Daming Yuanfu

Chapter 1610 Overture to War ([-]) Horse

Li Rusong...

Gao Wushi frowned and pondered, but shook his head after a while: "It's better for him not to move lightly this time."

"Why, are you afraid that Gu Yangqian won't be able to command him?" Liu Xin raised her eyebrows slightly, and said, "Even if Gu Yangqian can't command him, don't tell me you can't command him either?"

"Me?" Gao Wushi smiled: "How can I command him? I am the Minister of the Ministry of Households, not the Minister of the Ministry of War. Why should I command him, a Liaodong general? If it was a year ago, it would be okay, because At that time, I was still carrying the false name of a seven-town manager.

Right now I am in charge of finance, and last year I received a lot of financial power. The power is already in the hands of the government and the public. Naturally, it is not appropriate to intervene too much in the military... The reason why the emperor specifically mentioned that I should use Zhou Benbing to make suggestions is not because so? "

Liu Xin said: "Then why can't Li Rusong be used? Although Li Chengliang lost some troops last time, according to the information, Li Rusong has almost made up for the lost troops after returning to Liaodong. The scale of about [-].

If such an elite cavalry is not used to deal with Mongolia, do you still have to use them to smash the Japanese-style mountain city defense system on the Korean battlefield?I remember very clearly that it was you who told me that the Japanese-style mountain castles on the Korean battlefield caused the Ming army a lot of losses. "

"I have a way to solve the problem of the Japanese-style mountain city system, and Li Rusong and his cavalry troops will have other uses in the Korean battlefield in the future." Gao Wushi said: "Besides, not using Li Rusong this time is actually not just for military considerations. , more for political purposes."

Liu Xin put her hand on her forehead and said helplessly, "You don't want to let the Xin School do meritorious service?"

"No, the political purpose I'm talking about is not the internal purpose, but the external purpose. Believe it or not, my political prejudice is not as serious as that of other people in this era." Gao Wushi shook his head and denied it.

"Oh? External purpose?" Liu Xin asked in surprise, "External...mean the Mongols?"

"It's mainly the Mongols, but you can also include the Jurchens." Gao Wushi curled his lips and said, "I want the Mongols and even the Jurchens to feel that since Li Chengliang was defeated last time, the imperial court no longer trusts Li Chengliang." It’s not a general mistrust, but the emperor’s distrust plus the oppressive suppression of our real school.”

"Oh, I understand now that you said that!" Liu Xin's eyes lit up, she clapped her hands together, and said, "You deliberately 'hidden' the [-] elites of the Li family army, and let them fight against the Mongols and the Jurchens against Daming." They were removed from the calculation of their military strength, and they were suddenly revealed at the critical moment to be used as a surprise army!"

Gao Wushi nodded lightly, and said: "This is one of the plans. It was a plan before the Chahar war broke out before the Korean war. If, on the other hand, the Korean war broke out before, then this plan is of little significance. gone."

"You can't decide which of these two wars will break out first? This is not in line with your usual style." Liu Xin laughed.

"I did this and that in Japan, and my original intention was to delay the outbreak of the Korean War and hope to finish the Chahar battle first. It's just that there are still some variables, so I can't say for sure now."

"Sometimes it's really not as good as man's calculations." Gao Wushi said, suddenly sighed, and said, "According to my original intention, the purpose of these two years is to avoid the fact that the Mongols are aware of the fact that the strength of our Ming cavalry is growing rapidly." The situation, because only they have overlooked one point, when the decisive battle of Chahar is launched, I will be able to set up a plan to fight a decisive battle and solve the Mongolian problem in one fell swoop. But the current enemy situation involves Horqin, which happens to be a' must be rescued', and the rescue of Horqin must use cavalry."

Gao Wushi rubbed the center of his brows with some headaches, and said: "Just now when Zhou Benbing proposed to me that Jinghua send troops to support me, I was thinking that it would be best if Tumed sent troops to support him. After all, Tumed is not only powerful, but also Once they are the main support, Tumen may ignore the strength of the Ming cavalry, which can be described as the best of both worlds."

"I think it's a good idea, why not do it?" Liu Xin said immediately.

"The Tumed cavalry is certainly useful, but you have to know that Tumed is now considered a foreign vassal. They submit to surrender, but they have to settle their accounts clearly. For example, how many troops they sent, what things should be done, and after they are done, I will be the Ming court. How to reward, every pen and every pen, in the final analysis, it is all about giving money."

Gao Wushi smiled: "If you don't give money, no one will help you. If you don't pay enough, people will work and don't work hard. For business, everyone doesn't want to lose money. This is a reasonable thing, don't you think?"

"Uh, how much do you want to spend, and how much help do you want them to help?" Liu Xin asked.

