The four palace complexes in Chang'an City cover a total area of more than 16 square kilometers. In addition to the Bei Que Jiadi, East Que Jiadi, which were awarded to ministers to live, as well as various treasuries, two-thirds of the city's area is occupied.
Official occupation.
Liu Xiang felt it was a waste.
It's really a waste. Take Mingguang Palace for example. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty built this palace for the purpose of housing the palace ladies.
How many palace maids do you have? Do you need to build a palace several times larger than most county towns?
To give a specific analogy, Mingguang Palace is twice as big as Zhuoxian, which can accommodate 70,000 to 80,000 people, five times as big as Book City, and similar to Liu Xiang's newly built Beicheng of Ye County.
It's too luxurious. Poverty limits imagination.
Guigong, where the concubines lived, and Beigong, where the emperor visited, were smaller. Each palace was nearly 1.5 square kilometers, equivalent to two and a half Youzhou-style county towns.
Not to mention Weiyang Palace and Changle Palace, which cover an area of five or six square kilometers.
Including Jianzhang Palace outside the city, southwest of Chang'an, and all the way to the northern foot of Zhongnan Mountain, Shanglin Garden occupies more than 200 square kilometers.
The annual maintenance cost alone is a large expense. For more than a hundred years, the Eastern Han Dynasty's finances were tight, and many palaces in Chang'an were abandoned and shelved. After all, the political power moved eastward, and the South Palace and North Palace in Luoyang were the permanent residences.
Dong Zhuo took Liu Xie hostage, moved the capital, and renovated the palace, but it was difficult to restore the old outlook. He did not pay attention to the economy and people's livelihood, and he was even more short of money.
Liu Xiang didn't want to bear this kind of burden. What use would all those palaces have?
He plans to use it instead.
In fact, the only ones that can move now are Jianzhang Palace, Shanglin Garden and Mingguang Palace. He wants to live in Beigong, and Weiyang Palace, Changle Palace and Guigong want to avoid suspicion.
Many of the ordnance in the arsenal had to be remade and transported thousands of miles to the workshops in Youzhou and Jizhou. Too much manpower and material resources were wasted. The workshops in Chang'an West City were difficult to keep secret, and they were too small to support Liangzhou.
The war with the Western Regions will also lay the foundation for the Silk Road in the future.
So Chang'an had to re-plan.
He once again prayed to the ancestral temple, took charge of the Grand Sima, and took charge of the government.
The first order was to transform Jianzhang Palace into a garrison camp, set aside several palaces, and convert them into ordnance workshops.
In addition to cold-forged armor that relies on water conservancy, other swords, crossbows, spears and halberds, as well as iron smelting workshops for blast furnace steelmaking, are all set up here. Haiyang was ordered to mobilize engineers and set off after the beginning of spring. The craftsmen and
Liyu was recruited in Chang'an.
Set aside half of the area of Shanglin Garden, sow alfalfa, establish a pastoral garden, and breed war horses.
This will serve as a breeding ground for Hexi war horses and Dawan horses.
Over the years, he has been robbed and cheated, and he has bred them by himself. Liu Xiang has more than 30 Dawan horses, and there are 12 descendants of Chitu alone. This little colored horse is very powerful.
After Chang'an surrendered, more than a hundred horses were seized from those left by Dong Zhuo and raised in the palace, enough to build a herd.
It is a pity that apart from Chi Tu, Liu Xiang has not seen another sweat-blooded horse so far, including Rouge, the best descendant of Chi Tu, who is not a sweat-blooded horse.
Maybe the bloodline gap between Baixi and Chitu is too far, and the chance of conceiving a foal is relatively low. So far, he has only given birth to one offspring, Rouge, and he doesn't want other horses to contaminate Baixi's bloodline. This has always been the case.
Already.
Bai Xi is an extremely rare individual among Youzhou horses. Among the tribe with a shoulder height of 1.3 to 1.5 meters, it has grown to a shoulder height of 1.6 meters. Liu Xiang thinks that it must have a genetic mutation, and it is a benign mutation.
