In the Hongwu period, when the overall environment of the Ming Dynasty was the best, the officials of the Ministry of Rites proposed to Zhu Yuanzhang to set up a martial arts school and start conducting martial arts examinations. However, Zhu Yuanzhang subjectively and simply believes that this will result in "the analysis of civil and military affairs as the second way, and there is no all-round talent in the world".

This Son of Heaven, who has rich combat experience, said that "three generations of ancient scholars have both civil and military skills", and "later generations of martial arts, specializing in Tao strategy and not training, specializing in fighting, and not being idle in one art." Therefore, the founding emperor of the Ming Dynasty insisted on opposing the setting of martial arts in his own country. (Note 1)

Zhu Yuanzhang did not have a good impression of martial arts, perhaps it was related to the lessons of martial arts in the Song Dynasty, because the martial arts of the previous Song Dynasty did not produce any good results.

Moreover, at that time, the Ming Dynasty also needed to promote education and stabilize the social order in various places, and as a result, the martial arts of the Ming Dynasty were not born in the best time period. So Zhu Yuanzhang gave up trying like this, which is really a pity.

So how did the Ming Dynasty cultivate military talents during the Hongwu period?

At the beginning of the founding of the Ming Dynasty, with a large number of cruel selections of the fittest in war, there would naturally be a group of officers with excellent skills and extraordinary military qualities.

Although most of them are probably illiterate. These officers, who lack cultural accomplishments, may not be able to write any good military teaching materials. However, when they taught their sons and nephews, they passed on their war experience by words and deeds, and they could also cultivate some talents with certain military qualities for the Ming Dynasty Guard.

In addition, during the Hongwu period, a strict competition system was used to select candidates, and the new generation of children who succeeded the military attaché were also effectively supervised. In order to successfully inherit the precious hereditary military position, they can only seriously exercise their military skills.

At the same time, Zhu Yuanzhang also used harsh laws to restrain the military attache clique, which corrected the arrogant atmosphere of the military children to a certain extent. At that time, the internal environment of the Ming Dynasty guard was "but there were those who learned to sing and cut their tongues, played chess, played double-lands, broke their hands, and unloaded their feet." (Note 2)

Therefore, the Weisuo army in the early Ming Dynasty still had a certain quality and could cope with various military challenges around it at that time. However, after the death of that group of veterans in the early Ming Dynasty, this mechanism for cultivating talents was naturally not as useful as before. In addition, the hereditary military attaché became less and less valuable in later years, and the original relatively martial environment gradually collapsed.

However, the Liangjing Martial Arts School, which was set up in the early years of orthodoxy, did not become a place for the full teaching of Confucianism like Weixue in various places. However, the martial arts of Liangjing was mainly based on the teaching of Confucian classics, and the education of military skills was reduced to a more secondary existence.

The textbooks used by the Liangjingwei were the Book of Filial Piety, the Book of Loyalty, the Primary School, the Analects, Mencius, and the University, as well as books such as the Seven Books of the Book of Martial Arts, the Biography of the Hundred Generals, and the Great Message. The rest of the teaching content is that the martial arts students are required to write 100 words a day, and once every five days the instructor leads them outside the city to practice arching horses.

It is very doubtful how many military talents can be used by such martial arts. What's even more ridiculous is that the reserve officers trained by this kind of martial arts lack sufficient understanding of their own shortcomings. Among them, many people think that they are different and look down on the border army who have worked hard from the bottom.

Let's not talk about the usefulness of the Confucian classics they studied, such as the Analects and Mencius, to actual warfare. Even things like the Seven Books of the Martial Arts, which are obviously military philosophical, are mostly regarded as rote memorization examination tools, without understanding the core meaning of the legacy of these sages.

If you look closely at these reserve officers, many of them may even be wrong in breaking sentences. What these people have learned in martial arts, perhaps the only thing they can count on is that they are not illiterate.

In the eyes of Zhang Mengcheng's later generations, this kind of thing naturally has no merit. He believes that among the large number of thieves in the late Ming Dynasty, some of the more common child soldiers were not as good as the martial arts students of the imperial court in terms of cultural quality. But when it comes to the ability to charge into battle, it will definitely be much higher than these martial arts students with low eyes.

Of course, Zhang Mengcheng's evaluation may also be too harsh, and his requirements for military educational institutions in the Ming Dynasty are too high. After all, it is not easy to reach the level of military schools in later generations.

Even the military schools of later generations have been accumulated bit by bit over a period of several hundred years. Moreover, not all military educational institutions in the Ming Dynasty were like this, and there were still some relatively professional martial arts set up.

For example, in the Longqing period, Qi Jiguang and others strongly requested the imperial court to set up the martial arts of Zunhua, Yongping, and Miyun. These are somewhat similar to the martial arts of modern military schools, and the teaching content is very targeted. Moreover, there are many talents with excellent military skills, such as Qi Jiguang, and the teachers of these martial arts also have a certain guarantee.

Qi Jiguang advocated that martial arts should be divided into four majors, one is to focus on military theory and strategy, and the teaching content is naturally the classic textbooks of traditional military science such as the "General Essentials of the Martial Arts" and the Art of War of Sun and Wu.

The second is martial arts, that is, the use and training methods of various weapons, such as knives and guns, bows and crossbows, and firearms. The third is courage, which is mostly some training for carrying tripods, weightlifting and arm strength.

The fourth is acrobatics, which is some specific tactics and auxiliary knowledge, such as astronomy and meteorology, fire attack and water warfare, and everything that can be used for military aircraft.

