Song Jiu decided that he would not invest, then he couldn't do it, after all, Zhao Kuangyin was not evil to him. Of course, he is not evil to Zhao Kuangyin, as a courtier, he has done a lot, and he will soon contribute to the Song Dynasty.

He didn't dare to enter, these fierce brothers were more ruthless than the other, and what he saw on the surface was that several people had fallen, these were all big guys, and the fall was eye-catching, and there were more people below one after another, and even many nobodies died because of it. To get involved is to send death, not to seek wealth.

The decisions made are just spectators, not involved, not reminded, and let it go with the flow.

On March 14, Song Jiu hurriedly returned to the capital, and if he didn't return to the capital, his mother-in-law was going to settle accounts with him, and Pan Weigu would get married soon, but he couldn't find the groom, and the matter would be big. Song Jiu entered the palace with a large number of drawings and written records.

Zhao Kuangyin saw it and shook his head, which could only prove that Song Jiu had a heart, and he didn't have the time to look through it slowly, so he said, "You can report it." ”

"Oh, Your Majesty, if you want to solve the problem of cattle, Weichen has thought about it, first, the price of meat is cheap, more, and the price will fall, otherwise in the future, the country will develop, there will be more and more rich people, and there will be more and more people who eat meat, and beef can only become more and more expensive. This is expensive, which means that there will be more people slaughtering cattle. The second is to make cattle expensive. ”

"Make the cow expensive?"

Now it is not a question of the high value of the cattle, but to prevent the people from slaughtering, so that the number of cattle increases, just like the glass, only to come out very little, so expensive, so expensive that I can't even imagine, I sell a vessel is fifty times, and it becomes more than a thousand in the blink of an eye. I sell vegetables for about 400 yuan a catty. I don't know how many pounds a pound has become in the market. Without him, there are too few. Cattle prices have not risen. It is the imperial court that controls and regulates it, and the imperial court calculates taxes based on it. Or the wealth of the people will be increased to the intention of increasing taxes, and the enthusiasm of the people who raise them is not high, so the price of cattle has not risen. If the price of beef is 50 yuan a catty, and the price of cattle is 7 or 8 yuan a head, and the court does not use it to increase taxes, what will happen? ”

"It's hard."

"It's difficult, so it has become an unsolved problem for thousands of years, and all the court can do is to issue a ban on the people from killing cattle, and let Li Zheng prove the dead cattle. As a result, there has been a shortage of ploughing cattle in the Central Plains. And Weichen thought of one more thing. Horses are expensive, so why aren't there many horses? ”

"Tell me about it."

"This is the intention of Weichen to watch the horse supervisor, the cost of raising horses in the imperial court is very high, although there is pasture, barley needs to be bought, and other feed needs to be bought. Barley is cheap, but when it is transported from the production area to the pastoral superintendent, the officials make a little more money, and it becomes less cheap. The people were also enslaved in the middle, and if this manpower is also included in the cost, the cost is even higher. On the other hand, what if the people raise it? Just a few liters of barley a day, barley is planted in the ground. The cost is only a few pennies. It costs less than two dollars a year, and as for the pasture, children can graze it. Or mow the grass and go back to spend the winter, which is not included in the cost. Why aren't there many people keeping horses? Wechen looked around. Few people raise horses, one is that horses are too expensive. Although it is more effective than an ox, it can pull things, it can run, and it can plow the land. Moreover, horses are included in the property tax, which is originally a fifth-class household, and when a horse comes out, it immediately becomes a fourth-class household, a difference of one level, and the tax levied is completely different. Therefore, this horse is also available in the people, either like Weichen, who does not lack these money, and usually uses horses, so he raises a few. Either use it to pull goods, or pull carts to carry passengers. But this kind of horse, which is used in towns, requires expensive costs. Therefore, although horses are expensive, there are not many people who have to raise horses! ”

"Reasonable."

This is a process of argumentation.

It is said that cattle are cheap, and taxes are levied, and they dare not kill them, so there are not many people who raise them, so what about horses.

With it, it can be argued that if the price of cattle is raised and taxes are exempted, more people will be willing to raise cattle.

