Without money, what is the point of being a traitor?

Chapter 562 One general succeeds and thousands of bones wither
Chen Xinjian drew inferences from one example, "Then what Qianhu meant was that we should not use those cunning military households, but find some people who have never fought in a war and train them from scratch?"

"Isn't this a bit too slow?"

Although military households are not easy to use, their advantage is that they can quickly form an army and set up a military force as quickly as possible.

If we really were to recruit some civilians who had no idea about fighting, although there would be hope of training them from scratch and building a strong army, it would take too much time.

Pei Yuan had considered this, "Of course, we can't look for those honest people. I might as well tell you the truth. In three to five years, the north may have to start a war with the barbarians."

"Although the current emperor sometimes jumps out of control, he is more determined than me when it comes to doing things. As the emperor, he leads by example and can easily boost the morale of the border troops and rally the hearts of the generals."

"With him personally in charge, it won't be difficult for our Ming Dynasty to win a great victory given its national strength."

"I sent you to Xuanfu just to steal the credit..."

Chen Xinjian's heart skipped a beat when he heard this.

He had witnessed Qian Hu's miraculous predictions countless times, so he naturally believed in them. Qian Hu said there would be a war in the northern border, so there would naturally be a war.

Stealing credit? That's good.

Pei Yuan continued, "What I really covet is not the few people trained by your small army, but the Ming border troops whose morale and confidence have been boosted by the current emperor's strict rewards and punishments!"

"Zhu Houzhao is the emperor after all, and he can't be a mighty general for his whole life. After he has achieved military success and gained power, he will definitely take the opportunity to return and solve the problems within the court."

"This well-trained frontier army may be rewarded according to merit and assigned to a general he trusts to take charge."

"Rather than leaving these border troops to others to suck up their blood and take up empty positions, and slowly disintegrate into a pile of loose sand, it is better for us to take them ourselves."

Chen Xinjian understood a little.

"In other words, what I want from this humble army is to be fierce enough and to be able to fight with all their might. As for the rest, you don't have to worry about it."

Chen Xinjian can only recruit a thousand people at most in his garrison.

If you want to achieve success in a war, you can only focus on attack power and destructive power. It is like sharpening a knife to an extremely sharp edge, only caring about the effect of the chop, and not caring whether the knife itself will break.

According to this idea, this army is completely regarded as a consumable and becomes a stepping stone for Chen Xinjian's advancement.

After Chen Xinjian gained merit and was promoted, the troops trained by Zhu Houzhao would be handed over to him.

In Chen Xinjian's mind, a sentence that he had often heard when listening to storytelling popped up inexplicably, "Please don't talk about becoming a marquis. A general's success is the result of the sacrifice of thousands of soldiers."

Chen Xinjian tried hard to gather his thoughts and waited for Pei Yuan's clear signal.

But Pei Yuan sighed with satisfaction, "If I had three or five more subordinates like you and Cheng Leixiang, what would I have to worry about?"

Chen Xinjian did not dare to be proud and continued to ask, "Where should I go to organize such an army?"

Pei Yuan already had a plan in mind, and answered directly, "Dongchang Prefecture."

"Dongchang Prefecture?" Chen Xinjian was a little surprised, and then he remembered something and reminded him, "Captain, Governor Wang mentioned before that it seems that Prince De has always coveted Dongchang Prefecture. If I go there to recruit soldiers, I'm afraid it will easily offend Prince De."

Pei Yuan said calmly, "There is no need to worry about De Fan anymore."

Chen Xinjian said nothing more.

Captain Pei said there is no need to worry about De Fan, so naturally there is no need to worry.

Pei Yuan said, "Dongchang Prefecture is a mixed population of Han and Mongolians, with rough customs and many bandits. Although the people here are still wild and difficult to tame, as long as they are trained well, they will surely become a sharp force in your hands."

The problem of Dongchang Prefecture is more complicated.

When the Ming Dynasty was established, because it was built on the foundation of the Yuan Dynasty, a large number of Mongolians, Semites and other people came to submit to it.

In order to reduce casualties in the unification process, Zhu Yuanzhang accepted the surrender of a large number of Mongolian tribes.

Many Mongolian tribes were settled in Dongchang Prefecture and the surrounding Yanzhou Prefecture and Jinan Prefecture, where they began to implement horse policies and breed and raise war horses.

Moreover, this was not an isolated phenomenon. In subsequent wars, the Ming court also centralized and resettled the captured ethnic minority people.

Apart from the Dongchangfu area, the most densely populated resettlement area is near Beijing.

