Since the Accounting: A Chronicle of the Roman Khanate

Chapter 116 Changes in the Military System

After the provincial institutions were perfected, the provincial capitals were gradually established.

Guo Gai and others summed up the lessons of Eastern Rome in their early years.At the beginning, various positions, dispatches, and titles in Eastern Rome overlapped, the division of labor between military, judicial, and administrative officials was unclear, and various institutions in the military region overlapped each other.Not only has the efficiency been reduced, but when the real problem is faced, it cannot solve the problem of noble rebellion.

Therefore, a simple but efficient system is necessary.And this kind of system needs to rely on a large number of experienced and reliable officials.

Before, the Greeks also made many attempts.In the entire world west of Congling Ridge, their system may be the most developed and perfect, even surpassing the Persians as teachers.But the Greeks still couldn't solve the problem of infighting 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 perfected and has begun to Song Dynasty.The real reason is that their education level is not as good as that of the Central Plains, and it is impossible for the citizen class to provide a large number of management talents.

We have been relying 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 is to choose from the army.

Since the establishment of the Purple Horde Khanate, it has been very unpopular with the surrounding God-worshiping religious forces. Basically, it has to fight with people.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 people with the most culture and management ability 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 came from low backgrounds, had no systematic education, and had difficulty even reading and writing.It is difficult for such people in the army to read and read complicated military orders, and they cannot write official documents. Training and execution of tasks will be affected.

According to the regulations of the Han Dynasty, illiterate people cannot pass the examination and become military officials.This is not to deliberately create a threshold, but because a combat-capable army cannot be a mob pulled together hastily.

A grassroots officer, in addition to performing military tasks, also has a lot of clerical work to do: routine inspection and maintenance of weapons, soldiers' health, training performance, assessment results, and even the garrison's food reserves, non-staple food purchases, and drug reserves ... All kinds of official documents and account books have to be written and signed by them.

War is not about bravery, but about the collision of two machines.These trivial and complicated matters seem to have nothing to do with the intense and bloody fighting, but they and the rules and regulations behind them are the source of combat effectiveness.So far, in the Western Regions, there are still handbooks used by soldiers of the Tang Dynasty to practice calligraphy, which shows how popular it was at that time.

What the people of the Han Dynasty could do with bamboo slips, it is even more possible to do it now with printing.After all, for soldiers, of course, the more educated the better.In addition to words, it is best to know mathematics.

In the Central Plains, there is a classic story:
During the Northern Song Dynasty, some people dug up some crossbow machines of the Han Dynasty, so they 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 crossbows.

Shen Kuo found that the aiming part of this crossbow is quite long, and there is a scale with scale on the side.The intention of the design is to aim at the end point of the arrow, the target and the number of scales when launching, measure the angle of launch, and adjust the height of the arrow.What is used here is the Pythagorean method of the operator.

In the past, the people of the Han Dynasty left a formula, but people did not understand its meaning at that time.Shen Kuo compared the crossbow and found that it probably told the user the standard gestures of holding, the method of aiming and the Pythagorean technique used for calculation.It is said that the ancients used this method to hit ten shots ten times, hitting the same place.

Shen Kuo recovered a crossbow and went to the shooting range to experiment by himself. Even though he was a novice, he could hit seven out of ten. Therefore, he believed that this method was effective.

So, can Shen Kuo's method help the Song Dynasty army?
Of course not.

In the Han Dynasty, soldiers had to learn how to use crossbows and were regularly assessed.The results of the assessment, like the number of beheadings, are the most important indicators for rewards and promotions.In addition, they usually have to carry out complicated maintenance and repair work on the crossbow, check whether the tension of the two arms of the crossbow is equal, whether the strength and range are qualified, and make detailed records.

And this kind of weapon was a thing that didn't take up the establishment when the Han Dynasty was prosperous-basically the main infantry could carry one in each hand.

Even if Heavenly Father threw the crossbow in the arsenal directly to the Northern Song army, how many of them could learn to use it?Can it be maintained?Can you guarantee that it will not become a waste product 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.

Here, there is a more important need for education: most of their soldiers are recruited from all over the world, and they don't understand each other's dialects.And except for the Greeks, basically everyone did not have a mature language, and they couldn't do clerical work even if they wanted to.Under such circumstances, if education is not carried out in the army, I am afraid that it is impossible to even give orders to soldiers.

The nobles of the Zizhang Khanate are actually not very educated, but they still know a little bit: the Li family brothers are engineers who repair water conservancy for others, and their basic measurement and measurement skills are very good; Cao's father and son are from accountants. , is good at arithmetic; the first chief shepherd and the first imam are even more powerful. As the most knowledgeable person in the Khan court, he has participated in many local sects in West Asia. Not only can he translate various common languages, but he also has rich teaching experience. How to teach these zero-based recruits...

Anyway, they are not needed as gentlemen in the military.According to Guo Gai's experience, only a few hundred Chinese characters, combined with some simple and concise stick-stroke marks specially used in the military, can meet various needs from daily copywriting to flag marking.

Later, even these symbols were eliminated-the soldiers believed that Chinese characters were originally simple and concise stick-stroke symbols, and there was no need to create another set.

In order to unify the passwords, Imam Zhang also used Greek letters to phoneticize these Chinese characters, so that the recruits can read them easily.Although the accent will be a bit strange, but you can understand it, and you don't have to expect too much.

Over the past few decades, a set of traditions that may be quite unique in Europe has been formed in the army of the Khanate.Veterans and grassroots officers in the army also provide enough personnel for local management.

In particular, the hundreds of households at the grassroots level were both grassroots administrators and grassroots military officers in the khanate system.Managing villages in peacetime and leading troops in wartime are daily routines in many places.

In the city, in fact, the same.

Except for a big city like Constantinople, most of the areas controlled by the Purple Horde do not have any urban traditions.Many cities that emerged with the development of the Khanate are actually war factories, responsible for the production of ordnance and other logistical materials at the request of the Khanate to meet the needs of the legion.

In the city, it is nothing more than workshops replacing farms, and workshops replacing villages.The various other institutions, including the arsenal where the weapons were kept, and the armed squares where the soldiers were organized, were identical.Management, the difference is not very big.

With this kind of grassroots support, further organization will be much easier.

(End of this chapter)