Facts have proved that Liu Wei's worries were unnecessary. They were just a natural vigilance formed by leading troops on the front line for a long time. There was no trace of this canyon. Although the Liu Jiajun's team of eight thousand cavalry was stretched out due to its width, the journey through the canyon was extremely smooth in the end. [Note: This place is now called Pingshan Lake Grand Canyon, and Baidu Map even has many real-life pictures. ]
After passing through the canyon, the rest of the road is still on the mountain valley road, but the mountains on both sides are no longer tall and steep, and you can have an unobstructed view, which also means that our army is unlikely to encounter an ambush.
At this time, the cavalry soldiers continued to maintain the marching posture of leading their horses - this is the meaning of the question, because the Liu Jiajun cavalry's so-called fear of mountains is mainly because they themselves are "mountain infantry", and at the same time they have mastered Developed the technology of leading horses in mountainous areas.
This is actually natural, because mountain training is something that humans can do, but horses may not. Humans are the most learning species, but horses basically rely on talent. In particular, today's Ming army war horses are, after all, based on the blood of Mongolian horses. They were not born to move in mountainous areas. They need help to travel in mountainous areas.
Since even marching requires the help of the cavalry around them, it is naturally impossible for the cavalry to ride, but can only dismount and walk. In fact, it is not just in mountainous areas. Even when Liu Ping's cavalry is marching on flat ground, as long as they need to travel a long distance, they will often dismount their horses and lead them.
This principle has been mentioned before, because the advantages of horses, apart from carrying weight, are mainly explosive power, while endurance is not as good as that of humans. Of course, Mongolian horses have an advantage over war horses from other parts of the world in this regard, but the war horses of the Ming Army - especially the few Ming Army war horses that received high pragmatic special care, are almost not pure-blooded Mongolian horses, but Bred by crossing the bloodlines of other horse breeds.
To put it simply, Mongolian horses have strong endurance and are particularly easy to feed, but they are short in stature and lack explosive power. Therefore, Gao pragmatically asked Jinghua's racecourse to cultivate a more "universal" or "balanced" war horse a long time ago. The target in his mind at that time was actually the Don horse of the Cossack cavalry. Of course, it refers to the Oriental type of Don hippopotamus.
There are two main types of Don horses: the Oriental type, which has a dry constitution, is powerful, fast, and suitable for riding; the Western type, which has a stronger constitution, a thick body, a deep and long middle body, and substantial bone mass, and is a riding and pulling type.
The reason why Gao Pragmatic targeted the Don hippopotamus was because the origin of the Don hippopotamus breed made him feel that Jinghua had the ability to cultivate it. The Don hippo itself is bred based on the strong Mongolian horses on the treeless steppes of Siberia, the Akhal-Tak horses (produced in Central Asia) known for their speed, and mixed bloodlines such as Persian and Arabian horses.
Later, Orlov, purebred and mixed-bred senior Arabian horses were also used to improve the level of Don horses in the early 19th century.
Ignoring the "later" batch for the time being, there is no doubt that some of the outstanding Mongolian horses in the early years were not difficult for Gao Pragmatic, and the Central Asian horses, Persian horses, and Arabian horses were all goods that Jinghua could obtain through commercial means - although they were very rare. Expensive, but if you can get it. Of course, what Gao Pragmatic wants more is for Daming to directly control Central Asia, the birthplace of BMW.
Because the goals are clear and the conditions are sufficient, war horse breeding work has continued over the years and great progress has been made. With the size of the 8,000 Liu Ping cavalry, no more than 30,000 war horses were needed (the actual number was only 20,000, supplied by Jinghua, jointly funded by the Ministry of War and Yuanma Temple). The horses were selected and bred from the same population with a high degree of consistency. . [Note: The attributes of early-cultured populations are often less stable and require longer time to stabilize genes. ]
In short, the horses of Liu Ping's cavalry are not as durable as the Mongolian horses, but their speed and explosive power are better; they are not as fast and explosive as the Central Asian horses, but they have strong endurance and are not delicate. Overall, these horses basically meet the high pragmatic requirements, a bit like a hippopotamus.
After passing the canyon, Liu Wei knew that the soldiers could still hold on, but considering that although the horses were not carrying people, they were carrying dozens of kilograms of various supplies, he decided to take a rest and feed the horses. The only disadvantage of resting here is that there is no source of running water. The snow must be collected, burned, and then cooled before being fed to the war horses, which is somewhat troublesome. Considering this, Liu Wei simply ordered the entire army to eat a meal of dry food on the spot without wasting time.
The entire march was probably like this. Liu Wei first passed through the Longshou Mountains, walked in the green space on the edge of the mountains and the Gobi, and walked in the northwest direction until he saw a large river in the distance - not the Yellow River, but the Black River.
Heihe River refers to ancient weak water (the section north of Heli Mountain) and Heishui (generally refers to the Inner Mongolia section of the Heihe River downstream of weak water). It was formerly known as Heli River, Qianggu River, Xianshui, Covering Water, Futou River, Zhangye River and Ganzhou River. It is the second largest inland river in northwest China and later the largest inland river in Gansu Province.
The Heihe River originates from the middle section of the northern foothills of the Qilian Mountains and flows through Qinghai, Gansu, and Inner Mongolia. The lower reaches are called weak water (ancient weak water), and the section in Inner Mongolia is called Ejina River, which means black water in Xixia language and disappears in Juyan Sea. The Heihe River is also the main water source for domestic water in Ganzhou and its surrounding area of tens of thousands of miles, with a total length of nearly 2,000 miles.
