The combat strength of the Ming army was lost, and the heads remembered their faults
In ancient history, there were many armies with the heads of enemy soldiers as a symbol of merit, including the Assyrian and Tyrannical armies of the Tyrants, but there were also outliers like the Ming Dynasty.
The establishment of any system has its inherent rationality, but if there is no real strong person to assist in its implementation, even if it is designed by a smart person, it will lead to chaos.
Therefore, the Ming Dynasty's head record system gradually lost its importance in the process of evolution.
The original model of beheading merit originated from the Qin Dynasty's military merit system, in which the enemy's head was captured in exchange for wealth and titles. This bloody calculation model has been used by successive dynasties, which can effectively stimulate the fighting spirit of soldiers and ensure the transparency of rewards and punishments.
However, during the Ming Dynasty, this model was problematic. Although during the period when Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di's military appearance was relatively complete, the troops did not pay too much attention to the number of heads captured.
In the Taizu Dynasty, only a system of rewards according to "capture" was set up for coastal pirates, but there was no clear provision for inspection according to the head. In the Yongle Dynasty, the decapitation mode was only for special sentinel troops.
According to the on-site supervision of the supervising army, the other units are divided into three grades according to their battlefield performance: miraculous merit, first merit, and second merit.
During the Ming Dynasty, the assessment criteria for the army were not based on heads. It was not until 1434 that the Ming army began to pay attention to the decapitation model. However, this incentive system has not been rolled out across the country.
It was not until after the fiasco of the Tumu Fort in 1449 that such regulations were implemented throughout the country. This "wolf-like" incentive system often reduced the combat effectiveness of the troops in the eyes of later generations, because there was no other alternative to the command level.
Although the Ming Dynasty has a relatively long record in the 15th century, most of the wars were fought against the border people, so it is not easy for observers to pay attention. By the 16th century, the weakness of the Ming army remained unchanged.
For example, in 1508, Emperor Zhengde abolished performance-based military exploits such as "charging", "breaking the enemy" and "fierce battle", and completely changed to the head as the assessment standard. Considering that the Ming Dynasty did not have any major external problems at that time, and the scale of most of the military operations was small, there did not seem to be much wrong with such an arrangement.
Later, Ming Shizong ordered the restoration of traditional commendations, but the status of beheading and recording merits has been deeply rooted and has always been regarded as the highest standard for the assessment of the middle and late Ming army.
In the 15th and 16th centuries, the Ming army began to regard the number of heads as the most important criterion, and even the credit for not capturing the head could not be recognized.
The Ming Army's Combat Performance Identification Faces a Dilemma Wang Fu, the military secretary of the Ming Xianzong period, once revealed that although the decapitation can stimulate combat effectiveness, it is still necessary to overcome difficulties in order to be true and effective.
He believes that it is difficult to prevent overreporting based on the criteria for determining military merit based on combat performance such as taking the lead and destroying the enemy. Recently, the order of military exploits in the Liangzhou Song Report shows that the number of beheadings is much lower than that of Fen Yong, but the review standards are mainly the responsibility of the supervising army, which makes it easy for relevant personnel to wield too much power, and may use bribery, threats, and daily relationship maintenance to gain the best opportunities for themselves and their subordinates.
This made it difficult for the Ming army to abandon the head-to-head merit model.
Excessive centralization led to the Ming Dynasty's military supervision system relying on its own integrity, which was different in other countries. According to Dunbar's number, the social limit of any individual is around 150, so the monarch of a small country only needs to send his own cronies to meet the needs of the prison army, while the monarch of a large empire has insufficient cronies and can only rely on a huge bureaucratic system.
However, the top-down step-by-step authorization system is easy to form a chain of deception and concealment, and there is no physical evidence left in ancient times, and the credit according to combat performance depends entirely on the moral integrity of the prison army itself.
If the monarch's ability is mediocre, the disadvantages of performing merit will be more obvious. Just like the imperial history Lu Hong pointed out in the Chenghua period, as soon as the chief soldier and other officers of the town guard were dispatched, they asked for more officers in Beijing and their families to accompany them.
Therefore, it is requested that such acts be prohibited.
The generals of the Ming Dynasty must not only have excellent combat skills, but also know how to properly handle various dead situations in complex interpersonal relationships in order to achieve a reasonable solution.
The evaluation system of the Ming army in the middle and late stages was in trouble, because there were serious drawbacks in both combat performance and the number of beheadings. This kind of institutional contradiction seems to be unsolvable, but in fact it reflects the inadequacy of the military and political system at that time.
For example, the Tusi system, which prevailed in the southwestern provinces, contributed a large number of cheap and efficient combat forces to the imperial court. The Tusi chief is not only the owner of the territory, but also the real master of the army in the territory, they have sufficient self-interested motives to do a good job in the recognition of military merits, and the scope of management is small, which improves the management efficiency.
As a result, in many wars in the mid-to-late Ming Dynasty, these native soldiers often played the role of mainstay.
The Tusi troops played a key role in the battles of the Ming Dynasty, and their proportion reached 7 percent, and they did not practice decapitation. Their performance in the Pingbo War far surpassed that of the regular officers and troops, which was also reflected in the battlefields of Datengxia, Hainan Island, and the coastal areas of Jiangsu and Zhejiang.
However, the Ming elite was well aware of the drawbacks of overly centralized management, and they feared that local autonomy tendencies would rise, thereby weakening the absolute authority of **. Therefore, they would rather spend the blood and sweat of the people on corruption, procrastination or melore, and hold power tightly in their hands.
This is what Huang Zongxi, a thinker in the late Ming Dynasty, said: "I think that the power of the world's interests and harms comes from me (the emperor), and I attribute all the benefits of the world to myself, and all the harms of the world to others!" ”