"I didn't think of a... maybe a better way until just now." Gao Wushi said with a smile: "This time Daming can take a bit of a loss and buy more geldings - buying more means that Tumote's existing geldings For the horses and the geldings for the next year or two, I will make them round. If the imperial court really can’t afford them, I, Jinghua, can help them.”

Liu Xin was very surprised: "Why is this? Didn't you buy as few geldings as possible before and buy more mares and stallions?" She suddenly showed a thoughtful expression as she spoke, and said to herself: "Wait a minute, What do you mean...the battle is imminent?"

The so-called gelding is the horse after castration, also known as castrated horse.However, many people may have misunderstood gelding horses, thinking that these horses are not good and are all garbage.This kind of view is actually quite unfair to the gelding, especially for the Mongolian gelding.

In fact, the Mongolians have long formed a unique method of raising horses during their nomadic life for thousands of years.Generally speaking, this is the case: within one or two years after the horse is born, it is first carefully trained on the grass to make it full of green grass and full of fat.

When the four teeth grow out, they will be castrated. In Mongolian, a castrated horse is called "Atasi", and in Chinese, it is called a gelding.Such early castrated horses actually grow strong and strong, and are both powerful and supple, and are more able to withstand cold weather.

After the castrated horses have been grazing on the grass for two or three years, they are ridden again and coached again like the initial riding training.After the second coaching session, the horse's temperament has become more docile, and its gait is also very ideal. It will not bite or kick people, and the rider feels very stable on the horse's back.After dismounting, there is no need to tie the horse, and the horse will not go far away.In addition, the integrated herd of hundreds and thousands of horses did not neigh indiscriminately.

Among the trainers, Mongolians never give feed during the day. At night, they graze on the grass, and at dawn they prepare saddles for riding. Although they don’t need to be tied up after riding, they must be tied to posts as a way of raising horses. Make the horse look up and wait until the breath is completely calm and the hooves are cold before starting to graze on the grass.This is because it is very harmful for a horse to eat grass and drink water when it has not recovered from fatigue after running.

After taking part in the battle, the war horses must graze on the grass, so that they can eat enough grass and drink good water. During this period, they must never ride. Only when another battle is approaching, the horses are driven back to the camp from the pasture and tied to the horses. On the embolus.Then, only feed a small amount of grass. After a certain period of time, the fat will shrink and the body will be strong. At this time, continue to ride for hundreds of miles.

With this method of raising horses, the horses can run long distances without sweating very much, so any expedition can be endured.Never feed grass or drink water during the march, because eating and drinking during fatigue and stress, what the horse eats will not only fail to turn into flesh and blood, but will get sick instead.

The strongest and best horses among herding horses are kept as stallions without castration. In the discourse of the Mongolian-Han mixed area, stallions are generally called "stall-moving horses".Except for stabbing horses, in fact, most stallions will be castrated, and there are very few sick and weak horses.

Yiba horses are usually official horses, and the Mongols who have the task of feeding such official horses will also manage the herd of mules and horses as skillfully as a shepherd manages a herd of horses. mix.

A group of mules and horses generally consists of [-] to [-] horses, and a group of stallions must be equipped with a stallion (stall-moving horse).When the stabbing horse finds that there are runaways among the mules and horses under its jurisdiction, it will immediately catch up actively, kicking and biting them back.When a stabbing horse from another group of horses rushes to a group of horses that does not belong to them, the official horse of the group will stop it, bite or kick it and drive it away.

The shepherds often hold iron whips to supervise the horses, so horses are particularly afraid of Mongolian iron whips.If the shepherd finds a horse ignoring order and rushing to drink water first, he will wave his iron whip and stop it immediately.Therefore, even when drinking water, the horses are arranged neatly and leave after drinking water in order.Such thoughtful feeding and management is why the Mongolian horse breeding method is superior to that of other ethnic groups.

How do you know these things?Of course he got it from his good student Erde Mutu.Erdemutu is not only his student, but also the eldest son of Hannaji who was named by Tumed Chechen Khan as Tumed's Huang Taiji, which means "crown prince".

With such a disciple around, Gao Yushi had already grasped some of the Mongolian horse-raising tricks.Of course, some skills are simple to say but very complicated to implement, so Gao Yushi spent a lot of time on Cao Gan's careful arrangements, and dug some horse-breeding experts from the Tumote people to breed good horses for Jinghua. .

Over the years, Jinghua has obtained many good horse breeds through the land and sea silk roads, including the famous Arabian horse, the Akhal Teke horse (that is, the legendary sweaty horse, the national treasure of Turkmenistan later), the Akhal Teke horse Keha-Teke horse (also a Central Asian horse breed), Kazakh horse, etc., and then carry out various breedings for breeding research, of course, the addition of the Mongolian horse lineage with the largest number is indispensable.

