Two or three days later, King Huan Zhao Hongxuan, who was preparing to go to Hedong to join his brother, received a letter from Luo Yao, the eldest prince's staff.
After roughly reading the letter, Zhao Hongxuan curled his lips and said coldly: "King Yong actually sent Zhang Qigong to lobby the elder brother to join hands with the elder brother? How shameless!"
In his opinion, the eldest brother, Zhao Hongli, the former Prince of the East Palace, was clearly framed for his position as the crown prince by King Yong's trickery. But today, it was a good day. This King Yong actually dared to go to the eldest prince's mansion shamelessly.
If Zhao Hongxuan had been there that day, he would have spit on Zhang Qigong's face.
Compared with Zhao Hongxuan's sneers and sarcasm, Zhou Min's mentality was particularly calm. Maybe he felt a little secretly happy - with King Yong's acquiescence, Zhang Qigong excluded him from King Yong's staff, but now it seems that this
The master and servant were not living well, which made Zhou Min feel happy.
If he hadn't already defected to King Huan Zhao Hongxuan, I believe he would probably have said proudly at this moment: Look, without me, Zhou Min, you really can't do anything!
However, since he has defected to King Huan Zhao Hongxuan, it is not easy to say this casually.
Therefore, after Zhou Min touched his chin, he chuckled and said: "On that day, King Yong and King Xiang sent Chen Tang and Liu Jie to Qiguan respectively. They knew that King Yong and King Xiang had parted ways. What happened today will not go away.
It is expected that...most likely, King Yong is experiencing the same situation as the eldest prince, and was suppressed by King Yong and King Qing together."
When he said these words, Zhou Min still felt a little secretly happy in his heart.
I think at the beginning, although King Yong had a keen eye for people and picked him Zhou Min from the ranking of positions later that year, he still failed to live up to King Yong's trust and trapped Zhao Hongli, the former crown prince of the East Palace, and his staff Luo Yai.
North, but how did King Yong treat the meritorious people in the end?
Zhou Min never believed that Zhang Qigong would seize his position next to King Yong without King Yong's acquiescence.
"You deserve it!" King Huan Zhao Hongxuan gloated and cursed.
Zhou Min hummed in agreement.
On that day, Zhao Hongxuan summoned Zongwei Gong Liangyi, who had been appointed as the "Qixian Youshiwei", and left him five thousand soldiers, and told him to garrison the Qixian border market.
Afterwards, Zhao Hongxuan personally visited the King of Yan Zhao Hongjiang, the General Shao Hu and the South Yan General Wei Mu, bid farewell to the three of them, and set off for Hedong.
Because Zhao Hongxuan was worried about something, he couldn't wait to lead the infantry back to Hedong slowly, so he asked the Zongwei Commander Zhang Ao to lead the army, while he himself, with Zongwei Li Meng and more than 200 cavalry, galloped forward
Head to Anyi.
These two hundred cavalrymen were assembled by Zhao Hongxuan in the past few days. After all, he and King Yan Zhao Hongjiang now control the border city of Qi County and want to select some qualified war horses from the tens of thousands of cattle and horses in the mutual market.
This is really not a difficult thing.
Therefore, after greeting King Zhao Hongjiang of Yan, he obtained about two hundred horses and formed a cavalry team.
It's a pity that at present, he can only form a small cavalry team of more than 200 people for fun. If the number is too large, he cannot afford to raise it. After all, war horses need to be fed with concentrated feed such as soybeans.
This is a huge expense.
Zhao Hongxuan has privately calculated that the cost of taming a horse is enough for him to pay for the military expenses of five infantrymen of the Northern First Army. What is terrible is that this is only the cost of taming a batch of qualified war horses, and does not include the cost of training cavalry.
.
Although it is said that those who are near the water come first, Zhao Hongxuan, as Zhao Hongrun's biological brother, certainly has the means to get a few sets of full-body heavy armor for merchant water traveling horse heavy cavalry from his brother. But after hearing the cost of these cavalry heavy armors, Zhao Hongxuan was frightened.
