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As a very interesting dynasty in Chinese history, the Ming Dynasty has a system that must be mentioned - the military merit system. Many people know that the military merit system of the Ming Dynasty was calculated according to the head of the person. It is also called "shougong" (as the name suggests, according to the first level of counting), but in fact, the Ming Dynasty did not calculate the gong according to the first level at the beginning.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, it was based on performance and calculation of merit, so-called: "Whoever establishes Qigong and Shougong, the leader of his personal control is to report knowledge, and those who report falsely are punished with serious crimes." Those who capture the traitors when they march to the camp or go down to the camp shall be rewarded with the merit of the quasi-head. Yu Ju Ji Gong". During the Zhu Di period, the Ming Dynasty mainly looked at combat performance, which sounded much more scientific and reasonable than looking at human heads. After all, if others kill the enemy and you grab the head, the credit will become yours, which seems very unfair.
But why did the Ming Dynasty later resolutely change to "first level" as the main criterion, abandoning "looking at performance"? In fact, this is all forced out by the various methods of lying about military merit by the generals of the Ming Dynasty, so we may wish to see how the Ming generals lied about military merits.
First, conceal the sky and cross the sea, and the chicken and dog ascend to heaven
In the early Ming Dynasty, the evaluation of military merit in the army was mainly based on performance. This point was especially prominent in the Yongle Dynasty, that is, during the Zhu Di period, and the main reason why Zhang Yu and Zhu Neng ranked high among the Heroes of the Jing Dynasty was that these two goods were extremely brave in battle (Pig Burst Masters), so it was natural to be among the best according to their performance.
However, this was not the case since the middle of the Ming Dynasty, on the one hand, the emperor lived deep in the great interior and did not go out, and the world was peaceful for a long time. On the other hand, the generals at that time were really too good at exploiting loopholes. For example, it is explained that the important criterion for judging military merit at the beginning is called "being the first", and the so-called being the first is to charge first.
At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, this "dangxian" had two provisions:
1. Generally no more than five people
2. There must be professionals to audit and audit.
However, by the middle of the Ming Dynasty, not only was the number of people who audited and inspected gone, but even the number of people was gone. Hundreds of people often "take the lead". And the generals all had a lot of words for this, such as "Some people are raising flags, some are sending equipment, and some are supporting." "There are even some generals who say that we have charged three times, so we have to count three military attacks." (The leading officer played by the rear commander to three or four hundred people, not in the case of chopping, do not set up a name, know the transport of sharp guns, know the flag, charge to break the enemy, know three times to be the first, and serve before the army.) ）
This kind of nonsensical military merit was the Battle of Yingzhou in the Zhengde period. Although the results of that battle are still controversial, the Ming Dynasty officially believes that it is more than ten levels of beheading, and the actual battle is only one day, but the final reward is as high as hundreds of people. This was simply an insult to the intelligence of the imperial court, and eventually the court officials could not bear it, and from the jiajing decade onwards, the Ming dynasty officials announced that the "first level" theory of merit had become the mainstream.
There are many advantages to using the first level of merit, and the most obvious advantage is that the first level has physical evidence after all, empty mouths have no evidence, and the first level is still reliable.
However, do not underestimate the intelligence of the Ming generals, whose level of intelligence is far beyond your imagination in this regard. Do you think they won't be able to change to the first level? Then you're too young.
2. Create something out of nothing, and exchange prisoners for sacrifices
The most famous user of the first gong system was the Qin state during the Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period.
Since the shang martingale transformation method, this military merit evaluation method has almost become the steel law of ancient military merit after thousands of years of testing. At that time, the Ming Dynasty stipulated that a Mongolian soldier who captured a Mongol soldier would be rewarded with 30 taels of silver and 20 taels for killing one (sentinel horse sheng captured a thief and a person who came, and the reward for silver was 32 taels; the first rank of a thief was beheaded, and the reward for silver was 22), although the specific numbers changed later. But the value of a first grade far exceeds a farmer's annual income. Therefore, this huge material stimulation also made the Ming Dynasty army like a wolf.
But when it comes to escape, life saving is often the first choice compared to the huge temptation of beheading. In particular, the Ming Dynasty army often defaulted on the money obtained from the beheading of the generals, such as the Jizhen Mutiny, which led to the killing of almost all the elite of the Qi family army, because of the arrears of wages. So in this case, it is not feasible to simply stimulate with substance.
However, this material stimulus was particularly effective for the general. Seeing that the first level was so valuable, all the generals' eyes basically glowed green. But what they wanted was not to kill more enemies, after all, going deep into the desert to find the Mongols to get rich was not a good choice. They decided to take a shortcut: "Now fortunately, there are drawbacks of buying merit, taking credit, sending names, channeling names, and combining merits." "Here I would like to explain that this sentence refers to the five methods of counterfeiting the first level at that time.
The so-called purchase of merit is very simple, that is, to use money to buy heads from the hands of soldiers who kill the enemy. Many people will wonder, then you buy it is not 20 taels of silver, the reward is also 20 taels, do not earn ah. Then you can think too much, they will all take advantage of the arrogance, or use the name of the chief to suppress people, or deceive the honest big-headed soldiers to buy at a low price, and some simply use each other's families as a threat.
To say that those who buy merit are already very bad, those who risk merit are even more disgusting, such as pretending to be others' achievements and saying that they are their own, or impersonating others' military merits. There are also more excessive killings of good and bad deeds, which is called "fellow countrymen, borrow your people to lead a military merit."
