Ten thousand fine cavalry were walking leisurely on the grassland. It was Gao Pragmatic and Qataiji and his party. Apparently, Qataiji had been convinced by Gao Pragmatic and now joined forces with him.
The highly pragmatic imperial envoy's honor guard is basically a decoration. His riding skills are quite good now, so he usually rides a horse to avoid slowing down the team.
In his own words, his equestrian skills are fine except for fighting on horseback. Not only can he gallop, he can even do a few tricks, such as hiding in stirrups for a short period of time. This kind of thing is no longer a problem for him now.
Chatterji could only describe him as extremely surprised by his performance. Of course, after the surprise, he was filled with sincere admiration.
He knew Gao Jingshi's identity very well. He was the nephew of Duke Wen Zheng, a classmate of Emperor Wanli, the sixth number one scholar in the Ming Dynasty, the concubine of the left concubine of Zhan Shifu, and the attendant of the Hanlin Academy. Such a typical civil servant of the Ming Dynasty actually had good skills. Riding skills were as magical as asking him to go to the Hanlin Academy to talk about learning and Taoism. It completely overturned his thirty-year view of the civil servants of the Ming Dynasty.
No wonder the Great Khan in the past never considered occupying the territory of the Ming Dynasty for a long time and sneered at the words of Zhao Quan and others who encouraged him. Now it seems that the Great Khan is still wise and wise. Whenever there is a high and pragmatic civil servant in the Ming Dynasty, Tumote will There was no hope of accomplishing such a miracle.
How many such civil servants were there in the Ming Dynasty?
Chatterji didn't know, but he knew that at least there was one in front of him.
Forget it, for the sake of mutual trade, just give in to some things, it’s not a big deal. At least, Dacheng Taiji is also a direct bloodline of the Golden Family, and is a proud son blessed by the eternal life.
He was thinking about these things in confusion when suddenly he heard Gao Pragmatic beside him ask: "Is this always like this in this area?"
"Ah? Which one?" Qataiji looked in the direction of Gao Pragmatic's finger, only to see that it was an ordinary piece of grass in front of him.
Gao Pragmatic reminded: "Why are there still a lot of loess exposed on those grasslands, and not even the grass is full?"
Qataiji looked surprised and said: "Most of the pastures in Monan are like this. There are very few places covered with grass. At least it has been like this since I could remember when I was a child."
"Really?" Gao Pragmatic frowned slightly, and thought to himself: There is a saying that "the Yellow River is full of evils, but only one set of wealth is rich." Isn't this where the front set of one of the "three sets" is located? Why is soil erosion so serious? ?
Gao Pangshi just asked this sentence, mainly because he remembered a statement on the Later World Internet, which believed that the Ming Dynasty extremely lacked strategic foresight and therefore abandoned the Loop. Especially after Anda vigorously developed agriculture in Tumochuan, this view became even more popular, believing that the Ming Dynasty had foolishly abandoned large areas of strategically important land.
Those who say this may have never seen China’s precipitation distribution map. In fact, the core territory occupied by the Ming Dynasty in Guannei, except for northern Shanxi and northern Shaanxi, is all within the 400 mm precipitation line.
The northern part of Shanxi is the two major border towns of Xuanfu and Datong, and the northern part of Shaanxi is the so-called three borders of Shaanxi. These two places are typical military and national defense towns. It is impossible for them to support their own expenses, and they rely on blood transfusions from the mainland.
The front, back and west sets of the Yellow River are actually outside the 400mm precipitation line.
These three places are collectively called the Hetao. Where are they specifically located?
"The Yellow River is blocked on three sides around the Hetao. The soil is fertile and can be cultivated. It is close to Yulinbao in Shaanxi Province, east to Shanxi Piantou Pass, and west to Ningxia Town. It is two thousand miles from east to west; south to Bianqiang, north to the Yellow River, and far away* *A hundred miles, the nearest is two or three hundred miles." - This paragraph comes from "History of the Ming Dynasty".
Well, that still doesn't seem clear enough.
In fact, the Loop is the large bend in the Yellow River. The northeast corner of the outer bend is the front loop, the northwest corner is the back loop, and the west loop near Yinchuan is the west loop.
Not counting the outer part first, the inner part was called Henan by the Ming Dynasty because it was located south of the Yellow River. The approximate scope corresponds to the Mu Us Sandy Land, Ordos Plateau, Kubuqi Desert and Hetao Plain in later generations.
It is very regrettable that in the Ming Dynasty, most of the Hetao was outside the 400 mm precipitation line, so the precipitation in the Hetao was actually quite scarce and was not suitable for large-scale farming. Moreover, there is also the Mu Us Desert, one of the four largest deserts in China, within the Hetao. .