The face is earthy.
According to his understanding, the cost of a heavy horse riding merchant can actually support the expenses of fifty of his Northern First Sergeants.
If coupled with the daily maintenance of the cavalry's heavy armor, this expense became even more unbearable for Zhao Hongxuan.
At this time, Zhao Hongxuan was relieved. Shang Shui's horse heavy cavalry hung up the Korean cavalry on the battlefield in northern Xinjiang. This was not without reason - his brother Su Wang Zhao Hongrun forcibly used money to create an extremely powerful army.
of cavalry.
Zhao Hongxuan is not the only one who is daunted by the sky-high price of heavy cavalry armor. In fact, Zhao Hongxuan is not the only one who is enthusiastic about the Shangshui Ranger Cavalry. The King of Yan, Zhao Hongjiang, also wants to build one. It doesn’t take much, just five hundred cavalry.
enough.
But after learning the cost, King Yan Zhao Hongjiang was frightened and backed down, because the total cost of building a heavy cavalry of 500 people was enough for him to raise another 20,000 to 30,000 Shanyang troops.
military.
At this time, King Yan Zhao Hongjiang finally understood why Zhao Hongrun still owed millions to the Ministry of Revenue even though he had many money-making channels under his control. The reason was because of the investment of the eighth emperor brother in military expenditures.
It really doesn't matter the cost.
After learning this, neither King Yan Zhao Hongjiang nor King Huan Zhao Hongxuan were embarrassed to ask Zhao Hongrun to support some heavy cavalry armor. However, they had secretly made a decision to wait until they got enough from the border city of Qi County.
With the money, it is necessary to purchase some heavy cavalry armor from the Smelting Bureau to build a small-scale heavy cavalry.
As for before that, let’s use Wugang chariots first. The relatively expensive heavy armor of cavalry, Wugang chariots are simply conscience, so much so that even the Koreans shamelessly stole troops, and even Zhao Hongjiang and Zhao Hongxuan listened to
He said that the Korean army was also preparing to use their Wei Wugang chariots to deal with the Linhu cavalry in the west - how shameless!
In mid-October, King Huan Zhao Hongxuan, with his military adviser Zhou Min and more than 200 cavalry escorts, returned to Anyi in Hedong without stopping, which was the garrison base camp of his Northern First Army.
After returning to Anyi, Zhao Hongxuan walked around the military camp first, then handed over the things in the military camp to Zongwei Li Meng, and took Zhou Min and the escort cavalry straight to Fenyin.
At the same time, Zhao Hongrun was recruiting refugees in Fenyin.
Although the year before last and the year before last, due to frequent fighting in the western part of Hedong County, many local civilians fled to Fenyin, Puban and other cities, but many civilians still fled to Jieshan. In addition, many people fled eastward.
When they arrived in the middle of Hedong County, they even crossed the river and fled southward to Sanchuan County.
Therefore, the first step Zhao Hongrun had to do after arriving in Fenyin was to recruit refugees and increase Fenyin's ethnic population.
Because only when Fenyin's population increased, he would have enough labor force to do the next steps, such as clearing land for farming and building river embankments.
But it is a pity that even though Zhao Hongrun tried his best to calm the people, Fenyin's population still did not increase much. So Zhao Hongrun, out of help, is considering changing Fenyin's civilian settlement model into a military settlement.
After all, Fenyin, as the rear defense base for stabilizing Hexi and the expedition to Hetao in the future, must be self-sufficient. It cannot let the Wei State bear the huge food and salary expenses, right?
You must know that the Linhu in Hetao are not nomadic people different from the tribes in Sanchuan. Once a war starts with them, it is almost impossible to win in the short term. Therefore, only by allowing Fenyin to be self-sufficient can Fenyin avoid being destroyed.
It dragged down Wei's domestic economy.
