Chapter 463 462 Border Strategy

Wei Guangde's curiosity was naturally impossible to get the answer from Zhang Juzheng.

The matter was kept secret, and Xu Jie did not tell Zhang Juzheng about the arrangements for him, so although Zhang Juzheng was smiling at this time, he was actually very puzzled in his heart, although he was not jealous yet.

With teacher Xu Jie in the pavilion, Zhang Juzheng certainly would not suspect that Wei Guangde had robbed him of the opportunity. He could only say that there might be something else he didn't know about, and he could only take the time to ask the teacher.

In the next two days, Wei Guangde hosted another banquet at home for his peers and fellow villagers. After all, it was a happy event for his promotion.

When fellow villagers get together, the things they talk about the most are naturally things about their hometown in Jiangxi.

"Yesterday I saw the book handed over by the Secretary of General Affairs. Governor Hu Song and Mr. Hu came to Shu. Jiangxi was invaded by Fujian-Guangzhou thieves. The provinces are more than a thousand miles apart. Although the close ones were ordered to suppress them, they joined forces to fight with rats. The forces are uneven, and the Zhangnan, Wuping, and Jianning factions are especially pushing back. I don’t know what these foreign officials think. At this time, they are not worried about the enemy and suppressing the thieves. "

"I have read the memorial. The main message is that those who have made meritorious deeds from now on should be rewarded according to the regulations of Fujian and Zhejiang for catching Japanese pirates. If rewards and punishments are not clearly defined, Jiangxi officials and soldiers will not be willing to suppress the thieves."

"That's natural. The thieves in Fujian and Zhejiang are rewarded according to the rules for catching Japanese pirates, but the Jiangxi officers and soldiers can only get a small reward even if they kill the thieves, so they will definitely be dissatisfied."

"In my opinion, the main battle is the distribution of bounties. Now when Jiangxi is suppressing thieves, the bounties come from the Jiangxi Chief Envoy, while the Fujian and Zhejiang troops come from Governor Hu's camp. Jiangxi previously asked for instructions to temporarily withhold additional taxes and services to suppress thieves. Governor Hu objected and ordered the shipment to be delivered within a time limit.”

The people here are all officials from Jiangxi, and naturally their talk is focused on Jiangxi.

Jiangxi was also included in Hu Zongxian’s campaign to suppress the Japanese faction, but now that Fujian thieves had fled to Jiangxi, and the lives of people were in ruins, Jiangxi had to collect money from its own pockets to exterminate the thieves, and also paid Hu Zongxian to suppress the Japanese, and everyone was unwilling to do so.

Even Hu Song, the governor of Jiangxi, felt that it was very unfair, so while reporting the actual situation in Jiangxi, he once again asked Hu Zongxian to pay the reward for the extermination of the thieves.

"Shan Loan, what do you say?"

At this time, Lao Kan asked Wei Guangde.

Wei Guangde glanced at Lao Kan and then at his fellow villagers. He knew in his heart that these people had probably communicated with each other before entering the door, and perhaps wanted to jointly submit a memorial to support Hu Song's memorial.

"Although I haven't heard anything about the palace's stance on this matter, I think the Ministry of War will be asked to discuss it in detail and draw up regulations, which will then be approved by His Majesty."

Wei Guangde thought about it and then said: "So, there is actually a lot we can do. We can talk to the adults at the Ministry of War about the injustice, and the Ministry of War will naturally take care of it when considering it."

Within two days, Wei Guangde heard the news in Prince Yu's Mansion, but the memorial was transferred to the Ministry of War, and after discussion with the Ministry of War, Yang Bo submitted the memorial to handle the matter.

