**10,000 Fans Incentive Plan
Yesterday, I posted an article about the phenomenon of the Ming Dynasty's folk self-palace (20,000 people collectively self-palace......It's not **, it's true! It is said that there are many men who do not hesitate to disobey the ban of the imperial court and go to the palace privately in order to enter the palace as eunuchs.
The impact of the private palace was very great, and even some grassroots soldiers began to take the road of the palace, intending to attack the eunuchs.
For example: in September of the second year of Jingtai (1451), the Ministry of Rites said: Recently, the first person from the palace has led more military service, that is, the border is not resting, and I am afraid that they will all follow suit, so that the army is short of people. ("Records of the Ming Dynasty").
The meaning of this sentence is that many of the people who have come from the palace have come from military service recently, and now there is no peace on the frontier, and if other sergeants in the army follow suit, I am afraid that there will be a shortage of people in the army. In the future, if there are people in the army who are from the palace, please send their whole family to Liaodong to fill the army.
It can be seen that the imperial court was very annoyed by the matter of private palace, and punished these people, the most common is to send these people to the army, and these people are called the pure army. The net army has those who are assigned to guard the border guards, and there are also those who serve in the royal gardens, or those who guard the imperial tomb and the palace city.
And there are two main ones in the net army.
One is the aforementioned private eunuchs, who were punished by the imperial court and filled into the pure army.
The other is that some eunuchs who have lost power or committed crimes have been demoted to the pure army. For example, Wang Yue, who was in the Zhengde period and Liu Jin's regime, was demoted to Nanjing as a pure army after losing power. Another example is that after Feng Bao in the Wanli period lost power, he was sent to the net army of Xiaoling in Nanjing to grow vegetables.
After Wei Zhongxian gained power, the original celebrant and eunuch Wang An was punished to fill the army and guard the Nanhaizi wall and various gates.
As for those who serve in the clean army, those who commit relatively minor crimes are generally sent to the clean army in Nanhaizi, Beijing, and those who commit serious crimes are sent to the clean army in Nanjing.
The pure army is called an army, so do they have combat effectiveness?
The Pure Army is essentially a special group set up by the Ming Dynasty to punish eunuchs and eunuchs who violate the law, and they are called the Pure Army, but in fact they do not have the attributes of an army, let alone go to war.
But during the special period, the Pure Army was also armed and became an important force.
First of all, in the Zhengde period, Emperor Zhengde is a well-known thing, he wants to lead the three armies to fight, but repeatedly blocked by the civil officials, he organized the eunuchs in the palace, the number is not enough, and the eunuchs in the net army are also used to fill the number, "(Emperor Zhengde) since the eunuchs are good at riding and arching people as a battalion, called the 'Chinese army', morning and evening drills, the sound of artillery, up to the nine gates, bathing the iron group, shining in the palace." Ming Wuzong Records, vol. 134).
Emperor Zhengde organized the eunuchs and practiced every day, but these were all tricks, completely to curry favor with Emperor Zhengde and go into battle to kill the enemy, which was simply impossible.
There is also the period of Wei Zhongxian, he organized as many as 40,000 pure troops, training day and night, trying to form an important force to defend themselves, but after Chongzhen succeeded to the throne, Wei Zhongxian fell, and these pure troops were disbanded.
There is also the eve of the fall of the Ming Dynasty in 1644, Emperor Chongzhen asked the eunuchs to organize the net army to go upstairs to fight, but at this time the Ming Dynasty had run out of oil, and these clean troops did not have the ability to save the Ming Dynasty, and under the attack of Li Zicheng, most people chose to surrender.
What are these people of the Pure Army doing? In fact, it is to do some labor, such as growing vegetables.
Shen Defu has a vivid description of this in "Wanli Ye Ed.": "Hearing that the officials are in the clouds, the vegetable growers go to Nanjing, and their garrison Da Jue sits in the grand hall and drinks the clouds to take the ministry, and the net army shoulders a dung bucket and spoon, and tends to go forward, although the master of ceremonies is offended. and live in the vegetable garden day and night, and he must not cross an inch unless he is forgiven. ”
In other words, after being punished to Nanking to purify the army, these people could only live in the vegetable fields and work, even the eunuchs who had held important positions in the celebrant eunuchs, and at the same time, their personal freedom was strictly restricted.
Of course, it's not just about growing vegetables, there are many chores that are also done by Jingjun. Liu Ruoyu was a eunuch in the Wanli period, he wrote a book "Zhizhongzhi", which wrote a lot of content about eunuchs, including talking about the Jingjun watch, which is described in great detail: (Jingjun) five people take turns to go to the Xuanwu Gate Tower every night to fight, starting from three o'clock to three o'clock on the fifth watch, according to the number of rattan drumming, sandalwood hammer hitting. For example, only one person goes upstairs, not allowed to carry lights, it is okay on a sunny night, but the wind and rain are obscure, and if there is a mistake, it will be punished.
Although these people in the pure army were punished and also needed to work, their treatment was not actually the worst.
In the eighth year of Jiajing (1529), Liang Cai, who was then the head of the household department, made a note: "The ceremonial supervisor unveiled and said that in June of the eighth year of Jiajing, the internal officials and the chief of the internal envoys, the internal envoys of the small fire, and the pure army saw 12,639 members, each named four buckets of lunar eclipse rice, a total of 60,667 stone and two buckets of rice every year, and 5,555 stone and six buckets of rice in the leap month. ”
In other words, the net army is provided with food by the state, and although it is only four buckets per month (about 62 catties equivalent to today), at least it will not starve to death.