"Chang Siye" in "Tea House"
Author Lantai
In modern times, it seems that the Eight Flags have iron crops, and it seems that it has become a historical fact that the caged bird can become the "uncle of the banner".
Including the movie "Tea House" and the TV series "That Five", they all show the decadent appearance of the late Qing Dynasty flag people who are not diligent and have no distinction between grains.
However, the real Eight Banners in history, most of the people lived a very miserable life, otherwise there would not be so many Manchus in the late Qing Dynasty who took the initiative to join the Alliance and wanted to overthrow the Qing Dynasty.
First of all, the Eight Flags system is essentially a variant of the Ming Dynasty's Weishou system, and all people under the Eight Flags system are soldiers in the first place, just as the soldiers under the Ming Dynasty Weishou system have a truth.
In other words, the essence of the eight flags system is the "world soldier system", and the so-called "world soldier" means to be a soldier for generations.
The "advanced" or more cruel part of the Eight Flags system than the Ming Dynasty's Health Center system is that once you become a member of the Eight Flags, your children and grandchildren will always be "world soldiers".
After the Ming Dynasty was in Yongle, the good villains had already tacitly accepted that the children of the soldiers would automatically "get out of the nationality" when they took the examination, while the Qing Dynasty could never "get out of the nationality".
If Zhang Juzheng was in the Qing Dynasty, don't look at Zhang Juzheng who won the jinshi examination, and he was also the first assistant of the cabinet, and the emperor said a word, Zhang Juzheng had to "change from literature to martial arts" and go to battle to kill the enemy.
Eight Flags Armor
This is the real thing.
For example, the Yongzheng Emperor's favorite minister Ortai, his eldest son Erong'an was not only a scholar, but also a scholar of the Hanlin Academy, and as a result, because of his status as the Eight Banners, he was appointed by the Qianlong Emperor as a general of Dingxi without any reason, and went to the northwest to fight with the Dzungars, and as a result, when the army was defeated, he did not even have the wrist strength to lift the sword, and let the servants help him kill himself.
In the Ming Dynasty, the nobles generally took their children at home to enjoy their happiness, but not in the Qing Dynasty, and the nobles were often assigned by the emperor to go out to fight.
For example, during the Jiaqing period of the Qing Dynasty, in a small-scale domestic peace-fighting battle, two hereditary first-class dukes of the Qing Dynasty died at one time, namely hereditary first-class super yong gong'an Lu (son of the famous Qianlong Dynasty general Hai Lancha) and first-class Chengjia Yiyong Gong Huilun. (Qianlong Dynasty famous general Ming Ruizi)
In other words, the Qing emperor was much more stingy than the Ming emperor, and he did not allow the children of the soldiers to "leave the country", let alone allow the soldiers to eat idle meals. Even the Eight Banners Noble could not avoid killing the enemy, not to mention the ordinary Eight Banners ordinary people.
The so-called "hardcore crops" of the eight flags refers to the military salaries of the eight flags soldiers.
It should be said that the treatment given by the Qing Dynasty to the Eight Banners soldiers is still relatively rich, and the marriage and funeral marriage to the imperial court are subsidized, and even the Qing Dynasty will give "rewards" to all the Eight Banner soldiers on the emperor's birthday, the big wedding, the empress's birthday, and the empress's birthday every three to five years.
However, as mentioned earlier, the Emperor of the Qing Dynasty was very angry, and this kind of "hardcore crop" could only be found by soldiers who became eight flag soldiers, and ordinary flag people as "reserve soldiers" did not exist.
That is to say, if a disciple of the Eight Banners cannot become a soldier, there is no "hardcore crop".
At the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, this was nothing, because under the Eight Flags system, there were 87 soldiers in the next commander, and at that time, there were only about 100 people under a single collar, and many of the Eight Banners disciples could also become officials, so at that time, a child of the Eight Banners did not worry about becoming a soldier at all.
Eight Flags Soldier in the TV series
However, by the Time of the Jiaqing Daoguang Dynasty, the number of males under the jurisdiction of the Eight Banners system had swelled to 300-400 people, while the number of soldiers was still only 87, plus at most 10 "nurturing soldiers" with 1/3 salary.
This is from the beginning of the Jiaqing Dynasty, almost 2/3 of the Eight Banners disciples can not become soldiers, can not eat "hardcore crops".
These Eight Banner disciples who cannot eat the "hardcore crops" are called "Yu Ding", and "Yu Ding" has no money and grain.
What if I don't have money? Cold.
Either he lives by doing odd jobs, such as the "second brother-in-law" in Mr. Lao She's "Zhenghong Flag", who lives by doing odd jobs and carpenter work, or the whole family lives on a military salary.
Because the Qing Dynasty stipulated that the eight flags disciples were not allowed to do anything other than being soldiers, if you are interested in reading the papers on the livelihood of the eight flags in the late Qing Dynasty, you can see that the vast majority of ordinary eight flags children in the late Qing Dynasty lived much worse than the ordinary people.
Here I can recommend a few academic papers to you, "Military Reform of the Flag People at the End of the Qing Dynasty and the Livelihood of the Eight Banners", "Daoguang Initial Discussion on the Historical Materials of the Livelihood of the Eight Flags", "The Decline and Fall of the Eight Flags Nobles - A Study on the Economic Situation of the Flag People in the Qing Dynasty", and "An Analysis of the Livelihood Problems of the Eight Flags in the Qing Dynasty", all of which talk about Jiaqing, Daoguang Dynasty, and how miserable the lives of ordinary flag people under the Eight Banners system were.
Of course, under the Eight Flags system, it is not a clan room, and there are indeed a small number of people who can "lift caged birds and be idle", which is the eight flags disciples with knighthoods, who can obtain income without being a soldier.
For example, the Qianlong Dynasty's corrupt official He Yan, whose ancestors were awarded the hereditary third-class light car lieutenant for military merit, this title in the Qing Dynasty could receive 160 taels of silver per year.
Even if he does not become an official, he can still have 160 taels of silver a year, although it is very likely that the he and the Yan family will live on this 160 taels of silver, but this is a good thing to have an income, which is the real "hardcore crop".
However, according to scholars' statistics, even in the Xuantong Dynasty, no more than 3,000 flag people received hereditary titles, and these flag people with titles belonged to the upper echelons of the Eight Banners
In general, as a military system, the Eight Flags do not feed idle people, not all the children of the Eight Flags can eat "iron crops", at least 2/3 of the ordinary flag people have never eaten "iron crops" in their lives, they either rely on their fathers and brothers to support, or live by doing odd jobs.
In the Qing Dynasty, especially after the Yongzheng Dynasty, the living standards of the vast majority of ordinary Eight Banner people were not as good as those of the people in the city, and the later the Qing Dynasty, the more embarrassing the lives of ordinary banner people.
END