Ming Dynasty 1627

Chapter 162 The Three Benchmarks of the Ming Dynasty

Under the eaves of the cabinet office, Grand Secretary Huang Liji stomped his foot heavily, shaking the snow mud off his official boots onto the stone steps outside the door.

He exhaled a puff of white breath, rubbed his hands together, and said, "Luckily, the snow today is quite dry, otherwise, if my clothes were soaked, my old bones would probably have lost half their life."

As soon as he finished speaking, Li Guopu walked in through the wind and snow. He brushed the snow off his shoulders and casually replied:
"This snow is timely. A good snow promises a good harvest. We can look forward to good things for farming in the north next year."

The two entered the house one after the other.

Inside the duty room, several braziers of charcoal were burning brightly, their warmth dispelling the chill seeping in from outside.

Although honeycomb briquettes have been on the market for more than ten days, they are only used by ordinary people at the grassroots level.

Wealthy families and palaces still used top-grade red charcoal, which was smokeless, odorless, and very refreshing.

After serving hot tea, the servant quietly withdrew.

Huang Lijie held the hot tea, took a sip, and felt the warmth spread throughout his body before letting out a long sigh of relief and relaxing.

He gazed at the swirling snowflakes outside the window and said leisurely, "Ever since His Majesty assumed personal rule, the capital has changed like the weather, changing every day. New policies are introduced one after another, implemented with swift and decisive action. Now, even the heavens seem to want to join in the fun."

“Your Excellency’s words are quite true.” Li Guopu put down his teacup and said, “His Majesty’s desire to govern far surpasses that of ordinary people.”

"Once the selection criteria for official documents on state affairs were announced, anyone with ambition would inevitably submit a memorial to discuss it."

"Yes, thankfully these all had to go through the secretary first, otherwise we would have had a lot to read." Huang Lijie sighed, then changed the subject: "Speaking of which, Yuan Ye, has His Majesty finalized your policy essay on improving official conduct?"

Upon hearing this, a bitter smile flashed across Li Guopu's face.

He shook his head, took a manuscript from a box, and sighed, "Now that you're part of the new policy, there's no need to hide this from you, but..."

He handed the manuscript to Huang Liji and said helplessly, "His Majesty said it's still not enough. It's acceptable in terms of the facts, but it's not enough in terms of the heart. He asked me to revise it again."

Huang Liji took it and glanced at the dense red characters, feeling dizzy.

The emperor's handwriting was elegant and unrestrained, but the annotations and comments were full of phrases like "not addressing the root cause," "there is an easier way," "do not rush it, proceed slowly," and "consider human nature."

He placed the policy proposal back on the table and comforted him, saying, "His Majesty has very high expectations of you. As his subjects, we can only keep up with His Majesty's pace by working diligently and assiduously."

Although he said that, he couldn't help but have some doubts in his heart.

This young monarch had a mind as deep as the sea and an energy as vigorous as that of an ordinary person.

His demands often targeted the core of long-standing problems, yet they were also wildly imaginative, leaving a group of veteran officials exhausted.

Keeping up with him is easier said than done.
Let's wait and see when the audience is held at the Wuying Hall. Usually, there is an audience after the grand court assembly, so why hasn't he arrived yet?

The two remained silent for a moment, with only the occasional crackling of the charcoal fire audible in the guardhouse.

After a while, Li Guopu spoke up: "Judging from today's situation, His Majesty will not summon us to the Wuying Hall for a meeting. Let's deal with the backlog of memorials first."

“Alright.” Huang Liji nodded, pulled out a book from the mountain of memorials, and began to read it carefully.

The room gradually quieted down, with only the rustling sound of turning pages remaining.

After an unknown amount of time, Huang Lijie suddenly made a "hmm" sound and stopped writing.

"Yuan Ye, come and take a look at this."

Upon hearing this, Li Guopu stood up, walked to his side, and took the memorial from him.

