Zhao Yu knew that although he was taking the route of elite soldiers, the horses produced in the few horse farms in front of him could not meet the military needs, and if he wanted to really play a role, it would take several years, or even more than ten years. At present, even if some horses can be obtained through trade, this path will also be constrained by the political climate, and the number of such transactions is unlikely to be large.

At present, the source of the war horses of the Great Song Dynasty is the capture on the battlefield, and Zhao Yu knows that the battlefield capture is the most unstable, not only the number and source cannot be guaranteed, but the limited capture is sometimes not even enough to add holes, let alone expand the army. Then the limited cavalry can only play a tactical role, but it cannot deliver a large-scale and decisive strategic strike against the enemy.

The Northern Expedition to the Central Plains was an inevitable strategic choice, but Zhao Yu knew that the more north he went, the more difficult it would be for him to rely on the navy for strategic maneuvering. And even if the Northern Expedition was successful under the existing conditions, the Central Plains were seized. And it was not easy to defeat Meng 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 commanded more than 200,000 Mongolian cavalry, and swept most of the Eurasian continent with its unrivaled combat effectiveness. Looking at the current territory, there are China, Mongolia, North Korea, and South Korea in East Asia, India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh in South Asia, Iran, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia in West Asia, Turkey, Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in Central Asia, and Russia, Germany, France, and Italy in Europe.

Therefore, Zhao Yu clearly realized that even if the Northern Expedition was successful and captured the sixteen states of Yanyun, then the entire north would still have to face the attack of the Mongols. But he didn't have enough war horses available during the Han and Tang Dynasties, so it was difficult to drive the enemy away, so he could only fall into passive defense, and it was difficult to learn from Qin Shi Huang to overhaul the Great Wall! This question has always bothered him, but reality is reality, and once he crosses the Yangtze River, he will have to face it......

"Your Majesty, this scenery is so beautiful, when you wait for your subordinates, I hope that Your Majesty will allow you to come here to be a horse herder!" The group entered the pasture, but saw that the water and grass here were abundant, and the war horses were either enjoying the shade of the trees, or foraging, or playing, several wranglers rode horses to watch over the horses, looking very leisurely, Zhao Mengjin pointed at the wrangler with a horsewhip, and saluted the emperor with a smile.

"Hehe, you want to be beautiful, but it's not so easy to be a horse herder here!" Zhao Hao said with a smile.

"Oh, what's so important?" Zhao Mengjin asked in surprise.

"Don't just look at these horses because they look majestic, but they are actually very squeamish. It is the most dangerous when you are full of food and drink, as long as you roll a few times, the horse's intestines may be stirred together, and it will not take an hour to die of pain. At the emperor's suggestion, Yi Jie replied after saluting on his horse, "So once a horse is found to have fallen to the ground, the wrangler must shout at the horse lying on the ground at any time." Keeping care of a herd of two or three hundred horses is not so easy to do! ”

"This family knows that the well-fed war horses should first raise the reins and hang them for a while, just to prevent them from indigestion!" Zhao Mengjin nodded and said.

"The lowly duty is indeed to forget that the envoy is a general on the horse, where can he not understand these little things, atonement for sins, atonement!" Yi Jie listened and arched his hand and said, "These shepherds are still very hard, and every time there is a rejuvenation, the horses also begin to come into heat. They have to keep notes with them, keep a record of the mating, and the pregnant mares are kept alone. The gestation period of the horse is eleven months, and when the winter gives birth, a herd of horses will be more than 100 foals in their lifetime. If the foal is born in the wild, it is even more troublesome, so it should not be taken lightly at any time. ”

"Really? These trivial things can't be done by a certain family! Zhao Mengjin frowned when he heard this, and shook his head again and again.

"Commander Yi, are all alfalfa planted here?" Zhao Yu raised his hand and pointed ahead with a horsewhip and said.

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

"Well, it's good to leave some weeds appropriately, these beasts in the province eat well, and they will starve to death if they don't have to eat in the future!" Zhao Hao nodded and smiled.

"Hehe, Your Majesty laughed. Those Wusun horses who have just arrived in Jiangnan are not very accustomed to it and need to add some horse feed, but after a period of domestication, they can gradually adapt to it, and the next generation after crossing with Mongolian horses will quickly adapt! Yi Jie explained.

