Chapter 138: Everyone Is Winning, Winning So Much They're Numb (5k, Seeking Monthly Tickets!)

Zhu Youjian strode in with long, sweeping steps, the hem of his dragon robe stirring a faint breeze behind him as he entered the great hall of Qianqing Palace.

"His Majesty arrives—!"

"Kneel!"

At the young eunuch Gao Sheng's shrill, drawn-out ceremonial call, the hundred-odd military officers in the hall moved as one, dropping to both knees in perfect unison.

Zhu Youjian looked straight ahead, ascending the side steps of the throne platform.

"His Majesty takes the throne."

He slowly seated himself upon the dragon throne that symbolized the supreme dignity of the emperor, his gaze blazing like a torch as he swept it over the officers below.

"Prostrate—!"

Before the trailing note of Gao Sheng's voice had faded, the hundred officers in the hall toppled like mountains and fell like pillars, bowing down in unison, their foreheads knocking against the cold gold bricks.

"Long live His Majesty! Long live! Long, long live!!"

The rough, powerful voices of the officers merged into a torrent, crashing back and forth within the magnificent hall, making eardrums buzz and hum, until even the beams and pillars of the palace seemed to tremble faintly.

Even though he reviewed the Valiant Guard Camp without fail every single day, even though he had already experienced this scene of a hundred officials prostrating themselves over a dozen times.

Yet when this elite force he had handpicked from every corner — this sharp blade, this brutal engine of violence — submitted to him at such close range, Zhu Youjian still felt an irrepressible shudder race from his spine to his scalp.

This was nothing like the refined, genteel obeisance of the civil officials.

It was filled with the clash of blades and spears, the acrid smoke of gunpowder, and the blood-soaked carnage soon to come!

Reform... how could it possibly not involve killing?

Zhu Youjian slowly raised his hand and gave a slight, empty wave.

"Rise."

"We thank Your Majesty!"

The officers responded in unison once more, and only then rose together.

Zhu Youjian's gaze roamed over them.

The hall was packed with officers clad in red padded jackets; though they varied in height, every one of them was broad-shouldered and thick-waisted, exuding the fierce, battle-hardened air of men long tempered by war.

Among them were Platoon Officers and File Leaders alike.

Sun Yingyuan was the sole Company Commander among them, and currently the highest-ranking military officer in this new army.

As for Battalion Commanders or camp generals further up the hierarchy, there was not a single one.

All military administrative affairs requiring consolidation were jointly managed by eunuchs dispatched by Xu Yingyuan from the Directorate of the Imperial Horses.

From his enthronement to the present, Zhu Youjian had reviewed the Valiant Guard Camp for twenty-one consecutive days.

His mind was as clear as a mirror.

Under his all-encompassing system of rewards, punishments, and incentives, this army's small-scale formations and martial drills were passable enough.

But in large-scale formation drills, a slight stiffness of command was already perceptible.

And if one expected them to go out and fight a battle, they would likely be on par with the three thousand eunuch corps in the palace.

One had never seen blood; the other was a disorganized rabble.

An army has always been the engine of violence that demands the highest degree of organization.

Even if he held not merely seven famous-general cards from later ages, but were given a hundred Lü Bus, facing three thousand cavalry and infantry in orderly ranks, they would only be ground to dust.

But he was willing to bear this temporary loss of combat strength.

The wings of this butterfly he had become might beat with immense force, but surely they would not, within half a year, cause the iron cavalry of the Later Jin to breach the passes once more and bear down upon the walls of Beijing.

And so long as no foreign foe arrived, internally, those three thousand eunuch corps he held firmly in his grip — so long as they did not act — would forever remain his ballast stone.

Their very existence was their greatest value!

This was also the fundamental reason why, when purging the palace factions, he had only moved against the upper echelons of the eunuch corps but had never disbanded this armed force.

Unlike the Chongzhen of history, who, the moment he ascended the throne, before he had any absolutely loyal armed force in his hands, hastily disbanded this elite personal army of the previous emperor — an act of sheer absurdity.

Now, after twenty-one days of drilling, the first monthly examination would take place in ten more days.

Once the first monthly examination concluded, the first batch of true Company Commanders would emerge.

Thirty days after that, the second monthly examination, and Battalion Commanders would emerge.

Thirty days after that, the third monthly examination, and the camp's commanding general would emerge.

In ninety days total, he would make this army, from top to bottom, accustomed to this atmosphere of regulations, statutes, and daily assessments.

He would make military officers at every level rise from the ranks, one by one, truly on the strength of their ability.

Even if Yue Fei himself were placed before him, he would act in exactly the same way.

He would make these several thousand men understand that here, under Zhu Youjian, the capable rise and the mediocre fall.

If they wanted to stand out now, they would trade sweat for it.

In the days to come, to stand out, they would have to stake the very heads on their shoulders!

