Traveling through history leaving a name

Chapter 397 Grassland Strategy
The time enters 1613 AD.

At present, Japan has completely become a part of Ming Dynasty.

After Japan was brought into the territory of Ming Dynasty, the king of Japan moved to the capital and became a hostage. This made North Korea, which was sandwiched between Japan and Ming Dynasty, silent for the past two years, for fear that Ming Dynasty would annex North Korea if he was unhappy.

In the past few years, North Korea continued to send envoys to show their loyalty to Daming, and also sent many beauties to Emperor Wanli to show their loyalty to Daming.

After the Ming Dynasty took over Japan, in addition to the severe deterrent to North Korea, it also greatly deterred other small countries around it.

Originally, the situation in the south of the Ming Dynasty was not very stable, not to mention the chieftain's rebellion. Annan and Myanmar have always been very disrespectful to Daming.

Burma and the Ming Dynasty had been at war for half a century, and it was not until 1605 that they just ceased fire.

However, after learning that the Ming Dynasty had defeated Japan and included the entire Japan in its territory, these small countries in the south suddenly became much more honest.

Annan, in particular, hastily sent envoys to pay tribute in order to show his loyalty.

However, even under the power of the Great Ming to destroy Japan, most of the small countries have begun to become more sensible.

However, there are still people who are not interested.

In 1613, the Mongolian Department of Fried Flowers and others invaded Liaodong Pinglubao (now northwest of Shenyang, Liaoning) with [-] riders, and demanded that the Ming Dynasty reward countless money, food and materials.

When the news spread to the capital, the cabinet passed the news to the Li Supervisor, who knew that the matter was serious, and passed the news to Emperor Wanli.

After Emperor Wanli saw the memorial, he didn't take it seriously.

In recent years, there have been too many incidents of grassland peoples invading Daming, and it happens several times every year, and he has become accustomed to it.

After reading the memorial, Emperor Wanli just asked the cabinet to discuss it on its own, and after the constitution was in place, let the supervisor of ceremonies approve the redemption.

The cabinet's attitude towards this matter was vacillating for a while, and after half a month of hesitation, another news came that the flower frying department had committed another crime in Daning (now west of Ningcheng, Inner Mongolia).

In the end, the cabinet agreed to the request of the Flower Speculation Department and rewarded a lot of money and materials.

When Zhang Qingfeng heard about this, the cabinet had already made a decision.

From this incident, Zhang Qingfeng finally realized that the Ming Dynasty was not only facing threats from the south, but also threats from the north.

As the Little Ice Age gets worse, the life of northern nomads will become more and more difficult.

At that time, the northern nomads will come to Daming several times a year to rob.

It’s not that they naturally like to rob, but because if they don’t rob the Ming Dynasty, they will starve to death.

Under such circumstances, most of the strategic resources in the late Ming Dynasty were basically concentrated in the north.

And what is the northern army doing?Raising the bandits' self-respect, defrauding the imperial court of military salaries, made the officers of the nine borders earn a lot of money.

However, what they didn't expect was that they would eventually raise such a monster as Manqing.

Zhang Qingfeng has come to this era, and now that he has enough rights, he naturally doesn't want Manqing to continue to grow.

So he approached Emperor Wanli and said that he would intervene in grassland trade and earn more money for the royal family.

Because the interests involved in grassland trade were too great, Zhang Qingfeng didn't dare to intervene at first.

To do grassland trade, you must have a strong background and the support of the frontier army.

In the last years of the Ming Dynasty, Shanxi merchants were able to become the number one merchant gang. Without the collusion between officials and businessmen, it would be impossible to achieve such great achievements.

Just say that with so much material entering and leaving the customs, how could it be possible without the release of the border troops?

At that time, Shanxi was an important town on the nine borders, and there were countless Ming troops stationed there. Without opening up the border troops, it was impossible for Shanxi merchants to do grassland trade.

Hearing that Zhang Qingfeng was going to do grassland trade, Emperor Wanli immediately agreed.

He didn't know that grassland trade was not as simple as he imagined. The royal firm did grassland trade, and he didn't know how many people's interests would be harmed.

Moreover, if you want to do grassland trade, you need to have connections on the grasslands. If you don’t have connections, it will be in vain.

The reason why Shanxi merchants are able to gain popularity on the grasslands, while other merchants have no way to intervene in the grassland trade, is mainly because Shanxi merchants can make it difficult for you to move an inch on the grasslands.

In order to do grassland trade, Zhang Qingfeng directly transferred back the [-] cavalry stationed in Japan.

After Chen Guangping captured Japan, more than 3 security forces were stationed in Japan.

This time, in order to expand grassland trade, Zhang Qingfeng ordered the deployment of five thousand cavalry.

Zhang Qingfeng also asked Emperor Wanli to train another 5000 cavalry, which could protect the safety of the caravan.

Emperor Wanli quickly agreed to Zhang Qingfeng's request.

However, he did not prepare the cavalry court army, but existed in the form of bodyguards of commercial firms.

After obtaining the consent of Emperor Wanli, Zhang Qingfeng began to recruit troops and train these cavalry.

Cavalry against cavalry, the best tactic is wall charge. In the era when the enemy has no firearms, wall charge is almost invincible.

Wall charge tactics do not have very high requirements for cavalry and horses. An army can be formed within a year, and with hard training, an army can be formed in half a year.

Of course, the tactics of charging completely against the wall cannot take all the enemies, so these cavalry still need to use more tactics.

Zhang Qingfeng equipped all the cavalry with muskets, so these cavalry must also be able to be used as mounted infantry.

Zhang Qingfeng wants to train this cavalry to be like the Cossack cavalry, able to flexibly use a variety of tactics, so that they can be more flexible in changing tactics according to war needs.

For this cavalry, Zhang Qingfeng not only equipped them with the best cavalry swords, but also equipped each of them with a sophisticated long-barreled flintlock gun and four short-barreled firecrackers. In addition, each of them also had a A pair of heavy breastplates.

As for the war horses, Zhang Qingfeng even spent a lot of money to buy them from various places. Everyone was equipped with two horses, one for riding and the other for carrying weapons and food on camels.

Just when the cavalry training was almost finished, the caravan organized by Zhang Qingfeng was also ready.

As for the merchants leaving the customs, Zhang Qingfeng only needed to draw from various industries under him. In just three months, several caravans with more than a hundred horse-drawn carriages and hundreds of civilians were formed.

The materials transported by the caravan are naturally iron pots, porcelain, glass mirrors, glass utensils, cotton cloth, silk, salt, wine, tea, etc., which are in short supply on the grassland.

Especially iron pot, salt, tea, these kinds of materials are almost strategic materials on the grassland.

Not to mention the importance of salt, without salt supplementation, people will appear weak and sick, lack of energy, and physical fatigue and other symptoms.

Tea is also very important on the grasslands, because grassland people have used beef and mutton for a long time, and beef and mutton are greasy, hot and difficult to digest.

Taking beef and mutton as the staple food for a long time will cause various discomforts, which in turn lead to various diseases, such as abdominal discomfort, dryness and constipation, which are very uncomfortable.

With the appearance of tea, the prairie people quickly got rid of some symptoms.

Therefore, tea and salt are very important strategic materials on the grassland.

Other than that is the iron pot. When many herdsmen flee for their lives, they don’t need to take anything else, but they must take the iron pot with them, which shows that they will attach importance to the iron pot.

In March 1614, the first royal caravan organized by Zhang Qingfeng set off from Zhangjiakou and entered the grassland.

(End of this chapter)