According to the records in the History of Ming Dynasty, "Xu Da pacified the desert and relocated more than 35,800 households of people from behind the mountains of Beiping, dispersing them to various prefectures and guards. Those who were registered as soldiers were given food and clothing, and the people were given land."

After Xu Da pacified the desert, more than 35,000 households migrated from the north of Yanshan Mountain. If we count them as three people per household, that would be more than 100,000 people.

The "Ming History Taizu Benji" also has records about snatching the survivors in the desert and hoarding them in Beijing.

"More than 32,800 households of the desert survivors settled in Beiping, 254 settlements were set up, and 1,343 hectares of land were opened up."

It can be said that in the early days, the Ming court still had a very simple idea of ​​"using Chinese to transform barbarians".

Zhu Yuanzhang, the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty, also said, "Human nature can all be good. To treat the Xia as barbarians is an ancient practice." He sent all officials and subjects to China, let them accept our teachings, let them slowly accept etiquette, and reform their customs.

Moreover, in this process, our ancestors demonstrated a great deal of ruling wisdom.

According to the Ming Dynasty law, "All Mongolians and Semu people are allowed to marry Chinese people, but it must be consensual. They are not allowed to marry each other. Those who violate this rule will be punished with 90 strokes of the cane. Men and women will be taken as slaves by the government."

In other words, if the Mongols and Semites who were left over from the Yuan Dynasty wanted to get married, they could marry Han people or intermarry with each other as long as both parties were willing, but Mongols and Semites were not allowed to marry within their own ethnic group.

Anyone who violated the rules would be punished with 90 strokes of the cane, and both the man and the woman would be sent to the government as slaves.

The court's goal was to blur ethnic boundaries to the greatest extent possible and to make the people of the Ming Dynasty form a unified whole as soon as possible.

So are there any exceptions in this process?
Have.

That is the Huihui Qipchaq!
The Ming Dynasty Law stipulates.

"Those Chinese who do not wish to marry Huihui and Qipchaq can marry among themselves without restriction."

That is to say, the Ming Dynasty law stipulates that Hui and Qipchaks can marry within their own ethnic group. If the Chinese are willing to marry them, there are no restrictions; if they are not willing to marry them, it doesn't matter either.

What is the reason for this?

Because Huihui Qipchaq was related to religious issues, the Ming court was very wary of the spread of religion while accelerating ethnic integration.

Although the Huihui and the Qipchaks were also regarded as subjects of the Ming Dynasty and could freely marry Ming civilians with mutual consent, they were not forced to integrate with other ethnic groups. Instead, they were allowed to reproduce within their own ethnic group.

If you think about it carefully, our ancestors’ ideas were relatively clear.

Compared with some practices in later generations, are there any merits?
However, although the Ming Dynasty had good expectations and visions, good ideas might not necessarily get good returns.

After the Battle of Tumu, as the Oirat troops approached the capital, the people who were migrated from the desert and the surrendered Mongolian tribesmen suddenly became stressed for unknown reasons.

A large number of desert survivors and Mongolian tribes rebelled, burning, killing and looting everywhere.

Yesen was outside the city of Beijing, cursing those guys who refused to bring Yingzong in, when he suddenly realized, hey, why is there chaos here before he even took any action?
This isn't going to blackmail me, is it?

slip away.

A comparison of this historical material also answers another controversial question: Did the so-called "Battle of Beijing" actually take place? Why did the civil and military officials who defended the city still achieve great military exploits after Yesen ran away after scolding others?

History itself has the answer.

Because the targets of their attacks were all kinds of ethnic minorities who were rebelling in the capital.

Although such military achievements are indeed unremarkable, I would like to say that I devoted my life to the cause and helped protect the Ming Dynasty in times of crisis. Isn't this reasonable?
This incident did serve as a wake-up call to the Ming court.

In the fifth year of Jingtai's reign, the Miao people in Huguang and Guizhou began to rebel, so the imperial court recruited some Mongolians from Hejian, Dongchang and other places to quell the rebellion.

Then, after the rebellion was quelled, they packed up their families and sent them there, completely dispersing them to various places and settling down.

Later, the governor of Shandong, who was young and wealthy, saw that there were still many remaining Mongols. He was worried that these people would become a disaster, so he petitioned the court to relocate some of them to Nanzhili.

After repeated migrations, these Mongols and Semites scattered across the country were completely integrated into the Han people.

Although the imperial court was trying hard to assimilate and integrate, as the first place where the Mongols and Semites were settled, Dongchang still had many mixed-race people of various ethnic groups.

