At the foot of the Qilian Mountains southwest of Gaotai, thousands of war horses galloped wildly. More than a dozen horse soldiers wearing no armor and only wearing marshal's cashmere hoods were swimming around with long poles, driving the mighty Mongolian horses away.
Camp to the Chinese army.
This is the second day for Liu Chengzong's Huben Camp to rest. Under the protection of the Tangqi Defense Line and the Feng Yu and Zhang Tianlin battalions, the soldiers of Huben Camp seemed relaxed in a safe atmosphere.
As April approaches, the weather has gradually warmed up. From time to time, cavalrymen rush by outside the camp to chase and play. Usually a rider drags the haystack with a rope to roll up the weeds and dust, or he may keep throwing cloth balls into the sky.
Afterwards, more than a dozen horse teams rushed to the front, using their riding skills to shoot long arrows at the target.
Although the march lasted for more than 2,000 miles, the soldiers were dressed in shabby and dirty clothes, and all of them looked like beggars with unkempt hair and unkempt appearance. However, in the rare leisure time, people still enjoyed showing off their skills while running, maybe shooting left and right,
Maybe he's hiding in the stirrup.
In fact, yesterday some people used arrows wrapped in cloth to simulate horseback shooting against each other, but Liu Shizi stopped it after the injured appeared.
In confrontational riding and shooting training, the distance between the two sides is within ten or even five steps. Even if the arrow shaft is wrapped with cloth, if it is hit without armor, it will still be a fracture.
After all, they came out to march and fight, and the troops in the Huben camp were all grassroots officers who had made great achievements in combat. The entire battalion could not find a war bow with a bow power lighter than ninety kilograms. With this bow power and distance, even with a slingshot, they could shoot
The head can also kill someone.
The slingshots used in the army are not Y-shaped, but bow-shaped bows designed to shoot stone or iron bullets. Firstly, they are used for hunting without damaging the fur; secondly, secret messages can be stuffed into the iron pellets and shot out to convey messages.
In the face of a formidable enemy, Liu Chengzong's troops were stationed at the foot of the Qilian Mountains not just to rest, but because at the western end of the desertified Hexi Corridor, Suzhou grassland was much less than Liu Shizi imagined.
The land that can be used here is cycled between irrigation and abandonment, and there is not much pasture for horses, which makes it difficult to graze.
The pressure of baggage was not obvious when outside the pass. Once inside the Jiayuguan Pass, the shortage of horse food increased sharply, and it became a top priority for Liu Chengzong to worry about.
Bean cakes and wheat bran for horses are not rare in Hehuang. They even brought a lot of hay made from alfalfa. But if these things are eaten, their more than 20,000 war horses will have to den, not to mention the pressure on logistics and transportation.
It’s also very big.
After all, the Oirat army that had been carrying the heavy baggage for the main army had already gone to Hami. They were not able to recruit civilian men on the spot. The few people in Suzhou were not enough to transport the heavy baggage.
War horses need fine feed for heavy duty, but they need more than just fine feed. No one can raise a war horse with just fine feed... This problem is just like people need to eat meat, but they cannot just eat meat. They need to mix meat and vegetables, and also
You have to eat food.
On the one hand, it is nutritionally comprehensive, and on the other hand, the cost is also there.
Therefore, Liu Chengzong's response strategy was to recruit additional local horses and try to use Mongolian horses and Tibetan horses to participate in the battle.
In fact, the Marshal's army has never had enough serious war horses.
Take this expeditionary force, which has more than 20,000 war horses and more than 30,000 pack mules, as an example. There are more than 20,000 riding horses of all kinds.
Relatively pure ones include Qinghai Hequ horses, Mobei Mongolian horses, Shaanxi Guanzhong horses, Tianshan Yili horses, and Kangning Prefecture Tibetan horses; impure breeds include various hybrid horses of unknown origin.
In addition, there are many soldiers whose mounts are not horses at all, such as the mule infantry, a legacy of the Lion Battalion period; and the Bactrian camels from Batur Hutaiji.
