My life is like walking on thin ice

Chapter 333 Animal Husbandry in Agricultural Civilization

After the Hetao Battle, Liu Rong, who should have been the happiest, became the calmest person inside and outside the Chang'an court.

But apart from Liu Rong and Empress Dowager Dou, who felt somewhat uncomfortable, there was almost no third person in the entire Chang'an who was not cheering for the Hetao Campaign.

——In the second year of Emperor Rong Xinyuan’s reign, on October 20th of winter, the Hetao-Mayi Campaign officially came to an end!

In Hetao, the Han and the Xiongnu used the river as the boundary, confronting each other at Gaoque to the north of the river and at Bowang City to the south of the river respectively.

However, winter was approaching, and no matter how unwilling they were to see Hetao lost and how much they wanted to take it back, Junchen had to order a halt to the war. Everything would have to wait until spring.

The Xiongnu people in Gaoque temporarily gave up their covetousness for Hetao, or were unwilling to do so. Generals of the northern front army such as Yuhou Luan Bu and Gonggaohou Han Tuidang were naturally relieved.

While arranging the northern defense line of the Hetao region in an orderly manner, he cooperated with the officials sent by the Chang'an court and, in accordance with the instructions of the Chang'an court, officially started the Han Dynasty's "digestion" of the Hetao region.

Although the Chang'an court quickly came up with a solution to this matter, there was also a period of extremely frequent debate.

The core of the debate mainly focused on whether the Han Dynasty should give full play to the advantages of agricultural civilization and turn Hetao into another granary of Bashu after obtaining Hetao, or maintain the status quo, allowing Hetao to continue to maintain its grassland landform and use animal husbandry as the main production model in the area.

It is actually understandable that such a debate would take place in the court of Chang'an.

——Unlike the Qin Dynasty, which once owned the Hetao area and even directly ruled the nomadic people: the Yiqiu people, and maintained a considerable degree of control over the grassland: the Han Dynasty has not experienced similar issues since Taizu Gaohuangdi established the country.

How to resettle nomadic people?

How to use grassland?

How does animal husbandry develop?
This series of propositions about the grassland, especially those closely related to the Hetao region, have never appeared since the Han Dynasty, and no one has even imagined them.

What was the attitude of the Han court towards grasslands and animal husbandry?

Let’s take a very simple example to illustrate this point.

——As we all know, when Emperor Wu of Han drove the Huns northward and promoted the prestige of the Han Dynasty, the Han Dynasty no longer lacked horses.

Not only was there no shortage of war horses and cavalry, but they even trained elite cavalry that was praised by historians as "one Han against five Barbarians"!

But before Emperor Wu of Han restored the glory of China, only a dozen or twenty years ago, the Han Dynasty was still suffering from a severe shortage of war horses, so that it was impossible to form a cavalry group, and a severe shortage of oxen, so that ox-drawn plowing not only could not be promoted, but was also in an embarrassing situation of constantly regressing with the passage of time.

Obviously, between these two huge contrasts, a major event must have occurred, which caused the Han family, which was originally short of livestock, to quickly become a "dog-rich family" that could easily mobilize hundreds of thousands of cavalry troops during the reign of Emperor Wu of Han.

This change actually means that the Han Dynasty has been unremittingly and generously building horse gardens on the northern border wall since the time of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen - or throughout the reign of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing.

During the reign of Emperor Taizong, the Han treasury was empty. Although the people were able to rest and recuperate, the national economy had not yet recovered.

Therefore, during the 27 years of Emperor Taizong's reign, the Han Dynasty only built seven Mayi towns at the junction of the northern border wall, grassland and Central Plains.

In the later years of Emperor Taizong, these seven horse farms began to produce hundreds of war horses every year.

Now that Liu Rong is in power, these seven horse farms can produce more than 500 war horses every year, making an indelible contribution to the construction of the Han cavalry.

—Five hundred horses a year may not seem like much;
But considering the Han Dynasty today, at most they can scrape out tens of thousands of cavalrymen, and five hundred war horses every year is actually a lot.

Furthermore, the Han Dynasty did not only have these seven horse farms, and only produced 500 war horses every year.

——Historically, during the reign of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing, the Han Dynasty built a total of thirty-six horse gardens along the northern border wall!
Excluding the seven built during the reign of Emperor Taizong, a total of twenty-nine sites were built during the reign of Emperor Jing alone!

It was precisely thanks to these 36 horse farms built during the reigns of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing, which were able to produce thousands of war horses every year, that Emperor Wu of Han was able to evolve the Han army from a pure infantry group into an integrated force with a rational mix of infantry and cavalry in just a dozen or twenty years.

In this timeline, due to the flapping of the wings of Liu Rong, the little butterfly, Emperor Xiaojing's reign was ten years shorter than in the original historical timeline.