"The Minister of War, Yang Bo, and others reported to the governor of Jiangxi Province about the military suppression of bandits in the four provinces. He requested that the leader and one of the evil followers be severely arrested, and then allowed him to be captured and beheaded before he surrendered. Three hundred charges were filed against him at the military gate in vain. Rewards; Erting, Shao Jianning and other places are the main routes for thieves to enter Jiangxi. It is advisable to order all the guards to avoid escaping when the thieves attack together; the third censor Gu Yan said that although the mission is full, he knows that the soldiers are doing their job, please stay, and he will be praised for his merits. "Fourth, please lend me money to support the Nanxiong and Huzhou salt taxes and pay for the troops staying in Guangdong, Guangxi, and southern Jiangxi."

"This memorial by Yang Shangshu should be approved soon."

When Wei Guangde read Yang Bo's memorial carefully, Zhang Juzheng on the side said with a smile.

"Yes, but it seems that Yang Shangshu can also join the Qintian Prison as a supervisor."

Wei Guangde also smiled and replied. In the strange eyes of Zhang Juzheng, King Yu and others, Wei Guangde said again: "Yang Shangshu said that recently, sandstorms and earthquakes in the north and south have been reported as disasters. I think this is a sign of war, haha."

"Shaloan, Yang Shangshu just wants to remind the court not to focus all its attention on the southeast. The captives in the northwest will do more harm."

Zhang Juzheng smiled and said to Wei Guangde: "In Xuan Daji Town, there are Anda Xin Ai Ba Du'er Tuman, in Liaodong there are Hu La Ha Chi Na Xi Ji Neng and various small chiefs Lao Sa Toutuo, etc., and in Shanxi Yangu three towns are bordering The wall is leaning down and should be repaired in time, hey."

When Wei Guangde and Zhang Juzheng were talking, King Yu sat silently at the top, just listening to their conversation quietly.

In the afternoon, Wei Guangde was suddenly invited to a wing by Li Fang. When he entered the room, he saw King Yu already waiting in the room.

"Shandai, sit down and chat for a while."

King Yu stood up and came over to greet him. After Wei Guangde sat down, he also sat next to him and said: "Before, you said that if we want to completely eradicate Japanese pirates from the southeast, we should remove the fuel from the bottom of the cauldron and give the seafarers a way to make a living at sea, and fundamentally eliminate them. I, the people of the Ming Dynasty, have become pirates, and Gu Shen takes it for granted.

Today, the enemies in the northwest are eyeing us. Although our Ming Dynasty has built nine border military towns, they are thousands of miles apart, so the response will be insufficient. Is there a way to eradicate the border troubles once and for all? "

After hearing what King Yu said, Wei Guangde understood what he was asked to do.

Thinking of the discussion with Zhang Juzheng in the morning, Yang Bo's memorial was arranged in the southeast, but the war department focused on the northwest. In dealing with the Tatars, it seemed to resonate with King Yu and wanted to ask if there was a solution.

However, Wei Guangde actually has no good solution for the northern grasslands.

In fact, for thousands of years, the northern grassland peoples have been eyeing the Central Plains. This is not an easy solution.

Moreover, Wei Guangde's family is a military household. If the military household is really miserable, it seems that he will put shackles on his own neck.

It is of course impossible to say that Wei Guangde does not understand the current situation of the Ming army.

The problems that the Ming Dynasty is facing now are actually in essence, the adults in the court are well aware that the officials are not governing properly.

Almost all the problems encountered by the Ming Dynasty were ultimately caused by problems with the administration of officials, but the reasons for the problems were varied.

Gao Gong discovered this problem a long time ago, so he was also the official who most clearly wanted to rectify the administration of officials, and his thoughts even had a profound impact on Prince Yu.

Chen Yiqin, Yin Shizhan and others also realized it, but they still had concerns or thought that rectifying the administration of officials was only one of the problems, and eliminating bad policies was the top priority.

As for Zhang Juzheng, he was similar to Gao Gong and was aware of the problem of official administration, but perhaps because he saw many reasons for bad policies, he wanted to do both and be tough.

