Chapter 384: Da Wei, who can barely hold up the horse dance
Cao Shuang continued: "In the final analysis, the number of horses in our country is not bad, so that we can barely support a single horse dancing. I heard that the children of aristocratic families in Wu and Shu do not have such preferences.
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Ma Jun thought for a while, held the reins and nodded: "Yes, after all, the horses in Wu and Shu are not as many as those in Wei, but I can't imagine the scene of horses dancing together, how grand it would be."
What a scene! It must have been only during the heyday of the Western Han Dynasty that so many dancing horses could be assembled."
In the heyday of the Western Han Dynasty, there was a grand scene of "herds of cattle and horses, farmers used horses to plow, and people all rode them."
At that time, the country's horse breeding industry was in a period of great development. There were a large number of horses in the country. Horses were not only used for military purposes, but also became people's daily means of transportation. Especially for people living in the capital, if they did not have a good horse at home, they would
I'm embarrassed to go to the street.
"Horses are the foundation of military armor and the great use of the country." Especially in the Han Dynasty, the horse breeding industry had a reason to grow.
In the early Han Dynasty, after a long period of war, the Han Dynasty was weak and the people were poor. The number of horses was so pitiful that even the emperor could not find four horses of the same coat color to pull his cart when traveling.
During the long war against the Huns, the Han Dynasty's cavalry was always suppressed by the Huns' cavalry. Especially after the Battle of Baideng, Han Emperor Gaozu was besieged on Baideng Mountain for seven days and seven nights.
Behind the frustration, Liu Bang fully realized that the Han cavalry was nothing compared to the Huns cavalry.
After that, while Liu Bang adopted pacification measures to stabilize the situation, he also vigorously developed horse breeding and cavalry troops to accumulate strength for future counterattacks.
To this end, the Han Dynasty first actively raised funds nationwide.
In August of the fourth year of Emperor Gaodi's reign (203 BC), he ordered the whole country to begin collecting calculation taxes "for the purpose of managing the treasury, troops, chariots and horses."
During the reign of Emperor Wen, the "Horse Restoration Order" was issued to encourage people to raise horses. Those who raised horses well would have the privilege of exempting three people from military service.
During the reign of Emperor Jing, "yard horses began to be built for widespread use". In addition, thirty-six "herding gardens" were set up in the west and north counties, with Lang as the garden supervisor, and three hundred thousand horses were raised. At that time, almost the whole country was mobilized to raise horses.
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Each county has a horse minister, and the kingdom has servants and subordinates such as stable chiefs, stable ministers, etc., who are all specialized personnel and institutions responsible for horse administration.
During the reign of Emperor Wu, "horse mouth money" was added to improve the relevant horse management institutions. Even Jin Rixi, who was later entrusted with one of the important tasks of entrusting the orphans by Emperor Wu, initially got another job from Emperor Wu because he raised horses well.
Treat each other with eyes.
Because it received full attention from the rulers, during the reign of Emperor Wu, there were 400,000 stable horses alone, and in other places, the number of private horses was countless.
The large-scale development of horse breeding during the Western Han Dynasty indeed led to an increase in the number of cavalry. Emperor Wen of the Han Dynasty was able to mobilize 80,000 to 90,000 cavalry to defend against the Huns.
By the time of Emperor Wu, the Han Dynasty's army had changed to mainly cavalry, while infantry was mostly used to transport grain, grass and baggage.
During the large-scale counterattack against the Xiongnu during the reign of Emperor Wu, each cavalry deployment started with 100,000 cavalry, adding up to a total of 1.2 million cavalry.
After that, the Han army made full use of the highly mobile characteristics of the cavalry, ran long-distance attacks, carried out separate and combined attacks, and continuously won victories against the Hungarians. However, there were no dancing horses at that time.
Cao Shuang continued: "It's a pity that since the Eastern Han Dynasty, after years of war, the number of horses has been greatly reduced. It is far less than the Eastern Han Dynasty, and now it is even worse than the Eastern Han Dynasty. After all, the world has been divided for too long."