There are more advanced ones, such as the name of the channel, simply looking for the "insiders" of the military department to modify the first-level number, out of nothing. There are also people in the capital, but they can "not go out of the Beijing Division, and those who report meritorious service in the east, west, south, and north, according to the name, are accumulated and suddenly reached the highest level, which is called combined merit."
The culmination of these geniuses was Mao Wenlong, the chief soldier of Liaodong Phi Dao in the late Ming Dynasty. At that time, in order to deceive the military salary, Mao Wenlong could be said to have used these means one by one.
At that time, Mao Wenlong once led 200 people to raid Zhenjiang, but was forced to abandon it and retreat to the Yalu River after being attacked by Houjin.
According to Mao Wenlong, just after he retreated to the Yalu River, he sent troops to attack Zhenjiang and other places many times, killing the enemy and Building meritoriously, and his Tang Bao declared: "About 4,000 of the captured rank have been obtained." Yu Yu retreated to Lianshan Pass as the boundary. "After that year, the Jin had a total of about 60,000 troops, as Mao Wenlong said, there were more than 4,000 beheadings alone (generally the number of first stages in ancient times was much smaller than the number of deaths), so I was afraid that houjin would inevitably shake the whole country when it suffered this fiasco, and the Ming Dynasty could not be without news.
However, the historical records of the Three Sides of the Jin Dynasty after the Ming Dynasty of Korea have basically no record of this, and only a few words in the Korean "Diary of Guang Haijun" indicate that Hou Jin was pursuing Mao Wenlong, but this was only the beginning of Mao Wenlong's forgery.
However, just as Mao Wenlong was busy reporting to the imperial court for his merits, Amin, one of Nurhaci's four great belles, had already sharpened his knife and crossed the Yalu River to him. On December 15, the Houjin army killed Mao Wenlong's longchuan area, where Mao Wenlong was stationed, and "beheaded lü guerrillas and thousands of generals and generals, totaling more than 500 soldiers, and killed more than 1,000 men on the periphery." At this time, Mao Wenlong fled in a hurry, and actually wore makeup to avoid being pursued and killed, and the DPRK "tried its best to hide" before barely escaping death.
However, Mao Wenlong actually claimed in the Tang Bao of the Shangquan Imperial Court that he had "slashed more than 6,000 pieces of the Battle" in this battle, but because the first level was robbed by the Later Jin Army, only "twelve" were left. This nonsensical and comical record is estimated that no one but himself will believe it.
However, the North Korean record sharply points out: "Wenlong took off his crown, and the mixed soldiers were only exempted." The fiasco was known as the Linpan Fiasco, and Mao Wenlong basically lost all his belongings since he went deep into Zhenjiang, and the soldiers and civilians who had withdrawn from Zhenjiang with him were destroyed.
However, after this war, Mao Wenlong once again entangled a large number of fleeing displaced people, and his strength was soon restored under the protection of North Korea, and soon after the North Koreans chose a new base for the Mao general, Phi Dao.
However, on Phi Dao, the Mao General Soldier's counterfeiting was even more unscrupulous, and he very cleverly improved various tricks of risk. For example, pretending to be the first rank, he learned to change prisoners, that is, to use ordinary people as prisoners to offer to the imperial court, and he put up the delicious and delicious offerings of the captured Jurchens to wait for the Ming Dynasty to inspect. After the Ming Dynasty inspected it, it was determined that it was the Jurchen "Zhenyi" and then immediately replaced by innocent people and thrown to the capital to report the merits. This trick was a tribulation at the time.
Even Mao Wenlong, after leading his army to sneak into Anshan and was defeated, killing less than 200 enemies and losing as many as 4,000 soldiers, he shamelessly asked the imperial court for merit and reward. As a result, Shangshu Wang Yongguang of the Army Department almost died of anger: "There are less than two hundred people who have been beheaded, and more than 4,000 of my officers and men have been killed and wounded, and the equipment and horses have abandoned the killers and injured innumerable... That is, if it is punished by merit, can it still be extravagant and praise the king? Mao Wenlong's shameless face in order to ask for credit and reward can be seen.
It was precisely because Mao Wenlong acted so recklessly that Yuan Chonghuan was trapped alone in the Battle of Ningyuan, and the Houjin army "had no intention of stumbling back" and did not take this so-called "rear threat" as a thing at all. The whole Ming Dynasty and even today still have people who have the so-called "containment" big dream, which is not ironic.
Mao Wenlong has even reached the point of insanity because of his long-term lying about military merits. He even proposed a very bold two-year plan for Pingliao, which is called;
"In the past two years, there has been an old business of unfair Liao, the abolition of slavery, and the sin of cheating on the king." This was three years faster than Yuan Chonghuan's plan for five years of Pingliao. It can be seen how unreliable our grand plan of the lord of Mao Island is.
The military collapse of the late Ming Dynasty can also be seen.
Text: A cloud of smoke and rain
References: "Diary of Guang Haijun", "Old Manchu Archive", "Old Manchurian File", "Dongjiang Shujietang Newspaper Festival Copy", Mao Yuanyi's "Fourteen Collections of Shi Min", Xiong Tingbi's "Xiong Jingluo Manuscript Book", Qiu Jun's "Ming Jing Shiwen Compilation", Gui Cao's "Please Reform first merit discussion", "Daming Huidian"
The text was created by the History University Hall team, and the picture originated from the Internet and the copyright belongs to the original author