Strictly speaking, Zhu Yunwen knew nothing about training new soldiers. But as emperor, he did not need to master the details; that was his ministers' job. He only needed to take the lofty vantage point and oversee the whole picture.
Drawing on his perspective from later generations and his grounding in history, Zhu Yunwen drafted a complete training plan.
The plan consisted of five parts: physical training, ideological development, battle formations, equipment upgrades, and the establishment of special forces.
It incorporated methods of training special forces learned from television and films, methods of military command on ancient battlefields, methods used by outstanding ancient generals to train their troops, and more.
The physical aspect went without saying. In the Great Ming Dynasty, where cold weapons still predominated, each soldier's stamina, conditioning, and fighting ability directly affected victory or defeat on the battlefield.
Intensifying physical training was inevitable.
Surely they could not send soldiers into battle who gasped after three steps and collapsed after ten?
As for ideological development, Zhu Yunwen dared not mention communism. After turning it over in his mind, he concluded that the best possible result of instilling Marxism-Leninism would be his own overthrow. Better forget it.
As an emperor, he would start from an emperor's standpoint and respect objective facts. That was called the materialist conception of history.
Without Marxist-Leninist faith, he could promote the heroic spirit of returning "wrapped in horsehide," the patriotic spirit of "Serve the Country with Utmost Loyalty," and the national spirit of "sharing the sovereign's burdens and bringing peace to the four seas."
Combined with rewards of promotion and benefits for their descendants, these would be enough to make soldiers willingly stake their lives on serving the court.
Zhu Yunwen did not say much about battle formations. That was, after all, the military officers' specialty. Still, he proposed the concept of cooperation between "different troop types" and advocated drilling new formations and tactics.
Zhu Yunwen attached particular importance to equipment upgrades.
Yes, firearms and ammunition already existed in the early Ming. But the long guns of this period were called fire lances, and the short guns hand cannons. Their range was terribly limited, somewhere between a few dozen and a hundred meters.
Moreover, after firing once, they had to be reloaded before firing again, making it difficult to establish a comprehensive network of fire.
With a range of a hundred meters, against cavalry charging at speed, the enemy would be upon them, sabers swinging, before they could get two shots off.
As for artillery, although Frankish Cannons had not yet reached Great Ming, Great Ming still possessed some cannons, such as the Divine Handgun Cart Cannon and the General Cannon.
These were fairly decent. They had longer ranges, reaching three kilometers or even exceeding four.
But they were great lumps of iron, readily weighing two hundred to four hundred jin. Great Ming had neither trucks nor trains for transport, nor paved roads. Once rain turned the roads to mud, who could haul these things around?
Besides, war demanded speed: swift penetration and rapid maneuvering. If they dragged a cannon along and everyone had to wait for it, how many li could they cover in a day?
Thus, in Great Ming, these weapons were mostly used to defend cities, or brought up after an enemy city had been surrounded to blast its gates open.
At this point, treating them as an independent troop type and incorporating them into battle formations was unheard of.
Now Zhu Yunwen explicitly demanded not only the formation of fire lance units, but also cannon units, and gave them a resounding name:
The Artillery Corps.
His requirements for the special forces were even stricter. Four thousand elite soldiers were to be selected from the Capital Garrison's army of four hundred thousand for specialized training-truly one chosen from every hundred.
Ru Chang, minister of war, read the document of nearly ten thousand characters, his hands trembling slightly. He looked up at Tie Xuan and saw that the shock on his face had yet to fade. His eyes were filled with admiration and approval.
"This... was truly written by His Majesty?"
Ru Chang could scarcely imagine it.
If the reigning emperor truly possessed such insight, Great Ming would flourish in both letters and arms!
A true golden age would arrive!
And when that happened, his own name would surely be preserved in the histories!
Tie Xuan gradually regained his composure and nodded emphatically, unable to suppress his praise. "His Majesty's undertaking will surely succeed. The task of strengthening the army will surely be accomplished in our hands. Only now do I understand: this is what truly gave His Majesty the confidence to cut a hundred thousand troops!"
Ru Chang glanced down at the New Recruit Policy and shook his head slightly. "I have served as minister of war for nearly ten years, yet never heard such penetrating insights. His Majesty first established the Grand Secretariat and restored discipline at court; now he is implementing the New Recruit Policy and forging a new army. It seems our emperor's thoughts reach very far indeed."
Tie Xuan put the document away and looked gravely at Ru Chang. "We must still discuss this matter with the Duke of Wei."
"The Duke of Wei? Only the Duke of Wei?"
Ru Chang was startled.
Looking at Ru Chang, Tie Xuan suddenly understood as well.
By rights, although His Majesty trusted Xu Huizu, the Duke of Wei, he should not have spurned Li Jinglong, the Duke of Cao. Yet His Majesty had never mentioned Li Jinglong at all.
This meant Li Jinglong did not enjoy the emperor's favor.
Tie Xuan frowned slightly. "We need only follow His Majesty's instructions. As for anything else, it is not for our Ministry of War to question."
The open struggles and covert intrigues of the Five Army Commandery had yet to spill over into the Ministry of War.
Tie Xuan did not want to get involved. He only wanted to flesh out the New Recruit Policy as soon as possible and train the Capital Garrison's army.
In a side hall of the Hall of Martial Valor.
Zhu Yunwen sketched a rough world map from memory. He looked toward South America, then shifted his gaze toward Europe.
Hongwu Year 31 was 1398 CE.
Dante, Petrarch, and Boccaccio had probably been dead for several decades, and Europe's Renaissance was still continuing.
The Hundred Years' War should still be raging, shouldn't it?