Although the breeding of war horses on Longju Island has started long ago, establishing a horse farm is a long-term investment and extremely costly work.
From the beginning of the construction of the racecourse, the mare is pregnant for eleven months, and the foal matures in three years. Everything goes smoothly step by step, and it takes at least four years to form the first batch of foals.
The Longju Temple in the Marshal's Mansion was only established in the fifth year of Chongzhen. Today, Longju Island is full of little ones, far from being able to join the army.
In terms of military needs, according to reports from Longju Temple and Ma Ying, the war horse with the best overall ability of the Marshal's Army is the Hequ horse because of its large size, strong load-bearing capacity and good endurance.
The breeding direction of Ryukomaji gelded war horses is also in these directions, with no focus on speed... In addition to escaping on the battlefield, there is almost no need to let the horse run wildly.
The situation of Mongolian horses and Tianshan horses is different from Hequ horses. Although Mongolian horses are generally small in size, have poor load capacity, and have only the same endurance in comparison, their advantages and disadvantages are not from selective breeding, but from selective breeding.
brought about by the growing environment.
The Mongolian grassland is larger than the entire Western Europe, and the so-called Mongolian horse is more like a large-scale term for pastoral dog. Under the pastoral dog, the difference between a thin dog and a Pekingese is no smaller than that between a thin dog and a corgi.
In other words, the difference between Mongolian horses and Mongolian horses may be greater than the difference between Mongolian horses and Hequ horses.
The shoulder height of the Mongolian ponies raised at Longju Temple is generally one to two inches higher than that of free-range Mongolian ponies of the same age. Similarly, they have largely lost the advantage of having a small appetite.
Liu Chengzong was very familiar with war horses. He knew very well how much a horse eats. Regardless of breed, male or female, there is generally one indicator for a horse's appetite: normal forage mixed with concentrate is 2 to 100 percent of the body weight.
Three; if they are released to eat only grass, the amount will be three to five times more.
Mongolian horses raised by grassland herdsmen generally weigh four to five hundred kilograms. They can sit in the grass for two hours a day and eat fifty kilograms of grass. If combined with two to three kilograms of concentrate, they can only eat ten to fifteen kilograms of grass a day.
Okay, if you really have to eat less, it won’t be a big problem if you lose some meat.
Although its capabilities in all aspects are not very good, it can indeed undertake almost all combat missions.
The war horse selected by Hequ Horse weighs 750 to 850 kilograms. It can do anything, and it does very well in terms of load-bearing and endurance. It is just that the weight is here, and it is matched with five to
A ration of six kilograms of fine grain was enough to eat up twenty kilograms a day, and it was not enough. During the march and heavy duty, the meat was lost.
In Hehuang, Heka, Guide, Bajiao City and even Kangning Prefecture, tens of thousands of war horses can be let out to graze casually, and the horses can eat well. After they have had enough fun, they can come back to replenish the concentrate and eat some salt bricks.
If they are well fed, the soldiers of the Marshal's Mansion can charge freely on their most majestic horses.
But in places like Suzhou and Gaotai where desertification is very serious, especially when their attack direction is east, this is not the case.
If we attack westward, it doesn't matter if we pass through a desert with a radius of hundreds of miles. We can't resupply here. We can just go to other places to resupply.
To the east are the paddy fields and criss-crossing ditches of the Heihe River Basin.
At this time, the Mongolian horses that were freed by herders had the advantage of saving forage and became significant.
Liu Chengzong was chasing and shooting with the cavalry outside the camp. As soon as he shot the ball spike thrown by the soldier with an arrow, he heard the guard beside him immediately shouting: "Commander, the horse is back."
Seeing the Mongolian horses being driven down the mountain by herders holding long poles, Liu Chengzong wiped the sweat from his forehead and couldn't help but smile.
Suzhou did not disappoint him. At least they had recruited these war horses. Even if the frontline battle dragged on for several days, they could still ensure that the soldiers pushed the front across Shandan.