This was far more reliable than simply picking up some general-summoning card and, without a second thought, shoving him into the commander's seat and expecting him to turn stone into gold.

And today's impromptu supplementary examination was not for selecting a commanding general.

It was to demand from them a pledge of allegiance — a pledge he had to obtain before he conducted the third Daily Lecture!

Only by submitting this pledge would they truly cross his threshold, would they have a future of glory and wealth, of titles for their wives and sons!

Zhu Youjian withdrew his gaze and looked down at the imperial desk.

Upon it, the various examination papers had already been sorted by category and neatly stacked.

Seeing this, Xu Yingyuan hastily bowed and stepped forward, reporting in a low voice:

"Your Majesty, the total number of examinees today was one hundred and fifty-one. All examination papers are here."

"The officers come from diverse origins. This slave has divided them into eleven stacks according to their home garrisons — ten stacks for the various garrisons of the Nine Frontiers, and one for the Capital Camps."

"For each stack of papers, this slave has roughly summarized the circumstances of each garrison into a booklet and attached it on top."

"Also, as Your Majesty instructed earlier, any entries that were clearly problematic upon comparison have been marked with green slips."

"Well done." Zhu Youjian nodded with satisfaction.

Just like how the Four Heavenly Kings are actually five.

The Nine Border Garrisons are actually fifteen...

It's just that five of them are Shaanxi military garrisons, far away — they'll likely need another ten days or so to arrive. That's why only ten garrisons' elite troops are here at present.

His gaze roamed over the stacks of dossiers for a moment, and finally, he picked up the leftmost pile — the answer booklets belonging to the Liaodong Garrison.

On the cover, in Xu Yingyuan's elegant handwriting, were the words: Summary of Corrupt Practices in the Liaodong Garrison.

Yes, this examination — or rather, this "survey" — had a single core focus, and that was "corruption"!

To know what is straight, one must have a plumb line; to know what is square or round, one must have compass and square.

If you cannot see where the problems lie, how can you speak of solving them?

In his previous life, he had been deeply involved in a reform project for a Fortune Global 500 company.

Dispatched from headquarters, parachuted into a local branch, facing an entrenched network of connections impervious to outside influence — how does one break through?

This was exactly how — simple, crude, and direct!

Separate everyone, have them fill out their answers individually, conduct private interviews, and push the "prisoner's dilemma" to its maximum effect.

No one knew what the others would say. To protect themselves, and to curry favor, they would naturally reveal the truth to a greater or lesser degree.

Once all this material was compiled, even if the picture wasn't one hundred percent true, it would be eighty or ninety percent there.

For a feudal monarch, being cut off from information is the norm.

But has there ever been a shortage of solutions?

It's just that since ancient times, most emperors were raised in the inner palace by women, with little experience of the world, born into supreme honor and favor. That is why they could only rely on irregular means like the Depot and the Guard to break through the information barrier.

But he, Zhu Youjian, was different.

He had far too many methods to manipulate these ancients.

When it comes to corruption... could this Great Ming of 1627 possibly be more sophisticated than later ages?

Zhu Youjian straightened his body and gently opened the booklet.

Come then, let me see — of the military funds disbursed, how much actually reached the soldiers? Seventy percent? Fifty percent? Or ten percent?

The booklet had been summarized by Xu Yingyuan, the content concise. Zhu Youjian finished reading it very quickly.

His brow furrowed deeply, almost involuntarily.

Xu Yingyuan's ability still fell somewhat short. The summarized content was on point, but still rather disorganized.

This employee's logical reasoning skills are lacking...

Zhu Youjian set down the booklet, pulled out four or five of the original answer sheets, skimmed through them for comparison, and then, in his mind, reorganized and reclassified the corrupt methods of these Great Ming military bosses according to his own logic.

The first category, the most direct and also the most widespread: embezzling military pay.

Great Ming's military pay had a multitude of categories: there was the fixed monthly grain ration, the marching grain issued during campaigns, the salt-and-vegetable silver to supplement meals, the one-time settling-in allowance upon conscription, and the fur-coat silver for purchasing uniforms and boots.

Soldiers who tended horses also received hay and bean fodder supplements, which were further divided into two methods of disbursement: in-kind and commuted to silver.

A bewildering array, extremely complex — which also provided the perfect soil for graft.

Take the simplest monthly grain ration, for example.

An ordinary infantryman in the Liaodong Garrison had a nominal monthly grain ration of one tael and eight mace, but this pay also included an actual monthly issue of five dou of rice, converted at four mace of silver.

If these five dou of rice were converted at the current market price in Liaodong, they were actually worth six mace of silver.

That's a price difference of two mace right there.

In other words, a common soldier's theoretical monthly salary was as high as two taels! Nearly seventy wen per day!

That wage was almost on par with a skilled printer in the capital. How could that not be considered a high-income class?!