Until Gao Pingshi crossed over, China was still investing huge amounts of money in afforestation in the Mu Us Desert. Therefore, the sentence "The soil is fertile and can be cultivated with mulberry trees" in "History of the Ming Dynasty" is very problematic. Even if it is not nonsense, it obviously cannot refer to such a large desert.
There is such a large desert. You told me that the soil is fertile and can be cultivated with mulberry trees. Can you plow a piece of it and let me see?
Therefore, in the Hetao area, only three alluvial plains on the edge of the Yellow River are suitable for farming, and they can rely on rivers for irrigation. However, because the Yellow River once changed its course, the area of Yinchuan did not exist in the Ming Dynasty.
In other words, there is only a narrow area in the north of the big bend, which is land that can be cultivated for agriculture.
If we compare it with the maps of later generations, from east to west, from Hohhot to Baotou, and then to this narrow strip of Bayannur, it is the front cover plus the back cover.
Qantao and Houtao are the so-called areas suitable for farming with fertile soil and arable mulberry trees. This is an enclave suitable for farming outside the traditional Han land.
Modern people often confuse these two geographical concepts. Some people probably think of this land thousands of miles away from Yinchuan in Ningxia to Yulin when they talk about Hetao. They even think that this large piece of land is a blessed land with rich water and grass.
All in all, the Zhenhetao area in the Ming Dynasty was not suitable for farming. What was suitable for farming was actually the Fengzhoutan area outside the Yellow River to the north of the Yellow River, and it also used river irrigation. The area near Ordos in the Hetao is rich in water and grass, but due to insufficient rainfall, it is more suitable for grazing than farming. This area is the area where the "Taolu" often moved in the Ming Dynasty. That is, Kangxi, the master of rabbit shooting in the Qing Dynasty, shot 300 rabbits a day. Only place.
At this moment, it can basically explain why the Ming people did not occupy the Hetao: an area that is not suitable for farming, once occupied, will need a continuous supply of military supplies to meet the needs of the garrison. For the Ming Dynasty, this was an area that could not be self-sufficient and would become a huge financial burden.
The Daningwei established in the early Ming Dynasty was also a place that could not be self-sufficient and had to expend the energy of the four inland provinces to supply it. Therefore, if we take a look at the Loop, it will inevitably become a huge financial burden if we occupy the Loop.
If you really want to occupy it, you might as well occupy Fengzhou Beach, which is the front cover.
However, the problem is that Qiantao itself is also a farming enclave. It is a bit far away from the traditional Han Dynasty and is not directly bordered. It is separated from Datong and Xuanfu, which are the key defense points in Shanxi, by large mountains. Whether it is military or military Strategically, there are many problems. If stationed for a long time, the local defenders can easily become a lone army. Therefore, although the Ariake Dynasty sent troops to attack and burned the city once, it had no intention of occupying this place.
The above is just a geographical issue. Let’s talk about giving up the Loop.
In fact, the Ming Dynasty cannot even talk about giving up the Loop, because the Ming Dynasty has never actually controlled the Loop, so how can it talk about giving up?
In fact, in the early Ming Dynasty, the Hetao area was just a no-man's land that no one cared about. In the early Ming Dynasty, in view of the fact that the number of Mongolians in the Hetao was sparse after the Yuan Dynasty withdrew to the north, they directly adopted a simple and crude policy of expelling or moving the remaining people in the Hetao to the interior - "In the fourth year, General Tang Hebing Attacked Chahannao'er, captured the fierce general Huchen, general Xie Cheng of the Zhenjun, and others, surrendered them, and moved them into the interior, where they reached the ruins of the Hetao."
In other words, the few remaining tribes were moved into the interior, artificially creating a no-man's land and turning it into a military buffer zone.
Many people in later generations, including perhaps some people in the Ming and Qing dynasties, regard the Ming Dynasty's abandonment of Dongshengwei as the Ming Dynasty's abandonment of the Loop. In fact, this understanding is a typical hindsight-style cognitive error.
The place where Dongshengwei was set up was also outside Taotao, near Fengzhou Beach. In fact, in the early Ming Dynasty, this place was only a part of Shanxi's defense system. As an outpost of the army's expedition from Shanxi in the elastic defense system of the early Ming Dynasty, it was not set up to defend and control the Hetao.
Therefore, the abolition of Dongshengwei has nothing to do with Hetao, it is just a strategic adjustment. During the Hongwu and Yongle years of the early Ming Dynasty, it was impossible to predict the changes in civil engineering or the danger of trapping captives. It was true that Zhu Yuanzhang and Zhu Di could fight, but they were not immortals after all. In their generation, because the Loop was an uninhabited land, in fact there was no need for fortification at all.
However, a few years later, when the Tatars were oppressed by the Oara and had to move to the Hetao area, causing the problem of captives, Ming Dynasty people looked back and saw - Damn it! Why was Dongshengwei such an important place abandoned? Why was such an important place like the Loop abandoned?
