would not bring down the imperial court's finances.

But Zhu Biao was still a little worried about this and said: "Yang Qing, if this hole is opened, will there be a situation where a large number of descendants of military households do not want to be soldiers? In this case, the source of soldiers for the imperial court will become a big problem."

"This won't happen." Yang Xian shook his head slightly and smiled. "As long as the salary of soldiers is high enough, there is no need to worry that no one will want to be a soldier."

"His Highness can look further. When the time comes, he can completely expand the scope of conscription to the whole country."

Zhu Biao asked: "Is Yang Qing planning to adopt a recruitment system?"

According to what Yang Xian said, if the scope of conscription is expanded to the whole country, it will be a recruitment system.

As for the recruitment system, Zhu Biao was still somewhat unsure.

The most important thing among them is the lessons learned from the "cowardly Song Dynasty".

Of course, the recruitment system also had its glory days.

The recruitment system originated from Wu Qi's reform, and the pinnacle of the recruitment system was the world-famous Wei Wu soldiers!
One of the most eye-catching achievements was that 50,000 Wei soldiers beat up 500,000 Qin troops.

But at that time Xunzi discovered the most fatal weakness of Wei's soldiers, that is, the conditions for the selection of Wei's soldiers were too strict.

Selection, no matter what, you cannot select a group of supermen from a group of people.

Therefore, there will only be Wei Wu soldiers for a while, but there will be no Wei Wu soldiers forever. (End of chapter)