The Song Dynasty finally had a grassland where horses could be raised...and it was quite big. Outside Kaifeng City, the land with a radius of more than 100 miles had been deserted for almost two years from the time of the Xuanhe War to the present. The Yellow River was flooded for several months.
The original muddy ground was covered by the sand brought by the Yellow River, the fields, ridges, villages and towns disappeared, and even the woods were submerged, leaving only endless grassland.
And this radius of more than 100 miles is equivalent to more than 2,000 square kilometers. If the winter of the first year of Hongwu can be used to control the Yellow River Flood Area, maybe 4,000 square kilometers of grassland can be managed. That’s six million acres!
If bean cakes could be supplied, these six million acres of grassland would be enough to raise 200,000 horses! During the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Song Dynasty, this was the number of official horses raised by the pastoral supervisors of the Song Dynasty.
But to raise horses well, it’s not enough to have pasture and bean cakes... You also need knowledgeable officials and officials, responsible grooms, and high-quality stallions and mares!
The owner of Qunmu Division is the official family of the Song Dynasty. The six million acres of grassland and 200,000 official horses belong to the official family, that is, they belong to Zhao Kai!
How is this horse doing? Whether officials who raise horses should be beheaded or promoted and awarded honors are ultimately decided by Zhao Kai, the official family.
So if Zhao Kai doesn't understand horses, then the people below will be confused.
The horse administration in the Song Dynasty got worse and worse. In fact, it was related to the fact that the officials who grew up in the palace did not understand horses at all - why were there so many horses during the reign of Emperor Taizong? It's not because Zhao Guangyi is still an official who can command on the spot... He is not a military strategist, but he at least has half a bucket of water to swing around.
And Zhao Kai is now a half-baked military strategist. Although he doesn't know how to raise horses, he can already ride a horse to fight, and he also knows clearly which horses are good and which are bad.
Moreover, some of his female classmates know how to raise horses, and some of them are even from the Tibetan tribes in Longxi and Qingtang, and they have a considerable herd of horses at home!
With officials who understand horses, it will be easier to find officials who understand horses.
In the past, the Song Dynasty was afraid that the horses would rebel... Oh, it was afraid that the horses would be led away by military generals with evil intentions and used in rebellion, so they used the "palace-chaoist system" method in horse administration.
The palace is the chamberlain, and the court is the civil servant. When it comes to cavalry, generals cannot ask about horses. They have to be left to eunuchs who are physically disabled and strong-willed, and civil servants who are well-read in poetry and literature. We cannot let Zhang Wansui, the Daizhou rebel who encouraged Liu Wuzhou to rebel, manage such an important horse administration. But the question is, how do the internal servants and civil servants know about animal husbandry? Who did they learn it from?
Officials don't know horses, and the chamberlains and civil servants who are in charge of horses don't know how to raise horses. However, the stablekeepers below who are responsible for raising horses receive a small salary as a box soldier. Zhang Wansui’s heart?
Moreover, the civil servants of the Song Dynasty didn't know how to raise horses, so don't give them random orders, but they still liked to pretend to understand. These officials contributed a lot to undermining the horse politics of the Song Dynasty. Their contributions were mainly in three aspects. One was ethics and morals - horses could not be allowed to mess up the horse family, so it was not allowed to engage in inbreeding for horses to purify their bloodlines. Allowed!
The second is a special belief in the blood of wild horses. Horse officials in the northwest often let local wild horses mate with mares from racecourses to obtain so-called "refined breeds" - "refined breeds" that are naturally selected for the purpose of carrying a man to death. Shen's big living people charged into battle?
The third is to mess around with some kind of guaranteed horse-raising method - the professionals in the group of livestock supervisors can't raise them well, and they let a group of old farmers who don't understand horses and don't use them to raise official horses. If they are damaged, they have to pay compensation. This is not a scam. ? If you want to give the official horses to the generals of the Western Army who are fighting on horseback and the Yingwu family, it is reasonable to raise them, but if you want to let a group of farmers who cultivate the land raise the war horses, what does it mean?
In the hands of Zhao Kai, civil servants and internal servants who did not understand horses no longer interfered with horse affairs. The current envoy of the Qunmu Department is Ma Wang, who was a military commander two years ago. In the past, he was two provinces and above in order to be an official!
The three deputy envoys of the Qun Mu Division are all Zhao Kai's "brother-in-law". One is named Zhao Huaiyi - this "Zhao" is the given surname. He is the clan brother of Zhao Huaien recommended by Qian Gai to deal with the Huangshan incident. Descendants of Zusiluo.
One of the deputy envoys was named Ren Dejing, who was the cousin of Ren Baolian who had just been promoted to Wanrong.
There was also a deputy envoy from the Zhe family in Fuzhou named Zhe Yanwen, the son of Zhe Keqiu.
These three people were able to obtain the high position of deputy envoys of the Qunmu Department not because their girls were favored, but because all three of them had issued military orders and returned to their hometowns to hire horsemen and buy good horses for Zhao Kai - each of them It is necessary to bring back more than 300 stablemen and more than 1,000 fertile horses in order to retain the position of deputy envoy of group herding.
In addition, Ma Wang has now pieced together seven to eight hundred horsemen and thousands of male and female horses for Zhao Kai.
When Zhao Huaiyi, Ren Dejing, and Zhe Yanwen all return from their hometowns, Kaifeng Racecourse will have more than 10,000 stallions and mares, and more than 1,000 horsemen... The horsemen are enough, but the horses are not. Still missing a little!
But the question is where to get enough good horses?