Song Jiu also said: "There are also many things wrong with the pastoral supervisors, first of all, the influence of geographical advantages. The Tang Dynasty raised horses from Lanzhou Liangzhou and Qinzhou in the west, and reached Jingningqi in the east, and connected Yinxia Nanhetao and Loufu (northwest of Shanxi) in the east. Our dynasty mainly raised horses in Kaifeng, Zhengzhou, Luoyang, Daming, Huazhou, Weizhou, and Lanzhou, using tens of thousands of hectares of barren land as pastoral supervisors. That's the first question. Under His Majesty, there are three good horses around, one is the Qinghai horse, the Qinghai horse is better in the area of Qinghai Lake, and the Taomin place is mostly a short horse. The northwest horses are better than the Liangzhou horse and the Hetao horse, and the Fuzhou horse is also a good horse, followed by the inland horse, including the Hedong horse. The third is the Khitan horse. ”

"The Khitan horse is not good."

"Your Majesty, Weichen thinks it is better, especially the horses produced by the Wugu enemy and other departments in the northwest of Khitan, although the running speed is not fast, but they can bear hardships and stand hard work, can be suitable for expeditions, long journeys, long endurance, can enter the low-lying areas of the plains, can enter the snowy cold city."

"Even if it's good," Zhao Kuangyin smiled, and actually retreated, mainly because he wanted to hear Song Jiu continue.

"The best is Qinghai horses, this is the Tang Dynasty's saying, but they have a significant shortcoming, and the Tubo people, the same as the Tubo people, suitable for running and fighting in the hypoxic environment of the plateau, to the low-lying plains or hot areas are not good, so the Tubo has been eyeing Dali, only to remove Dali near the western plateau, and can not go south. The northwest horse is the best, running fast, can be high and low, so it is the place of pastoral supervision in the Tang Dynasty. But Your Majesty, look at the map. ”

Song Jiu pointed to the map and explained in detail.

Qinghai Lake produces good horses, but in the west of Chishan, it is higher and colder, and the weather is cooler.

Liangzhou and Nanhetao produce good horses, but there is also a line, Longshan (Liupan Mountain) to the north and west of the Douling to Hengshan line, and Qinghai Lake is the same, the weather is colder and cooler. It is also a reason that the Wugu enemy produces good horses, and the west of Jinshan (Daxing'an Mountains) is insufficient in water vapor, although the cold weather is dry.

Song Jiu said: "Oranges are oranges in the south and oranges in the north. Only a small part of the horses of our dynasty came from the Khitan smugglers, some were obtained from the Uighurs, and most of them came from the northwest, which were good horses. But after a few years of breeding, it began to mutate, and the horsepower will be weaker in the next generation. Even when you don't adapt to that kind of cold weather on the northern battlefield, you can freeze to death in the blink of an eye. I also did a competition, went to the border of Fuzhou, and before I clashed with the eldest sister of the prefect, I tested the horsepower with a herdsman. Wechen's horses are not bad, but the herdsman's horse left Wechen's horse in the blink of an eye. It's just that the imperial court has not used the cavalry to directly collide with the Khitan or Northwest Qiang people. No one knows. ”

"Go on."

"It's a difference in geography, followed by people. The amount of feed for a horse is regulated, how much a horse eats. The fluctuation is not big, and if you want to report more, the three divisions will not agree. Some officials wanted to be greedy for ink, so they withheld the feed of the horses, and the horses were not well raised, and even many horses died. In addition, although the land occupied by the shepherd is wasteland, most of the land is rich in water and grass, and these lands are suitable for use by the shepherd and suitable for cultivation. Now the population is not large. Once the country is stable and the population increases, it will inevitably encroach on the land. Song Jiu suddenly thought of a set of data that he didn't know where to see before, saying that Wang Anshi's promotion of the horse protection law was unavoidable, and the cost of raising horses in the Song Dynasty alone reached more than 500,000 yuan a year, not counting the cost of buying horses, there were only about 1,000 horses a year, and only about 200 horses could really be used as war horses, and the cost of a war horse reached 2,000 yuan! Sweaty BMW!

