Because the conversation was really speculative, the generous Gao Hanwen had no choice but to spend his own money to entertain the group at Xiaolian Tea House. Gao Hanwen was the local magistrate and wanted to show his friendship to the landlord.
Fortunately, you can get food and drinks on credit at Xiaolian Tea House, and the shopkeeper is familiar with it, so Gao Hanwen doesn't have to worry about the embarrassment of not bringing any money.
It took me two quarters of an hour to walk there, doing my usual routine.
When we arrived at Xiaolian Tea House, Old Yu’s podium happened to be free, so he came over to answer the greetings and then settled into their seats.
I asked for a separate private room. Gao Hanwen and his two disciples sat on the right side. After some refusal, Yan Jun and his two disciples sat on the left side.
Other social studies students want to lose face, so how can they be embarrassed to join them if they are not direct disciples? Such a shameless person is still not found among the Confucian scholars of the Ming Dynasty.
Gao Hanwen and Yan Jun had a lively chat, and naturally they talked about Hu Zongxian's anti-Japanese situation in Jiangsu and Zhejiang. Moreover, Yan Jun came from there and has first-hand information. When meeting Hu Zongxian, the damn Gao Hanwen didn't behave well before and didn't ask for information. This time he had to seize the opportunity to ask more questions.
Since the "conversion of rice to mulberry" project is progressing smoothly, most of the gentry in Zhejiang have opened their granaries and taken out five or six years old grain to pay for the land rent. This time, Zhejiang did not occupy too much of Jiangsu's grain reserves for war. . Therefore, unlike in the play, in the current situation, Hu Zongxian is overwhelming and has squeezed the Japanese pirates onto the small island near Zhoushan.
The Japanese pirates also knew that the decisive battle was not far away. Either they will lose the opportunity to plunder the Ming Dynasty's inland forever, or they will defeat the Ming Dynasty's most elite regular army in an upright manner, and then justifiably stay in Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
It would be okay if there were simply a Japanese pirate force in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, because although they were called Japanese pirates, they borrowed their name from the Japanese, and the main body was the Ming Dynasty people who were affected by the forbidden sea. As long as you are alone and weak, you will be able to wait and see.
But behind the Japanese pirates in Jiangsu and Zhejiang, there is also the support of the Japanese pirates in Fujian. Obviously, the Fujian Japanese pirates regarded the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Japanese pirates as a strategic barrier. It just so happened that the Japanese pirates in Jiangsu and Zhejiang were the richest and most powerful. They were the most reluctant to abandon their foundation and were willing to give it a try and turn their bicycles into motorcycles.
Yan Jun transferred to Hangzhou after planning the decisive battle. Presumably, after the autumn harvest, Hu Zongxian would launch a land and sea campaign against the Japanese pirates in Zhoushan after the court approved it.
Having said this, Gao Hanwen immediately raised a toast and congratulated "all the soldiers of the Ming Dynasty for their bravery and fearlessness in killing powerful enemies."
This sentence evoked Yan Jun's silence.
After a long silence, Yan Jun realized that he had ruined the atmosphere, and began to analyze how powerful the Japanese pirates were and the shortcomings of the Ming army.
Let’s talk about Japanese pirates first. The main body of Japanese pirates are actually pirates, Dan family members, vagrants, etc. along the coast. There are very few real Japanese samurai, and the combat power of Japanese samurai is not strong. Pretty much a pirate. If those samurai were really powerful, they wouldn't be driven into the sea to become pirates.
You know, Japan is still at the end of the Warring States Period. It is said that Oda Nobunaga is about to unify Japan, but the price of unification is that a large number of samurai from different factions were expelled from the mainland as their masters were defeated, and they could only escape to Korea and the islands in the East China Sea. .
A group of defeated deserters also dared to speak out, but the core combat strength of the Japanese pirates was nothing more than this.
But the problem is not that the Japanese pirates are weak, but that the traditional guards’ officers and soldiers cannot even resist such weak Japanese pirates, so that the Japanese invaders invade the city and plunder the land as if they are entering uninhabited territory. The number of soldiers recruited was actually equivalent to that of Japanese pirates, and the previous officers and soldiers who suppressed bandits did not take advantage at all.
It is evident that the Ming Dynasty’s armaments were depleted.
What is more worrying than the depletion of armaments is the Ming Dynasty’s military merit system, which places too much emphasis on the head.