Correspondingly, the 27 horse gardens that were originally supposed to be built during the reign of Emperor Jing of Han were drastically reduced to eight.

no way;
In this timeline, Emperor Xiaojing reigned for only six years before he safely handed over the Liu Han state to Liu Rong.

In the first half of these six years, Emperor Xiaojing devoted almost all his energy to Chao Cuo's "Plan to Reduce the Powers of the Feudal States" and the Wu-Chu Rebellion caused by the reduction of the power of the feudal states.

After the Wu-Chu rebellion was quelled, Emperor Xiaojing had just calmed down and wanted to work hard to achieve some results, but then he started to have health problems;

He had no choice but to let Crown Prince Liu Rong serve as regent for three years. When Liu Rong was fully grown, Emperor Xiaojing no longer cared about the world and passed away...

To be honest, among the eight horse parks built during the reign of Emperor Xiaojing, six of them were planned during the period when Crown Prince Liu Rong was regent!
From a certain perspective, Emperor Xiaojing died too early, so that according to the original history, the 36 horse farms built by the Han Dynasty during the reign of Emperor Wen and Emperor Jing were greatly reduced to 15 for the prime minister. This actually had a considerable impact on the construction of the Han Dynasty's cavalry forces.

——Use the most stupid way to solve a math problem: It took Emperor Wu of Han at least 15 years to build 36 horse farms to build a cavalry group that could rival the Xiongnu.

These fifteen places are less than half of the original historical ones. Theoretically, Liu Rong will need thirty years or even more to push the progress of cavalry unit construction to the level of the early days of the war by Emperor Wu of Han in history.

Of course, this is only in theory.

The fact is: after owning Hetao, let alone the 36 horse farms that supported the Han Dynasty to complete the construction of cavalry units in the original historical timeline;
——Even now, Liu Rong is no longer interested in the fifteen horse farms that the Han family has built!

The reason for this is that it was precisely these horse gardens built during the reigns of Emperors Wen and Jing that fully displayed the Han Dynasty's attitude towards grasslands and animal husbandry to the people of that time and even to future generations.

The horse garden, as the name suggests, is actually a closed area. Just like the Sixian Garden, the private garden of the crown prince of the previous Emperor Xiaojing, or the Bowang Garden of Liu Rong, it is a square area surrounded by wooden fences, with stables, horse sheds, and warehouses for storing hay and feed.

Take Yanmen Garden, the most typical garden in Liu Rong's opinion.
As the first horse garden in the Han Dynasty built by the government and fully funded by the central government of Chang'an and governed by the Taipu Yamen, Yanmen Garden covers an area of ​​five miles from east to west and from north to south.

The area it covers is basically the same as Liu Rong’s Weiyang Palace.

The garden was built in the fourth year BC during the reign of Emperor Taizong, and has a history of thirty years.

At the beginning of construction, the Chang'an court allocated 30 million coins each from the prime minister's treasury and the Shaofu's treasury to the Taifu as start-up capital for the construction of Yanmen Garden, totaling 60 million coins.

In addition, the construction materials and craftsmen for Ma Yuan were all borne by the Shaofu, while the required manpower was recruited from the people by the Xiangfu.

In other words: the 60 million yuan of start-up capital was almost entirely the special fund allocated by the court to the Taifu for buying horses.

In the end, Xiahou Ying, the Grand Coachman at that time, lived up to everyone's expectations and used the 60 million yuan as starting capital to buy three precious stallions and dozens of fine mares for Yanmen Garden.

In the following thirty years - both during the reign of Emperor Taizong and Emperor Xiaojing, the court in Chang'an allocated funds to many horse farms, including Yanmen Garden, every two to three years, with an amount of at least tens of millions of coins each time, in order to speed up the construction of the Han cavalry.

To date, including the initial 60 million coins in start-up capital, the construction of Yanmen Garden alone has cost the Han family at least 200 million coins in special funding!

The rest of the labor, materials, or fodder were not taken into account at all - either the Shaofu helped, or the Xiangfu collected the "straw tax" to supply the various horse farms with fodder for the horses.

Over a period of thirty years, with more than 200 million yuan in packaging funds and materials and labor investment of almost equal value, to what extent has Yanmen Garden developed?

Liu Rong knew.

According to the data Liu Rong had, Yanmenyuan now had a total of thirteen stallions, each worth a thousand gold coins, with a total value of more than 100 million coins;
There were more than 410 purebred mares, with an average unit price of roughly 600,000 to 800,000 coins each, and a total value of approximately 300 million coins.

In addition, from the second year of Emperor Taizong Xiaowen's Houyuan reign to the present, a total of eleven years, more than 600 war horses and thousands of slow horses have been slaughtered, with a total value of more than 800 million coins!
With this calculation, Yanmen Garden not only brought a huge amount of wealth to the Han family in the past 30 years, but also this huge wealth was a strategic material that the Han family was originally unable to cultivate and possess: war horses.

