Just like after the Han Dynasty completely defeated the Xiongnu, Xianbei rose up in the desert grassland and quickly replaced the Xiongnu, Rouran after Xianbei, and Turk after Rouran. After the Turks were completely defeated by the former Tang Dynasty, they either surrendered or moved westward. Uighurs have emerged on the grasslands again. After the Uighurs died, the Khitans rose again. Less than a hundred years after the demise of the Khitans, another nation will be born on the grassland and conquer almost the entire world. If Daqi did not completely conquer the desert grassland, Daqi would always be on the defensive in the face of the constantly changing tribes.
It is almost impossible to completely occupy and hold the white mountains and black waters. Especially on the peninsula next to the white mountains and black waters, there is a person who always grovels when facing the strong. But once a strong person declines, he immediately becomes greedy and feels superior. Always at the mercy of both sides, he may betray his allies at any time for his own benefit. They were not tall and their fighting power was even weaker, but they still kept peeping at the white mountains and black waters, feeling that all the good things in the world belonged to their nation.
With the existence of this nation, when Da Qi fights those nomadic cavalry, not only is it impossible to become an ally, but it even has to prevent them from biting back. Therefore, if you want to completely annex that piece of black land, you can't simply send troops. And if you want to achieve this goal, you need to prepare too many things. This includes the accumulation of war horses, the accumulation of grain, the expansion of cavalry, and most importantly, the current internal changes in Daqi, although they have seen great results, they have not yet been completely completed.
Even if he wants to take advantage of your illness and kill you, he wants to take advantage of this opportunity to send troops to the Northern Expedition and destroy Northern Liao in one fell swoop. But the reality is that Huang Qiong can only suppress his ambition to send troops. And not only Huang Qiong, but also Yu Mingyuan, who was the privy envoy, did not agree with sending troops to the Northern Expedition at this time. Except for Yu Mingyuan, who was born as a Jinshi, and was unwilling to make moral mistakes. Another point is that Yu Mingyuan believes that Daqi's current strength can be weakened by one or two attacks to weaken Beiliao's strength.
But if you want to completely control the Northern Liao territory, especially the black land that Huang Qiong has always remembered, neither the strength of the cavalry nor the food reserves are enough to support such a large-scale offensive operation. The cavalry also needs to be expanded. What's more, fighting against nomads requires not only a powerful cavalry, but also a large amount of wealth for military needs. In order to eliminate the threat of the Xiongnu, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty made successive northern expeditions. But facing the nomads who are flexible in marching combat and better at riding and shooting.
Although it weakened the Xiongnu's strength, it forced the Xiongnu to either retreat to Mobei or move westward. But decades of war almost exhausted the vitality of the former Han Dynasty. Not only did the treasury be drained, more than a million soldiers were killed or wounded, but the accumulated hundreds of thousands of horses were lost to embers. It also made the people all over the world unable to bear the heavy corvee labor. In order to avoid corvee labor, military service, and heavy taxes, they became refugees one after another. This was the Northern Expedition of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, which was based on the previous Han Dynasty which had just experienced the Wenjing rule and accumulated a lot of wealth.
But today's Bei Liao may not be as good as the Huns in terms of cavalry strength. But both its political system and military mobilization system are more mature. The number of Dingkou it controls is also greater. And the Northern Liao, which absorbed other ethnic groups, was not only good at field cavalry attacks, but also good at defending cities. Facing such an opponent, I am afraid that the materials consumed can only be greater, but definitely not less. Therefore, in Yu Mingyuan's view, if you want to achieve this goal, you need a long-term preparation.
Both Huang Qiong and Yu Mingyuan believe that Daqi's firearms have developed greatly nowadays. But if there is a large-scale attack on Beiliao, the cavalry is the real main force. Today, Da Qi's army, as the main force in field operations, has a total of 130,000 war horses and more than 40,000 miscellaneous horses in the four major camps in Beijing and Xijing. Including the border troops and various guards in the north, as well as the horses for the handymen, there were less than 200,000 horses. Moreover, the quality of horses varies. Party horses have good load-bearing and sprinting abilities, but they are not good at running long distances.
Khitan horses have good endurance and are suitable for long-distance raids, but they have poor load-bearing capabilities and can only be used with light cavalry. But the war horses in the army are mainly composed of these two kinds of war horses. Nowadays, there are more than 10,000 new horse breeds improved through the captured Jurchen horses and Tianzhu horses, which have excellent weight-bearing, endurance, and sprinting abilities. But if you want to replace the main party horses and Khitan horses in the army, you can't even think about it in a short time. At the same time, the various herding supervisors in Longyou also had more than 300,000 Dangxiang and Khitan horses in their herds.
There are a lot of war horses in reserve, and the proportion of war horses in the army can be said to be the highest in all dynasties. But if a large-scale offensive was launched against Beiliao, the number of these horses was not enough. At least the cavalry can't do it yet, the standard of one man and two horses. At the same time, tens of thousands of war horses are eliminated and replaced in the military every year. If the Northern Expedition to Northern Liao was carried out, the cavalry participating in the battle must be at least one person and two horses. The current stock of war horses, even the existing cavalry, is difficult to support. Not to mention, if the full Northern Expedition cavalry needs to be expanded.
Although the king of Anxi County who is currently in charge of the Western Regions pays tribute to tens of thousands of horses from the Western Regions every year. But even adding this number was not enough to support the Northern Expedition. You must know that when Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty made his northern expedition to the Turks, he not only relied on the elite combat power of the Tang army, but also relied on more than 700,000 high-quality war horses. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty continued his northern expedition all year round and requisitioned millions of war horses. In one battle, 170,000 horses were dispatched. However, Daqi's current inventory of war horses and cavalry horses is still nearly half of this number.
