At the end of the Eastern Han Dynasty

Prior to this, Guo Peng had set up a large-scale official horse farm in both Bingzhou and Youzhou, and handed it over to the governor of Youzhou and the governor of Bingzhou respectively. Over the past few years, no less than 20 horses have been bred on the grassland.

This is not enough. For Guo Peng's ambition, 20 horses are not enough. This is only enough for the cavalry, which is enough for the current unification war. One war horse is not enough.

Re-opening the Silk Road and building the Protectorate of the Western Regions are all strategic-level actions that require an extremely large number of war horses as power.

To the west of Longshan Mountain, collectively known as Longyou, the area is rich in water and grass, and is the most suitable place for raising horses.

During the Western Han Dynasty, Longyou horse administration was once very prosperous, providing the Western Han government with a large number of horses that could stably attack the Xiongnu. Although this situation stagnated for a time during the Eastern Han Dynasty, it was not without exception.

Guo Peng set his sights on the Longyou area early in the morning, intending to establish the country's largest official horse farm in the Longyou area and raise a sufficient number of war horses, so as to lay the foundation for the restoration of the Hexi Corridor and the Protectorate of the Western Regions in the future.

This time in the battle against Liangzhou, Cao Ren got more than 5 horses just for the crusade against Song Jian, and more than [-] horses during the entire war.

The Longyou area proved to Guo Peng its strength in raising horses and its superior climate and geographical conditions.

Of course, most of these horses are untrained ordinary horses. It will take time to become war horses, but these are not problems.

Now that most of Longyou has been controlled, time is a minor issue.

So Cao Ren reported the truth to Guo Peng.

After learning about the situation, Guo Peng was very happy, and mobilized a group of experienced horse trainers from the horse farms in Youzhou and Bingzhou to Longyou, and let these people who work with horses all day long come to Longyou to be responsible for raising horses.

In addition, Guo Peng asked Xian Yufu's younger brother, Xian Yuyin, to come to Longyou to be in charge of the horse administration. He allocated special funds and did not follow anyone's route. The government returned to the grand occasion of Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty.

At the same time, Guo Peng intends to open his treasure chest of hidden technology a little bit, and take out the full set of harnesses.

The enemies who might threaten him have been wiped out, the northern princes have been wiped out, and the north is actually equivalent to unification. Guo Peng has no worries anymore, and it is time to take out the full set of harnesses.

Takahashi saddle, double stirrups, and horseshoes, these three magic weapons for immediate combat are time to come out.

The 6 cavalry in the Wei army group has reached the point where they can free their hands and turn the cavalry into a real armored chariot in the cold weapon era.

It's time for Wei Jun to make a revolutionary military change.

Let the cavalry become the absolute main force of the war, instead of being the object of support, and let the cavalry have the strength to charge the battle, instead of just detours around the periphery to engage in cavalry and shooting.

Cavalry weapons can also be improved.

Chapter 678 .680 Seven Cavalry Innovation

In the past, most cavalry could only use the ring-shoudao as a weapon, charge with a knife, or play horseback riding and shooting with a bow.

Only a small number of cavalry with strong legs and a smaller number of generals can use spears, charge with spears, or fight immediately with spears.

Because there are no double stirrups and high-bridge saddles, the balance of the body depends on the legs clamping the horse's belly, and heavy weapons cannot be used, otherwise they will lose their balance and fall from the horse.

Only those who have undergone careful training and have strong enough legs can use weapons like spears, which can charge forward with a certain lethality and impact.

Even so, when stabbing the enemy with a spear, most cavalry have to learn to let go in time, otherwise the reaction force brought by the high-speed impact is not something everyone can bear, the arm may be torn, and the cavalry themselves will also suffer from it. Injured and fell off the horse.

At this time, the cavalry can only be used as a support, fighting with the opponent's cavalry, or chasing and killing the defeated soldiers who have lost their army. They can only be used to attack a small number of infantry, and cannot be the main force of the battle.

