The Naiman and his companions were dressed in different attires and carried various weapons. Many of them had armor and stomachs pieced together from fragments of armor. Because they disliked the heat, most of them were shirtless and tied their sheepskin jackets to their waists.
Compared with the ordinary Han soldiers around them who were wearing white or khaki military uniforms and walking silently, they were obviously looser, but they also exuded a ferocious aura.
This group of people all fled from the grassland to the Central Plains for various reasons in recent years. They were either horse thieves or offended someone on the grassland. There were Mubo warriors who were kidnapped by the Mongols from the Xia Kingdom in the early years, and Plateau people.
The "Briyati" in the north are the people in the forest.
The Kingdom of Jin and the Mongols had been fighting for so many years, and the defeated tribes on the grasslands had always been accustomed to go south to join the Jin Dynasty, and were then organized into the so-called "Zhe Army". The Zou Army suffered huge losses in the previous incidents in Zhongdu, but
Until the two cents of Dai and Jin, there were still remnants in the army.
After Kaifeng rectified the military system, these Zou troops were divided into the 13th Captain's Department, and at the same time merged into the Hu tribe who had taken refuge in the northwest border over the years. Monk Wanyan Chen was responsible for commanding these fierce savages under his brother.
Each of these people has a tribal background, and most of them bring their own weapons and horses with the army. Among the thirteen captains of Kaifeng Prefecture, only these people can now organize large-scale cavalry.
It was already early summer. Their horses had eaten grass all spring and had replenished a lot of fat lost in the winter. However, the horses held by everyone were still a little thin, and there were obviously some old horses or young ones with insufficient teeth mixed in.
horse.
Horses are very delicate animals. Old or immature horses can easily die from exhaustion if they have to carry people around for a long time.
Therefore, each of them led the war horse. Unless Monk Wanyan Chen specifically ordered to go on the road or to meet the enemy, they never mounted the horse. Many people deliberately chose the lightest saddles and were not even willing to put their luggage on the back of the war horse.
The prisoners were detained and walked beside them, so that the prisoners could carry the weight. This was one of the reasons why Wanyan Xielie's troops carried strong men along the way.
Monk Wanyan Chen walked in the queue of these Hu people. He also dismounted and walked. From time to time, he would go to the roadside to grab a handful of young grass, carefully shake off the dust, and feed it to his war horses.
When he joined the army in Fengzhou in his early years, there were a lot of war horses in the army. Many soldiers in the town kept several horses in their homes. Whenever the court defaulted on military pay and rations, they would resell one and then ask for favors from the Qunmu Station.
One or two horses were stolen from the ranch under his jurisdiction to make up for the shortfall.
Ranches would sometimes buy horses from soldiers, mostly to top up their numbers when the court sent people to inspect them, so even old and lame horses were fine.
But later, Monan Mountain changed hands, and the source of the horses disappeared. The current horses in Kaifeng Prefecture are mainly purchased from the Qiang tribe, and the price is very high.
After the more than 20,000 war horses purchased last year were distributed to each captain's headquarters, more than 3,000 of them died of illness in one year because they had not been tamed and had not had time to be intensively raised and familiar with the water and soil. The emperor was furious about this.
A special animal husbandry department was set up, headed by clan Wanyan and Zhou Qin, who were responsible for inspecting the management of horses by various ministries.
Wanyan Hezhou himself was not active, he only watched his subordinates issue instructions.
This nobleman of the clan had once served as Marshal and Supervisor of the Army, and he knew that it was not easy for the generals at the grassroots level. The generals and generals in various ministries had few horses to call for, but they could not afford to raise more. Some things were inquired too clearly, which caused unnecessary trouble.
Wanyan Xielie was the only one who failed to protect him because he was a close confidant of the late emperor. He had always been grudged against him, so he ran the army harshly and managed it extremely strictly. The war horses belonging to their army exceeded the rest in terms of quantity and quality.
Each captain's department.