From Yu Mingyuan's point of view, if Huang Qiong decided to expedition to the Northern Liao Dynasty. The current inventory of war horses needs to be supplemented by at least 200,000 horses. This does not include the number of draft horses required after the general is equipped with artillery on a large scale. According to the number of artillery currently distributed in the army, as well as the number of supplies of shells and charges required, the number of draft horses will also need to be significantly adjusted. At least the number of horses required for each cannon must be doubled compared to today. This, in the opinion of Yu Mingyuan, who single-handedly founded the Daqi Artillery Brigade, is still lacking.
Of course, these horses do not necessarily have to rely on the pastoral supervisors of the Longyou group. They can also rely on recruiting from the Western Regions, Goryeo, and Qingtang Tubo tribes, or purchasing and exchanging their Western Region horses, Jurchen horses, and Tuyuhun horses. However, Yu Mingyuan suggested that in addition to increasing the stock of horses, it is best to reserve some camels. Although these camels cannot charge into battle, their carrying capacity far exceeds that of horses. The most important thing is that camels have grass and can survive even withered grass. The Northern Liao army was equipped with a large number of camels.
After several days of discussion, Huang Qiong finally approved that within five years, the number of war horses in the Longyou group of pastoral supervisors would be increased by 200,000. At the same time, one hundred thousand horses were recruited from Tubo, the Western Regions, Korea, and through Korea. Especially the Jurchen horses suitable for building heavy cavalry, according to Yu Mingyuan's suggestion, as many as they can be collected through Goryeo. At the same time, the army is secretly expanded by 30,000 troops every year, including 10,000 infantry and cavalry troops, and 10,000 gunners and crossbowmen in total. At the same time, investment in the research and development of explosive bombs and other firearms will increase by 500,000 yuan per year.
Regarding this plan, Fu Yuanshan, as the Prime Minister, is honestly not willing to do so. Because the income has just improved, the pressure is still a bit high. Not counting the increased investment in firearms, it is just about expanding the army and expanding the inventory of war horses. The annual expenditure will increase by at least one million yuan. The money Daqi allocates to river construction every year is only 2.4 million yuan, plus 700,000 bolts of silk. Although the annual revenue is increasing every year, the national treasury already has a pretty good balance.
This is an additional increase of nearly two million yuan every year, and the court can still afford it. But if this continues, Fu Yuanshan is worried that it will get bigger and bigger every year. Especially now, the court is in dire need of making money. No matter how much money is minted every year, it is almost not enough. They were forced to change the banknotes issued by Wuwei Bank, and some of them replaced the currency making. Even now, the annual salaries paid to officials are all converted into banknotes from Wuwei Bank. And if officials want to cash these banknotes, they can only exchange them for coins after a year.
Although Wuwei Bank is now controlled by the imperial court, the issuance of these banknotes is in response to the reserve of two million taels of gold in the national treasury. In the production of banknote paper, in order to prevent counterfeiting, a certain amount of silver wire or even gold wire is mixed in depending on the denomination. As a result, these banknotes were so counterfeit that almost no one dared to forge them, and they almost replaced most of the large-value money circulation among the people. But Fu Yuanshan is worried that if these banknotes continue to be issued like this, they may depreciate or lose credibility.
Especially now, except for a small part of the gold and silver reserves in the national treasury, which are extracted from the imperial mines, most of them come from overseas trade. After the emperor succeeded to the throne, he fully opened up foreign trade and encouraged merchants to come back from overseas to make gold and silver. And encourage those merchants to pay taxes with gold and silver. Nowadays, the reserves of gold and silver in the Ministry of Revenue have almost replaced the original reserves of money and silk. Although these inflows of real gold and silver have greatly improved the quality of the national treasury's reserves.
After all, real gold and silver are much more valuable than those copper coins and silk. But what worries Fu Yuanshan is that all these gold and silver come from overseas. In particular, silver is mainly sourced from Japan. The amount of silver taxed internally by this dynasty is no more than 300,000 taels per year, and the normal amount is no more than 200,000 taels. Most of the rest comes from overseas trade. Although he also knew that gold and silver were more valuable, Fu Yuanshan had always been worried that if he really used gold and silver to replace copper coins and silk, it would be equivalent to giving money away.
Once overseas sources are cut off, I am afraid that Daqi will immediately fall into a deeper money shortage than before. Even though the Ministry of Revenue had a huge amount of silver reserves in the national treasury, Huang Qiong rejected the request several times to mint silver coins before they even got to him. It was only at Lu Duan's strong request that he agreed to intentionally mix some silver and gold threads into the banknote paper produced for Wuwei Bank according to the denomination, so as to avoid a large number of counterfeiting of Wuwei Bank's banknotes. This caused the banknotes of Wuwei Bank to depreciate.
Of course, the price of paper used by Wuwei Bank to make banknotes has become more than ten times higher than before. However, there were not many counterfeiting activities among the people, and they have completely disappeared. Originally, Wuwei Bank's banknotes basically replaced the money-making function in large-value transactions, and now they are gradually replacing the money-making function. This has always made Fu Yuanshan worried, worried that the entire financial resources of this dynasty would be controlled by Wuwei Bank. This was also his insistence that not only could the money making and casting not stop, but he had even been increasing the quantity.
Even if the emperor did not agree, the imperial court issued an edict to the shipping departments of coastal cities to strictly prohibit the outflow of money. As a result, once a large amount of copper coins enter the market every year, at least 40% are smuggled overseas by disdainful merchants. Today, overseas, the money made by this dynasty has surpassed the money made by the former Tang Dynasty, and has become the main currency of Japan, Korea, Dali, and some countries in Southeast Asia.