It wasn't until the harness matured that the cavalry could truly be called iron cavalry. It felt a bit like a torrent of steel, and its lethality against infantry increased exponentially.

Especially the heavy cavalry who are covered in armor, people wear armor, horses wear armor, and use mace and other powerful weapons with powerful lethality, they have extremely powerful ability to break through the formation.

Having said that, this type of heavy cavalry is generally dressed and organized before the formation, and is specifically responsible for breaking the formation and destroying the infantry formation.

However, due to the heavy load, there are high physical requirements for both humans and horses. It must be able to bear the burden of a strong man and a tall horse of excellent blood with a strong load.

Therefore, the number of heavy cavalry must be very small, and the time they can persist in fighting is also very short, and they cannot attack long distances, otherwise they will lose their combat effectiveness due to excessive fatigue.

Therefore, real heavy cavalry often belong to the battlefield killer, the super kill category.

If you don't come out, you will win if you come out.

Think about it, facing a perfect infantry formation, a heavy cavalry unit is covered in heavy armor, lined up with each other, advancing side by side, and charging together.

They rushed directly towards the infantry formation with an indomitable momentum, just like a big iron block crashing into the formation. Such an impact cannot be easily resisted by infantry with shields. It can instantly tear the infantry formation apart. Kill the Quartet within.

At that time, a large number of follow-up troops followed closely behind, crushing the infantry that had lost the protection of the army formation, dividing and encircling them, and defeating them one by one.

That poor infantry would be slaughtered like this, and collapse directly, with heavy casualties.

That is the tank of the cold weapon era.

If the infantry wants to deal with such "tanks", they cannot engage in encounter battles, they must preset positions, and place the decisive battle battlefield on the preset positions.

The preset position needs to dig traps, set up horse refusal, and also be equipped with a weapon specially designed to cut horse legs, such as a saber, which is one of the weaknesses of heavy cavalry.

Of course, the biggest weakness of the heavy cavalry is not that the horse's legs are not protected. It is a joke that the infantry who is not very professional and strictly trained and physically strong wants to fight the heavy cavalry.

The biggest weakness of heavy cavalry is that they are expensive and scarce.

The money spent to raise such a heavy cavalry unit is beyond the reach of ordinary warlords, which can be called astronomical.

First of all, a person's physical fitness must be strong, he must be an elite, and then he must eat enough meat, must have sufficient protein and oil, so that the body bones can bear heavy armor and heavy weapons.

The same is true for horses. Not only must they be of good breed, but they must also have good feed.

The cost of raising such a heavy cavalry and a horse, based on ancient productivity, is conservatively estimated to be able to raise 30 normal infantry.

Judging from the level of Guo Peng's current army, the only people who can become heavy cavalry are probably the Tiger Guards.

As for the war horses that can carry heavy loads, it is estimated that there will be at most a few thousand such war horses out of hundreds of thousands.

This kind of army is definitely amazing to the world, and for a long period of time, it is invincible all over the world. It will definitely make the enemy's army howl and run away when they see it.

But once the weakness is caught, the heavy cavalry unit can be severely damaged in just one battle, and once such a unit is severely damaged, even if the family has a solid foundation, it is impossible to pull another one within three to five years. Come on, that's a huge financial burden.

This is the biggest weakness of the heavy cavalry.

That is the real noble army, the noble way of playing, burning money and burning it.

In Guo's opinion, the loss outweighs the gain.

As long as the number of basic cavalry is large enough and the equipment is good, it can also be regarded as a torrent of steel. As long as a few heavy cavalry go ahead and destroy the infantry formation, the cavalry who follow can also clean up the infantry like melons and vegetables. Really build tens of thousands of steel torrents.

The financial burden is too great for Mr. Guo to bear.

He only needs to let the cavalry free their hands, put on the right amount of armor, take a variety of weapons, have a certain ability to charge and fight, and let the number of cavalry increase greatly, so that the difficulty of cavalry training is greatly reduced, that's enough up.

