This Naiman and his companions were dressed in different costumes and held various weapons. Many of them had armor and stomachs pieced together from fragments of armor. Because they disliked the heat, most of them were shirtless and tied their sheepskin jackets around their waists. Compared with the ordinary Han troops around them who were wearing white or khaki military uniforms and walking silently, they were obviously more relaxed, but they also exuded a ferocious aura.
This group of people all fled from the grassland to the Central Plains for various reasons in recent years. They were either horse thieves or offended someone on the grassland. There were Mubo warriors who were kidnapped by the Mongols from the Xia Kingdom in the early years, and Plateau people. The "Briyati" in the north are the people in the forest.
The Kingdom of Jin and the Mongols had been fighting for so many years, and the defeated tribes on the grasslands had always been accustomed to going south to join the Mongols, and were then organized into the so-called "Zhe Army". The Zou army suffered heavy losses in the previous incidents in Zhongdu, but until the split between Dai and Jin, there were still remnants of the army.
After Kaifeng rectified the military system, these Zou troops were divided into the 13th Captain's Department, and at the same time merged into the Hu tribe who had taken refuge in the northwest border over the years. Monk Wanyan Chen is responsible for commanding these fierce savages under his brother.
These people have various tribal backgrounds, and most of them bring their own weapons and horses with the army. Among the thirteen captains of Kaifeng Prefecture, only these people can now organize large-scale cavalry.
It was already early summer, and their horses had eaten grass all spring and had replenished a lot of the fat they had lost in the winter. But the war horses held by everyone were still a little thin, and there were obviously some old horses or ponies with insufficient teeth mixed in.
Horses are very delicate animals. Old or immature horses can easily die from exhaustion if they have to carry people around for a long time.
Therefore, each of them leads a war horse, and they never mount unless Monk Wanyan Chen gives special orders to rush on or to meet the enemy. Many people deliberately chose the lightest saddles, and were not even willing to put their luggage on the horses. Instead, they specially detained the prisoners to walk beside them and let the prisoners carry the weight. This was also one of the reasons why Wanyan Xielie's men took young men along the way.
Monk Wanyan Chen walked in the queue of these Hu people. He also dismounted and walked. From time to time, he would go to the roadside to grab a handful of young grass, carefully shake off the dust, and feed it to his war horses.
When he joined the army in Fengzhou in his early years, there were many war horses in the army. Many soldiers in the town kept several horses at home. Whenever the court defaulted on military pay and rations, they would sell one horse and then ask for favors to steal one or two horses from the pastures under the Qunmu Station to make up for the shortfall.
Sometimes the ranch would buy horses from the soldiers, mostly to top up the number when the court sent people to inspect them, so any old or lame horse would be fine.
But later, Monan Mountain changed hands, and the source of the horses disappeared. The current horses in Kaifeng Prefecture are mainly purchased from the Qiang tribe, and the prices are very high.
After the more than 20,000 war horses purchased last year were distributed to each captain's headquarters, more than 3,000 of them died of illness in one year because the war horses were not tamed and did not have time to be raised intensively and familiar with the water and soil. The emperor was furious about this and set up a special animal husbandry department. The clan Wanyan and Zhou Qin were in charge of the affairs and were responsible for inspecting the management of horses by various ministries.
Wanyan Hezhou himself was not active, he only watched his subordinates issue instructions.
This nobleman of the clan had once served as Marshal Zuo Supervisor of the Army, and he knew that it was not easy for the grassroots generals. The generals and commanders of various ministries had too few horses to call, and too many horses that they couldn't afford to feed. Some things were inquired too clearly, which caused unnecessary trouble.
Wanyan Xielie was the only one who failed to protect him because he was a close associate of the late emperor. He had always been grudged against him, so he ran the army harshly and had extremely strict management. The number and quality of the war horses that belong to their army exceed those of the other captains.
However, the army cannot be maintained by military law alone. Although Wanyan Xielie was strict in running the army, the rewards were not inclusive... Those rewards were not given by the court, but money given by the emperor after he arrived in Zhongdu last year. The total amount was not much, but it was spent in two months.