"So what do you say?" Zhao Kuangyin said angrily. But in his heart, he said that more officials had to be sent down to investigate this problem, and if this was really the case, the matter would not be small.

"Your Majesty wants docile people like the Southern Tang Dynasty. Or do you still want the pioneering and enterprising people of the early Tang Dynasty and the Qin Dynasty during the Warring States Period, or the pioneering and enterprising people of the Han Dynasty and the Han Dynasty? ”

"What does it have to do with horses?"

"Rent a horse."

"How to rent a horse?"

"Good officials must be sent to preside over the matter. Go to the shepherds and overseers to remove some of the short, wounded and disabled horses. These horses can't be raised, and sooner or later they will have to be raised to death by the little officials. They are divided into male and female and rented to large households. Regardless of whether they live or die, regardless of whether they live, a family with one male and two females, after ten years, pay two horses of appropriate age, and two after twenty years, and the court will not let them hand over the horses in the future, and they do not need to pay any taxes. Let them feed the cultivated land, multiply. ”

"Twenty years ......" Zhao Kuangyin hesitated, even if it was five percent interest, there were more than four horses in twenty years, and there were three horses.

"Your Majesty, if you don't give it to the people, you will still die, pick out these horses, the shepherd because of the corruption or mismanagement of the small officials, still continue to die horses, it is better to hand them over to the people, the people have more horses, there are more people who can ride horses, if you encourage the people to practice martial arts in their spare time, when it comes to the use of soldiers, there is no forbidden soldiers, and some elite soldiers can also be picked out. The main reason for the corruption of the military system in the Tang Dynasty was the corruption of the Juntian system, which was not bad in the first place, and cultivated a large number of soldiers with strong combat effectiveness. Wechen did not encourage the restoration of the government military system, but chose its essence, so that a large number of available military sources appeared in the people, and perhaps it could also stimulate the training of forbidden soldiers in peacetime. At the same time, the horses are hidden in the people, not the horses are hidden in the northwest, the northwest is all Qiang people, Tibetan people, does Your Majesty think they are reliable? Tang Taizong is an emperor through the ages, his most regrettable in his life is the conquest of Goryeo, Weichen thought that it was not the conquest of Goryeo, his fault was to marry Princess Wencheng, and did not mention it, but sent tens of thousands of craftsmen, because Tubo was strong, self-destruction of the Great Wall. The second is to move the Hu people of all ethnic groups scattered in Youzhou in the northwest, these were originally the fences of the Central Plains, and now there is a Huyin everywhere, maybe it will become a big harm to our dynasty in the future. ”

"Hiding the horses from the people?"

"Yes, and it's not that simple, if you don't send good officials, the big families who want to adopt may not be able to get it, and what you get may not be a breeding horse, but a horse that will die of old age. Or some big families with connections, the small officials will be able to go to the battlefield strong horses as weak horses. Or some severely crippled or dying horses were forcibly distributed to the people. It is not a hidden horse from the people, but a maladministration of the state, which seriously worries the people. ”

In fact, it is not very good, it is handed over to the people, and the people must be used to pull carts and plough the land, and the horses are heavy, instead of running often, and they still rest on the battlefield, but it is better than the current pastoral supervisors raising horses indiscriminately. Song Jiu's proposal was not for war horses, but to solve the problem of cultivated land and to increase the number of horses in the country.

"What does this have to do with cows?"

"Yes, there are many horses, and they are used to plough the land, but the protection of cattle is not used to plough the land? And if there are more horses, there will be horses that will die of old age, and it is also meat, and it can also take leather. Of course, it's an idea that comes with Wechen. The main thing is to bring down the price of meat. So the real way is to raise, on a large scale. I have been a shepherd and superintendent for tens of thousands of hectares, millions of acres, and how many horses I have raised, and I can only raise one horse in a hundred acres of land. And it's a great place for a first class. If alfalfa is planted in these places, one acre of land can harvest nearly 2,000 catties of hay and raise four horses. The overhang is 400 times! (To be continued......)