Moreover, the Mongols were not familiar with farming and weaving, nor did they know how to do business, so the imperial court treated this place as a horse breeding ground.

Raising horses alone was obviously not enough to support the slowly growing population, so a lot of land was used to grow cotton and beans.

However, this fragile docility immediately began to stir again after the Bazhou bandits invaded Dongchang Prefecture.

A large number of strong men fled into the mountains and became bandits.

Many thieves and bandits took advantage of the location of Dongchang Prefecture on the canal and began to rob merchants for profit.

After Pei Yuan got Qi Yanming, the first arrangement he made was to let him go to Dongchang Prefecture to see if he could gather a group of people.

A handsome guy like Qi Yanming is indeed more suitable for a grassroots environment and he soon began to stand out.

Later, when Pei Yuan wanted to surround and kill Zhang Yong and the elite troops of the Beijing Army, he did not have any strong cards in his hand, so he could only send "my son Fengxian" to Chen Toutie to use.

After killing Zhang Yong, the young and strong men of the Luo sect who had seen blood needed to be reorganized. Qi Yanming and his small group of bandits stayed in Tai'an Prefecture, the Luo sect's old nest.

As one of the six bandit leaders of the Bazhou Army, Qi Yanming certainly cannot meet with the people from Xuanfu.

When the Bazhou Army was pacified before, apart from the main force of the Beijing Army and the Shandong Dusi, the people from Xuan and Da sent the most troops.

If a prominent figure like Qi Yanming were to work under Chen Xinjian, it would be easy for him to be discovered.

However, even though Qi Yanming is not needed, it is entirely possible to let Qi Yanming, as a guide, help to make arrangements in Dongchang Prefecture.

The people of Dongchang Prefecture are rough and the common people are very tough. But there is another advantage. This place is used as a horse breeding ground for the imperial court and many people here have Mongolian ancestry, so they are quite good at riding.

When Chen Xinjian went to Dongchang Prefecture, he could first recruit some bandits and robbers, and add a small number of young and strong people to train. He could use bandits and robbers to cultivate the wildness of the team. Then he could slowly eliminate the bandits and replace them with local people with parents and relatives to strengthen the control over the entire team.

Pei Yuan slowly told Chen Xinjian about his ideas.

Chen Xinjian listened carefully and became more and more clear about his future plans.

Pei Yuan added, "You can slowly recruit soldiers and train them first, don't be in a hurry. If there are any good looking people, you can take them in as servants, so that you don't have to train a strong army in the future and be taken advantage of by others."

"These people..., if they can follow you and make it out, I will not hesitate to reward them. You can just promise them some future."

Chen Xinjian's position as the commander of the Thousand Household Guards was an official position of the imperial court. If Xuanfu turned against him, it could be taken away at any time.

But if all the elite soldiers were taken as servants and only some military households were trained to deal with the problem, then even if the court stripped Chen Xinjian of his official position, it would only be taking away an empty shell.

As a result, the imperial court not only lost an elite force, but also had to waste food and money to support those useless rubbish.

Therefore, there was a reason why the Ming Dynasty court was unable to do anything about those military leaders.

At the end, Pei Yuan instructed, "You are from the Jinyiwei, so you must be a little inadequate in the use of troops and fighting. When you go south, you can first go to Tianjinwei to see Cheng Leixiang, and then go to Linqing to see Ding Hong who is building ships there, maybe you can get some instruction from him."

"Also, we can ask them for some people to set up the Xinghe Guarding Thousand Households Office."

"You will also stay for the banquet tonight."

"Those from Shandong are fine, but many of those from Liaodong are from military families. See if there are any who are compatible with you and make friends with them. I will try to get them to help you in the future."

Chen Xinjian was overjoyed when he heard this.

Although he is smart and capable, his family background is here.

As a seventh-rank small flag family with a tradition of torture, they were extremely unfamiliar with how to lead troops, how to handle military affairs, and how to deal with various government offices.

If we can really get a strong helper, it will undoubtedly save us a lot of trouble.

He asked uncertainly, "If they pass the exam, they will have a bright future, so they may not be willing to help me. Besides, I am just a small thousand-household office, and I can't offer them suitable positions."

Pei Yuan said, "It's okay."

"It's hard to say anything else. If it's the censor, it's his duty to patrol the border. Although the court has set up a governor in Xuanfu, there will also be special censors who are responsible for patrolling the forts and key and dangerous places. When the time comes, you can ask Li Shishi to help arrange it."

(End of this chapter)