I am the prince of the Ming Dynasty, I don't give up

Chapter 208: The Sorrow of the Beijing Camp
Zhu Houxuan quietly observed Zhu Houzhao's expression, and only felt a little relieved when he was sure that he was sincerely asking him about the Beijing camp.

He knew that his identity was sensitive, so he basically stayed away from political and military affairs and focused on taking care of his own business.

But he was not indifferent to political and military affairs. He was very concerned about the political and military issues of the Ming Dynasty. He was already in the political center of the capital. Ignoring these things was simply a way to cover up his own mistakes and to seek death.

Therefore, he had a relatively deep understanding of the political and military issues of the Ming Dynasty, and he knew that when he was around Zhu Houzhao, he would inevitably be asked about political and military matters.

Seeing that Zhu Houzhao was asking questions sincerely, he decided to give some useful suggestions.

The problems of the Ming Dynasty's Capital Garrison were very complicated. During the reign of Zhu Di, the Capital Garrison was extremely powerful. It was the heyday of the Capital Garrison. At its peak, the Capital Garrison had as many as 700,000 people.

At that time, the Beijing Camp was the benchmark of the Ming army's combat effectiveness. It was extremely fierce and could hit whatever it was pointed at. However, after its heyday, the Beijing Camp's combat effectiveness quickly declined. The speed at which its combat effectiveness deteriorated was unprecedented.

As for the reason, I won’t go into details about the well-known Battle of Tumu.

The reason why the combat effectiveness of the Beijing Army continued to decline rapidly was because of a temporary system established by Yu Qian.

After the Battle of Tumu, Yu Qian created the regiment system in order to cope with the military pressure from Mongolia. At that time, he only had 100,000 old and weak soldiers from the Beijing camp and new recruits. In order to quickly form combat effectiveness, he decided to select the best and strongest men from these people for training. They were called "selected vanguard soldiers". Those who were not selected were called "old family soldiers", also known as the old camp. The old family soldiers did miscellaneous tasks for the selected vanguard soldiers.

After forcing the Mongols back, during the Jingtai period, in order to quickly restore the combat effectiveness of the Beijing Camp, the Ten Regiment Camps were established, with a total of 150,000 people. Soldiers outside the Ten Regiment Camps were required to train as usual as reserve troops, but most of them were doing miscellaneous tasks.

Before the Jingtai Dynasty, the imperial court rarely used the capital's military on a large scale. Even if the capital's military was needed to serve as craftsmen for special reasons, subsidies were often given.

However, after the establishment of the Old Camp, this self-conscious restraint on the use of soldiers from the Beijing Camp no longer existed, and soldiers from the Beijing Camp, especially the Old Camp, were often used for various projects.

After Baozong's restoration, he negated all of Yu Qian's military moves, disbanded the Ten Regimental Camps, and allowed the Beijing Camp to return to the three major camps. At this time, Yu Qian had already realized the drawbacks of the regiment and camp system and was preparing to carry out military reforms, but Baozong interrupted this process.

Then came the Chenghua period. Emperor Chenghua was a good man and rehabilitated Yu Qian. He also recognized the problems of the Beijing camp and wanted to carry out military reforms, but he was lazy and simply copied Yu Qian's regimental camp system and re-selected the vanguard to establish twelve regimental camps with a total of 120,000 people.

But this reform of his also opened Pandora's box, because he issued an order through the Ministry of War to strengthen the training of soldiers who entered the 12th regiment, while those who did not enter the regiment were only responsible for miscellaneous tasks. He directly institutionalized Yu Qian's temporary measures and turned them into iron rules.

Those soldiers who were unable to enter the 12th Regiment Camp became civilian workers who served the Ming government for free. You should know that the Beijing Camp had a staff of 380,000 people at that time.

Although Emperor Chenghua stated that these local soldiers were only to perform military labor, he himself actually used a large number of local soldiers to build palaces and tombs.

This made the already serious phenomenon of private drafting of soldiers even more rampant and serious after this reform, leading to further decline of the Beijing Army.

Also, don't think you will be safe once you enter the 12th Regiment. The powerful and wealthy want soldiers to work for them, so who would like to use the old and weak? The good guys in the 12th Regiment are so useful.

The soldiers from the old hometown were called regular troops, but in fact they had become menial servants doing unpaid labor for the government for generations.

This resulted in many soldiers from their hometowns deserting, leaving many vacancies in the old camp. What to do with the vacancies? Then they had to recruit people from the 12th Regiment. It didn't matter if the combat effectiveness of the 12th Regiment declined, but it would be a serious crime if it delayed the projects of the emperor and the dignitaries.

So when Zhu Houzhao ascended the throne, there were only more than 8 soldiers left in the 6 regiments, of which only 6 were available. Finally, 3 elite soldiers were selected from these to form the East and West Offices. This was actually a new regiment system. In fact, the emperors who followed also wanted to reform the Beijing Camp, but from Jiajing to Chongzhen, they failed to get out of the regiment system and did not solve the problem from the root. The solution was actually a slightly changed regiment system.

There were only 80 years between the Yongle and Zhengde periods, and the 70 elite troops of the Beijing garrison were reduced to only serviceable soldiers. Even among these , no one knew how many veteran soldiers there were.

Such 30,000 people could not support Zhu Houzhao's ambitions at all.

This scene is really heartbreaking.

The occupation problem is the biggest problem of the Beijing Camp, but it is not the only problem.

There were other problems with the Beijing Camp: the civil and military officials who directly managed the Beijing Camp were extremely corrupt, and they occupied the fields and playgrounds of the Beijing Camp soldiers, and did not even provide them with basic food and wages. The soldiers could only work part-time selling things to make a living, but they still looked pale, and their horses were so thin that they were just skin and bones.

There were many people who received false salaries, including generals, nobles, powerful people, relatives of the emperor, civil servants, eunuchs, etc., whose servants and retainers were registered in the army and received food and salaries.

Every year, there were problems such as soldiers from the Beijing camp deserting and various supplies being withheld.

This was what Zhu Houxun observed in the capital during his short few months. According to his thinking, the Beijing camp was in such a rotten state that he might as well just tear it down and start over.

But the scope of this undertaking is too broad and the impact is too great, requiring tremendous determination and courage. Obviously, none of the emperors of the Ming Dynasty had this determination and courage.

Zhu Houxuan also knew that the suggestion of starting over was not in line with Zhu Houzhao's wishes. If Zhu Houzhao really listened to his suggestion, he would instantly become the target of public criticism, which would affect his layout.

Therefore, he could not solve the problem of the Beijing camp at all now, and could only put the matter aside for the time being.

In fact, he also understood that the main reason Zhu Houzhao was concerned about the Beijing Camp was that he was worried that the Beijing Camp's combat effectiveness could not support his ambitions.

If it is just a problem of the army's combat effectiveness, then Zhu Houxuan does have some practical suggestions.

Because the answer is ready, Qi Jiguang in later generations also took this path.
"Brother, if we want to completely solve the problem of the Beijing Camp's combat effectiveness, we have to start from scratch." Zhu Houxuan asked deliberately.

After hearing this suggestion, Zhu Houzhao frowned and remained silent.

"Besides that, there is only one other way."

"What method?" Zhu Houzhao was cheered up and asked quickly.

"Start from scratch and train a new army!"

(End of this chapter)