Haisheng Mingdi

Chapter 572 The Great Emperor
As for the [-] more troops, that's nothing.

Even Liu Zongzhou couldn't say anything, after all, the emperor even thought of the orphans of martyrs and made arrangements.

Lecture Halls, Naval Academy, Army Academy, and even Artillery Academy, Cavalry Academy, etc., are all places where officers and professional technical arms are trained. They actually recruit active soldiers, that is, select outstanding soldiers from various towns and send them to further study.

The students in the various colleges did not recruit additional soldiers, nor did they increase the number of soldiers and military pay, and everyone had no objection.

The lecture hall mainly trains middle and high-level military officers, while the academies mainly train professional technical arms without conflicting with each other.

The imperial court will also continue to set up military examinations, military examinations, martial arts examinations and military strategy, military strategy is also placed above military martial arts, military examinations are equivalent to a supplement to the military officer selection system, mainly to find missing talents.

Colleges at all levels, imperial camps, foreign towns, tun towns, regiment training personnel, and even civil servants can sign up for the exam. Like the civil and imperial examinations, they also take the exam every three years. There are Wu Tongsheng, Wu Xiucai, Wujuren, Wujin Scholars, and Wu Zhuangyuan and so on.

After passing different exams, one can be admitted to different colleges, or enter different military towns. After reaching the level of Jinshi, one can also enter the martial arts hall for training, and then can be awarded martial arts after coming out.

Generally speaking, Wu Jinshi first trained in academies, then were awarded as bodyguards, and then sent out as officers, starting from deputy positions.

It is not easy to test martial arts, after all, it is necessary to have both civil and military skills, especially the art of war strategy, which must be higher than his personal riding and archery combat skills, and even the four books, five classics and martial arts.

Riding horses, archery, pulling hard bows, dancing big swords, and lifting big stones.

This whole set of test content is actually only suitable for military officers to take the test. Ordinary civilians are not many literate, and it is even more difficult to ride and shoot.

So the martial arts exam established by Zhu Yihai is actually a supplement to the selection of active military officers. Riding and archery, strength, and also show your military tactics. As long as you can prove that you have reached a certain level, the difficulty of martial arts exams at each level is different, and you will be screened based on this.

When you reach different levels, you can confer corresponding officials, give promotions, and even give you the opportunity to enter martial arts halls or professional colleges for training.

Being promoted is not just about fighting for meritorious service. After all, sometimes there is no fighting, or assisting in the back, etc., that can't be proved.

So that's an addition as well.

The requirements are also high, with both civil and military skills, so it is difficult for ordinary soldiers, officers, or children of powerful gentry, or ordinary people to pass.

Those who can pass the Wu Juren examination must at least have the ability of a battalion officer, and being able to become a Wu Jinshi means that they have at least the ability to lead thousands of soldiers.

If you can't have both civil and military skills, you can only work hard to kill the enemy in the army, and use your actual ability to lead troops to prove yourself in order to get promoted, and you can't take this path.

Of course, if they are general disciples, they will definitely have an advantage in the martial arts exam.

The Ming Dynasty dismissed the garrison and abolished the hereditary system of military officers, so the re-opening of the examination might not be a compensation for the generals.

Why did Zhu Yihai suddenly set up four new guards and reopen the imperial examination? In fact, it was just to stabilize the imperial power.

The essence of power is actually to sit in rows and share results.

The distribution of benefits is the essence of power.

Whoever holds the distribution right holds the real power.

How it is distributed reflects power.

Sometimes even compromises, concessions, exchange of interests, etc., are just details.

Holding the power of resources and benefit distribution, the emperor is naturally superior, but if the distribution is not good and the benefits are uneven, accidents are prone to happen. Therefore, the most important thing for the superior is to balance and distribute the benefits well.

Even if it is never possible to satisfy everyone, at least a priority value must be taken.

Try to recruit as many people as possible, otherwise the position will be unstable.

The founding emperors of all dynasties in China are actually the people who understand this best, but many subjugated kings do not understand this. They think that power comes from the title of emperor, but it is not at all.

Even those last emperors lost their real distribution rights, so the imperial decree could not leave the palace.

Even if the emperor does anything, he must first form an alliance of interests and win over the vast majority of people to his side. Otherwise, he will become a lonely family, and he will either be kidnapped or abandoned and betrayed in the end.