After capturing the Zhangye Oasis, the battle line can easily push past the Shandan Guard and reach the Yongchang Acropolis, the narrowest part of the Hexi Corridor, facing the Wuwei Oasis of the Liangzhou Guard in the distance.
By that time, they no longer have to worry about horse food. The Shandan Military Horse Farm founded by Huo Qubing is a real time-honored brand in China. It raised 70,000 horses in the Tang Dynasty. Even now, it is still the most suitable place for raising horses in Gansu.
A place for military horses.
After all, the geographical environment of Gansu was unprecedentedly bad in terms of large-scale horse breeding during the Chongzhen period... There is desert in the west and drought in the east, and it is in the middle section that war horses can be raised on a large scale.
Of course, Liu Chengzong smiled mainly because he saw groups of big heads running freely with their bangs swung, which reminded him of the red flag.
As soon as he sent someone to pick up the war horses, he saw a streak of sand rushing towards him in the distance to the west. It was Tang soldiers from the direction of Suzhou who came to report that there was an envoy from outside the pass.
After a few more messages, the cavalry team from the west came running over. Liu Chengzong frowned as he looked at the man on the leading horse.
Because this man was dressed in crimson, with a patch on his chest, and a black gauze hat on his head, he looked very familiar.
Although these are the characteristics of the fourth-rank or above imperial court officials, they are not the appearance of the Ming Dynasty imperial court officials, because the crimson official robe is made of military uniform and tied around the belly, and the chest patch is not square but has the same pattern as the dragon pattern on the cotton armor.
Round.
Also, what I wear on my head is not a black gauze hat, but a trendy item from the Tang Dynasty, the futou.
The iron soft-legged headdress worn by this man was designed by Liu Chengzong himself. It is a helmet issued by the Marshal's Office to senior civil servants as a protection on the battlefield.
It is not considered original. Liu Shizi copied Zhao Gongming in Taoist paintings, but the iron futou Zhao Gongming wore was a cross-legged one, while the one Liu Chengzong prepared for the civil servants was an iron soft-legged futou.
In addition to soldiers and generals, how many senior civil servants can there be in the Tianshan Expeditionary Army? There is only one person wearing this helmet, the main hall of the Navy Yamen of the Qinghai Marshal's Mansion, the owner of Xianyu Fang, and the captain of Huaiyuan Zhou Qiang.
But Sunday Qiang should be heading to Tianshan with his elder brother.
Seeing him running over, everyone in Liu Chengzong was stunned... Looking at his calm appearance, it doesn't look like something happened to the army in the west.
They had no idea that Sunday Qiang's heart was surging. Looking at Liu Chengzong who was standing up not far away, Sunday Qiang rushed step by step. When he was about ten steps away, he bowed his hands in advance, then stepped forward to clasp his fists and said loudly: "Commander
, Hami, which has suffered three defeats and fell for a hundred years, is back!"
"So fast?"
Liu Chengzong blurted out without thinking that the matter of recovering Hami was not as strong an obsession as Sunday's in his heart. In other words, for him, the Marshal's Mansion's control of Hami was a matter of course and not worth getting excited about.
But he really didn't expect that his brother's advance would be so fast.
Because Liu Chengzong didn’t know anything about the Yarkand Khanate.
In the year of the southern expedition to Kangning, the leader of Yarkand's eastern Turpan sent a tribute team into the Kurwan. They were detained as soon as they participated in the political affairs and were not allowed to go home until now.
Yarkand is a separatist oasis, feudal, tribal, and khanate.
In this sentence, there are four words, each of which means reducing the stability of the political system.
Separation of desert oasis means inconvenient transportation between cities; feudalization means strong local tyrants; tribe means low ability to resist risks; khanate means poor ability to centralize power.
The introduction of Liu Chengzong by Participating in Political Affairs is that there is a Khan to the west of Yarkand and a Khan to the east. Even if it is not a tense relationship, when this relationship is the most intimate, it is at best the same as Liu Chengzong and Liu Chengzu.
