readx;? When Zhang Jiashi was gradually recovering the areas that the Great Qin Empire had lost control, one thing gradually became a serious burden that he could not avoid, that is, if he wanted to develop cavalry, he had to expand the scale of horse breeding. Pen "Fun" Pavilion www.biquge.info

And this serious burden lies in the corresponding situation of horse breeding, especially in terms of horse food.

Zhang Jiashi has to admit one point, that is, the cost of raising horses in later generations is much lower than that of raising horses in ancient times, and it is said that the cost of raising horses in later generations is about 10,000 yuan per year.

Of course, this hearsay data, Zhang Jiashi himself is noncommittal. After all, he didn't personally embody it.

It's just that in ancient times, Zhang Jiashi said that the cost of raising horses was expensive......

......

Ancient China has a long history of horse breeding:

Because of the important role of horses in warfare, transportation, etiquette, and cultivation and traction, they were called the first of the "six animals" very early. Due to the needs of war preparedness, successive governments raised a large number of horses and set up officials to manage them. The people also raised horses for farming. In the Han and Tang dynasties, the horse breeding industry was at its peak. The nomadic peoples of the north and northwest are especially known for their well-developed horse breeding, fertile pastures, and good riding skills. After the Middle Tang Dynasty, the drastic land annexation, the large increase in population, the relative reduction of pasture land, and the prohibition of breeding by the rulers led to the decline of the government and the people, especially after the Qing Dynasty. Traditional pastures have also been greatly reduced due to overgrazing, over-reclamation and desertification, and the grassland horse breeding industry has not recovered its former prosperity.

The Pu's wild horse was once considered the ancestor of the horse breed in northern China. Later archaeological excavations and investigations have proved that the ancestors of Chinese horses are wild horse breeds, and their predecessors were Sanmen horses, all of which lived in the vast areas of northern China. The southern Chinese horse breed originated from the Yunnan horse, and their fossils are distributed in a vast area centered on Sichuan and Yunnan.

Neolithic sites such as Chengziya in Licheng, Shandong Province, and Baiying in Tangyin, Henan, which belong to Longshan culture, have unearthed horse bones. The lower molars of the horses unearthed from the early cultural sites of Qijia in Dahezhuang, Yongjing, Gansu Province, have been dated and corrected by carbon, and their age is about 2000 BC, which is no different from modern horses after identification. According to the "Zhou Yi Department Resignation", the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun "served oxen and horses, and led to far-reaching", indicating that horses had been domesticated and used for military service at that time.

Ancient Chinese horses are generally higher than modern horse breeds, and there have been many so-called "thousand-mile horses" in the past dynasties, and there are 3,000 mares (牝) of more than six feet in the Spring and Autumn Period. During the reign of Emperor Jing of the Han Dynasty, it was forbidden for horses in the prime of life to be more than five feet nine inches tall to leave the customs, which was equal to the terracotta figurines unearthed from the Mausoleum of Qin Shi Huang. Since the Ming Dynasty, due to the wear and tear of the war and the decline of the horse breeding industry, Chinese horse breeds have shown a trend of degradation, except for some good breeds that are still preserved in the western minority areas.

The distribution of ancient horse breeding areas in ancient China is basically the same as that in modern times, but due to the changes in socio-economic conditions and ecological environment in traditional agricultural areas, the number of horses has decreased significantly in recent hundreds of years.

Northwest Horse Production Area: This area includes the ancient Western Regions, the grasslands are abundant, and the people of all ethnic groups have always lived on animal husbandry and are rich in good horses. For more than 2,000 years, it has been a major horse resource in China. Shaanxi and Gansu also have a long history of horse breeding. About 900 B.C., Feizi Zai and Wei Zhiye were awarded the title of King Xiao of Zhou for raising horses, and became the ancestor of the Qin State, and the Qin horse was also famous. In the later Han and Tang dynasties, the large-scale national nutrition horse farms were mainly distributed in this area. After the Anshi Rebellion in the Tang Dynasty, Longyou fell into Tibet, and animal husbandry was still developed. In the Song and Ming dynasties, tens of thousands of horses were imported from the northwest to the interior every year, including the relics of Tang horses. In the Ming Dynasty, military horses were bred in Shaanxi and Gansu provinces, and horse farms were built until the far reaches of the Hexi Corridor. During the Qianlong period of the Qing Dynasty, the horse farm was set up outside Xining to Jiayu Pass, and the scale of the horse farm in Yili and Balikun was particularly large, and the stallions transported from Inner Mongolia and Yumen were also raised.

