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The Ming military was run in a largely quasi-independent manner. Generals were left to their own devices in terms of training, organizing, and commanding their men, and the Court provided no centrally-administered military academies, supply depots, regulation handbooks or field manuals. If the Court maintained records of budgets, organizational charts, and so forth, they went out of use early in the dynasty. Generals were, however, held responsible for their failures, with strict punishments being doled out when a military effort went awry, regardless of the reasons.<ref>Huang, 159.</ref>
The Ming military was run in a largely quasi-independent manner. Generals were left to their own devices in terms of training, organizing, and commanding their men, and the Court provided no centrally-administered military academies, supply depots, regulation handbooks or field manuals. If the Court maintained records of budgets, organizational charts, and so forth, they went out of use early in the dynasty. Generals were, however, held responsible for their failures, with strict punishments being doled out when a military effort went awry, regardless of the reasons.<ref>Huang, 159.</ref>
The Ming military was huge, nevertheless, with nearly two million hereditary military households being under legal obligation, due to their status, to provide at least one soldier per household to active military service at all times. Even with a great many military households relocating, falling out of the registers, and the system falling apart otherwise, the Ming still likely had the largest standing army in the world. That said, most of the time, many of these soldiers were used by their commanders as domestic servants, construction workers, and porters, when there was not immediate military work to be done.
The Ming military was huge, nevertheless, with nearly two million hereditary military households being under legal obligation, due to their status, to provide at least one soldier per household to active military service at all times. Even with a great many military households relocating, falling out of the registers, and the system falling apart otherwise, the Ming still likely had the largest standing army in the world. That said, most of the time, many of these soldiers were used by their commanders as domestic servants, construction workers, and porters, when there was not immediate military work to be done.<ref>Huang, 160.</ref>
The Court did direct the distribution of supplies in a centralized fashion, but the actual execution of those directives was performed on a very local level, by local officials who would not have been able to coordinate well with one another in large numbers or across great distances; intermediate levels of direction or implementation, such as on the provincial level, were minimal.<ref>Huang, 161.</ref>
==Policies==
==Policies==
