Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 37
Zhu Yihai woke up as soon as a fish-belly white appeared on the horizon.

When I first woke up, I was in a trance for a moment, thinking it was a dream.When he saw Zhang Mingyang, the deputy general of the Banner Bearer Battalion who had been guarding him all night, he threw off the blanket and got up.

"Your Highness?"

"Thank you, Zhang Qing." Zhu Yihai is more and more satisfied when he sees Zhang Mingzhen's brother, who looks like a gourd. Although he doesn't talk much, he does things calmly. Wang Chuangzi looked more pleasing to the eye.

Zhang Mingyang called his servant and fetched Zhu Yihai's crown and gown, which had been ironed last night.It's just that Zhu Yihai glanced at the Yishan crown and Chilong robe, but waved his hands.

"In the barracks alone, it is Zhu Wu, the commander-in-chief of the Banner Battalion."

Zhang Mingyang was stunned, what did Jian Guozhi do?

"Just get me a military uniform."

"Your Highness, the weather is hot and wearing armor is very inconvenient. Besides, there is no war in Yincheng today."

Zhu Yihai waved his hand, "The soldiers of the Bannerman Battalion can march in armor, why can't I?"

He asked Zhang Mingyang to find a set of armor that he usually wears. The two of them were about the same height, so it fit them well.This is a set of cotton armor, which is made of silk on the outside and silk cotton on the inside, with iron sheets fixed with copper nails. Compared with the iron armor of the Tang and Song Dynasties, this cotton armor, which looks like iron clothes, is actually more convenient to wear. Even lighter.

However, the defense ability has not been weakened, and there is even a defense bonus for firearms.

Wearing it on a hot day is not as uncomfortable as wearing armor directly, after all, this silk cotton can also absorb heat and sweat.

Walking out of the tent, Wang Chuangzi was standing guard outside.

"You are the commander-in-chief of Haimen now, why did you come to my standard-bearer battalion to stand guard?"

"Your Highness is where the country is located, and I have the duty to protect it."

"Have you eaten yet?"

"Not yet." Wang Chuangzi couldn't keep up with Jian Guo's train of thought.

"eat together."

The Banner Bearer Battalion is the first new army that Zhu Yihai plans to personally lead and train. The model army is even more special than the Yongwei Battalion, whether it is the slave battalion system or others.

In troubled times, even the emperor who is the Ninth Five-Year Supreme is not really supreme. Any bandit, pirate, rogue, or military leader may make this supreme emperor The emperor's life could not be saved.

Almost all the emperors in the Southern Ming Dynasty were puppets, and Zhu Yihai didn't want to follow in this footsteps.

In fact, he is not satisfied with the current standard-bearer battalion. Although they are all veterans drawn from various battalions, they still have the habits of the old army deeply imprinted on them.

For example, servants.

The Ming army is basically supported by servants, who receive more pay and are equipped with the best armor, but many times, these elites of the army only act as guards for the officers, and do not rush to the front when fighting. Wire.

Therefore, in Zhu Yihai's view, this family system is distorted, costing a lot, but of little use.

If there is a chance in the future, he still hopes that the Bannerman Battalion can recruit a group of strong and honest recruits, and bring out a new model army little by little, instead of another Brave Guard Battalion or Guanning Army.

Early in the morning, the soldiers of the Banner Bearer Battalion were busy, lighting fires and cooking, feeding horses and drinking water, and starting to unpack tents and pack supplies, all in an orderly manner.

The breakfast in the camp is very simple. Because we are in the south, we eat porridge.There are many sweet potatoes in the porridge, which becomes sweet potato porridge, served with small salted fish, simple.

While eating porridge, Zhu Yihai chatted with Wang Chuangzi, Zhang Mingyang, Wu Kai and others about the establishment of standard bearers.

"Your Highness, let's join together."

Wang Zhiren and Zhang Mingzhen also came to Bannerman Ying to have breakfast, but Zhu Yihai warmly entertained them to sit down, and personally made sweet potato porridge and small salted fish for them.

"Why does Your Highness just eat this?" Wang Zhiren frowned.

"Brothers eat this, so naturally I have to share the joys and sorrows, not to mention, this sweet potato porridge is also okay."

From Zhu Yihai's point of view, Ming's army has many problems up to now, such as fake rations, deduction of military pay, heavy labor, meager pay, habit of comfort, fear of fighting and fleeing.

The problem of military officers at all levels falsely reporting the number of troops and falsely claiming vacant silver taels has been around for a long time, and everyone is even used to receiving empty pay.

But the consequences of this are also very serious. Firstly, the number of soldiers is not right. There are people in the army book, but there are actually no soldiers.Furthermore, the soldiers were severely deducted from their salaries and their fighting will was low.