Saibei Horse Production Area: The vast grasslands north of the Great Wall are the ancient origin of Mongolian horse breeds. After the Warring States period, the Xiongnu, Turkic, Mongolian and other nomadic peoples rose here one after another, with a huge herd of horses. Through trade, wars and migrations between ethnic groups, a large number of horses in this region have been continuously introduced to the Central Plains since the Zhou and Qin dynasties, such as the Tang Dynasty set up a horse market in the north, and some of the tribute horses even came from the Baikal area, the Ming, Qing Dynasty, Xuanhua, and Datong border towns, and the annual quota of horses to the Saiwai City reached 34,000 horses, and allowed the people to sell horses freely in the border area. From the Liao, Jin, Yuan and Qing dynasties, the Chahar grassland was the main horse breeding ground. During the reign of the Yuan Dynasty, the land was divided into 12 large pastoral areas from southeastern Siberia through Chahar to the lower reaches of the Yellow River. The Qing Dynasty organized the Mongolian people to develop horse breeding throughout Chahar, and most of the best horses were given here.

Southwest Horse Production Area: Southwest China, including Tibet, can be traced back to the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period. During the Han Dynasty, Bashu merchants already traded horses and other livestock here. The Eastern Han Dynasty once set up horse gardens in Sichuan and Yunnan. By the Song Dynasty, the southwest horse resources were more valued. From the Northern Song Dynasty to the end of the Ming Dynasty, the tea and horse trade, Shu horses and Yunnan and Guizhou horses represented by Dali horses were the main objects. Southwest horses are suitable for the ecological environment of mountainous areas, and there is no shortage of precious and good horses, but they are not as good as northern horses for military use. According to the record of "Guihai Yu Hengzhi Beast Chronicles", the "fruit off the horse" produced in the south is not more than three feet high, and the best is produced in Deqing, Guangdong.

Kanto Horse Producing Area: The Northeast region is also an important horse-producing region in Chinese history. In the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, Donghu and the successive Xianbei and Wuhuan were all riding and hunting tribes. The Buyeo people in the Nenjiang and Songhua River basins in the east of Xianbei are mainly engaged in agriculture and also produce famous horses. After the Khitan and Jurchen tribes successively established the Liao and Jin dynasties, they had a grand herd organization. More than 100,000 horses were raised in Liao, and 470,000 horses were raised in only 7 herds during the reign of Jin Shizong. During the Yongle period of the Ming Dynasty, a horse market was set up in Liaodong and other places, and horses from the Songhua River to Heilongjiang were purchased, and the Liaodong Yuan Horse Temple was set up to preside over horse breeding. In the early Qing Dynasty, horse farms were also set up in the northeast, but the horse breeding industry declined significantly. Later, due to a large number of immigrants outside the customs and reclamation, there was an urgent need for animal power, and the horse breeding industry developed again, and the three northeastern provinces became the regions with the largest number of horses in the country in the past 100 years.

Central Plains horse-producing area: The Central Plains has been riding since ancient times, and horse breeding is quite prosperous. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, horse breeding became a common practice, and then it declined for a time. The southward migration of the grassland peoples has brought back the prosperity of animal husbandry in the Central Plains. However, due to the introduction of a large number of Mongolian horse breeds, the original horse breeds gradually disappeared. Yanmen Pass in Shanxi Province is the entrance place of horse breeds in Saibei, and the Tang Dynasty set up a pastoral supervisor in Hedong (now Shanxi), and the horses were very prosperous. The pastoral supervisors of the Northern Song Dynasty were mainly distributed in the Central Plains, and there were as many as 14 in their heyday. However, some of the herdsmen have been in conflict with the planting industry, and their management is not good, so that there is a tendency to decline; but judging from the large number of horses that the Liao, Jin, and Yuan dynasties have raided for a long time after invading this area, the number of horses raised by the people is still considerable. The horse protection law of Wang Anshi of the Northern Song Dynasty and the official horse and animal husbandry of the Ming Dynasty were mainly implemented here. It was not until the Qing Dynasty that private horse breeding was banned, coupled with the increasing population and insufficient pastureland, that the horse breeding industry in the Central Plains collapsed.