At present, there is a relatively successful breeding breed, which is smaller than the Kazakh horse, but stronger than the Mongolian horse, slightly lower than the Arabian horse in terms of speed and agility, but has quite good endurance. Southern Xinjiang conducts climate adaptation research.

Since the horse was bred at Liangzhou Race Farm in Gansu, which Jinghua belongs to, it was temporarily named Liangzhou Horse by Gao Wushi.However, since it takes at least several generations to finalize the bloodline of a horse breed, it is not yet easy to breed in large quantities, let alone carry out large-scale equipment and actual combat.

Under such circumstances, continuing to purchase excellent Mongolian gelding horses as the main warhorses is the proper meaning of the question.However, the Ming Dynasty... or simply put it in the entire Chinese history, the Central Plains Dynasty has a kind of thinking that the key production must be mastered by itself. Therefore, when the Ming Dynasty court finds Tumed to buy horses, it often hopes to buy more mares and stallions. I hope to breed war horses on my own racecourse.

Gao Yushi did not interfere with this principle too much before, but after years of development, he found that this idea seems to have problems.

Judging from the way the Mongolians raised and trained horses just mentioned, in fact, this process has quite high requirements for horse farms and pastures, but this does not matter to the Mongolians, but it is very stressful to the Ming Dynasty. .

Even though Daming was much better than the Song Dynasty in terms of racecourse conditions, if this relative advantage is compared with the Mongols, to put it bluntly, the level of conditions is still two words: poor.

Because of this, even after some reforms, the performance of Daming's official racecourse can only be said to be mediocre, and it is still so-so to solve the problems. Compared with the gelding or war horses bred by the Mongols, it is really bad. not enough.

Since the war horses bred by the imperial court are not very good, and there is a large-scale demand at this stage, and there is a need to reward the Tumets at the moment, the three conditions are added together. The gelding method.

But if you want to discuss this matter, you have to hurry up. After all, the Tumen are already preparing to send troops. If the process of negotiating business with the Tumed people can't be shortened as much as possible, the day lily may be cold by the time the Tumed people take action.

Therefore, Gao Wushi didn't delay any longer, and immediately sent someone to call Erdemutu over.Erdemutu is now the military secretary of the Jinghua Secretariat, who also happens to be in charge of the army, so it is very reasonable to discuss this matter with him.

Hearing what the teacher said, he immediately agreed in principle, saying: "The teacher wants to buy a gelding, and the student can agree to this matter on behalf of Dahan, but the specific transaction details need to be nodded by Dahan, the student. I can only exert a certain amount of influence in my personal capacity, and I ask the teacher to be considerate of this."

Gao Wushi smiled and said, "It's natural, I wouldn't make it difficult for you."

Erdemutu said gratefully: "Thank you, teacher, for your understanding. Since the matter is of great importance, and this matter should not be delayed, the student suggested that the student go back to Guihua City in person, propose to Da Khan in person, and try his best to make it happen as soon as possible, so as not to hold up."

Gao Wushi kept him by his side to exert ideological influence, not as a proton to send Hanaji, so he did not object to Erdemutu's request to go back to Tumed in person, so he immediately said : "Okay, then I'll work hard on you. It's rare for you to return to the north. Regardless of whether the matter can be negotiated or not, you can stay for a while depending on the situation. It is not only a filial piety in front of your father, but also a debt with him." It will be beneficial for you to communicate more with the important ministers in the future."

Erde Mutu nodded, but continued to be highly pragmatic: "In addition, it is not surprising that there are many people who are courteous. As a teacher, I will prepare some gifts for you. You can be more generous when the time comes, and it is all on your own." To distribute them in the name of others... Attention, the gift is just a gift, don't give them any hints, no matter which aspect, understand?"

"Yes, teacher, I understand." Erdemutu paused, and then asked: "Does the teacher have any other orders? If there is no other order, the disciple plans to clean up overnight and leave early tomorrow morning."

Gao Wushi smiled and said: "No more. You cleaned up well tonight, and I have to clean up for the teacher to prepare gifts for you... Oh, you don't have to come to my place to say hello tomorrow, just go directly."

Unexpectedly, Erde Mutu shook his head and said: "Courtesy cannot be discarded. Tomorrow, I still want to come to the teacher to say hello first before leaving. I think it will be a while later, even if it is late."

Gao Wushi smiled: "Since you have this heart, it will follow you."

Having said that, Gao Yushi felt warm in his heart, and thought to himself: After teaching for many years, it seems that his level of Sinicization is already higher than that of his father. Yes, it is good news...
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Thanks for the support of book friends "Cao Mianzi", "Shan Qi Zhao Bi Xin", "Shen Ba Tian Xia 2", thank you!
(End of this chapter)