"How many horses are there in the stables now?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Your Majesty, there are more than 500 stallions of various breeds on the horse farm, more than 6,000 mares, and more than 3,000 breeding horses in addition to some of them being sent to other horse farms to be stallions. Yi Jie replied.

"Yes, there will be another batch of good horses this winter, and there will be more and more in the future, you must be prepared, especially the breeding work, and do not be careless!" Zhao Hao praised it and admonished again.

"Your Majesty, rest assured, you will definitely be conscientious!" Yi Jie Shi Li said.

"How come there are so many Mongolian horses here?" Zhao Yu and his entourage listened to the report while walking, looking at the stallions that were stocked in different areas, and suddenly found that there was a large group of stallions being kept in a pasture. The group were all stallions, and not many of them were modified Mongolian horses, he asked curiously.

"Your Majesty, this is stolen by a lowly position!" Yi Jie said with a smile.

"Stolen?! These are? Zhao Yu was stunned when he heard this, but asked in surprise. There were not a few or dozens of horses, but hundreds, and so many horses were stolen, and it was hard for him to believe it.

"Your Majesty, exactly. All stolen from the opposite Tartars, there were more than a thousand horses! Yi Jie nodded, still smiling and replied.

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

"Your Majesty, several generals. The horse was indeed stolen from the Tartars on the other side, but it is not quite appropriate to say that it was deceitful! Yi Jie waited for everyone to finish speaking, and then he hugged his fists and saluted.

"Stop playing dumb riddles, tell me what's going on!" Zhao Mengjin was also in a hurry, and when he saw his long-windedness, he urged with a blank face.

"Hehe, have you ever heard the story of the famous Tang Dynasty general Li Guangbi deceiving the rebel general Shi Siming's war horse?" Yi Jie sold it again.

"Oh, I see, you have a smart brain, and you can learn from the past and use it today!" Zhao Yu patted his head when he heard this, and suddenly realized that he pointed at him and smiled.

This story takes place during the Anshi Rebellion of the Tang Dynasty, when Li Guangbi had become the deputy marshal of the world's soldiers and horses and the envoy of Shuofang Jiedu, and his task was to confront the Shi Siming rebels in the Heyang area and find an opportunity to annihilate them. And when the careful Li Guangbi inspected the position, he found a small detail: Shi Siming's rebels would wash their horses on the opposite side of the river every day, and they were very punctual every day.

Many people actually don't take this kind of thing to heart, but Li Guangbi frowned, thought about it, and lowered his head and laughed for a long time. He immediately asked his subordinates to pick hundreds of mares in the army, and these mares were mares with foals by his side, and he had these mares driven to the opposite bank while Shi Siming's army was washing the horses, and these mares remembered the ponies they had left in the city not long after they left, and came back with a neighing and roar.

The mare's neighing also reached the ears of the stallions of Shi Siming's army, and when these stallions heard this, they still had the heart to bathe, and they all followed the steps of the mare and galloped towards Li Guangbi's army. Zhao Yu thought that Li Guangbi's mood at that time must have been beautiful, he didn't lose anything, he got a thousand good horses, and he also made Shi Siming lose a thousand good horses, and he made a lot of money back and forth!

Yi Jie also imitated Li Guangbi's method to deceive Meng Yuan's war horse. After he found out that the Mongols were also mares by the river, he took medicine according to the prescription, and Chongming Island is located in the center of the river, the north edge is only two or three miles away from the north bank of the river, and it is close to the estuary, the water surface is wide, and the water flow is relatively gentle.

"Then if you use it a few more times, won't it be inconvenient to deceive all the Tartar horses across the river!" Chen Fenglin felt that this plan was very good, and laughed, as if he had suddenly made a fortune.

"Chen Dutong, the Tartars are not stupid, after they found out that they suffered a loss, they would not go to the riverside to herd horses, even if they wanted to do it again, it would be impossible!" Yi Jie waved his hand.

"This success is actually a fluke, it is precisely because Boyan wantonly swept horses in order to invade the south before, and some of the horses were not castrated, so they will be tricked!" Zhao Yu said that this is actually just a coincidence to succeed.

