Gao pragmatic frowned and thought deeply, but after a moment he shook his head: "It's better for him not to move lightly this time."
"Why, are you afraid that Gu Yangqian can't command him?" Liu Xin raised her eyebrows slightly and said, "Even if Gu Yangqian can't command him, don't you think you can't command him?"
"Me?" Gao Pragmatic smiled suddenly: "How can I command him? I am the Minister of the Ministry of Household Affairs, not the Minister of the Ministry of War. Why should I command him, a general military officer in Liaodong? If it was a year ago, it would be easier to say, because
At that time, I still had the false reputation of being a seven-town manager.
Now I am in charge of finance. Last year I gained a lot of financial power. I already have all the power in the government and the opposition. Naturally, it is not appropriate to interfere too much in the military... The reason why the emperor specially mentioned this and asked me to make suggestions through the mouth of Zhou Benbing is not because
Is that so?"
Liu Xin said: "Then why can't Li Rusong be used? Although Li Chengliang lost some soldiers and horses last time, according to intelligence, Li Rusong has almost made up for the lost soldiers and horses after returning to Liaodong. The direct line of the Li family's army has generally been restored.
The scale is about 40,000.
If you don't use such an elite cavalry to deal with Mongolia, do you still have to use them to fight against the Japanese mountain fort defense system on the Korean battlefield? I remember very clearly that it was you who told me that the Japanese mountain forts on the Korean battlefield made the Ming army
I suffered a lot."
"I have a way to solve the problem of the Japanese mountain fortress system, and Li Rusong and his cavalry troops will have other uses in the Korean battlefield in the future." Gao pragmatically said: "Besides, not using Li Rusong this time is actually not just for military reasons.
, more for political purposes.”
Liu Xin put her hand on her forehead and said helplessly: "You don't want to let the Xin School make meritorious deeds?"
"No, the political purpose I am talking about is not an internal purpose, but an external purpose. Whether you believe it or not, my political bias is not as serious as other people of this era." Gao Pragmatic shook his head and denied it.
"Oh? The purpose of external affairs?" Liu Xin said in surprise: "For external affairs... you mean the Mongols?"
"Mainly the Mongols, but you can also include the Jurchens." Gao Pragmatic curled his lips and said: "I want to make the Mongols and even the Jurchens feel that since Li Chengliang's defeat last time, the court no longer trusts Li Chengliang.
It’s not a general distrust, but the emperor’s distrust coupled with the suppression of our real school.”
"Oh, I understood when you said that!" Liu Xin's eyes lit up, she clapped her hands and said: "You deliberately hid the 40,000 elite Li Jiajun in the snow, so that they could fight against the Ming Dynasty during the Mongolian and Jurchen war.
They were removed from the military strength estimate, and then they were suddenly revealed at the critical moment and used as a surprise force!"
Gao Pragmatic nodded lightly and said: "This is one of the plans. It is a plan before the Chahar War broke out before the Korean War. If the other way around, the Korean War broke out first, then this plan would not be of much significance.
Already."
"You can't decide who will break out first among the two wars? This is not in line with your usual style." Liu Xin laughed.
"My original intention in doing this and that in Japan was to delay the outbreak of the Korean War, hoping to finish the Battle of Chahar first. But there are still some variables, so I can't say for sure now."
"Sometimes it's really the fate that matters." Gao Pragmatic said, suddenly sighed and said: "According to my original intention, in the past two years, I want to try to prevent the Mongols from noticing that our Ming Dynasty cavalry force is growing rapidly.
situation, because they only ignored one point. When the decisive battle of Chahar is launched, I can set up a trap and strive to fight a decisive battle to resolve the Mongolian troubles in one fell swoop. But the current enemy situation involves Horqin, which is...
He must be rescued, and cavalry must be used to rescue Horqin."
Gao pragmatic rubbed his eyebrows with a headache and said: "Just now when Zhou Benbing asked me to send troops from Jinghua to support me, I was thinking that it would be best to let Tumut send troops to support. After all, Tumut is not only powerful, but also
Once they focus on their support, the Tumen side may ignore the strength of the Ming cavalry, which can be said to be the best of both worlds."
"I think this is a good idea, why not do it?" Liu Xin said immediately.
"The Tumote cavalry is certainly useful, but you have to know that Tumute is now considered a foreign vassal. They surrender, but the accounts must be settled clearly. For example, how many men and horses they sent, what things should be done, and after the things are done, I will let the Ming Dynasty court
How do you want to reward me? It’s all about giving money, one after another.”
Gao Pragmatic smiled: "If you don't give money, no one will help you with things. If you don't give enough money, people will not work hard. In business, no one wants to lose money. This is a reasonable thing, don't you think?"
"Well, how much do you want to spend and how much help do you want them to have?" Liu Xin asked.
