Zhao Bing knew that although he was taking the elite military route, the horses produced in several horse farms in front of him could not meet the military use. If he wanted to truly play a role, it would take several years or even decades to work. Even if he could obtain some war horses through trade, this road would also be restricted by the political climate, and the number of such transactions would not be large.

The source of the war horses of the Song Dynasty is the capture on the battlefield, and Zhao Bing knew that the capture on the battlefield was the most unstable. Not only was the quantity and source impossible to guarantee, but limited seizures sometimes were not enough to add holes, let alone expand the army. So limited cavalry could only play a tactical role, but could not carry out large-scale decisive strategic strikes on the enemy.

The Northern Expedition to the Central Plains was an inevitable strategic choice, but Zhao Bing knew very well that the more north he went, the more difficult it would be to rely on the navy to carry out strategic maneuvers. Even if the Northern Expedition was successful under the existing conditions and captured the Central Plains, it was not easy to defeat the Mongolian Yuan completely, because he had to admit that Genghis Khan was definitely one of the most iron-blooded heroes in history.

With the rise of Mongolia under the leadership of Genghis Khan, it led more than 200,000 Mongolian cavalry and swept over half of the Eurasian continent with its unrivalled combat power. Judging from its current territory, in East Asia, there are China, Mongolia, North Korea, South Korea, South Asia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, West Asia, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other countries, in Central Asia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and in Europe, Russia, Germany, France, and Italy.

Therefore, Zhao Bing clearly realized that even if the Northern Expedition was successful and the Sixteen Prefectures of Yanyun was captured, the entire north would still have to face the attacks of the Mongols. However, he did not have enough war horses to escape from the Han and Tang dynasties, and it was difficult to drive the enemy away and could only fall into passive defense. Could it be that he would learn from Qin Shihuang to build the Great Wall! This problem has always troubled him, but reality is reality. Once he crossed the Yangtze River, he had to face it...

"Your Majesty, this scenery is so beautiful. When my subordinates retire, I hope your Majesty will be here to be a horse shepherd!" The group entered the ranch, but saw that the water and grass were lush here, and the war horses were either cool under the shade of trees, foraging or playing. Several horse shepherds rode horses to guard the horse herd, which seemed very leisurely. Zhao Mengjin pointed at the horse shepherd with a horse whip and bowed to the emperor with a smile.

"Haha, you can think of it beautifully, it is not that easy to be a horse-wallower here!" Zhao Bing said with a smile.

"Oh, what other things are there?" Zhao Mengjin asked in surprise.

"Don't just look at the majestic appearance of these horses, but they are actually very cute. It is the most dangerous when they have enough food and drink. Just roll a few times, the horse's intestines may be mixed together, and it will hurt you in less than an hour." After receiving the emperor's instructions, Yi Jie replied after saying a salute, "So once you find a horse falling to the ground, the Wrangler will shout the horses lying on the ground at any time. Take care of the herd of two or three hundred horses, and this job is not so easy!"

"This family knows that after eating, you should raise your reins and hang them for a while to prevent them from digesting indigestion!" Zhao Mengjin nodded and said.

"I forgot to place an envoy as a general on the horse. How could I not understand these trivial matters, atonement, and atonement!" Yi Jie bowed and said, "These shepherds are still very hard. Whenever the spring season comes, the horses will start to heat up. They have to carry notes with them, record the mares on the record, and the pregnant mares are stocked separately. The horses have eleven months of pregnancy. When they give birth to a baby in winter, a group of horses will be more than one hundred foals in their lifetime. If the foals are born in the wild, it will be even more troublesome, so they should not be taken lightly at all times."

"Is that so? Someone can't do these trivial matters!" Zhao Mengjin frowned and shook his head repeatedly.

"Commander Yi, are alfalfa planted here?" Zhao Bing raised his hand and pointed at the dialect in front of him with a horse whip.

"Report to Your Majesty, only one-third of the land in the entire ranch has been replanted alfalfa. The rest will be removed after the weeds are removed in autumn and half will be replanted next spring!" Yi Jie replied.

"Well, it's better to keep some weeds appropriately. If these beasts eat them well, they will starve to death if they don't have to eat them in the future!" Zhao Bing nodded and smiled.

"Haha, Your Majesty is joking. Those Wusun horses who have just arrived in Jiangnan are not used to it and need to add some horse material, but after being tamed for a period of time, they can gradually adapt. The next generation after being hybridized to Mongolian horses will adapt quickly!" Yi Jie explained.