Upon closer inspection, the memorial began with:

"Wang Zhichen, the governor of Liaodong, said: The Western barbarians, including the chieftains of the Naiman and Huangbadu, led tens of thousands of people to surrender to the Jianzhou Jurchens in the east."

Fortunately, most of the tribes were unwilling to go, and the Jurchens were also suspicious and did not allow them to cross the river.

"Now most of his followers have fled west to Hudun Tuhan."

"Among them, the Naiman, Huangbadu tribes, Yimu Nengqitu, Jin Daiqing, and others, brought a total of 5,730 men and women to surrender."

"I have already ordered Generals Du Wenhuan, You Shilu, Hou Shilu, and Zhu Mei, and Deputy Generals Wang Mumin and Zu Tianshou to temporarily accept this..."

Li Guopu raised an eyebrow, somewhat surprised.

"The Naiman tribe? Isn't that one of the eight major tribes under the Chahar? Why did they suddenly submit to the Jurchens?"

Huang Lijie stroked his beard and pondered, "Among all the tribes, the Naiman tribe has never been very close to Tiger Chieftain. Now that Tiger Chieftain has led his main force westward, the Naiman tribe is located outside the Liaodong border wall and is close to the Jurchens. They must have felt the pressure and are now thinking of finding another way out."

Li Guopu nodded and followed his line of thought, analyzing, "If that's the case, then the Aohan tribe, which borders the Naiman tribe, will probably also be shaken. This matter is of utmost importance. We should immediately send Wenwang's ministers to Liaodong to conduct a thorough investigation and gather military intelligence."

After he finished speaking, Huang Liji showed a strange smile on his face.

“Yuan Ye, have you forgotten? The current commander-in-chief of Liaodong is Sun Chengzong.”

Li Guopu was taken aback, then suddenly realized, clapped his hands and laughed, "Look at my memory, I had completely forgotten about this."

He hesitated for a moment, then brought the question back to the present: "So, what should we do with these surrendered people? Should we accept them or not?"

Huang Lijie's gaze fell on the memorial, his eyes deep.

"I thought it was appropriate to accept it."

He slowly said, "Some time ago, His Majesty ordered Ma Shilong to lead 6,000 elite cavalry to seek an opportunity to intervene outside the Great Wall. His intention was to block the route from the Later Jin to Mongolia. Now, looking at the Naiman incident, it is clear that the Jurchens are also exerting their strength. On the chessboard, the opponent has already made his move, and we have no reason not to respond."

He paused for a moment, then proposed a specific plan: "We can first settle them outside the pass, set up pastures, and keep them under strict guard. In this way, we can both demonstrate the benevolence and power of our Great Ming Dynasty and serve as a barrier."

“Good.” Li Guopu picked up the vermilion pen and wrote his opinion on the draft without hesitation. “Then I will submit this draft.”

After finishing writing, he didn't put it down immediately. Instead, he stroked the pen and examined the memorial again. He then looked up at Huang Liji and said:

"Prime Minister, although this memorial is not a matter of utmost urgency regarding the border situation, I believe it concerns the direction of national policy and should be classified as a top-level document. It should be sent to the Western Garden immediately for His Majesty's personal review. What do you think?"

Huang Lijie nodded and said, "That's how it should be."

Having said that, he called out to a secretary in the Imperial Secretariat and handed him the memorial that had just been drafted.

"This memorial is urgent; send it to the West Garden immediately."

……

West Garden, Rabbit Hill.

In just over ten days, the place had completely changed its appearance.

The once lush green grassland was cleared away, revealing the dark brown soil.

Hundreds of farmers and laborers summoned from outside the palace were busy in the cold wind, following the emperor's decree to classify and reorganize the newly reclaimed dozens of acres of land into three different grades: superior, medium, and inferior.

This is a huge project, especially as the weather gets colder and the ground becomes harder, making excavation quite difficult.

