Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 380
On May [-]th of the fifth year of Longqing, the prince's companion, Gao Yushi, returned to Beijing to sell holidays.

Facts have proved that not only is it necessary to take two hundred riders with you when you go on a long journey, but your own status is also very important.Thanks to Gao Gong's blessing, Gao Yushi came back all the way, even with 200 servants, the post stations along the way received him respectfully, and he didn't dare to neglect him at all.

Of course, although the post station is willing to do its best, it can't stand Gao Wushi's team is too big. Most post stations can't accommodate so many people and horses, so they can only find ways to arrange them nearby.

But fortunately, there is enough money for high-level travel. Every time I go to a post station, I will take the initiative to pay, and it is relatively generous. I only need to run errands at the post station. Not only will I not lose money, but I can also make a small profit, which can be regarded as a pull A lot of passers-by.

Of course, Gao Wushi's generosity is not only for a little popularity, but more importantly, he uses these means to build friendship with the station officials, and then finds out from them the real situation of the station in his spare time.

There is a well-known event in history, that is, at the end of the Ming Dynasty, Emperor Chongzhen, who made great efforts to govern, ordered the abolition of the original post station system in the country.Li Zicheng, who was originally a postman in Shaanxi, suddenly lost his job and lost his livelihood. He eventually overthrew the Ming Dynasty.In order to save a few 10 taels of silver, Chongzhen lost the world.

But the process of history has never been so simple, because Chongzhen was not the first person to eat crabs.Before him, as far as Gao Wushi knew, the Ming Dynasty abolished the post station system at least twice. Both the previous Emperor Jiajing and the future Emperor Wanli had or will do so.

The problem is that both Jiajing and Wanli have cut out surplus food, but only Chongzhen has cut out Li Zicheng.Why?Gao Wushi also knew that the post station system cost a lot, and it was a big part of the imperial court's expenditure. In the future, he would definitely use the post station system if he couldn't do it down—maybe he was already thinking about it now.Therefore, Gao Wushi felt that it was necessary for him to find out a little bit about this matter before returning to Beijing.

To understand the emperor's attitude towards the various local post stations, it is first necessary to understand the operating mode of this system.The truth is, it would be a big mistake to see it as a simple and unassuming official hotel!

Because in the Ming Dynasty, the real post station was actually a kind of luxurious official guest house.In addition to the postal and military intelligence transmission purposes that we usually know, it also undertakes many other functions.

According to Gao Wushi's understanding from the staff of post stations along the way, according to the regulations at this time, most post stations have yards with two or even three entrances.On the main traffic arteries, the imperial court often had post stations serving officials, and their living conditions were not even worse than those of local magistrates—many of the passing officials were higher-level and more powerful than local officials. How can you live in such a bad way?
A post station in the Ming Dynasty had at least the gate, the drum tower, the middle gate, the front and rear halls, the left and right wing rooms, the kitchen, the warehouse, the stables, and the station’s residence.Most standard post stations have 10 upper rooms for officials to live in, and 20 side rooms or wing rooms for commuting servants, which can accommodate dozens of guests at the same time.

At the same time, these post stations also have their own post houses and offices.Of course, there must be supporting kitchens and stables, as well as management and service personnel such as grooms, donkeys, steppers, shopkeepers, clerks, buckets, housekeepers, and cooks.There must be Chase shop houses for them to live in, and there are even spare warehouses and temporary prisons for various officials to use.

Therefore, at this time, Daming's post stations, like the expressway service areas of later generations, are all over the country's traffic routes.Provide free services for "institutional personnel" across the country!And its service items are far more comprehensive than the expressway service areas of later generations.

The service duties of the post stations in the Ming Dynasty can be divided into three main categories:
First of all, the most basic is the accommodation service. As mentioned above, there are not only supporting facilities for users, but also all service personnel.

The second is the supply of chariots and horses. Take the situation of the Shaanxi post station where Li Zicheng was born as an example: Xi’an post station has 27 horses, 10 donkeys, a number of oxen and carts in stock.If these are not enough, you can call hundreds of postmen waiting to offer their shoulders.After all, these low-level officials are more able to endure hardships and stand hard work than mules and horses.