It and the red dodder, which is more than 1.7 meters tall at the shoulder, gave birth to a foal named Rouge. This year, it is more than three years old and has grown to 1.7 meters. If it grows a little longer, it will be almost the same as the red dodder.
This is something that even those Dawan mares can't do.
Chi Tu and several Dawan horses gave birth to eleven foals, the tallest of which was only 1.55 meters tall.
In fact, the common shoulder height of Dawan horses is 1.5 to 1.6 meters, and not all Dawan horses are sweat horses.
The Dawan horse is a regional name, not a specific horse breed. It belongs to a branch of the ancient Caspian horse.
In ancient times, there were five lines of Caspian horses, including Persian-Arabian horses; Caspian ponies; Caucasus mountain horses, such as Kabatjin, Karaba, and Karada; and Dawan horses, or Turkmen horses, including today's Ahal.
Tekkin horses, also known as sweat horses, and Yamut horses.
At that time, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty went on two expeditions to Dawan and conquered the Dawan nobles. He donated 34 BMWs every year and 3,000 horses for general use. Unfortunately, after defeating the Huns, the Han people were not that interested in horses.
Later, it was discovered that directly recruiting the Hu people and letting the Hu cavalry fight for them would save money than breeding war horses, so the matter was dropped.
Over the past hundreds of years, horse administration has not been done very well. There were fewer and fewer good horses in the early days. The offspring they bred were little mice born by badgers and wolves, and each generation was not as good as the last.
By the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty, although there were still Dawan horses, their bloodlines were not much good, and the sweat-blooded horses were almost extinct.
We still need to pay attention to horse administration. In the future, we will go on an expedition to the Western Regions and send troops to Mobei. Excellent horses will be indispensable.
His current horse breeding policy is divided into three parts. The first is the military horse farm that is private property under his name. He collects excellent horse breeds from everywhere and breeds them himself.
The second is You, the Han pastures in the interior of the two prefectures are mostly cattle and sheep, with a few horses. If excellent individuals are found, they will be sold to military horse farms, which can earn a lot of money. Many smart people will take the initiative to find good horses and earn rewards.
This is a stupid method. Over time, it can slowly improve the quality of the overall horse herd. It is definitely not as good as directly breeding excellent famous horse bloodlines, but Liu Xiang must be able to do it, right?
There are many good ideas, but not many can be implemented!
The third is the various Hu tribes on the border and outside the Great Wall. They herd a large number of horses and sell some of their war horses for military use every year. The military horse farms will also purchase some high-quality stallions for breeding.
People are not forced to keep horses.
The policies of the Song Dynasty and the Ming Dynasty, which forced people to raise horses for the government, proved to be nothing but harm to the people and could not breed good horses at all.
Liu Xiang's horse administration was to breed some of his own horses, provide some to the barbarians, and then let the Han people voluntarily raise horses to supplement the rest. The effect was pretty good, and there was no shortage of horses.
But there was a shortage of good horses. There were no horses of good pedigree within the territory of the Han Dynasty, so they had to obtain them from outside.
Like the Akhal Tekin horse, the British thoroughbred horse, the German Hanoverian horse, the French Serra?? French horse, the Spanish Andalusian horse, the Danish Frederiksberg horse, the Soviet Budyon horse, and the Soviet Don hip horse.
None of these exist.
He now only has one sweat horse, more than a hundred cross-bred Dawan horses, thousands of Hexi horses, and tens of thousands of Mongolian horses.
However, the Mongolian horse was too short, less than 1.4 meters tall, and looked like it was riding a donkey. Liu Xiang didn't like it.
He likes Arabian horses that are 1.5 meters tall and Akhal Tekin horses that can grow to 1.6 meters long.
So, still have to grab it!
After much deliberation, he found that the best way for the Han people to do horse management was to rob.
If the territory and the population are snatched together, wouldn't there be a good horse?