In the center of this bustling scene, a plot of land, about an acre in size, stands out, enclosed by wooden railings and thick ropes.

There was also a wooden sign about half a person's height stuck in the ground, with four large characters personally written by the emperor, but the content was... somewhat strange.

——"QQ Farm".

Gao Shiming stood by the field, a gentle smile on his face, quietly watching the figure busy in the field.

Empress Zhou asked His Majesty and said that these words were pronounced "Qiuqiu Farm". She was so happy that she cooked noodles for His Majesty herself.

Gao Shiming was fortunate enough to get a bowl as well, and his skills had indeed improved considerably.

This strange name, like "Serious Hall," is completely baffling.

But seeing that His Majesty's mood improved with each strange name he chose, Gao Shiming became too lazy to investigate further.

As long as Your Majesty is happy, what's wrong with calling him "QQ Palace"?
Xu Yingyuan stood by with his hands clasped behind his back, a newly compiled roster tucked into his arms. He looked solemn and waited quietly for the emperor's summons.

As for Wang Tiqian, he was nowhere to be seen today, presumably because His Majesty had assigned him another task.

In the field, Zhu Youjian was carefully sweeping snow from his precious spinach with a long-handled bamboo broom.

At today's court assembly, he was in high spirits, his heart surging with boundless ambition to unite the masses and lash out at the world.

But as soon as he stepped into the Hall of Seriousness after the court session, he suddenly remembered something.

Oh no! My spinach!

So he quickly changed out of his court robes and hurried over to Rabbit Mountain.

Fortunately, after asking the old farmer, he was relieved.

The dry snow is loose, so you only need to gently sweep away the snow that is pressing on the tender seedlings to avoid damaging them. The remaining snow covering the ridges can actually help to keep the soil warm and moist, which is very beneficial for crops to survive the winter.

Finally, after sweeping the snow off the last spinach plant, he straightened up with satisfaction and let out a long sigh of relief.

He stepped onto the ridge of the field, casually tossed the broom to a young eunuch waiting nearby, and turned his gaze to Xu Yingyuan, who had been waiting for a long time.

"Ying Yuan," he patted the dirt off his hands and asked, "How are the results of the Yongwei Battalion's assessment? Have they all come out yet?"

Xu Yingyuan strode forward, bowed, and handed over the roster in his arms, a smile on his face: "Your Majesty, the list has been compiled here. As you instructed, the daily training, monthly written test scores, and total scores of each officer have been recorded in detail."

"Very well!" Zhu Youjian took the booklet. "Let me see who will be appointed as my battalion commander!"

He opened the booklet, glanced at just a few names, and his eyebrows immediately shot up.

This list is somewhat unexpected, yet it makes perfect sense.

According to the rules he set, the performance of officers at the platoon leader level and above was assessed based on 50% of their daily training performance, while the monthly test scores, which reflected their personal cultural literacy and military theory, also accounted for 50%.

As for the lowest-ranking corporal, personal martial prowess is valued more, with training points and personal combat skills each accounting for 50%.

Ordinary soldiers are not assessed individually; their fate depends entirely on whether their unit excels in the assessment. Those who rank first are the clear winners.

—Sun Yingyuan.

The training score was 99, the monthly exam score was 78, and the total score was 88.5.

As the first military officer to be promoted, Sun Quan's troops had trained the longest and were the best coordinated. In daily evaluations of formations, drills, and military discipline, they almost always ranked first, resulting in a training score as high as 99, which was far ahead of the competition.

As for his score of 78 on the monthly exam, it wasn't that he didn't work hard; it was just that his academic foundation was a bit weak, and most of the points were deducted from questions on arithmetic and logistical calculations.

Zhu Youjian smiled slightly and continued reading.

Second place: Wu Jisi, 87 points.

Third place: Wu Fangrui, 82.5 points.

Both of them were individuals who distinguished themselves in the original Yongwei Battalion through their own abilities.