He is definitely not in a state where he has been in the army for more than ten years and has 40 troops to get more than [-] cavalry.

It is not easy to find soldiers with strong enough legs.

With a full set of harnesses, not only will the loss of war horses be greatly reduced, but the difficulty and time required to train cavalry will also be greatly reduced.

The benefits of advances in technology are all too obvious.

In November of the first year of Jian'an, Guo Peng held a military meeting in Yecheng, and displayed the double stirrups, horseshoes and Takahashi saddles and other war horse harnesses.

He let the generals with experience in leading cavalry in the whole army observe the new posture of the horses and cavalry equipped with a full set of harness on the spot, which shocked the generals immediately.

Zhang Fei traveled all the way back to Yecheng from the border of Youzhou. He was very excited after seeing the soldiers' rehearsal. He decided to go into battle himself. He put on armor and rode a horse equipped with a full set of harness. It was very easy on the horse. made a lot of difficult tactical moves.

Zhang Fei wore a grimace mask, which looked like ghosts and gods, and easily waved a heavy mace, smashing seven or eight wooden men into pieces with ease, looking majestic and imposing.

This situation amazed the generals, and after seeing the advantages of the harnesses, some of the accompanying staff officers immediately thought of the benefits that a large string of harnesses could bring.

Allowing the cavalry to free their hands, they can use weapons with both hands on the horse to fight, and can make many tactical actions, which greatly reduces the burden on the cavalry on horseback.

More importantly, the quality requirements for cavalry are greatly reduced. Therefore, more soldiers can become cavalry, and the difficulty and cost of training cavalry are greatly reduced, which will save a lot of military expenses.

And what excited the officials and generals at the staff desk the most was the little horseshoe.

Chapter 679. 680 Eight are timid in private fights, brave in public battles

After the narration by professionals, the usefulness of that small horseshoe was also known to everyone.

The horse's hoof is composed of two layers. The layer in contact with the ground is a layer of hard cutin about three centimeters thick, and the upper layer is live cutin. The horse's hoof is in contact with the ground, and the cutin will be eroded by the friction of the ground and the corrosion of stagnant water. Comes off quickly.

During the Han-Hungarian War, Huo Qubing led cavalry to attack outside the Great Wall, with a total of 14 horses. After a big battle, only [-] horses returned. The loss of the horses was astonishing.

Unlike the Huns, the Han army took raising horses as their bounden duty, and they had enough horses to use without fear of loss.

The war horses of the Han army are relatively extravagant consumables. The accumulation of three generations has accumulated the loss of a Han-Hungarian war. Emperor Wen and Jingdi accumulated the number of war horses for decades, which gave Emperor Wu of the Han the mobility to attack the Huns in the north.

Most of the reasons may be attributed to the damage of the horseshoe.

During the fierce galloping and fighting on the prairie, the horniness of the horseshoes was quickly worn away and a large amount of damage occurred. It was difficult for the horses to continue galloping, and it could only be counted as a loss.

The service life of a horse is so short, even the treasury of the Han Kingdom accumulated over decades cannot bear such a large loss.

According to legend, during the ancient Roman period, that is, at the same time as Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty, the ancient Romans began to use horseshoes.

Horseshoes have been recorded and real in the Wei and Jin Dynasties, but horseshoes were not officially recorded in China until the Five Dynasties and Ten Kingdoms period. By the Northern Song Dynasty, horseshoes were still absolutely foreign and were not listed by the Central Plains army.

The damage to the horseshoe is so simple and easy, it has caused headaches for the Central Plains courts in all dynasties. It wasted a lot of money and energy, racking their brains to increase the number of war horses, with half the effort and no major changes.

The spread of horseshoes is so difficult that later generations sighed, thinking that if there were horseshoes in the Tang Dynasty, how brilliant the cavalry of the Han people would be, how they would be able to bravely open up the territory and dominate the grassland.

Even the Song people, if they had horseshoes, would not suffer so much from cavalry.

