Compared to the astonishing cost of toolbuilding, the horseshoe is much easier. Pen × fun × Pavilion www. ｂｉｑｕｇｅ。 ｉｎｆｏ

After hundreds of years of development and exploration, Dahan's iron-smelting technology has been quite mature and widely used.

The "Treatise on Salt and Iron" was written by Huan Kuan more than 270 years ago, and in order to better develop iron-smelting technology, the Han Dynasty alone had as many as 40 or 50 iron officials attached to various places. The number of craftsmen engaged in iron smelting in the entire Han Dynasty was at least more than 100,000. At this time, almost every village had two or three blacksmiths who could make iron.

After Lü Bu led his army to Hedong, he secretly recruited various craftsmen, and blacksmiths were the most important of them.

Tens of thousands of troops were out on the march, and armor and weapons needed to be repaired, wheels needed to be maintained, leather needed to be tanned, and utensils such as clay pots for daily life needed to be fired, all of which had to rely on the help of mature craftsmen.

Hedong is densely populated, and after Guo Da's Bai Bo army made a fuss, many craftsmen who originally belonged to the landlord and wealthy families lost their survival support, and it happened to be Lu Bu, who led the army to come cheaply.

There are now nearly 100 craftsmen in the Tiance Army who have signed a deed of dedication with Lu Bu and are silently serving Lu Bu, and making horsesshoes is a task for blacksmiths.

Wrought iron is much less expensive to make horseshoe than steel to make weapons, and the process of making it is relatively easy.

Horseshoes can be produced in batches by heating iron at high temperatures and pouring it into the mouth of the stacked clay fan. The stacked casting technology of the Han Dynasty is already very mature.

A horse needs four horseshoes, which add up to about half a catty. There are 4,000 sets of horseshoes that Lu Bu brought over this time, with a total weight of about 2,100 catties, and only 20 horses are needed to carry them. Among the 5,000 horses, there are more than 3,000 real war horses, and the rest are pack horses. So, 4,000 sets of horseshoe is enough.

Installing iron palms on horses is also a technical job, and this matter cannot be relied on by blacksmiths, because when cavalry goes into battle, they can't always run around with some blacksmiths who are not capable of fighting, so they must let the cavalry learn to nail the horse's shoes themselves. Sometimes, a horseshoe that is not nailed firmly will fall off on its own. In the future, replenishing and changing the farriers for war horses in the Tiance army should be a necessary skill for most cavalry to master.

There are about a hundred soldiers in the Flying Cavalry Camp who can nail horseshoes today, and most of them come from blacksmith families, and when they were not soldiers, they learned to make iron with their families. Iron also needs to be hard, because they have been striking iron since childhood, so their bodies are exceptionally strong and strong, and when they become adults, they will become powerful warriors when they pick up knives and guns.

When nailing the horseshoe, the four hooves of the war horse are first cleaned with water, and then the thick cuticle of the horse's hooves is filed with a special file, just like cutting the nails of a person. Finally, a special iron nail is used to fix the iron palm with a round hole on the outside of the cuticle of the horse's hoof. The hammer used to hammer the nails is also a special wooden hammer, so that it will not hurt the horse's hooves.

In order to avoid the frightened war horse, when nailing the war horse, the horse should be led into a narrow passage, so that it can not move back and forth, left and right, and then the knight who is familiar with the war horse accompanies the war horse, and feeds the horse a little food from time to time to appease the horse's emotions.

Occasionally, the war horse was frightened by pain, because it was stuck in the mezzanine, as long as the knight was next to him for a while, it would gradually calm down.

The work of nailing the horseshoe lasted until midnight, and Lu Bu personally inspected the various departments to ensure the quality of the completion of this task.

Xu Rong had seen a horseshoe before, and as a cavalry commander, he naturally knew better than anyone what this simple device meant for a war horse.

Horses without horseshoes can lose up to 30% of their horses on high-intensity long-distance marches, and this figure can be more than 50% when passing through some gravel and rocky terrain that particularly hurts horses' hooves!

A horse that has injured its hooves and is unable to speed up is a fatal injury to a cavalry that relies on speed to win. When a cavalry unit has more than fifty percent of its horses damaged, how much combat power is left?

Lu Bu's use of the horseshoe this time shows that his determination to hunt down and kill the Xianbei people is very firm.

In the early morning of the next day, Lü Bu fed the soldiers with dry food, let the war horses eat bean feed, drank water, and then led the troops to Mayi, which was fifteen miles away.

The fifteen-mile journey was just used to warm up and digest the soldiers and horses.

Not long after the cavalry led by Lü Bu set out from the hidden camp, they were discovered by the Xianbei scouts scattered around the Mayi.

This discovery is actually a little close. If the Tiance army was camping outside, the distance from which the enemy army was found should be at least thirty miles, not fifteen! If Hou Cheng's subordinates only discovered the enemy's traces fifteen miles away, they would be beheaded when they returned.

The Xianbei people scattered the scouts for about fifteen miles in Mayi City, which was actually a manifestation of arrogance. They felt that with the current situation of merging states, there was no sense of the Han army to reinforce Mayi.

Xiao Xianbei went south this time, and there were four leaders above the captain alone!

It's not that there must be 10,000 troops under the command of the commander to be called a captain, compared to the commander and the centurion, the commander is already the leader of a large tribe on the grassland, and each of them has experienced at least dozens or even hundreds of tribal annexation wars, and finally led his tribe to grow and grow in the grassland competition where big fish eat small fish and small fish eat shrimp.

Garrisoned on the west side of Mayi City, the Xianbei Wanfu Commander, named Huo Chiluo, has more than 6,000 tribal warriors under his command, and ranks second in strength among the four Wanfu Commanders who went south. The most powerful captain was named Koons, and he was stationed on the east side of the city with more than 7,000 men. The other two captains, numbering more than 6,000 men, together set up camp on the north side of the city.

Wai San Lack is a common method used by the Han people, but this time it was learned and used by the four tribal chiefs of the small Xianbei species. However, as far as the current effect is concerned, Guo Yi and the soldiers and civilians stationed in Mayi obviously did not waver, and they put on a posture of co-existence and death with Mayi City.

Guo Yi knows better than anyone that the Xianbei people's lack of one is not the same thing as that of the Han army. When the Han army attacked the city and besieged the three missing one, it not only wanted to shake the morale of the troops defending the city, but also acquiesced to the safe evacuation of the troops defending the city.

In terms of the cunning and ferocious style of the Xianbei people, if Guo Yi really evacuated from the south gate to the Loufu area with the soldiers and people in Mayi City, the Xianbei people would immediately chase and kill!

Having lost the cover of the city, how could just a thousand soldiers resist the 20,000 cavalry of the Xianbei people?

This is also the main reason why Guo Yi was unmoved and stubbornly defended Mayi.

Lead the army and civilians out of the city and retreat to the south, and you will definitely die.

Stick to Mayi, even if all the soldiers and civilians in the city are killed in battle, at least they can still be remembered in history to strengthen the integrity of the Han Dynasty.