Moreover, the martial arts of the three towns is not only the training of military skills, but also much better than the martial arts of the two capitals. In the management of martial arts itself and the assessment of martial arts students, it is also quite strict.

First of all, students have a more favorable supply treatment in terms of material, and the supply standard will be divided into three classes according to the performance of students. At the end of each year, the outstanding ones are promoted and given material rewards, and the unqualified ones are demoted or even expelled from the school, and the money, food and materials provided free of charge before are recovered.

In terms of the way out for martial arts students, in the year of martial arts, they can naturally take the martial arts exam like the martial arts students of Liangjing Martial Arts. Even if you are not in the year of martial arts, you can be recommended by Wuxue to the local governor, and the governor will select talents to be transferred to the local area for internship. If they are indeed more talented, they will be further recommended and finally reported to the central government as a reserve for management.

The appearance of the Three Towns Martial Arts is indeed very exciting, but it is a pity that the situation has changed, and the threat of the Ming Court has shifted from outside Jizhen to Liaodong. After Zhang Juzheng was liquidated, Qi Jiguang was transferred, and the martial arts of the three towns gradually fell into decline.

Zhang Mengcheng, who also felt a pity, planned to learn from the martial arts of the three towns and set up a military school in Jinding Mountain that could really be used for battle formations. In addition to strictly training in the use of various weapons, formation drills, and other military skills such as riding and signaling, the teaching time of military skills should also be greatly increased.

For the Confucian classics, which did not actually have much effect, Zhang Mengcheng planned to get rid of most of them. It will be replaced by a more pure military theory teaching, and the knowledge of literacy, arithmetic, cartography, logistics, military system, and tactics will be uniformly changed.

As for the cumbersome traditional art of war such as the Seven Books of the Martial Arts, Zhang Mengcheng also plans to select the best. When the children have a more solid knowledge base, they will be taught in the form of juxtaposition of the original text and the vernacular.

According to Zhang Mengcheng's observation, although some of the Ming officers and soldiers in the late Ming Dynasty were literate, the illiteracy still accounted for the absolute majority. Even among some hereditary officers, there was a considerable number of illiterate among them. Occasionally, there are some people who can read and write, and most of them memorize some Confucian classics, which have nothing to do with war.

Even if you find a few people who have read a little bit of a military book such as Sun Tzu's Art of War, most of them will only memorize a few dead sentences. In many cases, few people even know what they mean by reciting these words. These people do not attach importance to the simple materialistic knowledge in the art of war, but regard the superstitious dross in the military books as the secret tricks of the soldiers.

For example, burning incense, making runes, chanting spells, invulnerability, practicing what to avoid arrows, strange habits that need to be paid attention to maintaining, and cutting off the head of a chicken to predict good luck and so on. These things made Zhang Mengcheng think many times that he had encountered a god like the Boxers, not the officers and soldiers who guarded the Ming Dynasty.

Of course, this is also related to the fact that Zhang Mengcheng has too few Ming army officers in contact with him, and the grade of the research object is too low. The rank of military attachés like Zhang Yingchang and Du Wenhuan should have better performance.

However, these two Ming army generals also created their own military quality because of their location in the borderland, the urgent military environment and some of their own family education, and they did not rely on the systematic training of the imperial court. And after seeing some of their battles, Zhang Mengcheng thinks that their level is not very high overall.

Without good military academies and universities to produce military talents in batches and with good quality, the Ming Dynasty could only make more efforts in the selection and allocation of military talents.

From time to time, some brave soldiers appear on the battlefield, although they are not highly educated, but they can also deal with some enemies with limited standards. With their brave charge, most of the mainland traitors with a very low degree of organization were difficult to parry.

Although the martial arts of the Ming Dynasty were not powerful, its function was more to ensure the martial arts to the imperial court, and to provide a large number of literate candidates on a regular basis.

From this point of view, the martial arts system supporting the martial arts of the Ming Dynasty has played its due role in the selection mechanism of military talents. Some outstanding talents have come to the fore and made no small contributions to the national defense of the Ming Dynasty. Among them, the most talked-about martial arts admitter in later generations is Qi Jiguang, a military master who wrote the "New Book of Discipline and Effectiveness" and "The Actual Record of Military Training".

Qi Jiguang, as a hereditary military attache in the guard system, also looked down on the martial arts education of the Ming Dynasty. He did not have a good life, but he relied on his own efforts to accumulate a solid military foundation. Later, in the martial arts examination held in Beijing, he made a splash with his unique insight, and at the same time took a more perfect first step for his future battles.

And it's not just Qi Jiguang, according to Zhang Mengcheng's understanding of the military attachés in Yansui Town and other border towns in Shaanxi, there are many well-known military attaches who have been selected from the road of martial arts. Therefore, Wuju is indeed a useful system for the government and people of the Ming Dynasty.

This is also something that Zhang Mengcheng has been more interested in recently, and he plans to try this mechanism that is still working. Although there was cheating in the martial arts of the Ming Dynasty from time to time, it was indeed a theoretically feasible way to ascend. And with the incentive of martial arts, the children in the cottage school can also have more motivation to learn knowledge.

PS: Note 1: From volume 183 of "Ming Taizu Records".

Note 2: This record of the punishment of cutting off the tongue and cutting off the hand is from the "Martial Duty Shadow Attack" in Volume 85 of the "Book Edition". There is also a record of specific punishment cases in it, "The left guard of the government army Qianhu Yu asked the man and Yu Duan to blow the flute and sing songs, and cut the upper lip and the tip of the nose." Long Jiangwei commanded Fu Hao and Xiaoqi Yao Yan to protect the circle and unloaded his right foot. ”