于志嘉
《
辭》是明末崇禎二年至七年間,張肯堂在北直隸大名府濬縣知縣任內,審理民、刑事案件的判牘。由於濬縣境內有不少衛所屯地,軍民雜居的結果,彼此之間難免發生糾紛,這種現象便也反映在《
辭》中。又因為直豫晉交界地帶各衛所軍屯分佈情形有其類似性,《
辭》中的案例便也具有相當的代表性。
分析書中與衛軍有關之判例,可以觀察到明末該地區衛所軍役的繼承已少有世襲祖軍之本戶軍,女戶充軍、佃戶頂軍乃至以募兵或他所軍餘繼承軍役的情形相當普遍。軍役的繼承伴隨軍屯占有權的轉移,由於繼役者本身尚須應當其他軍役,因此多將軍屯轉典出去。屯田依法不得典賣,但因在伍者常「數年一歸」,因此多傾向於以多年期限、預收典價的方式處理屯產。間亦有一年一典者,其典價的性質更類似佃租。
軍民間的訴訟需由本管軍職衙門會同民職有司一體約問,是為「約會制」。從《 辭》的相關判詞中,可以看到張肯堂會同千戶或衛所書識一同處理案件的痕跡,也可發現他在受理軍民糾紛時,對所謂的文武官分際,是有充分體認的。而他所以能積極介入衛所清屯、僉軍事宜,除了制度本身賦予他的權限外,他個人的行政能力與魄力仍是不可忽略的因素。
關鍵詞:明末 直豫晉交界地區 衛所 軍戶 軍民詞訟
Military Households and Military-Civilian Litigations in the Adjoining Regions of Hopei, Honan, and Shansi in Late Ming China as Represented in Chang K’en-t’ang’s Cultivated Judgments
Chih-chia Yue
Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica
The Cultivated Judgments is a collection of late Ming civil and penal judgments written by Chang K’en-t’ang, during his term as magistrate of Chün County, Ta-ming Prefecture in northern Chihli (1629-1634). As reflected in the Cultivated Judgments, civilian and military factions in Chün County were prone to come into dispute, due in part to their shared residency of the area, in conjunction with the many local garrison lands owned by the Guards and Battalions (wei-so). The distribution of wei-so garrison lands in the adjoining regions of Hopei, Honan, and Shansi are all strikingly similar, thus the legal cases presented in the Cultivated Judgments may be taken as representative of like cases in those areas.
Study of the cases in the Cultivated Judgments that are related to the wei-so has revealed that in the late Ming the military services of the wei-so in the above areas were seldom performed hereditarily by the male descendents of the original military households. Instead, the services were generally passed to the female-households who inherited the military status of their heirless fathers, tenants, mercenaries, or military households of other wei-so that had extra males. By and large, those servicemen, the actual landowners, leased out their lands while attending to their military duties. On average, the servicemen would only return home once every few years, and since the mortgage or sale of garrison lands was forbidden by law, they would normally agree to lease out the property for several years at a time but required advance payment of the rent in full. Occasionally, the lease was renewed on an annual basis; the nature of the latter agreement greatly resembles that of tenancy.
Litigations between military servicemen and civilians were in principle jointly adjudicated by local civil officials and wei-so military officers. The rulings recorded in the Cultural Judgments, show that Chang K’en-t’ang and his military counterparts joined together in judiciary practice, and also reveal Chang’s keen insight into the boundaries of the powers of military and civilian authorities in military-civilian disputes. In addition to the authority bestowed upon Chang by the system itself, his administrative capabilities as an individual and the bold nature of his character explain his active engagement in auditing garrison lands and substantiating the wei-so roster.
Keywords: late Ming; bordering areas of Hopei, Honan, and Shansi; Guards and Battalion system; military households; military-civilian litigations