There is one thing to say, in the early years of the Northern Song Dynasty, after five dynasties and ten kingdoms, the combat effectiveness of the Song cavalry was very strong. Even in the Zhenzong period, the Northern Song cavalry could repeatedly defeat the Liao cavalry.

However, the lack of horseshoe equipment and the loss of a large number of horse breeding land in the Northwest and Yanyun made the Song people extremely short of horses and could not afford a large number of cavalry. The battle of the large cavalry corps could only stay in theory.

If it is not on the grassland, the land needed to raise a horse can feed thirty people.

The cost is too high to afford.

Ancient China was not unaware of the damage caused by the loss of horseshoes to war horses. They also thought of many ways to protect the horseshoes by making simple horseshoes with bamboo wood, rattan, and leather, but these are more like decorations and cannot protect the horseshoes well at all. .

But now with this horseshoe, the service time of a war horse can be greatly increased.

Guo Peng's army has never been dominated by cavalry, and the harness has not matured, so the wear and tear of the horses is still within the controllable range, and the horseshoes are broken if they are damaged. When you can't move anymore, you can kill and eat meat, which can be regarded as making the best use of everything.

They really have nothing to do.

But this time, there is a way.

Wang Can's eyes flickered, and he kept stroking the horseshoe in his hand.

He said excitedly that this piece of iron, two pedals and a high bridge saddle can save Guo Peng a huge amount of military expenses, which can be used for many things.

He immediately asked Ying, saying that he would lead a team of accounting officials to calculate the specific amount of this amount for Guo Peng.

Guo Peng laughed and nodded in agreement, and said that after the calculation, the entire team of accounting officials will be rewarded heavily.

In any case, everyone can see that the release of this full set of harness for mass production and promotion to the army will bring huge changes to the cavalry.

The overall structure of the Wei army, as well as the future battlefield and army tactics, may all undergo tremendous revolutionary changes as a result.

The progress of technology has brought too many changes to human society, and war is also an important driver of catalyzing technological progress.

A series of technological advancements introduced by Guo Peng in this relatively chaotic era can be promoted to the greatest extent with the help of the forces of war.

Such progress can be seen right under everyone's noses.

Marvel at it, clap your palms at it, and smack your tongue at it.

Then, cheers.

Seeing the surprised faces of his subordinates, Guo was full of complacency and high spirits.

In fact, he has thought about how to use the large amount of expenses that can be saved after the appearance of harnesses.

For him, part of the money in his hand is enough, not too much. If he has too much money in his hand, there will be less money circulating in the market. Stuffing money in the warehouse will not make small money, but will cause trouble. Get deflation, let the economy go wrong.

How to spend it correctly to achieve the effect of benefiting the country and the people is a question that Guo Peng needs to think carefully.

After thinking about it for a while, Guo Peng decided to follow up with this stall, launch the militia system, and make the militia system permanent, legal and permanent.

Just at this moment, the government-run policy of Yantie Iron has been implemented for a while, and the local private iron smelters have been almost hit, and the militia system can just be implemented.

In Guo Peng's mind, the policy of salt and iron official camps and restrictions on civilian force is mainly to reverse the social state of gallantry that has been born out of the free and undisciplined social atmosphere since the Han Dynasty.

This state of society, where people kill with swords when they disagree with each other, is not in line with the way of the Guo government.

The heroes of the Han Dynasty went everywhere, so there was a saying that the heroes used martial arts to violate the ban. Although the heroes walked everywhere, it certainly led to the martial arts among the people, but for government management, production, and social organizations, the disadvantages outweighed the benefits.

Furthermore, whether or not folks favor martial arts is not directly related to whether the country is strong or not. On the contrary, there is a clear boundary between whether this martial arts is brave enough to fight publicly or privately.

During the Warring States period, the Qin people had a clear understanding of this, knowing that most people who are brave enough to fight privately are timid to fight publically, which is of no benefit to the country.