Horse production area in the southeast: China is known as the "south ship and north horse", and the horse breeding industry in the southeast is underdeveloped, but it is not absolutely unsuitable for horse breeding. For example, in the late Spring and Autumn Period, the Wu Kingdom in the lower reaches of the Yangtze River was in need of chariots, and horses developed rapidly. From the Tang Dynasty to the Song Dynasty, horse farms were established in Zhejiang, Fujian, Jiangxi, Hubei and other places in the south. At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, 14 pastoral superintendents were established between the Jianghuai River and in southern Jiangsu, which was unprecedented in the history of southern China.

Horses were originally bred for meat. The Yin Dynasty used horses as sacrifices.

"The Biography of Mu Tianzi" records that when King Mu of Zhou visited the west, the tribes in Qinghai once offered "eating horses". Later, due to the importance of horses in military and post transportation, they were no longer used as sacrifices and funeral goods, and it was strictly forbidden to slaughter horses. According to the records of the Zhou Rites and Xia Guan, the main uses of horses in the Zhou period can be divided into six categories: "stallions" for breeding, "Rong horses" for military use, "Qi horses" for ceremonial guards and ceremonies, "road horses" for post use, "field horses" for hunting, and "horses" for miscellaneous service. According to the system of the Zhou Dynasty, only the king of Zhou could raise six categories at the same time, the princes were not allowed to raise the first two categories, and the doctors were only allowed to raise the latter two categories. This constraint was broken through in the Spring and Autumn Period.

Regarding the origin and evolution of various horse uses, according to the records of the Zhou Yi and the Tang Dynasty, the Yellow Emperor, Yao, and Shun had invented the carriage. The carriage structure unearthed in Yinxu is quite complete. During the Yin and Zhou periods, horse-drawn carriages were commonly used for chariot warfare, hunting, and transportation. The origin of horse farming can be traced back to the pre-Qin period. The Han Dynasty's "Treatise on Salt and Iron" says that in the Han Dynasty, "farmers ploughed with horses", and in the same book "Scattered Insufficient", it is also said: "The ancients' horses were subject to the choke (yoke) when they were acted, and ploughed when they stopped", which should be a fact. It is difficult to say for sure when horseback riding began.

But its widespread use in production and warfare undoubtedly began with the nomadic peoples of the north. During the Warring States Period, in order to deal with the northern horse-riding peoples, the Central Plains countries changed their chariots to cavalry, and King Zhao Wuling's "Hufu Cavalry Shooting" is a prominent example. The status of stagecoaches has always been second only to military horses. Because in ancient times, land transportation mainly relied on post stations, and both post horses and stagecoaches were inseparable from horses. In the Spring and Autumn Period, there were already posts, and they were more developed in the Han and Tang Dynasties. In the Tang Dynasty, post stations were set up every 30 miles, and each station prepared 8~75 horses. The Yuan Dynasty relied on post transport to contact various countries, "Marco Polo's Travels" said that each post station has 20~400 horses, and there are 300,000 post horses in the country.

In addition, horses are also used for sports. In the petroglyphs of the Langshan area of Inner Mongolia, which reflect the life of the northern nomads, there are images of equestrian performances. In the Central Plains, equestrianism began to be seen in court entertainment in the Han Dynasty, and was unprecedentedly developed in the Tang Dynasty, with horseback acting, horse dance, horse racing and other projects. Polo originated in Tibet and became popular in the Tang Dynasty before developing into a military sport during the Ming Dynasty. As for horse milk drinking, it has been used in the grassland peoples since ancient times, and was introduced to the Central Plains during the Qin and Han dynasties. In the Han Palace, special officials and craftsmen were set up to make mare's milk wine, which was drunk by the royal family and later passed on to the people. Because of its sweet taste, it was respected by ancient medical scientists.

The development of horse breeding technology: China's traditional horse breeding technology is rich in content, and has been used in the private sector for a long time long before the introduction of horse breeding technology from the West, with remarkable results.