By the Eastern Han Dynasty, the government's horse breeding industry had declined greatly. This decline was mainly reflected in the reduction in quantity.
"Book of the Later Han·Hundred Officials" says, "There were six stables in the old days, but Zhongxing Province promised to build one stable." In the fifth year of Emperor Yongyuan's reign, Emperor He ordered "there are stables inside and outside the province and horses in various gardens in Liangzhou."
Although there were some additions since then, the overall number was far less than that of the Western Han Dynasty. The decrease in the number of horses in the Eastern Han Dynasty also greatly reduced the number of cavalry.
By the time of the Tang Dynasty, there were many horses in the undivided world. With this condition, if something was good at the top, it would be worse at the bottom.
Tang Xuanzong liked horse dancing so much that all the officials below him followed suit. His prime minister Zhang Shuo wrote a poem for Xuanzong in the 18th year of Kaiyuan called "Long Live the Horse Dance".
The poem reads: "The Holy Emperor's virtue is equal to that of Heaven, and the Heavenly Horse comes from the west of the sea. His arms and legs slowly walk and bow to his knees, and his arrogance does not advance with a thousand hooves. When the mane is in full swing, he squats and tramples, and his body suddenly rises up when he is angry.
.There is also a song that ends the feast with the cup in hand, and the head is bowed and the tail is drunk."
The whole poem describes the horse dancing performance in detail. Although it is full of flattery, it also vividly reproduces the grand scene at that time, the Tang Dynasty's preference for horse dancing and the technical level of horse dancing.
This poem was written in the eighteenth year of Kaiyuan, at the peak of its prosperity. At that time, the economy and culture of the Tang Dynasty were at the pinnacle of feudal society. The country was extremely powerful and had the ability to hold grand horse dance events every year.
However, many problems of the Tang Dynasty were covered up by this superficial prosperity. Behind the scenes of peace and prosperity, there were dangers. The "An-Shi Rebellion" more than 20 years later caused the Tang Dynasty to quickly fall from the peak of its prosperity. The Tang Dynasty's national power was consumed by wars.
Tang Xuanzong himself also fled to Sichuan, and the dancing horse he kept in Chang'an fell into the hands of the Anshi rebels.
These rebels wanted to use these dancing horses to equip the army, but how could dancing horses that had never received military training withstand the hard work of war horses? So they all died after a few months. These dancing horses became funerary objects in the prosperous period of the Tang Dynasty. Those grand dancing horses
Performances have also become "a thing of yesterday".
There were also many knowledgeable people in the Tang Dynasty who objected to this kind of horse dance. When Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty enshrined Yehu Khan in order to facilitate the purchase of horses in the Western Regions, Wei Zheng raised objections.
He believed: "If you want to be in the horse market, you should not appoint a khan. If the khan is established, then all the tribes will hear about it and will not attach importance to China. If you want to make it peaceful, then the horses of all countries will come without asking for it."
In the hands of Emperor Xuanzong of the Tang Dynasty, the AMTD Bureau was established specifically for these Western Region horses, and dozens of officials were set up, such as Feng Yu, Zhi Chang, Feng Cheng, Fei Yu, Zhang Xian, etc., and gave them the official positions of the fifth to sixth grades.
It spends a lot of money every year and encounters a lot of opposition.
But these voices were not adopted by the emperor who was intoxicated with pleasure, which was a pity.
With the golden age of the Tang Dynasty gone forever, horse dancing also declined. Especially in the late Tang Dynasty, when the world was in chaos and the people were in dire straits, horse dancing also disappeared.
As the Song Dynasty poet Xu Ji wrote in "Poetry on Dancing Horses": "When the Emperor of Kaiyuan was in peace, he would dance at night and become lost in his songs.
The embroidered couch is full of people's feet, and the brocade clothes are covered with mud.
Just beat the painting drum and get excited first, not pretending to be the golden whip.
Tomorrow I will play old songs in the opera house, and Fan Yang will come from all over the country."
After the Tang Dynasty, although there were brief attempts to use horses as dances in some dynasties, horse dances could never return to the world-defying demeanor of the prosperous Tang Dynasty, and they inevitably disappeared.