The feudal dynasty belonged to the world.

But not the emperor alone.

As powerful as the Sui Empire, it fell into the hands of Yang Guang, who was determined to go his own way, and he died in the same way. It was because of the decisions he made, no matter whether it was right or wrong, but first of all he had completely betrayed his core support class.

Without the underlying support, everything is just a castle in the air.

So Yang Guang finally died in the hands of the Guanlong Group, and even died in the hands of the guard Xiaoguo Army he recruited and formed.

Since Zhu Yihai raised his troops, he has always positioned himself as rebuilding the Ming Dynasty, not reviving the Ming Dynasty, so he continued to reform the old system, but it was not a reform like Wang Mang, but an exchange.

Every time he takes away a piece of power, he will first exchange it with an equivalent power, and even give more than what he took away.

Just like Zhu Yihai, using the current turmoil and famine in the world as an excuse, asked the people to guarantee the area of ​​grain planting, and even demanded unified purchase and marketing. Simply set a price.

Even if he minted coins and issued exchange certificates, they would be issued strictly on a one-to-one basis, and he would never dare to print Daming banknotes without reserve funds like Zhu Yuanzhang.

The imperial government engaged in the unified purchase and marketing of grain, but it did not lower the purchase price of grain for the common people because of its monopoly power, nor did it arbitrarily raise the selling price of grain. The income of the people cannot make the people unable to afford food.

After the Tartars Beijing, all the food was sold for ten taels of silver a stone, and the price on the black market was even higher.

But now after the summer harvest in Jiangnan, the price of grain has basically dropped to about one or two stones, and this price even reached the early Chongzhen period.

It takes a lot of energy to ensure a more stable and reasonable price by dispatching the limited precious food to the military and civilians as much as possible, so as not to let people take the opportunity to drive up the food price.

Because he knows that in such a time of war and turmoil, food is not just food, it represents stability and the hearts of the people.He controlled all purchases and sales, preventing those landlords and tycoons from taking advantage of this to sell food for profit.

But it also gives them the opportunity to let go of the legal management rights of salt, tea, wine mines, etc., and to restrict food, and to give them other compensations.

If the officers are not allowed to eat empty pay, they have to be compensated with food for their own soldiers.

If they are not allowed to deduct military pay, they have to increase their salaries, and even give an extra sum of money to the minister.

There are some things, even the emperor, it is impossible to say that no embezzlement or embezzlement is allowed, so that the people below can really abide by it.It's like a county magistrate, with a salary of tens of taels of silver a year, and a clerk, with a tael of work and food in a month. Is it possible that they are not greedy?
In the end, it was just added to the people.

Just like when the Chongzhen Dynasty levied three additional rates, it was said that only two cents of silver was levied per mu of land, which was not much at all, but they forgot. How much fire consumption will be imposed by the officials behind them privately.

As long as the soldiers dare to fight and have military discipline, but they can't even provide the soldiers with enough food, isn't this a hooligan?

Zhu Yihai withdrew the right to increase expropriation of fire consumption, clearly limited the amount of fire consumption, returned these to the public, and then directly distributed them to officials at all levels in the name of Yanglian Bank and Minister Bank.

A governor will give 2 taels, and a county magistrate will give [-] taels.

Some people think it is too much, dozens of times the salary.

But they forgot that even a county magistrate would earn a few thousand taels a year just for those bad rules, which is not embezzlement or embezzlement.

Therefore, it is very necessary to turn gray income into legal income and formally rectify it. Otherwise, if you turn a blind eye and close your eyes, the bottom will be hollowed out.

If it is formalized, at least everything is placed in the sun, there are laws and evidence to follow, and if someone messes up, it is really easy to investigate and deal with.

And the county magistrates can be at ease with this subsidy on the surface, and they can live well without having to think of ways to do those things. Of course, everyone will not think about corruption. become a general problem.

Zhu Yihai never deceived himself or others, that's boring.

Daming is rotten to the root, but it's not all because of the system.

The feudal dynasties in ancient China, any dynasty, will basically be rotten to the end by about 300 years.In fact, this is not a system issue, nor is it a matter of destiny.

It is a problem of productivity limitation. After two or three hundred years of development in a unified dynasty, its population will inevitably multiply to a limit number, and the dynasty's system will inevitably be full of problems after so many years.

So in the end it is the merger of powerful and powerful, political corruption, corruption of officials and so on.