"How many horses are there in the horse farm now?" Zhao Bing asked again.

"Your Majesty, there are more than 500 stallions and more than 6,000 mares on the horse farm. In addition to some of the breeding horses sent to other horse farms as stallions, there are more than 3,000 more than 3,000 horses. After the next selection, the rest will be allocated to the guards." Yi Jie reported.

"Yes, another batch of good horses will be delivered this winter, and more and more will be coming in the future. You must be prepared, especially for breeding, and don't be careless!" Zhao Bing praised and reminded him.

"Don't worry, Your Majesty, I will do my best to do my best!" Yi Jie said.

"Why are there so many Mongolian horses here?" Zhao Bing and his party listened to the report while walking. Looking at the stallions stocked in different areas, they suddenly found a large group of stallions being kept in a ranch. You should know that the stallions do not require too many stallions, and there is no need to say much about the reason. And this group is all stallions, and not most of them are improved Mongolian horses, he asked strangely.

"Your Majesty, this was stolen by Beiyi!" Yi Jie said with a smile after hearing this.

"Stolen?! All of these?" Zhao Bing asked in surprise after hearing this. Seeing that the number of horses was not a few, dozens of horses, but hundreds of horses. So many horses were stolen, it was hard for him to believe.

"Your Majesty, it's all stolen from the opposite Tartars, with more than a thousand horses!" Yi Jie nodded and replied with a smile.

"How is it possible? It's across the river here, how can you get the horses here!" This time, not only Zhao Bing didn't believe it anymore, but even Zhao Mengjin and others didn't believe it anymore. He shook his mind.

"Your Majesty, several generals. This horse was indeed stolen from the Tatars on the other side, but it is not appropriate to say that the cheating was even more appropriate!" Yi Jie and others finished speaking, then they clasped their fists and said.

"Don't play the puzzle anymore, tell me what's going on!" Zhao Mengjin was also anxious and urged him with a long and verbal face when he saw him whispering.

"Haha, have you heard the story of Li Guangbi, a famous general of the Tang Dynasty, cheating the rebel general Shi Siming and fighting horses?" Yi Jie kept a secret.

"Oh, I understand. You are smart and can learn from the past and use the present!" Zhao Bing slapped his forehead and suddenly realized his mind and pointed at him and said with a smile.

This story happened during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty. At that time, Li Guangbi had become the deputy marshal of the world's military and horse governor and Shuofang's Jiedushi. His mission was to fight against the Shi Siming rebels at that time in the Heyang area and find an opportunity to annihilate them. The careful Li Guangbi discovered a small detail when inspecting the position: the Shi Siming rebels would wash their horses across the river every day, and they were very punctual every day.

Many people actually would not take this kind of thing to heart, but Li Guangbi frowned, took a plan, and lowered his head and smiled for a long time. He immediately asked his subordinates to pick hundreds of mares in the army. These mares were all mares with foals around him. He asked someone to drive these mares to the other side when Shi Siming's army was washing horses. Not long after they left, the mares remembered the ponies they left in the city, and came back with yelling and roaring.

The neighing sound of the mare also reached the ears of the stallions of Shi Siming's army. When these stallions heard it, they still had the intention to take a bath, and they all rushed towards Li Guangbi's army with the pace of the mare. Zhao Bing thought that Li Guangbi's mood must have been very happy at that time. He lost nothing, and he got a thousand good horses, and he also made Shi Siming lose a thousand good horses. This time, he made a lot of money!

Yi Jie also followed Li Guangbi's method to trick the war horses of the Mongols. After he found that the Mongols were also mares by the river, he grabbed medicine according to the prescription. Chongming Island was located in the middle of the river, and the northern edge was only two or three miles away from the north bank of the river. In addition, it was close to the estuary, and the water surface was wide and the water flow was relatively gentle. The stallions on the brain swam across the river and climbed the island without hesitation.

"Will you use it a few more times? Wouldn't it be easier to trick all the Tartars horses across the river?" Chen Fenglin felt that this plan was very good and said with a smile, as if he suddenly made a fortune.

"Tong Chen, the Tartars are not stupid. After they found that they had suffered losses, they would not be able to shepherd the horses by the river again, and it would be impossible to do another trick!" Yi Jie waved his hand and said.