Soma art: In the Spring and Autumn Period, Bole, Jiufang Gao and other Soma masters came out in large numbers, and wrote "Soma Sutra". Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty cast the "Golden Horse" according to the Dawan horse as a good horse and stood in Chang'an. The Eastern Han Dynasty horse supported the "Bronze Horse Phase" and cast the bronze horse model in front of the Luoyang Palace. Since then, there have been works by Soma for thousands of years, such as "Sagara Mabao Golden Song" written by the Tang Dynasty and adapted in the Ming Dynasty.

Breeding, breeding and training methods: Wu Qi, a war-leading scholar, once had a summary of the pre-Qin horse breeding. The Northern Wei Dynasty's "Qi Min Yaoshu" pointed out that raising horses should "eat three times and drink three times", which was also taught by later generations. In terms of horse breeding, the Tang and Song dynasties had adopted the rectal pregnancy examination method and had a registration and declaration system, and the Ming Dynasty developed again. The northern and southwestern ethnic minorities have very distinctive methods of controlling and training the fertilizer of good horses. The horse pole invented by the Mongolian people and the rope trap horse trapping method in the northwest region are still in use today.

Horse breed improvement: Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty introduced Dawan horses and Wusun horses from the Western Regions, which were mainly used as stallions in addition to the royal use, which can be regarded as the arrow of Chinese horse breed improvement. From the end of the Han Dynasty to the Sui and Tang dynasties, there were continued to be good horses from the Western Regions, including Dawan horses and Persian horses, as well as various tribute horses from the grassland tribes in the northern part of the country. The current Hequ horse and the local breeds in the north and south of the Qilian Mountains are the Tang horse relics.

Horse breeding already had a relatively strict system in the Shang Dynasty, and later it became an ancient state policy:

The oracle bones of the Shang Dynasty record that there were Ma ministers who managed the horses of the Shang kings.

Historically, the government managed the organizational system of official and private horses across the country, which was originally conceived in the Zhou Dynasty. In the "Zhou Li", the functions of schoolman, priest, teacher, person, fun horse, witch horse and other functions are in charge of horse grazing, breeding, training, riding and health care and other tasks in addition to the Zhou royal family and princes raising horses, and requisitioning horses to the lower levels to fill the army. During the Spring and Autumn Period and the Warring States Period, there were words such as "the home of a thousand rides" and "the country of ten thousand rides" to represent wealth with chariots and horses.

In the Qin and Han dynasties, the border counties set up gardens to raise horses, and established the Taifu Temple, and the horse government organs were formed. In the Northern Dynasties, the Taifu Temple was also in charge of camels, cattle, sheep and other pastoral affairs.

The Sui and Tang dynasties set up a pastoral supervisor in Longyou, in addition to the Taifu Temple to oversee the national pastoral administration, and set up a driving department in charge of the post horse, a collection of official and private horses, cattle and miscellaneous livestock books, in order to rely on the examination course, the horse administration organization has been prepared to this point.

In addition to the Song Dynasty, there were still Taifu Temple and the driving department, and there were also a group of herdsmen. The government also set up a tea and horse temple to exchange tea and other tea for horses from ethnic minorities in the west. Wang Anshi created the law of protecting horses raised by officials and people, but it was abolished soon after, and later changed to the system of animal husbandry. The Liao, Jin, and Yuan Ma political organizations basically imitated the Tang and Song dynasties, mainly raising horses outside the Sai Dynasty, and wantonly looting people and horses.

At the beginning of the Ming Dynasty, horse administration was implemented in all parts of the country in the north and south, horse farms were set up in Shaanxi, Gansu and Liaodong, and officials were strictly supervised and pastoral in agricultural areas. Later, due to the decline of pastures and the disorderly duties of officials, no results were obtained.

During the heyday of the Qing Dynasty, the folk horse breeding in the interior was suppressed, and the horse breeding industry was declining day by day. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the military system reform merged the horse administration organization that lasted for more than 2,000 years into the Military Pastoral Division, but the Shangxiyuan remained until the fall of the Qing Dynasty.

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Judging from the above history of horse breeding, Zhang Jiashi actually got some things wrong, that is, many ancient countries that lost horse farms would do everything possible to maintain a certain number of cavalry. Especially in the Southern Song Dynasty, because of the successive hostilities with the Jin State and Mongolia, it was more likely that the horse breeding state could only be developed from the southeastern horse-producing areas.

However, because of its number, it is very likely that in the Southern Song Dynasty, there were only quite scattered cavalry units active on the battlefield, and there was no large-scale cavalry establishment.