The Tang Dynasty did not support Zhu, so he also collapsed.

The Song Dynasty did not have a separatist regime, and it could not survive its demise.

The Qing Dynasty entered the customs, but it also took more than 200 years of national luck.

The essence is that productivity has reached its limit.

So after going through a great turmoil, for ten years or decades, the world was in turmoil, the population dropped sharply, the old dynasty fell, and the new dynasty was born, and those old royal clans, ministers, relatives, and even nobles fell one after another. .

A new batch of military aristocrats and local tyrants followed suit.

Power is shuffled and resources are redistributed.

As a result, the fatal problems in the last years of each dynasty, such as land annexation, political corruption, farmers losing their land, and famine, all disappeared.

Many dynasties perished due to peasant uprisings, alien invasions, etc., but in fact those were just appearances, the trigger, and the real cause of the dynasties' demise had been planted long ago.

The world's land output can no longer afford to support so many people, especially after the means of production are concentrated and monopolized in the hands of a few aristocratic tyrants, which exacerbates the problems of wealth inequality and social injustice, and the contradictions become more acute. The old dynasty will be overthrown by means of famine and hunger, foreign invasion, or peasant uprising, and the cards will be reshuffled.

How many people were there in Daming during the Chongzhen period?

The official number is tens of millions, but later generations speculate that there should be more than 1 million people.

This number has reached a peak limit at the end of Ming Dynasty, so any famine or war will cause turmoil and eventually perish.

Zhu Yihai has studied Marx, and he also likes to read Mao Xuan.

Look beyond the surface.

Daming can only be rebuilt, not rejuvenated.

We have to start all over again.

No matter how much we try to salvage the old system, it is useless.

He just borrowed the banner of Ming Dynasty to gather people's hearts and fight against the Manchus, but if he really wants to stabilize and prosper, he has to come up with a new set of framework.

Zhu Yihai's structure is much more brilliant than that of the Manchus.

In the era of Nurhachi, Hou Jin was just a group of robbing barbarians who liked to burn, kill and loot.

In the era of Huang Taiji, some Han civil officials and military generals were recruited, and they began to play with the system, but they all learned the outdated things of the Ming Dynasty.

It's just that they were relatively simple at that time, with relatively strong cohesion, and they didn't have so much fuss, so starting a business was quite smooth.

After they entered the customs, in fact, the Tartars who engaged in the integration of Mongolia and Han had already been poisoned.

It's even quite poisonous.

They were successful in history, not because of how strong they were, but because in the Ming Dynasty, if there were no Tartars, Li Zicheng would have replaced them, and even if Li Zicheng failed, Zhang Xianzhong would have replaced them.

It is even possible that those Jiangnan scholar-bureaucrats will support another royal family, Zhu Jiafan, and build another Ming Dynasty.

But these people are not beyond the constraints of the times.

For example, those systems after the Tartars entered the customs were not developed at all, and they were very backward.

Facing Zhu Yihai's strong counterattack, they only knew one way to raise taxes.When the finances became more and more critical, they began to rob openly.

Regarding the fields and manor properties of Qi Xunchen outside the Mingzong family, at first they said that they would be given preferential treatment and reserved, but now they are all directly confiscated, and they even find reasons to massacre them.

For large merchants such as salt merchants, the mode of killing pigs and cutting leeks has also been started.

Facing the rebellious rebels everywhere, they have nothing to do but massacre the city to express their incompetent anger.

According to a secret report from Beijing.

The Tartars have already begun to discuss some emergency rescue methods. One is to increase the looting of the Han people. If the additional levy can no longer bring in money and food, they will just rob them.

The second is to reduce the food rate of the Eight Banners.

Give them more land, assign Han Chinese to them as coat slaves, cancel the food and wages of the Eight Banners, and even let them bring their own weapons and buy equipment with money.

Those who died in battle will no longer be given pensions, or owed first.

For the Green Battalion soldiers, it is also proposed that they all be assigned to the Eight Banners as household servants, given certain status, property rights, etc., but in this way, there will be no need to pay food and pensions.

Since the original set can no longer be maintained, we can only find another way.

Whether it's civilization or barbarism, as long as they can change the predicament, they don't care.

Daming is increasing military salaries and improving treatment, while the Tatars are about to start reducing their salaries or even owe them.

(End of this chapter)