In addition, many people of later generations, even those of the Ming Dynasty, like to use the Han and Tang Dynasties as a comparison to "restore the Hetao". In fact, the Ming Dynasty is not very suitable to be compared with the Han and Tang Dynasties, because as the economic center of gravity moved southward, the capital was no longer in Guanzhong but in Beijing.
Simply put, due to the shift in the country's political and economic focus, the strategic threat posed by the Hetao to the Central Plains is far less huge than it was during the Han and Tang Dynasties. After all, the Hetao can reach Longyou Guanzhong, and the Ming Dynasty's ruling center was not in Guanzhong, so there was no motivation to capture the Hetao like the Han and Tang Dynasties did. If we want to seize and control, the only reason is to open up the map and use the people's wealth to gain fame.
How did Zeng Mian die? Internal power struggles are certainly an important reason, but this is also one of the reasons.
Therefore, in Gao Pragmatic's view, the Hetao itself is of little use. It can at most be used as a horse breeding farm. However, the Han people don't like raising horses very much. They were forced to raise horses. The result was the same as horse raising in Hebei. It was not a big deal at the beginning. Problem, after a few decades, public dissatisfaction boiled over. Not only were there not enough horses to be raised, but the public scolding was also huge. There were even batches of horse thieves at every turn, which became a disorder of local public security. source.
The bandits in Hebei are now almost extinct. It is not just that the cavalry in Jinghua who took money from the government were particularly effective in combating them. The more fundamental reason is that at that time, Gao pragmatically controlled the Bailixia horse bandits and opened up a channel for doing business with Tumut. , so the government gradually released the pressure on horse-raising among the people. In the end, the tribute was completed and the mutual trade was opened. The people in Hebei basically no longer had the pressure to raise horses, so the horse bandits no longer existed - the skin did not exist. , How can General Mao attach himself?
Gao Pragmatic has always believed that many things do not need to be solved by fighting. In fact, it is just like practicing medicine. You only treat the symptoms. If something is cured here, it will be broken there. The doctor looks very powerful and always cures the disease with medicine, but what is the use? ? It is better to go directly to the source of the disease, that is the real solution to the problem.
When it comes to governing the country, it's useless to be Bian Que. Bian Que's eldest brother is really powerful. If it doesn't work, Bian Que and his second brother's level can make do.
But now Qataiji's words make Gao pragmatic a little worried. Not only the front and back sets in Fengzhoutan area are also going to suffer from soil erosion, right?
But after thinking about it again, I feel a little lucky: now Tumut has begun to change his governance thinking and vigorously engage in agriculture, which means that they will pay more and more attention to irrigation and maintaining soil fertility, rather than the purely nomadic period in the past. When the water and grass are no longer abundant, they migrate to other places, leaving deserts and Gobis everywhere.
It seems that Han Naji should really be regarded as Chechen Khan. Compared with him and Xin Ai, who is more willing to live a settled farming life like the Han people? There is no need to compare - Han Naji has lived in Daban for a long time. Shengcheng, while Xin Ai has been living in a felt tent. Which one of them is more inclined to farming, is there any need to compare?
However, I would like to remind you, Hannaji, not to be like some Chinese people in later generations who are always "****". They can vigorously sinicize the Tumut, but they must not fully sinicize - if you fully sinicize, who will Come and help my Ming Dynasty raise cattle and sheep for cavalry?
Gao Pragmatic then said to Qataiji: "In farming, the most important thing is not only the quality of seeds and proper cultivation, but also the maintenance of soil fertility. For example, here in Tumochuan, according to my opinion, the soil fertility is still good. But it’s not appropriate to protect it. If things go on like this—I mean, maybe in ten or twenty years, we might not be able to grow any crops.”
"Can't you grow crops?" Qataiji was shocked. The reason why Tumut was basically not afraid of white and black disasters now was because he relied on the mutual market and the crops grown by the Han people. This was a matter of life and death, so he couldn't help but hurry up and hurriedly Asked: "Then how to maintain the soil's strength? We Mongolians don't understand this."
Gao pragmatic smiled and said: "I am Wenkui of the Ming Dynasty. How to maintain the soil's strength... I naturally know."
Qia Taiji was overjoyed, and just about to continue asking, he suddenly noticed that Gao Pingshi's smile was somewhat meaningful. He suddenly realized it, hesitated for a moment, and said with emotion: "Qin envoys the world's great talents, and Tuo Tuo can't escape Qin's words or deeds." Under the control of the envoy. No matter what, as long as you can help me, Tumut, avoid being harmed by natural disasters and escape... I am willing to drive for the imperial envoy."
----------
Thanks to book friend "Venixing 90" for your monthly ticket support, thank you! Please subscribe, please vote~
[Youyue Bookstore is a free source-changing APP software for reading books. Android phones need to download and install from Google Play, and Apple phones need to log in to non-Mainland China accounts to download and install]