"This success was actually a lucky chance. It was just a matter of Boyan's attempt to invade the south in the past. Some of the horses were not castrated, so they were trapped!" Zhao Bing said, this was actually just a coincidence.

This involves the topic of degeneration of good-bred horses. Someone once put forward another statement, thinking that the degeneration of Chinese horse breeds is due to artificial castration. The best war horse is first of all, stallions, which are much better than mares in speed and strength, but stallions have a disadvantage. He has a lot more times in heat than mares. In order not to let the enemy's mares hook the war horse away, they have to castrate them.

The castrated war horses are a bit the same as those in the palace where eunuchs are used in the palace. Even if men incite to cut, they are better physically than women. This is not afraid of the other party's temptation, nor can they traverse the horse breeds to the enemy and indirectly support the enemy. In this way, they can only devote all their energy to fighting and growing up. In this way, since the war horses without selfish thoughts do not have that need, they rely on instinct to do whatever you ask me to do. If you let me run away, if you don't let me stop, then if you run to death, I will run away.

Therefore, castration is actually an excellent war horse cultivation technology, but there are conditions. In a powerful country, war horses are cultivated from the country's pastures, and stallions do not require many. However, this can only develop normally in prosperous times. Once in troubled times, such as the several large-scale climate disasters of the ice age, the corruption of the government, the misconduct of the emperor and ministers, and the peasant uprisings and foreign invasions caused by it not only destroyed the government, but also the horse farms are no exception.

If the peasants revolt, they would incite the stallions to use war horses quickly. Anyway, they were in urgent need, and the stallions were talking about them later. Even if there are many pastures in the country, all the farmers who captured the ranch thought so, so the good horses disappeared. After the nomadic peoples took away the horses, their breeding level was not as good as the Central Plains. We cultivated war horses, but most of them were for breeding. However, free-range and specialized breeding are different. It is difficult to ensure the bloodline of war horses, and it will inevitably lead to the degeneration of the population.

"Your Majesty, all these horses are all allocated to the subordinates. After the army formed a cavalry brigade, they were short of horses, and the formation of a car camp accounted for the horses to be drawn. Now the cavalry brigades in Jiangdong are equipped with only 70% of the war horses, and the lack of troops is serious. Now we have to take turns to train..." Zhao Mengjin immediately put his ideas on the stolen war horses and started talking on the idea of ​​a first come first served.

"The whole army is short of horses, and it's not your place. Now the Western Army is about to go to the expedition, and the horses are not yet settled. How can I give them all to you!" Zhao Bing was annoyed by his words and frowned.

"Your Majesty, there are only half of the subordinates, and the rest will be assigned to Jiang Zheng!" Zhao Mengjin bargained again.

"Yi Jie, is the Tartars' pasture right by the river?" Zhao Bing ignored it and asked Yi Jie.

"Your Majesty, it's on the other side. According to Beizhi's observation, every year during the rainy season, the Tartars will drive their war horses to the riverside for grazing, and they will leave after the rainy season is over!" Yi Jie replied.

"How far is it from the bank of the river?" Zhao Bing asked again.

"Your Majesty, you have been grazing on the other side before, but after being deceived, you moved north for about a mile and no longer drove your horse down the river!" Yi Jie raised his hand and pointed to the north.

"Okay, let's go and have a look!" Zhao Bing thought for a moment.

Under the guidance of Yi Jie, Zhao Bing and his group turned north and reached a highland on the northern edge of Chongming Island. The scenery in Jiangbei was at your disposal, which belonged to the original Taizhou Road of the Song Dynasty. When the Mongolian Yuan invaded the south, the military and civilians of the Southern Song Dynasty resisted fiercely. They were slaughtered by the Mongolian Yuan and destroyed the towns. The rich land in the past became a wilderness, but now it became a ranch for the Tartars.

"Your Majesty, the other side is one of the horse farms set up by the Tatars in Huainan, and there are tens of thousands of war horses free of charge!" Yi Jie looked at the other side and said.

"Yeah!" Zhao Bing nodded, took the telescope and looked carefully, and could vaguely see the felt tents scattered in the wilderness, with countless war horses galloping around and foraging for food.

"Your Majesty, this is just looking at the plum blossoms to quench their thirst. The more you look at them, the more you become more envious!" Zhao Mengjin sighed, put down the telescope and said with a bitter face.

"We stolen all the war horses over there. What do you think?" Zhao Bing looked at it for a while before putting down the telescope and asked, turning his face.
Chapter completed!