Their advantage lies in starting early, having a long training period, having good team cohesion, achieving high training scores, and performing well in monthly exams, thus securing a top-three position.

Starting from fourth place, those were the fierce generals he had gathered from the border towns.

Fourth place: Cao Bianjiao, 81.5 points.

Fifth place: Zhou Yuji, 74.5 points.

Sixth place, Huang Degong, 72 points.

The training scores of these top players are significantly lower than those of the top three.

These Liaodong generals were among the last to arrive in Beijing, so their teams naturally had far less time to gel.

In addition, the training score is calculated based on the daily average score within the cycle, and their poor performance during the chaotic adjustment period when they first arrived also dragged down their score.

Therefore, their training scores generally hovered around 60 points.

But these people, after all, had fought their way through the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in Liaodong. They were rich in practical experience and had a basic understanding of literature. They managed to pull up their total scores by virtue of their extremely high monthly exam scores and squeezed into the first tier.

Zhu Youjian nodded in satisfaction and continued flipping through the pages.

Finally, in the middle to back of the list, he saw those familiar yet troublesome names.

Those few "semi-literate" generals whom he unearthed from the dust of history.

Their cultural level was among the very bottom of the pool of military generals drawn by Zhu Youjian...

The 37th place winner is Kong Youde, a former miner, with a total score of 64.5.

43rd place, Zuo Liangyu, lost his father at a young age, with a total score of 58.5.

Zu Kuan, ranked 46th, was born into a family of servants and scored 54 points.

These three students already had low training scores, and due to their academic issues, their monthly exam scores were barely passing.

Take Zuo Liangyu for example. It is said that his exam paper was full of spelling mistakes and corrections. It wasn't that he didn't know how to answer many questions, but that his handwriting was so illegible that even the examiners in charge of grading the papers couldn't recognize it. In the end, he was lucky to get 55 points on the monthly exam.

(Attached image: Performance evaluation report of the brave guard battalion officers)
Upon seeing this, Zhu Youjian's brows furrowed slightly involuntarily.

Xu Yingyuan had been carefully observing his expression, and seeing this, he asked in a low voice, "Your Majesty, is this list not to your liking?"

Zhu Youjian slowly shook his head, his gaze still fixed on the roster, while his mind raced with calculations.

For him, simply training a battle-hardened army was not a matter of great urgency.

The situation outside the Great Wall is still relatively stable and controllable for the time being. Even if the butterfly has already flapped its wings, the Later Jin cannot appear out of thin air on the Great Wall of the Ming Dynasty overnight.

The Later Jin's efforts to win over, divide, test, and annex Mongolia all required time.

Even in the most pessimistic scenario, there will always be a year of stable development.

This is the source of his confidence in using this seemingly "inefficient" and even somewhat "bizarre" method to train soldiers in the Brave Guard Battalion.

The lack of a sufficient number of qualified generals will cause the army's organization to lag behind and its combat capabilities to develop slowly—does he not know such a simple truth?
Of course he knew.

He could have done better, faster, and stronger than the historical Chongzhen Emperor.

All he had to do was promote those Ming Dynasty generals from his memory one by one, directly granting them high positions such as battalion commander and centurion, and then select talented people from the capital garrison and border towns to serve as battalion commanders and squad leaders. After that, he could hand over the soldiers to them and focus all his efforts on rigorous training.

Having full confidence in the wisdom and ability of the top military commanders of this era, the army trained by them will ultimately not be too bad.

But what was trained in that way was nothing more than a traditional, reinforced version of the Ming army.

That's not what he wants.

In an old empire riddled with problems, what is the most important thing to do if you want to overcome obstacles and create a completely new situation?
It's about setting a benchmark, about creating a template.

His new policies in the capital were a "benchmark for governance" that he set for the entire country.

Hygiene, roads, regulations, governance, public security... everything must be done to the best of its ability.

