Since Zhengde, the number of military smiths has been expanding, and the consumption of Beijing Reserves has increased day by day, and the drawbacks it has brought have become increasingly obvious. At the beginning of Sejong's reign, he began to eliminate the maladministration since Zhengde.
In view of the expansion of the number of military craftsmen in the Beijing Division during the Zhengde period, the imperial court gradually eliminated military craftsmen and achieved results. For example, at the beginning of Sejong's reign, the official school of the Cut-off Jinyi Guards and the warrior craftsmen waited for more than 100,000 people, and the provincial capital stored 1.5 million stones of rice.
In the early years of Jiajing, the dismissal of military smiths since Zhengde made the source of abuses quite clear, which had a lot to do with Sejong's attitude of striving to eliminate Zhengde's maladministration. However, with the passage of time, the measures to eliminate the evil government of Zhengde and eliminate the military smiths were not completely carried out.
Sejong's attitude soon changed, and he began to turn a blind eye to the phenomenon of the Internal Government Supervision Bureau's indiscriminate collection of military smiths, and even supported it to some extent. Soon, the prison bureau did not have two months to collect more than 3,700 military craftsmen, and a large number of years of rice and winter cloth.
In March of the fourth year of Jiajing, the imperial eunuch Huang Jin requested two thousand more craftsmen to serve on the grounds that there were not enough craftsmen, but Sejong ordered 500 to be used despite the opposition of the military department, and strictly prohibited private service. Sejong's laissez-faire was opposed by Zheng Zibi, who proposed that the reform could not last long, and that it was the same as the non-reform, and asked Sejong to continue to lay off the craftsmen of the Inner Prefectural Supervision Bureau, but Sejong ignored it.
In July of the same year, Li Yu (李钺), the head of the Bingbu Shangshu (兵部尚書), was deposed by Emperor Sejong for his opposition to the acceptance of the weaving and dyeing bureau's use of craftsmen. Li Yuli analyzed the disadvantages of Chen Junsmith's excessive food, analyzed the relationship between military smiths and grain reserves, grain reserves and national connections, and the consumption of Jing chu, and the impact on the Beijing division, and asked Sejong to take action. Instead of eliminating redundant military smiths, Sejong still allowed the division to set up supervisors and the Bureau of War to recruit 500 craftsmen, and the other bureaus received from the appropriate amount.
In September of the same year, the internal government supervisory bureaus requested the recruitment of craftsmen, which was approved by Sejong, and its enrollment number was thousands, and the number of recruits was hundreds, which was strongly opposed by the ministers and officials, but Sejong ignored it.
Therefore, Hubu Shangshu Qin Jin Shangshu: Money and grain are the lifeblood of the country, its surplus and contraction are security, the ointment of the small people is lost, and its urgency is close. The military smiths of the various supervisory bureaus also saw that the number of workers in the food and grain was also quite large, and Li Yu and others of the Military Department also wrote to Sejong to oppose the supervision bureau to play the military smith, but Sejong ignored it.
From the beginning of Sejong's reign, when he laid off Jeongtoku's redundant military smiths, to the acquiescence to the recruitment of military smiths by the Inner Government Supervision Bureau at this time, this seemingly contradictory move was closely related to sejong's change of attitude. There are two main reasons for the change in Sejong's attitude.
First, after Emperor Wuzong's death, Sejong took the throne as the king of the domain, and at the beginning of his reign, he launched a great ceremonial dispute around the succession and succession, and finally ended with Sejong's great ceremony, but this incident made Sejong realize the necessity of wooing his internal subjects and supporting his cronies, and also caused a change in his attitude toward eunuchs, one of which was to adopt a tacit attitude toward the requests of craftsmen recruited by eunuchs.
Second, the military smiths of the Inner House Supervision Bureau mainly served the imperial family, and the recruitment of military smiths was better for the emperor to complete the craftsmen to meet their own needs. These two factors prompted a change in Sejong's attitude, and Sejong's change in attitude affected the dismissal of the military smiths of the Beijing Division.
Since Zhengde and Jiajing, the main reason for the dismissal of military smiths is that the consumption of beijing reserves is serious, which increases the burden on the imperial court. In addition, there are also cuts due to reasons such as taking advantage of monthly grains and not being skilled. While laying off the smiths, the imperial court also began to check the existing grain smiths, and due to the flight of the smiths and the implementation of the silver system of craftsmen, the court would also hire a moderate number of military smiths.
For example, in the twenty-sixth year of Jiajing, the Ministry of Works gave Huang Zongzong a request to the imperial court to investigate the food and grain smiths, and all surplus people were allocated to the work station, such as or insufficient to be hired. The main purpose of Huang Zongkui's proposal was to save the country's financial expenditure, and his proposal was feasible, so it was approved by Sejong.
After Jiajing, it is difficult to find in the relevant historical materials that the military smith Lan Thin and the minister Shangshu requested to cut the records of the military smith. This is inseparable from the impact on Jiajing and the original social system that preceded it. In order to facilitate the management of military personnel, the rulers of the Ming Dynasty adopted a conservative attitude toward the number of military personnel, without losing the original quota.
During the Zhengde and Jiajing periods, the phenomenon of military smiths being charged was very serious, and a large part of the people who invested in the deposit were non-military craftsmen, and their investment meant the destruction of the household registration system divided by occupation and the impact on the existing military smith system. The imperial court's measures to eliminate military craftsmen were also trying to maintain a situation that did not lose their original quotas, but they could not stop the shock of the entire social system in the last years of the Ming Dynasty.
The acceleration of social mobility and the development of the commodity economy have impacted the original system, and after Jiajing, most of the military smiths were recruited, and the military smiths who were supposed to undertake bad service were also allowed to pay silver for military service, and the phenomenon of military smiths being eliminated rarely appeared.
In short, the recruitment of military smiths has a lot to do with the attitude of the layoffs and rulers, and The laissez-faire attitude of Emperor Wuzong led to the expansion of the number of military craftsmen during the Zhengde period, and after Sejong ascended the throne, he gradually laid off the military craftsmen and achieved results.
By the end of the Ming Dynasty, with the acceleration of social mobility, the implementation of the silver system of craftsmen, and the emergence of the budding of capitalism, most of the military smiths were hired by the imperial court, and the number of military smiths was relatively stable, and there was rarely a phenomenon of laying off military smiths.