Capitalism was sprouting in Europe. In a few more decades, the curtain would rise on the Age of Discovery.
Great Ming did not have much time left.
Zhu Yunwen knew that if they neglected their navy and ocean navigation, then more than four hundred years later, China would become a semicolonial, semifeudal society. Foreigners would burn, kill, pillage, and do whatever they pleased upon Chinese soil!
Zhu Yunwen did not want that history to happen again.
But undertaking distant voyages would not be easy.
One of the greatest obstacles was a lack of money.
Zhu Yunwen had visited the Imperial Treasury. Though it was well stocked, its contents did not belong to him alone.
In fact, many people regarded the Imperial Treasury as the emperor's private property. Strictly speaking, that view was incorrect.
For in Zhu Yuanzhang's time, the old emperor had thought, Everything under heaven belongs to me. Do I really need to set aside a private stash?
That would be drawing legs on a snake!
"A sovereign takes the four seas as his home. Surely the wealth of all under heaven is for the use of all under heaven; how can it be divided into public and private? Taizong, an enlightened ruler of the Song, likewise held this view!"
Those were Zhu Yuanzhang's own words.
Zhu Yuanzhang believed the fall of the Song Dynasty was connected to the imperial family establishing an Imperial Treasury and turning the nation's wealth into "private wealth."
Thus, the Imperial Treasury of the early Ming was effectively the state treasury.
Yet although Zhu Yuanzhang established the Imperial Treasury system, it lacked effective oversight and management. Moreover, he had never studied economics and printed banknotes at the drop of a hat without tying them to gold or silver.
By Zhu Yunwen's time, the national economy was already in rather poor shape.
In his later years, Zhu Yuanzhang had also recognized this problem. Officials' salaries, for example, were changed from a combination of salary notes and salary rice to salary rice alone.
There was no helping it. The banknotes were no good.
Moreover, early Ming taxes were collected in goods rather than silver. In plain terms, tax revenues consisted of rice, cotton, cloth, and the like.
In Zhu Yunwen's time, having three million taels of silver in the court's coffers was already considered decent. Of course, if grain were converted into its silver equivalent, revenues still amounted to fifteen million taels.
But more than half of that money and grain went to supporting troops and officials. The armies of the frontier princes and the armies in the capital all needed money and provisions.
As for military farmland, where were troops in places such as Liaodong and Gansu supposed to farm? Some cities beyond the passes and coastal garrisons simply lacked the conditions for cultivating military farmland.
Surely the capital's main fighting force could not spend every day shouldering hoes?
Military farmland at garrisons throughout the country did provide a substantial share of the grain, but it could not cover every ration.
Officials, too, needed their salaries.
Especially those princes and imperial relatives, each of whom was quite capable of producing children. They drew allowances for themselves, and their wives and children needed allowances too. The money they received exceeded that of Grand Secretariat ministers by dozens of times.
After all these expenditures, the state treasury was practically scraped clean every year.
Zhu Yunwen sighed. With a few more years of peaceful development, Great Ming's economy could still improve. But under the present circumstances, could peace truly be achieved?
Would a formidable man like Zhu Di choose to resist to the end, or submit?
Zhu Yunwen could not be certain.
"Industry and commerce..."
Zhu Yunwen rubbed his brow. If restrictions on industry and commerce could not be lifted, making Great Ming prosperous solely through what peasants produced in their fields would be almost as fanciful as a tale from the Arabian Nights.
Yet Great Ming had no merchants-at least, no legally recognized merchants.
Zhu Yuanzhang hated merchants. He had even issued an order that "all who do not engage in production may be arrested and killed." Of the Tang, Song, Yuan, Ming, and Qing dynasties, the Ming accorded merchants the lowest status!
This might have been connected to Zhu Yuanzhang's background. Unscrupulous merchants had caused the deaths of members of his family, and he had always regarded merchants as just as hateful as corrupt officials, requiring vigorous suppression.
In the early Ming, there were military registers, agricultural registers, artisan registers, and so on, but no merchant register at all.
Emphasize Agriculture and Restrain Commerce became one of Zhu Yuanzhang's fundamental national policies.
The greatest obstacle to changing this policy was not Zhu Yuanzhang, who already lay in the Xiaoling Mausoleum, but the Confucian mindset of "Emphasize Agriculture and Restrain Commerce."
Officials wanted stability and vigorous development of the agricultural economy.
Merchants?
Today they're in the capital, tomorrow in North Zhili, and the day after they might run off to sea. How am I supposed to govern them?
Every one of you, stay on the land, tethered in place. That makes you easy to govern, doesn't it?
Besides, if merchants earn all the money and create a whole crowd of wealthy men, won't there be less wealth left under heaven? How are ordinary people supposed to survive?
Perhaps these were the heartfelt sentiments of the officials of this age.
But history had proved that rotten, antiquated institutions could not cage the mighty lion of economic laws.
Great Ming's merchants had plenty of methods. For instance, they could shelter under another registration: first buy a plot of land and make it clear that they were peasants. I till the soil. As for why I've taken up commerce, am I not even allowed a little sideline?
If that failed, they could collude with military households, obtain a military registration, and send a son or nephew to serve in their place. I'm a military man. What business is it of yours if I do a little trading?
These groups of merchants wearing a borrowed skin became one of the important driving forces of the Ming economy.
The shackles upon them were still heavy, terribly heavy.
Zhu Yunwen knew that merchants had to gain legal recognition. This was the key to unleashing the market's energy.
As for where the raging bull of commerce would go, that depended on how he held its tether.
But now was not the time, for Zhu Di was about to enter the capital.
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