Do you know how many troops a knotty envoy had in ancient times?
In ancient China, the Jiedu envoys were equivalent to the current "commanders of military regions", who were in charge of the military and financial power of one party, and could be described as local "princes". So, how many soldiers and horses can such a powerful man command?
During the Tang Dynasty, the system of Jiedu gradually took shape, especially before and after the "Anshi Rebellion", the authority and military strength of Jiedu reached its peak. At that time, the number of troops that a knot had could range from a few thousand to tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands. For example, the famous An Lushan, as the envoy of the three towns of Fanyang, Pinglu and Hedong, had as many as 200,000 soldiers and horses, which was almost equivalent to the entire armed force of a small country, which also directly caused a huge turmoil in the prosperous era of the Tang Dynasty.
In the Song Dynasty, after learning the lesson of the Tang Dynasty's Jiedu envoys, who supported the troops and caused trouble, the imperial court began to vigorously weaken the rights and military strength of the Jiedu envoys. At the beginning of the Song Dynasty, a jiedu envoy could generally only govern more than 10,000 soldiers and horses, and the military power was scattered, forming a situation of "no special soldiers, no permanent commanders", so as to prevent a single general from supporting the army and self-respect, and reproduce the situation of the division of feudal towns in the late Tang Dynasty.
Entering the Ming and Qing dynasties, Jiedu made this position exist in name only, and was replaced by local official positions such as governors and governors. Although the concept of "jiedu envoy" is no longer available at this time, we can see by comparison that a governor or governor in the Ming Dynasty had an army size of about thousands to tens of thousands, while the situation in the Qing Dynasty was roughly similar, except that the military and political management system was more refined and standardized.