"I didn't think of a... maybe a better way until just now." Gao Pingshi smiled and said: "Da Ming can suffer a little loss this time and buy more geldings - buying more means that the existing geldings of Tumote
The horses and the geldings for the next one or two years, I, Da Ming, have taken care of. If the court really can’t afford it, I, Jinghua, can help.”
Liu Xin was very surprised: "Why is this? Didn't you always buy as few geldings as possible in the past and buy more mares and stallions?" As she spoke, she suddenly looked thoughtful and said to herself: "Wait a minute,
You mean...a war is imminent?"
The so-called gelding is a horse after castration, also called a castrated horse. However, many people may have some misunderstandings about geldings, thinking that these horses are not good and are garbage. This view is actually quite unfair to geldings.
, especially for the Mongolian geldings.
In fact, the Mongolians have long formed a unique method of raising horses during their thousands of years of nomadic life. Generally speaking, it is as follows: horses are first given careful riding training on grass for one or two years after they are born.
Make it full of green grass, fat and strong.
The castrated horse will be castrated as soon as it has four teeth. In Mongolian, the castrated horse is called "Atasi", and in Chinese, it is called gelding. Horses that are castrated early are actually strong, strong, powerful, supple, and more mature.
Able to withstand cold weather.
After the castrated horse has been grazing on the grass for two or three years, it is ridden again and trained again as in the initial riding training. After the second training, the horse's temperament is more docile, its gait is also ideal, and it will not
It bites and kicks people, and the rider feels very stable on the horse. There is no need to tie the horse after dismounting, and the horse will not stray far away. In addition, there are hundreds of horses gathered in the herd without neighing randomly.
The Mongolians never give feed to the trainers during the day. They graze on the grass at night and prepare saddles for riding at dawn. Although they do not need to be tied after riding, as a horse breeding method, they must be tied to a post.
Let the horse raise its head and wait until its breath is completely calm and its hooves have cooled down before grazing on the grass. This is because it is very harmful for the horse to eat grass and drink water before it recovers from fatigue after running.
After participating in the battle, the war horses must graze on the grassland so that they can eat green grass and drink good water. They must not be ridden during this period. Only when another battle is approaching, the horses are driven back to the camp from the pasture and tied to the horse.
Then, feed only a small amount of grass. After a certain period of time, the fat will shrink and the body will be strong. At this time, you can continue riding for hundreds of miles.
With this method of raising horses, the horses can run a long way without sweating very much, so they can withstand any expedition. They will never feed grass or water during the march, because when they are tired and stressed, they will not eat enough.
If you turn into flesh and blood, you will get sick.
The strongest and best among the herding horses are kept as stallions without being castrated. In the discourse in the Mongolian-Chinese mixed area, stallions are generally called "moving spur horses". Except for moving spur horses, in fact, most stallions can
After castration, there are very few sick and weak people.
Yiji horses are usually official horses. Mongolians who have the responsibility of feeding such official horses will also manage the mules and horses as skillfully as a herdsman manages a herd of horses. However, geldings and geldings are in separate groups and never interact with each other.
mix.
A herd of mules and horses generally consists of forty or fifty horses. A group of mules and horses must be equipped with a stallion (a stallion horse). When a mules and horses find that there is a runaway among the mules and horses under their jurisdiction, they will immediately take the initiative to catch up.
The ones that are kicked and bitten are driven back. When a spur horse from another group of horses runs into a group of horses that does not belong to its own group, the official horse of the group will stop it, bite or kick it, and then drive it away.
The professional herdsmen often hold iron whips to supervise the horses, so the horses are particularly afraid of the Mongolian iron whips. If the herdsmen find horses that ignore the order and rush to drink water, they will wave the iron whip and stop them immediately. Therefore, even when drinking water, the horses are in order
Arrange them in order, drink water in order, and then leave. This kind of thoughtful feeding and management is what makes the Mongolian horse raising method more outstanding than that of other ethnic groups.
How did Gao Pragmatic know these things? Of course he got it from his good student Erdemutu. Erdemutu was not only his student, but also the eldest son of Tumed Chechen Khan Hannaji.
Huang Taiji, who had already been canonized as Tumute - equivalent to the meaning of "Crown Prince".
With such a disciple, Gao Pragmatic had long ago grasped some of the tricks of the Mongols in raising horses. Of course, some of the techniques were simple to say but complicated to implement, so Gao Pragmatic spent a lot of time asking Cao Gan to carefully
Arrangements were made to recruit some horse-breeding experts from the Tumut people to breed fine horses for Jinghua.
In recent years, Jinghua has acquired many good horse breeds through the two Silk Roads on land and sea, including the famous Arabian horses, the Akhalte Golden Horse (the legendary sweat-blooded horse, and the national treasure of Turkmenistan in later generations),
Akhal-Teke horses (also Central Asian horse breeds), Kazakh horses, etc. are then carried out various breedings for breeding research. Of course, the largest number of Mongolian horse bloodlines are also included.