While Zhao Hongrun was discussing with Kou Zheng and his two classmates the pros and cons of civilian settlements and military settlements, a group of black crows suddenly came to report that King Huan Zhao Hongxuan had entered Fenyin County with more than 200 riders.
"Xiao Xuan is here?"
Zhao Hongrun was overjoyed when he heard this. He threw the preliminary plan to Kou Zheng and asked the latter to continue to improve it. He himself went to greet him with his people.
In Fenyin County today, the city defense has long been taken over by the 5,000 Yanling Army under Yan Mo. These Yanling Army soldiers naturally recognized King Huan Zhao Hongxuan, so they brought the latter in, so that Zhao Hongrun wanted to go out of the city in person to greet his younger brother.
, but the two sides met halfway in the county.
"Hey, there are all cavalry?"
When meeting Zhao Hongxuan, Zhao Hongrun smiled and joked with his brother.
"Hehe." Zhao Hongxuan chuckled.
Although the so-called cavalry team of his First Army in the North currently only has more than 200 people, it can be considered a start, right? Looking at the many armies in Wei State, how many armies have cavalry teams? Even if they are just empty-handed
of cavalry.
Zhao Hongxuan thought this way: first try to train the escort cavalry into qualified cavalry, and when the time is right, use these escort cavalry as the backbone to expand a cavalry force. Anyway, now there are border cities in Qi County, even if the Koreans continue to do so.
At best, he and Yan King Zhao Hongjiang could still obtain some excellent war horses.
The only thing worth worrying about is the cost of training war horses. Zhao Hongxuan is not as wealthy as his brother Zhao Hongrun. He quietly established a 5,000-strong Shangshui Horse Cavalry. He became famous in this battle in Northern Xinjiang, so that
Even in South Korea, the reputation of "Shang Shui Ma Wei Qi" is still resounding.
After a few words of greeting, Zhao Hongrun invited his younger brother Zhao Hongxuan to the county government office in Fenyin, and ordered the servants in the county government office to prepare wine and food to entertain his brother.
The two brothers drank happily for a few rounds, and then Zhao Hongxuan remembered Luo Yao's instructions in the letter.
So, he asked his brother Zhao Hongrun: "Brother, you came to Fenyin, are you doing something big?"
Naturally, Zhao Hongrun would not hide anything from Zhao Hongxuan, who was like his own brother, so he told Zhao Hongxuan his strategic intentions in detail. Zhao Hongxuan and Zhou Min were stunned when they heard this.
It turned out that while the people in the Wei Kingdom were salivating at the land west of Hexi, a certain King Su was actually considering a large area of land in the Hetao area. The reason was that there were millions of Linhu herders there.
Cattle, sheep and horses.
"Hundreds, millions..."
Even Zhao Hongxuan, a direct descendant of Wei Guoji's Zhao family, was shocked by this astronomical figure and swallowed his saliva involuntarily.
Millions of cattle, sheep and horses, what an attractive profit!
I remember that a few days ago, Zhao Hongxuan was still secretly happy that he had obtained more than two hundred qualified war horses from the "Wei-Han Mutual Market", but now he realized that his vision had always been inferior to that of his brother.
"Brother, when you go to Linhu in the future, remember to take your younger brother's Northern First Army with you." Zhao Hongxuan swallowed his saliva and said.
Zhao Hongrun laughed loudly when he heard this, reached out and patted Zhao Hongxuan on the shoulder, and said with a smile: "Practice well."
His meaning is self-evident: You are my biological brother, how could I leave you behind if you have such benefits?
Zhao Hongxuan was secretly happy after receiving his brother's assurance.
However, when he thought of Luo Yao's instructions, he temporarily put away the joy in his heart and cautiously probed: "Brother, that means you want Pu Ban and Fen Yin?"
"..."
Zhao Hongrun was stunned for a moment when he heard this, and glanced suspiciously at his younger brother who was obviously a little guilty.