It is impossible for this kind of relationship to last for more than three generations. Under normal circumstances, the second generation will have to fight.
Jiayuguan and Hami are separated by 1,500 miles. He calculated the schedule. Logically speaking, his brother should not have reached the Hami Guard yet. How come he even sent the news of the recapture of Hami?
Sunday Qiang’s face was so full of joy that it was almost beyond words.
He nodded one after another and said: "Commander, I didn't expect that it would be so easy to recover the Hami Guards, which had been lost for hundreds of years."
As soon as Zhou Qiang's words came out, the generals and soldiers standing next to Liu Chengzong had different expressions. Liu Chengzong has not yet claimed the title of king, and none of his subordinates have ever claimed the title of minister. What's more, this kind of thing usually has to be done by warriors. No one expected that Zhou Qiang
It's so natural to call yourself a minister.
They are all warriors, and no one can understand what Hami means to Zhou Zhouqiang, a Ming Dynasty scholar.
In Sunday Qiang's life, national power has been declining since he can remember, but in the era when he was studying and growing up... the Ming Dynasty was still invincible, and the previous generation had fought all the wars that could be fought in the southeast, northwest, and northwest.<
/p>
At the end of that prosperous era, in the ideology of the scholars at that time, the Ming Dynasty was only one step away from the Han and Tang dynasties to prove that it was far away from the Han and Tang Dynasties. This proof was to accept the ancestors’ homeland of Yizhou, and this homeland was Hami.
Without it, there would be no unification.
Occupying Hami made Zhou Qiang feel more excited than occupying Tianshan. This had nothing to do with strategy, resources, wealth, or population. It was entirely about the desire to achieve great unification.
To put it bluntly, he would spend his whole life doing this thing, even if he only knew that he would be able to do it even if he died, he felt it was worth it in his heart to let Sunday force himself to death on the way.
Such a major event that will make a mark in the annals of history has been accomplished. Sunday Qiang is not excited about Liu Chengzong at all. I feel very surprised.
Liu Chengzong is different. He was born later than Sunday. Not to mention Hami, he doesn’t even have much affection for the Tang Dynasty, which is 9,900 miles away from Anxi. His affection is in Beijing and Shenyang.
What's more, in Liu Shishi's view, Zhou Qiang was excited about this matter. It can only be said that he was just sentimental and had not considered this matter strategically at all.
The reason why the Ming Dynasty cannot take back Hami is not because Hami is unwilling to surrender, nor is it because the Ming Dynasty does not want Hami, nor is it because Hami’s separation power is so strong.
It's because the people who really determine the situation in the outer northwest have always been the nomadic Mongols. When Hami separated, the north of Hami was occupied by Oara, the south was Qinghai Mongolia, and the west was the Turpan Khanate.
These three brothers are considered regional powers. They can easily pull out more than 10,000 cavalry to catch Hami and beat him up. Hami is 1,500 miles away from Suzhou, and Gansu itself is a few oasis strongholds on a long and narrow corridor, all along the
Heihe built a bunch of fortresses to protect Gansu, but it was completely beyond their reach to Hami.
Hami is located in the plains, with mountains to the north and plains on three sides. The local army is small and weak, and it has no ability to supply supplies to the army. It is impossible for the monks to escape from the temple.
After a few years of surrender, it was beaten and occupied. The Ming army fought back and was beaten again a few years later. There was no better way for the Ming Dynasty to abandon Hami.
But in Liu Chengzong's case, times have changed and the situation is no longer like this.
Liu Chengzong smiled and snorted softly and said: "I think back then, Hami was surrounded by Oara in the north, Mongolia in the south, and Turpan in the west. It could be said that it was surrounded by powerful enemies. The court expected the King of Hami to defend himself, but it was beyond the reach of the whip."
"Now Oara is me, Mongolia is me, and Suzhou is still me." Liu Chengzong shook his head and said: "General Zhou does not need to be excited about this. Recovering his homeland is just a rightful thing. It is better to tell me how Turpan reacted when Hami fell.