To get back to the point, Di Qing sent people over to spread the information, and they themselves stayed to rectify the defense of the ancient city.

The situation on this side can be said to be greatly beyond expectations, and what about the grain borrowing team on the other side?

Qin Qiong led the team to find a steep terrain suitable for ambush on the grain route that had been explored in advance.

"Uncle Bao, the other party's grain queue is very large, and it's not easy to deal with!" On the side, Cheng Yanjin carried his sparkling Xuanhua axe, and said angrily.

"Don't worry, these people we are bringing now are not the rebel army formed by the previous village warriors, these Qianghu vassals are really rare elite cavalry, leading them to charge into battle, as long as we can afford to lead the team, they will dare to follow us into the army!"

Speaking of this, Qin Qiong couldn't help but admire.

Cavalry, in order to reach a sufficiently elite level, several necessary conditions are indispensable.

The first, naturally, is horses.

Horses will extend to horse farms, grasslands, horse training, horse breeding, and even breeding, domestication and a series of problems.

With horses, you can build cavalry, horses are indispensable in ancient wars, but also the Central Plains dynasties attach great importance to a strategic resource, the Han Dynasty in order to resist the Hun cavalry, in addition to the royal garden large-scale breeding of war horses, but also promulgated the "horse policy", allowing the people to raise horses to offset taxes, Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty in order to improve the breed of horses, to create an invincible cavalry even did not hesitate to declare war on Dawan in the way of war! The Han army invested 300,000 military horses in the Battle of Mobei, and in a subsequent battle, the Han mobilized 300,000 cavalry at one time, and the scale of its cavalry is staggering!

The most typical example must be known to everyone. That is Da Song, who was drowned out by all kinds of scolding.

In the dynasties before the Song Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty firmly controlled the origin of horses, and the source of cavalry was not a problem, but it was not possible in the Song Dynasty. The "child emperor" of the previous dynasty actually took the sixteen states of Youyun, which are rich in horses, as a reward for helping him become emperor! The losses caused by the act of betraying the interests of the country for the sake of the private interests of one dynasty and one surname were immeasurable, which directly led to the loss of the material foundation for the Central Plains Dynasty to build a strong cavalry.

This is the important reason why since the Song Dynasty, the Central Plains Dynasty no longer has the proud iron cavalry in history! Shi Jingtang has been the "emperor" for only seven years, but he has brought more than 700 years of suffering to the whole of China.

Of course, we must also be justified in blacking.

Zhao Kuangyin, the founding emperor of the Song Dynasty, was a military general himself, how could he not know the great role of military horses in the Central Plains Dynasty? The Sixteen Prefectures of Youyun were not only the base for the Liao people to attack the heart of the Song Dynasty in the south, but also the material basis for determining whether the Song Dynasty could occupy the military initiative in the future! Therefore, the Song Dynasty used troops against Liao soon after the founding of the country, trying to reproduce the military miracle of Wei Qing recapturing Heshuo, it should be said that the Song Dynasty at this time was more aggressive, and dared to send troops to challenge the strong enemy in the north when the country had just been unified and had not yet fully recovered.

Of course, the results speak for themselves. The Northern Yanyun Land not only failed to get it back. With the successive rise of ethnic minorities such as Liao and Jin, even more land in the north was lost, and the shame of Jingkang became the biggest laughing stock of the Great Song Dynasty.

However, perhaps because there were few cavalry in the Song Dynasty, the limited number of war horses was allocated to the soldiers with the highest martial arts.

In the Northern Song Dynasty, the strength of the forbidden army was far from being comparable to that of the Han and Tang Dynasty soldiers, in the Northern Song Dynasty forbidden army, the martial arts of the cavalry were better than the infantry, and the martial arts of the superior infantry were stronger than the middle soldiers, and the medium was stronger than the inferior (compared to archery, one stone and two fighting bows, sixty steps shooting, six arrows and three hits were the foundation, etc.)

Although the cavalry of the Northern Song Dynasty is small, its combat effectiveness is the strongest in all dynasties, of course, it doesn't make much sense to say this. No matter how hard you train your 3,000 iron cavalry, you will still be surrounded to death by hundreds of thousands or even millions of troops after all.

Individuals are certainly a criterion, but they are also based on a sufficient base base to make comparisons.

In terms of horses, the horses allocated by these people under Bao Hong can be said to be the top batch of horses in the Han Dynasty.

In addition to the horses, it is naturally the riders themselves.

If you want to say where the influence of this military source is reflected, in fact, it is the rotation of the Xiliang Iron Cavalry during the Three Kingdoms at the end of the Han Dynasty is the most prominent.

Get rid of those that were even earlier, not in the late Han Dynasty. The first generation of Xiliang Iron Cavalry mentioned in the general romance or history books is naturally the batch under Dong Zhuo.

That's all kinds of crazy and cool drag to blow up the sky, what Han army, He Jin or what is the ten permanent servants and other kinds of capital garrisons, needless to say, what eighteen road princes are just barely able to gain the upper hand slightly, if it weren't for Dong Zhuo's own corruption, being scared, he didn't dare to continue to hold on, and burned Luoyang, ran to Chang'an, that with the Xiliang Iron Cavalry, and the Xiliang series such as Li Xu, Guo Yan, Xu Rong, Niu Fu, Zhang Xiu and other cadres, plus Lu Bu led the Bingzhou wolf cavalry, and Zhang Liao Gaoshun of the Bingzhou line, it is not easy for the princes of the Eighteen Roads to win.

This generation of Xiliang Iron Cavalry even continued to the next stage in the later period, Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu turned against each other, Dong Zhuo was killed, Wang Yun and Lu Bu took the throne and occupied Chang'an.

Li Qi and Guo Yan led the Xiliang Iron Cavalry to kill back in minutes, drove away Lu Bu, and slaughtered Wang Yun, such combat effectiveness is simply a bunker.

Needless to say, everyone knows that all kinds of bullying Boss Cao, killing his general, killing his son, Boss Cao has to give him an official when he turns around, why? Without the reason for Xiliang Iron Ride, can Boss Cao be so generous?

As for the second generation, there is no need to say more, it is naturally Ma Teng, Han Sui and Ma Chao. The most brilliant record is still brushed out on Boss Cao. Boss Cao's abandoned robe and beard were cut, and the combat effectiveness of Xiliang Iron Cavalry can be said to be still maintained.

The reason why Ma Chao was able to pull out such a team was mainly because Ma Teng had the blood of the Qiang people and had a high reputation among the Qiang people. On the other hand, they and Dong Zhuo at the beginning are considered to be juxtaposed, and they do not interfere with each other, you pull a group of people, I pull a group of people. It's all about the same time.

And in the third generation, it is the Xiliang cavalry that continued to be formed after Ma Chao was defeated by Cao Cao in the later period. At that time, on the one hand, the horses were not mixed much, and on the other hand, the soldiers were harvested in front, and this stubble did not recruit many people at all, and there were not enough soldiers, so the natural grade was much worse, and correspondingly, the performance in the later period was not very good.

And right now, the group of people under Qin Qiong's command can be said to be in the best state in these aspects. The horses are the most sophisticated, and the Qianghu vassals are also newly grown after being harvested by Duan Cheng, and they are also excellent soldiers when they are in their prime.

This combat power, as Qin Qiong said, was much stronger than the Xiangyong Righteous Army they commanded before. (To be continued.) )