Finally, there is the provision of travel expenses, which is probably the most incomprehensible service item for modern people.Not only do officials not spend money living in post stations, but they can also get money from post stations in turn.At this time, many officials went to the post station to stay, and when they left, they had to ask for money in various names.After all, post stations can't cover all areas, and the food, drink, and sleep of the police officers can't stop for a moment.If it is not given, it is very common for post soldiers and even post officials to be beaten.

If it is just being blackmailed constantly, the station system may not be the target of several abolitions.But what's more terrible is that these star-studded post stations are not only not operated in a market-oriented manner, nor are they supported by state funding.Each post station mainly depends on the local government to apportion directly to the people, and use the extra tribute from the local people to support it!

In other words, the daily operation and maintenance of the post station is carried out between grassroots officials and grassroots people.There is no supervision from the upper and lower levels of the government, and no agreed market norms.Therefore, it is the post station officials who have the final say on charging more and less from the common people.

In terms of the horses that must be equipped at each post station.The horses at the post station do not eat grass, but grain.As early as Zhu Yuanzhang's period, each horse in the station needed 80 shi of local grain every year.However, in the middle and late Ming Dynasty, a horse in Huazhou, Shaanxi actually needed 422 shi of grain every year!At that time, one hectare of cultivated land in Shaanxi could only produce 7 shi of grain.Therefore, raising a stage horse requires the blood and sweat of more than a dozen households throughout the year.

In view of the really poor breeding technology of the Ming Dynasty, it was impossible to breed horses into the size of African elephants, so it is even more impossible for the food intake to increase by more than 100 times in less than 200 years.These over-collected grains were actually eaten by the "institutional personnel" and the staff of the post station who went to and from the post station.

After the mid-Ming Dynasty, the speed of the collapse of the government was greatly accelerated.Anyone who has something to do with the system can open a letter of introduction to stay at the post station and use chariots and horses.The advantage is not only free, but you can even ask for travel expenses from the post station in turn.Therefore, in order to support the increasingly expensive post stations, officials in the system can only apportion more and more expenses to the people.As for apportioning more apportionments and less apportionment, it all depends on the personal conscience of the officials.Among them, there is Yicheng who is filial to the superior officials, and can accumulate a thousand or two fortunes in addition to catering to errands.

Anyone with a discerning eye can see that if the post station is not abolished, the peasants who are finally forced to survive by the post station will rebel sooner or later.

At that time, many court officials actually saw this problem.When Emperor Jiajing was in power, the imperial court planned to reduce the size of post stations across the country by 30%-50%, and half of the money and food saved would be used for military expenses.

The idea is actually not bad, but in execution, there are still problems.The local government did reduce the funds for post stations, but the burden on post stations did not decrease.The officials who came and went still ate and drank in the post station, and they had to use carts and horses.As a result, the staff of the national post stations began to go on strike or simply abandoned their jobs and fled.Since the post station itself also undertakes the function of message transmission, the consequences are more serious.

For example, after the Japanese pirates attacked Xinghua City in Fujian Province, it took more than a month for the urgent news to reach the capital.As a last resort, the abolition reform was declared a failure five years later, and everything returned to the original track.

In the Wanli period, Zhang Juzheng had already monopolized the power, and he also began to take over the post administration.However, he did not enforce the reduction ratio from the perspective of saving expenses, but started from limiting the privileges of officials.He presided over the promulgation of strict regulations, brought dozens of officials who violated the rules to justice, and many officials were demoted and dismissed.It also includes the descendants of Confucius and relatives of the emperor.

In addition, Zhang Juzheng did not stipulate a rigid target for reducing funds, but seized the key point of "official privileges".The reform of the post office was also directly included in the assessment content of the top leaders at the provincial level.This idea is quite correct. It has successfully reduced the cost of post offices across the country by more than 30%. It is said that it has saved nearly one million taels of silver and reduced the huge economic burden for the people.

However, as I said before, Zhang Juzheng's method may benefit the country and the people, but forcibly using administrative means to suppress officials all over the world, there is no way for people to escape.

The reason why Gao Yushi went deep into the station to understand the situation is also to carefully look for breakthroughs from it - he has always agreed that "politics is the art of compromise", so although strong pressure does not mean that it will never work, but blindly strong pressure will definitely not work. If you close a door, at least you can A window must be left for others. This principle is similar to the "siege of three and one missing" in siege warfare in the art of war-block all of them, it is better to leave a small gap as a catharsis, so as to prevent the trapped beasts from fighting and the fish dying.

(End of this chapter)