"Speaking of which, these are old problems. There are soldiers on the books, but there are no soldiers in the army. There is pay on paper, but there is no pay in the army. So far, no one can solve it!" Zhang Mingzhen and other generals are all soldiers. For five years, they are not clear about any of these issues, and even they cannot avoid doing this.

Wang Zhiren even made a calculation for Zhu Yihai directly. When he went to Zhejiang to take up the post of chief soldier, he found that the former chief soldier's town standard battalion was divided into three battalions from the left, middle and right. The salary accounted for 650% of the town's standard soldiers.

Then the generals, guerrillas, garrison, Dusi, Qian Zong and other first-level officers under the general army also have to pay. After eating at the first level, they eat more than 700. All the officers have enough to eat. More than one thousand two hundred, basically eating one-third of the empty salary.

And this is an unspoken rule that almost everyone knows, everyone is like this.

In addition to the empty pay for famous food, there has always been the so-called public-funded famous food, which is used for public purposes in the camp, such as the repair of military uniforms, school grounds, government offices, etc., payment and reimbursement expenses, etc. .

According to the usual practice, this famous food at public expense is directly deducted from the soldiers' salaries. Wang Zhiren's former commander-in-chief deducted 150 public-funded rations directly, and directly deducted the salaries of 150 soldiers as public-funded rations.

As a commander-in-chief, in addition to salary, there are also vegetable candle charcoal silver (living allowance), heart red paper silver (originally for office expenses), etc., but in general, the official income on the surface is too low , even with these subsidies, etc., not much.

The generals had soldiers in their hands, so they were naturally greedy. Not only did they eat empty salaries, they also deducted apportioned food from the public, and even took advantage of the chaotic situation to lead troops to rob and apportion food.

Anyway, if you have soldiers, you have power, and if you have power, you can get money.

Daming's army is bad, so it can be said that salary is a big problem.

The Zhejiang army under Wang Zhiren's account is [-], but in fact less than one-third of the soldiers can really fight, only a few battalions.

Among them, the servants are the ones with the best equipment and the best training.

Before Chongzhen hanged himself, the officers and soldiers in various places owed a lot of wages. After Hongguang came to the throne, it was even more chaotic. Anyway, now that Wang Zhiren has soldiers in his hands, he directly withholds part of the taxes and grains that should be handed over. Then directly apportion additional levy in the defense area, or solicit donations from landlords, gentry, and merchants.

There is no legal and formal payment channel.

It's all the army's own way of making money, and they have knives in their hands, so the methods they can think of are very simple and rude.

As for how to get the money and how much money they got, it was a bad account. Even if they got a lot of money, most of it went into the pockets of officers at all levels, and the soldiers still didn't get much.

It's a vicious circle, and finally soldiers become bandits.

Although Zhu Yihai is currently in charge of supervising the country, he is actually just a grassroots team, and he has no ability to systematically solve the military expenses for raising troops.

But he still hopes to get on the right track step by step.

Eating salted fish and sweet potato porridge, he directly asked the question about the family.

"The standard-bearer battalion system, one battalion is divided into front, rear, left, and right four posts, and each post is divided into four teams, each team is divided into front, back, left, and right sides. The soldiers are divided into three classes. One tael of silver, and one stone of rice per month."

"The salary of officers at all levels is 500 taels per year for chief officers, 400 taels for lieutenants, 300 taels for generals, 200 taels a year for guerrillas, 150 taels for commanders, 50 taels for guards, 30 taels for thousands, and [-] taels for generals."

Wang Zhiren didn't take it seriously.

It's easy to say, but it's not easy if you really want to contribute to the army. For example, the president under his command leads 5000 troops. Not counting officers and military expenses.

But Zhu Yihai continued, "I also know that Ming's army has been rotten to the core these years, and various problems such as false names and food are serious, so from now on, no matter how many soldiers were on the military list before, there will be real soldiers in the future."

One battalion pays another battalion, but if you want to eat empty pay, you can't do it.

But this is another way for military officers to get rich, so it can't be too simple and one size fits all, so Zhu Yihai first proposed to set a new annual salary for military officers, 500 taels a year for the general army, which is not high, but at least it is better than the previous amount Much stronger.

But if they are only allowed to take this little money, they probably will not be happy.

So Zhu Yihai also proposed that the new battalion system of the Banner Bearer Battalion is a four-four formation. In addition to one battalion and four sentries, the battalion will also have a directly subordinate family team with a quota of 60 people.

These sixty battalion officers and servants are not only the team directly under the battalion officers, but also the reserve team. At the same time, Zhu Yihai also proposed that the sixty servants will be paid as upper-class soldiers, and an additional one will be paid. Sent to the battalion officer.