But nominal wages and take-home pay have never been the same thing.

In later ages, wages are taxed, and naturally, our Great Ming also had its "taxes."

Before the one-tael-eight-mace monthly grain ration even reached your hands, four mace would first be deducted, on the grounds that you had been issued five dou of rice as rations.

But these five dou of rice were clearly worth six mace at market price, and yet only four mace were deducted — truly benevolent governance.

However, these "benevolently" issued five dou of rice were stored in a granary a hundred li away, and the soldiers had to go fetch it themselves.

The strong and fit could carry it back on their own backs.

But five dou of rice, converted to later-age units, is nearly a hundred jin. One round trip would leave a man half dead from exhaustion.

The weaker ones had no choice but to hire a cart and horse to haul it. The cost of the cart and horse for the round trip came to about the same as the value of the rice itself.

After all that trouble, those five dou of rice effectively amounted to only about one or two dou.

No matter!

Great Ming still left us one tael and four mace! Add the rice, and that's still one tael and five mace! Fifty wen a day!

That's the wage of a cooper or a bamboo-weaver! With a bit of scrimping, a family could still scrape by in Liaodong.

How naive, my friend!

Of the remaining one tael and four mace, before it ever reaches you, the military bosses will directly deduct another two mace.

Add the rice, call it one tael and three mace — forty-three wen a day!

Your class is slipping again, my friend. Go sit at the same table as the capital's porters.

At this point, 1.3 taels per month, divided by 1.8 taels — the actual disbursement is still seventy-two percent?

How sagely and benevolent is His Majesty the Great Ming Emperor!

And cavalrymen issued military horses were, in a sense, even worse off.

Keeping a horse is more expensive than keeping a man.

Officers skimmed the horse-hay silver and horse-bean silver, leaving the horses emaciated and weak. Reports of warhorses starving to death came in daily.

Worse still, when a warhorse died, the cavalryman had to pay for it out of his own pocket.

A single warhorse was assessed at six taels of silver — an amount no individual soldier could possibly pay — so the cost was spread across every cavalryman in the entire company.

As for the other allowances — marching rations, winter coat silver, family settlement fees, and the like — the situation was much the same. After deductions, the actual disbursement rate generally fell between seventy and eighty percent.

That doesn't sound so bad, does it?

My friend, you've forgotten — the men themselves are the most valuable consumable of all!

So compared to pay, the second broad category of abuse was far more severe.

— Namely, the misappropriation of labor!

Officers seized military farmland, concealed uncultivated tracts, and then drove the soldiers under their command to clear and till the land for their own profit.

These soldiers were treated worse than tenant farmers under a landlord.

A landlord, after all, had only whips and clubs in his hand — and if you were lucky, there might even be a local magistrate who still believed in "benevolence and the king's law."

But what the officers held in their hands were naked blades. A hereditary soldier who fled and was caught could be executed on the spot.

When you've got a fat pig that can't even run away, why wouldn't you slaughter it ruthlessly — were you saving it for New Year's?

Farming was only the minor pursuit.

In coastal areas like Xingshan and Ningyuan, officers would send soldiers out to sea to fish. Each man had to deliver a thousand catties a month, valued at ten cash per catty. Those who fell short had to make up the difference in silver out of their own pockets — they had become fish bosses in all but name.

Where there was no sea, they were sent into the hills to hunt.

Where there was not even game, they were driven deep into the remote mountains to dig for ginseng.

A single man was expected to split himself in two — training for battle while simultaneously running his commander's private enterprises. They had to be masters of every trade.

A modern beast of burden would weep tears of sympathy at the sight.

The third category consisted of various slightly more sophisticated operations.

For instance, reselling military grain — selling off half the grain issued by the court and pocketing the proceeds.

For instance, manipulating horse prices — buying inferior mounts from Mongol traders beyond the passes at three taels apiece, then reporting them as first-rate warhorses at eight taels each.

For instance, collecting a monthly "protection fee" of five mace of silver from every border tower, beacon station, and fortified post under their control.

And for instance, extending loans at usurious interest.

When the court's pay and provisions were occasionally delayed and the soldiers ran out of food — what then?

No problem — your commander would lend you the money!

The interest wasn't high. You just needed to put up your wife, children, and elderly parents as collateral!

A considerable portion of those harrowing scenes described in memorials — "soldiers selling their sons and daughters just to survive" — were, in fact, men driven to the last extremity by their own commanders in precisely this fashion!

Of course, not every commander operated this way.

Some of the cleverer ones kept their own habitual "white gloves" — all the lending, dunning, and coercion was conducted through merchants, while they themselves never dirtied their hands directly.

As for embezzling from the payroll with phantom soldiers, that was, by comparison, a technique requiring a slightly higher degree of finesse.