However, seeing the Heihe River at this time had two main meanings for Liu Wei's tribe: first, it could replenish the fresh water consumed by walking on the edge of the Gobi for two or three hundred miles, and second, it could determine the direction to go next.
Replenishing fresh water is an important task in fighting in the northwest semi-desert area. It does not need to be explained in detail every time, but determining the direction is very important, because according to the pre-war plan, it is time to cross the Heihe River at this time and the entire army turns to the southwest. Traveling in the same direction - a hundred miles away in this direction is Jinta County, Gansu Province in later generations. Keep moving in the same direction and continue another hundred miles to Suzhou, which is later Jiuquan City in Gansu Province.
By the way, more than twenty miles northwest of Suzhou is the famous Jiayuguan Pass. This place was built since the Ming Dynasty. After its completion, it became the most important pass to control the northwest during the Ming Dynasty. By the way, it also led to the gradual desolation of Yumen Pass.
From this perspective, Xu Sanwei may feel that losing Suzhou is not terrible, but losing Jiayuguan is the real big trouble. He asked Liu Wei to send troops as soon as possible because he was worried that the court would hold him responsible for losing Jiayuguan. Of course, there is no need to say what he thinks for the time being. At this time, I will express my gratitude to Liu Wei.
Of course, the name "Jinta County" does not exist today. The Ming Dynasty only had "Weilu Guards" here, and the name of the administrative area was "Weilu City". This city is not big, just three days a week. A city like this usually does not have too many troops stationed, but if it is really necessary, it is not difficult to put 20,000 people in it.
However, in fact, Weiluwei no longer exists. This does not mean that Weiluwei was killed by Burihatu. It was abandoned as early as the Yongle Dynasty.
At the beginning of Yongle, "the troops of our army (Weilu Guards) won merits and beheaded the prisoners. Zhao Chun, the imperial censor, thought that he had surrendered and wanted to kill the officers and soldiers who had won merits, so he led the people to rebel..." The result was that the people After being sent away, the castle was empty, so in the third year of Yongle, the Weilu guards were cut off.
However, although Weiluwei is gone, in the past few years, due to the highly pragmatic strategy of strengthening the border, it began to be reinforced into a large fort. The new "Weilu City" was renamed "Weilu Fort". Although there were no imperial troops stationed there, there were "three thousand local warriors" and it actually became a satellite city of Suzhou.
Of course, the above is not the reason for introducing Weilu Fort in such detail. The real reason is: Liu Wei learned that Weilu Fort has not been broken so far and is still in the hands of the Han family!
This news is shocking, right? Liu Wei felt the same way at first. The reason is very simple. Weilu Fort itself is not big, and there is no regular army stationed there. There are only "three thousand local braves". What use can this scale be used when the tide of Burihatu's 100,000 troops comes?
Theoretically speaking, as long as Suzhou is lost, Weilubao, one of the key satellite cities of Suzhou, should fall immediately, and Burihatu should not allow it to remain unconquered by the Mongolian army for so long. !
However, as a general under Gao Pragmatic, Liu Wei, in addition to getting information from the court, could also get intelligence support from Jinghua Trading Company along the way - just like he learned the secret road through Longshou Mountain.
The Gansu branch of Jinghua Trading Company informed Liu Wei that the so-called "three thousand local braves" in Weilubao were actually all people from Jinghua. Their official establishment was: Jinghua Mining Gansu Weilubao Copper Mine Protection Team.
Yes, later Jinta County, now Weilupu, has an advantageous mineral resource-copper mine. The Ming court actually had restrictions on the mining of copper mines. However, Gansu was too remote and the court had no interest in digging. So Jinghua got the deal, built a copper mine in Weilubao, and also established a mine protection team as usual.
As an important strategic material in the current era, copper mines were too inefficient for the imperial government to develop, but Jinghua did not dislike it. Therefore, six to seven thousand miners gathered here, and with a little more selection, there were three thousand mine protection teams.
These people usually mine, and only when danger approaches will they turn to arms. Because they have serious work to do, they will naturally not leave Weilubao, so that Suzhou, which is close at hand, does not know how strong they are. When Suzhou was attacked by Burihatu and fell into the city, Weilubao urgently armed himself and withstood the attack of a Mongolian army under Burihatu.
After the Mongolian army learned about it, they mobilized nearly 10,000 troops to attack again. Unexpectedly, they were easily repelled. At that time, Burihatu got angry rarely. However, when Burihatu inquired about the defense of Weilu Fort in detail, he no longer criticized the incompetence of his men. Instead, after pondering for a long time, he ordered that only a few detective horses be used to continuously monitor Weilu Fort, but as long as the people in the fort are not killed, Outside the Wubao, the Mongolian army stopped attacking.
Of course, Burihatu was not merciful, but Weilu Fort was impeccable. Thanks to the small size of the original city here, Jinghua rebuilt its city defense into a fortress. Sixteen No. 3 heavy artillery and more than two hundred intersecting city defense artillery firepower nets made the Mongolian army, which lacked heavy firepower siege means, unable to do anything but sigh at Fort Weilu. The wall of sighs belongs to yes.
The reason why Liu Wei was confident of taking Suzhou in a sneak attack was that another secret hand was revealed at this moment: the sixteen No. 3 heavy artillery pieces of Weilu Fort and the mine protection team in the fort.
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Thanks to book friend "Cao Mianzi" for your reward and support, thank you!
PS: The stuffy nose is not healed, and my voice is still hoarse. Why...why? This strain is somewhat unconventional.
(End of chapter)