At present, there is a relatively successful breeding breed. Its body is smaller than the Kazakh horse, but stronger than the Mongolian horse. Its speed and agility are slightly lower than the Arabian horse, but its endurance is quite good. At present, this kind of horse has been transported to some places.
Conducting climate adaptation research in southern Xinjiang.
Because the horse was bred at the Gansu Liangzhou Horse Farm owned by Jinghua, it was temporarily named Liangzhou Horse by Gao Pragmatic. However, since the bloodline of the horse breed needs at least several generations, it is not yet easy to breed in large quantities.
Let alone large-scale equipment and actual combat.
In this case, continuing to purchase excellent Mongolian geldings as the main war horses is what the question is supposed to mean. However, in the Ming Dynasty...or simply in the entire history of China, the Central Plains dynasty had a key production that had to be produced by itself.
The thinking of mastery, so when the Ming Dynasty approached Tumote to buy horses, they often wanted to buy more mares and stallions, hoping to breed war horses at their own racecourse.
Gao Pragmatic did not interfere too much with this principle before, but after these years of development, he found that this idea seemed to have its own problems.
Judging from the Mongolian methods of raising and training horses just mentioned, this process actually has quite high requirements for horse farms and pastures, but this does not matter to the Mongols, but it is very stressful for the Ming Dynasty.
.
Even though the conditions for racecourses in the Ming Dynasty were much better than those in the Song Dynasty, if we compare this relatively good situation with the Mongols, to put it bluntly, the level of conditions is still in two words: lousy.
Because of this, even if Ming Dynasty's official racecourse has undergone some reforms, its performance can only be said to be mediocre. If there are any problems, it is still so-so. Compared with the geldings or war horses bred by the Mongols, it is really bad.
not enough.
Since the war horses bred by the imperial court are not very good, and there is a large-scale demand at this stage, plus the current need to reward the Tumuts, the three conditions are added together, and Gao Pragmatic, who does not want to directly reward them, thinks of buying them in large quantities.
This is the method for gelding.
However, if you want to talk about this matter, you have to hurry up. After all, the Tumen are already preparing to send troops. If the process of negotiating the business with the Tumut people cannot be shortened as much as possible, the day lilies may be cold by the time the Tumut people take action.
Therefore, Gao Pragmatic didn't waste any more time and immediately sent someone to call Erdemutu over. Erdemutu is now the Military Affairs Secretary of the Beijing Secretariat and happens to be in charge of the Army. It is very reasonable to discuss this matter with him.
After hearing the teacher explain the matter, he immediately agreed in principle and said: "The teacher wants to buy a gelding. The student can agree to this first on behalf of the Khan. However, the specific transaction details still require the Khan's nod. The student
I can only exert a certain influence in my personal capacity, so please understand this, teacher."
Gao Pingshi smiled and said: "This is natural, I won't make it difficult for you."
Erdemutu said gratefully: "Thank you, teacher, for your understanding. Since this matter is of great importance, and this matter should be done sooner rather than later, I suggest that the student go back to Guihua City in person, propose to the Khan in person, and try his best to facilitate it as soon as possible to avoid
hold up."
Gao pragmatically kept him by his side to exert ideological influence, not as a proton to send Hannaji. Therefore, he did not object to Erdemutu's request to go back to Tumut in person, and immediately said
: "Well, thank you for your hard work. It's rare for you to return to the north this time. No matter whether the matter can be settled or not, you can stay for a while longer depending on the situation, not only to fulfill your filial piety in front of your father, but also to settle accounts with him.
It will be good for you in the future to have more exchanges with your ministers."
Erdemutu nodded, but Gao Pragmatic continued: "In addition, it is not surprising that there are many people with good manners. I will prepare some gifts for you. You can be more generous when the time comes, and it will all be done by yourself."
Give them out in the name of... Be careful, the gift is just a gift, don't give them any hint, no matter what, do you understand?"
"Yes, teacher, I understand." Erdemutu paused and then asked, "Teacher, do you have any other instructions? If there are no other instructions, I plan to clean up overnight and leave early tomorrow morning."
Gao pragmatic smiled and said: "No. You have packed up well tonight, and I have asked you to prepare gifts for you... Oh, you don't have to come to my place to say hello tomorrow, just go directly."
Unexpectedly, Erdemutu shook his head and said: "The etiquette must not be discarded. I still want to come to the teacher tomorrow to say hello before leaving. Even if it is late, it will not be later than this and a half."
Gao pragmatic smiled: "If you have this intention, then it's up to you."
Having said that, Gao Pingshi felt warm in his heart, and thought to himself: After teaching for many years, it seems that his Chinese level is higher than that of his father. Yes, this is good news...
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