This is equivalent to legal empty pay, but it used to be paid in vain, but now it is distributed according to quota.

The 60 battalion officers and the Ding team cannot be missing, and their salaries are paid as they are, but in addition to the salaries of these [-] people, a battalion officer is given, which is equivalent to receiving a sum of money in addition to his own official annual salary.

"I initially decided that there should be one hundred governors, eighty admirals, sixty generals, thirty lieutenants, twenty generals, fifteen guerrillas, ten commanders, eight guards, five thousand generals, and four generals. .”

In the future, the officers will set the number of family members according to their respective ranks, and at the same time enjoy the corresponding famous food.

A governor can have [-] servants, and he can also legally receive food subsidies from [-] servants.The commander-in-chief is only sixty, and the lowest commander-in-chief can only have four servants and receive four famous rations.

In this name, it is not allowed to have additional servants, and it is not allowed to eat extra famous food, and it is not allowed to pretend to be empty, and it is not allowed to find reasons to deduct the soldiers' salary.

"Each order the amount of rations for their relatives, thinking that the military officers need to support their family servants."

As soon as Zhu Yihai's plan came out, Wang Zhiren started to think seriously instead of taking it seriously.

Forewarned is forearmed, without prejudging the waste.

Rules must be established first, and then there are standards to follow.

"There is a special fund for the camp's public expenses. What do you generals think?"

Wang Mingqian was relatively young, so he had no scruples in speaking, and said bluntly, "In fact, the salary of the imperial court has always been too low."

This is the truth. After Zhu Yuanzhang conquered the world and took the throne, he set a very low salary standard for officials. He directly gave it to Lumi, and a seventh-rank official only had ninety shimi a year. Part of the distribution of treasure notes, another example is that the later emperors distributed spices to officials.

In short, very few actually got it.It is said that the actual salary that many officials received was only about 5.00% of the nominal amount, and when the Ming Dynasty was about to die, not only the soldiers owed their salaries, but also the officials.

So all along, everyone has been trying to make money on their own. If they really don't make money at all, they might starve to death just like Hai Rui.

"In Ningbo, the magistrate's master has a salary of 500 taels a year, and the governor of Zhejiang even has at least 800 taels a year."

Zhu Yihai couldn't refute.

For a general officer, 500 taels of silver a year is indeed a little low, but it is impossible for him to set it too high now.

Now add the famous rations of 180 soldiers, and the treatment is greatly improved. If a family member pays three taels a month, the chief soldier can get an additional 2000 taels of grain and silver per month, which can be [-] taels a year, which is the basic salary of four. times.

"Soldiers are divided into three ranks, and the salary is set a bit high. The minister thinks that two taels of silver per month are enough for the first class soldiers, one and a half taels for the second class, and one tael for the third class. As for the monthly rations, it is enough to give three dou of rice." Zhang Mingzhen A fairly fair proposal. "In the army, cavalry soldiers and literacy are first class, soldiers are second class, and defenders are third class."

Zhu Yihai thought about it and agreed.

No money, no matter how high the salary is, it is useless.

"In the standard-bearer battalion, there are four sentries in one battalion, four teams in one sentinel, four teams in one team, and 640 soldiers in each battalion, plus sixty officers and soldiers in the battalion, and five guards in total. There are four personal soldiers in total, and a total of 140 four personal soldiers, plus assistants, secretaries, literacy, etc., so the total number of battalions is [-]." Zhu Yihai thought for a while, "If you go to war, the battalion will be equipped with [-] senior officers."

The standard-bearer battalion is tentatively designated as the infantry of the land division, and the personal soldiers are the servants, with horses.

"After dinner, I left for Yincheng. I heard that Xie Sanbin's family is very rich. This time I just asked him to borrow money for payment." Zhu Yihai said to everyone with a smile, "I copied Xie Sanbin, a traitor, and just paid everyone according to this new salary system." The battalion soldiers pay the first payment!"

In the future, it will not matter what Zhejiang soldiers are [-], or what the town mark is [-], and the battalions will be reorganized, with the battalion as the unit, enough soldiers and then full pay.

As for where the money comes from, local taxes are one of them, but the most important source must be borrowing money or ransacking the house.

To raise soldiers, Zhu Yihai had no choice but to use any means.

Anyway, Xie Sanbin, the richest man in Ningbo, is also ruthless for the sake of the rich, and even a traitor and traitor.

Hitting the local tyrants to divide the land is still unacceptable, but it is urgently necessary to copy the homes of a few traitors and send them to the army.

"Mingyang, I personally lead the banner battalion, and I will also recruit sixty Ding soldiers under my command."

"The last general is willing to be selected by His Royal Highness."

"I'll do it myself." Zhu Yihai said.

(End of this chapter)