The reproductive capacity of horses is not strong, and the size of the horse does not entirely depend on the stallion. The quality of the mare is also very important. Therefore, the racecourse cannot just focus on quantity, but also on quality. Otherwise, the rate of good horses is too low, and all the horses raised will be vegetables!
After returning to Kaifeng City, Zhao Kai gathered his officials in Jiangxiao Tower in Genyue Tai City to discuss where to get more good horses to enrich Kaifeng Pasture.
However, before the court meeting began, Zhao Kai received a secret report from Ma Zhi from Wang Xiaode, who promoted the Imperial City Division - Ma Zhi was Zhao Liangsi's original name.
Because the alliance with the Jin Dynasty to destroy the Liao Dynasty was a mess, Zhao Liangsi's name was also ruined, and it was inconvenient for him to serve as an official here again, so Zhao Kai simply asked him to change his original name back to Ma Zhi.
Ma Zhi is not in Kaifeng Mansion now, but has sneaked into Yanjing. He has also become a retainer of Pharmacist Guo who stayed in Nanjing, and now lives in Pharmacist Guo's mansion.
Although the military power of Guo Yaoshi and Guo Anguo was taken away, Wanyan Zonghan still wanted to use their father and son's troops to maintain the situation in Jingdong, so he had to protect them.
Therefore, their lives were relatively easy, and Ma Zhi was able to learn a lot of secrets.
"Officials, Mr. Ma's letter said that Wanyan Zonghan, Wanyan Zongbi and Wanyan Zongwang's son Wanyan Qi went north to Huining together recently. Moreover, when Wanyan Zonghan passed through Yanshan Mansion, he also informed Pharmacist Guo to repair Liaoning as soon as possible. In the palace left by the king, it is said that Wu Qimai, the emperor of the Golden Thief, will come to live next year..."
"What?" Zhao Kai, who was eating in Jiangxiao Tower and listening to Wang Xiaode's report, immediately realized something was wrong, "Wu Qi bought Yanshan Mansion... Could it be that the golden thieves are going to invade the south again? This news is accurate Not allowed?"
"Guan family, my father's news is not wrong!" Guo Tiannv was dining with Zhao Kai. When she heard Zhao Kai's words, she interrupted, "The gold thief's Nianhan and the emperor Wu Qimai have always been at odds. Now Nianhan Han personally went to invite Wu Qimai to go south, he must want to start a war in the coming year!"
"Official," Wang Xiaode took out another envelope and handed it to Zhao Kai with both hands, "This is Guo Liushou's personal letter."
"Goddess, take it apart and take a look."
Zhao Kai did not pick him up in person, but asked Guo Tiannu to do it for him.
Guo Tiannv took the envelope, tore it open, took out the letter paper inside, unfolded it and read, "It is indeed dad's handwriting...Dad said in the letter that the northern tribe that is the biggest headache for the gold thieves is not the town. The Khitans in the state, but the Mongols in the Onan River Basin!"
"Mengwu?" When Zhao Kai heard this name, he didn't even eat. "Goddess, are you sure you are Mongol and not Mongolian?"
Mongol and Mongolia are all the same!
Couldn't they be a family?
"Mongolia?" Guo Tiannv thought for a while, "It seems that it can be called that... This Mongol tribe also showed signs of rising after the collapse of the Liao Kingdom. Their leader Hebule was very capable and conquered in recent years. We have gathered many tribes, and there are already signs of unifying the Mongols. This year, we also convened a meeting of various Mongolian tribes and became the Khan of the Mongols!"
"Khan?" Zhao Kai thought for a while and then asked, "Is this Hebule a surname?"
"No, Hebule's surname is Bo'er Jijin...it means brown eyes in Turkic language." Guo Tiannu knew quite a lot, it was still a good deal for Zhao Kai to kill her without an arrow!
"Bo'er is only a pound..." Zhao Kai's face was gloomy, and he said in his heart: That's right, this is the ancestor of Genghis Khan!
Guo Tiannu didn't know who Genghis Khan was. She had already read her father's letter and said to Zhao Kai with a smile: "My father said that we can unite with Mongolia to destroy the money!"
What? Lianmeng destroys money? This thing...why does it sound so familiar? It seems that the Southern Song Dynasty was destroyed in this way!
"Isn't this similar to joining the Jin Dynasty to destroy the Liao Dynasty?" Zhao Kai frowned, "What if Mongolia rises after the Jin Dynasty is destroyed?"
"The rise of Mongolia?" Guo Tiannv looked at Zhao Kai and actually saw a look of worry on his face, "Guan family, what do the Mongols have to worry about? They are just a group of barbarians on the grassland. There are countless such barbarians on the grassland! But they are so scattered that they cannot be unified."
This is not the end of Ming Dynasty. The climate on the grassland is still relatively warm and humid, and there are many people that can be fed! Moreover, Buddhism has not become popular on the grasslands, so the population of the grasslands is growing rapidly and the fighting capacity is also very strong!
Guo Tiannu added: "Speaking of which, the Khitans can be considered one of them. But the Khitans are not capable of truly unifying the grassland. Back then, when the Khitans were not subjugated, they continued to fight on the grasslands for years. They were tortured by these barbarians. That’s disgusting! Could it be that the Mongols can do what the Khitans can’t do?”
yes! Zhao Kaixin said: The Khitans do not have Genghis Khan!
Guo Tiannv saw the worry on Zhao Kai's face getting heavier and heavier, so she said to Zhao Kai: "The official family... After the demise of the Liao Kingdom, the grassland had no owner, and all the heroes came together, and the Liao Kingdom had implemented the grassland rule for many years. The iron ban cannot be maintained, and it is inevitable for these grassland tribes to increase in strength. If they cannot be used by me, they may become the Jurchens' help!"