The biggest difference between Zhang Juzheng's thoughts at this time and Gao Gong was that Gao Gong insisted on using severe punishments to crack down on corruption among officials, while Zhang Juzheng knew that if the water was too clear, there would be no fish, and wanted to solve the problem in a more gentle way, which may be the reason why he came up with the "Kaocheng Law" in later generations.

As for eliminating the malpractices, Zhang Juzheng had previously realized that the biggest malpractice was the complexity of the government's collection of taxes and labor service. Even many officials themselves did not know how to collect taxes according to the national law, and they just took it for granted to collect taxes from the people.

In the discussion with Wei Guangde, Wei Guangde gradually realized that Zhang Juzheng actually just wanted to find a simple and easy-to-understand collection method to let the government know how much to collect and let the tax-paying people know how much to pay, rather than listening to the officials below.

However, up to now, he and Zhang Juzheng have only thought of merging and quantifying taxes and labor service, but have never found a way to collect them, because at this time, the Ming Dynasty implemented currency and in-kind collection in all parts of the north and south, as well as corvée, and it was really difficult to find a unified solution.

Thinking of what Zhang Juzheng said at the beginning, "the people suffered from corvée", Wei Guangde deeply agreed.

In fact, many of the things that forced the people of the Ming Dynasty to break up their families were not taxes but corvée.

It should be noted that it was not that Wei Guangde did not know to reform the taxation model of the Ming Dynasty and directly adjust the past physical goods, currency, and labor services to the silver collection method. It was really that in the current Ming Dynasty, not to mention silver, even copper coins were actually in short supply.

Think about it, his uncle and father changed the copper cannons issued by Jiujiang Wei in the early Ming Dynasty into iron cannons, and the copper materials they got were directly used to cast coins.

The government did not have enough copper materials to cast coins, so what kind of currency would be circulating among the people at this time.

As for silver, it was even more scarce. It was no problem to ask for hundreds or thousands of taels at ordinary times, but it was another matter to collect taxes.

The Ming Dynasty now collects about three million taels of taxes every year, many of which are copper coins. Silver was only exchanged for the convenience of escort, but it was not a currency recognized by the court and belonged to the category of precious metals.

During the Yuan Dynasty, silver was used as currency by the government, but not in the Ming Dynasty.

Wei Guangde thought a lot, and his thoughts drifted unconsciously.

However, in Prince Yu's eyes, all this was Wei Guangde thinking and pondering, so he sat quietly and waited.

The decline of the Ming army's military strength was not a matter of one or two dynasties. Although it is said that Yingzong defeated the elite of the Ming army in Tumu Fort, the truth is that before that, the strength of the Ming army had been declining.

Before being surrounded in Tumu Fort, Yingzong sent several troops, especially the cavalry of the Beijing camp, and they were defeated in the battle with the Wala. Only then did he have to shrink his troops and gather them together, and finally they were all wiped out.

Now, the situation in the border towns of the Ming Dynasty is even worse.

The Ming Dynasty has a million troops, but they are scattered in the border forts. The number of soldiers in each fort ranges from more than a thousand to a hundred. The tactics designed at the beginning to support the army of the surrounding military forts when attacked can no longer be fought.

In the end, the border forts were often destroyed, and the population and resources were plundered by the Tartars and left.

On the other hand, the Ming Dynasty would fall into endless mutual accusations.

Do the governors and provincial governors have any responsibility? Do the generals and garrisons have any responsibility?

If the situation gets a little serious, it will become a dispute between civil officials and military officials. Emperors like Emperor Jiajing who played with the court officials in the palm of their hands were helpless.

This is the current situation of the Ming Dynasty. If a border town is defeated, all parties will blame each other. The original intention of setting up so many official positions is to prevent trouble before it happens, but in the end it becomes like this. No one can be found who should be dealt with and who should be responsible.

In the end, the emperor often picks a few unlucky people to take the blame according to his own preferences, and dismisses them from office.

