Chapter 26 Section 4 The Imperial Guards in the Ming Dynasty

After Zhu Yuanzhang established the Ming Dynasty, he paid great attention to learning from the experience and lessons of the previous dynasties, especially because he admired the system of Tang and Song Dynasties, he often imitated and improved it.For example, the high-level administrative districts learned the way of the Song Dynasty and implemented the system of separating the capital, the cloth, and the three divisions, and the Dusi Weisuo system was similar to the Tang Dynasty's military system. In the early Ming Dynasty, after the world was established, guard posts were set up all over the key points of the frontier for military defense.The majority of guards are organized with 5600 people as one guard. Each guard is divided into five thousand households, front, back, left, middle and right. Each thousand households has 1120 people. There are ten hundred households under it. , ten small flags.The guards are under the jurisdiction of military households, that is, sergeants and their families.The sergeants are all descendants, that is to say, they have been soldiers for generations. They are self-sufficient in farming and farming in peacetime, and they go to the battlefield in case of war.

At first, the guards belonged to the Metropolitan Governor's Mansion in the center, and later belonged to the commanding divisions of the provinces according to the regions.Soon, the provinces inherited from the Yuan Dynasty were transformed into chief ministers, so the capital and chief ministers were in charge of local military and civil affairs respectively.Although the government soldiers in the Tang Dynasty were also soldiers in wartime and farmers in peacetime, Zhechong Mansion, which commanded the soldiers, had nothing to do with administrative divisions, while some capital guards in the Ming Dynasty were a special administrative division.

Let me talk about the guard first.During the Hongwu period in the early Ming Dynasty, some border states and counties were abolished, and guards were established. These guards had their own jurisdiction and household registration, commonly known as Shitu guards (the guards are equivalent to prefectures, and the offices are equivalent to counties), and became part of the administrative division. kind.On the other hand, the guards in the interior are scattered all over the country, interspersed with prefectures and counties. They are purely military organizations, commonly known as non-real guards.

In addition to the Shitu Weisuo, there is also Shitu Dusi.As we have said before, the high-level administrative districts of the Ming Dynasty were designated as the 13 chief ministers of the two capitals, and there were 13 capital divisions in the same administrative office as the 13 capital divisions. The five capitals of China, Yunnan, and Guizhou have some solid soil guards.In addition to the 13 capitals, there are three other capitals that have nothing to do with Busi. One is the Liaodong capital, which is located in the present-day Liaoning area. Part of it is real soil; the third is Daning Dusi, that is, Daning Road (now the junction of Hebei and Liaoning) in Yuan Dynasty.

In addition to the 16 capital divisions, there are five more Xingdu divisions, which are located in important border areas. Among them, the Xingdu divisions of Shaanxi and Sichuan are real land, the Xingdu divisions of Shanxi are part of the real land, and the Xingdu divisions of Fujian and Huguang are not real land.In addition to the capital division and the Xingdu division, there are two left-behind divisions, which also divide part of the guards. One is the left-behind division of Zhongdu, and the other is the left-behind division of Xingdu.Zhongdu is Fengyang, Anhui, which is the hometown of Zhu Yuanzhang; Xingdu is Zhongxiang, Hubei, where the tomb of Emperor Jiajing's father is located.The two left-behind divisions are all non-real.

In this way, there were 23 units in the local military area of ​​the sub-command guards in the Ming Dynasty, namely the 16 capital divisions, the five-element capital division and the second left-behind division.Among them, the titles of Shitudusi, Xingdusi and Shituwei are listed in "History of Ming Dynasty Geographical Chronicles", indicating that they are a kind of administrative division.The Xingdusi, Liushousi and Weisuo without real land are not listed in the "Geographical Records" to show that they have nothing to do with the political area (the 13 capitals without real land are listed side by side with the 13 busi).For example, the famous Tianjin Wei cannot be found in "History of Ming Dynasty Geography".

The system of the capital guards in the Ming Dynasty was very complicated, and the above is just a rough outline.In addition to the guard office of the capital of the capital (details below), the official territory of the late Ming Dynasty was composed of the 13 chief ministers of the two capitals and the two real capitals (Liaodong and Wanquan).Neither the Xingdusi of the real land nor the capital of the non-real land are treated as administrative divisions. For example, the sum of the jurisdictions of the Shaanxi Dusi and the Shaanxi Xingdusi is considered the scope of the Shaanxi Chief Political Commissioner, so only the Shaanxi Chief Political Commissioner is regarded as an administrative region. calculate.

The Dusi Weisuo system played a certain role in both Yuwai and Jingnei, but by the late Ming Dynasty, this system had gradually become loose.In the early Qing Dynasty, the capital was abolished, but the guard still existed, but its nature became a purely military organization, which had nothing to do with administrative divisions.By the Yongzheng period, the guards had been changed to prefectures and counties.For example, Xiningwei was changed to Xiningfu, Tianjinwei was changed to Tianjin Zhili Prefecture, and Jinshanwei near Shanghai was also changed to Jinshan County.However, the guard system has been in operation for 300 years, and many place names have left a deep imprint.