Last month, he had no choice but to ask Monk Wanyan Chen for cash. So Monk Wanyan Chen also took out the emperor's reward, which totaled five hundred taels of silver, three hundred bolts of silk, a jade spit falcon, and a gold cup.
Silver and silk invested in an army of more than 10,000 people would not even make a splash, and jade belts and gold cups would not be of any practical benefit, but the commander-in-chief and the envoy of the army were both impoverished, and they were already paupers.
Raising and training troops has been extremely expensive since ancient times. To make a living for the sergeants and to support their families in Hukou, the court had to continuously provide money and rewards; the higher the requirements for the army's training and combat effectiveness, the more benefits it had to provide to satisfy the soldiers.
At the end of last year, King Sui ascended the throne of Kaifeng. At first, he rewarded the entire army several times in succession, and then reorganized the elite troops and generals of each department, achieving a powerful force of thirteen captains. However, most of the territory of the Kaifeng imperial court was relatively barren. The center was actually a mere Kaifeng mansion, plus at most half of Hedong, to support half of the country.
The center was established, the system was suddenly complete, and the civil and military officials who were responsible for their salaries made several somersaults. In order to win over local officials, the imperial court promised high-ranking officials generous salaries. Inevitably, money and food became more and more tense. I heard that people were sent to search the old palace of Kaifeng Prefecture last month and peeled off the gold foil of the palace decorations to piece together daily expenses.
The imperial court was about to run out of money. If it couldn't come up with the money and wanted to keep the army available, it would have to allow the generals to raise pay and food on the spot. However, this would inevitably form a vassal town, and the officials in Kaifeng Mansion, especially the Han officials, were very taboo about this.
At the beginning of the year, the court had another hope, which was the Song people's annual coins.
But the people of the Song Dynasty were very cunning. They repeatedly evaded this. They always used the things in the court to argue and prevaricate, and poured out bitterness from their mouths, but they did not actually take the money. According to the spies, they were actually fighting fiercely with Zhongdu, both covertly and overtly, and conniving at countless maritime merchants to do business!
What do Kaifeng think about this situation? Are you just waiting for charity from the Song people?
The imperial court can wait, but how can the generals who are so poor wait? Can an army of hundreds of thousands wait?
Even if we can wait a few months or longer, what's the point?
Guo Ning, the Duke of Zhou in Zhongdu, has also exhausted his old base, so he cannot send troops to fight. But he has always made money by relying on maritime business, and Zhongdu and Hebei have been prosperous places since ancient times. As long as he works hard for a year or two, he may be able to restore his old outlook and defeat the Mongolian army. One by one, the heroes pressed onto the battlefield.
At that time, what can the Western Jin Dynasty in Kaifeng do to resist?
So in the end, all that was left was to go south and plunder.
It's really funny to say that Guo Ning in Zhongdu is obviously a thief, but now he pretends to be a leader; Dai Jin in Kaifeng is obviously an orthodox person, but he can only think about burning, killing and looting.
Monk Wanyan Chen could only console himself by saying that the ancestors of the Jurchens raised their troops from the banks of the Hun Tong River, and they relied on fighting to support fighting. By chewing the flesh and blood of Daliao's bodies, they swelled like a snowball. Today's Daikin is of course weakened, and even the main force of the army is no longer Jurchen. But being able to maintain the looting culture shows that the bloody spirit is still there, which cannot be said to be a bad thing.
Let’s look at it again, how is the Song Dynasty compared to the Liao Dynasty?
It is recognized that the people of Song Dynasty were weak! I, Daijin, am just going to run wild with you!
The Naiman man walking beside Monk Wanyan Chen suddenly started to cry.
Monk Wanyan Chen was startled from his reverie when he heard the sound of the horn in front. It was the front sentry that had collided with the enemy. From the sound of the trumpet, it seemed that there were quite a few enemies. It was not the country soldiers or crossbowmen on the enemy side, but which regular army they had bumped into.