However, these involve the administration of officials, whether it is the civil officials or the military generals who are punished, there are actually very complicated backgrounds behind them, and the fastest way to see the effect is nothing more than "selecting generals" and "training soldiers".

The current border generals of the Ming Dynasty are different from what most people in later generations understand. They are not all good-for-nothings. Many of them are actually brave and courageous officers. After all, they are from general families and have been in the north for many years. They still have some blood.

However, Wei Guangde knows that these people have many concerns. If they win, it's easy. If they lose, they will get pensions if they die on the battlefield. But if they flee back, they will often become scapegoats for their superiors to shirk responsibility.

It is inevitable for generals to be injured on the battlefield, but not many die in battle.

It is precisely because of this that more and more generals, especially older generals, have gradually developed the habit of fearing war, and always try to find reasons to avoid war before the war.

In fact, they lead the court's soldiers, so there is no need to preserve their strength. They just don't want to be thrown out as scapegoats.

In this era, there were no communication tools such as mobile phones and radios. They could only rely on messengers to deliver orders everywhere. The backward communication methods gave them good reasons - they did not dare to act rashly without receiving military orders.

As a result, the war that was supposed to be supported by all parties gradually turned into a battle between trapped beasts. The Tatars besieged the Ming army's border fort, while the surrounding Ming army watched the fire from across the bank, euphemistically called waiting for orders.

King Yu has been waiting for a long time. Although there is no impatience on his face at this time, Wei Guangde also knows that he cannot delay it any longer. He still has to give some explanation today.

"Your Highness, there are actually many ways to solve the border troubles, but to truly eradicate them, the only way is to become stronger yourself."

At this time, Wei Guangde simply organized his thoughts and looked at King Yu talking eloquently: "At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, our military strength was so strong. We drove the Mongolian Yuan Dynasty to the north and restored China."

Wei Guangde did not directly talk about selecting generals and training troops, but first explained the glorious history of the army. Although it was intended to put some gold on his family's face, this was also Wei Guangde's discovery that King Yu had a hobby, which was to brag about the past of the old Zhu family. His great achievements often made King Yu extremely happy.

Sure enough, when Wei Guangde said that Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di had made many northern expeditions to Mongolia, which overwhelmed the Mongolians, King Yu smiled enthusiastically on his face.

"It's just that now, our Ming Guard system has become dilapidated and decayed, and most of the guardsmen are unable to fight. This is all because the guardsmen can only farm and cannot kill.

Your Highness and I told you at the beginning that the Jiujiang Guards had outstanding achievements in several expeditions, but the actual situation of the guards was no different from that of other guards. They were skilled in battle formations and had very few soldiers who could go on expeditions. However, when they encountered an enemy with limited strength, the enemy Not a crowd.

If the enemy is outnumbered or even equally matched, the outcome of the battle will be unpredictable. "

Wei Guangde then denigrated himself again. Although he was telling the truth, it sounded self-effacing to Prince Yu.

At least according to the news that King Yu knew, Jiujiang Guards defeated Japanese pirates several times, fought several battles with Japanese pirates in Zhejiang, and later chased and annihilated Japanese pirates who had left tens of thousands of troops in Nanjing helpless.

"To stabilize the northern border defense, it is actually simple to say that it is nothing more than selecting generals and training troops. Selecting generals who are good at fighting, such as Ma Fang and Yu Dayou, and letting them train troops according to their own fighting habits, but this is very difficult.

Once an officer is transferred, half of the trained soldiers will be wasted. But if the soldiers leave with the general, it will be easy to change in the long run. When I tried to transfer Ma Fang to Jizhen, the Ministry of War never approved it because of this intention. "

Wei Guangde's words made King Yu nodded slightly, "The generals you recommended are all good. Although Ma Fang suffered several defeats on Xuanfu West Road, he is also the most dazzling general in Xuanda."

After saying this, King Yu couldn't help but hesitated, as if he thought of something, and murmured: "It turns out that Shandai recommended those virtuous people to Gu Ju for this reason."