In Liaodong, where fighting was incessant, the court kept a tight rein, and the officers themselves feared going into battle shorthanded and losing their heads at the first setback.

Thus, the household retainers were always kept at full strength with full pay — some commanders even spent their own silver to raise additional men beyond the official establishment.

Ordinary camp soldiers were not casually turned into phantom payroll entries either. Instead, infantry slots were used to draw cavalry pay and rations, and cavalry slots were used to draw the pay and rations of household retainers.

The number of pure "ghost soldiers" was, in fact, quite small.

Truly a stroke of luck!

Luck, my Himalayan ass!

Zhu Youjian set down the examination papers in his hands and let out a long, deep breath.

He leaned back against the dragon throne. His face showed not the slightest trace of anger — only satisfaction, even… delight.

Angry? Why should he be angry?

This was all excellent news!

In the affairs of the realm, the trouble is never that a thing cannot be done, but that the truth cannot be reached; the trouble is never that the truth cannot be reached, but that it cannot be perceived!

The most terrifying thing is never that problems exist — it is having no idea where the problems lie, and blundering about like a headless fly!

Now, every festering sore, every patch of rotten flesh, lay exposed before him with absolute clarity.

Once the root of the disease is found, can the prescription be far behind?

He had every confidence that, layer by layer, peeling them back slowly, stewing them over a low flame, he could bring every one of these abuses to an end.

And the even better news was this —

The Ming army, with this kind of treatment, eating this kind of grain, swallowing this kind of abuse, had still managed to fight a whole string of hard battles! Even at the Battle of Song-Jin, when the fate of the dynasty was staked on a single throw, they had forced Hong Taiji to muster every last youth of his entire clan!

"The Ming army, underpaid — but let them be paid in full, and none can stand against them!"

Nothing could prove the weight of those words more conclusively than the examination papers now before his eyes!

To be sure, these problems were deep-rooted; to eradicate them entirely would be harder than scaling the heavens.

But as a swift knife-hand who had spent over a decade in a later age getting real things done, the one thing he feared least was solving problems!

Zhu Youjian rallied his spirits and picked up the registers from the other border garrisons.

The methods of the military bosses across the realm were, in truth, much the same — only adapted to local conditions, each presenting its own distinctive "special-development plan."

The Shaanxi branch, where the frontier warfare was relatively stable, practiced extortion on a somewhat larger scale than the Liaodong branch.

Actual disbursements there generally ranged from sixty to seventy percent.

The Yizhou branch — a purely interior garrison — was the most rapacious of all.

The soldiers there received only about fifty-five percent.

As for the officers who had originally belonged to the Valiant Guard Camp, most of them hailed from guard stations around the capital region, where the developmental model was even more distinctive.

In those guard stations, there was a practice known as "buying idleness."

Once you had paid your full monthly dues, you were excused from attending drill and could go out and earn your own living in trade.

Those who couldn't pay enough were the ones who had to come back for "training."

And this so-called training mostly consisted of labor services like building fortifications and farming the land.

How much was this cut?

The Tongzhou guard station offered the most generous rates, the talk of the entire capital region!

Infantry: 200 wen per month; cavalry: 300 wen per month.

Never mind the infantry — once a cavalryman paid up, he could take his horse and run long-haul routes.

How was this way of life any different from a taxi driver in later ages?

Beyond this, the Capital Camps also had a special line of business known as "ordnance contracting."

All arrows, armor, war chariots, and other military supplies bypassed official channels and were instead subcontracted by the ennobled houses and military bosses to merchants of their acquaintance for procurement.

As for whether the procured goods were usable or of any quality — only Heaven knew.

In any case, the ennobled houses were satisfied, the military bosses were satisfied, the civil officials were satisfied, and even the rank-and-file soldiers were satisfied.

One win times four — that made it a quadruple win!

The specialty of the Xuanfu and Datong branch offices was smuggling trade with the Mongols beyond the passes, relying on Zhangjiakou.

Interestingly, the commodity in greatest demand among the Mongol nobles was not ironware at all, but luxury consumer goods from the south — silks, tea, porcelain, and the like.

No wonder history records you getting beaten like dogs by Ligdan Khan! Zhu Youjian read this far and couldn't help rolling his eyes inwardly.

As for the Dongjiang branch office, its scope of business was even broader — smuggling, lumbering, fishing, even seizing Joseon land for cultivation; nothing was beyond its reach.

Not bad, not bad!

Zhu Youjian closed the last ledger, the smile on his face growing ever brighter.

Our Great Ming is thriving with each passing day!

Every branch office has its own core competitiveness, and a bright future lies ahead of each.

Truly a case of growing bigger and stronger, creating brilliance together!

Zhu Youjian raised his head and looked once more at the military officers standing in the hall.

His gaze was filled entirely with satisfaction.

— This pledge of allegiance, I'll take it!