This leads to a problem. Whenever the battlefield situation is advantageous, frontline soldiers will suspend the attack and harvest the heads, because if they don't harvest them, they will be harvested by others.
For this reason, it is not uncommon for the two groups of soldiers to kill each other on the battlefield. What's more, when the Japanese pirates saw the Ming army's formation in chaos, they turned against them and turned the Ming army's victory into defeat.
The Ming Dynasty’s court now does not reward military merit as long as it cannot be verified, and the only thing that can be verified is the human head. This has also caused many scandals of killing good people and taking merit.
Military merit can only be achieved in this way, but most of the sergeants without heads can only work in vain, complaining, and the villagers near the battlefield will inevitably suffer.
But this verification of military merit is indeed difficult. Due to the long period of peace, all wars were basically fought within the territory. Even when the Jurchens were pacified during the Chenghua period, they were surrounded by civil servants and governors of the Ming Dynasty.
War cannot bring benefits by expanding territory, and generals and surrounding officials may conspire to deceive each other and create a great victory out of thin air. The imperial court used this as an excuse to increasingly tighten military merit rewards, making it unsustainable to this day, but it did not want to change.
"How to enhance the verifiability of military achievements?" Gao Hanwen summarized the problem for Yan Jun.
"Maybe we can increase the audit so that the palace, civil servants, military generals, etc. can audit each other to be credible." Cheng Xueyan, a disciple on Yan Jun's left, responded immediately.
"The bad thing is that the eunuchs and civil servants were audited at the same time. The eunuchs accused the civil servants of falsely claiming military merit, and the civil servants accused the eunuchs of cheating. It seems that both parties are responsible, but in fact it is a mess. Logical induction Speaking of verifiability, is it necessary to use the victory of the next war of the same army to verify the authenticity of the previous one? What if there is no war in the middle? The host and guest armies are not the same." Yan Jun also realized that it depends on people. Verification will lead to an endless crisis of trust.
In the final analysis, throughout the Ming Dynasty, due to the historical legacy of Emperor Taizu's distrust of civil servants in the early years of the Ming Dynasty, the trust between the emperor and his ministers was pitifully low. Of course, there is a real question mark as to whether civil servants are trustworthy. Ever since the vigorous Zhengde Emperor mysteriously fell into the water and died of the cold after being rescued, the death of the emperor and his ministers had already been deeply rooted in their bones when they saw doubts. They just shouted "Long Live Long Live" every day. Jiajing relied on cultivating immortals to push the government affairs to Yan Song, so that he was about to die.The conflict between the monarch and his subjects that erupted from the volcano turned into a conflict between civil servants, and only then was there temporary peace.
Everyone in the house was speechless. Guo Xiaozi’s clear voice came up from downstairs. It turned out that he was talking about the Portuguese royal family sending Columbus across the Atlantic to find the New World. Then Portugal was able to establish territories in the New World, collect taxes and make a fortune, and everyone was happy.
"Have you heard what I just said?" Gao Hanwen spoke at the right time to break the silence.
"Teacher, I heard it. General Dao Ge occupied a territory and Franji used it to expand tax revenue." Shen Guanyi took the lead to break the calm.
"Here, although the Franji royal family rewarded General Ge in advance, there will be tax revenue later. The essence is to use the tax revenue from the war to reward General Ge," Zhu Geng added.
"You are saying that it is necessary to use the taxes from this place after the war to reward the sergeants. It was desolate after the war, and I have to wait for several years to get the taxes." Mr. Yan Jun seemed to think it was not feasible as a conditioned reflex, but The sound from behind became weaker and weaker.
"This may be a method worth trying. This method may not be suitable for the desolate frontiers, but it is most suitable for the Jiangsu and Zhejiang areas where the imperial tax is heavily taxed. Only by this method can we prevent soldiers from killing good people. merit, because all the kills will be rewarded with military merit in the future. For example, a war-influenced area can be defined before the war. After the war, only those who have made outstanding contributions such as climbing first or capturing the flag will be rewarded. The injured and dead will be immediately compensated, and the rest will be compensated immediately. It will be divided into ten years, and half or 30% of the increase in taxes in the affected area will be allocated as a reward. What does Mr. Yan think? Please remember to save Shao’s recommendation tickets. The latest and fastest website is free to read without anti-theft