And this involves the topic of the degradation of high-quality horses, and some people have put forward another theory, thinking that the degradation of Chinese horse breeds is related to artificial castration. The best war horse is first of all the stallion, the stallion is much better than the mare in speed and strength, but the stallion has a disadvantage that he has a lot more estrus than the mare, in order not to let the enemy's mare hook the war horse away, so it has to be castrated,

The situation of eunuchs in the palace is somewhat the same as that of eunuchs in the palace, and even if men are instigated, they are better than women. In this way, one is not afraid of the temptation of the other party, and the other is impossible to indirectly fund the enemy by sending the horse breed to the enemy. In this case, they can only devote all their energy to fighting and growing their bodies. In this way, since the war horse without selfish distractions has no need in that regard, he relies on instinct, and I will do whatever you ask me to do. You let me run, and if you don't let me stop, then I'll run to death, and I'll run too.

Therefore, castration is actually an excellent war horse training technique, but it is also conditional. In a strong country, war horses are all bred from the country's pastures, and stallions don't need a lot. But this was only possible in the prosperous times, when there were troubled times, such as the major climate disasters of the Ice Age in China, and the corruption of the government, the misdeeds of the emperor's ministers, and the subsequent peasant uprisings and foreign invasions, which not only destroyed the government, but also the horse farms.

If it was a peasant uprising, they fanned the stallions in order to be able to use the war horses quickly. Anyway, it's urgently needed, and the stallion will be talking about it later. Even if the country had more pastures, all the farmers who had laid the pastures thought so, so the good horses were gone. After the nomads snatched away the horses, their breeding level was not as good as that of the Central Plains, and we cultivated war horses, and most of theirs were for breeding numbers, but free-range and specialized breeding are not the same, so it is difficult to ensure the bloodline of war horses, and it will inevitably lead to the degradation of the population.

"Your Majesty, these horses should be allocated to your subordinates, after the formation of cavalry brigades in various armies, there is a shortage of horses, and the formation of a chariot battalion accounts for the transfer of horses. Now Jiangdong's cavalry brigades are equipped with only seventy percent of the war horses, and there is a serious shortage of troops, so they have to take turns to train ...... now" Zhao Mengjin immediately hit the idea of this batch of stolen war horses, and began to talk about it on a first-come, first-served basis.

"The whole army is short of horses, and it's not you, the current expedition to the west is imminent, and the horses haven't landed yet, how can they all be given to you!" Zhao Yu was annoyed by what he said, and frowned.

"Your Majesty, as long as half of the subordinates are allocated, the rest will be allocated to Jiang Cheng!" Zhao Mengjin bargained again.

"Yi Jie, is the Tartar Ranch by the river?" Zhao Hao didn't pay attention to it, but asked Yi Jie.

"Your Majesty, it's on the other side. According to the humble observation, every year during the rainy season, the Tartars will drive their horses to the river to graze, and when the rainy season is over, they will leave! Yi Jie replied.

"How far is it from the riverbank?" Zhao Hao asked again.

"Your Majesty, I used to graze cattle on the other side, but after being deceived, I moved north to Lixu, and I no longer drove my horses down the river!" Yi Jie raised his finger and pointed to the Northern Road.

"Okay, let's take a look!" Zhao Yu thought for a moment and said.

Zhao Yu and his entourage, under the guidance of Yi Jie, turned north, until they reached a high ground on the northern edge of Chongming Island. The scene of Jiangbei is in full view, there belongs to the original Taizhou Road of the Great Song Dynasty, when the Southern Song Dynasty invaded the south of the Mengyuan Dynasty, the military and civilian resistance of the Southern Song Dynasty was very fierce, and was slaughtered by the Mengyuan, the town was destroyed, and the rich land in the past became a wilderness, but now it has become a ranch for the Tartars.

"Your Majesty, on the other side is one of the horse farms set up by the Tartars in Huainan, with tens of thousands of war horses!" Yi Jie looked at the other side and said.

"Hmm!" Zhao Hao nodded, took the telescope and took a closer look, and could faintly see a little felt tent scattered in the wilderness, and countless war horses galloping and foraging around.

"Your Majesty, this is just wishing to quench your thirst, the more you look at it, the more greedy you become!" Zhao Mengjin sighed, put down the binoculars and said with a bitter face.

"Let's steal all the war horses over there, what do you think?" Zhao Yu looked at it for a while before putting down the binoculars and twisting his face and asking.

"Steal it back, Your Majesty will be a thief?" Zhao Mengjin's eyes widened when he heard this, and he said in surprise......