Then, through the porters, scholars, and merchants traveling north and south, a stark and glaring generational difference was formed in the minds of people all over the world, much like the later "China vs. India" image.

Ultimately, this created a siphon effect, wresting the power of culture, talent, and public discourse from Southern Zhili.

This fostered a trend among scholars across the land to "go to the capital."

The "new policy bureaucrats" selected through the official documents of Jingshi were the "benchmark for governance" he set for the officialdom.

The new selection method, coupled with the strict supervision of the secret police and the censors, made the working style, performance evaluation, promotion channels, and even reputation and status of the new officials completely different from the traditional old bureaucrats, thus forming a benchmark in another dimension.

Fame, power, and money.

Anyone who enters the gates of the new policy can obtain it at will.

He can provide the first two now, and he will soon begin to address the last one.

This new army of the Brave Guard Battalion is also a benchmark.

Uninterrupted daily drills, unwavering literacy classes, rigorous monthly exams, full pay to every soldier, and his personal oversight of zero tolerance for corruption.

The capable ones go up, the mediocre ones go down.

Everything is judged by ability; in the future, it will be judged by military achievements.

So, who is the target of this "military benchmark" that he painstakingly created?
With this in mind, Zhu Youjian no longer hesitated.

He raised his head and issued a series of orders.

"Preach my will!"

"The five officers of the Brave Guard Battalion, Wu Jisi, Wu Fangrui, Cao Bianjiao, Zhou Yuji, and Huang Degong, have trained diligently and are proficient in both literary and martial arts. They have ranked among the top in the assessment. They are hereby promoted to battalion commanders of their respective units within the Brave Guard Battalion!"

Xu Yingyuan's expression hardened, and he bowed, saying, "As you command!"

Zhu Youjian then asked, "How many soldiers are there in the Yongwei Battalion now? How many officers are there?"

Xu Yingyuan immediately replied, "Your Majesty, we currently have 5,050 soldiers and 101 officers."

"Alright." Zhu Youjian nodded and said:

"Then let's proceed as agreed a month ago. We'll keep only sixty officers, and send the remaining forty-odd officers, along with their squad leaders and soldiers, to various camps in the capital. This will reduce the number of the Brave Guards to three thousand."

Xu Yingyuan's heart skipped a beat, but he still bowed and accepted the order.

This matter was decided a month ago, and he had anticipated it.

As expected, this wise ruler truly kept his word.

Zhu Youjian then asked, "Where are the squad leaders and vanguards from various towns in Shaanxi now?"

Xu Yingyuan replied, "Shaanxi is a long way away, so I estimate it will be around mid-October or early November."

Zhu Youjian nodded, pondered for a moment, and said, "Alright, the next elimination will be scheduled for December. People from the border towns of Shaanxi will come to the capital in the middle of the month, and we will continue to fill the quotas using the previous method."

"You should still seek cooperation from the Ministry of War and the Five Military Commissions for these matters. I have already given instructions."

"Finally..." Zhu Youjian paused and said, "Issue a notice that I will select three captains from the candidates in the December assessment."

A battalion commander is in charge of 500 men. Above that is a centurion, and above that is a battalion commander who commands 3000 men.

A new and higher level has been set; whoever can climb it depends on their own abilities!
After all the orders were given, Zhu Youjian threw the roster back to Xu Yingyuan.

"Have you prepared everything I asked you to?"

Xu Yingyuan then came to his senses and hurriedly replied, "Your Majesty, everything has been prepared in advance."

"Alright." Zhu Youjian nodded. "Go back now, announce the list in public, and then make preparations for the dismissal."

Xu Yingyuan accepted the order and left.

Zhu Youjian watched him leave before turning around and looking at Gao Shiming, who had been standing by his side, observing everything.

"Let's go, Gao Banban."

His face regained its vibrant expression.

"Accompany me back to review the memorials, and while we're at it... wait for the exam results from the Imperial Academy."

(End of this chapter)