However, the army cannot be maintained by military law alone. Although Wanyan Xielie runs the army harshly, the rewards are not inclusive... Those rewards are not given by the court, but the money given by the emperor after he arrived in Zhongdu last year
.The total amount was not much in the first place, but it was all spent in two months.
Last month, he had no choice but to ask Monk Wanyan Chen for cash. So Monk Wanyan Chen also took out the emperor's reward, which totaled 500 taels of silver, 300 bolts of silk, and a jade spit falcon.
A golden cup.
Silver and silk invested in an army of more than 10,000 people would not even make a splash, and jade belts and gold cups would not be of any practical benefit, but both the commander-in-chief and the envoy of the army were impoverished.
Raising and training troops has been extremely expensive since ancient times. To make a living and support their families, the court had to continuously provide money and rewards. The higher the requirements for the training and combat effectiveness of the army, the more resources it had to spend.
benefits to satisfy the soldiers.
At the end of last year, King Sui ascended the throne of Kaifeng. At first, he rewarded the entire army several times in succession, and then reorganized the elite soldiers and generals of each department, achieving a powerful force of thirteen captains. However, most of the territory of the Kaifeng imperial court was relatively barren, and the center
In fact, it is only a Kaifeng Prefecture, plus at most half of Hedong, to help half of the country.
With the center established and the system suddenly complete, the civil and military officials who needed to receive salaries were stumbled over and over again. In order to win over local officials, the imperial court promised more high-ranking officials generous salaries. So inevitably, money and food became more and more tense. I heard that last month
People are already being sent to search the old palace of Kaifeng Mansion and peel off the gold foil from the palace decorations to piece together daily expenses.
The imperial court was about to run out of money. If it couldn't come up with the money and wanted to keep the army available, it would have to allow the generals to raise wages and food on the spot. But in this way, vassal towns would inevitably be formed. The officials of Kaifeng Prefecture, especially the Han people,
The members are very taboo about this.
At the beginning of the year, the imperial court had another hope, which was the Song people's annual coins.
But the people of the Song Dynasty were very cunning, and they repeatedly evaded this. They would always use the things in the court to argue and talk bitterly, but they did not actually take the money. According to the spies, they actually fought openly and secretly with Zhongdu.
Fierce, conniving countless maritime merchants to do business!
What do Kaifeng think about this situation? Are they just waiting for charity from the Song people?
The imperial court can wait, but how can the poor generals wait? Can an army of hundreds of thousands wait?
Even if we can wait a few months or longer, what's the point?
Guo Ning, the Duke of Zhou in Zhongdu, has now exhausted all his old foundation, so he is unable to send troops for war. However, he has always made money by relying on maritime business, and Zhongdu and Hebei have been a prosperous place since ancient times.
, as long as we work hard for a year or two, we may be able to restore our old outlook, and then bring the mighty soldiers who defeated the Mongolian army to the battlefield one by one.
At that time, what can the Western Jin Dynasty in Kaifeng do to resist?
So in the end, all that was left was to go south and plunder.
It's really ridiculous to say that Guo Ning in Zhongdu is obviously a thief, but now he pretends to run the country; Dai Jin in Kaifeng is obviously an orthodox person, but he can only think about burning, killing and looting.
Monk Wanyan Chen could only comfort himself by saying that the ancestors of the Jurchens raised their troops from the banks of the Hun Tong River, and they relied on fighting to support war. By chewing the flesh and blood of Daliao's body, they expanded like a snowball. Today's Daikin, of course, has
It has weakened, and even the main force of the army is no longer Jurchen. But it can maintain the looting style, which shows that the bloody spirit is still there, which cannot be said to be a bad thing.
Let’s look at it again, how did the Song Dynasty compare with the Liao Dynasty?
It is recognized that the people of Song Dynasty are weak! I, Dajin, just want to show off to you!
The Naiman man walking beside Monk Wanyan Chen suddenly started to cry out.
Monk Wanyan Chen was startled from his meditation and heard the sound of the horn in front. It was the front sentry that had collided with the enemy. From the length of the horn sound, it seemed that the number of the enemy was quite large, not the enemy soldiers.
Or crossbowmen, but which regular army they bumped into.