Over thirty years and with an investment of four hundred million coins, the value of more than one hundred million coins was eventually created. The model of Yanmen Garden is undoubtedly qualified.

At least from the Han Dynasty's inherent understanding of animal husbandry at this stage, the past 30 years in Yanmen Garden were 30 years in which the emperor could live up to his conscience and to the ancestral temple and the country.

But if you tell any nomadic people on the grassland about Yanmenyuan's experience over the past 30 years, I'm afraid eight out of ten people would say: Thirty years, tens of millions of dollars, and only a few hundred war horses?

——Are all Han officials so cruel in corruption?
——Don’t be greedy for small changes, but be greedy for big changes?!
We can’t blame the nomadic people on the grassland for having such a stereotyped impression of Han officials;

But on the grassland, it is indeed the case.

A tribe, or a family, had a young and strong man as the head of the family, three or five women to take care of chores, three or five slaves, ten sheep, two cows, and a horse, and they could barely have enough food and clothing.

As long as there are no major natural or man-made disasters and such a tribe or family is allowed to develop and grow on the grassland, it will not take more than five years for it to grow into a medium-sized tribe with a population of several thousand, tens of thousands of horses, tens of thousands of cattle, and hundreds of thousands of sheep!

Although a considerable part of this "development and growth" process originated from mergers, the reproduction of population and livestock also played a vital role.

To put it more bluntly: three stallions, dozens of mares, an endless supply of grass and fodder that will never be scarce, and thirty years of time;

With all the above conditions, it is incredible that a population of at least several thousand horses could not be developed within thirty years. This is impossible on the grassland.

You have to know that on the grasslands, nomads are chasing water and grass while resisting large and small natural disasters and the ups and downs of war, and they are still able to expand their livestock herds at a rate of at least 15% or 15% per year.

What if all these negative factors were eliminated?
——Such a paradise-like life is something that nomadic people dare not even imagine!
Take the Hetao region, which the Han dynasty has just taken control of, for example;

After the Han army officially occupied Hetao and gained a firm foothold, showing its stance that it would not allow the Xiongnu to retake Hetao in a short period of time, the chieftains of various tribes that originally lived in Hetao and had just "surrendered" to the Han family not long ago all approached the supreme commander of the Northern Front Army: Yuhou Luan Bu.

what to do?

No matter how much I say, it all comes down to one thing: I hope the general can express our highest respect to His Majesty the Emperor on our behalf, as well as the unswerving loyalty of our Henan tribes to His Majesty the Emperor until death!
As for the way of expressing loyalty, it was also very simple and crude: the various tribes in the entire Hetao area that surrendered to the Han Dynasty "tributed" a total of 10,000 war horses, 100,000 cattle, and 1 million sheep to Liu Rong!
In addition, every year thereafter, there will be an endless supply of thousands of horses, tens of thousands of cattle, and hundreds of thousands of sheep.

To be honest, when these figures were first obtained, even Liu Rong, the Han emperor who had seen the world, could not help but be secretly amazed at the wealth of the Hetao tribes.

——Ten thousand war horses, one hundred thousand cattle, and one million sheep!
What concept?
Those ten thousand war horses alone are already equal to the number of war horses currently available to the Han family. As long as they can obtain these ten thousand war horses, the Han family’s war horse food reserves will double!

As for the market price of these ten thousand war horses, it is very likely to reach between three hundred million and five hundred million coins, which is comparable to the taxes and levies of the Han Dynasty's central government for an entire year, that is, the total fiscal revenue!
What made Liu Rong even more dumbfounded was not the millions of livestock at one time, but the following sentence: a thousand war horses, ten thousand cattle, and a hundred thousand sheep every year.

Per year!

The fact that the Hetao tribes have the confidence to say this shows that they have done so in the past and will do so in the future, and have the ability to continue to achieve this goal: breeding and increasing the number of horses by thousands, cattle by tens of thousands, and sheep by hundreds of thousands every year.

Only in this way can we explain why they came up with such a number.

This is precisely the source of Liu Rong's deep awareness that the model of Yanmen Garden and other gardens along the border walls was far behind the nomadic people's understanding and cognition of animal husbandry.

——The nomadic people on the grassland always seem to be able to obtain extremely considerable livestock output with extremely small investment, so small that it is almost negligible!
On the other hand, the Han Dynasty - looking at the Chinese agricultural civilization, it seems that it is still restricted by the stereotypes and inherent ideas of agricultural civilization;

To put it simply: the Han people are using the same mindset as they do in farming to engage in animal husbandry.

The disadvantage of doing this is that the logic of raising cattle and sheep is completely different from that of growing crops.

(End of this chapter)